Ghost Hardware

your hands seem as playful
as goldfish in a milk jug,
but I'm only ever eating the walls again,
privy to the noises that beggars
make when running by,

i have this stencil
of Jesus
whiskeyed out
on a park bench,
spilling nickles
like daydreams
onto the broken pavement.


i lack nervousness in nature..
my anxious heart is only restless
amongst the concrete that my mind acknowledges,
but will not give into.
i've seen everything leave
& seemingly return
in the ocean of my life.
i'm waiting for something to stay,
as unlikely as that may ever be.



the hours
deplete me
of irony
& ivory.

I keep blades of grass
in my back pocket
to cut through the memories;
shadows are like dead relatives,
friends I've lost along the way
& the strangers I've left in passing
that I'll never see again.
I keep them all like coin collectors
hoarding stamps and rings.

each love affair is a different life,
every parting of the lips a reminder
of how many times I've died,
lived again
& started it all over.
the parts of me that are missing
make me whole.
I take deep breathes
when I'm remembering,
then tuck my eyes
into my dreams
& let go.
in my secret body,
I am both always & never
alone...

sadness seems more potent
when you attach its name to the seasons,
but its always just an lonely in the winter
as it is in summer's
purposeful daylight dragging.
perhaps
it's just the years that add up
and make the surface
seem so much more shallow
then before.
or is it that the debts
at which i feel seem deeper
& more lived into
with age?
& its as if the hearts
would rather perish
than love so freely..
I would rather sink or swim.



it took me so many years
to even see the ocean,
to ever even notice
that I was getting older
than I should.

i remember this hurricane
when i was four years old.
afterward, I stood
where my house
had once stood.
I could say it was the first time
that I understood emptiness,
but it wasn't the first time
that i realized that the wind
could carry me away.

i think children are more poetic in the rain.

within the seconds of our lives
are maps that show where we've been,
where we're going,
where we are..
they present the easiest method of escape.

if only we could stop moving,
the big picture hides withing the most minute.



i've seen you so many times inside these
like a heron, a floating dove
like a hurricane I wrap around my fingers
always fall short of touching
the most vivid and valid of my dreams..

the only way I recognize my own face
is through constant repetition
but still the mirror dulls the real sense of self
it is only a reflection and I am actual
or so it seems at times like this.

I always thought of you as the sun
and myself as that split in the mood
right where the dark meets the light

but there are a few things that I know completely
like the day I'll die, and the smell of spring like amaze of honey.
I will hold these things close to my heart
the reoccurring images of the
things I won't regret.

Once more I admire the frail
when they break they gaze so beautifully...

let us suppose in this instant
that out dreams could ignite the sky
inner demons wrapping swollen prophets
in their wake
how many loving teardrops could we brave

if only towards the inner heart
could guilty songbirds spill and fret
a love like any other pours so frail
belief turned stammered from regret

when i awake
eyes scatter like the air apart
neatly inside the once red pursing lips
like some strange fruit has died...
or a book turned inward.

the chords are at their strangest
as they leave your sacred throat.

at night i dish around the
cities bored
thick colors breath on me
while lucid doves pick the passers teeth
the dust of ancient lovers crowd the street

i paint a sunken world
pouring from our lips and meager feet
a circus of unkempt blood and hair

i am born here like the walls themselves,
often keeping out the rain..
my own ceiling is the fire of memory.



and often endless dreams
turn inward like buttons
a constant series of graphs behind
our eyes.

the bones know..

every evening
as i breathe your company
i travel backwards and ahead upon a carousel
a flower in the fog.

there, i am the honest bleeding of the night
i am the only grave you once slept in
to hide from the other skulls
nevermind my twisted trunk
cause i'm the only tree you climbed
to build a house...

i have been seen with such strange eyes
untouched by phantom hands
reeling in the hours of island shapes
I've found peace while the lucid doves pick the passers teeth

yet still i'm amongst the melting birds
crushed beneath tires and heartless tongues,
I've been shown that the easy way is not existing
for in the carousel of our thoughts we seek to escape.

i have felt such breaths and fingers pulsing
exhalations of deep tender hushing,
writhing necks collecting liquid
and arms folding inside heartbeats

tight lips raise ships from ghostly depths..
my green man is a miracle
in the warm times when we are pressed
we are most eloquent in our heat.