With a focus on the most basic mechanisms
I have been learning a lot about the way I perceive the world lately
and I find release in these instinctual truths.

First:

The light comes from above
and I am heavy in her warmth.

This may seem like a simple observation,

But when all else begins to contort

and gravitate into the pearl surfaces of a humanoid mirage that I have grown to call your memory

I find comfort in the transcending paradigm of life that

the light

comes from above.

My love is in my warmth.

My warmth is where raw elements begin to sift into the new

And our hearts delve into the old.

I am standing here

On the banks of Lake Eternity

blankly staring at all that may not exist beyond its waters.

I can tell you how it feels

to be here;

 to find yourself as the cause for losing the one thing
you love

At first glance, you may see yourself

channeled into a truer essence;

paper-bound

and conforming to the senses you may have forgotten were there;

glossy and shuffled in random order, they were there;

before you participated in the introspection of your introspective behavior,
 they were there.

These thoughts are overwhelming

 So now
you write.

And you have to catch a second glance in order to carefully complain of the complainer.

Take those laminated thoughts

and tape them on the backs of migration

for  just like your old friend, depression,
 these feelings have been known to migrate, repopulate

and mutate

to fit the page, come on

put them on the page, Alex

and catch them in the rye.

Lie, convincingly enough
and no one will know that you do this because you are scared.

That what you write may believe you
but it is hard to believe what you write.

So speak up

And aim to please.

Speak up while these pages drain into the eaves

And water the Earth.

Water what you have grown to hate

and call it genuine.

Speak up and just keep doing what you need to.

You need these poems more that they do.

I have seen the way you flip through the pages looking for yourself.

Well now
you can create yourself.

This, is your chance to start.

Just, bend that page and let your pen run through it,

But, “paper or plastic?” was never meant to be a question for the heart.

These, things have been bleeding into you more than the other way around.

I mean who were you trying to convince?

You had this coming.

So here I am.

It is as though my hand is half dipped into a still lake,

There is an overwhelming detachment from what is on the tips of my fingers.

Every inch of you

 has been
on the tips
of my fingers.

So here I am.

It is as though everything has only been where those pearl faces linger:

At the edge of my bed; drenched in the lyrics by which I have come to remember you.

My thoughts of you dance like mirages
 on the water when the light hits it

just right-
At the edge of my bed.
This is why I have been sleeping on the couch in my own house.

So here I am, amongst the foliage on the banks.

I dove into the ancient spaces of the ocean and pulled out what others seem to ignore.

Pulled out those words that echo in the background of conscious static before you signed them into existence,

Until I lined the floor with all the weaknesses I have for you
scattered about like the space

between

everything

My love

I have sifted you into existence

I have been building a human from the ground up,

in my mind.

I have placed you next to eternity there

so I may take you with me whenever I feel like getting lost.

But the light has been twisting,

And I am no longer sure of reality.

So I have taken the sun within my grasp and hung it on the wall of my living room;

on the empty space where our painting used to be.

I want to see how the figment of you looks when the waves of rays catch you from the side.
I want to see your pearl mirage dance on the water before my eyes

And I know

I may do all this as a way to lie to myself

To forget that we both were the problem

But god damn it, if you don’t look so pretty

when the light hits you
 just right.

My mind is a childhood street paved with Christmas lights
and blurred
 by Chevrolet exhaust
I have breathed in the steal dust foreshadowing the prison
this place
will become
This
 is Flint Michigan

Where sightseeing feels like a Sunday morning nightmare
A funeral service
Where deep grey stained glass
sprays liquefied light like feelings of color shattered dreams lying in shards on the first modern American ruins
My words should cement like street signs that warn
Do not trespass here
you cannot protect yourself
fresh wounds
on old scars
The light sticks like every lie you ever told yourself
heavy on the skin
Most places smell of abandonment
while the rest linger in denial
caught up in the euphoric stench of nostalgia

My family found their place here
And I
have a last name
to prove it

We Arendt supposed to stay here 
But misplaced dreams lead to misplaced lives. 
Now
an Old Man builds a house and a garden where home grown stories sprout and flourish,
but
You can’t ignore the cage for pests
Hidden in the corn husks
Set by a trip wire
Some things just aren’t welcome
and some things
 will never leave

He
 was there in the beginning
Young
and strapped with ambition like a utility belt
A shed of tools, because
Depression years will leave any broken man singing for his salvation
They
are dancing in a conga line rubble through gateways for the delusional
looking for happiness in those sanctuary-like cars
These kids got graffiti as big as the auto industry tagged all over their skin
it says: “junior’s a flood of success, just like dad.
Junior’s got Pontiac in his blood
They killed the chief and named their steel engines after him just for spite
This place is a tragic family reunion
America was a kid raised on genocide and the fear of god hiding in fat wallets
like shackles in black bloodlines

He
saw mostly
the insides of factories.
Assembly Lines live and breathe like organs
intestines of a machine just trying to get all 
the Shit
out
A liver lacking in enzymes to deconstruct this alcoholic city
While workers sit in silent cells, stuck standing on  minimum wage like a balance beam
Ever aging
Ever yearning
Mitochondria dissolving


In Flint, 
The American Dream amounts to the leftovers of Business Men scheming.
Truth spills in the form of a rhetorical question
You want freedom?
You better have a car to get to and from work where you make cars for people to get to and from work to make cars for people to get to and from work to make cars
Sing for Salvation the whole time!
This
 is Flint
Go to war for this system
Come back an old man
Plant that garden of stories and call them nostalgia
I see nothing… but grey stained glass 
And skin, heavy with cells of sorrow that hope used to hold up with her Detroit Piston Legs
Hope is busted
Rusted from tears shed by the city herself
A stained statue of liberty
sobbing
 on a fire that used to rage from the sparks of Flint and Steel
Now extinguished

Shit

Those tears looked so damn pretty running down all that ember colored stained glass 
now turned grey from the rising ashes, it left
 a steel prison of thirst that Lake Michigan couldn’t quench
He saw it coming once or twice
I’m sure
Temporary and fragile comfort can be found in the chapels of empty liquor bottles,
but prayers written on the inside of glass fade with sobriety
They are dancing again
Planting seeds in the garden
 and watering them
with cheap whiskey.

She is easy to see
if you know how to recognize her skin
It is living, and it moves
all suicide dancing up her ignorance
there are rain dances taking place on her wrist, begging
for a storm to flood out of them
Her skin moves to keep her place
to keep her fit into this world that she is so destined to just
drain out of
Her skin protects her
ironically
like shadowboxing at high noon
she only fights with herself in little fits
Her skin is young
Eighteen colors for her eighteen years
all contradicting like photoshopped beauty
I know
I should have never left her sizzling off scrambled rainbows into my medieval chimney afterglow
But I paused her there, mid evaporation
I told her
I am usually more ash than fire

But under her skin
Under the pinky side of her palm
There is a creek bed with rip tides big enough for oceans
She said I was the spirit of her waters
But I was just sucked in by the undertow
I told her
I don’t fare well with maiden voyages
I don’t even have my earth legs yet
and the veins in my feet resemble the feathers of a blue jay
I will be no great awakening, but I will prey on your soft shelled eggs of self esteem

You won’t stay real to me
You won’t
I told her

Soon, you will be a broken temple after though
A love drought empty Blue Nile
Careening into a dried up Ethiopian waterfall
You are beautiful from my months of erosion
and tattooed by my bite marks on the pinky side of her palm
I told her
I ripped off a piece of you
But I didn’t keep it
It weighed me down
You  were a long winded “fuck!” yelled on a solitary 2 a.m.
contained by car doors in a suburb driveway
I told her
You will be forgotten by the next sunrise
I told her
I am not of this world that you so half ass tried to escape
I told her
Attempting to kill yourself can say a lot
But that word “attempt” pendulums back and forth in your head like the noose that you didn’t use
I told her
I am one pissed off teenager, and you will be in the wake of my death metal rage
do not take me so seriously
I told her
I am very fucked up

She said you’re drunk
I said you must have missed her the first time, but it’s not your fault
none of it is your fault

The sun will rise again
Greeting your palm side creek like an old friend
Giving light, so you can see that color you have been looking for
I
Will be here
spitting ashes into the dark

I built a hospital out of Mars
Healed myself on her piano key craters
and seeped into her cosmic coasts like a crescendo

She took my flaws and turned them into golden eyes
Took my archival flesh and turned it dark
Where my allergies were
She left an archipelago of red dust
I call her potion
I call her calming
I call her home
Her tranquil rivers flow like strings of a harp
washing smooth harmony over me with every lazy rapid
I swim in her, she is changing everyone around me
while wrapping me in a butter cream soot cocoon
I can feel the gradual metamorphosis in the way I cannot stop staring into the abyss of mirrors
My image feels infinite in them
I walk lightly through familiar red foothills and let God cake onto my heals
She is purity
I call her Demon stealing
I call her abandonment

I am surrounded by earthlings I used to know
They are oblivious to this planet consuming our identities
It is spitting us out in its own image
It has a mind of its own and I constantly get the feeling that there is something watching me in the warped shape of the night, and from the shifting faces of my children
I can tell
 it knows
 that I know

Have you ever felt your mind bending into itself?
Have you ever felt your identity slipping into the liquid core of what is becoming your new conscience?
Well I am trudging through the murky swamp in between the two
I think I am talking to myself again
Sometimes, I speak stable words
But usually it feels like I am comforting a pet before I put down
Put me down
Everyone else seems to be transitioning so well
Well Put me down, Mars
See, I already slit myself open once, but I couldn’t escape
You cried me back up
loud as a sunset
you whispered to me:

You don’t want to die, you just want to get a taste for it.
Try it on in a dressing room and wear it like a fashion trend you can’t afford
Like a push up bra holding up all your false depression

Its all in your head
but that didn’t keep you from trying to killing yourself, did it?
Tell me,
Did it feel a lot like nothing on the tip of your tongue
Did it feel a lot like the fucking truth you are so afraid of
Did you feel like a coward because you can’t commit to life or death
Did it feel cold
being frozen in your selfishness like that
Oh yeah!
I bet it felt like the buried truth

Well I’m sorry, Mars

I didn’t mean to be, but I’m addicted to it
Addicted to how unbiased it felt
Addicted to how disillusioned the end was
Addicted to bending the lives of people I used to be, just too see if they’ll break or at least show themselves
Maybe they’ll scream
Scream “Stop!”
Scream to feel my nerves again
Fire every single one at once, because I don’t want to ease into this new Martian persona

Is this how it felt, every other time I left myself  behind?
Or have I suddenly grown some awareness?
Some insanity?
Why am I the only one who notices that we are all changing, all the time?
If Identity is so malleable, then how can we claim to have a soul?
Oh that’s right, we don’t
Put me down
Dig like a Martian
and bury me deep
Don’t hesitate
Jupiter won’t see a damn thing with all those moons swinging around her
She got one called Ganymede
Largest in the solar system
She loved Zeus a little too much and got ice all over her
Bury me there
200 kilometers under her skin
Drown me in the ocean beneath her surface
Just get me out of here
Get me away from all the other contortionists
Unwind my identity into the dark matter connecting us all
or I’ll do it myself
I’ll do it right this time

You won’t even be able to tell where your sands end
and my blood
begins

I have never seen a city built out of refineries before
 pumping chemicals around the clock
but the Dr. Seuss landscape looks so sleepless
And at night
the sky above looks oil spill sad
It cloaks my masquerade happy and blends with my vision

I cannot see much, but
There is a girl in the thick of the muck
She is taking it all in
She is finger painting blues bent oil notes and amoeba chords

Kimba
I have never seen a lion’s mane on  a human before
But the clear sky savannah looks so sleepless
and at  night
the black light moon reveals the blood of her loved ones hanging on all that grass
It is waving agony and blends with her nightmares
Each one is the tragedy she sees in others
Each morning
The oil spill gulf I drink smells of blood
I didn’t notice before, but now
 it’s the only thing I do

The neurons in my brain stem are wound taught around this fresh thought
like the casing of shotgun shells
I soak it in the stone age of my throat
Dissolve it into words and call it Paleolithic
It is the cave drawings on my sternum
She
 put them there
She finger paints Neanderthals… being chased by businessmen…
The  women watch in confusion
She finger paints me a Galveston beach under the skin of my back
Right where the sensation cannot be scratched away
So I sing to her
I say….
“Rape me”
…
Yeah, I always hated Nirvana
But she smiles when I sing along
So, I hum beautiful low
She smiles when cave drawings dance
So, I hum beautiful high

Nirvana is the nest on the tips of her lashes
It is the last thing she sees as she closes her eyes
It is the first thing I see when I open mine on a Galveston beach

It is high tide
I fill my lungs with the cold front depression pooling at the base of my brainstem
But I can feel it now
 raining down in all its glory
She is nirvana without even realizing it
I am losing myself without even realizing it

Using drift wood from her last hurricane I trace my thoughts into the sand
My beach does not read “help”
 or cry out for a savior,
It says: Please
 take off your shoes
and make yourself at home.
Leave footprints everywhere you go
Walk with grace
Step in me
Walk sleepy
move with my bed sheets
Walk clumsy
Leave footprints on my knees
Make me dance

I hope you have something to play music with
‘Cause I got these drum set vocal cords
and they’ve been playin nothin’ but jazz since you tucked you toes under my hamstring
I will give you something you have lost
and make this call and response rather sweet tasting
Make me dance

You are the only one who can tell when a cold front is in my lungs
so hum beautiful low
I smile when you finger paint, so
hum beautiful love
 and I will sing along

I took your confidence once but, I can take your insecurities too
draw them on the caves of my chest
I will hold them there for you
Just to see you happy dance and mean it
Just to see you burst and not try to gather it back up
Just to see you let go
Just to see you do what you love
Just to hear your trumpets
Make me happy dance and mean it
You
Make me
Feel every moment that we’ve got
While we’ve got each other

There are times when I hold all the motives but none of the inspiration to get above the mental games going on in my own head
These hands“
 are meant to be doing more than pacing back and forth over the same area of my skull
Where potential begins to fester with every dying thought
I’m telling you
It must have been raining at midnight when I got these hands
Because most of their time is spent clinging to the swinging chandelier strings of old blues guitarist and the sound of water splashing against my window to remind me that I am not alone
And that music is capable of strumming  limbo into light

But

It most have been Sunday at an internment camp when I got these hands, because they don’t ever fold themselves to pray
They only fold because this indecisive heart is begging them
Please
You potential embracing  lovers
Quit cradling all that adderall
The poems don’t come packaged in the cathedrals walls of those pills like that
Let go
You are a shield resting face down in sorrow collecting the tears of Achilles being stained red with regret
Get up
Dead beliefs are buried in my memory like dead soldiers
You are not saving anyone with a skill like that
Please
Your depression is making you weak and is engraved in your grip
You timid rhythm holders are clenching drum sticks with no drum set
Get over yourself
You aren’t helping anyone
Please
I am ready when you are to reach out
To write on these blank pages again about something other than yourselves

I am ready when you are for this

Between my mouth and these hands
 there is a ministry of foreign affairs.
Inside are seven human beings begging to be respected as such.
They are the MOFA seven
Caged in by torture and famine, they are silent and pleading for safety in the asylum of my words.
I am breathing a Chinese Embassy into them
North Korea
is in between these hands.
It is starving for sustenance in my pitch,
but I am choked up and lazy and walking very slow

Stuck, like tar, to the bottom of my shoe is a dream
Tread into it, is the image of a poet shouting love from the aisles of an American Congress
I walk on him every day.
He is crying ink onto burning flags and is very sad
There is a two-year-old Korean girl smiling a symphony in the embers
She cares nothing of the nature of the world in which she lives
Malnourished and surrounded by her family, she is blissful and very small
God
is very small,
and we often take care of him more than he takes care of us
between my mouth and these hands
there a neighborhood of bedrooms; each ricocheting a different song between its walls.
I am breathing serenity into them.

Two college students make love engrossed in the sounds of death metal, and scream through the walls.
They believe every second of it.

A middle aged widow sits still to the tune of “Let it be,” with nothing to move for. 
The walls
scream into her
and she feels
every second of it.

A young musician celebrates the departure of his cheating ex-girlfriend with red silence rushing from his wrists and “Here Comes the Sun” spinning under a needle
like a ricochet, he never saw it coming and didn’t mean to make such a mess.
God is an atheist
and never meant to make such a mess

Our lives
are soaked in his vomit that reeks denial
I am breathing in God’s immortal regret
Where his love ends, ours begins
I wrote it on the mausoleum walls of my monotone tongue to give my voice resonance reminiscent of Jimi’s guitar set ablaze by the depression God felt when he gave away his hands

Between my mouth and these is everything I live for
I am placing it at you r feet and all around you
Take these words for what they are
and take me for all I wish I could be
Tear the wallpaper-life off of me and build
Manifest your demons and spit on them

We got work to do with these hands
so start stummin your self pity into  love and
use your voice from your hands to
Crack the sky of this world
into light

I have a consciousness that likes to slide off the sides of silent moons
and catch glimpses of all that warm reflected light too dismissible to discourage and
too underwhelming to overcome this void that I am falling into.
It wants me.
It takes no pity while consuming that which claims to have a purpose
Takes no pity of those that devour their predecessors
and brothers
in order to generate the energy necessary in attempting to become the cognition which the universe is missing
I am withering
As an insignificant particle in a self consuming existence,
this soul is becoming nothing more than the flicker of neurons
projecting frames of fleeting thought onto those motel moons
Hoping
that the illusions of youth become truth again
I am lonely,
but getting better
Lonely, but becoming lucent, attempting to become the source of those reflected fractions of light that sprawl out like waves of memories
swivel and flow around hope
unravel this skin and weave it into harmony again, they are a part of me
They whisper and say that we are all together
Our souls are an entity that add up to God, or at least
they could be.

Or maybe
we are just God’s severe case of schizophrenia.
You never know

Love is the only energy that can be created and never destroyed

Let me say this as nicely as possible
You will never find love.
You can
however
become love.
Feel it begin to dissolve and replace every calloused prison you have created within yourself-
It starts in your palms
and ya’ll
there ain’t no stopping it
so you’d better embrace it fast.
Embrace it like a brother, wrists free
let it be a helping hand
Embrace it like floods through broken levees, rebuilder of joy
let it be your hammer of hope
Embrace it like sleep…. nah Embrace it like awakening y’all
in total darkness let it be the Sun
Embrace it like an enemy, shoes switched
weave it into every one of your hugs
Believe me when I say
Embrace it like your dreams
Because it will become who you are
I’m telling you
You have to embrace it
And then let it go
because
These walls
are an Illusion
These walls
This flesh
are for pealing back one heartbreak-panic attack poem at a time
This fist clenched heart is for unraveling and engulfing you in its loving grasp