The game is rigged the money’s spent

If I stay in bed too long

dreaming of the times gone by

There must be something wrong

like not knowing what is right

If I get up and get gone

still daydreaming in the morning light

There must be something wrong

because all I see is black and white

Out there on the road

passing frowns can’t weigh me down

Like songs from days of old

freewheeling there’s no time to tell

She’s been reaching for the sun

did all I could to take her there

Must be doing something wrong

like two children we’re still unprepared

To walk

on our own

As state signs blur

on the road

Yet all this time

we have grown

There’s still this

phantom partner feeling

though we’re on our own.

When you go there’s still coming back

don’t be extreme like who needs that?

There must be something wrong

for me to feel like this and that

She was going either way

it didn’t matter if I saved the day

There must be something wrong

for me to think or feel this pain

Standing in the setting sun

which blinds me now casts shadows on

Reflections on the windowpane

my doppelgänger’s staring back at me

If looks could kill I’d live

my malice spite all gibberish

God knows if I could commit

I’d probably muck it up like a little kid

Whose ball

hits the rim

It bounces far

time and again

The game is rigged

the money’s spent

Yet there’s this

faint glimmer of hope

like there’s a chance to win.

I’ll make it perhaps

The light in here is bad

The shadows hang their heads

I’m tired of this playlist

I’m tired of this bed

In sheets that are not mine

Busted strings don’t pass the time

The shadows hang their heads

In light of what they find

Am I really headed backwards?

Static fills my head

Am I really headed back there

Like I’m the walking dead

So I light the wick

And turn the page

Familiar is this pain

The light in here is fine

The shadows are just that

Perhaps I’m feeling better

Perhaps I’m coming back

Always and forever

Never fine

But

I’ll make it perhaps

artificial berries

She’s

artificial berries

passing in the wind

smiling and joking

contemplating

sea salt

or vinegar

laughing with a friend

while she pretends

to listen I grin

because her

artificial smile

and posture a 10

in the long run

really

makes no difference.

this one.

You can’t win

because it’s life

and there’s

nothing to win

just death

and then

whatever it is

you believe

will happen next.

For me I’ll be

reincarnated

to live

another life.

I just hope it’s

as strange

and weird

and cruel

and wonderfully

disastrous as

this one.

Maybe one

with less love

and more

true love.

Maybe not.

They had me at goodbye.

They had me at goodbye

as they always seemed to die

slow like a rose

one day jubilant and alive

then like sleep goes the week

and it’s noticed that the rose

has died. But see, I kept them there

all wilted and decayed

brown and crumpled I’d debate

taking them to the trash

throwing them away, though

a rose in its youth is beautiful

so too is a rose left to dry.

So I pressed them between pages

and drew a pretty picture

poured ink from my memory

so that even in death

they’d remain

alive.

poetry is spam

A large portion of

poetry is spam.

But I don’t eat that stuff,

at least not until I get to see Hawaii

then who knows?

I hear, fried with an egg, it’s good.

When in Rome, you know;

when in Rome.

One Philadelphia Night

I took off my clothes

my skin suit

and rattled my bones

clicked my heels

and down the hatch

I went spiraling forth

into a bleak oblivion

where not even the dark

could hide, I

stood staring into nothing like

a Mona Lisa replica

my conscience hung midair

like a wine stained sheet

pinned neatly to dry

and there were no bones about it

I had completely lost my mind

stumbling down West 4th and Pine

crossing line after line, every time

after time just me, myself, and I

delirious in my delusion

picking homeless men off the street

with tears in both our eyes

I’m no different than you my dear friend

neither are you from I, he said

you’re going to be all right, he said

as for me well, I’ve lived a storied life, he ended

with a reassuring glance as I handed him two dimes

for it was all I had

collecting my clothes

skin suit and conscience

brave the winter, he said

spring needs you

Open Cavity

I fell in love with myself

over and over and out again

until all there was was an

Open Cavity

beat beat beating down the block

beating and always beating

even when it stopped

I fell in love with myself and

that Rocket-shaped mailbox.

Her Genius

We are all our own genius

aren’t we? Self-help tells us

to be selfless while the world

tells us to be tough

slowly, gradually

like a surgeon’s steel

picking apart pieces

of our sanity like a game

of Operation. We are all

children at heart, aren’t we?

When our nose’s glow red

and hairs stand on end

while our souls ignite like kerosene

flailing our arms in ecstasy

remembering the truth which

from birth was wiped clean

like a board of chalk.

We’re always trying to get that

message back, that message which

in a world or man and steel and greed

can only exist as long as love at first sight

where in the morning she lay

soundlessly asleep, bound to no one

her genius in my memory forever.

At the end of the day

At the end of the day

we’re all just

butthole tissue

flesh, bone, and spirits

away from the truth

if there is any, well

we’ll surely find out

at the end of the day.

So keep it clean cause

you’ll never really know

until you do, I guess.