For You Old Friend..

My soul has been set ablaze by your tragedy,

The ambers glow bright red like a thousand eyes of demons staring back at me …

I strive to become your catalyst, but I fumble through empty rants only handing over fistfuls of broken advice

I stand against the blowing wind, watching you bleed through tourniquets of rusty chain links..

The warm blood rushes towards the frozen ground.. Melting the spot where you buried your heart deep within the confines of gritty soil

When you are ready.. I will help you dig…

When you are ready.. I will help you bury the past, as you have helped me bury mine…

I embrace you as a brother, bearing an oath that is made in the corners of tree houses or midnight adolescent adventures…

Promises made under black night skies, in empty streets…. sealed with concrete corners of a neighborhood…

You now stumble along in feverish grief…

When you are ready… I will help carry your weight, as you have helped me carry mine

When you are ready … I will help you dig..

For I count you among my beloved,

For I count you among my brothers..

The Common Struggle…

An empty heart leads to a murderous hand…

Their fingertips drip blood like leaky faucets,

They strap on their suits, ties fastened tight upon the collar,

to negotiate the sins a whipping boy will take stripes for….

Our pain is of no concern,

They laugh in between stiff sips of expensive liquors, scribbling big words with cheap pens, exchanging cheap smiles.

The business man makes his move and kills yet another pawn…

Another life wasted, just a common man with common debts,

Common bills stack on a corner of a shelf, screaming to be paid…

They’ll surely starve a while more.. for there are belly’s aching to be filled..

Nothing left but common tears to cry, from common women, with common children,

All while they go to uncommon parties and somehow, fuck uncommon whores, drink uncommon wine-own uncommon bank accounts

They fight uncommon wars using common lives.. They continue to dance on uncommon floors built on the shoulders of the common man…

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My brain seems to be misfiring, false engine lights blink up and down my spine.

Pores that sweat panic attacks…

I swerve through blurred vision, taking deep breathes

A desperate attempt to see clear…

My mind focuses on flesh and bone, its fragile structure is sculpted to one day dissolve.

My eyes scrape the murky soil that dines upon the left overs of life….

The first breathe of birth

The last gasp of death

The cycle repeats and echoes through my head laboriously

The body..

The vessel of the soul…

If I think about my involuntary movements, will they suddenly become voluntary?

A beating heart deep within the cavity of my chest..

Will it stop if I lose my will?

All my fears collide like a train wreck

No survivors…. its compartments reek of horror and death

My dreams are tortured with visions of babies in meth labs…

The filth of this world seems to stick to me like the smell of soot from destructive fires that burn within the security of our homes and tarnish the warmth of our beds..

All this wanders through my head as I drive in my car….

I continue to blame it on my eye sight as I take another deep breathe to regain clarity once more.

Reflections…

A reflection stares back at me from the mirror of my mind,

Gleaming, shattered shards of glass

Neurological pressure points and path ways twisting and bending rays of light,

Distorted conceptions….

Like an image in the water, dispersed into a million ripples

Never ending tiny waves within waves,

Like how the world sees us,

Thousands of optical tunnels leading to tiny waves of electrical pulses,

Sporadic stored judgment,

This is a failure with in us all…

Programmed from birth,

We believe the lies depicted from the mirrors of the world,

And sometimes….. The lies that glare from within ourselves…

The Interview

Straighten that tie

Comb your hair, neatly parted,

The smell of pomade emanates

Another set of eyes to impress

Another set of asshole questions to answer

A well met hand shake, dead skin cells flake from friction, they fall gently to the neatly buffed floor.

The exchange of dumb, toothy smiles, so easy and willing.

Whoring pleasantries through the clatter of footsteps.

Straighten up!

Knock that dandruff off your shoulder.

Don’t be yourself, not here….

The desk that divides, filled with documents and expensive writing utensils, hours of life bound with paper clips..

What are some of your strengths? Says “the have” to “the have not”…

It takes a lot of strength not to tell you what I really think! Thinks” the have not”, but he says differently…

His voice quivers with discomfort, spilling an array of bullshit… furthest from the truth.

“The have” pauses just long enough to let the sting of discomposure settle.

What are some of your weaknesses? “the have” says to “the have not”

Stop shaking your god damn leg!

Fold your hands in your lap!

Look like you have got some sense! ….

I can’t help but have a burning hatred for everything to do with people like you! Thinks “the have not”, but he says differently.

Again a story of brackish bullshit dribbles from his mouth, dry with a thin layer of nervous spit.

This time a well met handshake was tainted with sweat …

“The have” wipes his hand on the breast of his pinstriped shirt, watching “the have not” walk away

A document gets crumpled up and lands with a thud in a trash can found on the side of the dividing desk.

The sound is muffled by the clatter of footsteps…

In Moments Alone

The pendulum swings and seconds fall from minutes…

minutes that fall from hours…

hours that peel back into days, and so on.

The walls stand opaque, painted with the evening’s shadow. I sit alone with my thoughts as they strain through my mind.

I tell myself I’m not dead.

I tell myself Gods not dead.

I grasp my hands and fall to my knees.

Will my prayers be answered?

Are they all just empty sonnets?

Is there more than just a dome like sky to cry out to?

Do the clouds catch my pleas?

Do the stars burnish an answer?

And so it seems…

And so it seems its time to stand in line amongst the “what ifs”

Receiving just enough to wait around…… the endearment of sore feet.

The distinctive sound of an ambulance.  The mundane look of a passerby.

The uncertain stillness when the clock strikes that minute when life sways to death.

The blur, the draining of color, the permanent stain of grey.

Again the staring glares of a passerby. Mystified with curiosity. The” what if” burned into the pupils of their eyes.

laying awake

I can’t seem to escape this desolation; a place my mind continues to take me.  Again and again. I wither away, layers upon layers of nothing, I can’t breathe. I suffocate in the shadow of a nobody, a waste. My hands have become feeble and useless. Defected like a torn condom, for disaster surely follows my every move, failure lurks in the darkness of every corner of my life and I lay awake naked staring at the spinning motion of a ceiling fan, letting the air push its way around my body, and I can’t help but to be disgusted by my own weakness, it seeps from my pours and sticks to my soul, like warm spit on a popsicle stick, a reflection of my nakedness. Disgusted by what I truly am, an embryo of a man frail willed and selfish. I thirst. I thirst to drink deep from the waters of life, to become someone, to become something more than hopeless.

Random Thoughts… A Poem.

Thoughts pulse to the flashing of a flickering street light as I walk empty city sidewalks. The cool night air kisses the salt of my sweat; it pushes against me softly, nudging me along like the movement of the ocean. Moments of my past begin to overwhelm my mind, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the paths I’ve crossed. As I dream in spirit the city scape turns into a pitch black forest, rods of light pierce through the tops of trees and I begin to awaken to the cold bosom of reality, I force myself to suckle the teat of a world of opposites, its nourishment is filled with death, for all our lives are cloaked in the darkness of the inevitable, all our paths lead to the beckoning sound of a closing casket. From birth we struggle and yearn for the warmth of life, the embrace of love, the gentle touch of our mothers, our givers of life, to only find ourselves filling their place with the sight of cheap lamp shades, wallowing in the scent of one night stands.

Is life worth the struggles we face? How many of those struggles did we create for ourselves? Is there anything left pure, untainted by this world that turns on axles of desecration?  I find my answers when I look into my daughters eyes as she wakes, bathing in the morning sun light that forces its way through the alabaster window shades half drawn in my room.