Cartwheels and Swings November 3, 2009

I feel like sometimes this is the hardest thing for me to do. Release. Relieve myself from every single day’s torment of dementing me.
From here I fall up.
Into the sky.
Into the mouth of God -
my wet cave of sound(less)
heat, breathing,
revision.
“Until creation becomes
revelation,”
I said to her,
wishing, waiting for my own
message to transfer,
mouthing words in
no real vocalic [...]

October 14, 2009

     Loss coming from deep-chested gasps, whether it oxygen or soul reached for, the feeling grips my heart all the same. I wear these marks of permanent shame as a rebuttal to life’s approach toward keeping me happy, or maybe just my heart beating, irresponsibly, irreversibly, substantially aching over the detriment of my unknown love [...]

Winter Park Memorial Hospital October 1, 2009

“I have birds that whistle, I had birds that sing.”
Drowned in meds and stupidity rolling off doctoral tongues. Don’t know whether to pretend this is the best blues song a man could bring to the table or if I’ve just wasted a complete week of my life. Still walking around in pain but the cloud [...]

Classroom Notes September 11, 2009

 
Thin lines holding up the shoulders,
snapping, disappearing,
like idle thoughts lost, shivering
in the cold, in mindless speaking,
rambling, huddles
of letters falling
in some random numerical order
but far from technical, secular sorts,
the uppercase being a national hero
for all the apostrophes
making them stand with motionless singularity
like an apostle,
because God can’t live alone.

The History of Drinking September 3, 2009

 

Calm, collected,
infatuated with quietness
whispering to me,
like dust rumbling over book casing,
padding along the top
of parched pages disintegrating under
artificial, alien lights -
sand paper in limestone
quarries.
Tiny wings clapping
in translucence, vindictive
fluttering, taps
against the bulb -
every man’s flight
towards God.
Fissures scratching
inside man-made glass,
florescent vines
cutting outlines -
a kinder garden of
time-outs and mind
envisioning the arboretum
to come from
Benjamin Franklin thinking
while drinking under what
watered [...]

Mechanical Human August 14, 2009

Bruised bags under my eyes
beaten by flicking hands, fist
drilling minutes, seconds,
splitting eyelids – a flutter
similar to an immobile,
perched set of robotic
moth wings twinged by light wind,
trying to keep awake.
Each tick of the line
slicing silence in two’s,
then thirds, sixtieths, then
into those unheard minutes
before noon, or was it
midnight the night before,
this is where my knees feel restless
and [...]

Midday Drift July 24, 2009

Insatiable critics never play games,
developing love to
unfold the cage of my ribs,
like a piano player might
an organ, collapsing, folding,
bending the crease -
live oxygen to a field
of poppy plants.

Hospital Visits July 13, 2009

It felt like a small village
held idle
like a hand would
the needle over vinyl.
I can hear the static
dripping into my ears -
drums.
The silence of sound.
Patients turning over,
rustling linen,
coughing the air of sleep;
disease, pleads,
medicated dream.
Dripping down
into my inner ear
beating like rain
on bat-winged
umbrellas. I watch.
A pattering of God’s tears
overhead, my umbrella
a dying neighbor’s denial of Him.
Who am I
to [...]

Conversations About Death June 29, 2009

Words are water,
tumbling from the mouth
of a shallow pitcher,
hoarse, sly like the match
God dropped in Hell,
coarse, dry like dryer lint
under the branches
keeping my eyes under
level seizures of thought
shaking into the mouth of
another.
Flame in throat
hoping to choke down
the glass.

Waking the Dead June 24, 2009

With a few drowsy steps I shuffled my feet with stiffened legs and with an uncaring yank out plopped my carry-on bag. I wasn’t in the mood to wake up. My life felt black and white like the color had been beaten out of it from nightmares and unfinished dreams. They say you’re supposed to [...]