there is a limit for everything.

there's a limit on how accurately
you can pronounce 'pecan',
and it's worth a watch--
between wild west ranger
and retired norwich resident.

one must decide which arm
is stronger-- two grocery bags
for the left arm and one for
the right,

but if it were not so,
you may as well carry them
on each drooping finger.

a can rests on a tired desk.
it is filled with nothing,
which is precisely everything.

it weights 478 lbs. to an ant,
a balloon's helium proximity to you.

now try to step in the aluminum cylinder
and carry it from the inside

I cannot recall the bruise on my thumb
and the lazy scent of saliva on the carpet.

Working, under what circumstance?
Have you not the mind of a nocturne?
Are you bidding me to sleep
when you know I cannot?

God, I wonder if his fingers fumble
once in a while,
when I firmly hold my soliloquy
between the reed and my sorrowing lips.

It hurts,
down bottom,
I think,
But Saturday holds a repetitive rendition
of the same smiling faces
and the same brand of red pens.

I am not tired;
one has a maximum that
has not yet been conquered.

Thanks for licensing     your wet name
Like a spoon against a bitten cheek

to take your vanilla trophy
and      pop it back in :

Your crowd of hairs,
tinsel with limited light

and hoard of little comprehension,

Ma'am, sweet goes your calves
and fish tail swinging back in glee :

Tell me of tomorrow,
please.

open seed;
her busted fetus of death's frail womb
and moisture drops soil's dehydrated tongue,
a quiet resignation, understanding,

is some triumph on the other side
where the picket fence, traitor,
glances in whatever direction he
hears noise.

&

we exchange our horoscopes
with our eyebrows,
and the mini universes beneath them,
circular and budding
as medicines and poisons.

&&

you are not shimmied away
by the sand's magnetic force
nor stand with planted soles
on stone foundation.

you are lured
by wind's woe of distance.

so it was once
when you did each explore
in the crevices burned deep beneath
the blacksmith's pitcher,
and of kindling an unfamiliar taste
left to ravish haste
into statue-like disposition.

sometimes your fingers sting,
for it is you against dark
and cold does whistle
when your lips cannot part,
for they are chapped--
once ridden by an ancient kiss

where you once viewed the metropolitan
shadows against michigan's waters
though you were nestled
against sage weeping quilts,
resting at the sky
whom bids you no more

with stars the fury so soft
you smile,
because there is nothing else
worthy to do.

you'd like to think she does
the same; counting her toes
when they pad on linoleum ground,

and her being able to hear
against the streetcars rumbling below.

...is some minding swoop of your brow,
mimicking in your doleful eyes,
some ember fled to soot-drunken clouds
of mumbling mothers abandoned from cradles above.

Distillation, did her husband remember,
like banquets of poor bread that suffered in baskets,
no tender fish to oil the hair or curse the breath.

The casket feigned bitter chocolate,
hallucination the refuge of finger bones replacing ribs,
and what priest would sneer beneath his cloak,
as he turned away to cough and sympathize under unheavenly wings?

Woman, woman, you've cut my pie all wrong.
The piece goes like that, obtuse and feared,
and your tongue at my knees when days do retire--

her melody's a vixen shriek,
pawing through the birthplace of sea glass
and sharp bruises of scents through her palms,
where perhaps one lingers thirty years too long,

taking one year of fetal distraction.

It is 3 AM,
and no one is sleeping in their dreams,
but a meter flicks with the ring of your pulse,
supple streams watched
by tender mothers
and their soft eyes in darkness.

I glimpse my city
of ratty ears,
dust of mill and coal the reluctant taste,
of acrid tongue settling against the corners.

And they beckon me
with once plunged fingernails,
and luring each tall man
against the harbor, against the wall.

So lingering their grasps remain on summer weeds,
skinny strands of yeasted yellow
like some lurching disease that has brought
trembling, tilting, padding
hard feet slapped against cold floor.

She was warmer than fall,
and thicker than winter's feed.

Her frame sits on the blinds of 3 AM,
where somewhere else on the road,
light is blown from infant hands.

tonight there is no room,
no bed for soft heads to converse,
with knobbly knees bent out
in soft chattering--

from cold? hardly.

dawn mimics a dove,
with her white limbs,
off-plummage,
driven to some point
that has faded to your crescent brow.

tomorrow the siege will pull
at your echoing streets,
splitting hair strings off end
until you find earthen creatures
tugging at the hem,

at the toilet,
swallowing their hollow drums,

counting a mistress' scarlet nails
and her emerald brooch.

tonight i am quiet
with a bed.

It is winter in the cracker she nibbled,
minus festivities, strained fibers
of holiday's lore seeking confinement
in sore redness between your nails.

Like the last fervent muffle
of whizzing domino lines
struck by spring's sprigs,
the numbers nip in low spirits,
blackened from speech and stubble.

Hardly is the slow breath worth
your angled chin a glimmer,
because when the sun
snaps at your chest like an egg,

little do you know
how it commits adultery
when you sleep,
and only when you sleep.

i.

There are imaginations that are made of rust,
and they tend to rest on clothes lines and
spoil the rotting canary of mediocre dress.
Walk with me, because my pebbles cannot
settle against the dim of my breast pockets,
and so weary the sun tells me to strike upon
sweat laden cobblestone tears that chastise

who? You? Says he who comes stifled at my
feet, like an outlet man staring at fruits' chambers,
her wealthy, red string the last of his eyes!
Alas, what sure vagrant would kiss my fingers?
Is dignity the sour aroma of embarassment?
But let him come, when she turns her apple cheeks
to pray to the same head and God above.

ii.

The favorite jest of an arrow is to pierce a leg
while he jauntily catches the brow of his family.
The man will never saunter, nor amble in patterns
that reveals the flesh of a throbbing vein.
A young calf grows like the bluff of puffed cheeks,
and soon another, too--

together. His trousers will widen their stomachs;
his head the curious stew of bubbling concoction
that rise and decide not to evaporate in the air.
And someday, perhaps very soon, the fairest of
them all will chance and gaze into gallant eyes,
but brought down when he lowers the unidentified
color of glass. So be it.

His coins can jangle and fly to Shantou,
to Charleroi, circle around the perimeter
back to Sacramento. Ships move, yet the
infant steps of lead grow dim in development.

iii.

They say the wealthy family cannot last
for more than two generations.

They say a heart cannot last
its beating against another's,
if it be true.

iv.

Once, a man licked his fingers without even touching it.

When I hear a concealed clock ticking,
I think it's some shouldered past jello grenade
ready to chastise my fletched thumbs.

Like the last time Sandman drew supper with his knees,
and decided to fling cherry cobbler at my nose,
I realized this homeless perfume actually belonged to Mother.

Her pearls redeem her complexion,
milk marrow of silk against her nose--
three strikes dawdling their tongues
from underneath tin necks.

Steady, rinse, exfoliate:
but those are difficult to do
when your rib cage cracks
like the last octave
of a reddening audience.

Brother thinks the tree skirt is soft,
coddling his pats and rabbits
below a ranch full o' pine scented apples.

Sister wonders if she should bring new girl home,
(met at 1:33 AM on 23rd Street.
Apartment documented to smell like baby powder)
but friends are friends are friends are friends,
just friends as furrowed Daddy repeats to himself.
Even "Hallowed be thy name..." confuses the CCD out of him.

"Cancel Alabama's trip this year;
the bees will be humming in their own candle wax.

Besides, who wants to hug Nana
when her breath doubles over in grilled salmon?"

pocket filled waistcoats rub
their ears, perception like
fist full grass, an expedenture
that pause when you drift,
as well.

you cannot carry two children,
one in each slid curve of elbows.
Their ringlets will weigh the mass
of expanding legions, discipline and
love in revolution an absence
from rounded bellies.

neurons do not balance in transgression,
their procession the infinite arch of
fugues weaved through rhythm erratic feet.

two strike a semblance,
a cape-fled general gagging hemlock
to the weaker stallion's dry spit.

Sometimes saltwater taffy
stretches me and gestures
in sticky state, beckoning
each slip of sand beneath
my callouses of callouses.

The grandiose sweep of droplets
collect as an exhibition, mirrored
facets of mischievous personas,
each angled at the brighter side.

I wonder if the sun tilts its beams
in further reconsideration
when she stares at the trailing water.

Must you perceive me in
that way?

Are my tendrils trembling
with a locked spring of green sea foam--

truly?

She skipped her duty today,
a blush of gray flocked
larger than last night's geese.

The cube of your quirk
swaddles the malleability of each
gap, whistling bones in your mouth
sensing each flicker of the tongue,
where the start of commas halt,
and periods huff their first breath.

When you pause,
the temperature of Chicago's
bittersweet icing shivers once more,
good-bye's of sodden mittens
lacking any human warmth.

Let me tremble again,
an aura a sense of plowed gratitude
that reaches the confinements of
wingless teachings.

If your pupils would embark
to the shameful crumbs of soil,
passageway to mass of mind,
I'd delve deeper to blinded chambers,
the cooing a menacing siren.

in my mind,
i work at a third world convention,
bleeding saliva and avocado paint
behind a mule's ass like
seeking coverage was difficult
or something.

now it's past
the pillaging of painted americans,
valleys once rolled with corn and feather's weight,
but seized by nation's serious fathers.

the table creaks as sister
literally screams, "Grace!"
and the cotton tablecloth even
bows its head in poultry's spicy scent.

i said it was past,
un-remembered after a
murderer (more than)
antagonized another's HDTV
(bold, high, pronounces, and shrieks
more shivering-ly
than when a spider stepped on my toe).

now there are halos
beginning to blush,
vibratos crescendoing to
the last of leaf's sultry breath.

Noel was large-eyed,
carols twirling lighter than snow.

they made the Lord
wonderous, because o,
my baby king,

the manger was not a velvet cushion,
and neither will his
(or your)
days to come.

Do you toss the novel lightly?
-- Does it pound like your warbling
throat?

When you sleep beneath your
brother's armpit in trembles,
an etch collects the final drafts
of sick glasses, smoke and
Scottish gin patting your cheeks.

They are light against
dark undertones, the folds
of a curtain tucked for a spider's habitat;
for you.

I trace pirouettes in the back of
seamless air, countertop
wished to a balcony.

You do not stand (here).
I waste and recycle my fruit,
and sometimes naivety makes way
towards dented knees,
calves flexing in grey scale.

Once, we intersected city sc(r)apes
through glowing letters,
bar blinking red and I still clicking.

That is when my scent imagines,
eyes but a clam,
lingering in your body's bread.

this is not a poem.
this is not a senten--

sometimes i ponder like
a young girl swathed in grey film,
earnest eyes bent to world's phrase.

sometimes i write like
a peering boy, letters of letters
and paper cut fingers
waiting to cause her lips to
crease while she waits at her locker

once i dreamed i was
suffocating in my cherry wood coffin,
preacher's voice scribbling
psalms on to his note cards,
even though my Bible died
by hiccoughing moths.

i will imagine my eyes
tracing the back of midnight afternoon,
a word scrawled, fractions of
letters gathering like sickened ants
anticipating pools of honey.

this is not a poem,
i told myself

this was not a poem,
and will never be;

unless everything is
a poem.

sometimes we get lazy
wrapped in the confinements of our own
so we send fellow seekers
to kiss the ground above.

and i won't say i despise kids,
because really, i don't.
i just like to misplace their laces,
knotted, rotted laces
and command the ants
to dissolve Hallow's candy

away they pray,
in God's sanctuary

i respect Him,
because really, i do--
just as much as politicians
when they decide to drop out.

you can say i'm causing
lust to pilfer upon a window,
or betting on the next
world war nineteen

but all i did today was
take a swig of bourbon
and drown my pen.

Bodily eyes enjoy fragmenting
dissonance above her tongue,
like the last regard of bids and
oiled bye's.

A facet mirrors a ruby glimmer,
the final of my curve
grimaced upon staggering eyelids.

And would you even dare
to pocket the vomit of the future,
slipping in surprising residue?

There are no empty reflections,
ones you hold in curled fists--

--at least, not for tonight.

ain't the bites like
ants drowning in pepper spray?
do your nostrils perform seizures of
a catalyst's experiment twice worse than
your sister's "idealistic" closet?

darlin', they used to call you
and pull at your curls with
stroking eyes,
beards even haughty with poise.

nips are like ten-folds of
scissor rapes for such a
smudged paper doll like you,

smiling sorrow in the
back of your dimples.