We should be finished by next fall. Last autumn was a good time and I hear history repeats itself. Sleeping under trees, smoking Lucky Strikes and tending to our hobbies. Lackadaisically bent over antediluvian scrapbooks, I hear this winter's to melt into a flood. The ark is under way, we should be finished by next fall.

It was something in the calm drift of the clouds or the tick-tick of the water meter. There was us and then there was them. We were flushed, the world was bluffing. There was us:

Deep breath.

We were the lost children roaming 'round Cair Paravel; the boxed kit youth unboxing on a caravel watching hypnotic YouTube videos and firing fire out of firewood; that was when I fell. Beside the flames under cover of conversation of God and Hell and all the proper nouns that we fear so much. But fires burn out, so let's be civil. We should be finished by next fall.


But how can I be civil when I hope that your spit flies back in your face; that when you flick your wrist, your muscles tear because I've torn too. It's torn past the heart into my legs, immobile, and my arms, useless. These hands are cramped and shredded; scraps and pieces and bits, drill bits carving their way in. You carved your way in. They say an animal in a tailor-made niche is an animal in a found home. So carve away, carver, we should be finished by next fall.

I always feel like I’m running.
Not running away, there’s no such thing.
Just running forward towards something.

Something.

There’s no such place.

With how long I've been running
surely I'd have found it by now.

I've though of what it must look like.

Something could be a field
buried in a brilliant, sunlit cloud of alfalfa.

It could be a tundra,
frozen and without borders.

A rainforest,
vivid with life, green and flourishing.

A mountain, lurching
over a city,
and in the city there would be nothing but good men.

No liars, nor cheats.

Perhaps a desert.
The dunes would stretch, immaculate, across my vision.
The horizon would be sun, sand, and sun again.

Is the sky still blue in a desert?

Is desert wind built of language and faith,
or just oxygen, heated to boiling?

If I really am running towards something
I'm certain that something is a desert.

It's too cold to smoke.

The thermometer reads twenty-one degrees
imperial.

My chest feels too hot, I best take off this sweater.

You're absent
from my bed; I'd best alert those concerned.

Note to self.

My heart's so tied up
I can hardly breathe.

It seems, to me, that every scent is yours
every sight or sound,
song lyric or strip of poetry
relates back to you and the knot in my chest.

I best recruit a young sailor
to untie and bend these cravings.

These faint and vague desires
not to kiss you
nor to fuck you
but to see you, lay with you, be with you.

That is what I crave daily,
what I need to loosen this knot.

But
the knot
just
tightens.

I crave to see you alone on a walk
or you with others
or you with me.
I especially crave to see you with me.

O' that which I'd give
to see you with me.

It must have been the grass
or the beers
or the LSD
because no natural occasion could make me feel this way.

I first heard you before I saw,
singing across the fence.

Your voice was like cream in hot coffee
scintillating, mesmerizing
fascinating, and light;
a drop of sweet in the dark, dark bitter.

I never knew that drinking coffee black
would soon become impossible.

Everything is
bitter
when you've tasted
sweet.

It's something in the way you visibly think
about the world and
others actions and
everything I say and do; something in the way you care.

It's something in the way you spit,
claiming the concrete as your own, a primal beast.

You are an incarnadine being,
a vastly deep creature whose
curls I can be lost in for
hours and days if not for those eyes.

Those eyes steal me with every glance,
dark mines of copper and fool's gold.

But pyrite is the sheen to which my mind melts,
and Scorpio sun signs
paint the mystique
that keeps me awake and alert all through the night

You keep me awake and alert,
waiting for the next move.

Yes, I'd be a liar if I said I felt friendship for you
and a heretic if I
dared to touch you.
But you dare to touch me. Every day,

you brush your hand 'gainst my leg,
grab my shoulder and hold,
knock your knee upon mine,
you push me gently,
but I die when you grab my thigh,
grab my thigh and squeeze it tightly
reassuring me that you're there
you're real
you're caring for me
and when the goodbyes come
fuck the goodbyes
you hug me so closely and so tightly
that my heart,
knotted as it is,
beats faster than it ever has.

I swear that it beats
faster than it ever could.

And in this speed, this conflagration of emotion,
I feel how the knot
only tightens to where
even the youngest sailor lacks the nimbility to loosen it.

I swear that it's much
tighter than it ever was;

that no one has stressed my mind so,
kept my heart strained to where it
beats
faster than it ever could,

it beats faster yet, than the
rush of a train upon steel.

"I've missed you so much,"
I prepare as I walk through the door.

The rich scent of sweet cream
waffle cones and
brownie chunks
float in the air as thick as
smoke
in a happy car.

Her eyes are small and poignant,
tiny apostrophes,
commas beneath her blonde curls.

I stand by the door as she helps a customer.
I've missed her so much.

She glances up and her
perpetual glare fades.
The commas light up,
brilliant,
and the sentence is completed
by the curl of her lips.

I love that smile.
"I've missed you so much."

"That one looks like a dragon,"

you said, extending your arm to the night sky.

Sure enough,
against the aubergine purple,
there is a head
and a tail and a tongue
and a tiny lick of flame.

The wheat feels frigid
when compared to the heat of your waist.

I pull you in closer
terrified that the immensity of this field
will swallow us.

That we would sink down its esophagus,
away from the sky.

The stars are out now.
And I imagine being
swallowed.
Of falling up into the universe.
A celestial dive.

I lick my lips and whisper to you and the stars and even the wheat,

"This night will haunt me forever."

There are some nights when I lay awake,

staring at the darkness of my room,
so dark that my eyes cannot adjust
and it is as black as the base of a stone labyrinth.

When I lay awake and pray and dream and hope
that there will be days in our future that we spend together.

Days when it is just you and me.
When we run barefoot in the sands of some faraway beach,
farenoughaway that all of our problems will be in the past.

In the distant memories of the mountains.

This was the tree I first slept beneath.

It was summertime then, when
nights were warmed by hot breezes
and spritzing sodas were the drink of choice.

Now she is gold and losing leaves.

These leaves crinkle like foil
snap, crunch, crinkle
Oh I do hope they are okay.

I pray that Winter will be good to her.

They say it will be a cold one,
I think to myself as I rest against her.
The air smells spiced and dry.

I hope she will be okay.

Running, panting, I would sprint to the alfalfa field
on windy summer days
just to feel the blistering heat blowing across my cheeks
like an oven cracked open.

Maybe I will live in the desert.

In the sandy dunes and hot wind I will find myself
and explore my thoughts and revive my faith.

With sand in my shoes and cracks on my hands
I will walk in Christ's footsteps and drink from an oasis.

I will wander into the desert, murmuring,
"It is late, it is late, it is so very late..."

And then I will wait in the cold for the next day
when I will find relief in the hot air rolling over the dunes.

And then I will sweat.

It's a curious affect, to love hot air
O' wind blow
Find me an oasis, carry me to the water.
My mouth is so, so dry.

You said you hated me.

We could have been the most beautiful pair in the whole town.
You could have had the moon.

Just be cautious: porcelain shatters with ease.

And when you were happy you would be very happy.
I would wrangle in each and every thing that you desired.

Every thing is not every one.

And when you were sad I would press your eyes into my shirt.
Please stain my sleeves with your tears, warm my arm with your sobbing.

I think your tears are painfully beautiful.

And when you were angry, I would never leave.
I would listen, empathize, and always care. But never leave.

Unless you asked me to.

And when you were sick I would mend you to health.
I would travel to the ends of the globe to find a cure.

To keep you alive.

And when you were tired I could carry you.
It would be an honest trip from the sofa to the bedroom.

I'd lift you like air, so you would never wake up.

And when you were high I would never let you come down
until every thought had been traced ten times.

Every inch had been touched twice.

And when you were drunk I would hold your hair
as you empty into the porcelain.

I would marvel at how the moon was not marred.

And when you said you hated me
I would leave to make you happy.

I left to make you happy.

And if you died,
I'd die too.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I want to go for a walk at night.

We can listen for frogs near lakes
or
crickets in meadows
or
bears in the mountains.

Cars in the city.

Then we will come across a dock on the lake
or
a patch in the meadow
or
a tree in the mountains.

My room in the city.

California isn't so far.

The world isn't that big.

I see the mole.

It lies just south of his petite clavicles,
parenthesizing his fragile neck.

I'd like to find the others.

Moles dotting his figure,
beacons on his frame.

Showing me where to touch.

I'll map them all out,
every last speck.

Just call me the cartographer.

I'll connect the dots, drawing lines,
building routes with my fingertips.

Your body will be mapped like the Silk Road.

But no ideas will be exchanged, nor words spoken.
No empires will be connected across this globe.

Only moles.

It's true,

I think you've forgotten
how to skip rocks
so as not to have them

sink

into that murky, swampy
artificial lake that crosses
beneath the railroad tracks.

down

beneath the tracks there is
nothing but muck and a few
corpses weighted with stones.

below

the corpses at the bottom,
their faces twisted with
decomposition, there is

earth's

body for miles and miles, and only
a little patch of Hell deep down.
The rest of it is has seeped onto the

surface.

Just look at the city and talk to the people.
If this is not Hell, and these are not demons
then did we ever really have anything to fear

after all?

His touch
feels to me as stated:

CALLOUS, WARM, DANGEROUS

hand grazing mine
in a crowd

like water buffalo
to a field
or
timid mice
to weighted trap.

His touch
is hopelessly, listlessly

ELECTRIC

and my body the machine
whose lips thirst for volts.

Tell me, Mr. Milgram,
how many more
clicks
until he is in my
pants and I in his bed?

Smoke slips through his curls
in and up and down about again.

FAST AND SEXUAL

his kisses feel as they
barrage my mouth with heat.

Heat, heat, so very hot
that I can hardly
breathe.
Hands in pants
and bodies in shallow tubs.

Water feels foreign in the
hopeless intensity.

HOPELESS INTENSITY

only lasts until the player
cums on his stomach.

I lean past his shoulder
so as not to be
seen
dipping in with my
fingers and tasting his.

Sweet like honey
sans a hint of salt.

HONEY

O baby, won't you take me home?
I think I could love not loving you.

The word 'Montana' has a taste to it.

It is a being, it really is.
There is a spirit in those fields.
And you won't know it!
You won't! Know!

YOU CAN'T SEE

how much it has gripped you,
how firmly it has your heart until you are long gone.
Then you miss it. I miss it, friend, like a distant love.
It is like a massive pylon with bright red ribbon,

INCARNADINE

ribbon wrapped around your wrists.
No matter where you go you will always be connected.
It will always call your name, like a siren
in the seas calling a sailor home

BEFORE

cursing him and
devouring him forever.
Like the earth is to the moon,
distant and gripping,

Montana is my anchor.

i am very very sad.

and when i am very very sad

all i want are flowers

because flowers are pretty

and dont care to know it

Marcy Shultz was a typist.
She typed and typed the day through
but never wrote a single thing.

Each morning she would drink her coffee
with a sunken ring at the base of the mug.

It was her good luck charm,
an assurance that at one point in one moment
someone had truly, honestly cared.

At noon she would salsa with the air,
knowing damn well that she would later devour it.

But the air knew nothing,
Thought nothing, just stood there.
Air is naïve, and she was alone.

At night she would shower with the blinds open
figuring if someone looked, someone cared.

But nobody ever looked, and Marcy never blushed.
She'd type little tales on her little laptop.
Typed little stories of little couples

walking dogs
kissing in park benches
laughing at rude jokes
eating tiramisu in little cafés
weaving stories of passers-by
carving initials in wood
waking up in the dead of night
to hear the rhythm of the other's breathing
before
holding each other's hands
and whispering softly in the light of the full moon
flooding in like spilt milk from the cracked window
saying,
"We are together now
and if a moment like this is happening,
then a moment apart is only imaginary."
Then,
always,
always,
always,

The little couples would make love.
Their moans bled through the window
like timeless cries over the milky moon.

The cats in the alley would circle about the songs
echoing loud from the little couple's little love.

Then always, always, always with frustration
Marcy Schultz would toss the tales and go to bed
and the couples would live on in crumpled paper.

I want something more than what you are thinking.

I want the sway of your hips as we gaze into the sea,
examine its sheer force and power and immaculate size,
then reflect unto our reflections and realize that we are small.

I may be six feet to heaven, but I am the smallest person I know.

Fuck me like the ocean would the moon, Dear Amaranthine.
Teach me as you would any abecedarian, slow with pace.
My pallid arms are spread, and feet are crossed.
Crucify me, like one of your French girls.

Your endless frame arched over mine
a vaulting testament to the heat
of your front against my back.
This scene should have been a chapel.

Through hazed musk I can taste the saline
as it tumbles from your dripping brunette tendrils
forming brooks and lagoons the color of flesh
in the glens and about the islands of my spine.

I wish I could write about you in me
while you dance a contemporary beat
ceaseless, indeterminate, untold are
your feats within and upon my person.

For a split moment, seconds shattered in two,
I am completely and totally permeated by you.
I whine for you to vacillate me, I am fucking begging
to be occupied, satiated, by a rhythm akin to the sway of trees.

Love me fast and kiss me slow, Dear Amaranthine.
My palms are red, and feet bloodied, too. I moan.
Call me your poetaster but don't come on my chest;
There's far too much weight there already, my dear.

Being alone with you is like being alone.
But being alone is like being nothing.

I love to hold your hands while we hike through the crevasses
especially when you could fall and I'd have to save you.

Rocks are coldest when compared to your hands
I think as we break contact to scale yet another.
My favorite lyrics become distant rhythms
the moment your mouth moves and song bleeds out.

I think the catchiest song
is the sound of your lexicon.

But you're not singing,
you are simply talking

about that moment when the cigarette, dribbling with smoke, pulls away
from your perfect lips, the lowest of which hangs in a perpetual pout.
That is the soft line of flesh I would like for my tongue to skate upon.
Pirouettes are crisp and cantilevers are hopeful but I would much prefer

To enter a deep outside edge
while performing an open stroke.

But that is slicing ice, not kissing.
And we are climbing rocks, not kissing.

What's the difference?