If it weren’t for those incessant lines

If it weren’t for those incessant lines

a sprinkle of sheer enjoyment would be upon us.

Alas, still closed it reads a book

the droplets from the spring I shook—

and blew away the obstacles.

The last damn bits of powder from the sleeve

Reprieve.

Retrieve those antioxidants

You swallowed with the thoughts

Of them. That measly intellectual:

Disease.

Who said my sublimation was

inferior sensation?

Is that the touch your fingertips

Achieve?

The miniscule apartments

(I know you were a part)

and crept from.

Bent upon the notion of

reprieve.

Don’t worry little Golden boy.

I’ll leave the door ajar and coy.

And close my eyes

While Up you size—

Effeminates and undesirable breeds.

But Please

Don’t forget to lock the door

Before you’re cocked

—to learn of more

triumphant ways to whack away the weeds.
A Library / 2013

Happy Birthday George

In honor of my favorite Beatle, I scrawled this little ditty out. it's nothing much and began when i pulled a Robert Frost book from the shelves on a whim, but it became something more and I dedicate it to my one and only.

My lips lick my fingertips

Touching the frost

The leaves are broken

Bitter.

I blink and think about the moments lost

And inspiration found—

‘Constellations of Intention’

Isn’t it pretty?

To think about the trail of wandering inspiration

Hitting the page

Brushing past the backs

Of sweaty palms

And ending their long drawn life

Under snoozing sneaker-clad

Belligerents

Isn’t it sad?

We can’t leave behind

A bed of memories

Only a lackluster muster

At a beautiful sentence

Succulent sentiments stick to my numb,

Numbing,

Thumbing fingers.

We analyze with waking eyes

The sleeping dreams of believers

Dream weavers

And apple scruffs

Just.

It is such a rough feeling

To know

To fully know

That I was never a blip on the radiant radar I praise

But beneath the leaves and trees and screens

And drum-machines

And screaming teens

I commend.

And end—

with the phrase,

This is not a phase. 
A Library / 2013

Masculine Mentality

The streets stood on the backs of men

—whose regiment settles sour scores

who leave in their wake those wanting more.

And perched upon those marble tiles

between the sameness stretching aisles

no one has the gall to whisper—get out now.

The crowd becomes a stepping-stone

for men who wish they’d never grown,

now shadows running free around the town.

So do not dare stop and stare

there’s no more heat left in the flare

For, all the boys who left for war; stayed there.
2012

My Generation

My Generation

Ask me about the hands of the man of the house

and I’ll tell you that he is not home.

I’ll yell from the peaks of the mountains, scraping the smoggy sky

No! I did not mend the bent tips of his leather gloves,

nor stuff in a brown sack knickknack snack bag

sandwich sentiments and send him off towards the masses.

Or neatly stack cotton atop cotton, atop rinse cycle repetition,

mundane membrane tasks, thoughts,

caught between pages of self help, how to—Be.

Be told what to be, how to see—what is me. Gobbledy Gook.

Ask me how I spend my days and I’ll tell you,

Go To Hell.

Now, ask me how I spend my nights—and I’ll invite you there.

To the hell of uptown found homes,

stone-cold decisions set in unassuredness,

growing up, growing left, growing different.

Growing Weird.

Stoned realizations, Brilliance!

Retreat. Regret. Rethink. Repeat.

Go Ahead, Ask me what goes on,

behind the façade of snapshot picture frame windows—

broken glass, superglue, dried up superglue.

Hard time pass by with the blink of an eye.

Seamless—

onto singing, screaming, giggly shouts,

weekly calls of relief across streets.

Friend? Acquaintance? Stranger? Foe?

Flashback to picking poison,

cashing checks or clutching quarters,

one in the same when blurred together by broken memories.

We do it on purpose. We hail it with purpose,

when we know—in our racing minds, difficult hearts,

and percolating pupils. Speeding, Slowing, Stopping, Starting.

Strike that—never stopping—not really,

We know that within our minds we have not yet become inclined—

To Find.

Discernable purpose, fleeting purpose, pleasing purpose, gleaming purpose,

in the evening of progressive purgatory.

Ask me about My Generation.

But do not dare go and request explanation.

It’s all-relative.
Poetry & Citizenship / 2012

Ce Que J'ai Appris [what i have learned]

A POEM OF AMBIGUOUS PROPORTIONS

...What have I learned?

Je ne sais pas...alors.

J’ai appris.  J’ai appris. J’ai appris

Everything spurs from the intentional—the eventual.

With age comes increasing struggle to see,

My intentions are hazy

Too quickly—the time comes and goes

And this indistinct blur is nothing at all but that

A blur

—The clouds after it rains.

But slivers, slivers, there have always been slivers,

Through which I see a city, soft in shades of gray

A sun peaking out from beneath this collage

Of steel laden inhabitants

Chez Moi

Mais, Mais, Mais,

The rain has slowed for some time now, as the sky begins to ripen.

The haze, not gone, remains in the distance,

And the stain left behind, on my squinting eyes, is blue.

Blue. I don’t know what to do with blue.

I see, now I see—

I’d rather have just a sliver of light than be blinded by an overflow of Blue.

Beauteous beckoning blue

Bewitchingly decadent blue

Que Faire?

Hélas, hélas, hélas

I’ve looked up towards the sun too long

Although it feels like just a moment

 —unable to unwind

Now, in the forefront of my mind

Is not the last blue sky I saw.

But rather, the gray mist that came before

How fondly I will remember those silver slivers of light

Those falling, fleeting thoughts,

darting towards a steel ideal.

 I knew—at least I thought I knew

Distinction cannot appear behind a haze.

I knew. I knew! I knew?

Yet I squint to get a glimpse

Behind this opaque blue—

My intention? Qui sait?

 Je Continue.

 J’ai appris J’ai appris, J’ai appris

This wave has come at me in threes.

I smell Remnants of blur in the breeze

Cette vague, Cette vague de ma vie
Taking French / 2011.

Heights

             My friends from High School recently came to visit me and the three of us took a train into the city on a Sunday afternoon. Personally, I was hoping for a mellow escape—while simultaneously ignoring an unfinished paper looming in the distance. My friends were hoping for a little adventure, not very familiar with New York City, and ready to make the most of the one afternoon that they had to explore. What we found was right in between—just what we all needed. We found ourselves at a downtown apartment right off of Wall Street—a friend of my friends whom she’d met in her travels.  Needless to say (as the pictures sort-of say it all) he was exceedingly wealthy. 

And I was exceedingly inspired, to each their own.

It’s that feeling in your stomach, as if you swallowed a phone and keep receiving texts—that faint buzzing, that weakness of limbs, subtle numbness of fingers. The fear of heights doesn’t seem like fear at all. Rather, carnal reaction.  I can’t control it, I can’t stop it, I can barely endure it, but I don’t mind it. I step away from the edge with a jerk of my legs, when my newly fragile body has had enough. I wasn’t fragile before. But that was before I found myself atop the world. Well, sort of. Atop of the city hailed the greatest in the world—bright lights as far at the eye can see, subtle lights even further, and a newfound trust in the existence of the lights beyond the horizon, an assuredness resulting from this feeling.

The feeling of insignificance that spurs from the realization that we are all just tiny specks of dust within one of the thousands of illuminated squares, sitting side by side on the face of a high-rise. And Simultaneously, the feeling of insight, spurring from the realization that each speck of dust has the power to think of them self as a speck of dust, the power to draw the shades on their illuminated square, the power to look down on the rest of the specks, with respect or distain, depending on the day, depending on the speck. And furthermore, when those specks get together, in a cloud of indiscernible dust, the power to build the greatest city in the world.

Downtown NYC / 2011

life, simply.

Life is not a building

It's a railroad

We're not building up,

We're moving forward

For--if we simply build upwards,

We're destined to come crashing down. 
2010