February 25, 2008. 5:00pm

i started a small fire the other night in the mall parking lot.
don't get me wrong...i am not an arsonist.
it was 1:30 am, and there was no one around. there was plenty of oppurtunity to lose touch with reality. the skies weren't all that cloudy, and what the hell am i supposed to do with 15 half-used matchbooks. they're only good for cheap bar tricks and phone numbers, and those are two things that i don't do. it burned down in about five minutes, but the smell of burning sulphur and skin lingered for a few more minutes. i've got a gaping burn wound on my right hand. it's on the finger i usually shake in disdain at those who walk by without a care in the world.
i wish i could be more like them.
like the eyes of some blind prophet the skies are clouded over with a milky film layer. i want to set the skies on fire, and watch the atmosphere burn up. when it lacks oxygen and there's no chance for life to exist, please don't refer to me as an arsonist. i'm just a writer who lost his way. i use the term writer, and not poet...because look what happens to all the prolific poets. plath popped her head in an oven, and Bukowski fell victim to leukimia. "Don't try" read his headstone, so maybe I won't. I don't want to end up in a hole.
I want to feel like i did my first day at the track. Betting on every race, mostly just for horses to place. I hit a trifecta though, and payed out 60:1 odds. I should have put down more on that, but I was young and playing it safe. That was my first time and the last time I've been to the track, but still I crave the feeling that I got from watching those horses whip around the backstetch and fly in like chariots in a statistical dead heat. I long for those days, but then I feel like I might turn into Charles sitting beneath the grandstand half-drunk, chain-smoking, and going home with whores. I don't think I'd like that. No...I know I wouldn't like that.
GIve me parking lot fires, and a car that smells like my cigars and her perfume anyday. That's a life that I'm used to, and a life that I can live with.
In the abscense of everything that is, there is also something that is not.
I will find what is and what isn't, and I will learn from it until my bones crack and crumble, and the parasites dig in deep.
Cracking a half-smile I will think of that night spent alone starting a fire trying to burn the thoughts of her from my mind.

sestina//meal

Another shot of vodka
brought him closer to the lights
that moved in perpetual motion.
For him it was bliss.
Nevermind the sickness...
His world always crumbled in blue.

A master of ceremonies dressed in blue
shooting shot after shot of vodka,
he loved to serenade the sickness.
Down from his window, lights
flickered between death rattles and bliss.
Such is a world in constant motion.

Is his mind in motion
slowly fading green to blue?
A kiss for bliss
and those dry chapped lips emanating vodka.
Turn the lights
off before he welcomes back his sickness.

Is it a sickness
or some great plan set in motion?
He lights
up a cigarette exhaling smoke so blue.
His life, his breath, his vodka,
make his bliss.

Kiss this bliss
and hold the sickness
at bay with a shot of vodka.
Perepetual motion
like contrails painted in blue.
Kill the lights

and fuck the lights.
He penetrates deep. It is bliss!
Until her face turns blue
and it seems like the onset of another sickness.
Both bodies pump and fade in motion
until both are as empty as his bottle of vodka.

-------------------------------------

We sat at the mahogany table dressed in the best clothes we had. The guiding lights across the table flickered on and off incessantly. The whole house was silent save the padding of canine feet across the kitchen floor. They approached and lay down on their haunches, saliva dripping from their jaws. It dripped down like strings of pearls plucked from the craned neck of June Cleaver. All across the table were strewn silver serving platters heaped with overflowing plumes of food. Someone began to lead grace, and al heads instinctively bowed towards the cold ground underneath us. My eyes stayed fixed on the set of breasts across the table. Her entire composition was perfect. I longed to lunge across the table and captivate her in a rage of carnal lust. Amen. The table came back into the waking world. I diverted my eyes to the dogs. I knew how they felt. I was in the same boat with them. We passed around the dishes. Creamy mashed potatoes, three types of stuffing, honey-glazed ham, Italian roast beef...the things that turned men into gods. As I force-fed myself, I realized that these foods had no real taste. The one dish I fancied came to me later that night forcing my tastebuds to explode. Thinking of those spread legs, those perfect breasts, and that smile on her face, I can taste her still. The taste of a woman in heat.

assorted.

she burned down the city,
and it smelled like rotting flesh.
i called out to her, but she didn't yell back.
my nostrils caught another hit.
it fried my brain like pure cocaine,
and the city slowly roasted.
everyone was trapped inside.
**************************************

i check my phone and haven't had any calls in three days,
it's then that my eyes sulk over and glaze.
and just so you know, it's you i'm thinking of.
i sit idle and wait for your call.

when i step out to breathe and realize that i can't,
it's when i finally find the right words to say.
and just so you know, it's you i'm thinking of.
that's why the words don't ever come out right.
**************************************

cirque du triste
the horse is striped and on parade.
i've seen his sad escapades.
there's a man taking pictures, i see.
he's pointing his camera at me.
the lions are beaten and bruised.
i've seen them all being used.
there's a man taking pictures, i see.
he's pointing his finger at me.

have you seen the thick-skinned beasts?
they trample amongst the thieves.
there's a man taking pictures, i see.
he's pointing his gun at me.
the strongman is locked in a pen,
and i'm staring at a group of strange men.
there's a man taking lives, i see.
he's sucking the life out of me.

the canvas top is stuck in the air.
the flags are flying with flare.
there's ribbons in all the girls' hair.
the little boys stop and they stare.

but while they pass me by,
i laugh and i cry.
the carnival clown points his long gun at me.
*************************************

i loathe that feeling i sometimes get,
when i swear this one's finally my last cigarette.
my knuckles turn raw and i head off for home,
always working my fingers down to the bone.
what do i have to show for it
when life's a great big heap of shit,
and all i do is swim in it.
it's a smothered pool of jellied lust.
and all i do is swim in it.

i reached for the sky, so high.
on my tiptoes, i almost learned to fly.
i thought of the feelings, the dreams, and the visions.
they came to once, but they left me with echoes of derision.
my fingers were gone, like a sandpaper tongue ripped the meat bit by bit.
the bleached white bone shone like diamond in the sun. i reached for it.

i closed my eyes, and i looked deep inside.
the sun broke free of my stare.
the moon cradled the stars, and i exhaled.
the feeling creeped up the stairs.
**************************************

writing

I can not write, for fear of taking the words and clotting the pen that strokes the paper. I am a liar, and it is not right to let the lies break free from this levee in my brain. I fear that functioning has become a sole purpose, and that writing has become excess. I am a failure of sorts, though it's never been set outright. I can see it in eyes, and hands, and hearts. They stare, and I know that they've been right all along. My pen is just a crutch. So much for getting out there, living and experiencing. So much for being a writer. My ego consumes my thoughts, and no one wants to read about the thoughts of a pompous ass. I once called myself Creator. I once drew parallels between me and God. Who wants to read what I have to write? I am a liar, and when I write I speak of love, and infinite gateways. There is nothing that becomes worth reading when I write, because my pen and my thoughts are clotted with blood. I choke the throat that gasps for air and requires mercy because I think of myself first. I am always working to make myself bigger. I've become the world's Boss Tweed. I want to be richer, and to exploit, and degrade. I want to cut out from underneath them the cherry-tree trunks that most of those fuckers call legs. Run everyone, and put your guns to your shoulders. Take aim and shoot me down before I pick up a pen and write! There seems to be a little bit of vodka in my system, and when I write that all comes out, and I realize my failure. What I say has no bearing on the world as a whole, and my thoughts die out before I have a chance to set them right. I live a lot of lies, or at least that's what other people tell me. I try to ignore their voices, but it's hard when they've been right all along. The words I write die out like the flowers every winter. There is no solace to my insides when all my viscera become knotted. Choke like umbilical Neuse hanging from inside of a cavern, and let my words take your breath away. I am more of a vain person than Warren Beatty, and I know that my sick words will bring that to light. Let me expel the rumors here and now. I am not talented. I have seen more talent in a teenage girl's diary where she's venting about the boy that turned her down for prom. I am not gifted. I've seen more promise from the autistic kid that I used to hang around with. I am not special or different, or immune to this shit. What hurts most when I write is that it's not my own. It's the same damn thing that someone else said; only I have found that they said it better once long before I ever did.

i find

i find bliss in ignorance.
there is peace in the insipid snow.
it falls, and i know. i know.
the temperatures may read cold,
but i bide my time, and wait.
i don't know how long i sat out there;
no shirt, no shoes, no pants, no socks.
i overcame the numb and came to a crossroads of nothing and nowhere.
the abscense of a temperature,
the abscense of a color,
the abscense of people,
the abscense of noise,
the abscense of clothes,
the abscense of time all hit me at once.
and the world simply dissolved.
a simple sweet revelation.
i know nothing, and never will.
the time keeps on moving and i know not why,
like i know not why the birds fly up in the sky.
when the winter is gone, and the larks start to sing.
i will indulge in the bliss of not knowing a thing.

copper.

she wears a copper jacket as she waltzes through the door.
i never thought that copper could look so good. she looks so fine.
i see her coming, walking closer.
i see the corners turn up on her mouth.
they curl up towards the mountain.
those jagged peaks, those suction-cup eyes.
she takes off her copper jacket, ready to go.
oh my, that girl is heavy as lead.
she got the look to knock me dead.
she comes flying off the cuff.
i still know that woman got me.
come over and let me see.

cake.

the taste of birthday cake; rich and smothered in white velvet.
have you ever wanted to be the taste i crave?
i know you have.
i know you well.
frosted flowers in a boquet meant for eating.
vines creep down the birthday cake, and keep it planted to the table.
i taste the cake, rich like a kennedy,
done up in white velvet like you.

stylized.

stylized like boys and girls
climbing to the front porch.

the collapse in the swing on the front porch.
their hearts are racing.

stylized like a romance novel,
full of love
full of pain
full of secrets that they've told.

she hold his hand,
he holds her heart.


they'll never love like this again.

it's a pain that no one told them about.
a pain they don't want to know.

to lose the one you love like this,
it's such a way to go.

boogeyman.

the boogeyman is a lyricist that lives under my bed.
when i zone out, he throws knives in my head.
all the words he pumps in me like a stomach pumped with valium.
when i wake up sweating bullets, he raises them and rattles them.
eyes as vacant as the whole at the center of the universe,
and the things he sometimes does would be said to be perverse.
when he pulls the sheets, i can hear his labored breaths.
then he stops and claws the floor and shoots his meth.
he's got a swastika on his head like charlie manson,
and he loves when i leave music on because it keeps him dancing.
he enters the wounds if you leave them open,
and he sits in them like peroxide soaking.
all the mad-dog foam that is forming at his jaws,
hits the floors and burns like acid and he licks at his paws.
the boogeyman's waiting under my bed,
with a corkscrew to bore a shrill hole in my head.