Shared atmosphere vapor trails in blank stares across a room so crowdedly desolate.
Always there, always filthy. Slideshows flicker like the magnavox eyes shuffle lid to lid, moment to moment as time fleets like dust shimmering in my heart. Always filthy.
Brought out of the infectiously swollen cardiac arrest, through the waters, so thick drowning with due care. Peeled back potential baking like hot glue amongst the weight of glory that was never there.
Love against the glass ceiling swimming above while the sharks swim below. Sinking into the black and blue that ensues carbonated lungs scream alone in the waves below a somber rock a bye into the phonetics, into the pride less afternoons wasted in silence.
Alone in the drink as all the hands let go awaiting always filthy waiting to sink out of mind and out of sight.
Daytime ghosts
Windows bring light that exhales a dead-end world
Softest intentions drown to sleep at the bottom of shallow wells
Neon memories bubble to life the static scores that bodies hide
Mouthed confessions of loveless intimacy that knows no swirls of radiance
Soft embrace of the life above from the cold souls that swim below
Hugless lovers reclining in the bleak blue edges of summer lights hung on horizons
That never knew the scores composed from names that never met
Fainted in pleasures unknown to sender as the tape decks click B-sides search for depth
Tears for two at an empty diner booth that is abandoned along travels to far off destinations
Reservations for taped confessions of vows never thought, as the food comes shared aloud
Relief by numbers in collections of good vibes, better company and lives well lived
High tides come and go as wells stagnate the fishtank below
A young discus thrower hurls the discus with all his might
It lands, churning up the soil somewhere nearby
The discus thrower is happy, or perhaps disappointed
If his rival has managed to throw the discus further
Let’s try to give these competitions some meaning
Is there anything in them, hidden behind the obvious
Behind the victories and defeats – perhaps a thirst for a little power,
A sublimation of war, or, conversely, the peaceful labour of farmers?
Or do competitions serve as a consolation for those
Who cannot or do not wish to compete?
But perhaps someday, another time,
When discs are made to order,
Tailored precisely to the thrower’s palm.
The heaviest sound lays us to rest
Tied to the steak and eats our heart out
Composure fixed to the evening sky
Swivel the scenery then throw me away when I am colored dead
Let's all pose then fall down the well together
Understudies for the part we weren't meant to play
Courage for cowards in the rewriter's chair beating the around the rose bush
Sink thirty thousand feet into the shoes too narrow for human feats.
Back to factory settings until you can learn how to sing let alone speak our names
Caution tape leashes the struggle bus in gear on your best days
One step further than slipping up on a Monday, blue and battered
I wake up to the sight of the out of boundaries shred to pieces
Water for the pills stuck in swallowing fashion
Wings tied to the bed abstract as ever
We dreamt of the rise and fall of the house of us
Blueprints of further disappointment with marble inlays to hold onto this moment
Shock jocks of jealous siblings gnashing at ankles going home
Nostalgic for chaos and that bitter root
I didn't know that I was this obvious
Innocence donated with and without the will to live
Lover, Lover
The nighttime sings our names
Ballads of the figurative Juliet
Radios hiss hearts spilled the shadows hide naked ambition stilled
Neglected emotional hills wafts through valleys of past lives
Karmic backlogs review their closing percentages
Futures flood the floors hold the line between fate and tears
Shadow people alone in the twilight
Illuminated letters, walls woed to sleep
Dreams from the shoreline as phantom vessels waltz on the silver linings
Postures of stable footing, top of the line, kings and queens of value
Thumbs circle the knuckles, bone kisses bone, the familiar taste of home
Haunted hems lines explored in tribal pursuits
Please keep me waiting
The specter of tender frames evaporates
Morning ghosts caress the memory in travel
Neckties versus deadlines
Power brokered, breath that betrays the dream
Folded napkins
Cocktail napkin epitaphs
Check please
Poised-
Now It's Poisoned
Now Nothing...
Meaningless Trash.
My Poem Was Started
With A Laugh
But Something Else
Too.
I Forgot.
That's Funny.
I'm Glad It
Was... And I
Think I ...
Don't You Think
The Emptiness
You're Focusing
On Fulfilling...
Laughs Better
Than You Can
Possibly Remember?
-Gray Squirrel
09-12-2026
I have come to realize that every moment of my life
Has been solely about meeting and falling in love with you.
That has been my life’s purpose and I didn’t know it til now.
Since your up and leaving
I’ve been heavy bleeding.
Take this restless heaving
And recycle everything of mine
I gave to you that held meaning.
Disassemble these arms
That have clung to you.
They have done nothing but weep,
So distance your name from mine.
Call me when you’re back in town
So I can dilate my eyes and hide from you.
Your gaze is too piercing,
And your body is too beautiful to me
So I can’t bear to look.
Don’t tell me when you’re gone.
Why should I have to suffer your leave?
For the seventh time, with the flashbacks.
Take your time here but leave me lonely
Unless you mean it, unless you’re ready to want me.
It will soon reach a decade passing,
Like distilled water standing
Still in its same bottle.
I am the water marinating
In the reminders of you.
Choosing suffering, and choosing
My own suffocation by not moving on.
a reality check
vibrancy
dig deeper
for peace
abundant
sweet
checkmate
amongst the cosmos
a higher bliss
you and me
this
moonlight
a subtle hum
and warm breezes
old music
and even older poems
poetry
his art
my freedom
our salvaged dreams
forming memories
they are all lost at sea
this is bliss (well.. at least.. to me..)
interconnectedness
Christ wept real tears
for us all, for you and me.
We have forgotten
the true meaning of prayer
and the joy that prayer brings.
I feel my thinning purpose slipping fast~
a fragile spool with only scraps to give.
Each sheet you take recalls the recent past
when I was whole, and certain I could live.
Now every tug reveals how close I am
to joining hollow rings upon the floor;
I cling to what remains, a quiet jam
between becoming less… and being no more.
The spindle hums, indifferent to my state;
the cabinet waits, aloof in its supply.
I balance on the edge of near-not-fate
and ask what worth persists when comforts die.
If meaning blooms in moments nearly gone,
then I, half-spent, still matter as I wane.
THE CALLOUSED HANDS OF EXPERIENCE
------------------------------------------------------
By; Andantino Tirarsela:
___________________________________________________
Fare il gradasso
Fare il figo:
Dardelle arie
Strafigasi
-------------------
Erotomania
------------------
a longing for creative inspiration
encouragement from
a disappointment
the story goes
a celebrity wished for
inspiration
so he pretended to be a commoner
he meet a woman
who was self described as common
they became friends and
he invited her to a concert
he said he had backstage tickets and
she could bring a friend
they went to the concert hall
there they'd meet he new freind
he called her and told her
he'd be there later
something came up
and he'd show up later
well an hour into the show
he hadn't appeared after intermission
they had given up thinking he'd appear
and then the singer
started to intro his protege'
and when he did the guy walked
out behind his freind and grabbed her hand and took her on stage.
He sang a harmonic song looking her directly in her eye's.
What do you do
when you’re riddled with riddles,
swallowed whole
right down the middle?
Music blares,
but it’s not me.
’Twas a toot or two
from a fiddle.
What do you do
when your riddles get riddled?
When you’re all alone
and you fiddle your diddle.
Nothing comes out
but a little
piddle.
Compulsively arranged
and out of control,
thought after thought
has swallowed me whole.
Riddled with feelings,
I pick at my mind,
looking for answers
that no one can find.
Can you connect the dots?
I’m trying to justify
whatever still rots.
Riddled with riddles,
discarded
like an afterthought.
Something’s not right here.
Something became
a knot.
I am grateful for learning early the meaning of wealth…
and grateful more people are learning this everyday….
How wealth is not measured by what and how much we have to keep…
but by what and how much we are willing to give away
Life, I have come to know
is an endless journey.
Each stop is only transit
into another uncertainty.
We spend our whole lives
searching for purpose
some chasing meaning
others just relief.
I find myself in the first
asking myself again and again
why I am here
why I still breathe.
And still I move forward
not because I am sure
but because not moving
answers nothing.
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