Cite Your Guts

Phrases on the threshold of an audience, 

buoying between friends and foes. 

A gentle glide into subtle honesty, 

no backhanded compliments, 

nothing complimentary today. 

Punctuated silences broken 

by the churning of brains. 

Mulling over the statements, 

honing in on what needs clarification. 

An essay stacked with truths and no citations, 

can you cite the heart 

or better yet the guts 

or even so a conscience? 

Etched into the current state of living 

with a new backbone, unveiling a relic of possibilities. 

Uncontrollably Strapped

eager mind, washing quickly

i think you get it

not very good with actions

so many things being said

want to try and confirm

do you know where the placement is

right on the edge

get there

involved and evolving

turning away

an assortment of words

no toppings, no spread

a buffet of 'don't knows'

strapped or controlled?

Absentminded Takeout

is our novelty wearing off yet

break the transmission 

take all you want

easy living when you're just escaping

takeout containers for your most precious possessions

conveniently absentminded 

of your own investigation

rummage around

see what you come up with

anything worth it

anything wanted

nick the surface

draw a little heat

recoil from the attention

flee, flee, flee

Pints of Realization

An atmosphere resides north of your brow, where thoughts percolate and drip-drop into constellations. You connect the dots over time, take a mental snapshot of its location. Searching for an answer you travel south of your sharp clavicle and listen to the morse code beating from your chest. The sync is perfection. You feel murky south of the beat in the depths of unmarked territory. Misdiagnosed as the stomach, not quite certain where the X falls on the map but here is where the butterflies live. And as they flutter and fizz, the atmosphere takes notice. Adapts to your circuitry and makes a decision that lines up in your throat, protected by your teeth.
Pour with discretion. 

Settling Self Scores

a constant demand of settling scores,

adding and subtracting the little things

the human ambition of empathy and

the consequences of throwing stones

is so much greater than our eyes implore,

but to be oneself - excelling to a point of

truth, what a beautiful notion..

to be yourself on the cusp of everyone

trying to be someone else, a light

creeps through the cracks, we've

all got em, life is bound to knock

you around a bit,

the strength acquired is mighty,

but how are you going to react?

for the reaction to action is

begging you to be the best version of

yourself, whoever that is, invitation sent,

you've got to embrace that person you've always been.

Hovering Over The Unfriend Button

the weight of your deprecation rests heavy 

inside a small cavity never before explored.

you have become a dangerous jaw breaker

colourful and inviting, sugary sweet...

yet time consuming and actually quite painful.

picking the petals, searching for an answer...

a revolving door of banter that never seems

to actually matter, words rushing out of mouths

and passing through the canal but never

hitting the important spots 

none of the actualities being absorbed.

there is a distinctive disinterest cultivating 

amongst a jury of peers that are hovering

over the Unfriend button.

Restraining Order Mentality

crass talk, this close to uninstalling

the predicament of communication when

electronic blunders seem to be most effective

one thousand views and not a single coherent comment

setting fire to the sails of a friendship

the constant scrub, trying to exfoliate me

back up, back off 

restraining order mentality 

on how you're trying 

to promote your conflicting vibes

Phone-y Affection

the backsplash on your succotash has

got us a little tweety

a hundred and forty characters

but none from that famous

yellow family, we're

all cracking jokes but we're

not sure what a millennial is...

three pairs of socks in my

canvas sneakers equates

to winter boots in the city

dashing through your

feed with an eagerness to please,

ourselves out of remission,

we ain't missing notifications

just the punctuation of our feelings

and how many Likes does it take

to get past that phone-y affection?

Instant Mayhem of Absolute Living

the foolish frenzy of dazzling ideas all mixed up, 

shuffled into a swift deck that is begging you to take action. 

for the words tumble drying out of your mouth are brittle, 

they will not survive 

in the instant mayhem of absolute living we strive to do. 

the calendar is not our master.

it's a short distance for all of us, 

some even shorter,

we're going to run this trek. 

collecting fragments of ourselves in the vast gullies 

of where ever will have us.

catching glimpses of one another's teeth; 

laughter the soundtrack, 

we're feeling like a balmy day nowhere near summer, 

an abundance of questions and answers, 

baiting the end of our hooks,
we've got the time, 

but we don't got the need to figure it out.

thoughts keep percolating, we keep them pouring out.

Lick of Dynamite

a knuckle ball of something definite yet totally undefinable is zooming right down the middle of intrigue. connecting the dots or adding more to the mix? a feeling erupts like a like flame licking closer to a stick of dynamite. moving in and out of focus. shadow puppets of potential conversations dance on the tip of tongues and adventure forms. the mind, a playground of tantalizing ideas, waiting for someone else to walk through the cranium door. a sliver of disbelief, a gallon of impulse, one big zap of curiosity and waves jump out, see them stretching. the reach is past the horizon line and half blind there is an epic pull, creating enormous opportunity. there is a radical shift in the bedrock and i can't help but want to get dirty.

Catching Secondhand Feelings

two steady charges of smoke jet stream from his nostrils, outlining his lips, i can almost see his words take form in midair before swept away into the atmosphere. i can just about feel the pull of the cigarette on my heart. it buoys there waiting for him to exhale and release both nicotine and me from his grasp. i am aware, live and humming inside my body. catching secondhand feelings. a defiant toe on the stub punctuates our conversation. he flicks the lighter in his free hand, tosses it back and forth. almost daring, roulette, what's it going to be; earth wind or fire? the scratch of flame announces the results in a different language that we do not try to translate. answers turning in the light to unasked questions, an outpouring of information stuffed into my pockets to be dissected later, privately. drenched in his identity there is a swell of shared experiences, quick conclusions swapped like kisses or did we kiss? i feel a lip print starting to form right under my temple.

Sentimental Uncorking

heavy hands filled with thought 

slam keyboards filled with letters

feelings take on a tangible form

hold them to the light

inspect their authenticity,

searching for the crease

the weighted smudge of soul has left

the paper damp in your hands.

it buckles at your admiration,

threatening to tear,

an ironic action for the flimsiness of feelings

the firmly anchored bits tossed out by the pageful

a sentimental uncorking of the personal reservoir of bubbly.

 

You've Got a Sentence in Your Teeth

A salty grin with a twist like a lime right into the cocktail of my intuition. Drumming fingers on a shiny cool table top casting vibrations, they float my way and clink against my thoughts like ice cubes. I am thawed. I am intrigued. I move closer. Words I can't calculate tumble out of my mouth unpunctuated, shaken not stirred, here we bask in a shadowy orange glow of neon lights and a conversation sugary and saturated in a constant buzz. No names, no dates, no places to be but right in the middle of a sentence caught between my teeth.. 

Velcro Ideas

Do you see me the way I see you? With evergreens growing from your ears because you've embraced nature, that's what you say, but I'm suspecting you've just enjoyed the new car smell a little bit more than others. Are you as mundane as you're try not to be? All frilly and puff but forbid the rest of us to embrace in such material lust, whatever keeps you warm at night. Polyester lies and Velcro ideas, quit trying to stick to my passion. Pull away the band aid and you're not going to find a wound, just what I am trying to hide from you, you on the brink of another lie. 

Give Them Your Syllables

A small sizzling sense of self glitters on the cusp of something different yet familiar. An exchange of currency in the form of affection, transactions tallied up and totaled. Cashing in snippets of words for much bigger paragraphs. Give them your syllables. That grit on your skin that you can't quite shake, life causing reactions. You are a hurricane. 

A Good Dose of One Another

Sugar coated jokes that fizz on the tip of the tongue and zaps laughter throughout the body. The smile spreads to the knees, a wobbly place. Invite people to swim in your smirk and bask in the glimmering anticipation of getting a good dose of one another. Carry your humor in a good place.

Undressing Into Chaotic Creativity

Slow sleepy souls, restless desire; quick paced and undoubtedly remarkable characteristics. Warm as toast… tall tales but not fibs just vast in their details. Emptied pockets, no more possessions. Quilted fevers mesh with palpable thoughts that continue to submerge in reverent idealistics. Uniformed creativity, undressing into chaotic serenity; crawling up the walls to reach new heights and breaking through to a different perspective. Fresh air and rain, feel everything. 

Draft Dreams to iTrash

A stream of words comets across your screen in the dead of night while you sleep with someone new. Your past comes bubbling up with cartoony bings and is punctuated by the cutest of emoticons. Quick short blurbs blister in a shade of neon and sit excitingly to burst your morning wide open, into a million little pieces. Draft dreams go right to the trash app and you'll be better off cutting the tie and flushing the device right down the drain. Go back to bed and fear your favourite street corner at noon and not the bedside table, and never your pocket. 

Elaborate Eye Sockets

There is an elaborate joke tucked behind his eyes, when he sees beautiful things he laughs. You thought he was being cruel, he was actually falling in love. He didn't realize all the guts he had busted laughing would change the way he sees beautiful things. When he no longer saw your love his eyes no longer hid an elaborate joke but an immense sense that all he knew, once upon a time, of jokes and beautiful things would remain a grainy crust in the corner of his eyes. Blurring. Everything. Beautiful. You.

Grab Bag of Mixed Emotions

i used the space between my heart and ribs, the entry way into properly ending a life, to store all my mixed emotions; bumping into old flames, craving that person who was in a relationship, crossing the street when it wasn't my turn.. sometimes i would carry the whole lot in that spot, just west of my gut and hope someone would bump into me so that it would slosh about, perhaps fall into my leg and down to my foot so i could go for a run and slam it out on the concrete. that very rarely happened. there is currently a gully of mixed emotions somewhere south west of my heart and i can only hope the beating of the muscle will pound it to a pulpy substance and dissolve it into a case of slow churning heart burn. it wouldn't be the worst thing. the mixed emotions buoy on a tether connected somewhere in the depths of my mind and flap about like a sad inflatable creature with giant wavy arms and a placid smile.