a parenthetical paralysis propagating this purloined sense of perverted grandeur a frozen thought perpetuating pieces of pedantic peace in an implication of insolence integrated into insidiously ingrown insecurities picking at the scabs shaped into her crescent smile down the tender heartrattle toward a turgid malaise in stasis between daggers of sunlight piercing the tenebrae of […]

it rained all evening washing the grime from the city illuminated by jagged tongues of lightning as thunder cracks a guttural roar awash in the images of peripheral calamities spellbound by the last cool kiss before a sweltering summer graces the bluebonnets ethereal in undulating sorrows as lavender blossoms light the darkened cave with an […]

up early whispering prayers to the swirl of gray ill prepared for motion in a state of frozen wonder drowning in sand at the wrong end of the hourglass as it tumbles silently in her cool disdain all while tiny buzzing gnats circle hoping to draw bright blood inflicting incidental pains to justify their existence […]

each day dawns a somber blankness in which the chemicals splash shades and shadows the pencil scratching cross hatching in an illusion of depth on a two dimensional plane each shaky footstep onto this rickety bridge of frantic sketches in a shower of falling graphite saturated rubbery attempts to salvage the nascent scene before it […]

a human cannonball packed tightly in a nest of emotional tinder down the barrel as the barker lights the punt and the nervous crowd cheers the fuse is comically long to build the anticipation as he contemplates the logistics of a lifelong obsession with head-on collisions to the structural integrity of his hollow boned collection […]

there is a depth to loneliness one that eschews casual solitude a solid sense of detachment from the dirge of birdsong swelling just before the thunder calls forth the rolling storm jagged arcs of lightning lighting a familiar room of incidental ignorances dreams turn to motes of dust clinging to unopened covers as the words […]

my brain is too busy my soul is too worn my heart has been abandoned and my body is turned to ash the hotel life is not for me but any other seems just as far out of reach another ceiling swollen with muttered prayers new pillows to fluff with adorations that remain unreturned spinning […]

she smiles as the blade traces up my shin the barest pressure a thin line of crimson beading into a slow drip into my thigh she carves our intials ever possessive in insecure stalkings but i smile wide a demon possessed in lustful repose as the cartoon hearts cut deeply to bone i cannot control […]

i am a nick on occam’s razor an imperfection in the simplest solution a swollen tastebud dragging across the cracked molar of beauty a sty on god’s eyelid causing her to miss your prayers yet inexplicably or perhaps congruently to my natural incongruence i am the tingle growing between your shapely thighs the damp spot […]

the sun teases from behind the clouds it is warm today and i am in a mood run down from constant movement lack of sleep in a different hotel each week as i miss people that couldn’t give a shit where i am brooding today i oscillate between wanting to watch the world burn with […]

hourly the fire alarm screams for fifteen seconds that feels about an hour in length especially when it takes half an hour to fall asleep and every time i do it blares once more the entire night spent chasing sleep finding dream only for it to be torn away maliciously from my clutching hands turning […]

some idiot decided today was international poetry day as if an art already reduced to the barest hallmarkification needed an excuse for more needless words poets aren’t even real until their booze soaked souls ignite in valhalla carry no true bearing until the maggots feast on their remains somewhere an angry bellow rustles along the […]

the words are silent today a lack of sleep in another plastic molded monopoly hotel in a different carbon copied citt at the edge of a filthy highway lends a certain gravitas to the morning’s militant malaise anything worthwhile i had to say was muttered into the pillow or shouted at the ceiling hours before […]

i didn’t eat today the rush of a forgotten alarm the drive an immediate beginning to a week that promises to be long enough i don’t feel hungry but i keep thinking i haven’t eaten so it makes me think possibly i am hungry but now it is late and i don’t need to drive […]

there is a songbird outside my hotel window softly trilling a song of spring blooming contrasting the drab gray walls of my prison for the next week hotel mania a sort of agoraphobic madness keeping me in a fury of unchained emotion bouncing ideas off a ceiling feigning cool disinterest i am envious of those […]

i knew something was off the moment my eyes opened the pink blush across the sky birdsong and the voices of my neighbors rang softly into the murky bedroom i grabbed my phone in my frantic panic of over checking over thinking anxietial fireworks i forgot to set my fucking alarm in an instant i […]

i can’t tell if it is worry or if i forgot to eat today but my stomach is home to the fires of perdition as i triple check the double check everything is prepared for a fiftieth check in the morning unable to concentrate enough to do anything except pick at scabs and analyze my […]

i am good at most situations except for silently waiting my bags are as packed as possible minus essential toiletries and chargers the route is mapped and altered to allow more scenic passages hotel is booked delivery is confirmed for ten thirty meaning i am already anxious with just over twelve hours before i leave […]

the week with the kids is crashing to an end a week away in waco then a weekend of chaos in virginia still need to figure out my reading yet alone whatever i am supposed to say about poetry on the panel need to finish three stories and unwind the many tangled anxieties like creeping […]

a new day dawnscold and cleara shower ofpainful refractionsigniting themoisture inthe atmosphereinto a hallucinogenicexplosion ofgolden cerulean a week agoi sat in marshalllistening asan older manstood perplexedas his grandsonpondered aloudwhy the oceanwas blue ifeach drop ofwater is cleari calmly explained“every i love youthat goes unheardgathers dejectedlyto color theglobe in longing” he looked at mewith squinted eyesand […]

life oscillates between dreamlike splendor and nightmare hellscape with little area to differentiate the boundaries betwixt the two. why does every new opportunity feel so goddamned hollow unwarranted undeserved my mind fights to determine my reality and i am tired of putting up the good fight a pillow filled with unwanted adoration a ceiling bored […]

i watchedthe kindlylooking laundrylady lay intoa poor guywho fed hiscoins too quickinto the machinehe placid smilefaded into athunderstorm ofrage as shemuttered inspanish andrammed a hangerinto the slot as a veteran ofcoin operated machinesand the subtle artof servicing themi tapped her shoulderand asked to tryshe scowled anda flashback of mypast with hangersflashed recklesslythrough my head asshe […]

sitting as the graffiti covered train rumbles past admiring the irony of a cemetery at the edge of a dead end road wondering how many of these granite markers rests above a dreamer that slipped back home into the void’s embrace feeling fulfilled surrounded by loved ones at the very end and able to transition […]

each day beginstrying desperatelyto recall the thingsi have forgottenas i lay cravingthings i cannot haveif only i couldrecall the itchesalong my mindi could treat myselfto a fresh roundof hastily stitchesto pull this tapestryof hollow adorationsinto a child’s sketchof somber disillusionment i cannot let golet these memoriesbecome nothing morethan scabs hangingoff of half healedself inflicted woundsthey […]

a combination ofpattern recognitionand a good memoryleaves me withthe unfortunateability to seethrough the miasmahidden in paltry liesto pick apartthe recurring themesunveiling the truthcarefully disguised i am enamoredby the brush strokessubtle subterfugewithin the paintingas anxiety wrapsaround my brainelectrified pulseseradicating thetop coat of lacquerto see the finepencil strokes beneathexposing the deceptionlayered in shadows a routine of simplemental […]

there is an unsettling calm an unseemly threatening nature in the peaceful morning as i overlook a gentle creek while hawks watch the playful squirrels. i want to leave before the first blurred divebomb the wind rustling fresh green buds a swirl of pollen in yellow settling over the cars the squirrels skitter timidly chattering […]

home suddenly has a transience a hollowness in the bedrock. a temporal toning of temporary intangibilities. lost on the concrete oceans rudderless searching for something that doesn’t seem to exist.

the view from the thirty first floor of a city draped in morning fog a fugue framing the chaos in fuzzy forms of concrete diffusion as the sun glares angry and red faced through the metal frame of the crane suspended at the top of the half constructed skyscraper i am at once stymied by […]

early morning confessional the living room a church with wind chimes rather than bells reminding the unrepentant soul sitting silently on the sage sepulchre with lips moving mimicking morose ministries to embrace the majesty of this moribund malaise by releasing the fatalistic fallacies of a forgotten poet preaching for pennies to feed a congregation of […]

there was never a time to stop no collection of thoughts steady motion zipping through space a rolling tragedy moving at eighty miles per hour down the highway fighting against the earth’s one thousand mile per hour rotation trying to reverse time an incompetent clark kent unable to find a way back to her attentions

my body is painfully aware despite the lies told in flashing red digits or the birdsong of tentative triple declinations it is not nearly six in the morning the bastards that run this abhorrent shitshow use imaginary concepts to shackle the simpletons adjusting the clocks to create longer work hours carefully manipulating currencies while inflation […]

having a reason for the rampant anxiety should be somewhat reassuring one would think but picking apart the pixels of something you cannot control compared to searching for a reason to pick apart the pixels but it is most assuredly not the case still there is a slight comfort in knowing this feeling like a […]

no dreams as the time shifted forward and i lay lost in thought of what once was in a swarm of silent longing waiting for the sparrows to sound a continuation to this unquenchable desire for what wants nothing to do with me at all the last time the clock rolls forward as a fool […]

i can feelthis giant marblestuckin the back ofmy throatand every timei try to writesuddenlyi forgethow to breathei cannot swallowchoking on spit anxiousanxiousanxious when things seemto be going welli get anxiousexpect the othershoe to dropand even though i know betterthe goddamnedself fulfilling prophecyrares its snout my poles have begunoscillating fasterthan normal and i cannotget a griptrudging […]

certain writers speak to a part of your sleeping mind in a profound whisper that awakens ideas you never stumbled upon on your own hank taught me not to manufacture beauty but to find it in the filthiest places sylvia taught me to strain the aching into metaphor and to say everything in a panorama […]

i remember standing in line for the long gray cardboard box of government cheese and the weekly ration of powdered milk i was a kid the circumstances meant nothing but the promise of the best grilled cheese in the world put a smile on my little face we had a slicer a long wire and […]

i woke unable to tell where i was as the birds screamed for a sun unrisen it is home i realized after a panicked moment waiting for the line work to focus staggering from room to room in a familiarity of confusion the cacophony sounding a three note refrain of razored anxiety the regularly scheduled […]

rain drizzles on the row of rumbling slumbering trucks i sit staring paperwork to update and miles to drive unmotivated by a dismal view looking forward to a pot of coffee as i return to my gargoyle’s perch wasting away in a world of disillusion there is no true terminus to this madness type the […]

one last nightin this eerilyfabricatedpseudo nothingoff the highwayfifteen milesfrom shreveporta depressedoff ramp leadingthrough a depressionof the americanidyllic daydream this is nota building meantto withstandthe annals oftime immemorialbut a transitionalcash grab foreager explorersseeking gatorand spanish moss i vibrate onthe same temporaryforever thearchitect oncedreamt of drawingexcept we bothhave settled intoour insignificancelonging for thethings we werenever destinedto clench […]

1) eating pineapple as it eats you, an unnatural oroboros of irrational desire b) the first kiss of warm sunshine after a long winter when it is a little too cool to roll the window down but one song never killed anyone 3) the taste of her lips first thing in the morning when hunger […]

somedays are spiraling escalators on which there is no sense of up or down just an inane constant motion if you stop concentrate on one spot for a moment too long the vertigo snaps while bile slowly bubbles in the back of your scratchy throat i wonder am i only the only robot on the […]

once upon a time she held me to her delicate ear and said she heard the sparrows singing of the golden sun now i sit staring out into the swirling gray a penitent fool in the solitary confinement of her casually silent disregard once upon a time she held me close to her delicate heart […]

there was a red hornet in my hotel room angrily slamming its own reflection in the hexagonal mirror when i returned from seeking alligators in the bayou yet only finding suspicious stumps did i bring the crimson fury inside with me this vicious vagabond having hitched a ride only to be confronted by its hated […]

the hotelremained silentthroughout theevening as ipaced the hallsa restless spiritseeking theshallow warmthof the livingrattling chainsand bemoaninginsomniac desires my mind refusesto let goa manic miserytinting thehallowed hallsof a holiday innat the edgeof nowheresearching thesilence for asign of somethingto alleviatethis hollow ache

if sweetwater was the living embodiment of a brown crayon marshall must be where the green got spilled resulting in the beigetastrophe of west texas with little to do and nowhere to be on a day when the words feel hollow i left my cave to go explore perhaps i have seen too many of […]

it’s all so heavy today the manic ship finally sinks a fool in his diving bell hoping for no kinks in the hose as he stumbles among the beds of waving kelp half asleep with no dream left to clutch the main issue with a supernova heart is the gradual increase in mass renders the […]

the ground feels topsy turvy dizziness sweeps through a canal of oscillating ossicles suspended in the same murky disbelief i view this spiraling panorama of insular deliriums from. a mouthful of silver nails to keep my demon tongue from spilling out the poisonous prose that tingles as it drips down your lush inner thighs leaving […]

the sun rose and i’ll be damned if i didn’t feel the promise of the new day dawning this too will likely fade away but there is no reason not to at least try and tentatively seize the upcoming weekend as i pack my bags for a trip out to east texas next week the […]

there was an apartment building burning and a group of people standing with cell phones out recording as the firemen fought the blaze ignoring the families staring in horror as their lives wafted into the gray humans being unable to put themselves in anyone else’s situation insolent crowds of self absorbed shitstains posting other people’s […]

moving at half speed today the coffee did little to dispel the shibari keeping my brain knotted in recursive mutterings the same empty lot in a different city seeking answers in the gray fugue smothering the day that’s a lie seeking the answers that provide hope when the truth is as hopeless as an artist […]

the sky is dark more dusk than the ten o’seven the radio displays clouds hang down on the hils in strands of silk the horizon is ill defined the inside of a soread apart grilled cheese as tendrils of sky tickle the red dirt it is silent between songs no hawks fly just the car […]

you don’t have to believe in yourself that’s okay but you can see my words know that i’m here i’m real you can believe in me and you can rest assured i believe in you with every ounce of my being hopefully that’s enough to get us through one more day

soon sweetwater will be a vaguely brown memory as the road to hillsboro opens in front of my tired gaze hardly slept in the microtel but still managed to wake myself from painful dream left some morose prose scribbled in the red clay and listened patiently to the great silence beneath the windmills the car […]

i doubt many of us enjoy our reflection when we accidentally catch a glimpse the hushed panicked moment wondering is that me? but if we were to try to snap a pic we could never get the correct perspective we witnessed without obscuring our faces and changing angles. we forget that our vantages have advantages […]

if a poet sits alone at a dried up lake in a chasm of perpetual cinnamon haze scribbling the parts of himself he no longer recognizes into the skies that impart an agoraphobic anxiety in illusions of azure clarity is he not at his most futile and thus at the most poetic? what gets lost […]

bleeding out in a fleabag no tell motel somewhere west of abilene it all was a blur of frantic need and cordite scented kisses to greet a sunrise neither of us expected to see as the first rays broke through the filthy window and i cradled her cold body closer her skin tasted of sin […]

the grit on the wind infinitely howling scours the entirety of sweetwater in a collage of rusted machinery a fecundity of drab ochre on a flat plane drenched in beige amid grand forests of fiberglass spindles there is a frank honesty in sweetwater a sense the sandblasting has removed any pretense the burrs of hope […]

everything is coated in red dust as i wait for the sun to illuminate my new horizon oil workers sitting at breakfast lamenting another day in hell as i sneeze from the grit hanging heavy and a fool drawing her initials in the red dirt a cartoon heart already blowing to the west on the […]

there is a clear delineation as you exit dour abilene a heavy haze as the rusty old oil derricks began to mar an orherwise unremarkable vista hillocks break the stagnancy of bewildering browns with rows of white windmills sitting still great edifices in fiberglass like rows of glaring crosses while god glares mercilessly over a […]

already packed hours early so i can soak up the stringent anxieties background radiation causing static inteference in the regularly scheduled misery of another truncated sunday four hours watching hawks as west texas becomes a brown blur the first in a series of hotels and new vistas i tell myself it won’t be so bad […]

i traipse about a silent phantom trying not to make a sound the morning air a pleasant cold biting at my exposed flesh as i stand wearing a sylvia shirt goosepimpled holding a mug of steaming coffee watching the birds prance throughout the naked branches tomorrow i drive out into the desert a different season […]

i was an open book which she took as an excuse to rewrite the narrative to better fit her view. in the end she lost sight of the actual truth while it has taken over a year for the original text to resurface. i gave up the pieces of myself she took umbrage with to […]

i stand weaving flaming oars through the air as the waves rock my rowboat unphased by my inability to see the mythical shore ensconced in chemtrails of fiery remembrance as my rickety boat takes on the frigid spray surrounded by the hiss of steam moving to the backbeat of my fragmented heart a lone figure […]

i am slow to adapt new stimuli become instant anxieties until i can manage to pick apart the pieces and reshape them into a part of the background noise humming stinging nettles an incessant biting of a thousand gnats a panel and a reading at an event i already am dreading after weeks spent in […]

another thirty degree shift as texas mocks my polar swing unsure each morning whether i shall sit shivering or face a heatwave as i tap out the day’s ode to insignificance i fall into the low pressure numbness of depression’s limp embrace only for rounds of manic ordinance to explode each evening as the silence […]

he stared at the cars far below him matchbox vehicles in shades of gray and red hustling through another day in a life he can only imagine he gave away his poetry and his heart only to find they weren’t worth the time she couldn’t be bothered to give in return all he has are […]

didn’t recall falling asleep as the alarm sounded off against the backrdop of the storm one tired hand after another i pulled myself up the jagged rock wall toward the hazy nimbus of caffeinated reanimation the birds sing in a symphony of gray tinted squalor as the rain falls a sound of static in lazy […]

they text me try this i try that text back no change then i sit they text me try this i try that text back no change then i sit they text me have you tried this i snapshot the previous exchange and remind them no change i have sat for hours paced the two […]

years of sitting perfectly still avoiding any notice has honed my external patience into an implaccable wall while inside i rage and scream in the divots of my skull sitting perfectly still in a raging inferno ignoring the blistered flesh as i shrivel under the intense scrutiny of absent disinterest an iceberg bobbing on the […]

i bare my flesh to the chalkdust moon taking a bit of its stolen shine to try and brighten the dreary day as the sun sits on her fiery throne of rancorous delight slowly pacing the cerulean dome around a dying planet

your brilliant mind no longer pulses with electrical arcs driving you towards your preferred poisons your restless soul enveloped in eternal darkness a serene dreamless sleep from which there is no waking sixty six years ago you were pulled screaming from the abyss and thrust out into this hellscape too clever by far easily tempted […]

too many trips just ahead of me sweetwater marshall waco virginia austin too many new skylines too many haunted houses spread across what was once a paradise on the other side of the infinite ocean a series of decrepit graveyards a surplus of foreclosures and all i want is to hide in my shell in […]

she was celestial stardust and answered prayers to balance the terrestrial nature of my being made of mud she was born to glide angelically while i was born to cast her footprints within as proof of existence in the end we both were mythical fluff two vacancies bridging her heaven and my tumultuous hell

a fly buzzes ensnared in the long false lashes droopily adorning the lazy eye of beauty a sty an inflammation a string of stymied perjoratives hastily spat a last grand stand before inevitable failure the world is an oil painting of rotting fruit we molder on the sunken pear unaware that god is a cockroach […]

every word feels wrong i cannot trust myself to write in times like these where i have become two dimensional on a {3d} plane (a) geometric allusion in an a/l/g/e/b/r/a/i/c mnemonic a razored angularity vivisected in place

the last morning for the foreseeable abject predictivity of shivering as the faux winter fades into a short spring while summer sharpens her fangs i coalesce within the whorling icy regret suffusing the layer of fog burning off on the placid expanse of the lake i longingly dream to walk into the fireants of anxiety […]

we are all ghosts trapped in decaying cocoons lone fireflies flitting in dark hollow skulls bending light and shared delirium vapidly toward death

cast my tongue in molten lead as the black thread stretches my lips into a sealed bloodless white yet nothing can silence my idiotic heart screaming out in a love unreciprocated to quake the stoic mountains to dust

time and i are at a stand still moreover it stands still as i perversely try to kill it insubstantial on this side of the wavelength i still exist but my consciousness has shifted to my shadow ensconced in velvety darkness the fool hides as the flesh suit rots on the couch awash in the […]

the weekend beckons and i latibulate an oroboros spinning so rapidly i implode in upon myself a victimless crime with a slight soot stain in the shape of a cartoon heart in the corner

i sit in the heart of the city watching as it wakes a rumble growing louder as the streets quake with the tired faces a serene symphony of synchronous bird song punctuated by errant horns buses shudder as the train slowly dings in between crossed arms with flashing red lights the shadows sway along with […]

i whispered my love to the rising sun the light swelled into a vibrancy that washed out the last of night time as it clung to the sleeping city the sparrows sang a sad song of acceptance as the silent sun swept over the echo of fading dreamthunder as i sat desperate for a sign.

yesterday it was nearly eighty and the sun blessed the city with a bounty of gentle kisses and today my beloved texas has shifted along with its lonesome fool forty degress into a blank mass of shapeless gray disillusion i was asked to be on a panel of neurodivergent authors because of my open struggles […]

four days until your birthday and you came to talk in my dream last night instead of the normal night terror of saying the same thing into the abyss only to be ignored you put your arm around my shoulders the instantly familiar scent of old spice and cigarettes bringing me home the only time […]

when the spirals pull me deeper i long to be kissed until the world evaporates yet all i manage is to quicken the spinning her smile the only true dramamine in a world of vertiginous sorrows faded in the silent eternity of shattered dreamdander in vapid decline

there was a tingle of danger the moment she entered the room my hackles rose as her black eyes locked on me a predatory gaze that chilled me to the bone she seemed to glide across the room a seductive storm of malicious intent and i knew the fear of the tuna as the shadow […]

stay productive he tells himself as the anxiety pulses he knows as long as he keeps writing never stands too still he can stay one step ahead of his eventual collapse as long as he ignores the pieces left behind calculates how to continue minus a few essential support systems he shouldn’t fall completely apart […]

he walks squinting down at his phone seven foot tall in bright purple past a group of ladies in business attire heels clacking loudly on a quiet tuesday right before the mad lunch rush begins my head hurts and my backpack digs into my spine as i shift my shoulders and follow the amethyst giant […]

the sky is a deep dark shade of blue. or maybe that’s just me coloring the world in the hue of loss. you shouldn’t let me have the box of crayons when my impulse control is driven by my faulty heart. i wrote to her this morning in invisible ink because then i have a […]

rapidly cycling too much happening too quickly to keep my mental gymnastic routine in working order. this is where the fool gives in to the fires of chaos and just sort of hopes that it all works out. it hasn’t yet, but it has to eventually, right?

fluttering flailing trying to avoid letting the waters grow stagnant as the mold grows in blooming latticework on the surface just above me obscuring the beams of golden illusion as the silt settles heavily over weary limbs. sufferwrite rinserepeat it becomes impossible not to jump at shadows as the cataracts blur my vision fluttering flailing […]

feeling sort of mole(ish) the urge to burrow into the cool soil. the solitude of digging deep hoping to strike the mantle. happily exploring the vast interconnected tunnel system snaking through this hollow world. knowing there is as much chance of a subterranean hidden eco system as there is becoming a mole. but it’s okay […]

too busy to write poetry so i left i love yous scattered down the random streets and hoped despite my knowing better it would be enough

the bare branches of the trees an entanglement of middle fingers letting winter know exactly what they think of her frosty demeanor i am right there with you.

the faucet drips a lone orchestra in minimalistic exuberance a resounding sounding in chaotic repetition. the low rumble of planes circling ergonomically cradling the droplets as they crash ensconced in the heavy bass the soft plink carries an ethereal longing tainting the looming hope of a weekend unbegun.

the sun shines today yet it found the wrong end of the cycle and the golden light only highlights the depravity dripping down depression’s sullen sigh a prison cage of illumination trapping the shimmering hints of beauty into a mass of indignant malaise i saw my reflection before the shadows swarmed to hide my disfigured […]