You had me there for a minute
and every other minute after that

they are weak and trapped

those minutes
romantic and sick
sixty ticks

It’s so easy to to manipulate the line
between want and need
when you’re bored
when you’re hateful

you move

it’s pencil shavings on a blank page
one eye closed staring at a telephone pole
open the other eye
and watch the wires move

perspective,
it’s a war.
Your words explosive,
and I’ve fell
on every grenade
you’ve ever mouthed.

I left myself out on the limb of humanity
thought I was hungry
for love and the fruit of life
and now I’ve noticed that your reach
yields a saw
not a hand

perspective,
it’s a drawing


a line
between
your reality


and mine...

NB @ 10:27 AM [ 0 comments ]

---

lockstep into oblivion

beauty in this country
isn’t beauty at all

views of hills
now clogged with views of houses
who want views of hills
with houses on them

the pedestal isn’t for teachers
or thinkers
or artists
and god forbid it was for pacifists
or anarchists
or dissenters

it’s for corrupt athletes
for corporate logos
speeding in circles

musicians who don’t
write
what they sing

all of them
peeking around the cross
fooling you

turn your head
watch the affordable big, flat screen
while we
murder
everything that moves
and a few things that don’t

your hands are filthy

until we wipe the slate clean
and there is
war
in the streets
will we
ever
recognize beauty

NB @ 2:40 PM [ 2 comments ]

---

i want my 1995 back
my highland park
my hollywood
my glendale
and pasadena nothingness

to see the scared look on my high school friends' faces
for the last time
i was bleached blond,
dyed red
suddenly loud,
mean
and
alien

i want angry band fights
to play el arco iris
i want to scream along to falling sickness
"it's too easy to get all tangled up in life's big bed of nothing"

i want the controlled disarray
the school to drop out of
the jobs i would take
and definitely would leave
driving along
in my band-aid-on-cancer mustang
i was invincible
and the world owed me
goddammit
and it knew it did

women were scary
but beautiful
and new
i want those things
you first whispered to me
in the dark of your room

i was crazy and manic
depressed
and i said i hated 1995
but secretly,
deep
deep
deep down
inside
i was having
the time of my life.

wanting these things
brings me
closer to death
than i've ever been
because he promised
i could live
in 1995 one more time.

NB @ 9:18 AM [ 2 comments ]

---

somewhere between
baseball scores
and pancake desserts
lies a seething hatred
for my life
whether it be slathered in paint
or between the strings of a bass
in you, the scorned woman
and
easily found with the best laid plans
of record labels
or book publication vehicles
everything's done the hard way
and so pardon my indulgence
just for a moment
while i dream
of a great
black
final
violent
sleep.

NB @ 8:25 AM [ 3 comments ]

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