straight whiskey; mixed metaphors

**18+** unless otherwise attributed I wrote this stuff © 2012 - 3012

[purgatorypoetry]

and for whatever word you seek to attach, I'll be there, scotch tape packing tape duct tape what I'm tryna say is I'm flexible,

you just point me toward the sun let me wobble toward a goal and for whatever need you need to attach I'll be there,

pop rivet crimp section tac weld n braze I think what I'm tryna say is I get attached

It starts in the eyes and weed-roots down n through it discovers, entangles, wraps and strangles and scars, lord

always leaves the deepest scars when pulled away

and so maybe what I've been tryna say is I'm most safely viewed from a distance -

make it a sunrise or a high tide just make it a brief hug maybe but make it a goodnight

make it don't think on me again the currents rising now

swimming prowess be damned it's getting downright dangerous

your breaststroke a marker of arms reach and I'll keep on my side of the line if you'll do the same it's all I've been tryna say is it's gravity,

entropy in full swing and this love can't hold a candle in this tempestuous rage but I still wake

sandy breath heavy with your name

[purgatorypoetry]

@purplemonkeysexgod69 tag 4 non- selfies from my phone.

[purgatorypoetry]

Struggles With Moderation

I promise this is a love poem if you just hang in there -

in countering an insurgancy;

the greatest attention must be paid to the extent to which the combatant is prepared to destroy himself in pursuit of the success of of his mission -

I used to wonder

about the partisan fronts of france

and would I so be prepared to hang by wire for the sin

of letting my heart speak so brazenly between the ribs.

I been knife-in looking - fat, red morsels of my youth, clutched dripping in two guilt-red fists I mock them,

doubters of my resolve, all

my fingertips tracing fading lines of menace down their halls

sprawling cryptic drawingings on their every wall it's been said

a message in blood needs no further explanation,

but I been madman scribbling

augeries for the remorseless I been red-eyed squinting at you,

attempting to squeeze myself through an infinite, infinitesimal space,

-{}-

fearing I may suffocate, my limbs even denied the very right to flail in objection to the oxygen deprivation what I mean is

I been seeing your face,

inferred in the margins of

tens of tens of thousands

lines of code

still basically never sleeping cuz

still waking with my heart racing

did you know some feelings never actually go away?

you just get used to the taste,

copper-penny-bitter sweating

still waking up afraid-

and so I'm sand-tongued knocking on the bar,

two fingers up as a salute and a plea

a signal of tactical retreat

damn the glass just

make it Irish,

make it neat

[purgatorypoetry]

and for the days where the wind make every cloud look like a sea beast, all dolphins and humpbacks and those really really colorful ones but all

a sort of greyscale backed by blue,

eyes up to realize I been heads-down for a minute -

I'm reminded of a spring I spent in Alpena,

that kind of sobering kick you gotta be really, really drunk to experience

and I haven't been doing much drinking -

I been heads-down for so long,

these clouds streaked like overzealous watercolor work

I've always known there's no such thing as perfect

and still I'm all brush to canvas-

my modest wants

like to clutch you, every single one by the shoulders

to shake you, yell and tell you,

I'm about to do something incredible -

you oughtta watch

but I been heads down,

confidence is quiet they say and I move silent,

a frenzied motion blurred enough to resemble stillness I scream

, but a breath

in and out and I been heads down.

but for real are you seeing these clouds?

[purgatorypoetry]

it'll be a mazzie star song probably, baiting hooks through achilles, dragged me back down some dusty country roads, my open mouth on the stones they'll tell you,

cut my teeth here, solid and solmn as a telephone pole, copper tween broad shoulders shrugged sometimes a full quarter mile apart a horizon sized hug they'll tell you

never met a stranger, so well communed, arms so open as to let every last wave penetrate, lay precarious root, and slip through

twas the fool laid foundations in the sand, and I dragging this love affair with beaches behind me, where sea meet land and land meet air, some divider I'm not meant to cross

it could be anything, the breeze come to me cross the nape of a passing dream, that scent of the first drag of someone else's cigarette in an apple orchard late into an early october day but

it'll be a mazzie star song probably

[purgatorypoetry]

filthy creature that I am,

floundering, fluttering, side of the highway crow,

silver cigarette paper

clutched proudly in my beak -

and if you ain't a treasure, precious, devoid of any price

and if I weren't but a bird sans flight

if I weren't a cold october night

triple-beam value weighed, contention wax 'n wane, hands a subtle shake

mired in mite and shame

filthy creature that I am,

my bedspace carved in the bankside, my dorsal fin sharpened to a blade

touch me, feel me alone, taste

catch, clean,

filet

hungry angel you became,

filthy creature that I am,

the same

[purgatorypoetry]

with every inch of you a miracle, their palates growing weary of wine, this grace from which you've fallen, that grave from which you climb,

with every mile of you like magic, stretched, a black ribbon round me,

a hare in your hat,

the curtain drawn - you saw me in half

and every half of me a creature, atlas-shoulered brittle, butterfly wings

flapping,

a sea of typhoon winds at my command

[purgatorypoetry]

and you could be forgiven for feeling weightless, fluttering, under-skin butterfly wing, heartbeat and future under-feet

and the day's track on repeat, volume, a steady increase, snow and then cicada and then fire

this chorus to the unknown, this acrid tasting smoke, this withering, waning

grinding

of the bone

[purgatorypoetry]

been wolf awaiting moon,

cap-a-tillar, cocoon,

been words for the mouth-feel,

been a mouthful

of tongue -

and all the better to taste you with,

bowing, bending, breaking

at the word love,

honing claws beneath the sheets

teeth for carnal need -

my sometimes, huff-n-puff demeanor

your strawhouse disposition,

an apology of cog

and wheel

and gear

[purgatorypoetry]

a quivering island on horizon, the very muscles of the eyes strain, whole mountain ranges wane and heave,

a mass lost at sea, a volcanic peak, maybe some ship sans sail helmless, helpless, drowning the slowest death,

so many hopes in so many bottles like someone must be below deck, penmanship growing increasingly urgent

the edges of the words fallen off the page, parchment scrap, outdated map, and the scribe slips down

with monsters

[purgatorypoetry]

nothing ever dies

[purgatorypoetry]

can't fit no more brass rings round the heart,

no more black hair ties round the wrist,

you ain't know its torn me all apart,

been past as good as it gets,

done been forged,

all them cheques -

all tracked through the carpet old, love you,

a thousand-thousand times before,

loved you then and still

as a dead heart still

as the deepest dark still

love you,

still

[purgatorypoetry]

catch me if u can

been under-rock sleeping,

out-of-touch keeping either silent or else with

naught worth repeating

could have been dreaming,

every recollection fogged, clouded,

mirrors shrouded out of stupid superstition -

every chapter under revision,

irreverently rewritten

cross-out scribbles black-barred admissions

been poised under scrutiny,

whole crew contemplating mutiny if I said

that I was scared,

sacred, scarred and scared

would you forgive me?

quiver spent and shield bent and

my sword chipped, languishing

with all my other worldly laurels

on the mantel of a mightier man

[purgatorypoetry]

if I could I'd be a river,

wide and winding,

seeking, finding paths of least resistance

through the years that lie before you hewing hopes for you into the very stone -

my currents each, a prayer, a wish,

a hope and if,

if I could,

I'd be a whisper

a breath beneath beating wings,

I'd be a thermal rising, the very atmosphere consipring, carrying you, high as you would ever

dare to go -

the embrace of an endless wood, silence, peace

a blanket of budding leaves

to shield you should you choose to sleep,

and if I could,

if I could,

all the very very best of me

[purgatorypoetry]

the skin quake like so many roaming tectonic plate, seismographic data blinks in a thousand-thousand valleys,

peaks

rivers climbed and mountains swum, higher altitudes and lower oxygen come

what may come

dream what I can when I must

four warm walls and every one of them a trap,

closing in

that starwars scene

it was in one of the original three, but honestly too tired to even care to google it

point was I love you.

point is I loved you.

sequences and orders - questions of time like questions of space like the answering more to realize

we know nothing

and I know nothing

but that I love you.

a waning mass of entropy on bent knee and feverishly bent on thee -

burning,

candle-flickering 'cross a horizon on no spatial curve,

a vibrating particle,

slowing -

and I love you.

[purgatorypoetry]

more jealous than I rightfully oughta be,

sunset shrouded in forbidden guise, purple-puffed shoulders at her sides,

a thousand different blades up each sleeve, worrying lowering pressure systems snaking their way from the north -

perfect prisms perforating the crystal streams

more cold on more dark and more ice in more whiskey,

every promise flung to wanting winds, to waxing grins, craning in, sinister, shrieking I mean

shrieking

[purgatorypoetry]

dreamed of the day you stopped loving me, mix-matched skin mish-mashed in, staple-linked, we pulled,

we stretched -

curious little beast we were, hungry and skinny and empty of everything but dream,

we slept

dreamed of the day you stopped loving me, as ugly now as then, as fearfully enchanted by burning things, gems from the heavens, the ground around us all moonscape-pocked,

we danced