Loneliness is like
a pumpkin.

Sometimes you
carve it
into a
jack-o-lantern.

Sometimes you
bake it
into a pie.

Sometimes you
take out the
seeds to roast.

And sometimes
you're just round
and orange and
lonely.

Having a three pronged debate
with an electrical outlet
at 2:50 in the morning, there
is a stray poem in my head
and the lamp is
the only one in the room. By
the time I get the lamp
plugged in and switched on,
it is too late, and the
poem has wandered away from me
like a lost cat down
a dark alley. I swear it even
lets out a small meow
as it disappears completely
and leaves me with this?

Downtown Bellingham
on a Friday night
sounds like a herd
of pigs
orgasming. Fuck
the bacon, I just
want to go to sleep.

We kayaked round
like two lost
peas thrown
into soup.

We thought we saw a
whale,
but there are no
whales in
soup.

I write too
many poems
about
her
but
what else is
there
to
write about
when you feel this good?

I'm still young
enough
to realize
that each
small smile
is love.

I'm still young,
it makes perfect
sense that my poetry
is shit.

A big leatherclad biker is
throwing darts of light
at my eyes. The
sun is peeking out
from barstools.
I am still drunk:
a new day.

My penis enters your vagina
like a raindrop falling on a
silver flower. Nothing is as simple
and as beautiful as lying
in a darkened room with
you after making love and
quivering as you bring MY hand
to YOUR mouth for a kiss.

After the massacre at
Wounded Knee,
federal troops
shoveled the bodies of the
Native Americans,
frozen stiff,
into a mass grave.

thus religion
was called on as an excuse
for
human destruction.

if indians were
heathen,
inferior, perhaps not
even human
it was perfectly alright
to take
their land, and if
they resisted to kill
them.

I’ve noticed a close correlation
between people’s eyes
and the sounds of the city that they live in.

Bellingham in late September,
the dull clatter and bustle
of staring.

-for m

In 1542, hoping
to find
a waterway connecting the
Pacific and
Atlantic oceans, a cross-continent
passage to
the Orient, Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo
sailed
up the coast of California and
into bays that
looked as though
they might lead to you.

Every time our hands touch,
however briefly, I want to
run my lips into yours and
paint your body yellow with
my hands until it looks like
the finger painted drawings we
made stomachstretched
across carpet and drinking orange
soda two summers ago.

find a girl whose
kisses taste like Kamel
Reds
and take those
kisses
and turn them into
cigarettes.

fuck this poem.

bicycles and rollerskates
and rope and
sticks and a ball and a
little clod of moss
sit scattered on the cement
driveway.
only the children know
why they lay
the way they do.

Great excitement prevails in
Whatcom County when gold is
discovered on the South Fork
of the Nooksack River. A stampede
of prospectors is in progress to
the scene of the discoveries with
small flasks to fill and drink of gold.

The Hudson Bay Company
brought
peace, they brought
prosperity and they
brought law and order to the Northwest.

The animals were so
relieved that they wouldn’t
have to be beasts
anymore that they surrendered
themselves for the good cause.
The beavers said, “take
our fur, please, anything we can
do to help.”
The sea otters said from their
kelp beds, “if you need to hunt
us to extinction go right ahead!”

The trees knew that
the settlers needed houses
to live in and shelters for storage,
so they kindly offered up their
branches and their trunks
to keep the settlers alive.
A few of the settlers found that
timber was a profitable business
and the trees were more
than happy
to join hands in this business
all in the name of prosperity for man.

The Hudson Bay Company
brought
peace, they brought
prosperity and they
brought law and order to the Northwest,
or at least that’s
what my professor is telling me.

Wait, you're a poet
too?

Sure, Pablo Neruda came
up with the idea first
and, sure he was a much
better poet than me,
but, the thing is,
none of his poems were
for you (though they all
should of been) and all of
mine are for you. And the
thing I realized is that I don't
even need to be a good writer
because you do the
writing for me.