everything we have together is falling apart.

skies.

even the king wants to kill the king monarch butterfly knife
this is second nature's race to pistol tag his blindside
this is not a theremin it's pitch shifted hunger pains
from altruistic cynics feeding clipped wings to runaways
summer came and set kitschy indian and burning
now sisyphus laughs when i bitch about pushing thirty
worth my weight in unread books they learned to read it as charm
but abstinence burned half the perks of being a star

oh, almost forgot...

the second verse of plaly nice begins with a line about d-i-y castration. i feel good about it. it being the verse, not d-i-y castration.

yeah, that happened.

even the best of us don't give a fuck, we just play nice.

i dipped my pen in pig's blood signed my life and its labor
over to unchased women on the business ends of hangers
no thanks sir i'll take male privilege and march proudly
god's image has a dick and fears no dark alley's
consent i catcall bullets and angels hum along
drowning elevator music rape whistle culling songs
no piercing deaf ears 'til rosie rivets prostate check-ups
forgot that feminism is not just tipping strippers extra
disconnect us barefoot contessa stepford fetish
burning bra drawbridge is faux leftist so coquettish
it jetsets measurements sketched to pro-ana's choosing
coincidence and corsets cropped by cameras licking tumors
so much ruin in the subtext of an eyelash
face of ginger immolation save the stakes for salem typecasts
and when rape gives you lemons call the seed it sews a savior
a gloryhole myth to make the bastard less an anchor

that's in your favor.

fuck everything right now.

i just want to break some shit
or set shit on fire.
that or get a new tattoo or sushi.

playing tapeball in the park and some girl tried to steal my shoes!

you had me at "dumb rhyming words."

black capitalism is a hoax.

Black capitalism is represented as a great step toward black liberation. It isn't. It is a giant strides away from liberation. No black capitalists can function unless the plays the white man's game. Worse still, while the black capitalist wants to think he functions on his own terms, he ...doesn't. He is always subject to the whims of the white capitalist. The rules of black capitalism, and the limits of black capitalism are set by the white power structure.

this beat sounds like a sparring session with sledgehammers.

whiskey, rap, shit talking, girls, suicide and more whiskey.

tesla endorses tomorrow kings from the grave.

i can't not laugh at this.

http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/mis/1784057476.html

dear irs,

i am enclosing a money order good for $983.00 worth of fuck you. i don't know exactly what the conversion rate is between fuck yous and american dollars at the moment, but feel free to take as many as you see fit.

she said i wasn't there. she needed more, more, more.

the laser script inside the diamond read this is where she settled
tell paul i almost buried her twice between the echoes
of bell tolls cut quiet violence is a lonely expression
she don't love you if she wouldn't gut you and hang you with your lower intestine

estranged, framed in negative space.

sleeping alone FUCKING sucks. i'm seriously convinced that it can cause cancer.

SKECH185 + Lamon Manuel = Frank McIntyre

you can feed 'em force in courses, gorge and swallow the cynics
or blow a mushroom cloud kiss and tell 'em cholera did it
this is no parade for corpses, operetta of gimmicks
score to whistle at white women all in honor of emmett

blah, blah, blah. rap stuff.

interracial tattoo/album cover love connection.

connect the scabs to spell estrangement.

july 4th, 2007 - at a rooftop party with david, and maybe samantha. on the phone fighting with meredith.

entangled in a graveshift made to get the best of you. forever's not a promise. it's the first push of an exit wound.

what's most important - vol. one

some shit i'll never finish, because i don't write poems.

the prompt was to write about an intimidate moment with a lover, using objects and our senses to describe what it felt like. this is what came out. there is clearly something wrong with me.

this is the sound of a collarbone
being kissed with a rusty axe

a shark in a drowned nursery

three sharks cornering a swan
mouthing her wingless

the scrape of one vulture's tongue
across a quivering thigh

sweat as a line of defense

my coat of arms is a monkey knife fight for who gets the better typewriter.

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
-Gene Fowler

craiglist rough draft.

dear girl sitting next to onry/cape in the club scene of the sleestack payback dark time sunshine video at 1:05 and 1:24,

i am enamored with you. had i actually been lucky enough to occupy the same space as you, and not just your beautified likeness captured and broadcast across the internet, i think i would've worked up the nerve to speak to you. i would have said something subtle, but noteworthy, quelling the obvious, inevitable and often times just plain fucking annoying tattoo talk icebreakers that our generation seems to think they discovered, which you undoubtedly hear every day you leave the house in anything less than a turtleneck or a parka.

i don't know what i would've said, but it would've certainly led to us partaking in our respective preferred whiskey drinks together (whiskey and ginger ale for me) and discussing our respective preferred spooning positions (i'm perfectly fine with either, but definitely willing to accept the stereotypically male role of the big spoon). i don't know exactly what would've happened between that conversation and our happily ever after. but i do know that i would've insisted on taking things slow and waiting 'til the morning to discuss what to name the kids. the rest we can figure out after we actually meet. deal?

-lfm

willie manuel (verse one)

it goes papa burn his face off so i don't wanna work a day job
purged a third of his nerves and all i learned was fuck a day job
slight gap between our likeness rained ash and turned my collar black
so i laugh when i get mistaken for a college grad
he was glass brass and grease stains three siblings to divide us
and a wife health slipped schlitz pissing convenient pious
every newport was a lit prayer wrenched 'til cysts were timeless
golden days eighties baby raised by an arthritic midas'

thousand tongues carping "hey eight-year-old, you'll never be shit!"
tucked away agape when he sees the women that i sleep with
'cause sons fuck antoine's got five my proof is past due
i'm carrion for vultures my brother's a gang tattoo
anchored anger in his passed blues blooms and he sees it
clip and scale in the closet turned marine willie beaming
so the shadow that i sleep in is nine years my elder
(my) conception spawned the lock jaw on his bed of nails and failures

it was 2:22 grandfather clocked past me
second hands overlapped the day my father stopped laughing
frame shot cropped collapsing still the wake holds breaths
taught me tip toe around the casket-shaped hole left
house was rarely a home just two stories of callous men
where broken mirrors shape the face that we were fashioned in
given the time i'd crack the cracks and name them after him
the will to wrath convinced his fracturing is what my back's against

this might surprise you. you're all being lied to.

sisyphus laughs when i bitch about pushing thirty.

failure - 1,384,984
lamon - 2

i can't remember exactly what those two were, but i'm sure i've done at least two things right in my twenty-seven and a half years here.

haiku

tomorrow's kingdom
will rise from the shit we leave
to our children.

power lloyd stabbing himself with the pen diane gave him.

i left my tongue in st. louis knotted 'round my ex's finger
with a diamond-shaped tumor six-carat dead ringer
a year later i'm a drinker whiskey while the sad songs play
and you don't love her if you never wanted to punch her fiance
my anger's an anchor of pure regret
so i knuckle drag this path as unsure as my steps
in the direction of any woman whose face isn't yours
'cause you don't need me to sleep like lexapro and red doors
it's less force and more labor to write dear johns with razors
so distance is a blessing when indifference is your nature
but the miles ache like stillborns and cherubim choked
on words to sweeten my failures and your therapist's notes

waking the dead.

from the beginning

no day would be more fitting for the start of this than today.

shit.

this is shit past mourning the corpse pulled from his wrist

four hundred days malaise craving apathetic bliss

now the rumor mill's working like the facts aren't laughable

he's either agoraphobic or a fasting cannibal

and half-clad in hubris' half-truths but mostly over it

built this throne of bones and shit to burn until she notices

the hole of his logical solders broken ribs for lovers

to watch the smiles widen like a shark's trailing a cutter

and couplets are knuckle dusters when a vice is avoided

'cause a face full of blow makes the brain much too buoyant

disappointment had a name and a language 'til tax claimed them

today it walks the city spouting pull-string catch phrases

like "pour me another before the lapses replay"

and "my mother's praying hands are just another cliche"

so he's walking 'round bullets claiming near death keepsakes

'cause exit wounds bloom faster than cancer can keep pace

with shit last mourning for this corpse of a rib

so he python jaws liliths to see which one'll fit

again wrong myth wrong miss never liked her

he's either a bad muse or he should fuck better writers

or settle for bedding biters best excuse for why he slept late

no sweat check his demeanor's just as shallow as his chest plate

headaches like black funerals so flashy grand and glutton

and it's laugh track suitable how his form fancies function

for peers pulling punch-ins the kitschiest struggle

was how to jazz june cooler when blackface turned subtle

and chitterling circuit uncles claimed stars like southern crosses

to spawn agnostic genres like rakim and daniel johnston

caution this is music for men raised to be widowers

clocks tick inconsistent to count the minutes of missing her

in third person burning a church full of listeners

shit isn't hers it's work to stretch the purse of a minute's worth

-lamon manuel