modern art makes me sick

all of the people i should know,
all of the places i should be,
i must say,
modern art makes me sick.

being seen and being known,
having some contribution rightfully owned,

i know art is material but i'd like to transcend that ideal, it's a paradox
knowing that art is meaningful, meaning is formless.
however art is visible form.

i'd like to keep the art i create in the simplest of forms, without becoming so laughably vague

because if this is the reliant idea that should keep my art going, having a place in some social phenomena, where is that place within myself?
that place from which meaning erupts without form, into something with form?

the form is ground in which there is compromise, but the grandiose structures that are attributed to that form are the ones that dominate that compromise and place the art form into the completely objective realm, constructed only by phenomenal thought.

i seek to balance meaningful art and form, without indomitable structure,
the structure in which is initiated by critics of the social body, critiquing the form.

save yr prayers

i've let my nails grow out but all that really means
is that the red skin around them gets torn twice as often
and when i clench my fists and whimper at nothing
my penitent grip leaves a mark

but by the time those marks have faded
i find myself in too familiar places
scratching and biting every three seconds
if not at the nail then at the finger and if not the finger
the hand

idling long enough to let any devil in
praying hard and quickly so my tongue
can't catch in the chattering teeth

"let me be alive this time."

"help me be alive."

life never comes to ones like these
and more and more it seems
it never leaves

forgotten priorities

smoked enough cigarettes that I could count on my face turning red
blaming it on the sun.
She looks at me from not very far away, shoulder brushing against shoulder,
but I can't hold contact.
I may be looking at your eyes, but I'm thinking about my face
with blood vessels too close to the skin, to the surface, to your line of vision.

In the morning my mouth moves how my circulation would talk, and my muscles contract like how my self esteem functions. I talk loud and fast , mumbling without saying anything , paranoid of their absence of acknowledgement, spilling coffee on my bed for the one millionth time this month.

There are too many things that need doing, too many anxieties for time needed for healing, to much harm that needs reducing.
I think afternoons are meant for rooftops, and this heat is meant to set us running from its lashing flames. If we can't leave the city we need to crawl higher. Heat rises, but these mornings send me escalating in a pulse much faster.

How's it possible I've come full circle all over again? How is it possible for these dizzying seasons to be so cyclical?

that ringing in my ears and the way i fell up the stairs tells me
that im drunk and deserved every single second of the pain
that makes you throw yourself against every brick wall
that you've passed on your way 'home' from wherever you were

"Oh, I'll take my shit and get out of your home." You shout to someone
a subject somehow made unclear despite the fact that you're alone
a subject somehow made unclear simply by being a subject at all.

Stop gutting yourself, Travis Cannon,
and don't think of what they'd say
when you weren't around.

how we get removed from conversations like suicide (and other ambigouous phrasing of sentences)

lighten these lonely muscles like cords dropping
the popping of knee caps,
hyper-extension and the pressure releasing
fluidity like noise

these gestures must be made bigger,
glances speaking like setting while words build weaker characters,
we leave to write our fables and walk down the street with them holding hands
clutching nails into knuckles to bleed a solution,
a more natural response to an ending.

Leave town and be forgotten,
Stay here and get pushed out
out into what?
out into who?

The victor in you can't voice a story, they can only write one.
What we won't allow to push past these pages will, and what tries to
can come flowing back
with a history contextualized by those who have shed and lost the most
-and if I feel like I lose anymore-
no, i'm losing more.
I've lost more.
I've felt n' feared the cyclical nature of these things
and I want it to be beautiful to tell each other that

if you were shown secrets as heat waves,
they lied about only being visible from a distance.
I can see summer rising out of my footsteps
and I want to hold what we can share closer than the warm air filling my lungs

Spend No Time

the red of my knuckles from hitting the wall
every night in my sleep where love rather than science
tells me this is how its been for the past thousand years

"we've lived this before you know"
i know, i know, i know
"you haven't lived yet, you know"

punch to the pipes underneath and through
then climb in and disappear in the steam
as though it weren't so much to ask for alchemy

as though it weren't so much to ask for heat

i know it's too much to ask
i know it's too much.

so sick of goodbyes

we err on the cautious side these days
count black birds in fences
stare into every oncoming car
looking for signs that the time has come to run
though that which we're running from
seems more and more to be running
from us

'no one sees you like i do'

I go decidedly missing

I shouldn't be counting the people that love me like I would spare change. I treat you too much like I'm rolling pennies and I can barely make five cents.While 5 cents isn't much, It still makes me feel far from broke.
But lately I feel like my pockets can barely hold you.
I've sewn them back together, focused on the seams,
but we're always coming undone (the pockets and I)
and thus I end up counting
because nobody stays

counting and recounting
to make sure you'll be there
to know you're not spent

not yet