Daisy Chains

I had to be a bullet in a gun
No one knew who I was
Including me

I was ready to explode
A flash of flame
Steel and powder
Don’t you dare say my name
This is a hair trigger

I grew tired of being aimed
Directed
My annihilation
A weapon

Then walls fell
Chaos became daisy chains
And I rusted
Unused

I am still a bullet
My trigger is still eager

But my heart no longer yearns for it to be pulled

The entropy of excess

Winding through the hills of luck and nepotism
Houses a lone on hills
That looks more like manors that have esoteric names
Down into the valley of socioeconomic nightmares
Tent cities and junk yards
Flashes of suburbia
A moment of cookie cutter middle class picket fence
Before it becomes water and sunlight
But not for so long
The disparity
Haves and have nots
A wonderful incongruent back drop
Those of us with suitcases roll the dice
Here or there
It’s always here or there
Even though I seem to be moving in infinity loops
Where the tight rope between contemporary post apocalyptic garbage
And suburban yards with rose bunches and fruit trees
I don’t belong in either
I belong with a suitcase
And yet
Rosebushes and goldfish
Fruit trees and dogs barking
Wood floors and a rarely used fire place
It makes home when this world blurs past
There I can stop

Glimmers

You left me behind

Where is my trial?
If I am to be condemned to life without you?

I feel like you wrote your name on me with blades

Tattooed me with loss

But I see you in the trees
In the river
In the moonlight where the dryads dance

Glimmers

I hear your voice in your daughter
I see your smile in sunshine
And my god I hear your laugh

I want to fight with you
I want to shout at you
I want to scream that you could have come back sooner

I want to tell you
You were worth more than what happened to you

So on days when I bereave the world because you are not in it

I tell your brother I miss you

I tell my love a joke you told me once

I tell your daughter I love her
I tell her that she is golden and gorgeous
And I tell her she is worth more than what has happened to her

My Opinion On Dandelions

I keep thinking there is someone I can call

Drugs I can take
And powerful things
The darker things
That still know my name

I wish I didn’t know myself so well
I wish I didn’t think of me at all

Exchanges in my head
Are so powerfully meaningless
Septic nonsense

A dirge of names

A treachery of mine

A castle in the sky
No more attainable
Than serenity
As accessible as death

Like esoteric reading of tea leaves
My future in the debris

I am always the fool
When it comes to dandelions

But this cotton candy romance is wearing off

Self awareness like poison apple fills me with reproach

No one tells you that the grave is full of time

Death of the Palm Tree

Oranges fall to the ground and rot in California

Palm fronds litter the streets of gold that have never really glittered

All the mundane

Wrapped in temperate weather and small towns

The cities are just markers on a map

A vague indicator

Of the somewhere you pass through

Destination unlikely

Evenings stretch out into the setting sun

We are breathing

I am just a palm frond

Chaos Converging

I have spent so much of my life looking for something to fight

These days I never remember whether I won or lost

They were the same really

Just an excuse to become an adversary

I thought I had to fight

Gasping for breath was the only way I knew how to be alive

But these days

I’m just a little more peaceful

How dare the queen of chaos
Eris the god
Say such a thing

But chaos for chaos sake is a beautiful fire

And fighting for the sake of the fight
Will only leave you bloody

Destruction
Nihilism

But these days…

I’m just a little more peaceful

Gratitude of Dusk

My life made false start after false start
The runners were poised
The pistol was fired
And it died from the bullet

Life began when I was waiting

It began with endings

Such tremendous endings

I never thought I would see the sunset that way

Now both shoes have dropped
And I am running barefoot

Towards something
Something

And I am finding my way

The long twilight of my soul

Has come upon the stars

And notes like jazz
Incomprehensible
Are on the air

I am in the falling light

For the first time
I feel found

An Optimistic Stanza

I am a better poet the less I indulge in chicken soup for the soul

Or maybe the indulgence is that I imagine myself so darkly

I am my own creation
A stanza
Read a loud

Are similes and metaphors enough?

Do adjectives adequately explain?

That these days are sweeter than honey
More comforting than the sunrise

I am no longer scared of who I am
I am increasingly curious about who I will become

Every evening in the dusk I breathe deeply and sigh
It’s like I have forgotten how to lose my smile

In answers
Geographical and otherwise

If I have not been clever I have been lucky

The words are so pale compared to the Technicolor reality

I would paint the sky with those colors if I had that talent
If I had that energy

I am at a loss
How to create without friction

This is my first time
Hopeful and terribly happy

Other Questions for the Dead

I can’t comprehend never

I can’t fathom that days just go on
That blue skies turn black
And time is endless

Endless?

There is an ocean of agnostic nothingness between us

And I am to bear forever?

I whisper tiredly
My voice ragged with emotion

How could you do this?

I want to ask if you miss me and be disappointed no matter what the answer

I need to know if you still play hide and seek?

And can I know
If you are loved?

Does it compare to this love that is behind you?
Love that makes my heart beat wrong
Love that slides down my cheeks
Love that now feels like a crushing weight in my chest

Answer me?

This is just like the night as you were dying

Questions, questions

Answers esoteric if at all

And the things I wanted to ask haunt me like shadows in a mirror

Can you stay?

Will I smile the same?

Did you know I loved you more than snow and ice?

Was my hand in yours enough?

Can I come with you?

Questions I just live with in my bones
With this infinity symbol that is never
Slowly snapping my spine

Capitalism and Candy

I keep thinking in quotation marks
Reality incorrectly used

Sometimes I wake up
In the middle of the night
Just so my body doesn’t have to respond to the shriek of the alarm

The void is never silent
And at night the curves
Sing lullabies

I’m thinking I need chocolate
Some kind of sugary rush
Glory to the addict automotaun

Then I remember that American chocolate
Is made with palm oil
Which causes…
Slavery…
Or something

I forget I want chocolate

Do I need coffee?

This route is like skies so cloudless and blue
Overdose on beauty
And still you die