border(line) or bust

i don’t havea devilon my shoulderi have a legionof demons screamingin my skull you can onlyput up the good fightfor so longbefore the hellinside your soulis going to win i can always usethe bridgesi so gleefullyburned toguide me back homeonce more

discharged

i am a stray bolt of static discharge against the exposed flesh of beauty an amethyst spark reminding the bastards i am still here still ugly and bleeding out in three quarter time a simple act of willful desecration on the stillborn heart of love leaving scars along your tender perfection

magic is a goddamned lie

i am a broken window my last piece of peace dangles precariously in the breeze a scintillating shard of sanity i eagerly await watching fall i saw her and in her smile i saw everything except she was smiling at someone behind me maybe i was never truly there at all hell i’m not wholly […]

ink

i had to teach myself to scream in lowercase to control the hyperbolic tide within now when i whisper the hairs stand on your elegant neck it is no wonder normal hearts are vaporized by an intensity they have only ever dreamt of i am the greatest mistake your precious heart can possibly make momentarily […]

morning rituals

i turn the phone back on at 530 make the first shaker of protein powder and coffee my daily sustenance as the notifications vibrate across the coffee table sylvia’s words dance in my mind as the bitter crosses my tongue and birdsong breaks the dawn as the first rays of dawn cut across my eyes […]

prismatic delusion

i may never shine as brightly as the sun the easy way she does but my shattered makes beautiful little rainbows on the wall as i refract her light casting an illusion of depth in the vast vacancy filling a poetic delusion

sipping poison as a cure

the oscilating sine wave of emotional polarity fluctuates regardless of insignificance the same as the purple clusters rupturing in rapturous resonance while i allow the sonic wall blaring to ease the transition into a dissociative fugue of uncertainty hoping to strengthen the poisonous film encasing the ivory cage to keep my ramshackle heart from ever […]

after images of surrender

i forget the agony inherent in dreams until i awake inconsolable in mounting waves of a morning spent mourning a technicolor world i can no longer interact with still the sparrows wait patiently for the madness to spill out into the fresh dawn and languish lethargically as i sit silent trying to repiece the dreamscatter […]

don’t break eye contact until the light dies

momentarily my heart has been held by the most beautiful women on the planet i still remember how delicious there names felt along my cardial nerve even when the mere thought of them is spinning blades of serrated ice along my left ventricle if i close my eyes i can feel her fingers curled around […]

pretending

i am fine minus the waves of paralyzing grief slamming against my sternum when i remember to breathe baby steps to simply badly broken

Cuckoo in five days

Five days. You would think after years of tearing off pieces of myself and sharing the ugliness with the world, I would be used to being laid bare for everyone to see. I am not. But, if we’re honest, doing it in poetry is basically doing it anonymously. I have zero expectations they will ever […]

salmonella scented sweetness

life just merrily continues along mindless of the miseries left scattered in its wake triggering little catastrophes in nauseating swells with salmonella scetned sweetness there isn’t time to collect the shattered bits we just have to learn to continue on knowing the best parts of ourselves were part of the toll paid just to keep […]

must contain numbers, letters, and shame

in my stubborn sentimentality my password for work was just my nickname for her which was fine when there was a thought where she wanted to be associated with a loveless fool the password expired weeks after her feelings for me at least i won’t have to type out hoarfrost reminders of failing again

cavernous yawns and aching

dreams fade the harder you try to hold on because dreams are only the mind recycling trash vignettes of a world filled with impossibilities such as flying or being enough my mind keeps me awake throughout the evenings so i do not fall victim to delusions of hope

receptacle

how can i trust anything when i cannot trust my heart? i have never felt so ashamed in myself. and that’s really saying something. i feel stuck between reincarnations becoming a trash receptacle with empty when used etched on my chest.

permanent (temporally)

there is a correlation between dedicating my words and a sudden end of emotional investmency as if letting the world know their importance ignites a fuse racing to implode barely got to correct the newest to reflect the latest abandonment of an unwanted heart before i embarrassed myself any further spilling my guts over someone […]

the incredible existential flaw

the hollowness in hearing so often it isn’t me when it most fucking certainly has to be because there is no other explanation to how little consideration is ever afforded to the fact i was always right fucking here no one can be so consistently taken for fucking granted and it not be some fatal […]

low battery

the razor edge between understanding and acceptance may as well be an infinite chasm when each breath is embraced by frozen barbwire barrelling blindly down an unmarked series of one ways and all there are at the end of each is blank wall so i scrawl the names of the ladies i disappointed by never […]

lessons learned from the arch

i once drove nine hours simply to hold her hand and when i left she went back to her ex and waited three months to tell me all while i waited for her like a gigantic fucking idiot can you imagine a fractured mind paralyzed loving constantly through uncertainty while she was with the person […]

new phone, who dis?

the first words on this new phone a fresh start for an old fool who’s rather fucking sick of starting over this phone isn’t tainted by all the i love yous gone unreturned the miseries where exe marked my latest demise here is to one last chance at being someone’s someone special maybe

shooing away the sparrows

the sparrows seem confused hopping on the wooden rail waiting for the words they spread like seeds across the city of damned souls seeking salvation in a world plunged in night i have nothing no hopeful prose just serrated blades in place of happiness sitting with coffee and this overwhelming sense of emptiness in my […]

as it should be

i write about love so much because i am undeserving of it yet enamored by the thought i know what i am no matter how pretty the words there is no hope for me but it sure bleeds prettily as i try to recall how to breathe i make a helluva friend though

haven’t had cheesecake in years

i have these conversations where i explain my manic shatter to the people i wish wanted to talk to me in my head when i try to sleep i carefully construct the words detailing which actions left me in this state where i feel incapable of speaking out loud smallerandsmaller iballupmyemotions mutteringtomyself inthesilencewhile she goes […]

numbero uno fool

(un)broken released yesterday, and you wonderful disasters got it to number 1 on Amazon. thank you to River not only for letting me know, but for putting the damned thing out. and my friends for sharing and talking it up. a fleeting moment, but proof despite how it feels no one hears you, there are […]

podless

a pod of whales suspended nose up the light fractures the waves as they sleep lost in the dreams of brief moments in sunlight before they are swallowed by the darkness once more. i sing a song of loneliness muffled by the weight of the seas a dirge for those left so unrequited in their […]

maybe had i studied marine biology

it is not the flailing carcass shocked to life by gelatin flush with chemical dispersions which define existence it is space the infinte nothingsness imperceptible yet flush in vacuous denial this intangible emptiness which keeps our souls apart truly defining humans being some distances much the same as some forevers are only as long as […]

collected desires

each morning i sit with coffee steaming as the sparrows hop excitedly on the deck awaiting the monomolecular edge of the scalpel to open a fresh wound releasing a flood of ink in rancid decline to pour across cerulean lies snapshots of a shattered soul refracting the light she used to shine so freely now […]

the joys of self autopsy

i thought i was tending a flower garden yet again the plastic buds distracted a fool from realizing it was just another graveyard plot as the dye faded despite many attempts at rejected affections i make a better undertaker than gardener embalming something fleeting into a pain which endures forever

curiosity

curiosity taught the dogs an important lesson even as the cats casually ignored the causality and continued with a reckless desire for moreandmore

morningstar denials

too many things racing the convoluted track inside my brain the same rollercoaster keeping me just on this side of nauseous rapture an electron pinging in a lonely orbit a forgotten castoff from her photonics pitted with misery a lowly moon adrift lost in her penumbra fadingfadingfading until nothing remains a casual acceptance in my […]

(un)broken, paperback live now, ebook 8/22

my latest poetry collection has gone live for the paperback a few days prior to the August 22nd release of the ebook. the cover is by my brilliantly talented daughter, Maia Danae. she has done the last three now, and we already know next year’s cover. there is something so fulfilling about seeing her shine […]

cartoon hearts in crayon

the pill shakes the sleepy insomnial tendrils as the sparks ignite a lightning ball in the pit of anxieties which keep me tossing all night feeding one hell in place of another exchanging one terminal velocity for a new twist on the same old self destruction you see every aspect of what i am (un)filtered […]

human pillbug

i yearn to speak yet my brain screams no one cares so i simply select all and delete then go back into a ball of icy aches wondering if this storm will ever pass it will until the next and knowing this hopelessness is waiting makes it that much more difficult to manage

the heron watches a bonfire fading

overfull of unwanted adorations bristling with an inferno scorching ivory with blackened declarations until only greasy ashes dance across her perfect flesh the world pulses in time with the ache in my chest my lips crumble with one last wasted i love you leaving no sign i was ever here

the sob in sobriety

it’s god’s little joke giving me this ability to see beauty in everything except myself shattering me into a prism to split all these emotions into needles to pierce the æther with all the things i lack i would give my frontal lobe to be held just until this storm passes i would offer my […]

an alleycat and a pigeon

for months now i have felt so incredibly small unvisible to the naked eye and now i am an ant underneath a magnifying glass a tragedy smeared across slides and viewed from an electron microscope a floaty in god’s retina dissected by divisive photons yet fully consumed by misguidedly decisive disinterest

dead battery

i sit without a morning spark sputtering as my engine refuses to fire after a long night turning over rather than shutting down the gears grind as my mainframe shudders along with her vacancy filling in the gap where my arms should be wrapped around her with the last sighs of final surrenders the coffee […]

leaves sway

the drugs don’t do a thing but make the depression more pliable hiding in a shaded spot the shadows of leaves swaying seem razor tipped sawing slowly through the dappled windshield i was nothing more than a gnat annoying the fickle heart of sweet love now i am a smear on the back of her […]

hollow sun

the sunshine lends a hollowness to the city scenery devoid of any actuality a fabrication filled with fallen angels broken wings dragging across shattered sidewalks as golden forms slam wetly every other block showering dead dreamers in a phantasmal orgy of gore soaked wonder i search frantically for shelter to hide from my own simmering […]

inherited loneliness

the words always leave me over exposed skinless in a sandstorm wondering why i am never quite enough seeking things uninterested in insanity the lode stone in my chest is attracted to that which will kill me even as my brain screams stop

fading before your eyes

another day streaked with frantic panicked smears my heartbeat sounds a thunderous clanging blocks away from where i try to recall exactly how to breathe too many eyes staring at a human blur seeing something which isn’t real an amorphous stain ugliness oozing across existence whatever it is you imagine me to be the end […]

early morning haunting

it seems as if each morning the sun rises bringing a hint of her lips to tease my heartchoir into a painful song of longing for a love disinterested in semipoetic meanderings the bitterness of coffee windswept with stolen snatches of sparrow songs while i scroll electron desolation seeking sine sign this sanguine sunrise setting […]

monday morning panic attack

i can feel it the hoarfrosted iron barbs wrapped around my chest and stomach ever tightening the anxiety building the panic slowly seeping into each of my nervous cells adrenaline spikes pinpricks of ice blossom across my fevered flesh each breath grows slightly more shallow my lungs starving heart screaming at redline as my brain […]

i dream of you and wake to a world of painful longing

everything seems so overwhelmingly everythingish all of the goddamned time without ever seeming to take a fucking break untiredly spinning miseries around waning solar impudance a constant pummeling punctuated by a miserable silence where only the consistent tinnitus is the lullabye for a fool filled with scars in the shape of smiles all along his […]

in the presence of bizzaro royalty

we drove down to austin to see some of our writer friends and so a fool could do a panel on being insane in a mad, mad world it was a blur a who’s who of independent horror twisted minds in the sweetest people the hands which have shaped this community a rogue poet finds […]

scorcher

the sun feels awfully oppressive for so early all i can do is daydream of her absent heart as i melt down into a primordial ooze of aching regret steaming on the asphalt gurgling faint i love yous before seeping down the drain

action from the meaning

at times the fractures cause a steady dissociative angst where i cannot tell where i belong either reality is paperthin or i am shattered beyond saving then the city unfolds for me and i find myself on streets filled with a bitter soulstarving type of hunger as i pass the places we would pull off […]

crickets and fools

the chorus of chitinous crickets call out in a distorted complexity of morse code static bursts vibrating in place as they cry out for a momentary connection in an eternity of silent survivalist sensibilities. no different from a fool seeking sunrise with steaming coffee and an aching heart tapping out pedantic verse spilling out technicolors […]

(un)broken preorder live, coming Aug 22nd

my latest poetry collection, (un)broken, is up for preorder on Amazon now. coming August 22nd, from Potter’s Grove Press, this collection is the third in a row to feature the art of my daughter. she absolutely delivered, beyond my expectations. the poetry is pretty solid as well. allegedly. it’s a busy time for me, with […]

crescents

her smile continuously haunts my rare dreams with the promise of lips every cell in my body need to feel pressed firmly against mine i wake a junkie needing one fix one taste to still the shaking in my limbs to ease the thunder in my hollow skull to calm the howling desire burning through […]

swallowed erections

if you drive into cleburne from the south the clocktower rises up like a pockmarked brick erection which is likely the kindest thing to be said about the sleepy town just outside of the metroplex you can already see the rot the flood of cookie cutter subdivisions slowly eroding the countryside away one day that […]

skeleton

the sensation of my darling mania is flying headfirst through a pitch black tunnel of ice with no idea if there is a blind turn or bottomless crevice awaiting me i cling haphazardly to the sides of my seat knowing the dead end of incalculable sadness is the only end for this ride you just […]

blanketed by unfulfilled longing

there is a five eyed angler fish staring down at a shattered soul lost in the shapes of wispy gray settled succinctly over the silent city the sudden suffocation of a storm threatening in the stagnancy of summer’s sin. demons swirling a bipolar hellscape projected in a mass of seething clouds promising no relief just […]

wooden carrots

this ass sees the spots on the wooden carrot where the paint has rubbed off exposing the duplicitous nature of hope. yet it dangles tantalizingly in front of my face always just close enough to seem attainable while remaining ever out of my fumbling grasp. i am aware enough to know yet foolish enough to […]

self causality

my mind is a claymore the etching on the broken shell reads face toward the enemy so i direct the explosion inward in an effort to spare those who are actually important to me.

masquerade

i have spent so long perfecting my paper-mache mask to appear as a real boy when my brain begins to scream in a borderline bipolar klaxon as the world falls apart all around me by the time my mask slips it is a shocking exposure of exactly what i had been trying to warn the […]

Cuckoo, preorder live now

Uncomfortably Dark Horror has put the preorder for Cuckoo up. September 1st it is slated for release. And the link to the site shows a lot of kind words for my novel about Love. It’s been done and hidden for two and a half years now. A dozen people have read it. And what they […]

(re)posessed

i am an accumulation of ghosts haunting a weary skeleton lost in a blizzard of feathers and flower petals a shuffling confusion of crimson tears leading ever further from where i longed to be. an urban legend the dyslexic cupid firing missives of adoration while wasting away in empty lots across the city of unreciprocated […]

an unseen atlas

you have no fucking idea the lengths my broken brain has me go through to keep this shattered sphere of sin spinning obliviously on its shifting axis repetition routine a rigid fear if i make one small mistake the house of cards comes crashing down there can be no variation in the pattern without sending […]

copypasteddelusions

sitting in the parking lot of a small town newspaper listening to the soundtrack to rocky horror waiting for someone to come unlock the door while lost in the science fiction double feature a relic sitting in a museum lot two artifacts long forgotten in this modern rage of building only momentary monuments as the […]

cordite suffused neurons

my strength ebbs as each laborious step strains my feeble form. i am tired fighting a war in my mind contemplating raising the white flag of unconditional surrender since unconditional and failure seem to be etched onto my unraveling strands of dna.

she saw him for what he wasn’t

personally and publicly his repugnancy pushed her away and so deep did the poison infuse itself that professionally the toxins were too much for her to be expected to handle as his soulshatter induced her vertiginous rejection. he didn’t quite understand and for too long he continued to seek a spot in the light she […]

tinder to her inferno

i never feared her flame no i longed to feed it to let her set the horizon on fire with her beauty like a thousand fucking suns. i knew all that would remain of my loving remains was a fool burnt into the side of the building with a sliver in the shape of her […]

surfing sunbeams in a garden of delights

the malignancy pumping sinful pitch a tumorous growth in the shape of an unwanted heart keeping a corpse trapped in a hell of just being aware enough to see how he is the punchline to a lowercase joke masquerading itself as knife wielding minions of hope. every dream i have ever had burned itself to […]

motel of dashed dreams

there is a run down motel next to the tire shop i have been trapped at for hours now i have watched a steady procession of ladies who clearly work the night shift at said motel a caravan of battered blossoms blinking in the harsh summer sun as i wonder at the dreams forsaken to […]

ashen heartmurmurs

overexposed constantly reminded i am little more than an intangible while never mustering any true substance of my own the lingering attentions from those longing to watch my inevitable fall pointing out with persistent regularity how i was publicly exposed then as abruptly publicly disavowed the sad word boy with his unwanted heart pumping the […]

insomnial dreamflutters

for all of my neurodivergencies keeping me mostly miserable i am aware even if i am my own worst nightmare i am living a dream not only do i get to scribble all the strangest thoughts from my broken brain but there are actually people who seem to enjoy it there are shirts emblazoned with […]