words to help you escape

turn onto the narrow street i spot a neighbors

wrought-iron gate, the lawn behind it impossibly lush

speckled with bold white flowers

a few steps later the so-quiet houses and a well-worn path

i am grateful for these stark, odd moments of solitude

that sprout like lightning

between the hiss of tires on the wet road

and the droplets like cool little sips on my skin

and even the husky jungle air

that rises from roads and bridges and fields

and steaming rooftops like one long and sultry sigh

they call me the clandestine killer foggy windows icy winds and shivers winter forget the snow forget it I am forging ahead with angels I am burning horrors and healing heads of state with my breath because death does not exist to me it fails utterly to interest me

Would that I could reach for the sun    like a sprout and bask in the holy order of the day or sink my soft white teeth into the giving earth How light then would my spirit be with no mortal cross to carry no benighted flesh to bear

The gray dissolving days, the endless nights carry a whining rhythm or a beat until at once they crest into a bite whose icy sting stops body's living heat. Would that I could go back and change my mind and shield this poisoned brain from light of day exhort the tinkering finger of Design to set my gears and cogs a duller way Thus unadorned would life dare satisfy instead of serving only to remind of pleasures that beyond forever lie of weight and pains that do forever bind

I was raised to be a baby and a suckling fool I was spermed into a frothy wasteland, one lost soul in a sea of billions whose mouths are stark red syrup lips and I wonder Can I keep my head above the foaming sea can I survive and remain gentle? It cannot be done You only out yourself as a fool you only reveal a deadly weakness And when there is a face I recognize among them One sweet, familiar voice in the grievous choir I silence it because I must

Dirt. Leaves. Sunny woods. These were not an education. I never learned to quiet the roar in my ears I never learned the ragged techniques never affected a cold steady self-protection. Why did you not tell me there is no salvation only sweat and laurels for the most ruthless strivers? I never learned to be an animal. But as the sea grows thicker there is no island but a glistening back. Your days were so fair, your waters were so calm you never imagined I would ache with undignified necessity to hold my arms up in defense or crush the enemy at your door.

now he looks for some sweet orphan to quench his thirst who is this brute force who inhales the dust of ages to blow out ash?

i feel the rocking of his hips like the wild sea i tumble the ground sinks and yields to me now he looks for some sweet pound of flesh like me i sink ever deeper nudging the cool earth feeling the grains of centuries, eons beyond the ken of man

now he hungers now i sink, sleep when waking moments are horror alone and dreams are proxy to power here is the sweet orphan germinating in this crust of earth

The overflowing soul of better days now damned by fetid air and plastic wrap The liberated brain sinks into haze with hot coals left to gasp within the gap I mourn now for the mind I once admired and lungs whose breath I treasured as my own consumption lights the ragged funeral pyre the hushéd lips emit their final groan my heart will rage the earth with naught to blame and hand will brush the traces left behind yet both will shy away from their true aim lest root of this corruption they might find

Where does my strength come from? Does it come from my body? Does it come from these sore shoulders these skinny arms and these broken legs? Does it come from my mind? this mind that is so heavy it drags my face against the ground?

you want to know whether this strength comes from a spirit under siege? where the citizens devour their own shoes and huddle against the walls where demons fling fire over the gates fire almost graceful as it flies and putrid thoughts like overfed ticks that collide burst and leave their juice behind forever?

Like i'm going to write moby dick in a dive bar like i’m gonna roll out of bed with a five-star hangover beer shits drag my face across a typewriter and write Women (that’s actually how that book was written clearly i’m no Hank) men before became angelic drunks lovemakers and poets after the 12th straight whiskey call it modern sensibility when i’m that far gone i just want to punch, fuck, vomit in whatever order suits the night

so goes the grand delusion of my life-- that heavy drinking might cast literary merit on an otherwise shameful fall from grace and the uglier the hole? the better a more inspiring situation for our young hero to overcome by teeth and claw and wit alone

I dont know what to make of myself for having loved you I knew you, drew breath from you watched you think and probe the world with words produce sweet melodies that loved all life now i'm left to wonder at the traces of your mind

The overflowing spirit that you had in better times is a puddle, a trickle, a droplet dammed by plastic wrap a smothered coal gasping in the gap you left behind who do i blame for this corruption with whom to take up this dispute? with you? could I get the time of day? your moral sense exchanged for baubles ersatz soul from consumption cobbled our languages are not the same