For A Better Propaganda

a poem of your flesh
and the dirt i’ve thrust
upon it

a poem of the slow
rise of morning
wind, arms unfurling

the silence falling from
thinly split lips, somehow
ripe for spring

You stand alone in the morning
Facing west, wondering where
It has all gone

You stand alone in the morning
Preoccupied, my clumsy steps
Never cross your mind

You can’t step without gracing
The ground, a few honest paces

And don’t we all just want to win,
Just like you

Auction
Individual slivers
Each for its own personality

And here, an embarrassing fall

Like clocks work
Diligently
Until exhaustion

These sunken eyes

Adrift
The creature comforts
Linen encampments

Loss
Will permeate
Our memories
Stained bright with
Silence

maybe

count my ribs
and survey my face
inches and fingers
and zoom features

gather those
thoughts, milling around
like horses

see something you like
and take note,
ribbons and bows
flesh and bones

maybe

Broken pieces of poets
And the pages they waste

All the noise of the city
Is never coming back again

Shards of broken women and
Men filling wilting notebooks,
The dedicated poets never notice.

I remember the first time
I saw the cracks in your skin,
Was like a night with no edge,
My blinded footsteps.

Ask me once to follow you home.
I’d follow you to colder summers,
Islands with shifting earth beneath
Them.

A garden of new projects,
All the time in the world

Those nights…

Names were
Lost in blooming
Petals and smoke
Clouds, often
Boys don’t notice the
Details, darling
All we hold is the present,
Cascading grains,
That sand…

Leave me resting

I had a dream,
You were naked in the woods
Arms spread, praying to the sky
And I was intrigued

What pain would your feral god
Bestow on me to
Mirror those wishes bitten into your cheek

I wonder what hands lead you to sleep
I wonder who’ll love you tomorrow

wouldn’t be so troubled
if i hadn’t spent the day
chasing the smoke from your heels
tear up the carpet like rubber tread
through adventurous rodents and game

nope, i’d probably be a regular asshole
singing loudly behind these four windows
past metal boxes filled with laughing children,
no one ever told me why the school bus must be yellow
or why certain days are more blue than ever

i ain’t got no history
i can’t even remember her name
or how i got here, but sure i can guess

i ain’t more than the sum of words,
the ink from my 7th grade notebook,
when i (knew i) had so much to learn
turns out i knew it all already

you never get what you want
set neatly in your hands
you flail and drown
more slowly, or not

Pretentious Roman Numeral Poetry

I.

i wish i could write like
the “spoken word girls”
can belt out poetry,

like weapons.

II.

i’m
walking quietly down the road,
she jumps and i avert my gaze,
some would say the evil of other men
shames me, still
the great lengths i travel
to prove my innocence
to unaccompanied strangers

III.

the waitress hands me the check
and smiles. i wonder if she smells my
cologne, wants to fight the girl i’m with,
will blow this tip on blunts on booze,
like a normal person would

whoartgos:

 i never understood
the premise that
dark was evil, what
with how
often i’ve found
comfort in obscured
landscapes and cold
rain

fading into
the shadows like
camouflage for my
mahogany shell, a
heart of darkness
will often pump ink
and stain my veins
sure

but what else
would you have them
for 

the real world lacks poetry

whoartgos:

invisible faces
still move the
air

around the frame
rust collects from
the (not) too distant
sea

somewhere a woman
plucks at the strings
on her guitar, singing
softly. the boy that
loves her tries to contain
himself

and beautiful words
are never said, they’re
swallowed like grandmothers
pills,

left carelessly in plain
sight 

best

whoartgos:

and often
the next morning is harder
than the last,

how age affects the calendar now

might as well distill joy and
load the equipment, the
inverse relationship between
your happiness and my misery

i hope you’re happy
i hope you’re happy

and alone,

the selfish hands
implicit in my speech
don’t know which master to serve

neither do i

i hope you’re happy

as i trace the lines in my ceiling
alone

i hope you’re happy

whoartgos:

while i was cutting through
milky layers of privilege i 
tripped on my own. the irony
was not lost on me as the
change spilled from my pockets,
racing to the storm drains,
more used to refuse, fleeing 
from the sky

i wanted to tell my girlfriend
something about biology,
and rum and late nights…
but the feminist in me decided
we’d better arm-wrestle instead,
the eye contact should suffice

the racists haven’t made me
hate their children as much
as doubt myself. learn to love,
several times a week. you are
what you’ve been made into

and the money makes me
smile, brother, it sure does.
i’ll get mine before you take
yours brother, i sure will.

siren

whoartgos:

oppressive cloud
cover sits
outside my window

nothing to see
here…

she wore police
tape on our
first date

yellow, yellow
and black