the betrayal is always within. waiting to be discovered. 

cordial thieves gnaw on the bones.

the poison fluctuates between assassin and salvation. 

the curious arithmetic of exposed flesh. 

gravity idles. tender threads negotiating with deepening wounds.  

time consents. its voice simmering just below a boil. 

the dubious contract between want and circumstance. 

the distance sharpens its claws. just hungry enough to taste our skin.

faceless dolls scratching at shattered mirrors. 

places find us bound to choices long expired. 

feathers in a vacuum swaying on broken pendulums.

tenured atoms split their arbiters. 
the heavy drape of faltering kings.

the future insists. 
more friction than grease.

the weight of when tenders its applause, 
in hollow pragmatists.

gravity discards its scales. 
we all fall at the same speed.

we fumble with the fragments of our skin. 
fractured patterns in a stolen mirror. 

the remnants of our courage
too exposed to solve its puzzle.

the darkness sputters.
nearly frail enough to trust.

old time machines sharpen their claws. .
hungry for our corpses. 

 time comes and goes. a tyrant in the folds of our skin. 

full of duplicitous fractions as the math solidifies between us.

our words convince us. the simple helix that connects all these empty spaces.

the rabbit collects her stories. in broken grass and vacant dens.

we wear our victims. in dirty knees and spoiled lips.

the distance swallows. quietly. a beggar in the creases of our trust.

overwhelmed by the simplicity of our wants.

a string. riddled with knots. dancing between disparate electrons. 

we tease the edge. arrogant curators of the void.  

waiting for gravity to catch up. 

 broken pencils still draw their pictures. split atoms accelerate their division. 

little droplets of why on the curtain of our skin. leave their stains. 

sharp collars around the throat of time. cut into fickle flesh. 

a deep wound. infected with all the things we almost had. 

change wears her sharply. with a slippery grin. that crumbles when no one is looking. 

she writes her name in the darkness. stroking the phantoms as they assemble their doorways. 

lazy machines in the calamity of choice. suffocate on the velocity of our panic. 

shallow dresses on tiny skeletons. search for the buttons hidden in the folds. 

telling their stories in discarded flesh. 

a catastrophe of touch. 

that savors every bruise.

 brief collisions swallow our voices.

empty shoes abandoned in the doorway.

drowning in the footprints left behind.

our desires discipline the math.

orphaned numbers in puzzles made of skin.

little fires chasing strays.

we count out loud. daring anyone to listen.

rabid fools tamed by inertia.

sharp pieces of candy sweet enough to bleed for.

fleeting orbits determine our trajectory.

stung by gravity.

we embrace the fall. 

 the grin of gravity is vast as we tease the fall. overconfident in our plastic wings.

only the sky knows what we look like from above.

frail gods in heavy robes. biting at the wind.

the truth is a curious venom. gently peeling away calloused skin.

time is a fickle mistress. draped in her soiled sheets. singing her broken songs.

the journey is a paradox. how close we come is the same as how far we've gone.

the apex is a simple lie. a forgotten name that still lingers at those abandoned intersections.

we see everything. and nothing. orphaned arbiters of empty staircases.

only the bottom knows what we look like from below. 

the box in the corner has my name on it. but it isn't mine.

the room that it sits in is otherwise empty. except for the shadows that it casts.

its door is unlocked. yet once you step inside, there is no exit.

its walls are unadorned. no one seems to live there.

but there are footprints all around it.

the box in the corner whispers my name sometimes. though it never answers when I respond.

it can't be moved. but I never find it in the same place that I left it.

the box in the corner contains everything. yet it's always empty when I look inside.

 unexpected visitors infiltrate the seldom crevices.
domesticated monsters gnaw on the keyboard. 

the empty chairs search for faces.
the tilted table wonders after the math.
as broken skin sheds its bandages. 

the corner grins.
full of so many shattered time machines. 
they laugh as they fumble with the remnants of our past.

as we tremble in the void between
where we are and where we've been. 
our voices held hostage by all the words left unsaid. 

the truth continues tying its knots.
shallow creases steadily press deeper.
eventually becoming permanent. 

the scale sighs are we put on our weight on it. 
but lacking an opposing force.
we sink. 

a dark poem about the foibles of humanity.


arrogant monkeys discard their collars.
convinced their leashes are also gone.

they worship their temporary gods.
unaware of their participation in time's lengthy comedy.

the world tilts against the weight of averages.
the brilliance of the few collectively stolen.

they gather at the well. all desirous of the water.
they drink their fill. never working to replenish what they've taken.

the monkeys give themselves names.
to demonstrate that they matter.

the monkeys gather their stones.
to throw at each other.

the world swells with the prevalence of the mediocre.
an insidious infection.

the monkeys bang their rocks.
beseeching their imagined saviors.

the monkeys put on their tuxedos. 
to prove that the party isn't over. 

time attempts to answer their questions.
but they won't like what it says.

what the monkeys don't know
is that the end of the world has already started. 


Filed under: November 2024 Sad Poetry

alcoholicpoet.com

this poem is about the evolution of intimacy.


time comes in cuts and bruises. the stale anthropology of why. we swerve. untethered projectiles. 

the atoms tally their electrons. the random arithmetic of dubious accountants.

we turn on a fickle axis. orbiting distant and indifferent stars.

time draws its pictures. a desolate artist. a callous muse.

we bite the wind. starved for conflict.

our words slither quietly through choice's tall grass. as flesh collides. 

the geometry presses against our skin. the weight of time blurs our edges.

we touch. in stutters and stabs. all wrong answers. to a series of questions yet to be asked. 

Filed under: Sad Poetry October 2024

tambourine glances penetrate the depths. seldom distances echo in memory's fluctuating pinch. the lens consumes. vision whispers. as ghosts peddle their wares in the mind's soiled corners and the body's dusty crevices.

storms humble and beguile. eager students of the weather. its fickle loyalties. its abundant indifference.

we ran when we shoul've walked. the door was still locked. we waited when we should've pressed. everyone had already gone.

the clouds tremble. the miles confess. how small we are. how vast the world is.

i try to take the corner, but am taken by it instead.

perspective. it has its own rules. for what is far. what is close. distance has its own methods for measuring. lies. truth.

i never pretended to know.

how finely the glass had cracked. how easily the lock could be picked.

i never tried to dispute the paradigm.

that velocity has its own agenda. that gravity has a tendency to be merciless.

life came in waves. in daggers. in crumbs.

no matter my hunger i always left some over for someone else.

it's always heavy buckets or it's empty ones. i never expected different.

perspective is rarely to be trusted..

what's close seems large. what's distant very small.

but it's only a deception.

the road speaks. without words. just distance. a broken voice. a spent pistol. the clarity of poison. as it clenches upon stray moments. gnarled fingers cheating a smile in the face of a callous wind.

incredulous travellers worn by their path. solved by the force of gravity.

the climb lingers. a gracious wick. infatuated with the flame that burns it.

the journey whispers. in its low voice. secrets hardly kept. spoiled ironies and the stab of forever. as it rapidly approaches. in the wake of an arrogant surrender.

the obvious words. the stumbling breath. as the descent yawns to swallow us. orphaned puzzle pieces flirting with images they'll never be.

small lies blunt the corners. as the edges begin to sharpen.

the corners gave her away. in bits and pieces. a jigsaw of moments. a tumble of gravity. the simple bridges that remain.

empty plates divide. some for each of us. the road runs through us. places sour. maps dissolve. everything is lost.

the hours sweat. the alarm distorts. the stories are spent in missing change and torn tickets.

a bit of space. all broken watches and missing fractions. we didn't break the window. but i still took the fire escape. no use for conventional exits in those situations.

we found the curve. or we were found by it. the details didn't seem important. just one more empty bucket looking to leak all over us.

waiting for the world to end seemed such a tedious task. but we were fully committed. to all those beautiful monsters.

the crisis simmered. gently enough. no broken skin. just plenty of  bruises.

patterns realize her. all sober devils and soiled napkins. the feast has no meat. no knives. only bare bones. empty flesh.  and the treachery of progress. as it romances isolation.

the broken colors. voices chase the high. brief fits of clarity spoil long winters of chaos.

the journey. gnawing at my mind. the destination lost. like melting ice.

time was counting, but not for us. we were orphans. all circles and squares. in a world without dimension.

close to the boundary. far from the edge. words wither like flower petals ripped from the stem.

no growth. only stale gardens. and time. ripe with stagnant pendulums.

paths. frail knots in the eventual. slowly coming undone. the colors. the heady gasp. of each moment suffocating on its own virulent strain of agenda.

the broken highways that led us here. in stumbles and chokes. small candles in a surging darkness.

the outlines name her. in speculations of when. the science of the flesh. a long division. always a remainder.

the end. like doses of poison. attempting to cure this sickness that is self. the end. hollow doors guarding room much more empty than I care to remember.

the obvious hysteria of knowing. gradually growing louder.

Her voice like fireflies in the dying dusks of summer.

everything is distant. everything is impossibly close.

the obvious monsters fall like confetti. in a parade of strangers.

an Epiphany of skin. louder than reason.

these simple monsters flaunt their math. in stutters and coughs. flesh as blind as the rest of these bodies are. now that the world is ending. as it always does. dead leaves. and brown grass. the vast fields where we disappear. the endless cooridors that fizzle and simmer. pretending that we ever were.

pin pricks in a heavy veil. the grim algebra of touch.  the lonely nucleus of when. in a feverish array of broken atoms. the science of surrender is well documented.

the angles of a woman. soft and sharp. and so addictive.


the cut. the wound's precision. the sharp claws of paradise. almost gone.

the heavy blunt of cracked dolls. their frozen fists clutching absent gods.  the frantic stabs of potential lovers. a sharp mosaic of flesh. grouted in blood.

wondering atoms reach for the edge. of an ever expanding universe. the nucleus drifts from center. and everything is chaos and ecstasy. the weakness summons her. a raw king naked at its throne. an empty power. and a despairing fury. slip under her skin. to grow their famine.

The words wince. Against the thickening cold. The woman deliberates. Where the weather ends and she begins. How much distance is too far to go.

The winter approaches softly. Arrives in a scream. She flourishes in the dying. Gravity croons its tender ballads. As the ground clenches hard. The bottom seduces in missing skin and scabby bandages. The elementary physics. The random cuts and bruises. Of willing victims. And reluctant villains.

An empty carousel at the center of the world. spinning slowly. a long courtship with frail demons and  asthmatic gods. at last reaching its suffocating end.

Straw houses betray, And even the brick kind. Eventually fall.

It's the poetry of the circumstance.

the primer. the scrape of gravity. the freedom of falling. the rain. the heavy bucket. full of holes as it is. to hold. or to glimpse. the fury of when. time in pleats. the world in bends. blunt bandages on festering wound. the fever of if. like knots in broken skin.

time's casual innuedno. numbers scribbling on the base of the brain. its trembling cycle of repetition. dark. light. dark again. the bald mechanics of when. in a fury of subtraction. a seizure of moments.  always hungry to swallow us.

wearing the needle. murdering the monster. as if we were once whole. or could ever be again.warm graves. and the sharp knives that dug them. the soft horizon. the sloping surrender of touch. as the words confess us.

a checkboard of lovers. pretends the queen. a backgammon of touches. barters her breath.

the end overwhelms. tortoises retrace their steps. a slow race backward to victory. falling feels just like flight. without the heavy burden of wings.

play soft, fetid charms of waiting and impatient monsters. grip the tender scabs on shivering dolls. the stiffening air. the thinning corners. the chaos in their whispers difficult to ignore. the failing minutes grey enough for us all.

no sound. just engines in the darkness. rabid predators stripped of their claws. pacing at the base of utopia. quite disappointed. she folds. she creases. but does not tear. there is ink. and edges. and thundering margins. still the path is no different. and the edge remains just as sharp.

the narrow veins of time struggle to accomdate all the posions I choose to embrace. gentle tornadoes visit the truth upon waning ghosts.

a frenzy of skin. a panic of faces. time's appetite determined by our desperation.

the foul atom spoils for the stagnant nucleus. the weighted skeleton struggles against the skin. qeustionging the shape of every villain.