sepia

i am listening to music from a simpler time—the days of fire and indian sunsets—and i remember that it didn't always have to be this heavy. the day will come when the lonesome train will lurch underfoot again, when the sunshines hot and the stars are hazy with midaugust delirium, when my tongue takes to an unfamiliar language and everything passing in front of me is bright in its simple undiscovered state.
none of this old tired opulence of the northeast, no: a whitewashed room will do, a crucifix, a subjunctive form not found in english. the sky will be mercilessly blue and i will feel the rush of wild horses again. i cant never lose myself in academia nor a man nor my foolish overfull dreams for the future: none of them have the equivalent simple reverence of this moment
amongst the cactus blooming in dead rivers while the rockies blot out the stars, leaving us to guess where their silhouette actually rests.

freefall

the news sinks in and everything dissolves of color.I am in a rage so red i can’t see the door in front of me-- but i stumble through it, drunk and sobbing with my first victim,who is already as good as dead: the television has been asking to be thrown off the roof for some time. it explodes as i scream at the top of my lungs. next a vacuum cleaner; the fucking thing never gets used in this shithole anyway. the toaster oven sails flamingly through the late gray afternoon to join the graveyard of broken machinery below. i wish to god i had a bat. my friends hold me back. i am screaming, beating the ice with my bare fists until my knuckles bear blood, but nothing answers my echo except my own voice. the sun fades on the vista of broken vacuum tubes and mangled wires.

it is always only a simple matter of time until it turns dark; the universe is woven with laws of inevitability. the arc of the projectile predicts it must return to earth no matter how many poems we write, no matter how hard we cry, no matter how much we suspend belief to reject the relentless pull of gravity.

wolf like me

dreamt this morning:
the sheep were standing huddled together under the starlight until one of them cried out. it started to come apart, its face splitting grotesquely in half, until the wolf’s undercurrent became visible.
he woke up wet from the flesh surrounding him and was electrified by the smell of the skin of his own brethren; he fell upon them greedily until all the snow beneath their soft bellies was stained with steaming muscle and entrails. he worked his teeth through windpipes and thighs till none remained whole and silence returned.

alone and satiated, he raised his bloody muzzle over their ruined corpses and howled his true nature until it echoed off the very face of the waning moon itself.

duel

The midnight oil always burns off just before the sunbeams begin to show above the ground. today their first hints refract through all of the ice on the sidewalks and trees, momentarily turning this emptiest of hours into an unreal glass sculpture.
i stand on the roof of my building above this beautiful, horrifying domain, face-to-face with my heartless adversary, whose relentless whispers tempt me to abandon all of this and taunt me with visions of peaceful sleep if only i would just drop my burdens.
our showdown at dawn would be more becoming of the wild-west roots of my native city than the quiet, pastoral hills of new england: i imagine a tumbleweed rolling by, set to a desolate harmonica. dust whips the eyes of the frightened passerby, children hide in the skirts of the women. a man frowns from the creaking doors of the saloon.
the pistols are heavy on my hips; my hands float above their holsters. then the first light of day touches my boot, and i DRAW

the waves

i get called to the scene, nothing specific except ‘she’s hurt’. i walk up the stairs already pulling gloves onto my hands.
i size her up.
she is young, a freshman, with flawless skin and dangerous curves but a face that betrays her continuing ignorance of these powers. her eyes are burning wide with horror so that she looks precisely like a deer in headlights. she doesnt want to tell me what happened, exactly, or who was involved, but i come to understand that yet another vodka-breathed boy has succumbed to his inner violence.
i check her vitals, make small talk, but as her eyes well up with tears,
all i want to do is touch her cheek and say
oh honey, you wont never be as weak as him, you won’t never be as flawed as that moment when his morality finally failed him. fuck, i am so sorry that your introduction to their nature had to come as quick and and brutal as the atlantic ocean flooding the mouth of an overboard passenger. aint much to do now but gather up your body and lower your expectations: the world's cold blue horizons don't care much. oftentimes people forget,
and then they drown on account of their own foolish chains, made of iron and stretching for miles through the dark water.

if these wings should fail me, lord won't you meet me with another pair

I wake up with a start and a sheen of sweat from one bad dream or another. the morning has come and I don’t even remember falling asleep. something even worse than the quiet dread of watching another faint arc of the sun over purgatory settles in my gut. something feels wrong. I pull out the cheap plastic earplug I shoved in my ear the previous evening to silence the house party in the apartment below mine and a wave of pain washes through me. I hear fluid dripping and with it goes my hearing until just static and a muffled approximation of reality remains. my stomach heaves but I’m late for a meeting so I ignore it.

my advisor listens silently to my tales of academic woe over the last semester and tells me that I’m not cut out for this, I am not distinguishing myself, and maybe I’m just wasting the school’s resources; she adds with a note of kindness that perhaps giving up would be wise to spare myself more pain. I make no effort to explain myself. I say nothing of the crippling death and other blood losses that 2007 has dealt me, nor do I discuss how the resultant anemia has rendered me so that I can only stare numbly at the organic chemistry textbook without absorbing a single molecule.

I turn the now-deaf ear towards her and look out at the desolate library lawn, grimacing because these days, hope shining thin as the december light. she’s angry. she’s still talking: I’m sliding into fuck-up territory.

but I don’t tell her that it’s too late and I am too far gone to turn back now. life is too short and too cruel to be faced sitting down, even if my bones feel as brittle as the ever-multiplying empty bottles on my desk and I fear a fatal misstep at any moment.
she concludes and I take my leave with my head bowed.

I am walking outside watching the clouds gather. it is silent; there is not another human in sight. I light a cigarette, shivering through my 3 wool sweaters, and softly curse the foreboding massachusetts sky. upon the sound of the words exiting my lips, sleet begins to fall in sheets, coating the long road before me with black ice. the skeleton trees stir as the wind picks up.