There is one time
I cannot

Let's make it 12
for those who think
they aren't
able to save public

I have to win more battles
Do I? On a Thursday night?

I have to remove these socks
as my feet choose to overheat

I do have to drink more water
or the price is excruciating

I have to play this game
because it is in front of me

Being a man is not like
being a woman

As far as I can tell
they are glial

and we are being coaxed
into formation

thinking
we are thinking

pounding ourselves
senseless

did we get enuf
of that for you

The Muse spicy tonight

All agreeing
597999
are wrong
bless me
oh ****
there's
one more

I have never seen
have never
seen
any thing
ever
I know

this pretense
inside an
act
going for
in fact
an outside
sound

this is
the actual
crack
that's new
anything new
is good
he says

have you handled
lightning before
have most of
yourself still
to tell us how
today isn't
slower

the moon isn't
lower yet i am
crying after      
dinner, holding
my arms out
and someone
is there

I did not
expect or know
to think to hold
and briefly
I am held
leave holding
back none

No you don't need me
No you don't read me
When I'm sixty blue

There needs to be
an "L" key
that is not
sticky

Corrections appear
faster than I can error
out

This imprefect
singing moment
mayn't

think of itself
thought of itself
read out

the "S" key
no longer
sticks

This quagmire
I have
m's'trd

of short messages
with dopamine
in a synapse

crosses abandon
to land on


you know what
you want
to land on

This slippery thing
rubbing up against
not quite now

such anticipation
in this kind of here
past 5pm

and reaching for
anything almost
to fill this absence

of interest
in me
by [see list]

so let the games
begin


half filled lines
wait
for attention

I put bullets into spaces
load them with
these hidden things
that  i fear

i'm scrambling back up
a verse
the pressure is
too much

i think i'm putting bullets
into spread sheets and
check books
today

these dangerous things
lying around
haunting me
loaded

capsizing in a false
narrative
and sliding down
the throat

imaginary gall
fantastical struggle
pathos with ethos
just need nachos

that's some action
see the typist type
seated anywhere
really anywhere else

candid a bit
heavy handed a bit
commanded a bit
to land it a bit

tarantula' d it a bit
let's stop there

I worry about you
between art
and ****** armistice
where beauty
leaves us

Where beauty leaves
me
again I haven't
measured up
so stop

Arriving on top
of me
a fearful thought
named
you

About you
not about me
About you
not being
about me
About you
me being
always
About you
caressing
ahead
for you
while you
you
you

me fleeing
about you

these pure me's
fall ******* your
rocky perception,
die

There is this
part of the night
that absorbs all sound
You keep turning the television down
Still its loud
and you think
you hear
other sounds
you mute
hear nothing
less a distant train

What living things sing a moment
we imagine remains

slippery contains
rain, reign
no reins

ride and die singing
tho you may not must

harmonize

spread now wider
smile

I hesitate to approach this moment
of landmines
and disbelief

experience is stretched
and I've been ended
before

acceptance, have you any
i fear the narrows
as if

knowing the rules is any
different than being
lied to

in a well organized
and clear manner
again

there are moments
I would hand you
of her

could your humanity
this thing that hears you
fitting

fitting fitting fitting
into this this what
they say

oh i hesitate to discern
at this distance
if you

could be trusted with this
untoward collision
we wanted

this open for viewing
and enjoying
like this

you can do anything
you like
to me

I am erased
happily
thereafter
non
anydamnthing
a vapor
a mist
several molecules
amiss
won't even
be noticed
what are you
doing here

Funny, that.
Getting it Right
burns up the universe
faster
the force of seeing
Albert's gift
ablating away now

the subsurface
of the bottom of things
hates a calendar
knows a pattern on time's
a prison to chance
a lid to capricious eye

laughing at 2:30 pm
on Thursday
poetry at 3
falling in love
is next week
just after
i see epiphany

I meant something
not sure what
it was so
important

That's a space
to be filled
put something here
that has

and then

activated I strip
the moment

down for parts
I can reuse
being a poet
and all

digressing from
a hammer
of an evening
reaching

across a table
as if it was a
scene I saw
good blocking
elicits heartbreak

This forward thing
These steps
taken
to

nows
bleeding
forward an edge
thens crowd behind

i am limbed out here
crossing this sun
an' that moon
in this that
then

open
star craft
sailing from
who knows when
to not even there yet

again not again more
and even never
leaving out
anything
ever

more
happens
and is in store
to be bought by hours
absconding with everything

that's when you think a day
has marched through
my clean kitchen
and you clean
and pour

yourself
out on the bed
like time's wash water
congealed into a memory
of muscle and meat and love

I'm arrested by something
sticky the capillary action
is breathtaking
of all the things
in my head you
**** you
double **** yoou
to erase

You wrote me in
to your conversation
I wrote you in
to my conversation
Here is what you
had to say

I didn't say that

I've written
you differently
this time

More convenient
No longer irascible

Now what you say
Hearable

This audience blinks and thinks
about hear-a-ability
and vanishes

time and water are friends
so don't believe their lies
how they will be there
when you need them

you will sign up to be
flowing hoping to bob
your days gently along
an easy sunlit shore

these lies are employed
for someone else's laughter
our lives on some stage
of which we are unaware

a natural act an unseen watching
written up like time become space
I've inked my body's imagination
with misprints from the school lunch
menu

I'd like to have one of those again
pasty instant potatoes and add water
gravy next to an oddly shaped loaf
of how to make money off our children

we have been trading on our hearts
discounting how you affect my soul
with explanations galore that would
extrapolate happily on the drawbacks

Of Thursday afternoons with no wine
and it's this stage upon which all
of this nonsense cavorts it ills
as if we were more than ticketed acts

ingest laughing

I'm degrading
into adjectives
I remember
being a noun
Then that soun'
and i flailed
to be present
and tense
stead
past imperfect  
past irregular
past so tense
I'm hence
forth dense
of want
jawn

I'll take this space
adequately filled
with no one

And I'll drown it
introspectively
with ire

Conspicuous
consumption of
high regard

of breathless absence
and your presence
so willful

straining against
flitting away
from here

Twice today
this isn't
an admission

its badminton
deserving
of a drink

All these words
piling up
thoughts
upon thoughts
behind them
and then
nerves
rattling
in their
cases
shaken
not stirred
within muscle
contracting
inside me
pretending
against myself
that I'm better

How can we get back
to where
once

Now will be that time
later
once

You will be that me
safer
once

This will be that comment
about
once

This nowing line speaking
to you
once

that's as far
as she
can go
and I can't
reach out
for nothing

It doesn't look good
again

I don't know what
the world is
or what part of it
rubs so roughly
that I wish not
to open my eyes

I don't know who
you are being
or what part of you
lashes out so fast
that I wish not
to open my mouth

I don't know when
I'll be ready
or what part of me
hammered so thoroughly
will heal first and desire
to open my heart

I drifted out of
3 planetary aware
ness

Have you heard
bodies
3 of em

A problem
to ***
stroh-fizzy-ists

caught picturing
it perfectly
again

I can't navigate
you circling
him

It may have a AAA battery
this light I carry and
is hoping for a find
in this semi dark
of all my hopes run out
It may be flickering
and seem really really dim
against the background of you
such light raging in verse
I look away from your face
and there was a race I lost
getting here second to you

we are changing songs
sung by a moment
hopeful of being
shared

and there is another
rung of a moment
clamber upon
and hold

this is what
breathing
is for
courses

and blood charged
with oxygen
roar in my
head

i would slam
you to
the ground

I may have played out
some things
and need to move on
I may have played out
everything
and get to move on
I may have
played out
this vein
of my life
this cliff's crease
and need to leap
there just there
i thought

This range
spilt upon rock
by novelty and pull
leaves out hope
that torpedo
of breathless blood
on the rod
its a soul roundup
and branding
get together
of lessening selves
for, i imagine, something
i imagine
outcropping your hopes
and you **** back
in how-ness
i'm here

holding time
against what
was said then

I think these are things
and they are not

How shall I forget you
when I can't remember you
a conflagration appears
in your place
shrapnell sharply
holes your image
where my happiness
hung itself to dry

As long as you are in
the galactic plane
and dancing
with pilgrims
all lined up on an age

what slips you here
to your advantage
an advancement over
all that became before
now is on the borderline
are you here

can you be held warmly
seen as being wetly
cognizant of the pressure
if you'll do this for me
i'll stop your disintegration
with now

A gauntlet of beautiful words thrown down
Empties something carbon hard dark and scrabbling
I ache to leave; to see it leave, leaving always leaving
That's it I'm leaving

A gauntlet of gone and going to be and you'll see
and I won't be there here anymore then
exhausts itself and deflates
into angry ice cream consumption with wine

A trillion germ cells pulled themselves together to become you at my door knocking everything down and grinning at your terrible power
You needed to feel powerful
To be the one
To shove your love in a bag and pull the drawstring almost flippantly closed
Giving you power of taking breaking as if
As if slamming the door first or hardest made right of all the daring to be worse than and
All the daring to be Better than
at decimating
Every day's 10% off the top leaving only bottom time
Power through all that love all that life all this family in no time take off your safety glasses now there's nothing left
It turns out you were right
it always rattled
now its quiet and you don't understand
what to do with your
well designed well built amazingly well run gauntlet by yourself

days from 50 years ago
scream at me
that they are now
right the **** now
I tell them they are
and it calms them

Leaning back
in my chair
on elbow
on an arm
arching my back
till a crack

Waking up having no one to talk to has me sending texts and emails to colleagues who have someone to talk to early on Saturday morning and I realize this only after I sent them and I remember what I thought when I lived with a family and got emails don't they have a life?

Apparently I was wrong then

Having gone from a half life
To a whole life

(I'm still uninsured notes poet)

In a half step
From

From, from, from
The past I'll say

Not wanting to name names
Point at anything

But my
Choices




Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

We don't have time
since
it has us

These waves these
cosmic background
waves

Churn up everything
eventually
you

Opining here are
frothy bubbles
yeah

Ahm stealing something here
like stink can you remember the
smell of ink

Ahm cutting into something here
like kink can you remember the
smell of mink

Ahm sinking into something here
like think can you remember the
smell of shrink

Ahm running into something here
like blink can you remember the
smell hinky

in lasting lies I tell you sighs
i wish would last
time between thighs
hi high highs

Ahm Ahm Ahm
something having time
not to mention this woman
hungry to taste

landing on something
solid in fuzzy days
i z into your Thursday
like butter

she talks a good game
grows solid in mind
her darkness rising and falling
around her tongue lashing me

and finally you know
what ahm stealing
years, seconds, moments, now
ahm stealing now

i missed so much of it
then
starving for it
now

Ah Poesy
Why don't you Mosey
on down

Fill this sleepless space
behind my yawning
face

Some tasty line
to hasten
my decline

Into somnolence
I imagine
sublime

Ought to happen
to enliven life

Ah somethin
wreck me tonight

I learned something
I forgot

About attraction
gaining traction

I remember
being hot

I just never
really knew

at the time
I was shy

Now
Ah now
Always the game breaker
Always the wrecker

Undone unlettered
Facing the next

Blank
Line

Ah somethin
Wrecks

Up against me
A she

I am quiet
in the can

while she sleeps
swathed

Ah somethin
can I hold yer hand





Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

i rented these words
you may
have to read them quickly
before they are
returned

That void awaits
a warm welcome
for each syllable
back from service
into some warmth
as reward

for years
in our mouths
wet and angry
or loving
or scratched out
on pages or
hammered

into some mind
****** meanings
screampt again
and uselessly again
at the night
at the light
at the moon

let the poor
******* go
i wouldn't
pass through
here as they've
chosen
through spit
and ****

yet here
they are
gifts and pleasures
sweetness and light
tongue tripping
delights arrayed
for our pleasure