Defeat

Your arms are bare,
it's too much to bear while
we are both up in arms.

Lay down your arms
that you so often bear.
You may rest them at my feet,
as the biggest feat is letting go
of defeat.

Scratch and Dent

Have you ever really seen the light

inside your Kenmore? Whirlpool?

have your neuron transmitters

been wrapped in tinfoil

nad put in the microwave?

(if so, which button did you press?

popcorn?

TV dinner?)

The metal pot in which

you store your brain at night

is meant for stovetop cooking.

Don’t stick that in the oven!

Daily, we marinade our minds

but the meat is seldom tender.

Cook it slow,

retain the juices!

Turn off that broiler there.

Yes, you!

Skewer your thoughts with a sapling’s broken arm

and lightly toast them on an open flame.

Nuked food gets too tough,

too fast.

You don’t want the center to be dried out,

now do you?

Spilt

The brain from which you came is near to my
own mind. The crooked noodles pile inside
our skulls, they squirm with thought of their escape
through ears and nostrils. Eyelids, even better.
They wind and wrap like snakes on paths to deer
which might be wounded, waiting to be swallowed.
Their jaws unhinge in preparation for
the feast of flesh, the beast, the mess. Two brains-
turned ropes of hunger stretched around each other.

Heart Man

Holes in my heart are the size of the gaps
that puncture lobes, leave room for fingers, gourds,
or tongues that slip, like you out of the door
before the sun awakes. The morning raps

at the window, the light pours in the cracks
in the form of screeches, and senseless words
signaling our approach into a world
that tilts- that has no lines or rules or maps.

Heads rest on beds but mostly colored mats
and hands are hugged with gloves, with flashing lights
of love. We live in years not days or hours,

decades have gone by instead of only months past.
In the land of our living even what's wrong is right
and the sun that I see is the kind in the flower.

Down

Where do we go when
the only place we feel normal is
down?

Below, in the depths-
subterranean emotions are less
human than happiness.

What can we hold on to
when we dig
up and up and up
and still only push away the dirt and earthworms?

Encapsulated in a natural grave,
the broken hearted attempt escape,
but will soon find out that the
roots of trees have bound their ankles
down.

Mine Mind

I try to find a solution
to all the problems in my head
but all the figures shake and rattle
inside this skull of dread.

E

Struck down
Pills win,
a putrid affair
which I cannot stop.

Control lost-
spirals.
A galaxy of dusts
colors match, mix
through tubular bills
stuck in a cavity
of thirst and pain-

A kind which you
inflict on all but your own soul.

I abandon you.
Crack.
Go.

Me Without You

Burning and drifting
I life away
towards a sphere of
alternate, lesser reality.

Torture, a bruised soul,
and rope burns
around my bound wrists.

You left me
here,
Broken.
Addict, Masochist, Terror.

Each drop of love
has absorbed into your pores
and has been expelled
as urine and bullshit.

You:selfish.
and me?
left here, Broken still.
Destroyed without you,
yet completely renewed.
Alive. Awake. Alone.

Shadows

It can be hard to tell what kind of pain or damage
has been seen, and felt, by the human heart.
It must have scars, bruises or even burns-
perhaps from flying too close to the sun,
but more likely they happened at the hands
of another. But it still beats, lives.

Sometimes I think that as people our lives
only exist for one reason: they are built for damage.
But when facing the worst, often our hands
are the part being sent through walls. The heart
never really breaks. It only feels like the sun
could never have enough heat to cause those burns.

A solar flare licks its flame, burns
and smolders, wrapping it’s tongue around lives
in lands of loveless cold. Warmer than sun
though, is the care before the damage.
The height of the degree depends on how much heart
is put into the fight, and how much degradation the hands

Of time have caused. Wrinkled hands
feel the smoothest when they tend to the burn
sof the newly wounded. The aging, aching heart
that comes with them has beat in the lives
of many. They have felt the damage,
but also have inflicted it. The setting sun

Of every day changes the shadow cast on the soul. Sun
can reach through the cracks and grasp the hands
of the slipping, preventing them from damage
that the rocks below may cause, and the burns
they will feel as they plummet into hell. Our lives
all circle around avoiding that fiery place, but each heart

Has been there. The core of the earth, Mother Nature’s heart
is molten, yet it is dark having never seen the light of the sun.
Like plants, we bend against the panes of windows, our lives
dependent on the energy we absorb through light. Our hands
stretch toward the sky, fingertips ignoring the burns,
the lines and the spots. All sun damage.


The light in our lives consumes the hope in our heart,
but we cannot escape the damage in the absence of sun,
just instead clench our hands, and ignore the burns.