Today, I was a foal
in a room of sea monsters.

I waited for time, but she did not come.

I ran water
over dishes
I do not own.

Cars flew past on grand avenue
and the rain fell in wrinkles
like skin, into gravel.

I started to forget simple things, like my name.
I started to forget what it felt like to hear it.

So much of me
liquefied
into the posture
of preoccupied charm
that I glazed,

   and succumbed.

This house
is able bodied
coffee.

Boiled down
memories.


Salt in
scrapes.

This house.

I can't breathe
without feeling
it somewhere
on the horizon
saying

"Good girl.  That's it, now.

Go.

And weather or
not this peeking
ambition of earnest
will flatten me, soft

this house
will always lean,
a cream shade

in the
corner of
redwood, whispering

Child, I raised you.

"Ouch."



                                                      Said, she


                                                      like a curtain fearing
                                                      human hands

                                                      That peel her back
                                                      and tuck her away,
                                                      as if saying



  
                 "Yes.  You are useless."

See the world and
understand.

The golden gate
bridge is just a
bridge.

New york
city is just a
city.

Celebrity hair
products
are overpriced.

Do you know what i'm trying to say?

Try harder.

If you can't read my lips,
try my hands.  

They squirm.

They itch
like fleas
to get
caught in
the night

sneaking bites into
big, fat
ideas.

Wear your
ugly like a
well-tailored
suit.

People might
mistake it
for fashion.

I have explored different lives.

I have dipped my hands
into the cesspool of human
experience.

I have placed myself in situations
only to see what it felt like to
know the
incomparable

heartbeat of one
who is losing himself, the unsustainable
entity of falling apart in a
Denny's where nobody
knows you.

Like an animal dying, people
will pretend not to see you.

To ignore it is
to alleviate
the responsibility
of knowing how to fix it.

I sat in a booth in
the back, like an adult.

I am not the hero.
I am not the villain.
I am not the all-seeing-eye.

I am nothing.

That is the reality of
human beings.  Of our hearts,
of our hands, of our eyes, of
our thoughts.

We go to parties, but
don't find them amusing.

We sit in the pews and
think about boys.

We go to the hardware store
and decide ask for birthday candles.

We try to breathe
underwater but realize
our inadequacy.

We are all a nothingness with
man-made-names that wane, and breathe,
and grope for the truth.

Like blind men playing charades, we stumble.

Like blind men in business we sell coal, thinking its gold.


To realize our inevitability is to realize our indecency.

We have given ourselves the ability to ask
"why?" and enough gutlessness to
illustrate the answers.

I woke up to a white city
only to realize it was indigo.

And everyone in it, even
the keyboard players, wanted
to see what it felt like to dance.

I grabbed William's hand and
told him to grab back.  It
wasn't a bad idea if we
stayed with each other.

Like daisies growing
too rapidly, we twisted.

Our futures fused
like bone before we
thought to study posture.

When we finally tried to whack
ourselves free, William noticed
the string between our legs.  He felt the tape
of what stuck, of what yearned, and
attempted to flee, in apathy.

After years of splitting, we realized one thing; To deny
life's sporadic complication is like denying the sun
of its heat.

For there he stood; like the morning, never promised
Like a new dawn never guaranteed, but always
hopeful in its potential quantity

And suddenly I understood love's
inability to scream. I understood the beauty in my
inability to see what was meant for me.

You called me your ocean because I flooded you, quickly
flushing forward like a frenzy, waves rushing
through stone, but would suck back so violently
pulling my spine away, like a vestal
drying your feet of all things, tasteful, as if
my salt or the ocean were foreign suggestions, left to imagine
the taste of the touch of the vastness that composes
the sun-lit horizon, and never to understand why
it was there, if not to leave soil
with a well-matched companion.

12 am.
Your neighbor stops yelling at his television set.

1 am.
The light switch
quivers like a fat lip
and decides to
rest.

2am.
Nobody looks at each other.

The border collie
across the street will
try to have sex with a lamp post.

3am.
The stripper does
something other
than stripping and nobody
notices.

4am.
A boat capsizes somewhere.  

Water touches lips. Water touches eyes.

5am.
It is quiet.

6am.
It is quiet.

7am.
Somebody won’t wake up.

8am.
Jonny takes a crack at his ABC's.

It's 6am, and i'm tired.

The road looks purple
from where the sky, watches.

The streetlamps look drunk
and fuzzy, like hands that get
put into places
when you least expect it.

The gas stations feel like
empty lighthouses that lonely
people look at when there's no one
on the radio, yet.

I'm driving to see you,
but will turn around.

You will wake up
  with your socks on
      only to realize
           I always removed them.

There's not
much left
when you've
lit a life, only
soon to
discover, they
didn't
much notice.

My wings
have melded
and yet, I
fly.  I've
soiled my bed
and yet, I
sleep.

a spark leaves
space for
ignition, such as
death.

it is a feat to
sleep curiously, yet
to wake up
just the same.

Small and square in its corner, it sits
its thin plastic  spoons rattling
bone against bone.

The nurses don't say much,
passing through like obligations.

Fuzzed silhouettes of
overworked hands, lean
to tip their milk.

The wife nimbles
her fingers over the
crossword and licks
her chapped lips, dry.

Stale bread, nutty muffins
dry coffee and bad tea.

This place is a place
that i've sat inside, only
to question many
hours of why.

Life is a joke that will hit you later.

Laugh anyway.
It is shared.

Such is life as we live it, we toil like worms
as we wait for the rain, not knowing our brain
from our asses, to limbs,  from our organs
to heads, from hearts to instinct, from motion to beds.

     we are sinning and      
     sinning and      
     sinning, again
     finding, nobody knows what was said in god's head.

A moment of silence for
every empty garage stall, for
every basement closet and for
every gas station bathroom that
incessantly craves the presence
of a pulse, but will realize it's
inadequacy.

I shimmied out of your
atmosphere, the edges
peeling and flaking around
us like rose petals alongside the skirt
of a wedding, curling
knees into chests, such to perish as
separate.

I.
To understand your singularity is to accept
the normality of loneliness.

II.
Stare, more frequently.  Linger
in the revelations that come
when no one is looking.

Keep them to yourself.

III.
Stand, surrounded by the bits of
the earth and then place yourself
beneath them.  This is where you will
end up, eventually  Tell them you're not ready, yet.

IV.
Kiss the faces of friends more often.
It's better for your lips and your
tongue and your hands.

V.
Curse no one, not even yourself.  Not your god, not
your marks, not your sky, not your ceiling.

VI.
Running away still gets you somewhere.  Burning
the bridge still stings the eye.

VII.
At the end of it all, regard the
sun.  It's been forced to watch this
for billions of years.