i was living life on my knees when
I met JB, he was a song with a body part
in the title, a guardian, a saint, maybe a one-time
guitarist for Kiss.
(The last man to see Jesus, as far
as I am aware of, was the apostle John.
sometimes in his sleep he still whispered
“please don’t bury me, please
don’t bury me, please”.)
but JB had bowed to Baal, had kissed him,
bought a 20 dollar nosebleed from
a man with seven stars in his right hand,
a sharp thing in his mouth.
JB was not an apostle,
but he knew the knees of my heart,
gave his knees to the needy,
shoved soldiers, stared.
we spat in our gloves.
he said I have a swordfish mind,
but I have left 7,000 in Israel,
loved the oh of his mouth as the
stone rolled away, I have
met Jesus, face-to-face.
please don’t bury me.
these were the Great Days,
the First Aid: a myth that cost lives
taped us tight, and when he told me
that 150,000 people die in Britain every day
I said “instead, tilt your head forward,
pinch your nostrils shut and breathe with
your mouth; a half-sitting position with
your knees bent and head and shoulders.”
he did as I said and, later, John
put his **** in my mouth.
Reactive arthritis
affects the large joints, the knees,
causes pain, swelling,
an ectopic tongue on the floor
of the mouth.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 11:41 AM UTC
when in doubt-i-hyphentate.
this-also prevents Microsoft-word
from capitializing my i-‘s when i-want them
to stay bite-sized humble pie,
but it still capitalizes
itself)
Microsoft word*
* big ‘m’ added by bill gates
misspelling it prevents this
micropoft word*
* i-am the best kind of rebel
i-refuse to be told how to write by anyone
gate-related or otherwise,
even if i-may occasionally **** myself
on paper, the rain will take it all off,
we shall all be healed.
we *will all be healed.
carried away from the squaggly
green/red/blue lines of a processor
which doesn”t understand: poerty so often is
sentence fragments and uncapitalized i-s
untied shoelaces in a dark boling alley,
my bad breath and watered down alcohol,
stains and the hours spent rubbing them,
sounds on a dead tv set, rubbing carpet in
your aunt’s living room,
i-can spell
things how
i-want to
poerty is fun
like this;
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 11:55 AM UTC
she was called forth
from the rain, sing-screaming through
the lonesome pines, scattering needles
like a ****** angel; stomping
the dust into mud.
festivals strung on her wrists, the
flags shouting louder through leaves
than even that hung-up sun could muster.
rocks rambled up her spine, feet
calloused from dancing, she shrugged,
suspended above the moss.
the fire was never so bright.
would the black streets in a
harsh, dead city be deeper or
stronger than this?, can the skyscrapers
cut open clouds with their teeth
like she gnashed through God's hair
and tangled the sound of her blood
with the river?
even her chin was a boulder;
her knees flat skipping stones.
she wore soft bark and orange.
(aspens on hillsides with sunsets,
roots blending with bones and vein
and skin)
her hair spread out as a tree underwater,
or braided tight into vines.
a cup in each hand,
a sword in her mouth,
a wand on her waist,
pentacles on every inch,
forever breathing with the skin
of the earth.
and when she had left:
the missions departed, coals are black
in the cold city, skies scraped and scabbing.
burnt with the deep of a flame-led
memory.
the shallow graves upturned and cried out
into the rain,
*where has the base of my stream
flown from, if not the sharp
scent of her skin?
what shadow have I carried if not
an absence tied under my feet to
only be free in the morning
with her hair in my mouth?
where does the river flow
from here?*
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 1:35 PM UTC
shivered in a thin sober jacket
I wonder why you are not here
again, the sleep alone, the Sisyphus sun.
every night my closet is dark.
I am filled with the fear of knowing
the light again.
of your firecracker heart, your soul
outside you, not afraid to say it.
say it (again), tell me.
do you know your own fingers?
can you speak for the dance they
took on my shoulder at night
with nobody watching, can you hide that
spark flown through my skin?
*(I am alive with the light of it.
the fear is a valley.
the fear is a wet rock in my throat
the fear is a little death.*
I slept in your smile,
there was the hard tap of your fingers
that could have been my fingers
that could have set me all free,
pressing the fear until it hides deep
between cells of sparked skin,
lit from an argument of hidden beauties,
unknowns, you drew the X
out but did not feel it;
you kept the beauty hidden and you did not feel it.
so again I am filled with the fear of
holding the light ignited in my palm,
casting shadows out like uncertain nets.
*how full of orange flame you are
and green and blue of afternoon sky;
a swirled breath kept tight in the center
of a pond, a sharp shock, trembling hands
leaf-bent on a branch*
the hand hikes over you, a
quick brush of a lark in the dark bush,
calling for seeds to bloom, for the
spring to slip on the branches
and fall to the ground, slow and
smooth and emptied pollen;
*my hand hikes
over the hill of a shoulder,
the valleys.
and I sing with the pain
of it.*
of the orange of the fire on the
purple night cloud, lightning
in an empty field
the red dust on the palm of an
upturned arm, waiting for rain.
I sing with the pain of a
spectator, shivered through
thin sober jacket.
every night my closet is dark.)
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 11:19 PM UTC
I have been told since I
learned to read
that holding someone close
says I love you with my
heart inside my body inside my head.
she said "fall in love with someone
who's comfortable with your silence."
and still,
I only find you in the dark
crushing my toe on your frame
the scratched black nail in the morning
shines like the love I gave was too
loud and bright, so blinding
that you sank behind the sun
as I played "She loves me,
She loves me Gordian not"
with the sword rays.
splayed across my tongue.
the razor-blade foreplay
was violent enough to carnage
your room to a crime scene wrapped
yellow tape package CAUTION
you yelled with the nothing CAUTION
do not cross do not cross do not cross
you fake messiah
you save yourself savior complex
of a narcissist, drowned in his own pool
of backlogged traffic jam verbage
living with a rearview mirror in every room
especially our bed.
I find myself
with arms wrapped too tight
around a precious thing,
screaming until the spit sling blade
found every secret place inside your ear
and carved it to echo the only word
I have ever really known
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
MYSELF AND EVERYTHING INSIDE ME
living with a rearview mirror in every room
especially the ones you're in.
especially when you are too quiet
to be anything but a noisemaker
in my cavern of a head
filled with my own claps
singing my own song
playing by my own rules
until everything I knew of you was
dust and shivers in the mist.
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 2:30 PM UTC
Cadillac Cross
they were held up, two handfuls
of ripe fruit, an offering to the camera flash.
and you seemed only a child, forced
into the skin of a woman, the world
was watching you laugh, but no one would
ever know why.
the private conch you kept
offered for love or lust or heat,
now a deer in the headlights.
now cast out like round die
now handled until grimy
now silent
now hard.
I cannot imagine your
pain, how nothing is safe;
we made a pillar of you, a statue at a temple, rusted roadside attraction,
thousands of rubber bands in a ball, a house of crushed coffee cans,
the longest loudest brightest ball of flame
that side of the red carpet,
and then there was a sound
like a wet rag
falling limp and ****** onto the floor;
how will the decade treat your eyes?
will we find you in the forest
with a cadillac cross on your chest?
or bleeding in a hotel
with your publicists’ card twisted
between clean fingernails?
or scotch taped
with a tapestry backdrop
hostage with cameras wide-opened at your head?
the audience notes the strings of saliva that stretch
blindly from one full lip to the next
like the string of a bow pulled taut
and then lost in wild degradation,
broadcast.
how will the decade treat your eyes?
will there be bags where we do not want them?
packed with sag and soft nights,
will we find you in the forest
with a Cadillac cross
on your
chest?
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 12:17 PM UTC
there is a straightjacket noose man
gauzed inside my chest.
breathing with inside fever and moving
around the edges with a mumble and
a shuffle he crowds the walls
with blue light.
the tapes fuzz and hiss when
his hands raise up to the glass
the security operator is crying
into his wrinkled shirt collar
and the wind whips itself
to a frenzy, the tapes fuzz and hiss
when his mouth opens up and
crawls a gasp straight to
the shout the shout rises like
sharp pockets of steam
and the director is shaking so hard
the pens on his desk chorus like
a thin drum choir, the desk is too hot
to touch, the noose man slips
to strands then to particle
then to simple sugars and
energy like light
right through the floor and the ceiling
and we are live
so live.
the glass once slow flowing moves faster
and sand is everywhere and
his eyes snap and chip into the
locks and the tape.
he rages in the deep the
lightbulb left, in the dark desert,
the red dust.
he lights like sparks and rises again
until my every muscle trembles
and the mothers chatter and my
teeth chatter and the director shakes
and the neurons shake and operate
like telegraphs.
(outside, I am a clenched fist.
a tired pillow,
the shadow under an open hand
and a closed eye.)
inside there is a crack and a moment
of confusion so brief as the smoke
clears and the neck has broken
on the noose man,
cut open by the speed of
his own sharp snaps.
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 12:45 PM UTC
I do not know where your hands rest
when you speak.
but your knees are rounded
smoothing river rock and once I stared
at them in a wine-hazed fire,
and I called them beautiful but you
seemed afraid so I stopped that.
you have a perfect nose.
I am skittish in your focus
, rolled and shaken,
hazy when you laugh and ask
for more, I cannot be sure
that you mean it.
where do your eyes sit when you
ask questions, where do your
ears go to answer?
we talked so long, I think.
*you mad ,but you magic
there no lie in your fire*
as much as I can, I do mean it.
even if we were only close once,
with that glass tree hidden on
bull street, (you sang into the bottles;
it sounded hopeless and I loved it)
even if we were only close when you
kicked the candles across the room
with all the glass clanging
with us laughing our all out, throat roaring
even if that was it,
I would wake up again on your couch
knowing how your face may look perfect in the
softer morning-haze, with your foot cooling from
the cover, I would drive home in the sun, barely
awake; I would do this all again.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 11:21 AM UTC
you are a big thing
glowing with craters
and you are the moon
and I love like you
and I run
on and on
and on over the rolling tide
and you are beneath me
beside me, above and in me
with lightning ropes, slow
dragging the ocean to my shore
and you are a small thing
in the desert with heat
made of a trillion smaller things
and I am the water
in every cactus
and your waving cables
leap off the sand
and tug me to the shore
and I am slowly leaking
through the pores
coming to you
the endless stretch
and there is only empy
air between us
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 12:49 AM UTC
you are a body in a boat
on the lake with the shadows
of a million birds over your chest
and you are breathing with them all
and the waves want you
like I want you
and we will both kiss the tips
of your dripping fingers
stretching from your crinkled
hand, like all of Tennessee
in your palm.
oh, how full of fog you are.
you are a body in a boat
on the lake with that shore
covered in rocks, unskipped
the plants unpulled,
roots unslipped.
but as your fingers drip
from body to liquid
the discs of ripples
spread
to me on that shore
holding my own
holy head
so little did we know (so little did we know)
those ripples were not our own
but instead
the alternating white/blue
of iris and cornea
of skin and vein
of hand and sky (of iris and cornea
that all go away of skin and vein
that all die of hand and sky)
and one day, we will find
(beneath the shadows cast
by temporary leaves) (that all go away
our own bones, buried deep that all die)
under the roots.
(our own bones, buried deep
under the roots)
and you are breathing with them all
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 9:18 PM UTC