zhega ma

From loneliness you learn how to be alone
From laughter you learn how to smile
From the poor you learn how to give
and from children you learn how to grow

The time has come, sir wiggles said,
to talk of many things -
of tears and noise and rhythm bands,
of why the shower sings,
and how does hope expand itself
and lusting after rings

To the lips belong the sounding board
to the eyes belong imagined things
and to hands belong the mysteries
that brought you here and now
shaping, dreaming, always weaving on the loom
for hands, you see, are intimate
and contain more than this room

choose blue for his eyes and a mustache to frame
choose yellow for the shirt and her giggle kept in a jar
choose sand to walk on and green grass for naps
choose hearts that beat and need and hurt
take nothing more than you'll give back

you ask for a connection, between these wand'ring musings
"there's no more here than betwixt scallywags and kings!"
you'd cry
but i do quite wonder,
were you to relax your white-knuckled grip on that imagination you bridle
couldn't we, kind madam, dear sir, be slightly more than similar?

Trying to come back

An exercise i tried before writing something new, turns out it was better than the piece i wrote:

Halfway hallucinating happiness on holidays,

Hanging on hyperbole while holding for a better day,

Hopelessly with happiness we hate the honest undertones,

Hereditary homicide is flowing through my monotone.

Infiltrate intangibles while understanding impotence.

Investigate insomnia while living in the present tense

Indulgence interferes with independent after thoughts

Implicit indications that my mind is clearly lost for thought

Judgmental jealousy is justifying jubilants,

Jeopardizing joy by the fact that it ignorant.

Tomorrow comes again

This morning I was watching the sun rise and preparing to change lives
red and white lights flashed by and my ears were assaulted with a waaaailing
being emotionally raw I felt
consumed
with the tragedy that a fellow daughter, lover, believer, or brother, had just encountered
and I realized that I had been shockingly numb
to the human condition

how many times do ambulances annoy us as they scream by

how many prayers do we forget to whisper

how many breaths are taken without appreciation

how often do we neglect comforting the fathers and husbands and sons left behind

how do we survive without living

I'm going to remember to love believe fight cry forgive pray sing try learn venture promise laugh need decide kiss change dare escape move expect run dance fall demand want give play...
because that ambulance could be coming for me
next

This House

This house is empty and echoes remain

unplugged

It snuck up on me,
that lyrical twisting and entwining and somersaulting
Suddenly it was poetic
and I admit, abashedly, that I was not thinking about your lips
for a moment
I was forming rhymes and thinking in another language
I was seeing wildflowers and exploring treehouses and wondering
at the beauty
of a honey bee
you stole away my fear (took it from my slippery sweating palms and hid it away I mean)
and exchanged my breath for imaginings of...of...well
I guess these things have no words to them
except
the simplest of language, as in
the THU-DUNK THU-DUNK of a heart (anybody who's ever felt it knows it's more than a THUD)
or a tingling toe
or the gaaaaaasp of escaping oxygen the moment before audible laughter begins
or a flight of butterflies as they migrate
s
o
u
t
h

Entitled

Nobody really knows

The pain she feels when she goes to bed

The things we see when it's all in our heads

But I know

I know

I know.

There's just too much going on

And there're so many people to please

She thinks she'll just hang around some more

I've got to go

to go

to go.

She calls on me in the darkest of nights

The shadows cast keep the memories alive

There are so many secrets I could tell

But I won't

And I won't

And I won't.

Take what I need for my disease

And tomorrow I'll be back again

This is the life she knows I regret

But I can't

I can't

I can't

Turn back

~Note, Letter, Smoke Signals, Text, Email, Tweet, or Myspace Message; Phone A Friend.

Bullocks,

Digress.

Chasing Women

Sweet birdy,

"Can I call you?"

"Yes but not now, I'm still finishing a pint"

she calls anyway

"Listen, I'm still at the pub, let me ring you back in five."

20 minutes later

I arrive home.

"Hi birdy. How are you?"

She hammers on about her ex-boyfriend

The things he's been doing

Asks my advice.

I don't want to hear it

I don't want to give any.

"Listen, I'm going to throw up.

I'll text you in the morning."

I climb the stairs

Place my head in the bowl

and release.

I wake up fully clothed

Feeling a little too much

Like Bukowski.

~Just a dood.

Love,

Digress.

Night of Nights Day of Days

Another sunset on this city,

Your memory melts

Into overexposed evenings

Spent drowning in gin

But Every time you walk

Through that doorway

I cannot help but see yesterdays

Breaking like restless dawns

Tomorrow is a shadow

This city is a tornado

The horizon is hopeless

Mirrors reflect hell

Memory recognises nothing

I awake from a nightmare

With two options

Stay or go

~Will this turn sweet?

Love,

Digress.

This Is Caustic

I have faith

That this is something I will never recover

I have acted haphazardly

An inane lumberjack

chopping down

A forest of friendship

I look back

On a landscape of stumps

And destroyed habitats

This is who I really am.

~My shadow refuses to follow.

Love,

Digress.

Petite Le Mans

Dead

On the back straight

Two turns left.

Running on fumes the last

10 laps.

An upset title

In the fingertips

And like the afternoon

Of yesterday

Victory and

The last drip

Drops of petrol

Burn away

Leaving only headlamps

And the

Roar of the others

Piercing the

Autumn evening.

~ Sad to see you say good bye like that 430. Hello 458.

Love,

Digress.

I Once Loved Woman

She reaches

Across the bar and

Grabs both my arms,

"Even if she left you,"

she said,

"I can tell that deep down you're

a good guy."

"Ha!" I reply,

"Deep down

I'm a Dirty

Old

Man

Enticing you to whisper

What you never thought was possible

Deep down I'm only here

To make you fall for me

Then kick you whilst you're down,

Deep down I'm as cold as

The bottom of the ocean

Waiting for the shipwrecked

Bodies to sink

I am the callous wind

Howling through

The telephone wires carrying your message

I am a tearful good-bye; I am

The whispers of yesterday's news

Breaking the bonds of tomorrow

Deep down I am a broken heart

Dragged

Through the shards of a

Chalice's promise.

Deep down

No.

I am not

A good man."

~Look, No Hands

Love,

Digress.

Climactic.

It was the next day that it began appearing in the sink. Each time I turned the taps to the faucet, the water would run normally. I doused my hands. I washed my hands. I closed the taps. Each time, I'd look down into the porcelain bowl and there it was. It had the texture of mucus, with the exception of yellow, the colours were never the same. Strands of green and white, blue and orange, red and brown. It was like mutant Aquafresh. Each time after shutting off the taps, it would linger, stare back at me. I lost my patients with it, turned the taps back on and washed it down the drain. It only appeared those two days. It hasn't been back.

~Living Alone, Lonely, Far Too Long.

Kjærlighet,

Digress.

Rough Year.

24 hour news television,

Firearms,

Cookie dough, and

Brandy;

The only things to eat.

Her broken wings

Chained her to the ground.

I gave her time to heal

And she flew away.

Sweet bird.

Fly south.

Good-bye.

~There's got to be an app for that.

Kjærlighet,

Digress.

Sweet Talker.

A million smiles painted

On the ceiling of a night sky.

A wink carried

On the breath of the forest.

A kiss in the darkness.

A glimmer in your eye.

This is affection.

~Now everybody knows.

Love,

Digress.

Favorite beverage: water

I've found a new muse in you
I collect all my broken pieces and you tape them together
this first re-attempt will rightly be messy
jagged around the edges and slightly sharp at the corners

and beautiful

I'm
seeing
me next to you.it's bright like summer strawberries
I'll wake you up with kisses every morning
make you blueberry pancakes and stare into those bright blues
you have a special talent to stir up those butterflies in my tummy

This is redvelvetcakeicecream walking through a harbor town
it's favoritecolorblues and slaphappyhangovers
it's sharingcrutons and grumblybear look-a-likes

If this isn't love...
I never want to know what love is

I am.

Like stained glass shards

Filling this tumbler.

Like the broken bones

Protruding from my legs.

A cricket calling in the infernal night,

A cicada calling in the futile daylight.

The slow steady walk

Of respect disappearing.

A bardiche

In the hands of a silhouette.

My memory ashamed

The ghosts of yesterday creep through the window.

Your name floats

On a turbulent ocean.

I put a shipment of kisses and apologies

Onto a paper boat.

Like an afternoon saying good bye

That boat sails out of the estuary.

~Adoration of a ghost.

Love,

Digress.

Beware the Ides of Augustus.

The Ides of August.

A parade of armour.

My death on the tip of the xyston;

My blood drips love letters

Onto ivory papers.

Notes stuffed inside of glass envelopes,

Deliver themselves

On the whispers of the wind.

The gales push against your window

Eyes press against your body

A look of contempt from across the universe.

The Nova agrees then bursts;

A thousand shards of agony

Stretching from the Fornax Dwarf to the bottom of this bottle.

When the flag stops wavering

In the turbulence of your love

I'll put the cap back on.

~The Grand Tour.

Love,

Digress.

Something About You

Standing at a fountain in Reykjavik

Making a wish out of

Clowns, mud,

And grass stains.

I will pay the debt of Prometheus.

Only then will I be absolved.

~Pay a penance for piety.

Love,

Digress.

Stretching Yesterday's News.

Fish swim through broken glass

Wounds bleed laconically,

I will plough through the reeds

Hearts will melt in my hands

Afternoon suns will die in my eyes

And we will wait for-ever

~Disappointed in your behaviour.

Love,

Digress.

Canto of Echos

The boy opens the hatch on his chest.

Like a broken dam

His silhouettes cascade onto the brilliant afternoon.

The boy sees fence posts

Extending a greeting of agony

To the infinitude of imperfection.

Oceans of grass ignore the sentiment;

Painting envy

Across plains of infinity

Around the stillness of every twisted moment.

The sun walks across the sky slowly.

Like a caution

Hollered from peaks of rolling hills.

The boy hears the wars

Behind the closed doors of voices;

In the balcony above rhetoric.

Windows are closed

The latches are turned;

Subversive whispers

Echo off the panes.

The Earth leans forward over the void.

Gripping handrails,

Tracking the shadows of mysteries.

The boy feels the suicides

Creeping across the mirror

In morning hours.

The hands of the clock

Still like fence posts

While bed sheets crumple

To conceal the ashes of the boy's shadow.

Waves bludgeon the rocky fringes of hometowns.

Like the discordant emotions

Shredding bodies on precarious cliffs.

The boy watches sanity

Slip away from fingertips

Space and time evacuate in twilight.

The ocean of the mind;

Unexplored, abysmal,

Tragic waters that stir

Beyond the sky's green hands.

Stars fade and planets die.

Evaporating along

A staircase of impossible depths.

The boy dreams of misery and rancour

Hallways gape with unending solitude

Lined with one hundred towering faces

Opening like doors.

A collection of keys,

Skeletons and octaves,

None that will fit the lock.

~ Only listen.

Love,

Digress.