When I can't take the silence anymore
I type my little message,
send it to your cellular device
"Goodnight, sleep well."
When I really want to say
"I love you, sweet dreams."
And a few minutes later you say,
"Oh yeah. Good dreams."
And I want to kiss you,
smile at you, eat frozen raspberry yogurt
with you,
and I can't so
I guess I'll go to sleep.

there is a buzzing
     it's coming from the walls
the tiny electrical snaps and synapses
the mindhive that seethes
the radios and beeping pulses
we have reached the
singularity.

my stomach is an empty pit
hard and well-lined with the stories
of a thousand nights of hunger games
where you play to eat and sleep
you lose and die, shuddering as your organs
fail
one by one by two by two

I'm just wishing for the turkey dinner
the crackers and cheese
the milk and water and juice
that sits untouched on grocery store shelves
too expensive for me to take
and fill my body up

I see a monster
It is eating spaghetti
It is a good thing

I'm glad that it does
Not eat me or my brother
He likes spaghetti

We asked him his name
And he grumbled intensely,
"I'm Mr. Monster!"

He always came in
After a quarter past ten
And raided our fridge.

Frederiksburgville Town
Didn't usually have monsters
But they had pasta

And so the monster
Told the little children things
About from where it came

And it sang a song
That was very short and long
And it went like this:

Gobbledegook gobbledeedee
Fricasha bulungo tirimasu wings!

The children sat stunned
It was a horrible song
You can't sing along.

I was eleven, the first time I saw you.
I thought you were sweaty, and that your hair was too long.
I had just skipped two straight months of school,
they had told you about me and I hated that.

I was twelve, the first time I met you.
I remember my classmates were uninspired
and equally uninspiring.
I wrote things for you, I wanted you to know that
I wasn't like them.
I not only thought things through, I couldn't stop.
I wrote to keep from going crazy.

You showed me your plays,
your poetry,
your short stories.
You showed me college english textbooks
full of various prose,
each one flavored slightly differently.

You showed me The Giver,
and Dead Poet's Society.
I wondered if you really fancied yourself
the captain,
leading your charges into vast fields of knowledge,
and what's more,
appreciation for the knowledge.

You were the teacher that made kids
want to teach.
You looked after me.
Made sure I was fed.
Signed me up for extra credit,
even when I said no.
You showed me what it was like
to have someone's support.
You showed me love.

When I went to high school
we stopped talking,
except for the occasional email.
But I had a boyfriend
And I smoked ***
And I didn't want
to let you down.

When I graduated, I sent you an email.
Explained everything.
I begged to see you,
to talk about all that happened.
You never replied.

You died the week before I received my diploma.
Since then,
I've been going off of soundbite bits of advice
you once gave me,
trying always to remind myself that I can do this,
because
you showed me.

in the dirt-filled pocket
of this concrete street corner
lies a little note,
written on college-ruled
lined blue and white paper
and it says
"GIVE
IT
BACK!"
and nothing else.

Saying hello, again
Because to say goodbye
I'd have to trust that I would not
Say hello again.

And my silence comes in colors
Like drip-dry paint on the walls of my mouth
Tastes like green and yellow today
Fresh flowers that arrived late
And the yard working all shades.

I hate to stop
Picking back up where I left off is easier said
Than remembered,
No matter how many scribbled expo marker notes are left
on the dry erase boards of my closed eyelids,

Hello,
Again.
Care to dance this dance with me?

His is all loving and then all denying
Just a child in his long beard, crying
I move to hold him in my arms
And find that he has gone.

I weep not for him yet
But for the extra empty place I
Have now created in my heart.

she sinks to her knees like the setting sun
all reds and golds and streaks of purple-blue
and weeps for the things and the places she has lost
just a child, steeply barefooting around gnarled upturned roots
afraid that if it rains again
she might never be able to find her way back.

Relax past participle in order to
Accelerate mass particles
And innervate long dead articles
Of thought once thought tried and untrue.

My guilt is a sad song that is catchier than Spanish influenza
I press it down and up, like levers on a strange machine
But the fluctuations are constant,
Always teeming high and sweeping low,
But never
Ever
Gone.

I guess it is conscience,
My moral discontent,
Which breeds this inner animosity,
But this is only data
And would be best used to implement a constant rotary of ways to help others
Rather than damning myself.

To the man with the sword
to the man with the plough
to the man with the wife
with whom he must row,

everyone sleeps
from the same pool of eternity
and walks closer each day
to it's shores.

From the woman with the rings
to the woman who wears rags,
from the lady who sings
and makes puppydogs wag,

everyone eats
from the same grainy earth
and toils in the soils until death
from birth.

Her smoke moves like Spanish moss,
Blue-gray tendrils intertwining
Around the shining plastic beads slung low on her wrist,
As she takes another liberal sip from her Budweiser bottle
and does her best to ignore the man she came here with tonight,
he's telling the barmaid about how he got the scar on his right cheek,
And I know parts of their story,
But the thing that troubles me most
Is that I'll never know how it ends.

the car wash plays music over two tiny, square speakers, one mounted to either side of the vending machines.
It usually plays modern pop music hits and misses,
But today it's playing Elvis.
Today it's playing Suspicious Minds.
Today the sun is shining and the sky is blue.
All the washing stalls are occupied.
Silver, blue, and two black cars are getting clean today.
And I sit across the lot, waiting to work the rest of my shift,
Watching the day turn,
As House of The Rising Sun begins it's turn on the car wash loudspeakers.

If I cut you from my life
Like an image from a family photograph
Your absence would still exist
But it would lose your features
Make you into empty space

As nameless and yet as true as the heart
Which beats wildly inside me
As I imagine a new, strange lover's eyes
Meeting mine for the first time

And how
as we share our first drinks,
He'll ask me about you
And I won't remember the words I once said
To describe you
Because how do you explain something
That isn't there

Asexuality?
Nah,
I am the Bartleby
Of ***.

When I see the people abandon their old American Dream,
I read about their travels, their hungers and their happinesses,
I wonder if it is
madness
or if it is
love
which has inspired their souls
to commit the ultimate treason-
the pursuit of freedom.

"T-t-tuh-truthfully," he stammered,
"I cannot tell the d-d-difference."

Inside a recently abandoned coal mine,
His voice scattered down endless tunnels.

He lit a match and held it up before him,
But it immediately burned out.

"Are you an idiot or something?"
His companion shuffled beside him.

There was small, plastic-sounding click
And then they were both bathed in light.

"You can't light matches down here, ***.
You'll blow us to Kingdom Come."

"S-s-s-" but his companion cut him off. "Sorry
don't put the skin back on your bones."

"Now look again, Matine." His companion
Urged him closer to the small wooden table.

Matine looked at the two, ancient sea shells,
Anxiety filling up his stomach like acid soup.

Several tense seconds passed as he brought
Each one up to his face and studied it.

"T-t-tuh-truthfully," he stammered,
"I cannot tell the d-d-difference."

Inside a recently abandoned coal mine,
His voice scattered down endless tunnels.

Matine's companion was not a patient man.
His name was Jack. And he left the mine.

Matine did not.

The rain fell with the night,
all groaning thunder and vociferous lavender lightning
the water staining all it touched like old black ink
streetlamps dissolving under and into darkness dripping wet
and I watched from the cold side of a second-floor bedroom window
breathing onto the panes and drawing smiley faces with my thumbs

When the rain had finally stopped,
I was still sat there,
still thinking about how wonderful it would be
if you were on the cold side of this second-floor bedroom window
with me.

Hey!
I don’t often think about it anymore
But there was this dream I had once
Sleeping next to you some long ago
Sweaty stupid south Florida night
And the whole world was falling apart
No one knew what was going on, not even me
But none the less
We were all stood there, this whole community
And me
And asked to go into the gym
Wait in the gym
And you were there beside me as we were
Pushed into this massive empty building
With the crowd
And I remember the blue tarp on the floor
How it seemed strange
And we were in the middle
Where there would normally be a big circle
Meaning change sides
And the crowd was pressing in everywhere every inch
And the floor fell into water
And it turned out we were standing on top of a pool
A very deep and wide swimming pool
And it was storming
The power had gone out so everything was just
Darkness and touch
And I was trying to hold onto you
As I fell back and down with what seemed
Three hundred people
Babies crying
The splash and then no sound
There were too many people
Weighing on top of me I was lost
Drowned
But the dream went on
I saw you climbing out
Breathing air
Finding your parents
I saw you board a plane that was
Trying to leave through wind and rain and lightning
Because something bad was happening
End of the world
Maybe
End of mine?
Definitely...
And I never told you, but
when I woke up I felt
so glad
that you made it
that you
breathed air

even through the
rain
and
wind
and lightning.

in a house full of

                                  nothing

the camera
l
u
r
k
s
like a ******,

silently

                                                     watches

the floor weep into it's
--------------------------------------FOUNDATION----------------­----------------------------

and the knock!
                 knock!
                   knock!

coming from the                                                              ­  
                                                                                                         closet door

echos
  chos
   hos
    os

and we sit
and stare
at
heart-winning photographs;
the children we used to
be

                                                       we  silently

seep in the remembrance;

narcissus
was
   not
     in
       love
with himself

he was
  in
    love
       with
         h-h i-i s-s   s-s h-h a-a d-d o-o w-w,
the perceived


                                                        nothin­g


Just a trick
of  -   -   -   light
f
a
  l
    l
     i
      n
        g

out of books
like
l
e
  a
   v
    e
     s

of emotion,
like

F

       A

                 T

                              H

                             ­             O

                                                 ­         M

                                                     ­                      S

                                                   of suffering

                                                /  T / O / R / N /
from your
l  i  p  s

like black tar on your
s   k   i   n  

camouflage
for
the



                    A              B                 Y                      S                       S

Happy thanksgiving
Waiting for the two ten hour shifts
And two nine hour shifts
And the paycheck which means rent
And I'm sitting in this black cloth chair
Playing a game about survival
And feeling like I can't wait to survive
The next two months
And then the next year
Praying to any God that might listen
That I might live for the next ten, maybe even twenty years,
And learn all the things I've patiently been waiting
To learn.

So happy thanksgiving,
I am thankful to be alive,
But **** it,
No where vast is there true peace,
As our nation briefly rejoices in one another,
Before waking up yet again to
Chaos
And collapse.

Karma rolls around
You probably have not slaughtered any indengionous people with your own born hands
But your genetics probably have,
In some fashion,
Along the way.
This turkey day,
I urge you to rebel,
And celebrate now,
While remembering the warning screaming
Loud
We have only this,
The stewardship of nature and human empathy,
Don't let them take it away.

I'm sitting on the carpet of my rented room
Swatting neurotically at gnats and fleas that may
Or may not
Actually be there,
On my arms and on my face.
The only proof are the little red bites,
Up my left arm and across the bottom of my chin, where they stop.
As if my blood boils while I sleep, leaving little red marks to show that I need to
Chill out
Calm down
De-stress
But I'm
in distress,
Destroyed.
I need a higher up.
I need a voice that speaks with more experience,
With firm understanding,
With the knowledge of everything.
And I can't seem to find it in Bibles, Torahs, Quarans, or other holy scriptures.
I only hear it whisper from old history textbooks,
I hear it only
Chiming softly like drowned out cymbals from the radio talk
I only see it peripherally in my rear view mirror,
Can only taste it as an after taste of many drinks.
It is ribonucleic acid,
It is thymine, guanine, adenine, and cytosine.
It is the carpet of my rented room.

My canvas is the same as yours
Just white, solid surface
Made to fill with shapes and patterns
Of varying sizes.

The only difference is that
You use more colors
To paint your truth
And I use more words
To paint mine.

Some of us got lucky
And found what makes us
Work
Some of us still wonder

But life is art
And we paint it with our tongues
And with our eyes and hands.

Don't argue with me anymore
About whose paintings
Are
Better.

hello.
you wanted answers
to your questions
they are bleeding
you dry, like so many
needling worries
do.

I'm calling you to tell you
that I don't have anything to say.
It's a lie,
but I'm too stuck to tell you
that the thought of sitting
somewhere quiet and cold
watching the stars pop out of their
black velvet bed
as the wind and the cars
whip by
to turn and look at you
your eyes reflecting red and green
bound in gold and browns
it's the only thing keeping me
going,
like a thread of ribbon,
beautiful delicate
stronger than you'd think
but lost against the
repeating fabric
of daily tedium and survival.

She asked if I could I said "yes but
I won't."
She asked why not, laughing all the same,
And I said "because I
Prefer not to."
Then she got really serious,
Her eyebrows scrunched down hard toward her nose
And she said "you're on
Borrowed time."
I asked her what she expected me to do about that
And she said "live more."

The wretched sound
I mistook for tires squelching flat against pavement
Is actually the timely torrent of water
From a broken sprinkler head
Four houses down the street
First soft wet dribbles
Then increasing pressure
Until twenty or so seconds of geysering
Then nothing for ten seconds
Water pours loudly into the soaked mud
And everyone else sleeps.

It is sudden understanding
Which brings me back to you
Which pushes me back into your arms
And makes me swoon at your eyes
And it is always sudden despair
Which turns me away
And leads me back down a smaller path
That pretends to have never known your name.

I love nights like tonight
When the wind catches me
And pushes my hair back
And it's as if I've been standing in a thick, deep, dark forest
And now the trees and bushes and hanging vines blow back in different directions
Revealing paths I could not see before
Letting me choose again
Which way to walk,
Instead of this lonely frustrated hobble through thickets
I get a chance to pick
My own path,
And the wind will keep blowing me forward
To a new forest
With different animals and sounds
To learn and fear.

But God,
I love nights like this,
When the whole world is made new again
By nothing more
Than a breeze and a searching heart

Our bodies contain too much Mercury
From eating too much fish
Our drinking water contains too much chromium
From weapons testing and industrial pollution
Our media contains too much violence
From saying "all me are equal" but not really meaning it
Our hearts contain too much apathy
Because there's just too much.

The raindrops contain every color, and they shimmer through each hue as they slide off the long green fronds of the front yard ferns.
They disappear into dirt, make mud.
But they still hold rainbows.
Sometimes they just have to evaporate back into the stratosphere, collect and slide out of heavy clouds, tumble back to the front yard ferns, and shimmer again. It's ok though. Water always has time.

I wish that I did too.

15 years ago today
I was ten
And kids were getting pulled from class
Taken home by worried parents
And all the kids were watching the TV sets
In their classrooms
Except for my class
We were not allowed
The teacher
mrs. coyer
Said
"You all see soon enough. It'll be everywhere."
And I hated her for not allowing us to know
But when I got home
And I did know,
I understood
She was trying to protect us
From the image and the terror
Of death.

The air is still, and the sky flooded
gray.
Green things reach up while black things decay.
Cars hum past, bothered by delay,
And fifty years ago today,
It was Easter Sunday,
And the sun was high and bright,
Golden in the sky,
And children screamed with delight,
As they found many-colored eggs
And devoured chocolate pies.
But then
Their shiny shoes got stuffed in closets, easter memory forever now,
The houses that were here remain,
But the families are all gone somehow.
The air is still. The sky flooded gray. It is a dreary, weary Easter Sunday.
But God wanted it all this way.

Instead of worrying, I listen
Turn off the endlessly pouring spout of inner monologue flooding my senses
and listen

There is music in silence, a kind of symphony made by the absence of what could be there and yet
What is not

I will escape my body one day
And death will take what's left
But until then
Let's sing each other's praises
Until we're out of breath
And dance in sunlight, and moon light too
Let's drink to more drinks
And write it all down in a book
When all the rubber is worn from the soles of our shoes
our hearts keep beating with syllables and pentameter unspiralling
Even when the blood in our veins stops flowing
Let our souls flow out via the poetry
Kept stuffed in half-filled spiral notebooks perspiring, just
Waiting for you,
And for the you after you,
To live again
In the language of an old life
Speaking dead alive stories
For others to keep inside their own
beating hearts.

Origin of language
It's my dream to understand
Why and how
And I think it was
And it is
The human need for individuality
Betterness
To be at the top of the hierarchy
Which has sparked the vast expanse
Of spoken and written language,
The cheap signal communication style
So characteristic of human beings
Has everything to do with the need
To control and create
But the joke, ultimately,
May be on us
For when you create less than what you destroy,
You cease to be the creator of your own destiny,
And become instead the destroyer of your own fate.
Listen to the whispers of dead language
Which creep through your DNA
And understand.

If the world be ever changing,
Ever rotating on its wobbly axis,
Then I,
As constituent and citizen of the world,
Be ever changing too.

I was born hot, and wet, and loud, the last day of June.
And now I have grown,
And I have grown cold,
Because the hurt of learning
The pain of change, and the disappointment,
Has eaten to oxygen from the flame of joy
I was born holding
In my chest.

Were that I could find ignition within,
Some magic bit of unlockable truth,
rather than casting out my net of questions,
And attending to the ones who bite.

Please no- not another love poem,
Not another repetitious unravelling of sentiment and revelation that
Yes-! You feel and you desire and you want
Just as much
As almost everyone else.

Not another love poem,
No more please,
I can't stand looking at them
And feeling this heart inside me
Grow hard and heavy, become a mountain
Of missing you,
Until I want to scream,
Until I want to
Wake up from this crazy thing.

And everyone else in the world just gets to
Keep writing love poems,
and why are you in every single one?

late afternoon sunlight descends through the waving Palm and Oak branches
highlights the rips in the knees of my jeans, made not bought
and I feel like I'm seven years old again
waiting for everything
too young to know what's waiting for me on the other side of time
but then my next door neighbor comes outside and says
"Hello"
and it's welcome back to now,
to right now,
when I'm twenty four and sitting outside writing this poem,
hoping that you're proud of me,
hoping that I can still learn to love properly,
hoping that I always get rips in the knees of my jeans.

Seven serpents all in their own wicker baskets
Slithering, sleeping, curling and seeking
And a withered old man with skin
Red with ochre and brown with sun
Sits cross-legged on the dark earth floor of his hut
And waits.

Each serpent has a name, from left to right they are
Andromeda, Cyrus, Diochenes, Libratti, Nigellus, Fordham and Justus.
Whichever found their way out first would be able to tell the old man something
About the world waiting ahead.

So,
As the late afternoon sun baked the sparse shrubbery around his canvas tent,
Dyed orange and yellow and red by the clay and dirt and wind and rain and sun,
He waited and watched the seven wicker baskets.
Some shook occasionally, others stayed still the entire duration of the waiting.

But just as the bottom of the sun hit the edge of the horizon,
Fordham slipped his sleek, scaled face from the basket, flicked his tongue twice, and sailed smoothly between the two errant ***** of tent which held the entrance taut.

The old man released the souls of the other six from the bodies of the snakes
And gathered his travelling things;
A hat, a walking stick, and an old tanned sheep's bladder filled with spring water.
The hat spread out wide over his head,
And pooled in a large circular shadow far from his feet.
The sun was nearly set.
He began a thick, slow burning fire, and took his trail to the beach,
Thinking that it might be his last
Time ever seeing the ocean,
Listening to it speak.

I know your heart,
Only if it is like mine.
And if it is I know your hurt.
I know you hurt for others.
I know you hurt for things untouchable
But that can be felt by all.
You yearn for betterness.
Know of its existence by the dance inside your bones
And the song inside your soul.
And this world is a bad world
For the ones that feel
And think the way we do.
But it isn't time for hatred,
Because hatred has no room for goodness.
Remain vigilant not only in thought
But in action
Love is not the act of ignoring violence,
Bigotry, sexism, war
Love is the act of overcoming.
We shall overcome.