Pinto?

No, not the wild-spirited, color-splotched mare
with mane streaming like flames-thrown
behind in the wind
Taking desert inclines
with scuffing hooves on rock
catching her balance in mesquite
curbing?
The sage, dust
All
that nature throws in its pathway to knowledge
toward treachery of crosswalks?

“P-l-e-a-s-e  don't slow down!
Stop signs--?
”No!
Just keep going!
Don't slow down now!”

“They'll hear us coming
3 blocks away!”

Pinto?
Clogged carburetor--?
No one much-mentioned
rear-end inferno reputation??
A mere twinge in my signature
Woman-without-a-clue

“Hey, it runs, right?
Gets where we're goin'?”

Kids duck in back seat
so as not to be seen
In the cloud of smoke
We make our approach

Hiss Spitter, Belch, Pop
and--

BANG!

--Like a gunshot

Kids take cover
on street, in backseat
duck down
so not to be noticed...

“Oh Ma!  
MA!!!
Not right here!
Farther down!”

...so not to be seen
...by friends that matter...
in this ride
from hell!
Backfiring Beast--

“Friends”
skitter away
from what will emerge from the smoke and fumes
of high-risk-situation

Kids spill out through jammed door
to unexpected accolades
onto equality's curb
of laughter  
Public school's
wake of exhaust and relief

I drive mercifully away


Start of another school day

She was a gamine,
an urchin and a recluse.
Tattered and waifish,
scrounging for some small morsel underneath a city bus.
Tarnished,
a lot like brass that's been exposed to water;
she's splotched.
Even whilst disenfranchised,
she carries some valiance hidden beneath her turncoat.
There is beauty in the loose pages she's giving to the wind.
She is,
and will forever be,
floating in the updraft of a sidewalk vent.

i woke with a **** and
a windpipe full of butterflies, so i
swallowed them down to my chest
my stomach and below and
it was then that i realized
they weren't butterflies
but backward flies
that turn to maggots and
eat dead things

so it was then that i realized
i was dead, in between that
chasing-my-breath consciousness and
sepia splotched dream
which featured my favorite
human being
waking me, winding me
up...

hey saige, come on, so i
unlocked my eyes
even though i knew it was my
little brother
all along...

bright
cobwebbed windows at my
feet and
brighter fringe above me
brushing my forehead, like fingers
he leaned
over me, nudged me
hugged me, come on
saige...

i began to rise, which is why
he stopped me, that's when he
kissed me, and that's when i
forgave him
because i knew it was
an accident
except for, that was when
he did it
again...

my lips inside his, and
i kept my eyes
open
kept telling myself to
just kiss back, since we'd
already ruined everything, because
that was all he
wanted
because maybe
we could go back, maybe we'd still be
inseparable if
i hadn't screamed, enough!
maybe nightmares
are second chances at
being better
best friends...

i was torn
worn threadbare and i felt it
in every fiber of me
lying there, but i couldn't
pull away and i've
never wished to hurt him, so i
couldn't push, either
just clamped my eyes
shut, as he did the same
with his mouth...

and that was when
i woke
without a soul nor a shame
save for the maggots
in my veins

I don’t write about my Dad or God so
I will write about how
Moses told all the Jews to slay a lamb, take the blood, and paint its blood around the doors
so that the Angel of Death may Passover the marked houses.

The story goes that Dad (or God) was
Wobbling down the street with heavy breathing like a deflated walrus washed on shore,
kneaded jowls bouncing beneath his jaw with each bouncing step,
Because he had to order special shoes for his diabetic feet.  
When he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and collapsed beneath
The L train and curious stares blurred against a man’s fight to live.
Fiddling with either his rosaries or toolkit or pants or
Phone or newspaper or lungs or shoes or inhaler
And I’m sure they’ve seen him before,
But I’m sure this time it was different –
They would have a story to tell to their co-workers and loved ones
About their walk on the sidewalk by the hospital
Where an old man collapsed
And they would echo the words, “Count your blessings,”
But have no idea what that means.
He was dead for two minutes and had bleeding on the brain.

This is about more than just myself
And him
And the way he made me feel.
This is also about the man next door to him
And how I came to learn to never talk about my Father or God.

It is a Saturday morning with snow on the ground
And there is guilt frosted on my back
I have not moved in a few hours (perhaps years)
And there are tubes like translucent octopus straddling his mouth and mounting
His chest
As it rises – and breaks – rises – and breaks (so romantically)
With each second beep of the heart monitor.

In the general waiting room, some men and women arched in their seats with gleeful excitement
And balloons and footies for newborn babies
to deposit
Something hopeful and crisp into the umbilical residue.
So as to mask the horrors of what human health really is.
Staring at what is truly written as if the “I” myself
Is too special to suffer.

And, then, there is the man (stranger) with a smile
Too transparent against the masks bouncing robotically in the foreground
The man (stranger) –
he asked me if he was ready to
Make count with his major failures and major contradictions,
Thereby ready to vacate (physical) body (earth)  
up to the Lord. He spoke to me about The Lord as if I never knew him,
never knew his stripped promises of salt statues
never knew the bent knees and heads during Mass
stripped away the infallible memories of people
of people
who knew no better
yet checked each other
to thank him for their
chosen suffering.
never knew the responsive sweat dotting HELP along new mother’s brows
never knew the elegance of bliss/love during *******  
never knew the muddy feet of a wretched child clambering between belts.
never knew the frantic swerve of hurried fury from a coat’s hem.

my brother said he was going to
time how sporadic, chaotic, hypnotic
My three-year-old haunches switched up the stairs –
Animal-like, on all-fours,
swiveling from one grimy patch of
cement-splotched carpet patch to
the frozen barbecue-sauce colored tile at the front door to
another grimy-cement colored carpet patch to

the tacky, stuck-together carpet-hairs hardened by dish-soap calligraphy –
combed the S.O.S. message I crafted one hot, sticky June evening
after slapping the ***** of my feet into mud
then tracking pawprints through the kitchen door,
transcribing my help-yelps as Dad’s belt cracked –


Climbing then freezing at rage’s zenith,
His face contorted like gargoyle-wrinkles deepened with sweat
broken peals of thunder-skin splitting like a river’s delta through the house
Flooding pockets of silence then bursting with a child’s sniffs
since crying never helped me, anyway;
undeniable red-shame pooling split skin after each crack-smack
doubled back then cooled its buckle on his thumb.

With comfort, Aunt Joan assured me: “Love is
the second most mispriced of human goals.”
What’s First? “Liberty.”
So I’d lie amongst the dishsoap-doodles
     like Alice in the daisies
Limbs outstretched --
          like DaVinci’s Millenial Man
     or
           Jesus on the cross  
     or
           hopeless girl losing her virginity
     or
          Ma reaching towards the door lock
     or
          McMurphy post-lobotomy
     or
          Santiago dreaming of Lions on an African beach
     or
          fireworks blossoming against an emptied sky --
And trace the cracks in the ceiling with the blue veins on my arm,
like
       roads on a map;
I'd mouth the names of places I'd never seen/heard of but
       I would go in my mind –
The mountains I’d climb steady on all-fours, switching my haunches
As if Escape was the warm, fuzzy world only children would dream of -- then linger with their eyes shut to return there -- hidden beyond the garden of Love and Liberty –

No, sir,
        No, man,
        No, stranger,
                I never knew there was such a way.
-- how could I go undone?
He hogged the conversation – I hogged the facts
Everything I’m leaning toward is a cut in the conversation, sir. How could I go undone?
He asks me what his name is and I tell him, Ken. His name was Ken.(Or God.)
He asks why he is here and I tell him
You don’t need to know that. I don’t know why I am here. Why are any of us here?

He then prays for him and invites me to as well.
I tell him,
When you come undone, I come undone
We’ll all come undone in the end
We were doomed to die the moment we are born
So who will pray for you in the waiting room, sir?
No thank you, sir, I’m just fine, since who
Knows the way or what somebody says
All I know is that I can put you away. But, I will not.
So why don’t you sit your excited *** down?
If only he could understand the joke.
May the man learn the dead man’s float and seek solace in the cadence of Charon’s poling of his ferry.

What valor. What courage. You all turned out so well.
The leading man is dying.

Escape is the erased movement where the sinewy lights and colors behind dark eyelids stand steady long
after the first disturbance, then usher those that were hurt
into Charon's ferry
because anything feels better than everything that was taken.

Gene Wilder's ***** Wonka once asked me
to step into a world
of pure imagination
and I danced to his voice
of sugary imperfections.
The swelling strings drizzled
on top falsetto inflections
captured me childishly
with candy-coated attentions

But even the finest chocolate melts,
and I learned to let purity be
pushed by treacly lyrics
or stern midgets secure
in their fudge-topped zealotry.
It sifts too pretty for me,
powdering my grown-up
infatuations with petty
wants, getting a little messy

What I crave instead's stained-glass contraptions
to propel me past the stretches
of biblical proportion
where light and dark don't mix.
I'm no Idiot, good-hearted
in the veins of Fyodor
or Akira, and I can't see
beyond the pure tedium
of a blurredly driven snow

I like my mental drifts grime-choked and splotched
with some savory do
dropped in to dissolve flossy
confections to a salted soup
of imagined impurity.

On Loss

We’re always losing something.
Seconds, days take some french exit.
Time quietly shuffles out the back door.
Doesn’t even say goodbye.

Once we realize
our moments are gone,
we want them back. Maybe we can replay
them and take a second look, but the record skips and the tape jumps
and the film is splotched and some teenager spilt
wine all over the keyboard
long ago;

So we jump
from memory to memory like patchwork
realizing we don’t even remember the important things.

We don’t even know why we thought what we thought.
We can’t even explain ourselves to ourselves.
Our consciousness can’t muddle through it’s own muck;
our mind doesn’t even know how the mind works.

It’s not just an existential crisis.
We lose the small things, too. We lose cellphones.
Wallets. Innocence. Virtue. We pass some
tests, we fail some tests, we replace and are replaced
we stop loving  and are no longer loved,
but eventually, bigger things. Friends. Family. Lovers.
Ourselves. Our potential.
Eventually, we slip away from the most important thing.

I’ve heard a bit about death. It’s a lot like sleep. You don’t even know it’s happening.
It’s a lot like
slipping into the unconscious;
it’s a lot like putting your head down; you don’t thrash about. You see the holy gates,
maybe. Maybe you’re pulled from your body
like a handkerchief. Maybe you don’t lose anything;
maybe you get found.

If this is melancholy, I’m sorry. I’m allowed to be melancholy. Likewise, you’re are allowed  to be melancholy.
You are allowed to question-
you are allowed to dance, sing, shout, cry
know, love, forget;
You are allowed to lose. You are allowed to remember. What’s stopping you?
Who’s holding you back? No floodgates; you aren’t a flood.
There’s no sweeping metaphor; no sweeping generalization. You aren’t
a path, you aren’t constrained, chained bound or gagged;
confess if you must;
drink wine if you have too;
do some metaphysical exercise; transport your mind to some realm
explode, manifest, conquer,

Prepare to lose it all. Or let it happen. It’s a choice.

If I could, I’d help you through your heartbreak. Guide you through
it all,
make you smile. Make you happy.
But I keep losing things.
I keep playing all the songs I used to enjoy.
I keep reading all the things that used to make me happy.

Moments come and go, hours gently float away
Night will wash the palate clean, clear-coat the day;
I will love, and I will hate;
I will sing, and I will dance
I will grieve, and celebrate
I will shout, and by some chance,
I cease to be.
I will not be me.
I will go somewhere;

a dark room.
Somewhere where I am safe.
Nowhere at all.

Somewhere, sometime, somehow, a vauge
mirror you cannot avoid

I sit beside you,
two sets of eyes glued to a splotched canvas before us.
I in the driver’s seat,
you in your captain’s chair.
I’m asking all these questions, but,
are you really there? I worry
when I look at you, and the
shock is painted on my face.
Others pass me under the moonlight and
tell me to leave this place.
They say, “you better get outta here, and get
while the getting is good.
This job will turn you inside out
and make you misunderstood.”

I sit beside you,
two sets of eyes glued to the canvas, as if it will restore us.
A cassette tape is forced through my brain,
the night’s events replayed.
My finger tap upon the glass,
and your hair is frayed.
Your figure in the captain’s chair,
with skin as cold as tin.
Which one of these got to your bones,
which one did you in?
Do you remember sights and sounds,
you wish you could forget?
Is that look upon your eye,
one of anger or regret?
Trauma is etched into your skin
like cracks on a weary canyon rock.
I need to know how you turned to you
if only you could talk.

I sit beside you.
Our eyes are glued to the splotched canvas, that which holds nothing
for us.

Loneliness is pages splayed across the bed
It is clutching the empty space beside me
Writhing in agony, knowing very well
You're not there

Loneliness is having my blood run cold,
My feet solidly planted to the ground
Every time I hear the unfamiliar ring
Of my (prosaic) name

Loneliness is basking in the sweet but transient
Moments of companionship, when your supple
Lips brush mine (and sparks flit down my back)
Knowing they will soon be relics

Loneliness is donning heavy, splotched clothes
Sodden from last night's tears and broken memories
It is having your mind plagued with yesterday
*Loneliness decays your today

That double crescent moon bite mark
That Thom made on my arm
To show me he was, "*****."

Those five purple fingerprints
That Riley left, to remind me
My pants? Gone last night.

That weird, mysterious oval
On the inside of my thigh.
...Was that Kelsey or Nyssa?

That tiny yellow mark that splotched my eyebrow
From when I ran into a telephone pole
—completely sober.
Tyler still mocks me about that.

That blood red under-eye
That made me realize
We all get hit.

That Texas-shaped purple-to-yellow transition
That screamed to me,
We all heal.

Oldest thing I ever did see,
Skin a mountain range of
Crumpled/crinkled crepe paper
Peaking in altitudinous pouches
Under his eyes, dragging with
Their weight dewlapp jowls
Down to a waddling,
Flabby neck, eyes camouflaged
Under light, fuzzy swatches of cotton,
Mouth slack and vacant, dribbling.
Hobbling with a stoop, knees bowed,
Back arched at an angle, a
Tilted arrow. He tottered over to me,
Inches, feet, miles, years too young,
Smiled brightly to reveal an empty,
Gummy mouth rimmed with
Birthday cake, pallid arms
Outstretched, head splotched with
A thin, wispy cloud of hair,
Half-full and forgotten baby’s bottle
On the carpet behind him.

How quickly they do grow.

Aging arms splotched with purple and red
signs of tangling with jagged dead branches
among white pines along the back of the yard
reach for a copy of Ted Kooser's Flying at Night.
Pages flip for a stop here and there
to read Sunset, Carp and Spring Plowing
Envy swells inside him with the realization
that he will never write such fine poems
which prompt memories of childhood adventures
living rural among tiger lilies blooming in meadows,
newborn calves teetering toward first steps,
and freshly spread manure capturing the scent of fall air.
His fingers still grimy from early morning planting
place Kooser's volume carefully beside his empty coffee cup
content that he is blessed to have discovered it
that day hiding next to classic tomes by Shakespeare and Whitman.
He rises to tackle digging potholes for double begonias
to decorate his yard and and to dream of pages unread.

In the library,
the woman walks,
cane in hand,
bundled in a red coat,
green scarf over her shoulders,
her husband beside her,
in his slate coat and cap,
a checkered scarf
tied at his neck.
She pushes her white hair off
her forehead and peers up
at the paintings on the wall,
splotched and messy and bright,
the work of elementary students.
Paused at the paintings
they think of times when
they were that young too,
under the open sky--
her leaving clothes on the line
him chasing his dog back home.
They didn’t know each other then,
or maybe they did.
The details slip away
like summer into fall.
It doesn’t matter now,
but there was a time when she
held his hand on their walks
instead of a cane.
Oh, the watercolors
look like
ones Dan and Janie made,
Oh Dan,
he’d said he’d call,
or did Janie?
They can’t remember and think
of disintegrating paper
and blue drips on the table.
Instead, they finish their stroll
and both agree--
Lovely, wasn’t it?

baby butch in the bathroom, splotched with shaving cream
using dad's razor to shave what's barely even there on their jaw
baby butch in the bathroom, shirt off and defiant
(though alone who's there to see it)
(them that's who)
washing his feet and their armpits and her face

baby butch on the sidewalk, leather jacket wrapped around them/him, internal bravado daring everyone
not to look at him/them
baby butch in the hallway at school, laughing loud and pitching voice low
no one can know
but why not act how you want to
baby butch in the classroom, slouching in their seat, knees braced against opposite legs of the desk
carefully lazy
legs so tense

baby butch on the internet
finally telling
saying CALL ME THIS CALL ME THEY CALL ME HE
AND THEN CALL ME YOURS
she did. he is.
it's too soon. but he is.
baby butch in the background, scrawling out words
they. he. xavier. baby butch. king ****.
alive.
alive.
alive and living.

In the shadows of the walls
where laughter once reverberated
as a symphony of gleeful bliss,
intonational inclines arise in the dark
as dancing phantoms haunt
the smirking silence which dissipates
from the splotched, upended floorboards,  
while midnight footprints breathlessly creak,
cradling the demonizing affirmations whispered,
the very ones I knew would never become true.

We stood by, powerlessly spectating
as the love we once shared
gasped for air, red in the face,
its gushing carotid bulging in desperation,
four lungs incinerating themselves
with imminent anticipation
of the death gleaming
just over the horizon,
its violet hues juxtaposing
with the glimmering night skies
of faded constellations comprising the celestial
as moonlit silhouettes waltzed across the water,
a bright cerulean rippling in our presence,
the genesis of a journey unforeseen.

Brutal acceptance rains from my eyes,
a rumbling river that reigns supreme
over the rounded stones stacked high
as a towering dam of branches and rubble,
leftover waste long forgotten and forlorn;
hometown fantasies of childhood memories
linger longer than our lost loyalty,
liberating me from the rusted chains
you'd stapled into my brittle bones,
a leash tied tightly around my throat
to **** me from my courageous caution
back into the splintered wheel
dictating our selfish agendas,
empty promises of dilapidated affirmations
now turned weary and worn
with this newfound sense of reflection,
a dichotomy depicting time's own passage,
the consequence of a metamorphic resolution
of open wounds blossoming into eroded scars.  

Futuristic visions of lesions now mended
seamlessly fuse with renewed self-reception,
your broken promises stitched with the threads
ripped from the capillaries comprising my core,
blood-stained carpet of scarlet and crimson
fading into an aged and weathered maroon,
never truly waning in its acquainted pigment
yet blossoming into a stained fabric
portraying the promises of the past,
of decayed ruins now industriously erected
into a radiant utopia of gallant, rubious valor,
the final product of an unyielding resolve
to have our story rewritten, our own steadfast evolution.

Aging arms
splotched with purple and red
signs of tangling
with jagged dead branches
reach for a copy
of Ted Kooser's *
Flying at Night
.
Pages flip
for a stop here and there
to read _Sunset,
Carp and _Spring Plowing

Envy swells inside him
with the realization
that he will never
write such fine poems
about memories
of childhood adventures

Like Kooser
he was reared
living rural
among tiger lilies
blooming in meadows,
amid newborn calves
teetering toward first steps,
and around
freshly spread manure
capturing the scent of fall air

His fingers still grimy
from early morning planting
place the volume
carefully beside
his empty coffee cup
content that he is blessed
to have discovered Kooser's work

He rises to tackle
digging potholes
for double begonias
to decorate his yard
and to dream
his dream
of pages unread.
and pages unwritten.

Jenny and Jimmy were the best of friends
spending long days together that would seem to never end
picking up sticks and swinging on trees
blowing dandelion flowers in the warm summer breeze

now jenny was a beauty dressed in little boy’s clothes
with her pony tail lose an' freckles splotched on her nose
and she couldn’t give a hoot what those other girls’d say
cause she liked to be with Jimmy and the games that he played

now Jimmy wasn’t smart, but he knowed what he loved:
skippin' rocks, catchin' frogs, and his baseball glove
and that silly freckled girl that would always hang around
the most pretty little flower that he ever had found

they would lie in the grass, staring up at the sky
hoping life would never change, as the world passed by
they would always have each other and their lush green wood
with the birdies and the trees and everything that was good

but the winter was a’comin and the kids went inside
and the flowers and grass and the leaves all died
and a perfect white snow covered up all the fun
and it silenced all the laughter and it froze up the sun

so they sat and they waited for what seemed like years
and so Jimmy got angry and Jenny found tears
and even as they hoped and they cried and they prayed
the winter wasn’t going, it had come along to stay

so then Jimmy got up and he put his boots on
and Jenny got her gloves and her scarf from her mom
they each waved goodbye to their nice warm home
and they set off in the night in the deep cold snow

the ice was holding tight to every step they would take
and the wind was blowing hard and it made their bodies shake
but they kept moving forward cause they knew they had to be
in the arms of each other beneath the big oak tree

Jenny saw him first as she came over the hill
and she ran so fast she forgot about the chill
and Jimmy was amazed as a smile found his face
as he lifted Jenny up in a strong warm embrace

and as the two of them smiled and they hugged and they swayed
the winter and the ice began to slowly melt away
and the two stayed together up until the very end
because Jenny and Jimmy were the best of friends.

TOMATO CHASE

Now....
Out of season
They're reddish
Uniform in size & shape
Firm
And flavorless

In season
They're RED
All sizes and shapes
Firm, soft, some just right
And flavorful

Yesteryears
They were magic
Like the transformation of a caterpiller
The little yellow flower
Gives way to the tiny green marble
Stalk n stems grow bigger
Marbles grow larger
The green fuzzy rough stems
The scent
That wonderful smell
So unique to the tomato plant
They turn green to red
Some even get incubated on a sunny sill
When it's time
Knife reveals seeds and red splotched juice
And the TASTE
A taste that fades with our age
That TASTE that we chase every summer
Close
But never a ringer

blues man, man of soul,
writhing in my forearms.
a heart too calloused to pump,
eyes too full, fading to chalk.
thin wooden fingers, whining joints,
sagging biceps splotched with bleach,
a broom mustache solid in sweat.
it hurts, blues man, to feel you fade.

your sax bleat against the sidewalk,
the dry reed snapping on impact.
your canned bank spilling nickels into the storm drain.
i felt your shattered muscles shiver against my chest,
your spine spasming back and forth, pounding against your lungs,
blocked by all the **** you’ve eaten in your seven or so decades.

your shoulders sagged and your chin wilted to your wheezing heart.
i laid you down against the wall of Mother’s and searched for a payphone.
looking back, you seemed like an old black Atlas,
i stuck a few quarters in and yelled at an answering machine for four infinite minutes.
looking back, i saw people looking anywhere but your face,
dropping change in your saxophone case.
your fingertips stopped shaking,
and with it, my old earth sank into space,
and you ****** me into a new one.
it hurts here, blues man, man of soul.
it hurts here, and everyone’s got a rasp in their voice.

I hid behind the Buddleia bushes,
crouched in pools of
broken butterfly wings,
and bright feathers.

Between gaps in the greens
I saw them laughing,
jokes floating from
their mouths.

Rain started falling
pools rose
higher,
hair turned to string
cheeks were on
fire,
heartbeat burned,
my head
turned
away.

He kissed her forehead
wiped damp from her eyes,
traced light on her face
light from the skies.

Afterwards I walked
home under
rainclouds,
rainbows,
and rain.
dotted in sorrow
splotched with pain.

And let him pick me up
close to him,
again .

I remember the drive,
Across those
Watercolor splotched
State lines,
Smears of time passed fast,
Downpours covered,
Played a symphony
Above our heads,
Gushed down on roadways,
We are truly powerless.
Arrived safely,
Eyed signs like a game,
Counted down the miles,
Sweet freedom
And comfort,
I reached a destination
To call,
“Home.”

"Make as many mistakes as you can as fast as possible"
-Doc

Some kids found their rooms:
Math room pizza parties for those held in place by statistics,
four mirrored walls where the strong bodied press iron into muscle,
a tiny box for the "Special" broken off, hidden from the general population.
Those who went to the art room followed the music:
Stacks of scratched mix cds labelled with magic marker,
curated directly from fresh teenage hearts
hearts learning to become sound and paint in Doc's Art II class,
They sketch, carve, snack and chat.
The only room where students are allowed
to talk all period and pencils work to produce souls
instead of information.
There, the ineffable takes shape, in papier-mache,
macaroni or glitter.

Here are the kids who know how
to make mistakes. Perched on stools,
napping on the couch in the back,
the duds, the nerds, building things, hanging out,
shaving sculptures into their scalps. Their minds escaping
in paint-smear, light and earth, generating amorphous blobs,
new species of globule bacteria squirming across a slide of canvas,
things laid under the microscope, not for interrogation,
but for companionship. Not for scrutiny,
but for curiosity.
They reach no understanding with the world through movement
or the way the colors talk
to each other, they only reanimate the confusion into something
they can be friendly with.
Visions surface from the blank stare
of a white page.
They know how to get rid of that white;
just start getting it *****.
Eventually it begins to look like something
clean.

Nate starts new genres every class
though he plays no instrument: oi-punk, ska-core, pinhead blues.
Corban and Chip engineer robots
from their dad's junked wiper blades and orphaned gadgetry.
Quiet Jennifer looks
into the peeled aperture of her camera.
Golden Nick sketches always,
scoring every conversation with his etching.
Eyes cast aloof
from what everyone else is trained to see,
they stare into the discouraged hallucinations.
Unable to convince themselves the visions aren't there,
they exorcise them through messes of paint, wavering clay,
kilns burning mud into permanent shape. Splotched
mistakes arch gracefully into unforeseen purposes, the erroneous made integral.
What is discarded or shamed in other rooms is here followed with curiosity,
rescued and incorporated into a perfectly rendered mess
of liquid. The rejected is what is, what becomes.
Here, kids let their hearts out, casually, without explanation,
like red paint from a shiny new tube.
My heart, can't everybody see it? It's up there on the wall, collaged out of glue-stick
and diced magazine scrap.
It doesn't have to be clarified in the desperate pomp
of a poem or the insipid glitz of jazz hands. Put on the run by the logical requests
of Spanish teachers, they can relax here,
and so they are real, and so they are different.

As adults, they still use what they learned there. I watch them. They are my friends;
bartenders or line cooks or nurses or clerks, their basements cluttered
with bric-a-brac, creative purchases, bought not out of necessity,
but because they explode the room into life:
A creek painting amended with a rhinestone deer cutout,
the orange booth of a defunct bowling alley,
Happy Meal mascots leftover from obsolete Saturday mornings.
Their dens are hung with 4th grade prize-winners, Governor's Show picks,
a woodcarving of an eagle so ugly only a Mom could keep it hung
on her bathroom wall for thirty years.
Exacto knives and staedtler erasers point
from Warhol coffee cups on drafting tables,
T-Squares and light boxes are dragged through a gamut of low-rent apartments.

Maybe in the cupboard, maybe out in the garage,
a box lies closed
but not empty,
filled with crinkled tubes
of hardened oil, a palette stained
with a multifarious rash of colors,
a forest of stiffened brushes growing
from a ceramic ashtray.
Every now and then they put a record on,
pull this box out, open it
and again, with a little insistence,
the colors come flowing.

Soul of Frost

You worked your way out ward the cold hair wet with snow the face splotched also the snow covered
Clothes told the story of a life was it embittered did it reject the warmth of friends for isolation did it
Believe there was more value to toss caution to the wind go it alone curb your instinct to be one with
The crowd you desired to be distinctive one of a kind but there lies danger when you remain a stranger
You can do so many things with connections but your lonely eyes tell the story you find no warmth in a
Shadowed land its like you are walking among the tombs of others before it is time to do so the hearth
And door of the lovely only presents the coldest sight it is not by their slight but by your calculated
Choosing to be open to you means weakness so you forbear the cold you create hard stares misunderstanding it
Rocks gentle climes you answer in kind deeper harder the ice it increases your voice speaks with a hard
Edge you leave no question your word to the word is leave me alone I don’t take anything off anyone yes smiles and
Tenderness will keep their distance and the cold wind blows even harder you take it as the cost you
Must pay to be you and be safe they will never find you begging the answer is control don’t ever let go
Of emotions you seek not a world of sand that will crumble you planned well you fought to be fearless
It worked no one is tougher it shows by the rough cold exterior you fix them with that dead stare a
Lifeless pall pushes them to a distant length you have all the space not much finds its way through the
Barrier you built with coldest stone it has been reinforced over the ensuing years the girl that once was
Truly died and a woman was born from those death pangs a great gulf you spanned a city that can’t be
Breached a municipality of steel and concrete hard for light and sound even to penetrate this
Conscious fixed shield it shows in the dull glow of your skin you set out to make the world according to
Your mind set to bad it was flawed no peace not even a semblance shows you did a perfect job in closing
Out the world trouble now you are its prisoner there is no set end for your sentence the farther you go
The deeper the chasm of cold grows this maze knows no end somewhere you will be found moving to
Your own vision and design don’t worry no one will disturb you its funny ice is fun to create statues but
They hold your attention only for a short time then the living turn away to more interesting and timely
Pursuits oh lost soul you have no ability to turn away you created this marvel you are beautiful the
Picture of taste an empty promise with the coldest face no one desires to touch just a cold stare is all
They will ever offer the queen of ice what a deadly price to have a kingdom of indescribable coolness
Where only dead emotions ever are expressed nobody knows your state of mind its quiet distant maybe
You beat the odds a cold hard heart fixes all that is wrong the stars make the heavens wondrous all
The world ponders their existence maybe this will be your lasting glory as you stand aloof and alone
One human one soul of frost look what it bought your pedestal a terrific spot in winter’s eternal garden

When his fingers trace my skin
It will be a foreign invasion
Of the territory you made
A traitor
Waltzing on enemy lines

I'll look for you
In the contours of a strangers smiles
Or behind his fingertips
Waiting for just a glimpse
Of your light
To seep from someone else's skin

For pieces of you to surface
Rise like blood
A purple splotched
I love you
Signed with
I'm yours

I'll hold my breath forever
*but you won't ever come

I reckon every day is another page, another chapter to the storybook of your life. Some people have every sheet numbered in neat chronological order or categorised according to A-Z, while others are blank pages waiting to be filled, waiting for words to come. Occasionally there are stories that have been left unfinished, tragic end or dire fate, and there are those that end in the quiet melody of unsung heroes.

Of all the life stories in the world, mine is fragile at the spine, paper thin and translucent. The ink is splashed across several pages, words intelligible and smudged with tears; blood stains dotting the edges. There are countless tales that lurk beneath the binding, and even more lives entwined with mine. You, for instance, pressed thorns between the pages of the book that is my life, leaving flowers wilting amongst the splotched ink words and tears in the paper. It is funny, because only when you look back do you realise that nothing would ever be the same if you didn’t exist.

I am older now, the accompaniment to the author that is destiny and fate, overseeing the paths I am to take, the people I still have yet to meet, the places I will go. There is no promise of calm ahead, and with every recollection there are flashes of hurt and pain, of times when my heart was torn apart at the seams, shattered beyond recognition. Despite this I continue on, the naive hope that things will get better and that I will recover, lingers in the core of my soul; sparking a new hope down to the ends of my fingertips.

And while page after page is filled with cutouts and photographs of the memories I have had, none will ever shine as bright as you.

-

"When you’re here it’s like the sunrise, and when you leave it’s like the sunset."

(A.H.Z)

The day starts off bitter and dark
Splattered and splotched with watermarks
From tears of us forced to watch
Battle cause against battle cause
Shoulders flaked in hatreds frost
Rolling rocks collect no moss
Foes and friends this war has cost
Who could have thunk who would have thought

A world like this would take top billing

A time like this would come of age
Raising fists in fits of rage
Here's the pauper where's the sage
Keeping truth locked in a cage
Same old look different name
Nothing's changed it's all the same
Unknown ghosts make us afraid
Set the date cut the cake

A world like this is quite revealing

Unless you find you like the lies
Being spewed out on all sides
From the upper left to the lower right
As we feed the hand that bites
It's a case of do or die
Whatever it takes to win the fight
Sign of the times I  me mine
Raise your hand and close your eyes

In this world of truth concealing

They're keeping score behind closed doors
Where they have mine and they have yours
Where the disease thinks it's the cure
And only peace can come through war
If that's not enough there's more in store
Times are rotten to the core
Days like these are hard to ignore
Once we've opened Pandora's door

A world like this is hard in its dealings

A world like this is primed for stealing

A world like this has lost all meaning

A world like this is in it's keeping

A world like this...

street lights laughing
street lights passing
hooking the contents of a baked
beans can
with our fingers
grubby
Scavengers
like vultures
heads bald, pink, and splotched
winter months we clamber
inside pockets
and rest on shoulder shelves
it's when the sun dips down
we yawn through exhaustion
put away old vices
and sleep
just sleep
like weary vagabonds
jumping the night trains
for a span of
uninterrupted shadows

this morning on wednesday

april seventeenth

two thousand thirteen

a man was found dead in the parking lot

of a walmart

on a cold

drizzly spring day

wearing an old carhartt

splotched by cloudy ink stains

a white tee

and jeans so faded and worn that

there were quarter sized holes

dotting the fabric

and an old red and

white-gone-gray cap

that framed his cold

stubbled scarred scabbed face

in his pockets the following were found:

a wallet containing

seventeen dollars and sixty three cents

a bottle of forty antidepressants

minus around a hand full

the hopes and dreams of a seven year old boy

and a broken pocket watch

I remember how heavy you were;
you left footprints in the grass
and on my chest.

I remember your eyes;
glazed crimson
dripping sweat on my *******,
clenched beneath white knuckles
and stained cotton sheets.

I remember the birthmark on your left hip;
its ugly face smirking
past greasy thrusts.

Your breath a heavy whiskey drowning my lungs;
whispered in my ear
hot sticky grunts.

An ink splotched lion tattooed on your thigh
grinded into me,
twisted itself into my heart
ate away at my preserved innocence.
I’d saved myself for long.

And then there was nothing left after that.
“Have fun in college.”

A closed door.  

I carry you in every moment.
My hands pressed firm against his abdomens
as he tries to make love to me,
I wait for that lion to reach out and
scratch my face velvet.

I wait for the pain and the shudder of his pleasure
As it ripples through his shoulders and he presses into me.

I wait for it to be over
So I can bury your face back down into blankets.

I wait for him to smile and kiss my temple before he drifts to sleep
And then I shower to scrub you off of me and out of me.

But I’m never clean enough
I walk around with your dirt caked around my core
I’m branded by you,
I’m drifting to sleep and my fall awakes me to your snarling neck.

I remember hearing that now you’re a youth pastor,
a true saint.
you’re working in South America with empty children
and hopeless mothers
you’re building homes for the homeless
and saving lives
you’re teaching the lost
all about God’s reining love for us

but guess what baby—
I’ll never forget the night you ****** me.

This fever dream seems like it will stay forever,

Liquids cannot quench my thirst nor can they extinguish my body's need to feed on the shivering paleness of my flesh.
Stems of salty veins carve themselves down my face and bloom in my hands.
They ache and create splotched patterns of red and thread into my hair.
I dare not move for the magma spinning up my arms.

Fire like this leaves me begging for a quivering death.

I've barely broken a vial of vile
pills to chase out the thrill of overwhelming heat.
In my bed sheet catacombs I meet
the guise I despise the most.
the true grimace of my tormentor .
The flames filter my soul, and

I am screaming for a pure breath of cold water
to fill my lungs with ice,

and slip me into a frozen sleepless rest.

Stream streams, runs, speaks
in water to me, blind over
tongued rocks. Don’t wake up,

her sweet heat dropping over
my face. I don’t. I want her to
continue smiling with her eyes

like she is, hands through me.
I’m the grass in her fields and
she’s alone in them. I let her be.

An impossible color gleams in
shut eyes—maybe

veiled incarnadine, stirred in
splotched mauve, clearing dull
blue-black, streaming vibrant

because water is streaming
through air into myself, because
the high red sun is falling down.

A thin membrane’s between it all.

If I find the far distance inside
that short space, the chained
filaments appear, then glow,

shift, float, stream. I think of
seeing stringed symbols of
broken infinity, but I don’t

focus on that, I let be.

Kaleidoscopically gemmed
rainbowed streaks begin to light
the world, slowly, move my eyes.

As I move, they move, and
pour in the hot white of
awakening, o her smiling eyes.

my complex jupiter pops
full body into
infectious night—mouth
bursting and bang
taught curtains
so the light can shine through
every cherry blossom
I

never asked
what I meant to you
before
you

pink in my watching

slip into
the miniature composition
of splotched blue—

and I know everything
in space
is finished

The paint is flaking and falling off
splotched edges
discoloration
stormy days
weathered years
creaking and leaking
cracking from heating
the physics of aging
and seasons of raging
the terrible toll
they are taking
makes you think this old house
needs replacing.

But listen to the voices
of laughter and loving
hear echoes of weeping
and promise keeping
poems that were spoken
being whole and broken
see the tears that were shed
the glories in bed
sighs and lies
some of them said
inside the house that was home
these many years.


Inside spirit reigns
with angels unchained
where heart and soul
on a journey bold
through seasons of pain
where demons were slain
new life was greeted
death was cheated
souls were enrolled
in miracle courses
treasures discovered
of higher forces.


This old house of seventy six years
holds joys along with fears.
The structure isn’t new
but inside
there is
youth.

There are plenty of diseases around, take
an American motel room, shine an
ultraviolet on wall switches,
pillows, see seminal fluid
& mucus splotched like
a Jackson *******,
these are seen,

now,  flick a light & open your eyes
& recognize the overt sickness of
racism, spread  like jam
across American
bread, widely
viewed,
unseen.

Pillow under the head,
body laid in a bed,

black splotched red

behind the eyes, and
a breath somehow
wakens the rest

The sky is gray. Everything is gray really. The ground is grey brown. The the trees are gray green, and the sky is gray blue. A lonely man jogs beneath me in the cold. Most everything is still save for the gentle swaying of trees in the edge of my panoramic window view. There stand in the middle of the lot two trees that have traded their resemblance to stoic poets for the whims of the winds. They make me wonder about my brother. I remember how he used to mow the lawn on sunny days, rhythmically flexing his jaw as it rang with the vibrations from the machine at his fingertips. I remember the smell of fresh cut grass. I wonder if he was as trapped in his head as those other autistics who prove to be quite sentient. I imagine holding a conversation with a brother who is more intelligent than i ever imagined. I wonder how he's doing? I havent heard much about him since he tried to **** mom. Ticking time bomb. Set free to nurses in a hospice center. Released into the hands of a familial tyrant bent on pimping my brother for pills and potential children. Fake flower petals nestled in the window attempt quite faintly to soak up the silver sunlight. The sun is lazy today. It hasnt taken the time to run around the sky and warm itself up. It's laying asleep in a bed of clouds and contrary to what people say about them, i don't see a single silver lining. Just blurred edges. But somehow they manage to still be beautiful. They are a tired sort of beautiful. Cold stones lie in a shallow grave atop the rooftop awning extending from the outer edge of the building. They are splotched with tar and mold. Rainwater takes it's toll. The trees are tipping again. sideways and sideways back again. They seem to be fond of that tick tock triage. Much like mine. But i am less fond. Mind goes back to autistic rocking again. Sometimes i feel like my heart does what special needs people do on the outside. If my heart had a mind it would no it were in a cage consisting of cracked ribs and the dreams of a miser. If it had fists, depending on what day it is, let's say a dreary tuesday, like this, it would likely lay down on its wall hung mattress and resign to twiddling with it's thumbs. If my heart had a tin cup it would rattle it against my ribs. I would feel it in my spine and try to remember why i was built this way. But my heart doesnt have a cup, so it's thirsty, and restless. Without instrument. on days like this i would rather stare straight into the face of a room more brusque, floor covered in dust and hinges tinged with rust than to pretend that i am blemish free. on days like this i would prefer mongering war with my self and wallow in a pile of my own pelts, flayed from me by my own sharp words. The truth hurts. But tomorrow. . .tomorrow. . . who knows, i might hang some curtains.