Dyslexic Misanthrope

The softest side of empty

is plenty hard to live with;

the quietest despair,

a dissonant dementia.

I am a dyslexic misanthrope,

driven to self destruction,

content with self distraction,

left with self delusion.

I stand in repose

wrapped 'round life's tangle,

with the knowing smile

of a joke played on myself:

The horrific

and the beautiful

are but two sides

of the same straight razor

and Leonard Cohen called

to let you know

you need a shave.

Dance of Drunkards

The Wicked Witch of the West

was but a patsy

for the evil goody two shoes Gilda

perpetrates in perpetuity

on munchkins blissfully unaware.

"It's not easy being green"

is not Kermit's lament alone

and the companionship of flying monkeys

are a cold comfort indeed.

Thoughts of the shifting moralities

of these Ozraelites

haunt me needlessly,

like all good hauntings should.

Meanwhile, the cold rain

of February

bleeds wet upon the overcoat

as I remember Father

and his perpetual legs-akimbo

dance of drunkards,

steps as ageless as cirrhosis

scarring time

like the wizard that he was.

"Ignore the man behind the curtain throwing up onto his slacks.

The great and powerful Chuck has spoken."

beach dreams

her heart gave out

on the beach

he could not see for dreaming.

eyes exhausted,

legs akimbo.

dreaming.

sandy broken bottles

mixing seaweed to cerveza

cut my calluses underfoot

on a night with no moon.

fragrant bonfire remnants 

drifting afterglow of yesteryear

are no match for the odor

of hospital waste on the tide.

my mind gave out

on the beach

she could not see for dying.

breath deflating,

eyes in wonder.

never more.

50 spins 'round a star

I've ruptured aspirations,

slicing my imagination,

the memories bleeding out

into the last vestiges of summer.

An accidental tripping, stumbling,

crashing into aging,

convulsing on the edges,

cracking wise before the fall.

I've torn asunder wonder

and my civic standing today,

the neighbors - slinking caffeine junkies -

take their sojourn elsewhere.

As the weather turns from August swelter

to September autumn amber,

I wander through my yesteryear book,

making sick upon the page.

She's half gone, slipping softly

through my psyche today,

speaking a language I can't fathom

with a hope that's not named Bob.

That piece of her remaining rains down

hatred dressed as passion,

as I surrender punch drunk

on the wrong side of my needs.

Finally, a steely-eyed truth arises:

50 years of breathing,

knocking me flat back on the floorboards,

staring up at the ceiling looking down.

Bottle Broken '95

I bottle up my terrors

in self-prescribed libations

while drying out the night sweats

on a clothesline called the bar.

I sing the body electric

in a bathtub with a vacuum cleaner

praying that the fuse blows

me straight into the light.

I walk through my conscious laughter

into hazy ragged dreamscapes

of yesteryears gone haywire

and tomorrows not to come.

I huddle half nervously

near the bottle in front of me,

doubting its superiority

to a frontal lobotomy;

still, this kid's shaking safe

in her burning peptic embrace.

everlasting delirium shakes

dripping colors
of sunburned regrets
bleed through my dreams at night,
chased by daylight nightmares
of stumbling stasis
draped down in corporate ruminations
of my albatross.
--



she's always just off-camera,
gone from lost thoughts
out the corner of my eye,
a goth ghost
fondly remembered,
drifting toward existence
only after leaving me behind.
--
meanwhile, foreboding parties
of social grace failings
cut me screaming mute,
as though to peel away
the peptic perspiration
of conversations gone awry,
hemorrhaging reflux like museum wax figures melting.
--
i cling to my precious precipice,
balanced between the glory and the gored,
with my spiritual stupidity
up crevices divine,
twitching 'longing after' glances -
down toward echoes of elation -
at the normalcy i envy ...
--
... wandering giddy
into the warmed over death
of everlasting delirium shakes,
dissolving into the infinite past tenses
of hallucinating happiness,
shooting up idyllic confabulations
laced with imaginary days of yore.

blackened purple, fire of white

I dive into an emptiness,

my soul spent to fill it.

I languish in a mystery

that coats my world in choking smoke.

Her breath rides crystal hot and hard,

my vanquished eyes surrender

a blackened purple aftermath

slicing through my psyche sweetly.

My hope's on fire of white teardrops

torn from words gone silky silent.

Her hatred pure - so singular -

no consequence but gorgeous madness.

I pour myself down drains of light

while all my dreams drown disappearing.

She swims the depths through fear and failure

while all her doldrums die debating.

I haunt the ever twilight tinged

waiting rooms of faceless nightmares

waiting still for an unknown something

and called on yet by nothing, no one.

She and I are all but spent,

bent twisted in a life conspiring

to rip it up all raggedly, senselessly, heavenly -

finally to tear it all down.

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