ghosts of slumber parties past.
just a haunted betamax & a stack of oreo sandwiches.
sisters braiding eachother’s hair far past the witching hour,
contemplating life without supervision.

blue house. yellow lawn.
silverback gorilla in one garage.
two garage: empty.
three garage: a woman entombed in exhaust.

          [her bloated tongue]

a gang of bmx boys pizza-fed and friday-high,
hopped up on mountain dew and trading card collectible rituals ‘n rhythmics.
they conjure a demon just to **** and dismember it.
     for funsies.
     for keepsies.

a fang for the shrine at the foot of the old oak tree.
history on the skin, long history, long thoughts, long in the nod like a calm dead frog.
bubbled, boiled, toiled, and troubled.

the woods aren’t haunted.
you   are haunted.
you   are the conduit through which the darkness displays its vivid colors.

          [treefort aflame]

the seasons furrow/
                               / the leaves fall.
little plots of land etched out – subdivision and sprawl.
on the avenue, heaven
& hell made tame and tangible.
built, re-built, and refurbished – a lawn and a lantern.
a mortgaged glory of sparkle and decay.

          [dead cat is a new cat is the old cat ran away]

pictograms of morning light display on mom’s face
as she instructs us on the gusts of love       [scrambed eggs]
& teaches us the truth of nettles sprung
from violent pine.
                                      [toast with raspberry jam]
the television.
the microwave.
the blender beverages.
hymnals of an electric kingdom.
one mom dances, the other expires.

          [restless armless girls in orange sunsets]

girl with a gun at the edge of her lawn and selling lemonade.
girl in an old wicker chair.
save her horror story for another day.

boy with a bent frame bicycle limps his way home
from one end of the avenue to the other.
his pockets full of sparkly rocks found in the lime quarry pit.
one boy in a long line of lost planets.
the driveway.
the refrigerator.
the hum of a saturday night commercial-free cassette.
where’s dad?

                         the glow of an eerie crystal
                                                                     (continued…)

dad is in the garage.
days into spark-light and piles of polyethylene
etched.
soon, he says.
as grandaddy laughs,
rattling the icebox for more beer.

dad’s homemade android:
  the thing.
like a doll polished
& grinning, it
dances for us in the kitchen.

the dog barks, chained in the backyard.

the thing,
do-si-dos for a laugh, catches a glimpse
of the trees beyond the yard,
overheats,
circuits popping into a limp heap of pieces.
  dead.
left to mold-over in the garage.

the days.
the rain.
the cats tiptoeing along the edge of fences
across the street.
the dog barking, chained, &
snapped.
  dead
beneath a truck.

dad is in hysterics.
dad is in the garage,
weeks in and his soaked red knuckles.
mom is drinking with grandaddy.
they rattle the icebox.
  the dog.

the dog dances for us in the kitchen,
reboots and sits.
it digs a pit all night and buries three cats there.
it sleeps on the mound.
it never barks.
it waits there in the backyard, still
& staring into the trees.
  the trees.

earth boy.
air conditioned and living.
/or
following the light of something far from home.
begin:

old town and lovely she.
loved she.
love she like there is no other she.
the one and only she.
she dumps him.
finds a new he.
has *** with the new he in a far corner apartment complex peak
beyond the tracks. train.
troubles;
like screeching howls of love spit and ****, city
at midnight.

he buries his hopes and face in pie
at the café
volta.

new her,
wiping the counter calm yet tired yet cute and soon to close shop.
she tells him -
about the keys of lost lovers.
the doors to remain open for the sake of dreams and all possibility.
she tells him -
of the pies at the end of the night.
the cheesecake and the apple pie
/entirely gone.
the peach cobbler and the chocolate mousse
/almost gone.
but the blueberry pie, always
/untouched.

he’ll have that.
some sort of broken in the heart have that/love that/eat that/pie.
they talk for hours.
he rests his head on the counter and sleeps
icecream on his lips.
she almost kisses him right there.

and she remembers him.
attempts to call him while he’s in memphis
/or
some other southern city.
he's on somekind of journey.
he works kitchens for more money to motion further west.
westward sweat and burgers. see/saw.
little money, little love, little city
and onto the next.

she remembers him.
attempts to call him while he’s deeper into the glowing desert dome
/or vegas.
/or, you see the stars above?

she writes him letters.
and he writes her back, and in return, they fall
toward a thought, a light, a lit-up little idea of life full
on good something.

return.
to new york and old scents. old town.
corner apartment complex peak window and memories of a once-was
girl.
beyond the tracks. train.
troubles no more.
return/
to pie.

to café and concept
of sweet-tooth, sweet real something, sweet blueberry nights
and icecream.
and there she is.
with warmer winter/spring smiles than even dreamt.
and her words for hours.
she almost kisses him, but kisses him.

something perpetual
is love.

bottlerocket,
ski click &
shoot.

         [empress impressed.]

petrol souls drift the skin & aetherous
of our holy mother lake midday.
by alpine,
lymph node,
spine of glimmering fish;
i never truly thought that love could destroy.

       [to display the paradise boon and boom salute.]

her knife atop the stump.

*

yon machines construct art-form of reservoir (yon being short for yonder),
knee-boarder-boy wake to wake, he wags his tail when he dreams.

        [lakeside.]

tribal the beach: a family drunk on juiceboxes.
rolling rocks. tall boys
& boulders/ bountiful canyon kids
with their beautiful gasping dogs.
****** knee **** and gallop at the foot of a mountain/mound &
sugar ants stomped, longing to empire.

mom bunches her fists into sand
of stolen crag, listening closely for her childhood in the whistle
of a casio conch.
margaritaville will do.

          [to **** or kiss beetles.]

kiss;
the bitty prince.
maintain a steady alliance with all lifeforms and flora.
life is programmed as thus;
algorithm of love.

bright honeydew soaked slabs of wood,
or plank, tabletop treatise.
wet pile of seeds.

young small birds hoard seeds for winter;
teeter into spring;
& upon summer find solace in swift slip-n-slide daylights.

montana yellow dress, the highway looked bitter sunday fit.
she knew the land given,
land taken,
thunder walking west.
met a friend. stopped to talk.
he was a holy kid or dog, both songs of kindness.
trickster cool mountain calf
waiting for the water promenade.
deep creek good old boy swimming smiles,
rose up
and shot like bang with the buzzard sioux feathers.
truth is low clouds flashing, dreams burst
in the earth room.
doused sheets of chaparral and canyon grass
a pretty laughing bird.
wet things watch the water-log, and a frog spits whiskey.
charter bus barefoot leather and a father says kids, smell the hammer,
see the hammer touch its words into the world.
work-tale living, fools bled.
river gal cut, oh
fishing.

those outtakes after dusk.
those you & me girl / high on the distillation of living trees.

we balance our bodies
over the edge of a creek
******* for minerals
&/or wet peels of gold.

fruit of pine
& animal fat for flavor,
you jump stumps &
stretch lungs to worship.

/or my *** dealer.
man alight with gemstone glands &
sticky at the tips.
each finger
pressing wet pampas cure.

the touch and study of
high-fi royal matter. (rose galactic)

savannah, hand
& fleshing meat in the heat of mother cradle.
africa man, tell me how was it?

details: the nature of today
& of tomorrow,
of pleasure kid.

t-shirt, he
prepares an atomic roll of autumn magic and smile, friends
or simply just
a spliffy belief in holy hallelujah man.
wild this.
tree of knowledge of good and evil and all in between.
tree of

the modern mystic noon
& in it is energy/vision/like midnight
but throated in such
humming beautiful light.

the sky breathes endless love,
said sun and fun,
marooning us onto an all-day sigh.