Thoughts of an Agnostic Insomniac

Thoughts of an Agnostic Insomniac

I. I Don’t Believe in Wants, I Believe in Needs

A little Keystone Light and an exceptional high-fashion hair day

Are recipes for disaster.

We can be part of the underground,

Wailing, painting, and living like Warhol.

I can slap on some Ray-Bans too, you know.

Let’s just drink – I’ll call your chicken Kentucky

If I’m drunk enough.

I can’t thank you enough for this mouthwash.

I insert my head into memory foam.

It feels lukewarm; it feels like suffocation, it feels wrong.

On an air mattress, I observe you tucking me in.

With a kiss to my dirty face,

You make a silent request for my heart

And strut away.

I can’t arrest your mind.

II. I’ve Learned That It’s Impossible to Stay Disappointed in the World Around You

Dear forest of orange, you’re beautiful.

Dear thickets of my heart,

Dear waning moon,

Dear nightlife – you have my full attention.

Dear Halley’s Comet, once shooting through my sky,

You’ve had the liberty that I’ve been searching for.

I’d like to follow your shadow

Into a room where those with secrets go.

It means you could be a radical savior

And it means I could scream as loud as I want.

I followed you.

At the gallery, I saw buckets of paint with shameless shades.

I think I’ll dream about the color of crimson.

We turned into paper cranes

And flexed our stiff wings to the wind.

Our scraps began to scatter

But all we could do was smile.

I’m fond of laughter, especially if it’s in harmony.

It’s like listening to a Christmas choir of children

And having your heartbeat replaced with a butterfly farm.

A Crime Against Inspiration

Sunken muse, what can I do to appease you?
You were once livid and thirsty,
My nectar you drank with fervor.
I can feel you stick to me like
Sweet honey, seeping through the cracks.
My white-knuckled grip is gone,
And now I watch you flutter by,
Your silken wings gracing my oceans of discontent.
You leave ripples and water marks
And fade quickly.

I rest, desperately trying to find you through these beating wings.
You've left a glimmer, faint and ancient
On my life and I feel lesser.

Sunken muse, what can I do to appease you?
Should I clear my mind and think less?
Your influence is toxic and breathes like spirits.

My eyes water.

I can't drink you in -- not like this.
My intoxication is drowning among heavy, wet cinders. No fire.
My lungs fill with water and I grasp for
life. For you, my sunken muse.
I grasp for you, I try to feel your sweet, sweet honey again,
To tease across my lips.
Instead, I feel them darken,
Blue, lonely hues. I cry out for you.

I watch my final breaths cloud the water around me.
A million tiny bubbles dance past my cheeks,
The rose draining from my ivory.
I'm waiting for you to pull me free,
Breathe your sweet life into me,
Cradle me in your honeysuckle arms like a child.

You're a hummingbird,
Your wings echo my heartbeat,
Feverish and desperate and hungry. Ravenous.
You fly so fast against the endless glass
And my even my deft fingers can't keep up.

But why should you cage what you've always wanted?

A muse, a terrified heartbeat, echoing sounds
Off the cages of men who cry in the night.
A fated, cryptic creature,
A lonely, panicked bird.
Sunken muse, what can I do to appease you?

Saturdays = Youth, a Misunderstanding

Saturdays = Youth

Like most, she moved real nice.

She skinned and sweat against her new kill,

aching and folding out like a road map.

She pulled back again, risking everything.

We were clean of that night,

but there was a sheer, fickle sigh of him haunting me.

She called and transferred her heart across four states,

telling me, “this...this is almost gone.”

Someday, we would walk in the shadows and whisper,

“yeah, yeah, yeah.”

She’d whisper,

“faster boy, faster.”

Keep undressing.

We had our secret words in the night sky.

Keep in circles,

We had a method to that romance.

With luckless logic,

That was all we knew how to say.

We took it back to the room,

shattered by beats, but we couldn’t help our singing.

Someday, we would walk in the shadows and whisper,

“it’s so safe. It’s so safe.

Down here, it’s so safe.

Down here, it’s so safe for you.”

She was a great, young girl,

a brave, young girl.

I cried into singed stars as I watched her slip out of reach.

Strutting like a rock star,

She was nothing like I’d seen before;

That brave, young girl.

Crack, rev, grind.

Colors cracked. Colors revved.

We were grinding against those colors.

She was my focus.

If she could have drown out those voices,

I would have changed my focus.

She couldn’t control herself, and I kept shaking it up,

turning everything blue.

It had started to fade.

She had fallen and I began shaking.

We thought we’d hear of the tasks – the ones we wouldn’t dare recall.

And we thought if it were clear, we could write it down

and begin to chill the ones that began decaying.

You just needed to love me, girl.

You expelled yourself from those streets,

waiting on the air for me.

It all became louder, all those visions, all that we were dreaming.

Oh God, that plan! It soaked through my body.

We trust, we need, we leave.

It’s coming – we’re growing old.

This could be what we lean on.

This cover, it’s coming off.

Dispel me.

Someday, we’ll walk in the shadows and whisper softly, so softly,

“it’s so safe here.

I’m yours. It’s so safe.

It’s you that saves me.”

A Lesson in Foreign Language

I Can’t Speak Icelandic

He came over to my yard,

A solo man in life.

He sat there without much,

His polo shirt too big.

He confessed, “This is how it should be.”

This is it, this is all.

Recoiling with some sweetness,

He asked me to sing to him.

I fell far down to my knees

As he left a staple on my heart.

Icelandic is Difficult to Pronounce

Boat, we’re going down with you.

Trust me.

Consent across these lines.

A heart flat-lined.

You’re in flight now,

As this mirror gives nothing but lust.

Pepper it with fear,

We move to this plain tune.

Soon we’ll sleep, and soon we’ll rise.

But there are big things, big things, all the way through.

Infatuation Under a Blacklight

Infatuation Under a Black Light

That night was like a splatter paint portrait.

Hours were lost upon us in shades of

Pink and purple and orange and you and me.

We saw the world through merry-go-round eyes.

I fell victim to the blue that was suffocating us,

Rolling across the 3AM dew-soaked green with you.

What makes our hearts beat?

Don’t rush me; don’t weave me.

I am the placebo you accidentally swallowed.

I am the visions of cosmic yellow that you see

While I stare into your starry whites.

In a single moment,

I’ve breathed in Saturn’s rings,

And the flavor of your constellations lingers on my taste buds.

I explode into a million stars as our night fades to black.

We own this sky.

An Ode to Miscommunication

An Ode to Miscommunication

I am intergalactic. A foreign techno beat.

We’ll hold our breath, seizing the air deep within our lungs.

Can you feel me?

My body is weightless to this infinite chanting

While this sand is settling, soaking into my ears.

Am I high off you?

Chase your cloudy grey with a starry evening,

Lay under different stars

And soak in this high with me.

Can you hear me?

Pump this, feel it in your bones.

These raindrops are desperately clinging to the world like the undead,

The world is screaming, smudging in grey and green.

Do you understand me?

Your words pull like plucked piano strings.

Is this good for me?

I’ve trespassed into your foreign territory.

Is your mind like a music box?

I’ve left it open on repeat.

I’m sipping, slurping

On the sweet nectar of your song.

Your words are alien, yet so familiar.

The choir of miscommunication has sung,

And the meaning is clear.

We’re gaping deep into the pregnant satchels of rain,

And we’ll clench our fists as the world sobs upon our faces.

Flirting: Or How I Learned to Tantalize My Words

Flirting: Or How I Learned to Tantalize My Words

I fell into a sewer. I pulled the manhole cover over my head because the light stung like lemon juice. Underground, I learned of the labyrinth of filth and the kingdom of rodents. I stomped through crystal streams of muck, not slowing to a single splash of slime. When the rats and green tine of the underworld grew dim, I climbed out and faced the new world. Like lemon juice, I felt clean and fresh and new and profound and unique. I felt beautiful because the world watched me like arson-provoked fire, and I felt on fire. I learned how to tantalize my words and swing my hips like a pendulum. I could send confetti out of my fingertips and surprise any man I wanted. I was never sure if their surprise was from an avalanche of color or my general stunning appearance, but I was reborn into this world, bestowed with the knowledge of flirting.

I Will Lick the Pain from Your Bones

I Will Lick the Pain from Your Bones

Inhaling your exhales, I took in giant gulps of your carbon monoxide. As I watched droplets of perspiration birthed on your forehead, my eyes drifted into sleep. I started thinking of a road that leads to golden mornings and clean air and aching vintage cars and dazed smiles and those droplets of perspiration. Every morning, I see this road while you’re still asleep. You’re getting further away the quicker I move, but how much more can I run? A vintage car drives by and captures you, hitchhiking you away to your sweet release from pain. But when you finally wake, I whisper into your exhales, “I will lick the pain from your bones, swallowing every disease into the depths of my insides.”