and Sage Francis sings “i am no destination, i am just a journey, so don’t go settling on me love, no, don’t go settling on me” from a distance the words mislead from the heartbroken fool making him seem like something more than a pit stop on the way to true love upon closer inspection […]
a sparrow standing in the middle of the road plucking at the worms washed out by the rains unnoticing or uncaring of the danger from the vehicles going too fast i see the fat worm it is trying to work into its beak the truck barrelling towards it i press the horn in frantic bursts […]
pt 1 in the before the new normal silence was punctuated by brief moments of adoration the hushed tones were more dramatic in the lack of sound that permeated my globe pt 2 in the after there is a sense of waiting of constant checking of worry that the messages were still coming yet the […]
new blinds in the bedroom after so long with a blacked out room letting in the sunlight across my shadowed den of inexplicable loss. i cleared off the shelves once stacked three deep with hard covered tomes in an effort to divest myself of material possessions in the false hope of home in another land. […]
my passport arrived today just a month after i applied it was a surprise to show my willingness to prove myself to her the surprise was meant for me as she had already given up on me. too little too late for there to be an us just a passport to nowhere population me.
her nose breaks the surface of the clouds displacing the hanging fluff of mist to coalesce upon her higher and higher she rose the sun playing against the side of heck in a dazzling array of colors her eyes gleamed like gemstones as she soared in a playful swoop tagging every cumulus in sight feathery […]
when i was a child that still clung to the notion that life was an adventure filled with excitement fraught with peril and in the end the hero found true love i imagined a great brass diving bell that would take me fathoms below the surface where i would walk along the ocean bottom in […]
he is a competitive eater traveling the country completing challenges for free shirts free meals and an odd sort of fame the steady progression from fit to fat as the videos play on show a compulsion becoming a precipitous decline yet i cannot stop watching as he fills the void with eight pound platters and […]
it isn’t that i cannot breathe it is that i wish i could just stop. every burning exhalation carries an unheard i love you across the seas.
in my heart there is a hymnal in my mind a stained glass refrain through my fingers arcing poetry across my tongue bitter disdain my bones are calcified regret my eyes blinded by desire my nostrils filled with wildflowers my feet set upon the fire her smile cracked the armor her touch the sweetest pain […]
maybe the problem with me came about in the assembly two parts teenage lust one part accidental pregnancy two lives ruined beat until frustration is gone apply a series of doomed relationships vigorously add anxiety depression loathing (self preferably) leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the truancy of hope then let loose upon the world […]
i follow the eight five three rule of sleep since the end of all i held dear eight hours in bed five staring at the ceiling replaying a greatest hits package that ends in tears three hours of broken sleep punctuated by waking with her name on my lips rinse and repeat every night for […]
i am aware as the record skips the same refrain looped a sharp pop then repeated in the silence in the brutal light of stark honesty there is no gray life is merely rigidly defined sets of absolutes i tell myself to ignore the ancillary soundtrack but it is in that white noise that the […]
i sit skinless as the inimical wind gallops astride the ignoble bared bits clinging like barnacles to this shell i have become i welcome the raucous spiderweb of sublimated torment for in destroying the last lumps of myself lies the hope of hastening an economical return to dust
outside a sudden summer storm comes to life with a fury to match the malevolent hear that has baked the land for days and days i let my own lost mind rage along with the winds my hurt darken the sky my loss fall down my scruffy cheeks like the raindrops does the storm strike […]
this nothing affixed to my chest like an anchor in the presence of this absence i am stricken with an inability to feel anything except for loss it scares me this not caring a part of my mind screams as i drive too fast down the road but the part in control has ceased to […]
she planted a garden filled with bulbs that would never bloom tended tenderly every morning with great care to keep the nurturing soil barren. a salamander with eyes of the bluest flame lay upon a nest of stones thinking them to be eggs never curious as to why they do not hatch. a broken crown […]
through cardiac ablation they burn away clusters of nerves sending improper electrical impulses that cause irregular heart beats through nerve ablation they burn away clusters of nerves sending pain signals throughout a portion of the body usually concentrated around the neck i need cranial ablation to the gray matter to burn away this bone deep […]
trying to thread the needle of explaining to an eleven year old that love is real while barely able to get out of bed because the world is a series of pains inflicted. fake a smile whisper a benediction that he never knows the sting of rejection that he doesn’t plan a future that ends […]
he was an old pervert that loved ladies booze horses céline and classical music. not necessarily in that order. depending on the day depending on the mood depending on the number of glasses in he was. he was a prickly old shit by the time he became the greatest living poet. it just got worse […]
laying in the darkness lying to the darkness that it isn’t all there fucking is listening to the darkness as it softly mockingly laughs back yet again. it is all that there is as emerald forks of ache travel listlessly upon the miasmic totality of what life has become just darkness exhaustion and pain.
i am not convinced the sun will ever rise again that this eclipse that has forced her light from reflecting from mine own eyes isn’t just another end of the world misinterpreted from aztec ruins and i am just so fucking defeated by it all
the whites of his eyes were the sallow tint of a rat’s teeth as it hisses angrily rearing up on a dumpster in a piss stained alley. if the poor bastard had gotten any sleep it wasn’t in the last month or so as he blearily squints into the noonday sun as if flabbergasted he […]
in a perfect world i would have two sets of eyelids like an alligator that way i would have some protection from the swamp waters of misery that i find myself suspended in for all intent and purposes i could appear very nearly human while maintaining visibility as i drown.
when i close my eyes i see your face for the last year and a half that was pure heaven but the last week has made it a living catastrophic hell.
i remember spending the whole day so concentrated on her because i couldn’t be there sending all of my love through message to make up for the lack of proximity in the end it was what i didn’t do that mattered more than the intent i applied if i could do it differently my instinct […]
i was taught at a young age to build walls with every new pain to apply brick and mortar that if something wasn’t brought up it wasn’t to be talked about that in the absence the small words held the biggest meaning even when unable to manifest as long as you were there it was […]
i don’t want to go to sleep because i cannot think of a good reason to wake up. there are spiders in my brain that crawl incessantly all i think about is what was lost. exhaustion sorrow and an inability to pick up the pieces yet again. and just enough knowledge to know nothing will […]
a violin with frayed bow plays in the distance every third note squeals off key as the sky darkens above the birds fall silent In the trees upon the eaves along the lone gravel road a weathervane squeaks in higher urgency as it begins spinning swirling bits of trash leaves grass whip into a frenzied […]
if you find yourself willing to give up everything you have known because the destination is worth the cost be warned when there is nothing left of that hope you are suddenly forced to look around at what was once a transient state now stained with permanence.
i wanted a kitty but the long term plans made the idea a poor one then i was let go from my position as loved one left with no plan now a stifling inability to take care of myself means a kitty is a bad idea my world was contingent on a continental shift but […]
they covered the leaves the fat white slugs sightless grubs peculiar things that seemed out of place in the fairy tale forest of once upon a time dying slowly with no princess to save nor witch in a cottage at the end of the long winding path tucked between leaning trees with gnarled branches crowding […]
he was an old man that had momentarily forgotten the sting of age one that seemed preoccupied with dreams that had long since expired but he let linger on much like the list of things he would never accomplish. he let himself have these flights of fancy where he wasn’t who he was the world […]
the world keeps spinning irregardless of the wobble in my heart. there is a lesson there but i am not nearly smart enough to find it.
from child abuse to self abuse to the fallacy of opening up only so that it can occur again and again. some doors get locked other get boarded up. this one is having molten lead poured over then a controlled explosion to make the barracade stick. the key left rusted discarded unwanted all the way […]
heaving sobs emptiness all that beckons lost in a maze of blank faces predestined to fade away misery, my lover eerily bemoaned i stumble blindly against the knowledge my own failings blossom depression regal and sublime overpowers everything where once there was dream nothing remains inconsolable needles of loss piercing gone, she walked away
if her’s are the last lips i will ever kiss at least i went out with having one dream come true.
for the last year and a half there was a goal a new horizon ready to be explored a new life ready to be lived now there is no destination the map just sits blank accusingly no borders no recommended route just a spinning icon a painful reminder that home is no longer an option.
some people reach out in their moment of need seek the light from outside to brighten the shadows inside some have been beaten enough to just retreat into those same shadows because they were taught to hide she was the sun burning away the clinging remnants of old pain into nothing but vague recollection at […]
she collected snowflakes the first snowfall of every season if she could just find two that were identical then maybe that would prove that somewhere out there in the dark night of her loneliness hopefully there was someone looking for her as well it’s been years but still she looks standing alone in a blizzard […]
the wind whistles through the stone outcropping hanging over the arid plains the lone call of the hawk as it circles high above the varied shades of brown below it is there the heartache blends itself into the vast world of undulating sweetness of sin far away from the wagging tongues of naysayers preoccupied with […]
when she first appeared from behind the black curtains my heart lurched into my throat at her beauty in sequined tights she smiled out over the crowd with such a sublime perfection it is a wonder men didn’t begin fighting at once for her attentions i sat numbed to everything but the sadness showing in […]
as the mists coalesced around her bare feet a sudden cold fell over the land the leaves once vibrant verdant foilage now brown piles of detritus left to blow across the barren land she moves like autumn falling into winter just footprints etched into the soil the memory of her kiss burnt into my flesh.
she was a tangle of roots growing through the maze of interred corpses in shiny wooden boxes snaking her way through the decomposed odes to instability as buried in imagery too complex yet with a tenacity that bordered nearly on the obsessed she was able to suss out the hidden sun that shimmering darkness in […]
when she whispered i love you the moon flared pink when she snatched it back an entire section of stars simply blinked out. it’s funny how so sudden an absence can shift the universe.
a hollow rancid shell of perverse chocolate nightmare carefully molded into the form of middle aged mania a tarnished cage hangs suspended in the void within where an emaciated sparrow sits bathed in morose languish nothing remains in the circumstantial doubts of poor decisions and abysmally lackluster performance hollow man with a broken heart dancing […]
i rub the needle across the magnet set it on a leaf in a cup of water all in hopes of finding direction in the ever spinning fluctuations of the ever hungry unhinged jaws of desperation. depression is the accumulated baggage of a life half lived anxiety the whip across bare knuckles pushing on with […]
having been abused of the notion of disillusion since the first tentative swings of the wire hanger led to the steady building of walls between myself and emotional constructs on the sandy soil made of crushed dreams a one man jenga using wrecking balls instead of gentle pressure only to stand dumbfounded in the piles […]
when we awake from this dream the sterile light of dawn is nothing but a painful reminder of what was lost. honesty is a terrible sword to wield, cutting both the teller and receiver, leaving jagged wounds time never quite heals. so it is, we are born alone only to die alone. seeking those singular […]
canals run down my weathered cheek to divert the salted essence of dream as it evaporates from unseeing eyes. it would feel less like drowning if the world weren’t murky if my skin weren’t wet if the racking sobs would stop forcing air into deflated lungs. but what else is there hope that one day […]
i kept waking reaching for her not unusual the pain of missing her combined with the pain in my shoulder has me up four to ten times a night but these times were different because somewhere out there she wasn’t reaching for me as well so the pain in my shoulder was joined by a […]
and as the last petal falls free to the ground. it floats gently lands softly in that moment of silent agony. beauty is gone from the world as we know it. it wasn’t as if it hadn’t tried to maintain its luster. gravity has a way of breaking every damned thing. you just feel it […]
she cast a gaze of typical ridicule enhanced with notes of cyclical circumstance leaving the softer parts of living to fall with the shed scales of loneliness. it was a movement arranged across the subdermal spectrum of childlike wonder misplayed by shaking unpracticed hands across the ivory keys upon ebon fallen tears. there was a […]
silence smothers the globe a haze a malaise from the days beneath a blanket of nothing that itches like fiberglass against the bare body of need. clawing against dry skin to expose the meat of the matter the atrophied muscles from blackened unoxygenated sludge where blood used to flow freely. the star attraction for a […]
in decadent daydreams amidst a lazy river of caramel kisses floats the sterile waffle cone paddle boat dipped in white chocolate whimsy dabbed with raspberry reverie cut with the acidic tang of lime tears calcified wonder in fondant rigor carefully shaped to exude an illusionary indifference as cotton candy clouds turn gray dropping pop rock […]
in a world of ostriches find your inner wombat you don’t have to bury your head in the sand just learn to recognize the scents that will carry you home.
the ghosts swirl around her every movement a host of hellish intent forming an invisible yet impenetrable bank of fog filling the room with the metallic scent of anxious panic she is never alone not entirely no matter where she seeks a singular moment of reprieve from the constant babble of voices whispering of every […]
my dad never got to see my name on the spine of a book never got to hold his grandchildren never got to see whatever it is the world became or how it shaped us some days that is an unbearable weight chained around my neck as i struggle uphill in every direction with the […]
if the liberty bell can be famous for being broken there is nothing stopping you.
i’ve come to terms certain realities will never form from the aether magically around me: that six pack is going to have to be nestled firmly in padding those cheater glasses aren’t temporary but a necessity there won’t be a magical day where i catch my reflection and smile there won’t be a nobel laureate […]
a goat farm surrounded by mesquite across the highway from an indian restaurant combination tire shop forests of fiberglass windmills like white thorns on the side of squaw mountain as jacksboro looms in the distance the worn yellow brick inscribed with 1899 proudly displayed in a snapshot taken from the parking lot of the dollar […]
when the government realizes children take up less space with smaller coffins without affecting the bottom line of immediate returns, this is when it becomes an imperative to send them back to school so the dilligent drones can punch that time clock. if we refuse to learn from history we can just destroy the future […]
some days not all maybe three in seven are filled with abject misery for some reason those are the days i feel most comfortable as myself. i am well aware this is most certainly unhealthy yet it doesn’t make it any less true.
https://wp.me/pGgpK-jw My friend and wonderful poet, Jezzy Wolfe, does this thing where she asks 6 questions and posts them on the 6th of the month. This time she interviewed me! I had a lot of fun and she dug into my inherent love of wombats and I wrote a wombat limerick.
the snake never questions the feasibility of economic fragility the serpent only tends to the soft truth in the hiss and sighs tenderly wound beyond the hollow reproach within necessity. the spider weaves not a web in pursuit of artistic integrity the arachnid spins silk to lure the budding naivete inherent within the withering dismay […]
memories are weightless but the sweet loss weighs a ton my spine is twisted into an ampersand to give more room for her sweeping across ancillary nerve endings. my irises have adopted the half smile she would wear as she bent over in nothing but my old t-shirt knowing my eyes were locked on the […]
the morose rose tilted lazily against the glazed vase her rosey neurosis played hell on the world of laissez fair despair
under the lonesome stars rests the last vestigal scarring from meteoric caress. a festering bite marked arm hangs limply against the desert sand full of scorpion stings the final kiss goodnight in fevered sweat drenched by incremental hell. explosions sound off behind tightly clenched eyelids denying the ravenous need for spoiled desire.
sepulchral manuevers beneath the distilled desire laid carefully like floorboards upon the matrimonial suite dreams languishing in the ebon tides of woe. a diamond a thorn a droplet of crimson on the freshly fallen ash of winter’s lamented beguile. it was in her laughter i heard the call of ravens, in the cinnamon that clung […]
her afterimage burnt into the unseeing third eye buried deeply inside my psychosis. i am the mirror image of who i yearn to be cast in multiplicity among the varied funhouse fungi releasing spores to alter disillusion into braille for all the world to feel. i built this labyrinth with the bloodied stumps left from […]
(un)fettered by m ennenbach paperback is available now! Kindle version is still set for the 11th, but now you can hold it in your hands. This is another large collection, 200 some poems. And it is beautiful. I’m as proud of this as anything I have released, perhaps more so. My partners in crime, Patrick […]
i feel more(alive) coloring outside the lines find more(beauty) in the spaces between rather than the atoms(vibrating) in lonesome anguish in a world of filters we lose sight of what is real only to realize that(ugly is beautiful) in misunderstood brush strokes when watching raindrops on a glass door the enjoyment is (in the) variance […]
as i sit cross-legged on the floor feeling the timbers shudder as the concrete cracks the embers of the world falling down around me like lightning bugs in a hurricane there is a peace amidst the insanity an order to the chaos of yet another catastrophe befallen in unspoken fear. of all the four letter […]
le tenebre clung alle sue dolci curve come nessun altro amante avrebbe potuto sognare il suo tocco sinuoso gocciolando nei suoi pori pervertitrice il suo stesso sangue mentre pompa per tutto (the darkness clung to her gentle curves like no other lover could have dreamt its sinuous touch trickling into her pores perverting her very […]
when i opened myself to her my guts came out like writhing vipers that hissed and snapped at the autumn air in angry knots my bones like broken glass held together by rusted barb wire and muscles like slugs perch upon the slick ivory calcified remains when i told her i loved her she recoiled […]
it has been three years since i found myself pulled beneath the surface of the river of words three years four thousand poems soon to be four books twenty two times published. yet still i feel like an imposter. ever since i pulled the chain to light up the neon manic word depot sign in […]
part of me hopes to have a massive coronary while banging on the keys of the fucking 1969 smith corona typewriter i just had to have as another insipid poem is left to rot in the aether to be misunderstood in decades my disposition spurred by the bitter taste of anise in my soul that […]
waterbears and dust mites swim in every pore each a galaxy of unseen horror living across the faces of every person you’ve ever dreamt of kissing. microscopic incidents of accidental insidiousness laid bare beneath the heaving bilipid layers of water proof residue. biological warfare on the playground of wanton sexual desires leave a smear of […]
she stared out the window watching the storm clouds slowly swallow any hope of a better day pulling petals off of the daisy on the off chance the sickening need to be loved could be had by wishing on the death of beauty
there is blankness when you first see the emptiness of the void reflected in the youth’s eyes witnessing them be euthanized shredded reduced left with nothing but littered sighs tattered lies cannibalized and despised because the only thing the world ever does is take deflate and remake churning them into something less as the river […]
at first the loops are gradual joyous as you cycle the outer ring as they get tighter speed up pulling you closer towards the inside until the spiral is so advanced it feels just like a precipitous plummet from safety to uncontrolled chaos ending with a gurgle of water to wash you out to sea […]
ground underneath the blood flecked sole of the souless planet like a discrded cigarette butt of a misunderstood joke on the sidewalk to nowhere the ember of hope crushed into a dirty stain to drift off on the stale air of tomorrow
the lasers bounce magnifying themselves in the crystal skull of indifference perched upon a broken neck of shame
darling, it’s raining again washing away the ugly from the city to run into the drains then back to the tap to be drank and pissed into the sewers it so wanted to find darling, it’s raining again burning drops of chemical haze belched from the chimneys to settle deep in the soil so many […]
there is a grainy zapruder quality in stuttering black and white that plays when ever she crosses the back roads of my mind a cloud of dust wherever her dainty toes step disconstructing the strands of dna reassembling the frozen instant she walked away back and to the left my head snapped back and to […]
run, little rabbit flee this insidious mess of snapping twigs hawks in flight let the heavy pounding of your pulse guide your paws across the uneven ground. run, little rabbit as if your life depends on it for it does as the darkness creeps across the sky above to drape the land in shadowous peril.
oh hell the fool wants to write another shitty ode to those squishy feelings that wind their way across the nervous system of inconsequential chemical release in an effort to feel more like a human in an age of dehumanizing rancor
i get depressed end up reading hank then i get angry as the neighbor upstairs does aerobics at three in the morning as the car alarm goes off the neighbors across the parking lot that spent all night loudly making love now argue in half heard epithets spit like occam’s razor against the silence i […]
there is something about walking under the moonlight through a copse of trees on a winding path near a babbling brook as the insects sing songs of fucking from the thick brown bark hidden in the shadow that seem to cover everything to make you realize there is something about sitting on the couch with […]
he seemed to be as perfectly unremarkable as damn near any of the bastards that walked around with chests puffed out in one size too small shirt to accentuate the slow drift from youthful muscle to middle age paunch the spiked up hair that sought to misdirect from the thinning with inarticulate gesticulations frozen in […]
the neon tube sizzles gas ignites a flare of pink in the shape of a lower case t beneath the words jes_s saves flashes to entice the unclean the sinners the lost sheep but it feels meaningless without u filthy street water enters the hole in the bottom of my shoe worn soles even more […]
there was a winsome look in her gaze as the last spotlight faded as she relived the years on stage from those awkward first nights to the heyday of coke and easy marks a sense of pride briefly washed across her before the steady decline reminded her how she got to this final curtain call […]
he built a scaffold out of the ivory bones of affection used it to scale down to tap the reflection of the moon in the bottom of the sea the coral cut and snagged his suspenders, suspended in the waters, neon pink daydreams of high colonic dismay a diorama menagerie of carefully sculpted plankton beside […]
i’ve only seen the ocean a handful of times having grown up landlocked with only the blue gray of lake michigan as a reference the first time it seemed angry in its wrath as the waves bashed the land for as far as i could see down the coast the second time wasn’t really the […]
the rains began somewhere out over the mountains the jagged spires that dare pierce the emptiness of the heavens awash in reticence as the gales pound the ancient stone the tall grass sways in the valley as the birds of prey take flight in search of rabbits frantically seeking warrens in the cool soil starless […]
the words flow intangible streams of viridescent syllables shifting the banks trying to tame the torrents into the winding prose of poetic meanderings allowing them to take control through soulshallows anxiously scraping bonecoral flaking calcium sediment into a slurry to slow the incomprehensible darting quicksilver of insanity creating a poem is pulling every nerve ending […]
time is an ouroboros certainty a myth emotion is the tinder her gaze became the spark the blue flames rush eager to consume the timbers of justification leaving only whirling mists in ancillary meaning. buried deeply beneath the whims of sufferage deep in the recesses of angular precision sits a solitary mass uncorrupted by insubstantial […]
turn your head towards the wall and tip your head back, lower your mask so that your nose only is exposed i do as i am requested the tightness in my chest mixed with the fear from countless friends descriptions of the procedure there is no warning no this may sting or gentle squeeze of […]
i sat in my boxers on the couch watching stitched together photos of mars as i marveled at the alien planet come to life on the screen in front of me the hispanic lady across the hall stood in her doorway screaming profanities at her children those same monsters that run roughshod across the complex […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 