Wake up, it's time to doomscroll
7am and my eyes are allergic to light
15 minute minimum to feed the machine
Earth’s posterity guaranteed
Validating fake headlines after midnight
Proving my worth while
I lay in early bed dread
Not being a morning person
Bolting out of bed like
Frankenstein’s invocation
I am glued between two layers of soft
Suffering the horrors of
Money fiend modernity
Waiting for the day when
My dreams are full of ads
And other taxable content
Midnight movies always leave a mark
Stacking subconscious laments
Is it morning or mourning
I spent the night in backstroke evasion
Of a giant octopus
Eyes above the surface and black
The water black
The sky black
The skin black
Proofed by the moon in menacing highlights
These long legs of entanglement
Find me fleeing for my life
The deep seat of making the wrong choice
Is a retreat from making any
The snow on the ground this morning speaks back
Confirming the need to stand still
Because it's cold outside and
The tentacles have reduced their longing
To careful lurking
Enough that I can’t forget as I reach the shore
In early light
There is a heat on your face threatening imposition
I cannot yet know if it’s because
We just fucked
Or you want me to know something unfathomable
And the words will freeze exploding stars
with the impending doom of your eyes
I already know the secret
Between two palomas and
Spitting into your mouth you whispered
Something sweet and stoic
To remind yourself you were never here
I was never here, it’s resource scarcity
I closed my eyes to remain quiet
Speaking volumes of my own
Ignoring the way you cut through shields in voice messages
That broke me down with
Unfortunate accuracy
am I of this world?
searching the kitchen for anything
to make me holy
in the middle of the week
the flicker and the flame, wavering
the soft burning wick lilting between
this is the trinity of time on your hands
and dueling disorders
making promises I cannot keep
to avoid guilt and other delicacies
my brain and my body are not the same entity
yet, tequila adorns them both in the evening
because life is measured symmetry
I remember what I said
but not in the way you heard it and,
hoped for sanctity in that religion,
promises. There are only unkept words
in this wild land.
Area X in my head, and several versions of myself
standing around
between my mouth and the mirror,
double vision
double death.
I do not trust the sun in cherry glory, wanton transgressions. When I was a boy I walked the creek collecting crayfish in a yellow bucket, too heavy for its plastic handle in the velvet flesh of my wet palm. Sauntering away the summer in what felt like miles before I knew what miles meant.
Once we caught two carp in the bucket. Carried home a hundred shifting pounds and the sound of miniature thunder slapping the twilight inside. Mom said to take them back and they swam like two freedoms spawned in shallow water.
The days lasted, and the sun lingered low into the night like a stoic pendant. Long enough to make it home when home was the Braxton back door and dinner at dusk.
Today I’m sitting in the car too often pledging seasonal wishes that the lidless eye dip-dive in time with my moods. The pact is a loose rope, letting out too soon on my grip, a bright ball hanging too high for longer than I would approve.
The first thing I did was open the spine, soft papery resistance,
and set the pane aside, no streaky interference.
I needed to see through everything for the death of a butterfly.
The frame is heavy gold, fading in the urgency of a thrift store with second, third life promises
and paint worn enough to make you believe in something beautiful.
Held out in front of me to confront reality at the edges of forced geometry.
The chronic imposition of humans, fitting everything into boxes
—conditional shapes, nothing fits.
I’m taking deep breaths wondering what’s looking back in liminal,
lay me out exposed for as long as I can bear.
Between the frame, hoping to fill the ornate adoration of heavy wood
and the death of something that no longer suits me.
there is always a chance that I never woke up.
I know the story, the flirting, the push, the car.
the ambulance ride with Ry,
I’ve retold it so many times that
I can see it, seated, deeply in my frontal lobe.
a small torch, swishing in the dark,
bleeding loss of control.
quantum immortality suggests a split
like the “Y” shaped crack in my skull
new consciousness from a hospital bed
a long way from home.
every year my family remembers my face
intentionally, together.
not like the individual breaks.
not like the way that every time I see a set of antlers on the wall
I remember my Mothers Father.
wet grief, heavy eyes, confusing laughter.
when I tell the story I see a party and a yellow dress.
drunk twenty-year-olds with new faces
crowding into the wallpaper, with petals overwhelmed.
lingering smoke and light beer in the opening of a second decade.
when I tell the story I see the ambulance insides,
white-red-white, terminal overexposure
in an outburst of terrible enlightenment.
quick recognition of my best friend in the corner,
watching them watching my vitals.
when I tell the story I wake up to my parents
quietly waiting for my first appearance.
wide eyed naivety marking the end of adolescence
and the first breath of uncertainty.
I died in 2008, in the story.
but my edges are fuzzed and
my souvenirs are ordinary treasures
and a constant ringing in my ears.
the source code beautifully banal.
when I tell the story
I can’t help but wonder if I died in 2008.
or if the idea is just a split-brain relief for my previous
lack of vocabulary in terms like anxiety, depression,
attention, and overthinking.
I almost died in 2008.
I don’t want to talk to anyone
In the hallways
Making eye contact with the floor
I wonder if they’ll consider
Their existence
Without my acknowledgement
I want to talk to everyone
And stretch myself for perception
I wonder if they even saw me
And do I even exist
Without their acknowledgement
I skipped two barbeques on Sunday
Because I couldn’t decide if I wanted to talk
And be observed. Lies…
I wanted to be seen
I wasn’t ready to talk
But if you don’t get in the water
Everyone assumes that something is wrong
Too moody
I am of two moods
The definition of “Focus” is in a dictionary, and I forgot to look it up
Again
Last week I wished I was autistic
Because I would rather love one leaf than every leaf…I think
There are a lot of good leaves though.
These drugs are supposed to open my third eye
But the pupil is too dilated
These drugs are supposed to change my life
These drugs are supposed to make me focus
These drugs are supposed to recall the definition of focus
Two spinning dueling motors grinding me away to fuzzy lights bright and out of focus shining through my pupils disconnected upside down I’m slithering lines electric heavy breathing trying to define myself in moments undecided dining black and gray on snowy TV static with the voltage of disarray popping cracking in opposition of the exterior of my face I am softer than I appear but I demand control over trivial things and control demands stoicism so I’m reading unapproachable as observed and begging for a word that isn’t a prayer to be something I am not.
No one likes to talk about dying
I don’t think that’s fair
People are dying right now
And they deserve recognition,
A new achievement unlocked
We have two things in common
Before we know their names
If living demands dying
Death commands life
I want to talk about dying
The transformation of your face
To an idea
Like the picture of me on a motorcycle
Smiling to a curve
Will they remember the freedom
Or their fear of it
Mortality the thief
Three years, two grandfathers
Surviving spirits, knives and pins in my dresser
And when I see a pool table
And when I see an antler mount
And the dreams they’ve visited
Fox has cancer now
I’m watching my closest friend
My weirdo confidant, the Roswell refugee laying in the bathtub
Withering to his hips, scared of his shadow
While his shadow fills him in
We used to make jokes
About the pandemic of men in their thirties
Sticking their heads in the oven
Knowing there was other options
Would they have committed if they knew
Sylvia Plath did it first?
Maybe they were trying to be poetic
No one told them that
A poetic suicide is a long life
a day spent moving to
keep my body preoccupied
and avoid the compulsive
need for engagement
everything I’ve done is second
to anything I haven’t
on the run in a captive state
captivated by the accomplishments
of other people
stark admiration and
jealousy in smooth undulation
my life’s work is an
image of fawning evasion
and ideas made to be adored
this will be my undoing
What I am doing.
What I am not.
Two conversations and
I have nothing new to say.
On Sunday I saw two birds.
One hopped for life, the other felt the force of the grass from an unknowable height. I knew in the five minutes between them that I was both. Unable to fly beyond obvious commonality. Dead against the immovable objects I’ve imagined for posthumous admiration in the shedding of mortality.
I’ll get a tattoo of an eel
for mystery and origin
in honor of Freud’s bane
ironic obsession with
dick shaped animals and
an overactive scalpel
but it isn’t the mystery
it’s the plot twist
an excuse for self-deception
I live in negligent opposition
of what makes me
and regimented chaos to conform
eating time as a commodity then
panicking when I’m forced to stand still
itching for the freedom of
nonchalance and cavalier fantasies
yet my life is full of things that demand my attention
eels would never live like this
slipping into the Sargasso Sea
Taylor told me once that I was an enigma
and I wanted to bathe in the recognition
I’ll return to the sea and consort with the eels
instability
is the picture of a scorpion on the back of my shirt
and thoughts of a hard left turn into the highway barrier
the rosy bloom of annihilation
screaming “There Goes the Fear” with The Doves
until I believe it straight faced corporeal
instability
on the course of my life
I’d like to get lost in someone else again
I’d like to lose myself in the wreckage
and have something to believe in
like faithful bedlam between us
cut softly into the frame of days I used to have
speeding on the backroads
looking at houses and imaging my life in them
looking for an accident around a curve
with the windows down
and the air conditioning on to soothe the humidity
with you in the passenger seat
telling me I don’t make sense
and I squeeze your hand
as it rests in your lap