I (dawn)
Many mornings,
I fall off the mountain,
whose winding, purple peaks
haunt the misty dreams
of all romantics surviving
in this spiked and hollow,
cavernous place
and also those lain to rest
or abandoned
on the crackedup asphalt streets
to rot like dogs, smashed by SUVS.

shining eyes open, shutter and shake,
at the terrible plainness
starring through papery face,
then I notice with a gasp and a cough
that my face is melded shut
from the mucus
shot through
my romeo-red throat and nose,
and though it may sound extreme,
I holler a soundless scream
at the puregray silence
forever surrounding me.

II (stuck)

As I lay in bed, I often believe
that I've swallowed my tongue
and it sits dissolving
somewhere between hardened gut
and softsplit of lips
or else someone's saw through my anonymous guise
and sniffed out the broken beast underneath,
so he snuck in,
wielding, a silver-steel knife
shrouded and soundless
in the shadowy black,
to slice up the monster
and steal strong, twitching muscle from me
for display in a jar
beside a rug of rough skin.

but this slicer,
though, certainly,
under the sun is unreal,
is both human and alive
and he visits
from someplace deep within
my shards of splintered skin.

III (starting)

Sometimes when I throw down the sheets,
the frozen breeze
attaches like a bloodsucking tick,
so I shiver and sneeze
and
step weakly towards my billowing window
which reveals
boundless colors of sky and leaf
entangled in airy waves
with jumbled houses and whistling lines
and for a moment I believe
the world isn't the simple sketch
it's said to be.

but, sadness is like the sun,
it’s always there
and when the clouds collapse
you don't notice it that much
till you start fading into dust.

IV (falling)

So, often times
with colors turning in my face
the earth turns a shade redder,
and a smile slips across the horizon
to meet the moon
in allblack, nearby space.
then I think
maybe an alien came,
drugged me up with codeine cough syrup,
and clipped my Achilles,
so I couldn’t wake or run,
while he dragged me someplace
a million miles away
where everything looks
plain, and mostly the same
until you look a little closer
and see the mountains are volcanoes,
leaking sulfur from form rounded peaks,
and the cars spit smog across the razor highway
whose job is to slice kids up,
and the creeks run thick orange,
toxic as asphalt
and able to burn a hole in your mouth,
but that’s fine,
cause, the people here speak in tongues
and I don’t have one,
and anyway I forgot how to speak
and even still
I’m too tired to actually scream
or put up a fight
or lose my mind
or try to push
against the harsh grain
that the etches through the world
like brazen veins.

V (stumble to school)

And some mornings it seems
after I’ve drifted to school
in a sober stupor,
that the simple hallways
run perpendicular to the ridges
and parallel with the roads,
and, also, I’m becoming translucent,
with a shadow face,
bearing eyes
that don’t look fine,
even though the only words I care to speak are
“I’m alright.”

and I reveal nothing,
though my skin is more visible than my heart and my lungs,
as I stand there
lost in my home
or stumble with a straight face
and steady leg
in twisting plainways
that meld into brain.

VI(waiting)

At school in the day,
as someone drones on about
crushing tectonic plates,
mechanical muscle connecting tongue to jaw,
chemicals that mix to create the illusion of sunlight,
or the recent discovery of dead water molecules on mars,
I sit in a plastic chair
and sometimes I stare
out the window
and forget how to care.

VII (end of day)

Often, I arrive home
too weak to walk,
so I sit in the garage,
tasting sweet exhaust,
it weakens my heart,
and I’m reminded
of how wonderful life could be
and is not,
but before I flip the key
and sadsoldier on
into oncoming night
to be wrapped up in misty black,
punctured by shining
from coreless, gaseous stars
only to wake up,
spewing scum again,
I think about how easy it would be
to leave the car on
and breath in
the thick air
until it
replaces all the oxygen
and I collapse into myself
like the sun,
is slowly doing.

then I search with a grimace
for times when
I wasn’t in this place,
and somedays I see nothing but here
and no reason
other than routine,
but, on other days
the dirt air turns suddenly sweet,
a laugh is heard
that I can’t place,
but it brings a faint beat,
and I forget that soon it’ll fade.