A Feature and A Bug

Care to embrace the most
elongated endeavor ever 

No training wheels on the pens 
people just let me have 
Almost like I’m considered an adult now 

A mature mammalian specimen 
Poet caste, pops off at the mouth to
earn almost no money 

Both a feature and a bug, perhaps 
He digs getting deep but sometimes
he lands on funny 

Slipping into third person and 
right back out with
reckless, senseless abandon 
In poetry, anything can be anything 
It's only really resonant 
if you don’t understand it 

I just turn it on like a hose 
So enigmatic 
So damn emblematic 
A real slice of life 
of America at large 
Gayed up, of course
because now I’m in charge 

Sure you’re secure in your masculinity or
your soccer mom sensibilities 
but within you winnows growing alarm 

They let him have pens 
Now his arsenal’s armed 

He is me, but I hover, at times
a little outside my body 
like I’m but an observer of 
a mad motherfucker 
An emissary of a 
magnificent mouthpiece 

We’re both allowed to use pens 
Without guardrails, gayly 
You’re not promised 
straight streets or safety 

All roads wind within and if you’re 
honest you’re kinda liking it 
Cruising in a convertible of id 
Breathing hard even though 
it's a sin 
What color is your psycho-mobile 
Mine’s every blue ever invented
all at once 

Both fire and ice 
can be blue, realize 
Am I making you sweat 
or shivering you inside 

Play for keeps or play nice 
Reel in the riot or desire the fight 
I won’t be about acrimony but 
I might be up in arms when I’m right 

It's my standards, outsinging slander 
Dangerously dexterous, nearly untied 
My wild rhythm’s been all 
bound up in rallying cries 
for my malnourished aspects 

The child never allowed 
to hit back 
or cry himself out 
with necessary intensity 
The delinquent, always missing or mouthy 
The punching bag, empathizing with attackers 
deciding he deserved it 

The common denominator that 
strings my selves together 
is every me I’ll ever be will have courage 

My psyche’s known for spiking 
‘til the Richter Scale reads me 
but I forge ahead, I mean, I forge a
whole new head 

One that doesn’t stress making sense
with the wrong ingredients 

Placid madness from scratch, raving sanity 
under the lash 
These are what makes up my peaks 
and valleys and plateaus 
but locked away in my recesses 
I still remember everything I
wish I didn’t know 
The story arc ain’t really about anything 
as much as it’s about everyone 
I hate even entertaining it sometimes
but that’s who we’re called to love 

Someone’s gotta make it weird
Someone’s gonna striptease dropping their guard 
Not me, though, even my skin is a barricade
I’m a murder machine
A circling shark 
I’m every weapon designed for doomsday 
I’m poison-tipped and sharp 

Just trust it, never test it
It’s only phantom pains where I
used to keep my heart 

Reach for me, reach me 
I can’t be reached 
That wasn’t me asking, telepathically 
A hand to hold isn’t 
an actual need
You don’t die without it
Well, you do, you die regardless

The point is, I don’t dream of soft things
I wouldn’t let your arms equal armistice
I don’t look for you every time I go out
I’d never plant you a garden
I never expend energy on sestinas you won’t see

They don’t exist, I say
and I hate you anyway

I turn it on like a hose
Like a big fire hose 
to flood out sentimentality with vitriol 
I won’t be in love, I prefer other drugs 
I don’t waste time wishing
you thought I was wonderful

I don’t think you’re amazing or anything
and if I did, thinking it wouldn’t
make me even madder
I’m not just some dude, no, I’m
the shadow of doom
I’m lethal and I kill without blinking
except not right now, maybe
‘cos my eyes keep leaking

Tissues for issues
Totems for touchstones
An hourglass resentment might shatter
Begrudging falling sands that ruin plans 
I’m not killing time ‘cos I want it to suffer

I didn’t start this
Time said it would heal me but
it just aged me
Time’s the party always
breaking its promise

It never tries to save us
It feeds on and fades us 

Man, I tried to be sweet to it
Then I tried for an amicable split
but it still runs its fingers all over me
Runs them through my hair
making it disappear 

It won’t honor restraining orders
It's flat out unreasonable 
Just a sociopathic tyrant on a tear 
‘til it runs out on unseized potential 
Unmade epiphanies
Unobserved altars 

Sometimes I still thirst for magic
when strict adherence falters

Sometimes the soul of me thinks it
knows spellcraft and Tarot is of God 
I might revive a ritual but first 
I always read Psalms 

Prayer is power 
Tragedy is a tower 
No one is nowhere 
Don’t give up, I’m still in here
Climbing back in my body 
Baptized and brainy
Scarred and sarcastic 
A formidable entity 
Making no move towards escaping
This time every shade’s staying 

No distancing in third person this time
The rift was getting real but I
remain Travis Prime 

Reconciled, newly attuned
An equilibrium I mustn’t 
let mindflayers ruin 

Meat hooks in your astral body 
Lay you out, leave you so dotty 
Crush through the crust of 
your subconscious repressions 
Twist your secret soul musculature 
into ghastly positions 

You can’t let them in, can’t rock
with their rhythm 
Can’t make the mistake just to
extract the wisdom 
That priceless pearl or needed nuglet
from getting caught deep in dumb shit 

Be smarter for once
before everything hurts worse
Before you have to bribe officials 
with pucker and purse 
Before nothing is sacred
notice all of it is 
That’s why, eventually, all of us
take someone’s shit 

We take it from somebody 
or a string, or a genus of somebodies
because we saw through someone’s eyes
much like theirs once
and the view, for a stretch 
was singularly lovely
Because their hidden, ferreting hurt 
tenderized some empathy trauma
tucked into us 

Because other cheek turning is reflexive
once we glimpse how beautiful 
anyone once was 

He doesn’t mean what he’s saying right now
He's first person thriced again until he calms down 
Mindflayer, nonesuch, no, but he’s 
laid to nappy by the mindnanny
‘til he stops his awkward undulations 
in the general direction of romance

Actually, I mean what I say most times
even when I do what I said I wouldn’t 
Like letting the flayers boss me around 
after I rewrote myself so strong they couldn’t 

But let me tell you something else
Angels make meaning from lack 
Hell’s for wealth 
So lock onto that sacred aspect 
of every last thing 
Heaven lets you keep
for even half the duration of
your apportioned century 

The important stuff we reunite with 
when vitals fail 
and mercy becomes forgiveness
and forgiveness ferries us home 

‘til then many of us 
spruce up shanties 
out of whatever we can on the road
Mourning much and much alone 

Many of us mangle what means the most
and accrue a few keepsakes it hurts
each time we look at
but we carry them along to
wonder at anyway
In any dim light, baubles unwrapped

But to every night a day
To every roadblock, an alternate route
To every longing, a quietening 
To every screaming agony 
one that renders us mute

Gets so a good time is one 
that doesn’t remind of anyone, anywhere
even though we know they’re still in here
More real, maybe, than we are
we mangy mummudrai of memories
Of slang that haunts us when spoken 
because we first heard the phraseology 
from a lover who wasn’t done
loving others when we landed them 
or an enemy we didn’t have to cripple
A mother we didn’t make it 
to the death bed of 
Compatriots already gone or terminal 

This is why, we think, he reverts
so often to humor 
It helps him to alleviate 
tragedy’s many contusions 
but pens allowed to lark
will also look 
at what the hoped for laughter
hopes to cover 
A hose turns off, too
Thins to a trickle the 
madness that mutters
The ha ha that deflects 
The suggestive aside that affronts 

‘til it’s just me again
making the most of the
emotions that have me for lunch