the mockingbird sits in the old oak tree watching the silent world as the first hint of light ignites the far eastern horizon it hops from one leg to the other ready to fire off into the slowly filtered dawn a cacophonous blast a fire burns in the black orbs a need to shout to […]
the stars were dead long before we believed they twinkled for us alone making wishes on celestial death so focused inward that the gods we made to justify our own failings had to be shadows cast on the backwall of this dilapidated ouija board factory we call home sweet hell
incidental incremental falling into self destruction every three miles a dead skunk in the middle of the road a glitch in the system replaying images designed to strike the paranoia the anxiety screaming to stop from falling inside curling up involuntarily the storm on the horizon feels like a bad one the lighthouse isn’t visible […]
microscopically myopic with a tinge of body dysmorphia wrecking hell reckless feeling way too energized feeding on the manic anxiety like a superconductor a lightning rod getting struck on repeat the lichtenstein patterns dance on my bare torso as i self flaggelate on the stained carpet of a back alley motel on the bad side […]
i want to be somewhere that the city doesn’t drown out the stars where the world is not frenetic somewhere quiet but i love the city maybe it is the people i can do without except i love watching people i want to live somewhere close enough to a people zoo but far enough away […]
feeling over-emotional skinless in a salt water bath the mad line between cryinglaughingandscreaming my head hurts my heart hurts and the world is far too scratchy
i am saddled with shortcomings but have a few innate skills honed to perfection through my years drifting along as something very nearly real i can burn bridges with the best of them disappear into the brush to never be seen again satisfy yet still not quite be enough in equal measure i can say […]
i find that in case of a lack of candles to be lit in mourning a molotov really lights up the room
tension fills the air the streets are empty save for a few brave souls willing to face the day in their eyes fear lies deeply rooted no matter who wins the general feeling is we have all lost so much already pandemically paralyzed trapped masked kennelled afraid of where the road goes next as all […]
once the potential turns kinetic once i engage it is never ending clack clack clack clack clack clack the silver balls smack sending mercurial shimmers at an atomic level to shift this electron dystopia of negative charges down the spinal recompense of a life lived huddled in the shadows afraid to be seen as the […]
slithering eels in my stomach little arcs of nervous anxieties flashing my nervous system into a state of heightened agitation i know it is false flags but my mind doesn’t want to acknowledge the fact the chemicals make me feel this way while digging deeper to find a cause assuming everything is falling apart the […]
brown rice banana and fresh squeezed lemon in the instant pot for me smells with light citrus heaven delightfully fills the apartment about to make biscuits then start on the sausage gravy for the squiddos get dead is playing as i dance around the kitchen spent an hour with Sylvia and Hank hard to beat […]
the clocks have fallen backwards little drunkards on the mantle yet the internal dismay sounds regularly no matter the locality the fool refuses to acknowledge time as anything other than a construct invisible chains of anxiety until a scientist figures out how to traverse it backwards then it remains meaningless i count the heartbeats since […]
there won’t be a twenty one gun salute no solemn procession as my body is presented to the masses clamoring for one last look at the fool before the eternal flame sputters out leaving a greasy stain on the cheap wooden cross no fanfare or papal smoke rising from the vatican to signal the coming […]
Notches, A Collection will be free for ebook tomorrow. And (un)poetic and (un)fetteted are 99¢ each! I feel dirty soliciting my wares, but feel free to take advantage of the deals. Big thanks to River Dixon and Potter’s Grove Press as well as Patrick C Harrison III and Death’s Head Press for doing this. love […]
i know you would roll your eyes at me if i dared say you are perfect you would brush it off or try to convince me that it is far from true you’d think i was overly romantic the fool was too much in love to see reality with lavender glasses bleeding out the hard […]
mommy drank her sleepy juice the fire in her eyes had gone to embers as she glared blearily around the room a cigarette burned in the ashtray as she lit another i watched out of the corner of my eye as her head dipped then snapped back up only to raise slower when it finally […]
she told me my heart was a cursed burial ground filled with the smiles of the most beautiful women to ever walk this world killed by the fumbled inadequacies of the messy fool spewing moribund poems looking for the lady with wildflowers in her hair never quite present never quite right a cardiac infraction with […]
training for a marathon barefoot across the remnants of every childhood dream that was shattered every year i die waiting to be reborn into something half as twisted half as infected half as ineffectual something more suited to be injected directly into your open mouth training for extreme depression by locking myself into the closet […]
As a heads up to all of you wonderful readers and artists, this coming Sunday the Fool is giving you presents. Death’s Head Press and I are going to drop the price of my collection of short stories, Notches, in e-book to free for the entire day. I’m proud of this one. It goes across […]
i found myself writing a poem about you as i woke one that captures you as i see you one day i will whisper it into your ear between kisses on your neck i am saving this private little verse for me as it is not for public consumption they don’t get to know the […]
i am the last bloom to push out of the soil too late to ever open like the flowers around me the pistachio unsplit the scuff on your new shoes i spit in the eye of both god and the devil for doing fuck all but watching everything sink i tell the truth even when […]
she cut the wires to my self destruct button so now when i jam down hard on it in my moments of extreme weakness it just plays her smile on a loop sending the bitter sorrow back to the basement where it belongs she knows the affect she has on me yet never uses it […]
as wonderful as the ideal of a new regime coming into play maybe to some has anyone stopped to think that it is akin to slapping a band aid on an injured bald eagle’s wing while ignoring the head has been lopped off at this point it will take victor von frankenstein or herbert west […]
sometimes i feel so fucking hard that i cannot take it i just sit sobbing unable to breathe in those moments i need you so fucking bad it takes every ounce of strength not to beg you to help because i have to be a rock even if my guts are gravel and i cannot […]
in the private moments when the clouds obscure the sky the moon shines back to the sun with fierce abandon without the prying eyes casting dispersions on the wan glow in the all encompassing reflection of pure adoration on those nights i stare up at the clouds with a deep sorrow an egg in my […]
the sky showers down droplets of its peculiar vernacular a rhythmic dribble lost in the nuance of her absent-minded stare when the only urge is to wrap myself tightly around her take the worries away in the warm glow that pulses in her presence it’s cold again today i sit watching the rain shivering beneath […]
lesser than.mp3
on hand and knees heaving onto the oil stained concrete wretching a sluice of scabberously chitinous locusts twitching malformed wings skittering on half burnt legs into the overflowing gutters filled with the tearstained lost faith of artists that gave every bit of their soul to create only to fail vomiting a hoarde comprising the broken […]
i woke today insubstantial a shadow of the person i had hoped to be a wispy almost human shape filled with insecurities anxieties a once hopeful bastion of dream no more than a fraction of a hint potential squandered in an emotional pile up along the rainy corridors between real and imagination i woke today […]
the moon weeps the air filled with sullen tears as the skies above reflect the seas below i dreamt of you last night in fits and starts i found you sitting in the shade of the kapok tree while the concial thorns sway beneath the falling rains you smiled as i chopped my way through […]
he lit another cigarette off the corpse of the last letting out a cloud of blue smoke that danced in the cool rainy air followed by a tremendous cough that rattled like thunder and looked me in the eye as he spat onto the wet concrete and said: each one of these is a fuck […]
the world rings hollow the rains continue to fall in the blank spaces between errant spatters unblinking eyes trace movement coiled ready to strike i lay here under the elements weathering the storm staring into the ceaseless night that rests just behind your unabandoned vacancies in you i become less substantial unvisible in your tumultuous […]
there is a beauty that shines to me in the degradation of the countless copies the inspired bys that go too far cross the line into outright theft yet never quite manage to harness the spark of the original film slowly deteriorating into shambling mockeries of unaltruistic design it is there in the unentangled quantum […]
it is in her eyes a cold panic in calculating increments a sheet of ice coating her sense of self she sits at the threshold of fight and flight all i can do is slowly lower my hands step back into the shadows vanish from sight her nostrils flare as i settle down onto a […]
there are things i accept as truth that have zero bearing on any aspect of my life or the small chunk of this giant world i occupy only when i pause to conceptualize them do i begin to question the veracity of the known unknown truthiness of it then the ideas grate across my brain […]
i think that everyone should listen the ramones at least once a day they are good for the heart they are good for the soul if you don’t like the ramones i don’t think i want to know you that they should teach murakami kafka and twain in grade school then every three years after […]
she described my own tombstone to me while trying to make me feel better he was surrounded by loved ones yet never loved the way he chased his entire useless life she said it nicer
she disinfects herself of any scrap of me with her antiseptic smile fast across the countertop of indignant misunderstandings I may have been an anchor around her waist but we both knew she was the goddamned rope tethered between hope and my third rib so when she tells everyone she didn’t feel a thing it’s […]
she was made for me like a pine box lined with satin standing open next to a six foot deep rectangle in the middle of the desert she eyes me like the shadows in the noontime sky slowly circling spiralling closer to where i lay prone beneath the anger apparent in the storm behind her […]
they take their rusty blades to hack hack hack away at me seeking the secret to my hollow rings whenever my mind is otherwise elsewhere surgical precision of a million palm fronds dancing in hurricane force winds carving intuition from virgin flesh leaving vast fleshy partitions to strut my nightshigers like a skinned cat in […]
i have become treadbare threadbare spinning in place yet never moving never finding traction in traction a reactioniary revisionist no time for thought no plan no future no time for foresight forgot to look ahead hooking a gift horse in the hellmouth beating a dead hoarse throated cry of the harebrained hairtrigger sniper the asinine […]
she never loved me but she loved not being alone so when she felt alone she loved me(occupying the vacancy next to her) until someone better came along that maybe she could love to be with even more than how much she loved not being alone
his head is heavy the headache has returned welcome home it screams in pulses of wavering intensities of electrified honeysuckle infused agonies he is in his bed yet he cannot turn off the feeling he is still gone too little sleep too many thoughts so he drowns it all in coffee ryo happy thoughts of […]
exhausted yet wired back in the familiar cave not home no she is home together we are home but close enough compared to hotel life fifteen hour day five of which spent roaming the airport dancing down the escalator singing i’m scum loudly with nothing better to do need to decompress or simply press my […]
there is a reckoning coming i reckon a time for the beast to shed the skin of the fool to ravage savage ruthlessly crush the remnants of what once was a man but is now no more than a shell of who i longed to be too many times i was tossed to the side […]
terminal to terminal terminally ill sick of moving never sitting still racing from one end of the world to the final end of the world stark raving mad ravenous starving yet hate filled with longing to be loved training to be expected to take the train sitting on the floor of the vending area with […]
he was a sheep in wolf’s clothing a little man with a puffed up chest hidden behind muscles he couldn’t use but if attitude counted he was still nothing but a sack of shit staining whatever street he happened to slide down
i wasn’t born feeling suicidal even though i was well aware that she was the sweetest kind of poison still i drank her down in needy thirsty gulps i learned that poets pick their vices before taking their first steps so i had seen her in my dreams before i knew what any of that […]
i don’t do funerals i don’t commiserate life is negative enough without rolling about in the pain instead i celebrate the soul not the husk being interred i have seen the light leave the eyes of friends of loved ones heard the death rattle the long exhalation sat in the room as the reaper attended […]
there are pinholes in my darkness little rays of light lost lumens seeking an escape from the irrevocable emptiness that permeates my entirety cascading beams that exist only to be absorbed into my inequities bounced against the onyx stillborn heart caged in a tomb of bonefuckery every unanswered prayer wish or i love you a […]
i am overwhelmed too many people want a piece of the fool i don’t belong to me i am hers so if you need me contact her maybe she can pencil you in but i doubt it she has her hands full already with me
the first time you came over we talked for hours on the couch then our lips got entangled and somehow our clothes all fell off we went back to the bedroom where you screamed out my name with every shuddering spasm with every time that you came when we woke in the morning i wanted […]
i just want to be left alone the world can go fuck itself the chatter can stop the people can turn to dust blow away into the sunrise i just want to be left alone with my thoughts my mania my pain my scars where judging eyes are blinded by the light refracted off the […]
she sat weeping as the cold air blowing as she tugged her (exist ten)shawl(dread) tightly over her bony shoulders as bitter tears turn to dirty smears upon her lined cheeks a chance encounter on another sleepless walk i needed coffee she needed food so now we sit under the less than hospitable stares at the […]
it’s so quiet too fucking quiet i can’t think without the music on breathing in the recycled air in this empty hotel the edge of babylon. i keep going out for walks aware there is nothing to see here nothing to be here an interruption a disruption mistyped code deletes the function an empty junction […]
the line for the fast food restaurant stretches around the building snaking it’s way through the hotel parking lot he stands in the window freshly showered in the midst of crippling depression as he stares down at the cars he can’t sleep the bed is too soft the covers too heavy the pillows too much […]
there are monkeys flinging shit from the balcony in my mind rabid little bastards with insane fever burning madness in their eyes there are ducks swimming in ever tightening spiralling doom through my endocrine system pecking at my pituitary gland like a fat beetle on the waves there is a squirrel frantically clawing at the […]
this bed is too big for you not to be next to me though, if i am honest, a twin bed would be too far away as well. all i want is to be tangled with you.
the time change has my head all sorts of fucked as i found myself roaming the streets at two in the morning unable to silence the words in my skull yet incapable of spilling them into the aether the area is familiar enough during the day but as i walked i found myself feeling more […]
we shared an elevator something in that allowed him to share his trip with me a messy break up a near restraining order restrained by covid she moved six months later she reached out he flew from new york to dallas they had a rekindling he offered to move she wasn’t ready he was slighted […]
we all stand by the water’s edge feeling as the cold slowly climbs a gradual drowning so many loved ones have disappeared beneath the waves the emptiness reflected in the placid lapping i close my eyes lock your smile into my mind as the the water tickles the tip of my nose uncaring of the […]
some days i am a sparrow dancing from foot to foot on the branches trilling another unnecessary ode to her some days i am a storyteller rambling from metaphor to metaphor in the lines spewing another insipid tale of me i scream cut off bits to smear across the screen snarling spitting rage sorrow suffering […]
In my new exploration in cooking, I’ve grown obsessed with uniting the five flavors in each dish. My latest facet has been focusing on acidity. The perfect counterpoint to sweet but so often neglected. Tomatoes are a great source in typical meals. But I want to move past basics. So vinegar. A two step fermentation […]
his jowls quivered as he clutched the glass brought it up shakily to his rage whitened lips “as an adaptation…” i turn away unable unwilling to hear the lies rotely memorized yet false things like maggots writhing on an old log “but, as a movie…” the madness fades to a soft glow of enraptured joy […]
as i slept straps seemed to stretch across my torso over my legs my arms over my throat my wrists my ankles each time my eyes opened projected images of fruit rotting medical procedures from the late eighteen-hundreds danced across the ceiling in maddeningly slowed down or oversped sequences a full spectrum nervous system attack […]
i studied philosophy until it became self evident i knew the answers to the questions posed seven left a happy accident no sadly, still no if you slide a finger inside and make the come here gesture you’ll feel it the only one that haunted me sent me down dark paths seeking the true definition […]
i have written seven poems today all trash but one this ain’t that one
sometimes the only thought on repeat is of simple love and joy but i lost faith in expressing either as no one cares unless they can derive their own pleasure from the words so instead i choke them down hoping for something horrible so the animals are sated the beauty is only attractive when they […]
the clergy came to repossess my demons today they stood stoically in all black little white inserts at the collar somber men of the cloth here to do serious business i told them i wasn’t home as i eyeballed them through the peephole persistent bastards tenacious even i drained nearly an entire bottle of red […]
i have missed you in that missing came to realize how deeply you run in my veins so when i miss you i feel my pulse on my throat right where your mouth should be and i whisper my love into the darkness
it is so easy to choke on the bitter rind life has in abundance to let the waves batter us until there is nothing yellowed bones broken sinking in the tar pits that seemed like solid ground. it is why when those firefly lights of happy come i will just sit smiling trying to absorb […]
sometimes i scare myself i know i push go too far too fast get too caught up in the inner space of my cavernous skull i dart between cars going one fifteen writing poetry that will never see the page unable to slow down to lift my foot off the accelerator or my fingers from […]
half the night spent awake in that familiar shake and bake tossed and turned southern fried mental misery no matter how hard i try to shut it off i can still feel the two holes where your venom entered my system in the quiet time of the witching hour it burns its way through my […]
tomber en morceaux avec moi if you’re not busy it’ll be messy but a lot of fun
there are moments when the world feels too heavy but the weight starts somewhere inside my chest everything feels fractured i find myself floating in an upside down umbrella in flash flooded streets as cartoonish nightmare parodies dance along the roofs of the submerged cars kicking off alarms that bleat silently with flashing lights on […]
i just wrote you another poem as i drove it was possibly my best prose yet so i cupped my hand around a stray beam of sunshine whispered it with every nuance then let it reflect off my mirrored pupils to find it’s way to lay upon your skin
i am starving hollow an echo answers when i choke down the sparse spittle from biting my lip the entire day i am miniscule an ant among giants that seek to step on my every furitive movement through the big city hatred every building is covered in mirrored glass yet when i look i see […]
she is the tender curvature of my elliptical nuance as i am the flickering tongue of her full blown inferno i am the shadow she casts as she glides across the floor as she is the moonbeams reflected over my wicked blade apart we leave nothing but wreckage where people used to be together we […]
it feels as if my bones were ground to dust to coat my crushed organs deep fried in a lake of fire as i am served up on a silver platter for the devil himself a stygian love letter a disaster unfurled a three course lesson in futility an abandonment of sin bound in a […]
damn near rubbed a hole through the magic lamp wasted every wish on idiosyncrasies disguised in ill advised soulrattling cries draped in lies there is a hole in my sole as the streets run red with blood the steady squelch step leaving crimson splatters on this one way manual escalator leading directly to the latency […]
the world has spun me so many times, my sense of direction has lost all bearing/baring my lost sense of self, to a world of razor blades and lemon juice rainfall in the heart of ache there are static discharges that skim the edge as spiders lay eggs in all the things that are better […]
i first knew that i had gone from simply loving you to being in love with you when you told me you save the folded chips for last i don’t have a reason just at that moment all i wanted was to hold you tightly and spill the sudden overflow across your skin
the shapes in the darkness shoot forward to tear chunks of flesh from the corpse seemingly suspended by the ropes reaching up to entangle limbs to cinder block a vacant eyeless stare facing the light never to be felt again
some days the entire world is beauty today i drown in a pool of ugly the only thing untinged is you, my dearest that’s enough to keep hope burning
they dart around my head shadowy octopi with fluttering ears propelling themselves through the humid air of early morning dissonance writing in duplicate seeing in triplicate lost in the waves of this ocean bearing down down down on the battered fool in desperate need of relief she comes over the horizon draped in gossamer golden […]
i get high write shitty poetry by myself under the moon a cloud of startear smears across the screen in the steady tapping to the emptiness that fills me in its own impossibility i get drunk compose simple sonnets to you as the room spins a vertiginous whirlpool through my brain as i weave the […]
he wasn’t sad or angry or bitter or lonely or chagrined he wasn’t heartbroken or sick he was just done. the void has a way of insinuating itself into the most mundane days or sending a tendril to darken the brightest ones. it was then as he made a pot of coffee too late into […]
the ache {rattles} through my hollow bones [scurrying] through the empty expanse within my skull faint…echoes…from another pain(another flame)another oligarchy /drenched/ in emotional sins there is no (heaven) greater than the one manifest in you there is no (hell) greater than the distance between this ache in acid etchings along my spinal collapse the sky […]
the tarnish runs too deeply on my soul to ever do anything but reflect your beauty but like a slick of oil on a serene pool sometimes the light catches me just right and i shimmer that’s how you make me feel inside shimmery and maybe a little pretty
i lifted my head as the final line of a poem floated off my tongue a declaration so true that it willed itself into half dreamt existence i inhaled sharply to try and pull the words back so i could feel them in my mouth once more infuse them with the image of you burnt […]
laconic meanderings in the heat of early autumnal reverie(flint spark tinder)heavy is the head that wears the fez tassel streaming(oft forgotten glimpses)lost hours filled with unwept tears diuretic fancies flit(permeating the tenebrae)serendipitous; the bastard sleeps: the bastard slept. rainswept/windswept/unkept/unkempt everything tossed together in the umbra of lackadaisical(semi- plausible)denialbilities a translucent redundancy hums at the edge […]
the spastic aspic flailing in the ill fitting mold molded to his ill fitting sense of self-preservation preserved in the meaty brine suspended in his disbelief failing organs organically organized in the savory slop a buffet of buttery buffering fluttering fluffily static images that once smoothly streamed now the reel to real reels as the […]
some days i am my own worst anenome waiting patiently for the sun to unfurl my petals knowing in the furitive furling of my inexplicable dismay the enemy of my anenome is really me
i woke up feeling like a balloon knotting itself because of leaky conditions torn between maintaining shape or flying loose across the skies stuck in the incidental half thought out measures between twisted like a balloon sculpture in the shaky hand writing of a non-believer scribbling scripture to keep the devil unaware i am coming […]
she sent me a message in the middle of the night (she hates me she misses me she loves me) she went on about how her finger wasn’t the same she misses the different grain of my rougher tip she cannot read my words but now sees them in a hundred other poetic lines (she […]
the morning is still heavy but not in a crushing way more in that pregnant pause way that i almost wonder if i woke or if this is a precursor to some dreamschism the edges don’t mesh from dream to reality or my adventure in the land of nod in dream we walked down hallways […]
i drive down the streets at a hundred miles an hour with my arm hanging out the window painting the city with my amethyst innocuosity singing at the top of my lungs as a cloud of joy radiates like a comet tail behind me a heart full of you a mind full of words too […]
most days the world at large for me can be summed up with two separate time zones pre-dawn promises in which all offers for my soul will be considered for the right deal and after she wakes up to be reminded that my soul isn’t mine to offer no matter how tempting the trade so […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 