Clean Kitchen

Washing dishes
wishing brush would
scrub away this

shitty attitude

Chestburster

There is a butterfly in my chest,
or perhaps it’s a moth,
suffocating, smoldering
locked up in its rib cage cocoon

Neurotic caterpillar, already caught in a net
already burned by the flame

Practice Kindness

I was walking to work this morning when I came across this little nugget of wisdom from the one and only Jack Kerouac, in the form of a new mural on a building at Colfax and Logan in Denver. Made my day.

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Wanderlust

I’m horrible at names
but I dig your accent
I don’t mean to be ignorant
but I’ve some questions to ask

like where are you from
and what is it like there

I want to go there, too
I’ve a wanderlust
want to get the fuck out
or bust

touch the clouds
but I’ve no wings
never even
been on an airplane

I’m rubbing my hands together
trying to undefine these lifelines

so with my feet
on the ground I go on

trying to tickle my fancy
fuel my muse
until I get there
but I am awake
I am already where I need to be

so when I sleep
I will dream of wings

still

and that’s just fine
and that’s just right

because when I awake
I am exactly where I want to be

so many people
people to meet
there is no need
to fly, just fade away

me, a tourist?
filing meaning
with snapshots
and colorful appetites

I’ve a bad stomach
chewing antacids
before this battle of the senses

so many people
at my front door
I’ll just suck
all their stories through a straw

like I’m kicked back in a deck chair
soaking up the sun’s rays

Postscript

Sporadically traumatic
this web we leave
sticky sheets

a nervous security blankets us
keeps us warm & fuzzy

sirens dividing our attention

limitlessly timid
these teeth we sink
so tepid

a truthful trepidation sanctions us
leaves us warned & lovey

mirrors interfering with our perception

hollow
hollowed out
these eyes
proclaiming to see
so swell

I would be happy
happy to meet you halfway
in the median
on the beaten path
to hell

banging my head
to the rhythm of your
beating heart
because
because I want to be inside
breathing
your intimate most thoughts
scarab-ing around your dreams
wired
not to your desires
no, to your inhibitions
a prisoner to your
metabolic rage

your voice
your voice it sings
a rueful folk rendition
sawing through my harp’s strings

remember
this letter
sincerely signed
your needle-tip pen pal
p.s. there is no fucking postscript

Glazed

Staring at pixels
looking for some way
to connect

to identify with

grease dots on a
collapsible box

regurgitating information

ears waxed
eyes & mouth
stuffed
w/ glazed doughnuts

reaching for a napkin
to clean up
spilled self summation

Portals

Recurring dreams
of opened closets
stuffed with
adolescent t-shirts,
ill-fitting blue jeans
& empty hangers

dreams of locked lockers
in high school hallways,
combinations long forgotten;
in need of answers
but the textbooks are
securely just out of reach

why one door should be open
when another is bricked up

dreams are portals
to disappear through;
when you wake up
windows are boarded up

you will never find your way back

Gnawing

Gnawing knots &
thoughts confused
abused last chances
glance upon a mirror
here before us shattered
flattering no longer
somber five ways to Tuesday
rue days wake up feeling this way
stay on course, on par
far from unbeaten path
hath hell no woman fury frenzy
send me to shallow depths
and swallow stones

Spare Change

Entombed
all this doom, gloom
smiling in the face of
reach up & grab these coins off of
each eye

Blanket Space

Descent:
a
light-
headed
trek
into
mad-
ness

consciousness
my gift

consciousness

afraid to lose
my greatest contribution

teetering the brink
afraid
no one will be below
to break my fall

don’t want to go
to that cave
that cold dark place
blanket space
beckoning

letting go this conscious gift