audioslave

awkward radio waves
signaling through the audioworld
and i think i may be deaf
everything vibrates in audacity

an audioslave
you cant control the waves
that funnel through to your
nervous system

nervous all the time about the
highpitched audiofrequencies
red and green and purple
sound that you can see

but cant hear

the run around

2:14 am and we're at it again
never sleeping in
never sleeping
pillows on my tile floor

nothing is where it should be
including us
sleeping, should be sleeping
red heat on the radar

friction and inertia and
all that science
rhythm and harmony and
all that music

termonology
for the red heat on the radar
until everything goes blue
in the too familiar bedroom

its just the run around
of releasing energy
into the sheets
you and me

the run around
because i get up in the morning
but i never sleep
never sleep alone

foxtrot

boy dog dog window
5674 3228 98014

the only thing i understand
is when i feel you whispering

i know its not right
right now

so i push you away
while kissing you

tongue in your cheek
across my teeth

it wont ever make sense
when love is blind

but i have eyes.
i can see that

its not right
right now

but we keep on meeting
and i know your touch in the dark

love is blind.

paintings

i know just what you are
but i keep trying and trying
and trying
to craft you into

ma jolie

we would play dolls together
tea parties and dress up
gingerly handling their porcelain faces
living in a tricolor fantasy at

la grande jatte

we'd be 2 dimensional like in the photoalbum
life in stills without a soundtrack
instilling sadness that i cant control
i'm not in control if you go

afferma di essere: addio

picture after picture after picture
and i'm feeling fractured
i'm just distorted
damaged and awry like the

girl before the mirror

entering into the acid dream
everyone afloat but i'm flailing
in the dead sea drowning in the
dead sea i'm being devoured in

Guernica.

molting

dehydrated green flakes
crowning the gray dust rabbits
in the forest of
times passed.

the trees seem so sad.
weeping willows sweeping my memories
of branches falling around
domelike

everytime I swing on them they seem new

until I remember
everytime
that its all just the exoskeleton
shed off by the creatures in my life

snake skin

but with patterns so familiar to me
and like always I stop a while
spend sometime with my old skins
and can never part with them

tuck them back away

until the next time I find them
unprepapered
surprised
sad.

but I would never go back.

santa in action

1138 and the crowds are already
crowding the entrances
exchanging glances
sizing up the competition

and a rush to the door
throngs of people staring
doe eyed at the metal grates
10 more minutes

panting for a taste of
what they cant afford any other day
as if they were rich for
one night.

and like any other sewer creature
forced to creep out at 1am
kids passed out in carts
while they grab for the doorbusters

i saw santa in action last night
and wished I had never been so spoiled.

softened butter, one egg, and half a pounding

93 chocolate chip cookies and
burnt aluminum
in the oven
on the counters

counters set to 9 minutes
and 34 seconds
give or take a fraction
to achieve that perfection

like the time i wanted to be
perfect
but always fell
short

you cant actually see if you are deaf. or can you?

i heard the most vibrant colors
on the pages of your notebook

so i stole it
watching the music

recording every note of color
every image of harmony

it was all in your entries
of that journal in your room

open the door to the basement
the smell of cold overwhelming

winter in new jersey
feels like summer in alaska

i wouldnt go back though
to those hallways with the blue lockers

and the car with the grey interior
rumbling through the mountain passes

id rather listen to your pages
wondering where they came from

the images
the sounds

the smell of cold air

oh the weather outside is frightful

to see in digital red
0 degrees
on the banks screen
juxtaposed with the endless

little swirls of breath
clouds in my atmosphere
its always raining here
in my solar system

even though the time says noon
in that digital red
it feels like 7 in the winter
dusk and gray painting the sky

logically it would be highly
undesirable
but when the colors match
it feels like home

even though nothing is familiar
my room a diffrent color
the bluegray sky matches
my gray blue heart

strangulation

theres a pinch in the left side
deep in my chest
but i have to ignore it

breathing isnt as easy
as it was when i had
use of my organs

inside out
crumbling down
im in doubt

i think my heart gave out.

blue windows

natural blinking action
followed by unnatural
purple tears
square shaped instead of round

the blue windows between us
stop me from seeing
what could be
beyond

a weird kind of feeling
when i know it won't happen
a shortage in the fuse
between me and you

green heat in the room
my side has all the electricity
and despite my charge
there is a blue window between us

a white syringe to penetrate
extract the blue envy
extract the green sadness
extract the red tension

im left in the blackness
rubbing my feet on the carpet
wriggling toes
trying to feel the shock again.

Sideways breathing

its a peculiar thing, but i find diagonals to be soothing
none of the tension and dynamism
its a restful hypotonouse between the
lifeless horizontal and the
endlessness of verticality

twist to the left to take a deep
inhalation
almost 20% nitrogen
the neglected but refreshing proportions
less elemental and more atomic

like the time I realized it wasn't ever about lines
biomorphic forms
its always been about the Artist

attempt again at a full gasp and this time
almost 80% oxygen
Its time to start breathing in whats important

slight references

the difference between abstracted and nonobjective
is in the suggestions and intentions and
inuendos of lines
this intersecting circle and square are either
geometric
or not even there

maybe a snow cone or maybe
a portrait of yourself after 3 long years that
amounted to nothing but a bunch of flowers and photos
the roses had thorns though
it feels good to let go

this abstraction is either you in breaking into
yourself
growing back your own fingerprints

or its a circle and a square

nonobjective or abstracted.
its not exact yet
until you name it

untitled.

canibalized

like my instestines are oozing from my belly button
knocking on my cells walls to break down
pinholes through the internal network
sepsis in the blood and theres no going back now
theres no going back now

like my esophogus is contracting around my tonsils
a cobra swallowing its morsals
contracting retracting beating and throbbing
no more swallowing
no more talking

like my heart is having a seizure
tangling the cardiac muscles
sending impulses to stop the blood flow
sepsis in the blood though
theres no going back now

like my nerves are falling asleep
tingling and stabbing and drowsy
stumbling graveyard of cells
theres no more feeling
i cant feel anything

if all the street lights went out

imagine if all the street lights went out
the sun absorbed to the core
generating
heat that cant be felt

everything stone cold and dark
blind and confused and
this mess is you
heat that cant be felt

im not really this ridiculous

felt pretty good for 16 dollars last night
wine hangovers are unique in the headaches they produce
my viens are puslating and i want to freeze them
stop the blood from pumping toxins
stop the blood from pumping oxygen
stop the blood to stop the bleeding

im feeling less metallic
feeling more dramatic
feeling but not really feeling
beyond the pounding
i must have forgotton my iron last night

ive been demagnetized

we're onto something good here

i used to take the stairs but its been harder lately
catching up to me catching my breath catching the next step
and then suddenly im breathless
standing still at 311 am staring at the pavement where your tires were
tireless wondering if you were wondering too
tiring because never in my waking life have i been so
jolted.
deliverance.
content but weary -sad but hiding it-
working but languid -crying but painless
i dont think its pointless
i saw deliverance
but the pavement was vacant
im left winded

somedays im okay with art312

but not today,
suffocated in the lab filled with
cocky idiots.
more like cockerspaniels
flocking towards attention
mouths wide open
tongues dangling
slobbering
licking up the cliches like kibbles and bits and
bit by bit
I cant handle it.


so i take minimovies on my flipvideo cam
spinning in my chair while he conferences
about the nonsenses
that people think make sense

There is enough to do tomorrow without having to do yesterday's dishes.

Today I realized how nice JoAnn really is, because she told me to fix my makeup where it had smudged a chunk of black eyeliner. There are only a couple of kinds of people out there- those who will tell you, and those who don't. The people who let you just walk around with lipstick in your teeth are the same ones who point out your mismatched socks. It's like they are so completely absorbed in themselves that they worry how it may be slightly awkward to tell you, or worse that it's funnier to let it be.
Anyhow, JoAnn told me about my eyeliner. She also told me that during our strictly serious meeting with the bosslady that she wanted to compliment my hair but the timing seemed a little off.

"you dont wanna be here in the future, so you say the present's just a pleasant interruption to the past.."

if i had it all to do over, id do it all differently
because I didnt learn from my mistakes
I knew everything I did was wrong
so doing it was not a nonconventional way of learning
just a straightforward way of fucking up.

but you dont wanna do it any different
you say you know you were never wrong
and you keep unloading all youir secrets
haunting whispers in my gut
and i know keeping them is wrong

So i tell you i wanna be with you in the future.
and you say you do too
but you cant cut out the shit.
you say that Im wrong

im not your heart.
isnt that what you said. you loved me always
im not buying that lie anymore.

ive been waiting on the world to change.

I've been waiting on the world to change.
but You didnt.

It will always be the same.
the pain.

and my temper
that is always on the back boiler
bubbling

i turn the knob down
try and put it out

but you never fail to kneedle it
kneedling
and kneedling
til it pops

and i realize i cant stand you,
i cant stand you
i CANT FUCKING STAND YOU

i want to..
--go ahead keep screaming keep screaming

i want to SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM.
BUT i hang up instead

yuou asshole.

Uncle Michael

I don't remember exactly what the ailment was
I had to be in junior high
maybe younger
I was legitmately sick
unlike the usual run around of fake coughs and
belly aches.

Technology is in sync with my biology
in adolescence during my adolescence
Sorry you're feline under the weather
I remember I was mesmerized by the cat with umbrella
We printed it on the dot matrix. Or maybe at that point
it was in color.
My memory tends to be black and white at times

Love Uncle Michael.

My first E-Card. I hung it up

And then I got better and i still had the
print out of the cat.

It was his turn next. He got sick
I remember exactly what the ailment was
His sister from California flew in
encology nurse.

I didn't see him the last two years
my Uncle Michael. No one did but Dave.
But everyone else, the chefs the musicians the artists
the friends
aunt Karen.

Kid germs. We were always sick.
We were a risk.
And eventually the print out was lost
in a shuffle of 2 dimensional things
tack holes left vacant where it hung

early morning, probably spring
i must have been 14.
The cat out by the garage had a litter
tiny writhing babys that would likely
get canabalized.

I collected them in blankets
but my sister was allergic
cried and cried and cried
outside the A&P with the
wild kitties.

So mom yells, its Uncle Michael on the phone
hes still got more hair than Dave
that was the half hearted joke.
So i tell him, the kittens
my kittens
how brokenhearted I was

Leave them to die. They eat the songbirds.
Its better off without them.
The beautiful songbirds in the morning
they eat them.
No one needs to save the kittens.

I got angry. I disagreed.
The conversation ended quickly
hand off the phone to one of the other
six kids. i was miffed.

That was the last time I talked to him.
I don't realize sometimes how much I miss him.

a man obssessed

Monty comes up to the desk
in my face
his buddy leaning over like he knew something
it wasnt pretty.

nonchalant at first,
Monty with the earrings
always a wingman
hes helpess

i could careless.

Monty with the smile
like a little boy
Oedipus complex, id guess
clinging to her any way he can

working out to see her
hoping it will work out
working out so he can
work it out

and all the while his friend
acknowledging he knows
he knows
Monty is a man obssessed.

and so then im straight with him
this is a place of business
a hangover from all the
word vomit.

yea i mighta said that.
doesnt mean i meant it
the truth is
you cant handle it

so im straight with him
and he gets heated
writhing in embarassment
click through the metal gates

pumps off the last month on the
bench press
shes not impressed
i hope he gets it.

morning drive

Woke up to start my day
452 am.
snooze
501
up. heart racing, imagining i slept in
it wouldnt be the first time

woke up to a rumpled brunette looking at me
still smelling like that 7.99 clairol that drenched the blond the night before.
stumble to my car
still smelling like that newcar smell.

navigate the way through blinking yellow and
slick pavement
grip the wheel still terrified of
slick pavement

like that time i tumbled
upside down
undercarriage over me
upside down
in the drivers seat
upside down
this life can be
upside down.
spinning
stopped
straight.
park the car.

ten minutes early.

im still proving something.

blonday

tell my friend i went for a walk the other day
down eighth street.I wish my shirt had more shirt to it
that my cutoffs were full legnth
that my lens was the only one who could see me.
ehhhh BLONDAY.
so orignial and fresh. yes.
let me make it through the cross walk
the honks, the whistles.
let me cross on green maybe. be daring.
so that i can get in your car with the expired registration
blondie wants to sleep with you.
for fucking serious.
calle ocho. strolling through with the blond pigtails
jean shorts.
camera with the lens that weighs as much as my arm does.
peering through fences and listening and looking and listening
the snapping gum, rusty locks, graffitti that is more beautiful than any of my paintings.
looking and looking and looking and...
ehhh blonday.
took a walk down eighth street, wondering.
wandering.
looking and looking.
wondering.

solitaire in solitaire

sometimes the game just cannot be beat. It is sometimes a scientific impossibility due to the arrangement of aces and 5s and sometimes that king is over the queen and theres nothing you can do, theres just nothing you can do.

and you can shout and cry and sob and fell sick and tell everyone or tell no one or be silent all together for the rest of your life because that king, that stupid ridiculous fucking king was over the queen and you couldn't get around it.

and you just become an avid observer, obsessing over all the things youve lost so far and all of a sudden life is sad, something always past. so you look at some photos and wonder why when you were 17 you were always so angry and why your best friend hasnt answered you calls in the last 9 months while youve been pregnant with belly full of battles lost. and it all adds up into something called defeat.

and so all there is left to do is quit this unbeatable game and start a new one, where the queen is on top and you have a chance to win.

an interesting shift

me alex and david with the miami accent

sitting around on our shift

talking about string theory and black holes and the like

and david

always saying like...

and i say i dont want to anymore.

bend your mind backward and forward like those

worm holes.

id rather talk about things that make sense

when i realize you can turn anything into a philosophical mystery

the great inquisition of being

so we talked a while

all the while

im drifitng in and out of it

pseudophedrine always sucks it out of me

and everyone is so ready to go. eight sharp.

the building is closed.

but i get here and release there is so much less to do

and i dont get paid to stare at the eggshell finished walls

of my empty living room.

poppies.

graves cloaked in antiquity

and the poppies.

for some reason i feel a burning

a swelling

trace over the etchings on the grave of helen

who died in 1843

she was only seventeen.

for some reason

this is personal to me.

feeling the limestone

look to my feet knowing only 6 feet below

are her bones.

and from this spot

my field of vision grows

looking through a fisheye lens

its endless

the dead. a crop of bones and stone.

how sad that no one visits her anymore

Helen.

i hope

sincerely

there is more than this.

an old peice that feels new

What does It feel like?...
I always know when It’s coming.
I am a flounder on the other side
There’s a fisherman tugging
and I’m taking a Nosedive in Reverse.
The Hook is unforgiving, defying Gravity in the upward haul.
Ripping through the roof of my mouth.
I can’t discern what the Iron Taste belongs to-
the Hook- or my Own blood?
Now the nasal cavity stings-
even after that Bastard cuts the elusive string
and the tension recedes-
the Hook remains here.
(And I haven’t had my Tetanus shot
in the last ten years.)
It’s like an intricate way of dying
I always know when It’s coming.
It feels like going to the dentist knowing you have a cavity…
waiting in that rubber scented room where there is the Segregation of Teeth.
The Rotted and the Manicured. It will never be fair.
But the feeling, It’s that first shot of Novocain.
A needle tunneling through that pink membrane-
The Pain.
But you still have ghostly sensations, Slightly.
It’s unnerving.
I always know when It’s coming.
Starts out with symptoms that imitate
the Ascent of a roller coaster.
at the apex of the ride…
you’re pitched downward and It swallows you at 80 miles an hour.
And even though you knew, you KNEW It was coming
It hits you like a badly wallpapered bathroom.
It feels like driving past a wreck.
The inclination to stare steers your attention away from the yellow lines.
There’s screaming but its Just You in the car…
And there It is- the feeling.
(realizing it’s your own voice.)
Somehow you are sitting on the curb
Barefoot and Confused and this Wreck is You.
But what it feels like, the feeling, is finding out
that in the other tangled metal, 4 kids Died.
But you were Fine.
What does it feel like?
Shit, I dunno. It’s life.

titrations and cars that crap out on you.

I dont understand why a sophomore in highschool needs to know how to perform a liquid titration
or any kind of titration for that matter
or how to calculate the velocity of the car that broke down 5 weeks ago
on an afternoon drive
So damn hot, sitting in the car that wouldn't start
with the check engine light that Ive grown accustomed to
with the taps on the window from the highway patrol
who want to charge me an arm and a leg to get my car off that
rush hour time on I95. So many times ive made that drive
today I am stopped at exit 22.
an act of god, or inherent risk of activity
put my car out of comission on that shoulder where he met me
religiously devoted in a way i dont appreciate enough
brought me ice water and a check book
ill never appreciate him enough.
i dont want to make that sunday drive
8am to be guarenteed on time
miami will never be a destination i love as much as this one

plexiglass walls divide us all

Sometimes it doesn’t matter how nice you are or how many favors you do. It wont change them. They don’t care if you tiptoe around them or if you confront them with kindness, so much over the top kindness, in their face so close your trying to breath in oxygen but all you get is their exhalations, that’s all you ever get. Their exxxhalations.

So close that catholic school teachers would snap your knuckles and pry a bible in the gap to remind you about distance and sexuality not kindness or closeness or any of the ness’es that are necessary for happiness.

The edges of that weathered book are facing you and suddenly you have a nose bleed from the papercuts you acquired from his book and youre so close that the droplets of blood shiver and sliver down in streaks but it isn’t bright red like one blood is oxidized, its black from their exhalations of barren air.

And you get to wondering if it will ever change and so you dare to breathe out, because most of the time you just hold your breath and bow your head but today, today you breathe out and fog is returned to your face

so you reach up to touch it and theres a wall of plexiglass and it’s the cheap kind and you don’t know how or why its there, but you cant get past it you never will and so you shirk away into the room with the noise cancellation fan to pretend your alone because that’s how it feels on this side of the plastic.

how are you so sure spring follows winter?

so much of life is barren and today im afraid that this nothingness is all there is.

the assumption that these branches will green again is alot like believing well all go to heaven.

im not sure if i can do this

wandering

im sick of being alone.

turn to my [pill]ow.

turn and turn and turn and

when will this kick in?

and

sleet
rain
snow
wind
sun
clouds

im feeling weathered.


ice.

My inspection is expired so i suppose ill stay put for now.

If I had a reliable car, I wouldnt be here right now
or maybe ever
putting on red rimmed glasses at 1039 pm on sunday
what to do with my last 21 minutes of this day that will never
happen again
i should have taken my chances
using the ad hoc risk balance equation and drop the quarter
to enter the turnpike
watching the needles, all the while
low battery normal heat normal oil
abnormal oxygen ratio cuasing my gas mileage to be half

so instead of driving the planned 55.7 miles to 9307 arbor oaks court
i stop half way, and turn around.
spending the gas i would have normally
and imagining the rest.

selenium toning is for both perfection and archival purposes.

i dont use it. i dont even fix for the full six minutes, let alone rinse for thirty.

like anyone has that kind of time

but i wish i did. id make some amazing prints granted the gift of a free evening.

but like always

i get "home" (this place will never be quite that) and shower and leave again for work

never get home before midnight

never sleep til 2

up again at 6 or 7 or 8. whenever i cant fiegn sleep any longer.

all the while wondering what my dream meant.

you were in it. and i thought about it all day.

saw you twice.

and now i cant stop thinking of how different it would be

how exciting

how freeing and careless

if i had the time

if i werent tied.

i wonder...

birthdays are the same as light meters, in a way

birthdays used to seem so enchanted.
i dont remember what age exactly, maybe 14
when i snuck a peek into the giftbags on the mantle
laid on the couch in agony of stomach pains
had cake brought to the end table
i was so ungrateful that day.

and realized that it wasnt special
it was a measurement like any other.
like a clock, or ruler, or scale
measuring time passed, time left
and every year ive accomplished slightly less

it was my sisters birthday today
she wore a yellow dress and had a table of friends
so many there werent enough forks or chairs
and after there was tons of mess
and wondered if on my birthday i would ever have that.

i already know the answer.
ill be at a table for two
hell bring me flowers maybe
tell me i look pretty
and act like we dont know that even if i invited others
it would still just be us.

Until I came to Miami, I left my keys in the car.

Locks are to keep people out.  it promotes anti trust. 

doors are to let people in.  a passage through 

walls. for holding. for waiting. for containing 

windows . let in light.

storm shutters block out life.

closets are for storing lies.

drawers are for what we hide

shelves are for our pride and 

locks are to keep people out. 

doors say step inside.

theres so much to see and we can only ever focus on 2% of it

i tried to write something happy once. it turned out more like one of those inspirational posters they sell in bookstores with the encouraging words in bold and rainbow color, almost mocking you for buying such a ridiculous lie.

home is my roundtrip destination.

i went home for easter to see my family. dancing in the graveyard was the most uplifting thing ive done all year.

Closets are like a disorganized biography that no one ever reads.

you said to check the closet for the boots
but i hadnt.
i wore running shoes instead.
and all the while thought in curiousity if they were there.
its not where i left them 2 months 1 week and 3 days ago.
against my better judgement i opened it.
like pandoras box greeted with haunting objects
whispering to be touched, to be read. to be taken out of hiding spaces
so carefully cluttered. each time becoming more antique
a day. a month. a year. 5 years.
and i promise each time to revisit them.
all the while knowing it is something past.
something sad.
and like always it brought it on again and i shuffled for hours
not looking for anythihng, just through. discarding none of the things
that reminded me so much
of how much of life
is over.
but i come to this five foot by two foot
enchanted nook. its mine.
i come to it and see how much of everything
has been lost.
and how much hasnt been replaced.
sit and read how lonely i was.
how frustrated.
i dont know why.
i have so much less now.
but i dont feel it because i dont have time.