Poetry Blog by Zach Dafoe

sometimes it's like 
"Sorry, man. I can't carry you. My pockets are full."

and then the ugly side comes out 

in the face of denial, the ugly side comes out 

but it doesn't give me room for me
to love a stranger .

Sometimes,
I quote the old great songs 
carried on high like gospel 
picked out of a smoke stained book
older than I've ever been 
worn, ill-fitting
language , tumblin...

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a miser

managing middles

planting loosestrife, 

caught with coroner's hands 

pallid as the pale horse

waiting to ride

an irony 

taking lunch on a crossbeam

next to so-called friends 

bound solely by necessity :

a family's blood debt

they eat in silence .

yet buildings are measured in stories 

untold and entombed secrets.

a posterboy 

killed by...

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There's a metaphor for this 
a wooden block, chopped and chipped
by the sways of life and lisp
broken by Stone and verb to become the stick 
so thin we re mistaken as straw ,
tossed in the with the stray dogs 
in a haywagon , 
spending life thinking that we re a needle
trying to squeeze life through an eye, but choking on the biblical camel

in looking for ourselves, we found a die to pu...

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control group: 
imagine Einstein on a stoop 
drinking from a brown bag , huffing 
lightheaded heathen , stolen shag
the only carpet that requires raking
kept lined in a pocket next to a stolen, frozen watch 
so you always know what time it is 
and how close you are you right, twice daily 
eating steel cut rice with Bailey's 
pining down the end of the fucking world 
mapped out equations ...

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the weight of decision in your hands
Taking the shape of a preferred tool 
one you can never drop 
the option always thumbed 
in the pockets of conscience ; 

mine takes the shape of a carpenter's hammer,

tho, I've never been much for building;
I've never been much for intended purpose 

a hammer: crashing into side conversations and 
cracking teeth, flipping them inwards 
forcing in...

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the rolling amber grains 
of sunsets steeped:
slowed but unslurred 
kept clear and clean against the blurred
fathoms of abalone grey. 

of kitchen block white 
of office eggshell: embossed business cards
wading thru fleshy handshakes and toothsome grins
currencies of decisions made 

solace grows where the sun shines 
gleaming in, fragmented incountable times 
conjoining every patch o...

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gravity wells 
bending light into silvery pines forty feet below 
grainy seas of tug o wars
simulations of bodies sent
to splinter off one another 

it's not always easy 
to give me your love.

skins shared and sloughed off 
staccato cracking and cackling
Pots boiling and churning
pigs roasted, stripped for crackling 
yet the fall was so cold

so still

rememberance in reverberanc...

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re: 'What is Love?'
Sometimes it's a mistake you make on purpose
a chance you take for something that feels as close to real as anything can

in a world filled with band aid relationships and medication and distraction, layers and layers of falsities behind farcities, love comes off as legitimate.

So that's what it is. The great spiritual motivator: the sapient justifier of our need to proc...

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shed stripes 
coded in Morse
and now I'm just
another fucking pale horse
defined by stains 
awaiting a calamity 
slain centuries ago
in fairy tales

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evaporate:
seek to make up lost time
silver screens, burned out to sepia 
brazen bulls, cooling 
trident tines, braided 
to speartips we dream to fall against
but not upon.

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my hands are spades for splitting wood 
and trim Hades' hair, doused out as it ought to
choked out in the night , face torn down
into a restful ease
stillness yet unmatched
like a broken watch 

my legs are belt buckles: tourniquets
tight switches for the imaginative lights
synapses firing across an ionic storm
so it can be funnelled into a trench
mindlessly cut by my feet 
thoughtless...

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chastized by a silver tongue 
chopped off, forked and hafted
splitting thru my crackled flesh
as if my bones were meaningless
hung spires of calcium and listlessness
weighted, sunken; seized by indecision

and lo, with such ease 
am I rendered into shapeless vicera 
spilling out and flooding away 
churned down thru eddi and towed under 
into the tepid standing water 
brackish with time...

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devil's sympathies 
dried up streams 
where letters used to be

smoke-filled rooms 
warm with murmuring lips
rumors left vacant as coal dust

chalk outlines traded
for slow leaks of nitrous oxide 
and the velveteen burn of a leash

taut teachings of how to loosen up 
and laugh again

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My name is John Bastard 
I am a head on a stick 
I am a picture of rats crawling over it
the maimed meme of patchwork, cult heroes 
of pop culture 

You can call me by my name but it changes 
You can call me by my name but it changes 

fells falling, Fargo and Wells wallin
tarped Egypt as a riddled Sphinx
build of stones and styx: Hell's calling

Faceless Stanley, bagged and tagged 
...

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Chapter 2 inspired, uh sorry it's late I fell asleep

creaking and swaying
groaning on the fulcrum between worlds
nourished and nourishing , leaves unfurled
reaching out and weaving into the cosmos 

to touch the skin of history:
reading laugh lines and scars
gifts written into bark 
recorded and grown over
expanding to fill the spaces
between war, feast and famine 
fed by what is, wi...

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elder-god carrion and a world dreamt
eclipsed by the worms of our ilk 
burrowed and tunnelled 
syphoned and sustained
by the blood and brains of greater things 

formless, unwitting children of Ymir
separated from the nothing by the everything
wringing meaning from a crackling void
and order from the blank slate of chaos.

set into motion, our nature
of tides eating tides
the old fall...

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Lulling heads towards the frame
departure of a sunset, broached at the horizon 
casting shawls of cooling blues and greens 
laid down to rest, sinking 
as hearts rise
and the vapor of stars collect, reaching highs
colluding ions from a thousand years away

Here I am, 
a lucky antenna , bearing witness 
conducting wishes, sleepy and listless 
caught and carried away

were it so easy to...

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raise your hand if you believe music's magic
incantations in cheer and tragic
fluent language for our condition
feverbrush hexes: our own volition

raise your hand if you've lived possessed
malcontent and vinyl-dressed 
tearing off that studded vest
droned down these fetted frequencies
lyrically stripped to skins
sandblasted by indecencies:
as if the songwriter was calling your name

...

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Dianetics :
fake sweeteners' faith for diabetics
saccharine and hollow 
following and tumbling after 
brave men to eat a labyrinth 
sold cardboard insurance disasters

gun-running is in my blood 
but I've never sold with a smile
ravenous as a cult following
leaden-mired and wallowing
for the right to wear hearts
cyclical-actioned 
beared on sleeves
and my departed leave none bereaved
...

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autumn's autumn, 
writ from right to bottom 
plagued with plagiarizers 
drinks downed and capsized her 
black powder fingernails
tapping on the glass of patients 
grown up into big-boy rails

inhale;
dreams curdled in a blue whale
swallowed by the swallowed 
Noah the knower and his betrayal
edible, the way we like our drinks

talked up;
planting seeds with a monster truck
hallowed ...

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setting your watch to a belly of a dog

springs and sprockets carried on a Crimean surf

cards with men wearing sleeves stamped with mermaids, anchors: momentos and hexes and the names of lovers stranded by the low tide

like us: dried up and bottomed out,
stamping timesheets , winking at dirty jokes 
eating dinners in silence as the hull whistles 
thru bullet holes.

counting the days ...

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From whence cometh strength ?

A rush in a side by side, an absence of fear on the rides, gleaming-eyed steering, searing, leaping thru the Ides normally marched

Beer-battered into dark rooms and
Ultraviolent and hasty retreat from the wombs and
licking wounds and injurious seasons for seasoning, tasting waded reeds and chasing reasoning for the aching kingdom of war--
praying to be on pos...

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"I love you"-- laboratory euphoria
crossing stars and sparks,
bridging blackouts and cold sweats
and pleas that I come to bed
"I love you" -- biting feeding hands
and still you feed me,
nourish me, hold me
and push us to grow
in the well tilled garden of one another
"I love you"-- oil slick Oceana clearing ,
chasing the sunset,
healing by eternity ;
it feels like my lungs were made to ...

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wear the tithe of poetry 
devils buying drinks on interest 
swollen basement stills, brewing the poison that lets you feign forgetfulness

man's truest, fastest sprint made in fear 
from every and all truths
that point to our entire species being fradulent

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celebrate celibate victories 
shallow seashells shorn and sold 
like virgin tides, rising high and never receeding
to drown the world in obsolescence
to spike the seawalls 
and watch it flee on hubris 
innocence mass murdering ignorance 
until the young become the old
and feel life owed to them
How true that exchange would be 
as true and cold as hypothermic absolutes
kept breathing and...

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