I wrote this while pulling an all-nighter in a library. It's about the decision of whether or not to continue working or to take a break to crank out a poem. Alternatively, I found out after reading it for a few friends that it can also be read (quite easily) as deciding whether or not to take a break to go masturbate. Definitely not the intended message, but it works.

Sitting lonely but not alone
Sleep deprived, but still alive.
My only company residing inside of me
The altercation, among inspiration, motivation, and procrastination
Chaotic chemicals, primed to burst, dissolve my inward conversation
So I default to my faults and react to this corrosive situation
Productivity my casualty
My mind and my pen moving faster than me
Necessity awakening my creativity because
In actuality, making an alternate reality supersedes 
the only actual alternative: reality.
So how can it be that this free flowing energy cannot be harnessed like electricity?
Just like a bolt, this wild dog cannot be leashed
Only released by a mixture of caffeine and the sweet release
Of ejaculatory speech thrust upon the page
Uncaged like the beast
When it vanishes I wonder
If this is lightning, where’s the thunder?
This flash of inspiration followed only by 
the soul-searching silence of self-deprivation
Like the mime kept quiet by his own imagination
I make invisible bars for my incarceration
Suffering from this situation’s suffocation 
Trapped in this vehicle of my creation
Without my consent, without hesitation
 The auto drives away from the word asphyxiation


The All-Nighter

A hero once said that my actions define me
But which actions that happen go in to designing
The blueprint found in my shoeprint
Experiences like residue bent around my boots
Caked on like icing still wet with goo
Add a candle to it every year until I am dirt too
And when that lit wick whipped by the wisps of time and wind
Drips down to nothing but a tip
Like that last line of lead writing one last gift
With my blessed last breath before everlasting death
There is only one weight waiting
One word I want to throw from my chest
Yes
That positive definitive unrelenting expletive yes
Three illuminating letters glowing together in unfettered fire forever
Burning down the darkness of my unquestionable questions
My incoherent obsessions
Confusion defused with my final confession
Because really, was I meant to live with permeating uncertainty
Restricting my belief to only that which I can see
Murky fog like a mask
flasks filled with black liquid seeping through synapses
or motor oil leaking from the wreckage of crashes
of waves, slapping the sand silly
making messes of the castles I’m building
Every bit of sand some master plan
Spires rise with the dreams I’m fulfilling
But I can’t protect them from the sands of time
Nor can I create what I call undefined
With every step sinking, being swallowed by the grain
I’m not insane, just walking blind

And what am I?
How do I define in one line an entire lifetime?
Who is me?
What is this being through whom I am feeling?
Am I the body I walk with
The mouth that I talk with
The mind I used to think that I thought with?
Who knows

So before I die, there’s only one thing I want on my mind
A problem so hard it has been solidified
But the answer so delicious every letter’s been chicken-fried
A word so concrete that when I drop it on the street
The earth quakes in such a way that I can dance to the beat
And what I want, is for once
Instead getting strangled by subtext
Or seeking different angles and context
Or being mangled by the syntax
Instead of circling vultures and cross referencing cultures
Instead of rectifying the death-defying ever-trying journey of always being objective
I want to choose and unusual directive
To lock up my unsure detective
To be unnaturally selective
And to just say
yes


The Last Word

Tattered flesh like rags sewn into my being

Patterns of patches, needles and string

Become locked doors and latches on an organic machine.

Constructed callouses crafted from the constructs of my callous craftiness

Trading traits from friends and acquaintances

Borrowing a billion little bits, I trim chunks of wit that I staple to my skin

With the piercing pain of a pinpoint prick, I pile pieces of identities procured to protect,

Animate armor that a sewing needle injects, flesh formed for antiseptic aesthetics.

Cross stitching blood pacts like train tracks turning my body into a map

So that a mirror’s immaculate glass reflects nothing but cracks

I guess that’s why my luck lacks, because with that she sways sweetly onto the scene

With all the villainy of a warm summer breeze—just as jubilant, just as fleeting

Her words send chills, tugging on stray tendrils as if they were loose lint

Her loose lips fire flippant phrases delivered like scissors 

My threads slither unraveling around curves

like serpents constricting, but in reverse

Shedding my skin, coils bundle at my feet

I am undone. I am uncomplete.

A shower of fleshy leaves fall with meteoric speed

This hail of failures turning me into a wintery tree

Naked and ashamed beneath the gaze of the sun’s scrutinizing blaze

Muscles exposed, fluids drain until only dried meat remains

Immobilized by pain, my body blackened like ash

Every movement cracks. Raw rags cushion the crash

As I fall to my knees making red handprints on the pavement

Daggers in the wind batter my body barren

And as that warm summer breeze floats on full of bliss

Fresh air freezes my fingers into a coagulated fist


Skinned

So here's something I threw together. It's a tongue-in-cheek description of a pretty simple social interaction. Enjoy.

Have you ever been filled with inexplicable rage?
Like life’s loving caress is just rubbing you the wrong way
That feeling like saying back words backwards
Like a shot missing the backboard, Like you’re building a backlog, Like you’re back in a black bog
the unbacked backup backing the backside of the side you know is wrong
back to back with the backwall with nowhere to back down, voices just sounds in the bleak background
but back in reality you’re safe and sound 
still, you hate the sound of buzzing beeps, raging machines
car horns and popcorn about to burst in the frictionless heat
despising the ground that touches your feet
pure irritability for no other reason than that the world resonates repeatedly the wrong way with your mental machinery
But even worse is that inquiry of pure fucking villainy
From some well-meaning friend just trying to be friendly

“Hey! How are you doing?”

What the hell gives that bitch the right to pry?
Knowing full well you’ll have to lie, Because nobody in their right mind
Will admit that the only real problem is that everyone won’t just simultaneously fucking die
So you look straight into the face of innocence
To those pretty little eyes filled with the emptiness of ignorance and unapologetic happiness
And telling the truth is only possible like this:
A brass knuckled fist straight between those little spheres of bliss

In the front of your mind you fantasize about firing on the frontlines
About putting everyone on the front side of the front end of a front engine, and making the front page headlines
About having a front row seat to watch the front runner fall just a few feet before the finish line
but we can’t reverse to the verse about back words
so you put on a front and move forward with the four words she is sure she deserves
“I’m doing great, thanks.”



TheMysteriousQuesadilla