Funnel Cakes

​Once the subject of best-selling stories and songs and soliloquies
have I delayered into funnel
cakes on your face like a haphazard makeup job
and yet I smile when the onion layers,
settings in rings, looking like basketballs,
give me permission to scrutinize, but is it
liberating, or scientific?

I speak the word with such disgust but it
is an inevitable piece of my nature,
whispering to me that only the fittest will survive
because Darwin told me it was natural

Swish, swish,
here goes nothing. But oh! Mind leaping from its seat
like a zealous child
(there is potential here)
and though my cards my fingers grip near,
tell me everything and nothing and
do everything and nothing and
charm the Ego needing nourishment

Oh what fun,
rewatching my own reruns
and restudying my own refunds
and telling myself I'm gripping the joystick
and Kirk is letting me drive
and I am the captain of my own mind
and yet here I lie, unable to unwind

I want to know -
"Is it beautiful/exciting/humble/impressive/relatable/babyface/vixen/"
...what did they say we should be?
Eh, forgotten in the threads.

No, no. Reassure thyself and keep on
waltzing down your own yellow brick road,
and with that dog in your basket, keep picturing
10s across the board
(was that okay?)

A Hug From Mercury

​How deeply do you feel unloved
when the torrents outside are knocking,
begging with arms outstretched,
grumbling with fear?
What's on the other side of fear?

Nothing.

And yet, how deeply do you feel loneliness
when you listen to the same sad songs
and sing sadfully along
and hope for an answer to your call?
Who are you waiting to call?

No one.

Then why, why do you feel so unfocused,
so mercurial with each thought trickling like
beads on a Sunday morning dewdrop,
waiting on an epiphany to arrive?
Where do you find inspiration?

Nowhere but here -
Here, inside the heart you thought you never had
that you thought for so long would never possess
that they said was only for others
that we said we'd all share,
and then why, why do we feel so deeply?

Missing

He didn't come.

A dark cloud forever cast over his shoulders,

shoulders I haven't seen in three, four years

He's upset, they say.

Drape yourself in sympathy, but we all know

what we don't know

Who will be there for you?

Why didn't you say anything?

Why didn't they say anything?

Why are we frustrated?

Who are we to say?

He's exhausted, I bet.

Creativity Research

Subtitle: That Poem in Which I Plagiarize Song Lyrics

I forgot how to write.
I fed myself forced creativity,
rejected by peristalsis.
Losing that part of my brain where my
halfway ideas and unfinished stories reside -
would that not be the worst reply?
(it's a superpower)

Who doesn't remember those times I
attempted being "poetic" and I tried not to rely
on laudations my acquaintances showered on me
believing perhaps thine words were slick and sly...
Do I even know about rhymes?
(fifty K for a verse, no degree out)

Crowds pushing, music pulsing, everybody wants the one
in the middle.
Walls crumble in and fold inside themselves the desires they
wish could hide.
But then who am I to shove my assumptions and superfluous fives
on a population I don't comprise?
(king of anything, she said)

Ah, only now do I realize the reasons they surmised
a talent could reside in the things that they call eyes -
but mine?
Making habits, breaking requirements, unplugging styles.
(on to the next one, on to the next one)

The Swell

Dangling toes over the edge, wondering
Who remembers?
Insignificant digits appended to a significant life
Hold your own hands
Nothing else matters but
self-belief
existing halfway between fantasy and reality

That insufferable swell
Chills dancing their way through veins and arteries
Genuine energy with childish fears
beg the question, why do we fear these things?

Is it pain? deep inside a different soul yet unknown
Songs will write themselves and only after publication
will I know what I mean

If Bovine Could Fly

Scratching at the unpainted surface of a tired melody
Half truths and full lies entertain themselves in heartfolds
Who is the dog that barks his every fleeting thought
without careful contemplation
whose insincere consideration begs for laughable condemnation?

A wipe at the face and halt. Inhaling stale air
marks mere attempts at determination and they
pretend cirrus clouds and radioactive demons are but distractions
in an opaque painting of a lackadaisical raison d'être

Yet freshwater etches a fresh scar on ravaged skin
and leaves unprinted harmonies for the homeless to pick
Wondering -
No wondering.
Reaping ideas they tried piecing into a Picasso frown that'd
theoretically turn upside down if bovine could fly and
brush off their shoulders like
inconvenient dirt
thinking we'd all laugh ensemble

But I refuse to accept dysfunctional bombs and saccharine pity
from those who think not of what they are.
Surely a mind such as mine might understand.

Unremarkable Diary

Everything that drowns the silence

Sleeps inside of me

All the moments people dream of

Creep inside of me

Put my head to the radio and speak

Louder than the voices in my head

Tumbling down cracks in the name of

A visage only I see

Who sees? Is it me?

Wonders of aging time and tearless goodbyes and angst we pretend to harbor unnecessarily

Was it just a jaded teenage dream?

Greedy for the light and

Grieving shadows through unknown tomorrows but there lies

Truth

Such truth in the eyes that look beyond what I believe to be

My version of reality

My adaptation of peace

And I wonder, oh I wonder!

Dangerous thoughts are those that aim to please the

Citizens of a granite city

And the cuts in their jackets and ties in their blouses

Crease every page of an unremarkable diary

And I taste a little bittersweet,

a little redder than most but catheters scream and lions flee and

Poetry lies by the wayside, wondering, "Who are these things?"

Only by the midnight do my thoughts run free and am I caught in a leash

Burn what things may fall please and I

Yes, I

Will renew peace.

A Traditionalist's Thoughts

The washing tides are stronger than undeveloped wills

Breaking down the step-by-step, faster than free thoughts

and furthermore songs I avoid writing, things I avoid trying,

and to wonder why water floods down on empty windowpanes

I can't complete the answer

Birds of my persuasion get wrapped up in the washer

calling me to deliver a perfectly constructed argument

and words of advice and compliments -

A reasonable person would appreciate

But I fall, flying in abysses they told me not to venture in

But wait, the canyon is shallow.

So shallow, though to drown simple sentiments into

stifled melodies saved for later, I said,

I have no words, no thoughts, only emotions

Can you comprehend that?

A completely Feeling motivation for one of "life's administrators?"

All my brushstrokes lie within lines I lay for myself

Lonely, yes, but never loose to lose constructions

my pen's dictated since twelve years past

Ink clearer than the outline of my eyes

Saving long-strung thoughts for twelve years forward - just wait.

Just wait.

Madness Crossing Sadness

Sirens and flashing rooms and writing on walls,
pulsing glee, simpler things
Ten hands tending to heights

There's always a reason to expect
Genies from ruins,
adult nightlights, and I think
We can do better than
Madness crossing sadness
Fraying at the edges and forgiving exes and
We find shelter in the arms of the forgotten

Years write themselves on blank faces and blank pages and you say,
"There's a reason."
But I prefer
A brand new way to a brand new me
See yourself
Reciting the alphabet backwards and pretend
You're okay
I can write sad songs and you can play sadfully along and pretend you know what
I'm thinking

Even I don't trace back but we
Need more than we're giving and based on our body language
We're ghosts sitting on the wall pretending
One minute is enough time
Enough to delve deeper
And make yourself into something you're not
Plays on words and
Fragments of truths you
Whisper.

"Who do you think you are?"

Foreverland

Artificial energy,
riveting into those 3AM thoughts and 5AM dreams
Who sees the deepest thoughts?
Ode to a foreverland on repeat
and I think
I can.

4th and Final

Creativity is a magnet, polarizing the practical and dreaming
Drought dried distaste for dimmer dinners
Blurred into one piece de la resistance
I change the streams of my own glory
Volition is stronger.

Believing I didn't need home
The unexplored world is but my temporary home
Which do I choose?
Indecision haunts souls that dance together in limelight
Hidden in subway tracks
Kind of shrugging into contradictions
in the night-line
in the high-line
in The End.

Summer Mindset

Winter has overstayed his welcome
Left his shoes at the doorstep in October
But it's almost April now,
almost spring, almost endless things
A lover who won't leave
Leave me be

Every day I daydream of California breeze
Sun striking my tanned, red cheeks
Simpler days, he reads my childhood
back to me like textbook creeds

One take, only take,
all more than mistakes
Criticizing, scrutinizing, deconstructing
I miss you more

I miss not the weather
But the beauty in a mundane life
Every day a play off yesterday
More dreaming, less thinking,
More singing, less blinking

So many times I thought of running
But his shackles are iron and my will
Weak enough to dismiss
The will to write of a summer I miss

Come back to me.

Swimming to Sunshine

I need some distraction
Let me be weightless and find peace
in darkness and depths of wreckage
May I find some sanctuary,
some storm to lift the weight

Capture the sentiments of a
calming song you sing me
and the endlessness of the night
flirting with forever

The arms of music
wraps me in melodies
And I, lonely I
inspire a million lights, an encyclopedia
of eighteen years of life

Why do I seem so old? So wrinkled, yet so unwise
Complexities creep 'neath my fingertips
Striving to be happy and carefree and
swimming forever to sunshine

Lullaby Me

Lullaby me to a silent reverie
as the symphony swells and you
paint a shining crest of fortunes you
craft in my memory

I speak to wisps of reality
trickling in dreams unknown,
haunting every thought
with the beauty of productivity

Industrialized thoughts, flowering
tomorrow's fantasy and
boughs of creased hopes, your
original origami seeks release

Attempting to cry, attempting to see
what I hide, what I most ardently seek

Sorrows seep in souls unknown
Fall-away dreams, mysterious gleams
All my memories, peace

Granite Fashions & Cellophane Strings

Rivers fall on tracks riveting
Everyday citizens lining ordinary heights
Ants see only peripherally
Little thoughts, little dreams,
Little wishes, little themes
Crumbling to chocolate liquor streams
Swimming upstream to tags unworn by modest upbringings
Jumping downstream to a different face of fantasy
Magic has a different name
A different flame, a bittersweet game

Granite fashions and cellophane strings
Frozen fingertips and broken heartstrings
Winter prys those who fall to the feet of blistering reality
Tears from an angry cloud swish in unproofed shoes
Left unprovoked and untarnished
Wash, rinse and repeat

Want inspiration? Run somewhere else
Secrets color streaks in a lonely palm tree
Three days is plenty

Forever Dance

Chords crashing on a silent reverie
Breaking a little, dancing on a string
to nowhere, where do you go?
A single flower on a wide open space
Eyes wide open, but
Mind shut.

Doctrines I teach you learn not
Only a missense mentality
But a dishwashed dream
of syllables I translate into the
Words
Every word I wish you'd believe


A boy on a fragment, a freefall, a forever fantasy
Final call for
Clean blue circles are not
But I don't.
I won't be the one
Fix you yourself
Too young, too dumb
Pretending clear skies on snow days
Nothing is solved, unhaze the craze and
Try.

A girl on a pinnacle, a pinwheel, a forever party
Twisting and turning each thought you do not
Why now, why you cannot explain
But rather do.
Only doing, doers fall
Don't fall
Forget all you ever wanted
Bleached frames of what you cannot see
But I do
That's what to do
I can't be the one to sing you itoldyaso's in three years
Itellyaso instead now

You and I,
a drift, a daze, a forever dance.

Shorts

Flashing hungry eyes
Terrified of lies (but only if I cry)
Poems of tomorrow, I surmise
will into portraits arise
Dark creatures lie with a sinister smile and inviting eyes
Eyeing the prize of a plan not executed
Properly

Proper figments of disguise
Shielding my lies, but wait,
I don't lie, I only try
yesterday's truths into tomorrow's byes
I decide
I control the sides of which stories I tell

Short-lived, short life, short cries
of temporary joy and reflecting upon my actions
I am victor, always
Good night.

Archaeology

Clouds collapse on each other feeling
They've had their share of my burden
Mirrors transcend the powder you dust on my face
Painting me the way you want that day

It's wrinkled, you know, wrinkled and crow feet and fossils and dinosaurs and archaeology
But you assume me to break upon command,
Laugh upon words you feed to
others who differentiate not the blurred line
flying between perfection and possibility

Ah, I'd have you know every detail
But details remain fragments of complete truths I refuse to tell
You pretend to think to know to see through
but my outer layers and think we'd
intersect and intertwine
Cards and tricks I cannot mine
till beacons of hazy nights swallow mysteries into
the story of a time

Once in a limelight
Twice in a green light
Inconstant feelings sigh

Brick Stones Unknown

Promise of a possibility
Wandering into brick stones unknown, and I
Break into a thousand shores, sure I
Ripped inside a tainted mind, following a
Promise of a path

Fingers losing their tension, their strength
Falling into toys of the player
Puppet on a string
I knew the master but he told me
I fly too high
Scolds me for my decisions, and I
Leave him with excuses to justify the
Quiet murmur in my mind

Walls swimming into papers on walls and
Air bubbling in clouds of unreality
Something escapes me
What words? And what feels?
Who feels? Who blurs
the fashion of the blacklight
Beaming on brisk fantasies and
Fade

Out My Window

Shades of inner gray color the words I cannot find,
sharing three sides of the same story
Blue cuts into gray skies, just as I
Swallow and sing each breathy lyric and meet
the disillusioned me bursting into ballad but
stay above the surface