The City of Broken Toys

Rabid animals masquerade themselves as pillars of sanity
Social butterflies hiding inner pariahs
Pushing deliberate deviance
Sporting half assed smiles with whole hearted jealousy
Loveless and lascivious
Love less than dirt
Shattered panes of painted pains worn like a fashion trend
Passed around as the proverbial joint
Fractured personalities swept together
like shards of wine glass dropped from jeweled fingers
Swept into souless forms
Reminiscent of something human
Less than whole indefinately
Pouring endless streams of bile laced sex
Failing to fill a leaky bucket
Total lifeblood chemical replacement
Too shameful to acquiesce
Too caustic to handle
Acid coursing through collapsed veins
Venomous recipricity for heartfelt kindness
Indignant answers to unasked questions
insults made "for your benefit"
Too much speed to slow down
Too little self respect to stop
Self hatred capitol of the world
Precious little is held sacred
To these denizens of toxic seaside
This poverty paradise
This is damage that storms cannot achieve
This is petulance in the tens of thousands
This is the city of broken toys

Mirror man

   For the third time in my life, I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. This time, like the other two, is quite bewildering, but for different reasons. My face shows age that I don't feel except in old (and new) injuries. My baby fat has melted away, leaving a face reminiscent of family members in their twenties and thirties from my childhood. I see the lines on my forehead when I make facial expressions where once was a smooth surface punctuated by pimples. I look at a solid angular jawline and prominent cheekbones where once there were youthful curves. My eyes, though still bright and fiery, have a sorrow in them born of broken hearts and shattered dreams, the way only life can give you. I know this man who's eyes I stare into so intently must be me, yet I study his face and gestures like a blind man having just received sight. 
   The first time I stared at a stranger in the mirror I was a teenager. Having recently grown into puberty I saw an image of myself and realized I didn't know who I was. My childhood had become murky, partially due to a Prozac prescription that had some side effects on my memory. Also having lost my best freind to a recent suicide, i was particularly addled. Looking at the reflection I saw a face and body that was familiar but at the same time alien to the child's self I had known for so seemingly long. I was sure that I hadn't always had those bright blue eyes, that smile, the dimples and cleft chin. I couldn't remember much about who I had been up until that point. Some memories of a series of violent episodes involving my father and various people, a few random childhood scenes, and of course most of the birthdays and Christmases. I decided then to start on becoming a real character. I couldn't just be some guy, I had to be something only I could be. I just had no idea what that was.
   The second sudden realization of metamorphosis took place when I was in my early twenties having just finished with my time in the navy. I was six foot, two hundred and fifty pounds, and I had been drinking heavily for the last four years. The man I saw wasn't one I was proud of. I had made many poor decisions and saw them in my bloated cheeks and bags under my eyes. My belly had become a beer gut that rivaled late term pregnancies and would be the brunt of jokes to that effect quite often. As i stared, I could feel the eyes in my other self looking back at me in shame. How did I get to this point? I was lost but had been through enough trials and tribulations that I knew I'd land on my feet somehow. I knew who I had been, but I hadn't figured out who I was, and what I should do with myself. I was a man, but hardly. The world had been trying to break me for my own benefit and I just didn't get it. In AA meetings they tell you that you have to hit rock bottom before you can rebuild yourself. I didnt reach that point for years, I'm still not sure I ever have. 
   I am, as of this writing, on the cusp of my thirtieth birthday, a date that I have dreaded since I could still count facial hairs. I am sitting in bed next to the most wonderful human being I've ever had the privilege of falling in love with, and despite her warmth as she peacefully sleeps beside me, i am unable to sleep. A few minutes ago (before I grabbed this tablet) I was curled up in bed waiting for the sandman to throw some sheep at me to put me under when I decided on a glass of water and a bathroom visit. I decided to shave earlier today for the first time in ages. I stopped drinking for the most part a few months ago and between that and a better diet I am down to one hundred and sixty eight pounds. After voiding my bladder I turned to look in the mirror and saw a stranger. Alone with myself standing in front of the sink as I washed my hands, I looked at the child I used to be, the young man I became, and realized that I have become what I was trying to be. For once I have no big drama, no belief that the world is against me, no animosity towards the people I care about. Most importantly, and most surprisingly, I no longer hate myself. I have travelled all over the country, I've worked many different jobs, I've read novels and poems, I've seen art and nature, I've seen art IN nature, I've tasted most (but not all) of the dishes on the buffet. I see the man I always wanted to be and it is as unreal as if I saw Mickey Mouse in jackboots and a pompadour baring his teeth at me. I'm told that I'm kind and gentle, but manly and tough. I'm artistic and well spoken while mechanically inclined and vulgar. I am so struck by this image for this reason: it's who I know I always wanted to be but hated myself so much I didn't believe I could be. I realized while writing this, the only conclusion I could come to: it's a mirror. The guy in it? That's me. I am an artist, an athlete, a musician, a poet. I am Tristan Storey Lock.
   

JOURNALISM?

Now presenting Lies to eat with butter cheese and chives
With recipes advertised to, but mostly FOR you
The latest fad and app and diet pill
then traffic weather celebs oh fuckin my!
Criminally crooked accounts of two sides of a triangle
Truth beneath sediment of verbal filth accrued
"Public safety" is a safety blanket
To comfort sheep awaiting sheer
Anchored by a clothing ad on a live viagra commercial
Now the buxom model sells you fear of noncompetition
The joneses the joneses the goddamn joneses
Informed in the slightest? No
Infomercial masquerading as news
And then theres infomercials masquerading as news too
Judge for yourself with no facts to weigh
Faux* news network having a tea party
Youre invited to mass marketed decay
Play their brands hand the way they showed you
Bite the man who stands behind you
Right is right if coulter says it
Going straight is left next to beck and his call
Break your neck looking back at the photoshopped rear-view 
How rosy her cheeks and what a 'raq haw haw haw
Whats a motto with you? Fair and balanced- like a bomb in a diaper
Saffron scribbling, asinine blonde reports 
Nielson ratings laughingly dictate need-to-know and have-to-have
What cant you live without? Find out after these important life changing offers
Buy to relieve your impotence, to exfoliate your portfolio, to rectify and simplify and numb your skull to obfuscate the pills on today you took yesterday and will die from tomorrow
Preserve your necrotic existence with botoxic waste byproducts
Ressurect on saturday to watch the bank of america distraction bowl
Brought to you in part by stagnation and indifference 
The rest by avarice and illegitimate claims of youthful appearance
And now the news, dont touch that dial
This just in, election results have a winner in the hotly debated race
The victor is a joke and YOU are the punch line
Delivered in a speech written down to "your level"
Correspondents corroborate each other for lack of source
He said she said evidence enough for prime time expose
Callin Babs hard-hitting is evidence enough
F.A.I.R. enough? Fuck no
Woodward and Bernstein are alien to an alienated media
While deepthroats connotation makes you gag
We dumb it down to the lowest common denominator
And present stories from the lowest common contributor
We feast on sex tape leaks in a Kathy lee wine sauce appetizer
Leading into a mildly Cyrus surprise in a bed of Paris leftovers
Deep fried bieber bologna with a side of talk soup 
Followed up with sugary sweet human disinterest
Like our young we are malnourished and obese in body and mind
Our eyeteeth rot while our empty hearts inflate with misplaced affection for famous strangers
That we know intricately like we don't know our own kids
Estranged from ourselves so we fill up on junk food journalism
Empty calories from fictional figures from plastic personalities with plastic faces
Truth sells, but who's buying?
Megadeath threats against your home, 
Mister Albert kayda is just a bogeyman 
Wall street is the one with a bloody knife under your bed masturbating with your life savings 
In soviet America the bank robs you
Thugs in three piece suits with drive by subpoenas 
The fortune 500 mafia is less scary than the ethnicity of your choice of fears
You gorge on slop from the trough overflowing with genetically modified bullshit
Even though Greenwald is delivering three course truth
Hastings died showing you the knife in your back and you still don't believe it
Though the blood clots down your back spell it out in block letters
Headline news says it's your lack of fashion that's bleeding you dry
And murdochs cronies tell you it's liberal leaches 
feeding off your minimum wage you voted against raising
Because Rush says it's socialist
Call the call girls whores but your politician buys them jewelry
Sponsored by corporate subsidies from your taxes
Kickbacks for everyone who helps build the pyramid
Ponzi would be proud
Worldwide web worship click click boom
You think you are consuming while being consumed
We condone our enslavement with delusions of freedom
We redefine patriotism as conformity
Revolution is a responsibility not a right
Star spangled saboteurs sell us slow suicide behind pseudo-science silhouette 
And the eff dee aye says it's okay with dollar signs in their eyes
Stuffing themselves with caviar and crackers and there are crackers at the reigns
Cracking whips to keep us moving to the beat of company drums
Sate your needs with A or B but C yourself an outcast if you don't
And all the while we wipe at sweaty brow with oil soaked rags of our sullied flag
And go home with dirty hands and empty pockets
Flip on your boob tube with ten thousand talking heads 
And obey your master, master
Metallic baubles with shiny glass now only half your take home
That poor fuck went to jareds
Instagram your tv screen so they know you know what they saw
Set your homepage to Facebook and you can tumble like a twit
And repost the falsehoods that appeal to your inner fuck-wit as truth
See your friends post how much they KNOW
Reply with regurgitated filth you think you know about everything 
open your mouth and remove all doubt you fool
Fill your gaping chasm with likes or comments and see fiction become "fact"
Like this poem one million times and you are still a battery
Powering the camera filming Americas own snuff film selfie
The obituary will read, 
USA,
Seventeen seventy six to two thousand something
Died of consumption
Survived by a close knit family of aristocrats
Displayed on a scrolling line below the screen on CBS while fashionistas argue the virtues of capris- sorry, crops versus summer dresses

* (pronounced fox in this circumstance)

Reville

Reveille revealing
Rosy reflections
Of great lakes dungaree days
Despite being beaten
The hard lessons eaten
And motion defined by a pace
When hats were commodity
With four letter words
And four letter words
Were a treat
With Brasso a tool for
Free conversation
While silence maintained on your feet
A numbered division
Of sleep deprived victims
Await the foul stink of the mess
Once finished consuming
The herd is corralled
To work them to weigh a bit less
Capital letters
Aligned for deciphering
A litany of witnessed events
At 4 in the morning
The watchman is stoic
A hound with his eyes on the fence

O town

Reason rhymes with orange
7,8
When cuckoo shouts obscenities
G-rated pornography
Displayed en masse
between spread sheets
6
Mystification of simple terms
My document in your word
Filed away for safe keeping
Pre-formatting
3,4,5
Echoed slap reverberates
Under over but only through
Around about equal to less than
More of the same new difference
1,2
Phantom relevancy
Revelations of fantasy
Richly poor and well to do
How are you?
0

The Ghost of Ft. Davis

Its an honor to report,
Wrote a long dead soldier
Typewritten, an invoice of sorts

The engineer listed
The concrete and mortar
Used in the bolivar forts

Meant to defend
Against Spanish aggression
The battery hastily built

Though manned and upgraded
In decades of warfare
No enemy blood it had spilt

Now ghostly and hollow
It serves as reminder
For memories nobody owns

P-ways and corridors
Once filled with bustle
Now silent but for windy moans

Fractures in concrete
Set in a century
Before this one that has passed

The structure has withered
As seaside erosion
Has started to claim her at last

This long lived emplacement,
Now crumbling bastion
Of outdated coastal defense

Leaves much to imagine
When seen from within her
And more from outside iron fence

A placard describing
The life of the fortress
With blueprints to fill in the ghost

Look past to the carcass
Of iron and concrete
The specter of bolivars coast

When it flys

When it flys
I flail wildly to grasp
To hold and contain
Its immaterial grace
The ethereal spectacle
Borne of compassion
Weaned on admiration
Obstinate Milk-teeth
Fall to soft memory bed
Claws with newborn delicacy
Hold fast for dear life
To hearts known to sorrow
More than delight
Enraptured by the reciprocal
Each recently discovered
Equating two to one
Embodied magnificently
Within this graceful
benign specter
I exert all to envelop
What is held already
Shared between two

Fake ole livers

Con man says he's got "fee lings"
Well, fish don't blink
Turns out crazy ole livers
Stole her batshit from
The silver screen
Lea made it seem fun
And poopy took her up on it
Doop doop a doop
Pretending to be crazy
Does that make you crazy?
If you do it day in
Day out
12 years of fucked up?
Put em away livers,
You poopy old bitch
The batshit doesn't behoove you

Me and Gaia

Emboldened by headwinds
Physical inhibition
Feeds emotional swells
Like the seafronts continual liquid pulse
As it caresses this sandy foreground
Breeze crisp like
That first bite of harvest macintosh
Every push a new mouthful
On which soul feeds
On which feet glide
Atop petroleum rubber dreams
Anodized aluminum legs
Under maple and carbon body
Like norrin radd I glide alongside
Silver surfaces of suns reflected glory
Avoiding cheese grater street top
Angling to bypass ghost trolleys trap
Carving thanksgiving turkey portions of
Flat pedestrian paved wave

Icy inferno

Icy inferno
Continual wintry blast
Rends fleshy comfort
Leaving bones to bear
Frigid encumbrance
Circulation inhibited
As north wind bores deeply

Highly valued insulation
simply protective layering
built-in systems bolstered
By external accoutrements
Quickly infiltrated
As windy spike
Burrows towards heat source
Spine shudders
Nerves crackle
Extremities become casualties
First degree frostburns
Hypothermic needles
Direct arctic injection
To poison
Ninety eight point six degrees
Of desperation

Intrinsic motivation to remain
Within boundaries of
Any shelter
Despite implied claustrophobia
Circumvented only through
Manufactured strength of will
Only absolute necessity
Forces egress
From makeshift womb

Icy inferno
Sullen sub zero wasteland
Jack frosts vengeance
Strewn widely
Wildly
Suns love?
disconnected
Til further notice...