skonen_blades

Nothing is forever of course
Of course
You know that
But still
When that friendship ends
When that favorite childhood store is replaced
When the trees are cut down
When that beloved idol dies
When the empire crumbles
It’s still a shock

Success is fleeting
Accomplishments recede into the past
Like a wave pulling away from the shore
Nothing can be held
Or stored
And this moment right now will be old
As hard as that is to believe

Entropy and erosion make sure that there are no finished products
Time, the great whittler
Cleanser and eraser
Makes every border, war crime, history book, and high point
Every secret love, bold striving, and courageous attempt
Every memory and chapter

Into sidewalk chalk rainbows
Turning Rothko in the rain

It brings me to the conclusion that honestly
Logically

(taking that all into account)
(With now being all that truly can exist)

You're not amazing when you're done. No.

You're amazing when you try.



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It's morning.
The meat trains move through the traffic on their way to work
The caved-in heads and thousand yard stares of commuters
As they repetitively groundhog day their way
through their unexpectedly disappointing lives.
The thrill of all the edges has been rubbed off by the friction of time's river.
And the accidental polish from millions of hands of tourists.
The embodiment of beliefs eroded by exposure.
People that are tired of walking compelled by simple biology to keep on walking.
Personal rainclouds of being misunderstood following each person
The older the house, the more that it's haunted.
None of us are buoyant in this rain-soaked darkness.
But instead of filling up with water, we are emptying.
Bleeding out with no replenishing.
Ebbing away to transparency.
The clothes existing more than the people.
Scarecrows that the crows don't even notice anymore
Snakes that shed skin only to find that there's suddenly nothing underneath.
Half-lifing away
Until the final transition to the great unknown
is less of a giant leap
and more of a small step.



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I dug a hole in the garden of eden
And buried myself up to my steeple
But it turns out that the garden is quicksand
And if I swim slow, I can still make it out

When I was young, I was young forever

Now I am well on my way to becoming a cautionary tale
Now I play a game of ‘the past is lava’

I need reminders that the river hasn't stopped
That choices are still possible
That the precarious stack of plates I’m carrying
The person breathing on the back of my neck
The staring-contest of weakness
The sled I drag, the world I backpack, the rock I shoulder,
The leers that know my lack of worth that agree with my inner self-disdain
The critic that scoffs in my heart
The flimsy barrier of my skin not helping
The dying from exposure just by being able to interact with people

Is all imaginary

My life and all I am is not a cake sliding off the tray of a clumsy server
Hypervigilance is a scarecrow
not a suit of armor
Racing with myself is lose/lose
My tortoise and my hare can learn from each other peacefully
That I’m the only one in the boxing ring and there are no spectators
Set up a deck chair and have a ginger ale

Stop worrying my entrapped soul
Let the Trojan rocking horse lullaby the soldiers in my heart to sleep


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I’m a doctor cutting into leftover heart tissue that's been microwaved into jerky and then left to harden in the hot sun of heartbreak.

It’s open heart perjury. It’s a life-saving amputation. It’s a vet putting an animal to sleep.

Love can be a courtroom spelling contest sometimes. Spell definition. Spell loyalty. Spell pause. Spell break. Spell still not getting it. Spell being the last person to figure out that I’m single now. Spell drinking.

Love is blind because it’s locked in a chest but because love is blind, it can see in the dark. It does keep bumping into people, though. And falling down stairs. Love is blind but it has the most powerful eyes since justice.

Each surgery is just a doctor’s best guess with the best training we have to offer. Question: What do you call a doctor who nearly fails his final exam? Answer: Doctor.

If this love is a math problem, then let it be algebra. If you are my ex and I still can’t figure out why, then let x = y.

We are all doctors operating on each other without the benefit of schooling, only on-the-job training. Veterinarians know what the most merciful choice is sometimes. Anesthesiologists put each other to sleep on the last week of school so they can see how it feels and dentists numb each other’s mouths.

So doctor, reach into the hole here that doesn’t beat anymore. Dentist, reach into my chest cavity. Veterinarian, prick my non-existent phantom-limb heart with a needle and pet it like a pet until it goes to sleep. So that it’s numb. So that I can’t feel anything.

So I can learn, too.




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April 30/30

14/30

The fortifications of everyone’s hearts
Are made up of different and specified parts
The blast doors are open but shut with a crash
When they’re required to stop something rash
The armour is old and it squeaks when it moves
The wax in its love-holes are covered in grooves
Its earmuffs and blindfolds and tied up all tight
(but oddly, hearts seems to see better at night
And hear what they want to no matter what’s said.)
It’s brimming with life but it’s camouflaged dead.
'Cause hearts that don’t “heart” are safer, you see.
You learn this quite quickly when in infancy
An up through to college and sometimes beyond
When someone or something of who’ve you’ve grown fond
Takes a big stab at your life-giving part
The oxygenating, mammalian heart
There is a reason in video games
Why lives look like hearts and they don’t look like brains
Because your heart holds what is precious to you
It holds all your love there and other’s love, too
Impossible though the heart may be to sway
And though no heart’s ever been made to obey
A heart can be muffled and helped to forget
And still kept around like an old, favourite pet
Because without hearts then we all drop down dead
But if we can ‘help’ our hearts out with our head
Give it some crutches, a tv, some wine
A bullet proof vest, and a big neon sign
That says nothing’s wrong but that none need apply
Just leave it alone in its safety to die.
That way the human that’s wrapped round that heart
Can stay unperturbed by that worrisome part
And still walk around with fresh blood in their veins
No aches or depressions or hearbreak or pains
Just super protected. A Frankenstein pump.
Useful but no longer tempted to jump
Off every high rooftop to soar with pink wings
Mine’s unconcerned with such frivolous things
A miracle heart is inside me and so
I’ll show it you. Oh shoot. Where’d it go?



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I’m wearing my good luck funeral. A fake pencil is nestled in the inside pocket. I taste licorice because it’s raining. The wildlife keeps a respectful distance. My shoulder skulls track the clouds for threats. Finding none, I kneel before the tombstone of my godson. If ink was blood, I could write you a story of my veins and how they came to be here.

I have no engines to transmit the sorry of newsprint. My mind is an octopus reaching forward with wet, strong tentacles of grief. I give off paper airplanes like gusts of pheromones scattering the deer. I am the opposite of a battery. The grass turns inward at my touch. My shield becomes a cracked reindeer and I’m left with the bigoted remnants of my best intentions.

Here, every day is a birthday and I’m tired of it. I want to pull the back off of the phone and let the rain in. I’m a snow boot in a summer gutter. The armour I wear is not meant for peacetime.




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It’s planned.

This entire town is like an octopus in a cookie jar. Out here the flies wear helmets and smash through the cellphone signals, handing out whiskey-soaked business cards before they dive too deep into trouble. Bearskin rugs wear crowns and dream of burning-castle screenplays and far-off forests. The ugliest angels you’ve ever seen plummet down to earth, making acne craters in the driveways. Each feather a razor, each halo a carcinogen.

The small white houses in this suburb are measured and pristine. They don’t betray the sharks that swim inside. Dragons with delusions of fireworks and connections to drug dealers stay up late trying to set milk on fire. All they find is that blood makes horrible shampoo. This is a suburb lost at sea but the oars are being ignored. Every bathroom cabinet here is stuffed with orange pill bottles the size of beer cans. The cupboards have enough canned food for the apocalypse but it’s barely touched. It's the liquor cabinets that need constant restocking. All the basements hide blind identical twins hugging each other and crying. “Hyde seeks Jekyll” personal ads are tattooed on the eyelids of every plastic-surgeon promise. The children are pretending to be children and the parents are pretending to be parents.

Snails can be just as awkward when they pose in front of a mirror. In these houses, even the televisions ignore each other. The downtown core is hours away, a series of sandwiches on the horizon. A moustache breeding skyscrapers far away, infested with commerce, excitement, and crosswalks.

Out here, in the manufactured desert carpeted with lawns, marriages become neon signs and the bored pray for any excitement at all. Hypocrites with zombie intentions hoard steering wheels, brake pads, and airbags. Their right arms are longer than their left arms so it’s easier to stab each other in the back.

Every stuffed animal has arteries. Every husband screws the babysitter. Every summer there are a few hunting accidents. And no one reads the paper.




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Write through the owls of your mind that make the black curtains of nocturnal living seem attractive. Crochet paper airplane lace-doily lightness from your craning-neck tension trying to see shuttle launches from 1985 Cape Canaverals. When all your heart knows is that there have been no moon walks recently and that the backstage passes are dated 1972 and gathering dust.

Stereophonic beach condos, rectangular in their architectural beauty, relax in the fog. Cookouts and a sense of being behind-the-scenes of something are helping beach-party men who retired early relax. It’s the dream, kid. It’s the dream seen through the wrong end of binoculars. Keep rowing.

When does a freight train become a falling elevator? Ask women with husbands at war smoking a pack a day manufacturing AK47s for the war effort. Ask deep sea divers who have been down too long falling in love with mermaid sirens. Ask getting to the sunset in your boat only to find it’s a Wile E Coyote painting and you’re in a giant room.

When everything thrilling is peeled away and your life becomes as exciting as an iPhone searching for wireless connections in a basement, it’s time to hit the eraser hard and dial up some lost weekends into being. Bring some forgotten walks back from the dead. Gateway your sadness into dimensions that don’t matter. Enjoy the pleasure of simply not being until the deadness becomes alive without the aid of witchdoctors, frankensteins, or potions.

When you are ready, you’ll be able to sip volcanos and ride polar bears. Until then, grease yourself. Don’t make it easy for the bullets.



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The shadow of what I’m perceived to be is growing longer than the part of me that casts the shadow. People want who I was, not who I am. Used to be thin, used to be a dancer, used to look forward to the future, used to chase.
The talent I have pools in my extremities. Regular exercise just makes me tired. I see the whippet thin replacements walking around like they’ve got forever and it makes me happy. The future is slowly being poured into new heads while we of the last generation pass on our outdated knowledge to deaf ears. Just like our parents.
My life is measured in different chapters. It’s a ghost-written autobiography. Each chapter plays out like a DVD biopic that gets most of it wrong. A life can’t be summed up. But everyone wants the short version. An amusing anecdote with no black ice. No sneak attacks. Palatable and fit for public viewing. Not unlike a tidy corpse.
I’ve truly forgotten heights that a lot of people will never reach. Truly. The mind is a rebellious bastard. Memories fade, leaving me wondering why I did anything in the first place. I’ve striven. Sure. I’ve competed. Yeah. I’ve struck while the iron was hot. Did me a great deal of good, too.
But so what?
My face adorns bookstores now. My words drip from the lips of pundits and scholars. My smile still charms from the cover of bus-shelter advertisement posters. The picture’s ten years old, though. Even I look at pictures of myself back in the day and marvel. I was really something.
Fame presents you with an immortal version of yourself you can’t compete with. A mirror universe doppleganger that has trainers and makeup personnel. An always-fresh idealistic avatar created by public perception. It makes balancing on a pedestal look easy.
It’s a suit you used to put on but not so recently, it ceased to be comfortable. It’s too tight, for one thing, and that makes it hard to breathe. Sometimes the eye-holes slip and your vision is impaired. I let the backup dancers do the high kicks these days. Every time I’m onstage, every time I’m talking to an audience, every time I’m signing a book or listening patiently to someone telling me that I’ve changed their life, I feel like it’s Halloween.
My past self, prettier and better at everything, is tying me a noose and winking at me. It was adept at battle. I am fat and ready for the fire now.
But I have not stopped being profitable. I’m one of those whores that you see on the way down to the bottom of the stairs. There are bucks left in this old horse. There are dollars to be wrung out of my dirty laundry. There are cents in the couch cushions for the cops to go through.
It’s the agony of being loved. And I did it all voluntarily. My fans are cupids shooting arrows and I am my former self’s meat shield. For someone who doesn’t exist, he sure does rule my life.
I suppose in that way, it’s like a religion. The cult of personality made flesh. In my nightmares, he stares at me with pity.
Our younger self, who art in hyperbole, hollow be thy name.
Crowds that love you are vampires and you come to miss them. When the roaring of your fans dies down, you can really hear what little goes through your skull. It’s a sobering experience. It’s why substance abuse is so rampant in celebrities.
We can’t live up to your expectations. You are the farmers milking our souls dry. We are embarrassed every time the light hits us. And it only gets worse.
I am an animated corpse. You, my fans, are necrophiliacs.
Buy my books. They are my flesh. Buy my music. It is my soul.
And maybe, just maybe, with the blood smearing your wolf-in-sheep’s clothing mouths, I’ll escape you while you’re newly fed.
And sneak into new headlines to sell a final thousand newspapers, a new box set of my work, and some posthumous lifetime achievement awards.
And I’m still grateful. I am so insecure that I’m still grateful.
Look at me. Look at me. Look at me.



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The pain in me is like a light, a light that leads the way
A way that weighs so heavily, from day to heavy day
A way whose path that darkly winds through decades getting longer
And I’m afraid of darkness so the light is getting stronger
By pain I mean the ennui and loneliness I feel
With all the friends I have I feel the feeling isn’t real
And yet I use it like a light to show me where it goes
Even though it’s turned a lot of yesses into noes
I feel it is my lighthouse and it also is my anchor
So gravity’s my enemy and I’m an oil tanker
I am the waves, the shore, the ship, the lighthouse and the light
My inner cowardice decides what I will do tonight
I feel safety here for sure. Security in fear.
I squeak by while dreaming big. There goes another year.
When I look empirically, I know I’m doing well
And even though it’s dark I know it’s not a living hell
I do fine. I make it through. It’s not a cry for aid.
I’ve turned a lot of lemon orchards into lemonade
But the question making me so fearful of release
Is I don’t know what I would do if I could be at peace.




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