hand me down stories
an indian burial ground
figures in the woods
three piles of rocks
the same log
bundle of blood


               i am so, so sorry

took his bike to the end of the street and disappeared.
he was laughing.

maybe today, just find a way
to bell the bones of magnificent fun.

she thought he was funny. he
took to the day like a wild oat.
took a bullet to the chest, still had long to go.

that old bless of a naked always-stretching lung
     [can we account for nuance?]
took.  took.  took.

holocene compounded, brain aneurism expounded.
he knew the city suffered, city slumbered, never, not ever.

your number? he asked her.
or about some kind of snake wrapped around the heart.

war chest, drum the chest, bone or breast.
twas rhythm, not explosion.
rhythm/blast.

city/socks/electronics.

the humdrum conundrum of ***, thumbs and time.
we are surrounded yet alone.
stone’d yet liquid.
remember the lung?

city/shoes/blood.

he thought she was funny.
stoop, stop to think about a text…
send.

was once a wild dog,
reborn a man, for just a brief moment in this billion year odyssey.

was once a demon,
sent to earth to destroy, instead fell in love with the woods and her toys.

was once a frog prince,
tongue-out beside a pond, with his princess to never arrive.

was once a boy,
forgot about time, scuffed knees and chin, to grow old and die.

was once a dreamer,
fell asleep and got lost…

                            [each harsh yet beautiful minute proceeds into the next, time telling its stories of love and death]

girls, boys, friends, and words
morning river stones and stoners
water/smoke/gold bits
home known lips
years beautifully dreaming
maybe god
maybe house, and teeth, and stars, and *****
family thinking,
father, children, trees and feet/fort
of blankets
earthy far places/closer in pictures
legs been dancing
lovers been drunk beneath their best thoughts
gone
to air-like warm place, autumn
hand, or
deep fingered fruit and flame
alive to die
to die, is life
truely lived in color and crayola
kids making breathy art of movement, sport
to tongue and run
thinking of leaves, the spirit dog breathes blue
dreaming of big cool animals
he once saw
the meat of wilderness/tenderness
woman, she works the red dust
memories of street ancient holy naked heights
fun nights/fights/***** given
party lost body making ****** form waves, pool
full on tall-tales and books to seed
an empire
a televised endless story of flesh and
remember
a life, survived
passed on to a throng of youth
free spirits/springtime adventures
bottled pink sheets and the american lawn
bone-war in a distant existence
closer seen in pictures
fictions, stories told
retold, father’s factory soaked skull
his spit sweetened up in the mountains
goats we were, ready/ not ready
escaping slaughter
speaking of forests and ritual vengeance
popcorn blunted ghouls envisioned by pungent neighborhood momentum
weekend, high

that’s my kind of girl,
with the long and big teeth.
she rolls a joint.
licks it.
complete.

        “dinosaurs ****** **** up,”

she says,
and we breathe big clouds,
escape the beetle-wood plague.

shapeshifter kids
thumb through the guts of a dead mammoth
/or mastodon.
i never know which is which.

she’s out there on the ice again.
holy night &
positioning the gas-tanks just right.

joseph is her father, and his father,
even if not by blood,
raised flame.

foot to throat, brother remains
in the city working.
he is building a rocketship
in the basement of his apartment
complex.

back to town and dying houses.
foreclosures and fences.
lake of fire.

lights: she lingers in lights.
something so true and alive about the revelatory
of color,
of the world when lit and hit by sun
or our artifice.

her lovers: one dead by heavy
lumber, the other rewinding videotapes
in chasms of the library.
she thinks on his lips.

her dog tracks wet prints
across the carpet and floors.

wish list:
        mittens
        huckleberry jam
        iphone solar charger
        explosives

one thousand shards, my crown was built.
not of thorns.
but bubblegum legos, saturday morning stuck
to the carpet
& days gone by.

crept out of fold and gut/   kid living
& watched by trees.
autumn watches us fall like leaves,
born of the belly and the mother.
mom quiet/

dad loud/
  men hid behind blisters and god.
  men hid behind tall towers and the bomb.
  men bled for immortality,
  warred and ****** resource for more, the door
  to an endless life.

dad taught me how the heart and brain behold blood,
& how the body manifests it/    
moves it/
follows the sun.
son follows father follows god follows ghoul.
dad taught me about the machete.
           about how “our fates will dominate us blind.
                               so man dominates the jungle.”
he told me a story of love and more glory.
of poor men and dead men.
machete theories.

he carved wooden chairs.
built a lodge.
fished the river,
    & reeled to forget the war.

harpoon the river gods.
the heart and brain behold blood,
& the body manifests it.