did life's dark impress prey itself positive upon ya', kid?
now where are you and where is your precious home?
are you somewhere between the difference
of the distance of you finishing dialing on the landline
and the phone starting to ring?

and so you dig--
inner-dialogue and all.

what was the dream you had, you had that one time?
when you still had dreams?
that one where you'd run away from the night and into the white and unfocus your eyes so you could see underneath your bed where
you would hide with the bugs?

where have you gone? are you still underneath your bed
with all of the ways
you wish you could have been?-

-a better sibling
a better son-

dear vessel;
your poetry is melting inside of me
inside of you
playing fossil
can you tell
you stranded vessel?

why can't you watch nature without feeling awkward?
you dirty voyeur!
just imagine you are an acorn!
a stubborn suburban substitute with clenched palms in the parking lot
feeding traffic and weather
through a colander
to hangmen
on the eights.


what was that mess
that was set
deep inside of you
as a kid?



and so I dig.

some years ago
we would wait
at the bus stop
in the cold
and the snow

and when it would come
I would feel lucky
to sit next to somebody
and imagine tangible
the warmth
they shared me.


then I would sit
in the library
and stare out
into the white,
close my eyes
and wish
that i might die.

(NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR)

and so you dig.
inner-dialogue and all,
wading through your know-better, past worm and forgotten pipe to find an old telephone line lain so long ago that not so much a well-placed wink would connect.
your own roots forgetting the difference between themselves and this copper,
each breath entangled further,
your thirsty threatening toward accidental bridges,
the clockwise world finally trapping you and swearing to set you straight.

deep within you, set far across your sadness,
five words ring out in endless and unreal haunt

YOU WERE BORN A NUMBER

some words just have to, left with little choice,
like glowing maps set somewhere along some far away burnt horizon,
post the little-red-knee-tops you want to bring them,
the surface seething and breathing, beckoning your language to step suddenly and completely,
to come help empty the forever cornered compass of its implied divine meaning-

"who put me here?", it wonders across the stuck land;

"dig me up!", it cries;

"BREATH ME OUT!"

a glow reflects off the soft broken glass sky sending snakes through your spine,
the naked and still night speaking in shallow past-tense, some sort of wicked reverse to lead you, or melt you, or remind you the single simple and undeniable truth that the only secret
any human ever keeps
is their own mortality.

clothed in the blackboard backs of your sleepless eyelids
even half-truths feel fact, indistinguishable in the dark, threatening you with what you need to move on,
but are you not so safe in your middle place?

when the sun finally wakes and breaks your flesh back open,
a new sense of direction itching in your pores,
you tip-toe forward and leave your eyes closed only to prove to yourself it's not your eyes that know the hell between your ears
can't tell either but instead something that can hardly be thought or felt let alone held or made home points ever so slightly as you make your way painting nostalgias in your wake.

it isn't until you are almost too far entirely that the glowing map, a rusty italic figment of some concept you once had or held briefly between dreams snickers wildly,
the compass buried alive somewhere within your blood, breathing You out, carefully
completely,
whispering for you to take your steps back
so that you may take your steps tiredly,
softly,
finally,
within.

tomorrow you wake up and there's a ladder your eyes climb straight down without even trying;
you're not sure why, but it feels like the bottom's been waiting like a starting line.

just a few steps in there's a faded green sign that seems to imply a sense of direction,
your parent's noses side-by-side, facing forward,
and in it's reflection there isn't so much a list,
as a set,
of three things:

I bet you,

the perpetual lost voice
the growing cherry eyes
the you who learned how not to try

will never find out why.

chiseled it's way through wet amino chains and
found itself set conspicuously aside whatever it is
that's been making your decisions as of late.

"I found me", you dream to yourself.

"The first time you get lost, you are almost there", I dream back.


Tomorrow you wake up and remember you can do anything.

watching our parents grow old, sitting on the fence
pick a side
any side

grass is there
a bug is there
hair falls from my sister's tongue
and I know it's mine so I smile

then our parents watch us grow up, fall off the fence
my insides choose their sides
my sister cries and
for a second I almost admit that I closed my eyes in the thick

but

when we let our milky fingers
find their own,
they never let us down,
and they never take us home.