Arise along with dawn
and the dawn, she greets me:
sees again a legion of wannabe monsters
begin their march forth from my mind.

‘Round the breakfast table we sit, a merry bunch:
and I forge them helms out of corruption,
swords tempered with seduction,
their shields gilded with hope and mistrust
and marching boots carved out of wanderlust.

On my heels they hop aboard my morning bus
(ok, it’s not my bus, I just happen to use it a lot)
They somersault in my paper cups of crap coffee-to-go
(I’m a java connoisseur, I know)
At work, they lay siege to my desk till I surrender:
make a run for the nearest weekend and pray there’s shelter
for me and them behind the pints.

I want to sit on a park’s grass with you
beneath a sky, not any particular one
but that one will do for now
(in a world where dogshit is forbidden)
and stretch back, store the touches of a hand on a lap,
make the monsters take their seats and stay put
till the show is done
and accept that good times coming to their end
is not an end.

Each dusk I sit and wonder:
where are those legions now,
what waste have they laid and to whom?
They must be building an empire,
out there somewhere.

Thought the Seeker Years might’ve been done.
Thought so wrong; they’ve just begun.

Those born on mountaintops
underestimate the ambition of others
to climb.

I need things I wouldn’t
in a perfect world need:
– a change of buses to get to work
– a post-it note to plan ahead
– a pack of smokes to see me through
– a someone else to forgive me this and that.

Streets come in bundles of three
smeared with people paste.
Heaven and Hell are run like two offices
across the road from each other:
anger observing the competition,
sales pitches shot at souls of passersby.

My love hides in plain sight
in funereal corners of the earth:
I want to run a bar that only lets you in
when you lose someone you cared for
when you begin to wear black
when and when and not if.

I’m about as open as a fist
and sick to death of sage advice.
Lay down the eyes that keep me awake
and wishy-washy-wish for feet
who’d know how to rest at night.

Mornings before dawn are grey and are cool and are blue
and are on their own since no one else yet realized.

I handle my American Express like a ninja his shuriken!
Pose me no questions, I’ll prop up no lies in return
and I’ll go further and sell you Truth by the pound,
hire spotters to spot you the liars,
(and there will be plenty)
personally garrote the swindlers with my power tie –
you can buy my time for $0,00/hour
with special offers if you now buy ∞ hours or more!
I’ll sell water to fish if you insist,
make the wind blow the other way.

And when I’m whisked elsewhere,
I’ll make you cardboard cutouts of men in black
who got your back
and will make up for the things I lack:
we are a team, them and I.

There’s salesmen out there
scaring us half to death
with promises of dying tomorrow
so that we’d live “in the now” and accomplish today.
I just called in sick, fuck your heaven:
selling stuff’s a form of motivational speaking
and fear WILL motivate, won’t it now?

Ten thousand selfies later, we’re all the same.
I dressed up like I messed up
for the party, a walking apology hitting pay-dirt
since dirt does pay.

We’re all for sale – but if it matters at all,
my special discount only applies to you –
and if the world needs to belong to someone,
it might as well be mine.

Bangs on your forehead, bang against mine,
your hipster specs to make everyday an irony.
All I think of is undressing you
without taking your boots off in the process

Your blush is healthy and out of a spray can and yes we can
and I wanna gimme gimme your insecurities and vulnerabilities
and your bad days and throwaways, and your weakness and strength
and your sickness and health and the cards you’ve been dealt
and your blush is healthy and comes out of a strawberry margharita,
so vaya con Dios, señorita – even though you don’t even habla español.
I need Better Lines to love with.

I dress to kill dreamers: to show’em who and what they missed;
to in most profound and nether Chamber sow the seed
of wistful thought and doubt of What Could Have Been –
indeed to live well for it is the Greatest Revenge.

Hey grrrrl, good news and bad ones, too!
Bad’uns 1st: you ain’t no grand solution to my troubles,
which brings us to the good part:
I ain’t looking to solve or be solved in return.

Blink by blink, night by night
we shift further
down the corridor of dark matter and stars
that stare like needles;
what would await in the end,
I’d rather not know –
yet nature propels me.

The sphere of stars and the screaming void
of outer space,
is neither question nor answer:
it simply is.
If you had conquered Death,
dominated Time,
why would you care?

Who can say if the immor(t)al
hands of cosmos, hands of things blinded by light
are safe to hold
the salts and dusts and fragments
to which we are destined,
to which we all must shift?

Lulled by piping of alien skies –
to think we may sleep
when the Music was not made for us
but for Purpose;
for to keep It in line,
keep It docile:
That Which Should Never Stir,
who is neither question nor answer,
who simply is.
Who – what – lay in Reality’s center ring?
And does it wait for us with care
or with absolute zero?

I wake up dreaming.
I wake up screaming.

Thought of a horrible thing today,
when in the bus, watching another.

And you thought I’d tell?

It wouldn’t be a horrible thing
if you could just say it out loud.

Art’s not a way of saying and showing
that this is what and how we are.
It’s not truth but its splinters:
depravity of hope, yet hope nonetheless.

Art is suggestions: aspiration and avoidance.
It’s a purging: safer way to speak the hurting,
to deplete violence, confess weakness,
to turn your back and wait for the knives.

Art’s not us within us,
but a path to steer away from such.
You should know what art really is
with each lie that builds the day,
incense of apathy weighing down the night.

An eternity of afternoons spent well on highways
on seats of sedans thinking of those appointments
– haircuts, job interviews, doctor’s –
repeating over and over
the things that will make it all wrong
with that guy or with that girl
that one that could have been The One.

“No hugging, no learning”
is a fool’s golden rule.
For happiness in return
is promised, but is miniscule.
And there sure is fortune in the cookies
and with good will the bars of candy
I would sell and pay –
my soul’s compass did a 360 today,
so laugh it up, funny man, laugh it all away.

It always meant something, that feeling
of my house not being in order.

We’re all searching for That Special Someone
but is That Special Someone searching for us?

Things like this and things like that I like to think
when I light up
when I light the sky
when I paint over my each mistake
with Pantone 2905 C.
La-dee-fucking-da.

How do I know I’m evil?
Easy: my mind’s a snare
and my words bait.
And if you’re not yet sure what that makes you,
then come closer
and hear me out.

When the Yakuza make a mistake, they cut off a finger
from the joint.
Well, I ain’t Yakuza, am I?
I ain’t a horse’s head on a king-size bed
made to scare straight shooters.
These thoughts – beasts loose in Labyrinth.
If God only knows – then why won’t he tell?
His heaven may as well be a hell
so I’ll stay down here,
a mere mortal among mere mortals,
condemned to repeat it.

The sun’s in my eyes and I have nothing yet figured out.
There’s rain on the horizon and I’m made of sugar.
Fuck the life. Locked are the jaws that devour light.
You are not the air that I breathe:
the air that I breathe is the air that I breathe.

How do I know I’m evil?
Easy: I just do.

So that’s how I know.