tactile tales
tricks of the trade
trials, trances, and transformation
we hold distractions
like dead flowers
and command of the word
is shaky at best

blue bird
black
and broken by the world

secret spawn
i want to remember the first line
like it was the last
no more ghosts
no more songs

embrace the background noise
with cats and cacotopian coffee
we ride random lines
spent like loose change
as ideas seep then sleep
no art, no poetry
just promiscuous thoughts
brain fodder
on a cold morning dawn
simple words converted and captured
settled in paper notes with no meaning

six am, cold car hum
dressed like a lyrical bum
these early days
continually kill the poet mind

ruled by routine
survival
under a guillotine
some days we simply
deputize and digitize
abbreviated forms of storytelling

starving notebook themes
quiet as this fine toothed pen nibbles
at starving pages
invented and cemented
in these spiral hollow dreams

search a sunlight swell
with sanitation
in the morning spell
shifting gears
amidst spectral spheres
two lines, then back to work

screen names cascade
like vanity portrayed
and all at once
a bitter silence is betrayed

watered down days
mix with tangled vines
composed of
dying rhymes
driving me to midnight wine
till i’m left with nothing
but personal crimes

fever, favor
friendships and fatalities
fuel for an uncertain fabrication
in the noonday sun

living fiction
beneath constant friction
absent benediction
with dances and scriptures
the metal heads are moonlighting
as madcap marionettes

curse the ghost of tuesday
in my mind he whispers a song
though somehow
the melody seems a bit wrong
i want to drink
from that elevated fountain
and forget the future

behold the fire
and polished humanity
the word is different now
and we missed the apocalypse
repent slowly
as the lines between
addiction and desire
continue to blur

fate is a forgotten tragedy
and i know now
that the stars
are just
souls
that never made it to heaven