the heron flew low over the water majestically motionless except for a faint wobbling like a bundle of long branches bouncing slightly in the morning breeze the story finally sang to me not the lone note warbling on repeat from the mockingbird glaring down at me but with the promise of seeds carried in the […]

a slow leak that became a trip to the gas station each morning became sitting in the lobby area of a firestone waiting to get the tire repaired with a two hour wait and no air condition as the temp ticks into triple digits it could be worse i remember long shifts next to eight […]

the crickets scream a solid mass of white noise shivering across each thought a frayed bow over the worn strings of a violin calling forth the bitter sun my odometer clicks with every frantic turning seeking moments where sleep deadens the endless need lost in a tangle where briars puncture the membrane between dream and […]

i stood staring in disbelief at the sign proudly proclaiming city of mesquite tourism board i felt the wry chuckle worm its way up my parched throat to the displeasure of the kind gentleman taking me to repair their broken letter opener ‘who in the hell would willingly come to mesquite?” he didn’t answer and […]

i greeted the daywith a come hither starefilled withpestilent promisemy venom sacsare filled nearto burstingso if i am quietit is becausei do not relishscarring your beautywith my razored tongueand clouds ofacerbic whiningan acidic spill ofmy insecuritesto ruin an otherwisehorrific thursday my thoughts arecoming at metoo quickly fromevery directionthe electrified griefin anxious ponderingscoalesce across myfractured disenchantmentto […]

there are so many irritants stinging nits constantly biting drawing blood that only incites the furious swarm ceaselessly scrambling to consume everything in a horde of anxious hells i slept near comatose after hours of clutching a pillow and begging the universe for a solitary win only for the alarm to trigger a claxon of […]

pins and needles would be a better alternative to this numb lethargy it isn’t as if another setback wasn’t the most likely possible outcome but each new one feels harder to snapback from my elasticity has begun to fail me and this monstrous new form i am finding myself stuck in is making it difficult […]

the words hover just beyond my feeble grasp and the hopelessness is palpable my confidence is shattered and no matter how hard i struggle through i know i am beating myself into submission roaming this myopic wasteland every muscle spasming as i strain the algae ridden surface for potable water i need to be held […]

i slept like a stone skipping across a pond brief splashes before waking and trying so hard to trace the edge of dreams where i was actually a part of something instead of staring into the darkness aware of how empty the cusp of desperation truly is. taping together the fragments to sketch a haphazard […]

sometimes i find myself merely existing and i marvel at how joyous the act of being can be then i recall all the reasons i was miserable and begin to catalog them by agony the familiar tightening triggers iron bands around my chest And the damnable electrified bees begin stinging again i curl up even […]

i sprinkle flower seeds behind me as i drive yet there is no sustenance to be found in the barren fields of an indifferent sphere. like a fool i keep trying repeating all the same mistakes as the dried hulls crack beneath my deflated tires seeking beauty but only finding my ugliness reflected back in […]

no matter how fast i race across the city i am always just behind the truths i sought to outrun glaring at the other drivers merrily making headway on dreams while i am always stuck in the slow lane flooded with diesel exhaust swimming in tears as frustration ravages any sense of peace dizzy from […]

sisyphus can take his boulder back because i have had as much of this as i can fucking take another lost astronaut trying desperately to speak with the people that already moved on a million lights years away carrying this weight at three times earth’s gravity through this perdition of careless emptiness having long ago […]

the morning is eerily still nothing but the echoes of anxiety playing counterpoint to his frantically darting thoughts already ready already with no place to go and nothing to say cut for time to make room for someone of actual importance waiting for his scant few seconds as the spotlight dies settling the stage in […]

i can no longer tell which of these realities are dissociative fantasy or hand stitched hell i am not a part of either a spectator looking through rental binoculars the wrong way creating a myopic delusion i cannot navigate but that is just fucking life you don’t mean a goddamned thing just an infinitesimal speck […]

inhale deeply the acrid smoke clutch close to sweet oblivion falling farther from the light with every painful exhalation lost in this maze of billowing acerbic apparitions my heart has become no more than a phantom organ of rusted valves crooning a dirgeful farewell a human hand me down kept captive in exclusion torturing errant […]

i feel the cracks spread through me any sudden move and i could fall to pieces the kids go back this afternoon and the emptiness is already beckoning gently i remain motionless on a sea of softly lapping sanguineous sorrows slowly leeching all feeling from my shivering limbs the darkness seeps across my vision as […]

i feel a strange calm this radiating peacefulness i have applied all of the necessary bandages to my windswept soul enough to halt the hemorrhaging momentarily a brief repeat of acceptance a portion of scraps enough to stave off the wasting another day or so these rare times where the scales fall from my eyes […]

without my orchestrated routines the chaos inside my tainted mind would unravel me unto completion i take no pleasure from this scraping by to survive a life that wants nothing to do with me quiet saturdays spent sipping coffee curled up with sylvia as get dead plays on low behind the percolation restless hands yearning […]

no matter how low my expectations what the world delivers still manages to disappoint the half life of a fool is roughly six months before going fully inert and returning to soil again

all of my actions are inconsequential my unhappiness affects no one my retreating from losing situations go largely unnoticed my guts spilled out are casually yet proudly ignored and still i continue on a perpetual motion machine unaffected by the entropic friction in this universal disdain culpable to my own fleeting sparks of faltering necessities […]

so many nights spent tossing and turning chasing errant sparks of dreamembers hoping to catch fire with new creativity only for sleep to come and the pockmarked whore showers me with flecks scraped from childhood hells a consistency of pain in capsules of motherly hate a bitter aftertaste where i understand the mental hoops my […]

i felt it all go sideways going ninety around the turn right before one eight three meets thirty five the front tire dipped into the sewer drain long compacted by semi traffic the car dipped the suspension flexed mightily and i was one tire in the air over the warbling asphalt with concrete barriers on […]

this life has proven itself to be a strange hermitage of empty lots and parking garages watching birds and trying to manifest desire in a futile cyclical hellscape of unyielding torturous want no matter where i am it is always so very far from where my heart lingers beating weakly in a crystal box at […]

i leave a trail of my broken behind me so i never forget that hell is a constant i can retrace my steps and find exactly where my heart was deemed unworthy my words left ignored by the craters where i impacted after another subtle denial still i whisper every ounce of love into the […]

i put the litter in literature proudly polluting poetry with every poorly phrased tepid refrain trying desperately to give away every piece of myself because i cannot stand to be in my presence any longer i keep a razor tucked beneath my tongue so each word stings a rusted note of insular agony coating each […]

i shed my vices in order to pursue a future that never comes focused myself into a razor with which to slash apart the failing heart of beauty itself now i lay in pile of gore and viscera uncertain as to which organs belonged to me after so long cutting and bleeding through the aether […]

she sits patiently illuminated by the harsh light of day in shades of yellows and brown stiff backed upon her throne gazing blankly at the peasants a colony of ants working themselves down to the nub in service to her highness seated upon a throne of red clay i have seen her in moments of […]

i bathe in a fecundity of sorrows the black rains melt tissue from pitted bone yet this unnatural buoyancy won’t allow me to fully succumb a vaguely humanlike apparition hovering at the edge of a total collapse and i am tired of fighting tired of trying for a speck of happiness in a world of […]

there is no worse sadness than in laying your soul bare and being wished well in your future endeavors a simple rejection my words were found lacking my meager skills not up to the task yet i feel the sting carve furrows through my very being and i know that i poured my everything into […]

the line between frustration and needles of anxiety is permeable today i feel myself wanting to snap the darker side of my smile on display a little blood runs down my chin and my eyes glint like irregularly cut gems i am a yellow eyed onery bastard today looking to lash out yet choking it […]

i lost my connection to the world spent the night totally cut off only to rise after a turbulent nap to see my absence was not noted at all nothing reminds you of your place quite like being missing yet realizing that you weren’t missed a bit so much time spent inside my cavernous skull […]

i found a shady parking spot a rare commodity in this barren industrial park ridden wasteland the view is for shit but a steady stream of sweaty people provide some relief from this saturation of brownish gray the grand designer ran out of any vibrant colors somewhere around a quarter of the way through the […]

the sun squints through the broken blinds stabbing angrily into the dark my body, a mass of bruises convulses erratically in a dereliction of hope the city is awake a furious cacophony aflame with benevolent light i am not prepared for this repetition of sorrows as a new week weakly ignites yearning for sleep, i […]

willfully blind yet seeing it all pretending things are normal when the truth is normal is just a bullshit veneer where we rationalize a series of disappointments instead of pursuing actual happiness another cycle where every thought is on escaping this going nowhere at full speed ramming my skull against the walls uncertain if i […]

my heart feels heavy in my chest i feel it as it tries to escape each pounding reverberates down my esophagus and my entire body pulsates with the miserable thundering storm the kids sleep a wall away yet i have never felt so alone never contemplated the exact distance between where i am and the […]

we share a common illusion in chemical delusions traipsing along an imaginary world encased in sets of arbitrary rules keeping us grounded in scientific assumptions misrecording day to day psychosis then relating these fictional encounters to another entropic meat machine for justification as we misinterpret misfired synapses as holy interference seeking meaning in the static […]

i melt into a puddle of my own inconsequence feeling too much to the point of despair an empty vessel in disrepair listing heavily laden with barnacles going slowly in circles around the drain a destitution of shabby wonderment caught in an abundance of pollen blowing off of dream’s corpse

the morning feels fuzzy no motivation a series of naps broken up by stark terror my heart thumping against floating ribs xylophonic in panic stricken whimsy a full bladder a furry brain now the coffee hisses a beast caged demanding attention while i ooze into the couch oscillating between silent reverie and suffocating realization lavender […]

the kids pulling suitcases down the sidewalk staring up at the monoliths of glass and steel small towns embroidered on their matching shirts of small towns in the middle of nowhere, texas feeling the rustic civilization of ft worth pressing down from all sides i try to wrap my head around the collection hidden in […]

sunset suicide in pink swirls of burning abandon the nascent moon glowers miserly resting sourly in an ebon patch my rice paper skin an opaque grotesquerie of undulating sin a banded sheath of muscle and bone glimmering with a threatening feculence a dour nightmare forced upon the collective psyche of the dull city full of […]

i sit stillas the worldspins beneath methe scenery designergrown boredas i racethe same trainbrick redfaded bluegraffitied whitei am on a loopor texas isi cannot telli just press downon the acceleratorand wait to seeif the hamsterrunning the showor ihave a heart attackfirst life is nota racethe finish lineis the samefor each of usyet we don’t seemto […]

i am a dandelion growing amid the roots of a rose bush well aware my shoddy art is just a cheap facsimile of the beauty i steal nutrients from on a daily basis a puff of dander easily forgotten beneath the spectacle of natural talent

jittery time to shut down but not shut off contemplating every word unspoken compounded by the ones that slipped deformed from my maggoty lips a long drive tomorrow cutting up the jagged scar to the end of the chisholm trail mesquite scrubs and lonely corcling hawks and the solemn razor edge of silence that only […]

i find myself archiving things obsessively straightening objects seeking homes for every meaningless tchotchke unpinning dreamcatchers overladen with need stored away in dusty plastic bins in the closet decluttering again always a bad sign the restlessness nearly the same as pangs of withdrawal a sheaf of sketches half drawn graphite smudges in clouds of gray […]

the cardinal bright red over the yellowed grass a crimson afterimage slowly fading in flakes of rust smothering a new day spent regressing down through memories in sepia flashes of terminal ache the tarnished key clatters against the brass tumblers in the ivory lock a momentary freedom as that cardinal darts from my chest a […]

(un)tethered comes out on August 9th. with an amazing cover by my daughter, and a bunch of poems about love and desire. preorder is live and i feel dirty for shilling. this is my favorite collection so far, the inspiration behind the bulk of the poems brings out the best in my writing and i […]

as much as i envy the creativity of true artists there is something freeing in the way i smear shit across the cave walls an anonymous neanderthal babbling idiotically about the things i will never truly experience dying with every ignored declaration as i slowly build a wall in front of the only exit cursing […]

i trace the edges of futility exasperated by the obviousness in universal disdain and i am done for the day before it even had a chance to begin tired and aching unable to differentiate if i am nonexistent or simply a punchline the washing machine sat smoking my clothes sitting in filty water as the […]

the sun’s kisses leave scorch marks in trails of brown streaking across the fields the heat shimmering off of the blinding concrete sanctuary sought from the breeze as it carries embers while the city burns along the molten horizon i long for the wan silvery cratered disdain of that accursed dead orb in the nightime […]

on days like this my heart is a seaside grave my mind filled with the sound of waves breaking as the wind whistles over faded granite the sun shines aloof in golden rays dismissive seeking no secrets from swirled shadows lending no light in which to shelter demure self disintegrations i lay sleepless in the […]

the eager onlookers carefully perusing tables chatting with the boisterous authors happily shilling their wares flashy banners bold covers bespectacled with blood and monsters a palpable excitement between fans and writers i see the looks as they read the sign cookies and poetry how the excitement fades gradeschool lessons the terrors of being forced to […]

thoughts flake dead skin drifting a blizzard of relinquished dreams a white out on a sunny sunday morning standing alone in one of the many blind spots in eternal happiness an emotional wasteland painting the tepid skies with crimson streaks hiking across the corpse of divinity lost in bottomless deflection pools in a furious flurry […]

and behold! all of creation suspended aspic in the pus oozing from an ingrown hair on god’s shapely left buttock. so convinced of our own importance, yet remedied with a salve. nothing, no we are nothing. there is no grand scheme, no second act. just an unsightly growth Just in time for bikini season.

my soul weighs heavy today, barren the moon pockmarked cold dead covered in soft downy feathers angel wings burnt withered weathered worrisome anxiously, the night sky beckoned i do not heed. i do not heed. to be free freefreefree untethered unchained not detached a master of self defense mechanisms tinkering, tinkering. cleaning up the toys […]

three o’clock in the morning is for whispering secrets and fervent prayers clutching the pillow tightly while murmuring i love you into the synthetic blend for witches and lonely poets seeking deals with the devil to make their dreams come true the air is thick with sleepy declarations amidst tornadic twisting an underpinning of fevered […]

what am i without this anxiety? seventy percent water and thirty percent nonsensical meanderings. deficiencies where happiness should sprout unfettered. how abysmal is this patiently waiting to die. viewing chaos in the calm eye of the self perpetuated storm. curt clipped responses to existential defeat. a callous callus on the withered heart of hope. a […]

apathy. icicles forming along my shivering limbs. yet i feel nothing. so overloaded on the day to day minutiae each emotion fireworks blinding me in my apathetic haze. disconnected. a constant sensation of falling as i flail in this dissociative incongruence. anxious. stomach twisted into fiery knots. electrified. over stimulated to the point of apathy. […]

i have a story due on isolation but i cannot find it despite these daily attempts the words won’t sing the tale in the right pitch and timbre so i keep starting again and again and again waiting for one to whisper its secrets perhaps it is all the stress the hopelessness in waiting holding […]

i am feeling fragile my paper mache skeleton of hollow words caving in upon itself anxiousanxiousanxious a red hot knife stabbing my guts a vertiginous aching in my deformed skull my ugliness shadows pooling ever thicker in a lightless room of abject miseries where any sudden movement could shatter my indecency a human pinata emotional […]

i am falling into myself beating a hasty retreat from this plastic landscape where everyone chatters endlessly yet no one says anything of value at all just parrots squawking preening themselves desperate to be acknowledged while i slink back to the darkness afraid to be seen i cannot tell if i am mute or god […]

around the airport all the vehicles are white as if rendering the aeroplanes and scripting stories for transient souls is taxing on the software dead pixels hang black stars in sunny summer skies as the loop stutters the voxels forming shadows in low definition and i can’t recall a single name it taps at the […]

they watch me silent judgment unblinking the shadows make the hair on the back of my neck stand gobbling each word swishing them over razor tongues noses upturned as they comb along years of need gargoyles perched in dark corners stealing the best plump clusters of metaphorical insolence to spread honey over their insipid lies […]

bloody knuckles beneath the rocket’s red glare a celebration of a house torn asunder another hint of tetanus from old mother reagan’s coffin nails another case of treatable symptoms left to infection a removal of the fairness doctrine led to opinions meaning more than simple facts leaving the simpletons to scream and point fingers while […]

physicists claim the center of a black hole contains infinite density as a placeholder because they have no idea what truly occurs within i claim the center of my black heart contains infinite density as a placeholder because i cannot find the words to truly describe this longing within my bipolar soul pummles the universe […]

the air is electric frantic everything feels at the edge of falling apart it is all in my head he whispers desperate hopeful choosing to believe it is his madness not the crushing despair of reality causing the world to crumble he needs to write to spill his guts and play in the fluids as […]

one sign says no parking seven to nine while the one directly beneath says meter effective seven to four and if that doesn’t succinctly sum up the day already then the growing pit of despair pulsating angrily in my stomach confirms the slivers of armageddon sparkling in the effusion of gold blinding the city

thank god bukowski is dead. that hunter kissed a shotgun. thank god they didn’t have to meander through this online world and suffer the fools so smitten with themselves puking trash then parading it about in a mockery of art. we are all a bunch of goddamned hacks mimicking creativity in spastic bursts of static. […]

the trails blur brown on brown leaving nothing but hidden thorns in fields of dying dreamembers lines of blood and broken branches blend together in this seething setting of simmering violence dessicated shades where sorrows flourish moving farther away from harmonious wonders swirled into a muck of ugly losses as hope shatters in glittery clouds […]

occasionally i worry about the long stretches of driving i cannot recall snapping back in a brief panic uncertain exactly where i am rubberbanding between states of dissociation and sudden clarity lost in the maelstrom of fluctuations no rudder no guide never quite sure if this is my great escape or another case of slippery […]

the purple blossoms have become an angry pink as the chaste trees absorb the fury in unrelenting waves washing over the world outside as it melts into shimmering puddles of mercurial dream clinging to sweat soaked skin raising red welts a flurry of itching as the white hot light over saturates a day of longing […]

my life can be summed up in increments of two hour parking in those fragments between psyching myself up for a conversation to staring at the sparrows flying through the trees the long stretches spent choking in parking garages empty lots hiding from the world the sun responsibility always stuck in the car with me […]

the creek trickles babbling merrily a sudden influx of fresh hopes splashing into this stagnancy of dream algae growing over the suface in tendrils rich with dismay red petals let loose from overladen blossoms floating blood clots a flare of crimson on a placid sea of gray ripples dance lazily as dragonflies dart over marble […]

a smudge the greasy whorls of a fingerprint at the edge of the lens a cataract floating aimless in the ocular jelly of divinty a squiggle a shadow in the dark lesser than speaking algebraically in a world of common core irrationalities a train leaves chicago at three in the morning the conductor is doing […]

all day long i listen to pins drop booming through the enforced silence as i am relegated to the shadows never quite important enough to truly exist just a casual stain marring the day to day barely acknowledged and just as easily forgotten i was real for a week for the first time in a […]

hollow bone wind chimes sound a mournful dirge clattering together in the solemn heat a coyote whines in the distance careful to keep off the hot pavement skulking in the tall brown grass red dust fills the merciless skies with a crimson rage as i sit tying loops in six feet of rope the weathervane […]

i shudder as the cosmos slide across the fractured surface of my roadrash soul as my thoughts coagulate at the touch of a million stars grating flakes of sublime miseries to gently float a cloud of grit obscuring the view where discontent runs slipshod over sullen wonder a new pollutant in shades of tallow remorse […]

i am a bipolar butterfly chronicling my fluctuations of shimmering madness maintaining a factual log in metaphoric nonsense of my yoyo soul oscillating ever faster from north to south it has been quite difficult going from grub always starving consuming as much as i can gorge myself upon yet never reaching the peace of my […]

the machines grind up majestic bald eagles and call it the price of freedom clinging to parchment they do not understand as they shifted a democracy into a failed theocracy putting personal agendas before the rights that aren’t worth the paper they were scribbbled upon. land of the free home of the slave where they […]

a cluster of brown withered cacti a testament to divine neglect and in the pile of discarded needles i see only myself pathetic evolution needing little nourishment yet still deprived of that small need left dessicated in a plethora of empty promises under the vacant eyes of universal contempt retracted roots as the trickle dries […]

i seek to trick the very wind itself into carrying my words and hopes to blow across this desolation stretching between heartbeats murmuring to sparrows overladen with odes as the breeze moves sluggish under the weight of frantic kisses a cool front tickling the heat of passions in half whispered lines of collision leaving naught […]

i have a sneaking suspicion as the bricks fall to smash down upon the crowded sidewalk this is just another end of the world worst case scenario carrying an umbrella to deflect debris as everything crashes down around me asbestos clouds billow to obscure the one way affections of a fool in a dying city […]

i watched them two older men flirting with the woman watching the self check out lanes one would call her over calling her gorgeous as the other set unscanned items into his bags then he would call her and the other guy would repeat the theft it was a good scam that brought a smile […]

only sorrow opens her arms to sweep me unto her shallow embrace i sway incorporeal the shadow of willow branches dancing beneath the pregnant moon engorged on stolen light spinning gently topsy turvy in polar decline and my thoughts form a latticework of lace to smother wispy dream weevils scurrying frantic anxious the first snowflake […]

my mind races a million miles a second and then hard stop. sensory overload induces a constriction panic seizes my chest the pin is pulled and an explosion of exposition tears through cancer ridden meat i taste batteries on my tongue and pinpricks flare acros my scalp and i cannot fucking breathe and hard stop. […]

the birds stutter as the day begins to buffer a static overlay of demonic heat in the throes of the sun’s fury as we hurtle at our closest point unrelenting the solstice burns hope to ash as summer asserts her dominance on the sphere the children celebrate these dog days while i am as miserable […]

strap me tothe fucking tablejam a spikeinto ny tear ductplace elctrodeson my skullcrank that shitto one hundredsecure my armschain me to thebeige padded walland feed meall the dimestorepsychologies whileyou pump me fullof the finestpharmaceutical wondersgive me all thedrips and pillsand drops and patchesand suppositoriesshoot me full ofpeace and heavenas i vomiteach and everyone of my […]

night wraps itself around my chest a silken suffocation in bands of sinuous velvety nothingness my heartbeat quickens as my lungs strain to draw the humid air into starving lungs it’s the words always with the goddamned words drumming incessantly tapping out rhythms along with bthe cracks running across my placid insecurities as i lay […]

a hint of old spice the crackle of tobacco burning the shadow of a giant standing in my mind it has been nearly twenty years and not a day goes by without thinking of him of waiting knowing he would be home soon i still chase after his ghost using the knowledge he passed down […]

the kids are happily snoring coffee beckons as i read about mythological murderers to try and satiate the itching at the back of my brain stories brew while i allow the words time to steep unwilling to write simply content to love her and her wildflower smile as the day lazily stretches on i feel […]

i like to gather the stones from the sides of railroad tracks to pack tightly into my chest in order to muffle the constant pounding stabilizing my every frantic breath these naturally formed baffles reduce vibrations as freight moves through the country so why can’t they silence my hammering pulse whenever the anxiety pulls me […]

excise me from your mind erase my taste from your lips delete every solemn whisper lingering along your pretty lobes exorcise me one less spirit haunting your every thought bathe yourself in holy water and wash my sin away you believed me to be a catalyst stumbled headlong into cataclysm for all the heaven hovering […]

run the rusted blade along my chest let the crimson well until red drips to stain the carpet in rorscarch dementias proclaiming the story of a lost soul seeking succor in the emptiness i sidestep civility tiptoeing through shards of broken glass in circumspect attempts at noble indifference squeezing between metaphorical redundancies with the ease […]

there is a gentle sea where separating the sadness and the anxiety a shimmering layer where love laps at the tender agonies i float here basking in the warm suffusion aware of the fluctuations all around me but content to remain here as long as i can rare moments where peace exerts a sense of […]

i have finally come to terms with the fact i will never stand upon the surface of a distant planet no glimpses of the frozen nitrogen glaciers of pluto i won’t stand there and watch as charon stays in the same place as the world spins i will never travel faster than light escape the […]

i purr my love so softly a whisper building in intensity that trembles out in a throaty growl shaking leaves from the trees in a fifty mile radius. i prowl slunk low to the ground snarling a rumble nostrils flared eyes darting in every direction all at once. i remain (un)tamed by fate lashing out […]

the car rattles as the airplanes make their descent the shadows pass over the parking lot the sky is a sickly yellow as the sun is merciless in its immaculate ferocity and i cannot figure out a single reason anyone would come to dallas in summer a concrete disaster scarring the earth filled with angry […]

a desert of dream stumbling over shifting dunes no north star to guide me only mirages beckoning out from the endless desolation stretching as far as my mind could project the emptiness within an uncertainty where sleep becomes a tall tale on par with happily ever after and mythical home not sure if i managed […]