to those who've given up on love

I think I've given up on love;
I've no need left to look above.
I'll look forward instead--
or back, or below--
but I'll never find myself in the eyes
of the unreal.

For there are two realities, and two only:
the world of the dreaming present,
and the world of no consequence.

And the drowning serpents are swimming in both
pools. Your reputation precedes nothing, least
of all yourself-- shortcomings and comeuppance
and all.

You're
twisting
in the wind,
writhing
in the fire of my abject,
whoring stare; my black gaze
bores spiteful, nightful
black spores
into your tepid brain;
from the skin of your hands, your neck,
spring sores.

By the skin of my teeth I've
escaped unscathed
(i: unscalded by your eyes)--
and as I come wrathing down upon wanton smiles
and complacent haze
and concurrent opposites, blithe mannerisms--
you quiver, but without the warning

sign
of anticipation. I

can not wait for you to show up at my door,
yet
there is a voice
(he calls himself Logic-- the drunk bastard)
who tells me that He
(meaning You, meaning You, my Darling)
is never coming.

And my Laughter grows saltier
over the passing hours, as
I begin to think the voice
(Logic-- confident fucker)
is right.

My laughter is drowning in sobs.

Yet you reappear; every time-- and only just
a little farther away, this time
and this time
and this.

But I can still reach you;
I can still save you;
I can still get you;
I can still have you-- until
I decide to throw myself away again, until
this skin has
(once again)
grown far too thin, far too small--
and I: far too slimy, far too
forever too far away.

From Here; from Me;
from You;
from truth and all the lies you've proposed,
from truth
and all the lies I've exposed;

my head's been lying to me--
I'm not sad; I'm happy.

Love comes not from the World,
but comes from the world Within.

the ghosts i experience when i choose to look back

friends and family mean
everything and nothing
to me, apparently. i do not know myself-- he who lived more than three years ago--

and i find myself living from hand to mouth:
eternally, once again, for the first time.

these words which do not so much slide out of me
so much as they
fall,
decrepit-- like a blackdead fetus-child from the spot between a negligent non-mother's thighs--

these words are no longer mine. and i can't help but think that the effort it would take to reclaim them
(these aborted thoughts and coathanger-lacerated old selves)
is both grandiose and minute; miniscule; entirely within my atrophied grasp.

i have taken ownership of nothing.
nothing is mine, nothing is right.
nihilism and buddhism now occupy the same space in my cranium;
capital and lowercase letters, too.

kierkegaard, and the other guy-- the guy with opposing thoughts?
can't remember. the love of wisdom must have left me, for i remember everything
(and by everything i mean nothing--
I REMEMBER NOTHING).

and my meter is immeasurable, and my assonance is nonexistent,
and my rhyme scheme was never there, but add it to the pile and let's watch it burn.
i used to have a midas touch, an editing eye, a discriminating taste; i used to have something i gave away.
a burning torch tossed-- halfheartedly, with no real remorse or heartsorrow
feeling of soulplague-- into the ether, into the black, into the place where

forgotten memories and lost dates and inconsequential components and garbage and seafoam and polystyrene dreams of a child's creation of the futureself all get blended into a grey-snot slurried mess.

this passage has no end; it has no thing to say--
and i will pass on into the next day
(and the next) without a care, without
any promise or hope of a future;
without myself; without you.

give it away

When I met with the director of undergraduate admissions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago-- when I showed him some of my work-- he took interest in the fact that I gave most of my favorite work away. He said there was something to that.

And that has bugged me for some time; I hadn't been able to really figure out why I gave away the things I'm most proud of.

Staying at my dad's house this weekend, I've seen various pieces of metalwork I've done over the years which I had either sold to him (because he wanted to pay me for them) or given to him as gifts. Part of what kills me about seeing these things is knowing that he liked them so much and was so proud of me that he wanted to keep them. He even wears a ring I cast (four, five years ago now?) every day.

But what I've realized is that I give these things away because having them around reminds me of happier times and of the things I was once capable of creating. Because of a lack of materials or workspace or the fact that I work full-time at dead-end jobs-- and for a thousand other reasons-- I can't produce like I used to.

And for some reason, I am also afraid to create anything. Keeping my past creations away from me lowers the standard and the level of pressure, in a sense; it makes it easier for me to forget, let go, move on. It makes growing up and growing weary and growing sad easier.

If I keep anything I've created, I will do one of the following things: I will give it away; I will throw it away; I will change it; I will paint over it (and be disappointed); I will destroy it in any manner I can. These things are at once a mirror of my self and a window into the past. They measure just how far I've strayed from the path I wanted to be on. They measure my loss. They mock me.

The few pieces I still have gather dust-- and they have either been painted over, torn up and thrown away-- or they have tarnished and corroded and been bent out of shape. They were things that I was once so proud of. They are my highschool yearbook; they are the infamous "skinny jeans"; they are evidence I need to get rid of.

They are also pieces of myself which I give away in the hopes that they will be better cared for and better appreciated than they might be in my possession.

I can see myself in the still-reflective surfaces of some of the things I made my dad (incense burner, metal-box-turned-votive-holder). I don't like what I see. I never like what I see.

But the fact that I'm too blocked up and fucked up to make anything new that I can be equally as proud of-- it makes me so sad.

arm thyself

had i tried, i might've been
where you are now; i might've seen

a future-self, a something-else-than-where-i've-been-and-what-i've-seen.

how much should i give away? how much wind
'neath withered wings
will it take
for upward movement; lift; flight--

why should i go; where do i miss you; and why not?

far away; heart, head; i never knew you.

from where does this loss flow how may it be stemmed why do i care sitting here again i've made a loop conked my head why again why again where am i to go what means stream of i can't continue doing this it doesn't work in plugs and meters i have none no rhyme undone i have no meter i have no measure i have no song to sing

anymore.

arm thyself against yourself,
prepare for battle every day.
amidst the fires, amidst the rains and gas-filled trenches
of the everyday--

you've yet to find any peace. i'm telling you
it will never come; the battle rages on.

in the silence between bombs;
in familiar impact (lead kiss chest)
inside your tomb (lead lick flesh)
and among dead friends (lead bite bone)
you'll find your peace (lead hit home).

you've gone nowhere, you cannot run you've done nothing, you're never done you cannot you can not you can not do a thing you are paralyzed by what you fear by yourself by what you love by the way i forgot to mention the tracks are hot and waiting for you they are hot they long to kiss you heat rises from the tracks on your arm there is nothing and your futures are one and everything and belonging to another being which you have yet to become through falling from where you once were and you and you and you can do nothing to stop yourself from movement in any direction you are pong bouncing, bouncing without the laws of physics and it is yours to take control of yours to find the meaning yours to do something with

but you refuse you refuse you refuse

and why?

arm thyself against your Self.
the enemy has you trapped.
he is in your heart;
he is in your home, and suddenly--

none of it is yours anymore.
and in a few years, it happens again.

do nothing; do something; be damned.