I’m not good enough to write
this poem. these ******* words
won’t come. here I am, feeling
like a dried **** on the grass—
all hard, white and shriveled
obstinately sitting there, surrounded
by all that lush green.
this resistance is a real *******,
sitting on me like a sumo wrestler,
smiling in its power over me.
looking down on me
and controlling me effortlessly.

“you can’t write poetry,
you’re a nobody.
a real lukewarm leftover special.
no one will ever love you.
no one will ever like you.
no one will ever see you.
no one wants you to succeed.
no one wants to read your poetry.
don’t waste your time doing
something you’ll never be good at.
you’re not good enough.
you’re not strong enough.
someone like you could never
be someone like that.
someone like you could never
do something like that.
someone like her would never
love someone like you.
you’re gross,
nobody wants to look at you.
stay home.
don’t do anything.
don’t even try.
give up.”

I mean, this guy’s got a million
of these bumper stickers
and he slaps them all over
the inside of my car
all day, every day—
that is, when he’s not using
my chest as a seat cushion.
it’s gotten to the point where
I now can’t see out of my windshield.
I just wanna go somewhere
but he won’t let me see
where I’m going.
he won’t stop talking.
I can’t hear the music anymore.
I don’t know where I am.
I can’t breathe.
I just know that this car feels
more like solitary confinement
than freedom and the a/c
stopped working a long time ago.

I think I need to stop the car.
I need to open the door
and step out into the light.
I don’t even need to take
off the bumper stickers,
I think I just need to walk
for a while—
move at my natural rhythm again.
like children do before
we start in on them.
before we start building their car
around them and teaching them
to believe in it.

this is you.
you are this car.
except when you’re alone,
then maybe you can leave
the car but never in public,
never in front of other people.
this car will protect you from
them, from the world—
from yourself.
hide in it.

well, I left my car
on the side of the road
some ways back
with the keys in it
and a full tank of gas.
the door’s open,
take it if you need it.
hell, take it if you want it,
I don’t give a ****—
just don’t try
to pick me up in it
if you ever catch up.

                      signed,
                                 ­ 
                               nobody


P.S. watch out for the fat guy in the diaper.

my writing is a blunt hammer,
a white void pounding
at the keys,
breaking off little plastic
bits of life.

this room’s full of them now,
the debris of dead thoughts,
ancient relics:
dinosaur guts,
fern dust,
fossilized failures.

the sun’s clawing its way
up again,
after all this time.
what a *******.

can you wait
for morning to sink
its teeth into you?

can we
stand five feet apart
and still meet
each other’s eyes
without flinching?

can I write something
that outlives me?
sure,
that’s the easy part.

but writing something
that lives
without me?
now that’s the trick,
isn’t it?

silk canisters and
ribbons marching like fools,
a casket dressed
in bright roses—
pretty little things
for the spigot,
the *****,
the inevitable hole.

wait another year.
or ten.
or twenty.
hell,
spend your whole life
waiting.

go ahead.
see where that gets you.

it doesn’t come.
it never does.
not like that.
never.

stop waiting
for:
someone,
something,
some sign,
some break,
some moment
to crack open
like an egg.

stop praying for it.
stop hoping.
stop wishing.
stop.

the work,
that’s all there is.

live for it.
breathe for it.
burn for it.
die for it.

if you have to believe
in something,
believe in that.

I don’t know
what that thing is for you,
but you do.
and if you don’t,
then maybe it’s time
to stop,

and ask—
what the hell’s stopping you?

I’ve got this wild hair,
and it’s a real humdinger.
goes everywhere with me,
whispering, shouting,
whatever the hell it wants:

“dance in the fire.”
“go talk to her.”
“drive straight into that lake.”
“what’ve you got to lose?”
“**** it.”
“jump.”

it’s gnarly, tangled,
never stays down,
a rebellious little ****.

some of my best mistakes
have come from it, too:

“one more,
come on.
what’s the worst that could happen?”

“**** the trail,
it’ll take too long.
just run down the side
of the mountain.”

“ok, sure—
let’s pack up
and move across the country again.”

everyone’s got one,
standing tall somewhere,
poking out like a flag
on a battlefield of sameness,
a single, defiant kite
riding the sky
above the canopy.

those wild ones,
they’re the beauties.
the rogue strands
growing their own way
when everything else
marches in a straight line.

I love those wild hairs.
the ones that scream
against the comb,
flip off the barber,
and refuse to lay flat.

the ones that urge us
deeper into the unknown,
to take chances—
to risk ourselves despite everything.

the funny thing is,
I think
God had one, too—

when He made us.

he's getting old now, but still young enough
to buy self-help books he’ll read
only to stay on the treadmill
next to the other suburbanauts.
uses a fortune cookie slip as a bookmark
that just says run.

he's getting old now, but still young enough
to think he "found" someone—
someone as boring as he is,
and they swore to her readymade god
"to have and to hold" each other's
credit card debt and tangled mess of neuroses
‘til death of one kind or another comes.

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to pretend it’s not happening.
cleans the gutters. trims the lawn.
drags his boat to the river every summer
to drink beer and lie in the heat—
like the sun will burn the years off.

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to break down in the grocery store,
somewhere between the potato chips
and the popcorn,
crying onto the linoleum,
wiping his nose on his sleeve—
a quiet little implosion
under fluorescent lights.

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to think he’s missing something.
like a dog still searching for the ball
that was never thrown.
like a flickering motel sign that just says
no vacan, no vacan, no vacan

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to feel like a frozen dinner in the microwave—
burnt to hell on the outside,
ice-cold in the middle.

you shifted your weight
like a hunter when you saw me—
dead eyes, dead aim.

straight and true, like a well-told lie,
sliding off the tongue
with just enough rhythm
to sound like gospel.

a lottery in balance,
measured only
at the close of things.

that look of yours—
it’s a glass cannon,
and I swear I see a crack.
come on, baby—
give it to me.

take your shot.
aim for the chest
while my heart
swings open
like a rusted gate
on its last hinges.

make me think twice
about getting too close
to your kind again.

bare your teeth—
smile.
let that decoy body pull me in
while your hands steady,
while your breath slows,
while you line it all up.

exhale.
squeeze.

BOOM—

a clean ****.
I’m yours.
now drag me home,
lay me out,
and do what you do best.

Venus, O Venus!
you do not shine—no,
you burn, awake and knowing,
a luminous wound in the sky’s
quiet body, a beacon for all
who lift their eyes,
aching for direction.

but today, you have slipped
behind the curtain of the world,
a veiled ember in the great turning,
lost to our sight—
but not gone.

this morning, I too am unseen,
folded into myself,
caught in the invisible workings
of some celestial geometry
that cages and releases,
cages and releases.

there is a breath at my back,
an absence pressing in,
a presence without a face—
like hands just beyond the veil,
like voices speaking without words,
like the quiet dread of being watched
by something I cannot name.

and so, I ask, trembling—
what am I to do with this?
how do I stand beneath this weight
without crumbling?

and from the silence, an answer,
a whisper that is not sound
but understanding—

flower and fall.

this is the way of all things.
this fear, this pressure,
this restless hum beneath the skin—
it is not death, but motion.
it is not decay, but renewal.

do you not see?
what once clung to you,
what once devoured you,
is now peeling away,
a husk lifting in the wind.

let it go. let it fall.
let the unseen hands carry it
as ants carry petals to their hidden cities,
as birds take seeds to waiting earth.
what seems an end
is only another sowing.

Venus is not gone.
she only moves beyond your sight,
whispering in the quiet—

grow.

I have frozen lake independence—
self-sufficiency stuck in a state of stasis,
waiting for spring or a better excuse.

I’m the last bud in the bag,
that lonely bit of green at the bottom—
each time you reach for me,
you know you’re running out.

I’m a scarf left outside,
stiff as a corpse, wrapped tight
around a post under the overpass.
Some do-gooder tied a note to me—
“Take me if you need me.”

but nobody needs me.
everybody’s got their own warmth,
their own coat, their own somebody.

so I stay there,
*******, forgotten,
waiting for some cold *******
to come along and wrap me
around their neck.

You are lovely
like birds in winter,
a rare sight when the world has turned its
back.
When solitude slips into
loneliness,
and the echo of forgotten places
becomes a silence so loud
it deafens—
you.
You shouldn’t be here,
but you are.
Fragile and feathered,
defying the dying world
with every beat of your wings.

I’ve shrunk myself before,
folded into corners,
but you—
you are smaller still,
yet somehow
you stand taller than the frozen trees.
You sing in the biting cold,
pirouette on the barren branches,
murmur in the bleakest of skies.

Unshaken by the darkest days,
you’re here to remind me
that something in me is, too.
No matter how dark,
no matter how cold,
no matter how dead it all seems—
there’s always something flying,
something singing,
something alive
in that desolate stretch.

It may seem
small

but,

it’s enough.

I burn
beautifully
in the fires of vanity.

Got lost
in my own reflection
on the frozen food doors—
there I was,
lined up with the rest
of the products on ice:

three fifty-nine
for four egg rolls,
six twenty-nine
for frozen bread dough,
six ninety-nine
for wild blueberries.

Superimposed,
my long mug
trying its best
to blend in.

My forehead says
I’m three ninety-nine,
but my solar plexus
clearly marks me
at five fifty-nine.

However,
my **** is, apparently,
on clearance,
reduced by thirty percent,
and
going for a buck nineteen.

At the end of the aisle,
an old lady eyes my biscuits,
rattling her coin purse
like she’s about to
roll a Yahtzee.

I flick my gaze
back to the glass
and my own ghostly image.

What did I
come here for
again?

the genius
of his spirit isn't
allowed to be
confident

the muses around
his works
laugh at his
shy hubris

his connections
to the creative are
buried under a
desert

his voice
is full
of charisma
and doubt

there's something
in the way
of love

his heart is
alone in hell

in his father's
home
searching for the
way

his life is a
lightbulb
as bright as
it is empty

just like his
poetry

~every distance is a long shot
within reach of a fool~
                          Prv. 𝑓:𝑦

bleed your heart out in dripping
poetic pretense―slip
that inky salamander some silk:

         "the wilting waiting flora
bequeathed their busting bouquets and
     bountiful bosoms unto the world
              in all of its prescient
                       violence"

then read it back to yourself
later and be
absolutely disgusted.

throw it away with all the other
things you've done in your
life.

now reach back in your closet
and rattle the skeletons
lingering there.

finger your dreams in the
dark under pressure
from the mind
to find yourself.

the lightning severance
will sing and
anxiety will
harmonize with the knife.

you've done it again...
****** it all up
and everyone
knows it.

you could eat all the erasers
in the world
and your **** still
wouldn't come out correct.

a lifetime of valleys and
seawalls has made you
an avatar of
effortless blunder.

and you can't stop bleeding
all over the page; white
is red again
cause
you blue it.

bleed in―breathe out
breathe in―bleed out
bleed in―breathe out
breathe in―
bleed out...

welcome to the creative
process.

heather is a feminine body
in a suede chair under charcoal ceilings

perry is wearing
sweaters to evening dinners

katie is a black light poster
in newspaper print

alex is an origami sailboat

spoon feed yourself some more cathleen,
the cats are waiting

when I stop
and
just let the
silence
be. . .

everything
is ok:

the tattered
tarp partially
buried in
the
hillside is
ok

the broken
bough used
as a toy
by the
poor
children is
ok

the
jaggedly
chopped
tree stump
by the
parked
car is
ok

the
unevenly
placed
stairs
that force
you to
change
your gait
are
ok

the
distant
tower
with the
blinking
light
is
ok

the
solitude
among
other
mortals
is
ok

the
whelming
sense of
being
lost is
ok

the
neat
glass of
scotch
from the
isle of
skye is
ok

the
divorced
lesbian
with two
kids at
the end
of her
rope
is
ok

the
minuscule
fly that
landed
on my
forehead
in the
bathroom
this
morning
is
ok

everything
is
ok

even the
things
that
aren't

they're
ok too

a shake weight table steak
powdered sugar cigarette
break burning in alcohol
and corn flakes

a big ******* cluster-****
of broken noses and carefully
crafted poses posting pictures
of processed hipster's and blisters,
****-stirrers and culture twisters
jockeying for a spot
all melting in the ***

quiz show **** beads and
fleshlight teenage dreams
soaking through entitled
suburban screens choking
on plastic screams

chocolate dipped cancer fingers

city bus exhaust lingers

prescription bottle salvation bringers

and underneath it all the bible
belt girdles the gurgling masses
of glazed diabetes and frosted
faith pooling in the belly of
America

a fat flabby mess of
snake oil boiling
in stomach acid
and pesticide

"welcome, honey! grab a seat
anywhere you'd like --I'll be
right with you!"

break the poem
open like a pomegranate

spill the seeds
squeeze the juice
and
**** the flesh

when we were kids
we played in
mother's garden:
carrots, strawberries,
rhubarb, tomatoes,
plums, raspberries,
cucumbers, pumpkins,
green beans, watermelon,
onions, potatoes
and
a goldfish named Pierre

he died after
my parents
cleaned his tank
and didn't rinse
it properly

done in by soap--
life can be such a
fragile thing sometimes

we buried him
in the garden
and marked his
grave with a
smooth river stone

one summer
we picked a great
big watermelon
from its dirt nap;
heavy as a bowling
ball and green
as a cat's eye

we heaved it onto
the picnic table
and carved it into
smaller
and smaller wedges
until each one
of us was holding
our very own
chunk of melon

everyone dug in
after admiring their
piece for a moment;
eating it with
their eyes
before their
mouths

but as I went
to bite into mine
I noticed a seed
in the way

so I peeled
at it to free it
and as I fingered
the dripping flesh
of the fruit
the 'seed' revealed
itself to be
not a seed at all

but the eye
of a goldfish
staring back at me
lodged in the melon
in its death throws
gasping for
breath in the
open air

its mouth opening
and closing like
it had a secret
to tell

I stood there
in stupefaction
when suddenly
it slipped free of
its womb
and landed in the grass
behind me

but when I
turned around
to retrieve it
I couldn't find it

there was no goldfish
anywhere in that yard
I checked under
my feet
under the picnic table--
under other people's
feet--nothing

"what are you
looking for?" someone
asked

"nothing," I said,
because who
would've believed it
anyway?--I'm not
even sure if I did--
"just thought I dropped
something."

I stood back up
feeling different
about the world--
like the mystery
ran deeper than any
of us realize--
looked at
my hunk of fruit
and discovered
I wasn't hungry
anymore

so I put
it down on
the picnic table
and walked over
to Pierre's grave

there, underneath
that river stone,
was a watermelon seed
just beginning to
sprout

I smiled in
bewilderment
and gently covered
it with fresh soil
moving the stone
a few centimeters
off the sprouting seed

'Pierre, the watermelon
fish,' I thought--
wiping the dirt
from my hands--

'I wonder what
death has in store
for me?'

i'll raise an electric fence around
the gods up there
in mountains and ivory towers
and they'll all wear shock collars
too

i'll spread peanut butter on bread
and send it to them through
the mail

i'll write them letters from the
lower world saying that 'time
really isn't a bother anymore
because apples rot in home
baked pies down here'

i'll reach through my own
tainted build up of corrosive
discharge and pull a petal
from the flower of life
to eat in front of
them with a coffee toothed smile

i'll throw weeds over
palisades into
groomed gardens

i'll **** on the flaming sword
spinning like i do
outside
heavenly gates

i'll put AA batteries on
my ******* and force
feed the north star
until it bursts

i'll stain the glass in windows
extolling failures and shining
blunders under vaulted
ceilings

i'll be nothing less than
the imperfect son of
an imperfect man and
an imperfect
woman--

human
all too human
after all

patterned love responses
spiraling outward from
the chest in search
of hearth and
hemlock to
soothe the brittle
bones of a
generation lost
to time.

I remember a feeling
once felt in
the spacious quality
of my life
in its infancy.

a 'coo' to my
mother--her face
beaming through
the unknown
harshness of life
yet to touch me.

father was out
working, adding
more and more
points of stress to
his life to provide
for the seeds
he sewed in the
soil of his youthful
ignorance.

adulthood snuck
up on me too and
now its too late to
go back.

these days
the only coup
that will save me
is the one
I perpetrate
against myself.
the one that
corrodes my beliefs
and illuminates
the extent of their
misconceptions about
the world and
what it means
to be me.

loyal are the lashes
that lick my flesh
serving the blood
that drips and
flows to the
soil of my own
wasted youth.

all I can do now
is look forward
to the unknown
that looms ahead;
terrifying and promising
failure and change
alike.

pray to your altars
and cry to the
invisible mute gods;

they will answer
in kind in the
laughter of children
playing upon
your spent life.

and so it goes--
life eats life
and mother's die
too.

use your voice
while you have
it--speak of clouds
and storms that
broke you, of winter
and the living
silence you've endured.

praise be to the
broken and the
weary of heart, for
in the breaking is
the great gift
of life

and what you
become after each
shattering is nothing
short of your
endless potential.

shirtless screaming through
the heartland and I used
to smoke cigarettes
too.

she never wanted
to stay: the youth
she had
left demanded it.
now, I'll wager
she's somewhere
in an apartment with
some dandy that
wears sweater vests
to Thanksgiving dinner.

maybe she thinks
about me and my little
twisted heart every
now and again:
like when she's away
from the sweater vest
on the toilet
behind a locked door,
"be right out, babe!"
or toting groceries
through a parking lot
to her car,
or signaling a
left turn before
changing her mind
and deciding to
go straight instead.

and
maybe I need to
stop thinking
about her
especially after
three years
incommunicado

but what can I say?
I've never slept on
a bed of nails
I couldn't
dream on.

bathed in a beam of distant light, i'm
dangling from the mouth of
the sun today. it won't come like
Fante. it won't come like Bukowski.
it won't come at all. it's rusted
chunked blood calving off from
graveled glaciers onto dead sea beds.
it's a joke, it's far away, it's not
meant for me. and so it seems...yet
there still exists a tiny heart somewhere
under all that pumping away almost
imperceptibly.  funneling what blood
is there to send life to these
fingertips. i don't know if it will
ever reach the page though. odds
are good that death will take me
before those veins reach any words
with weight.
but in the writing they have a
chance to stretch and feel and
find their way through the
labyrinth of time and being
human. they have a chance to
beat the odds. a trickle becomes
a stream. a stream becomes a
river. and a river becomes an
ocean. these dead seas will fill
once more whether i am: the glacier,
the trickle, the stream or the
river. my blood runs to that future
ocean...one way or another.

my dear fellow human,

you have been wintergreen against my heart. a sharp brilliance of blinding light captivating me within the infinite breadth of a wandering moment. my lungs frosted first freezing figures of frozen firs upon the memory of each breath. my blood ran cold like that winter river and I was a fish beneath its icy exterior and you have been wintergreen against my heart. a cold slap of circulating change penetrating each layer of protection. you have been wintergreen through them all and now you are wintergreen against my heart. a fresh perspective from the core of my being to the scales of my skin. a permeating resolution of piercing glacial coolness frosting the valves and chambers of this brumal beater. you have taken my breath from gelid gilded gills and scattered the shattered pieces of peace across this boreal landscape. from the hiemal heights of arctic aurora aura's to the lower polar valley's suspended in diamond dust--you have been wintergreen among them all and now these roots are too--cool, clear and growing--and i have never been so grateful for the cold that pierced and kissed this wintergreen heart.

i wrote that drunk
i was trying to bypass
an impasse
lucked out and
circumnavigated the
rabbit
ran into the fox
he stole my color
only to find it again
at first light
and now i nod
to the speed of life
the unceasing turning
of greater and greater
wheels
the lightness of death
as it passes

there's no
circumnavigating
that

1.


2.


3.

sitting on the foot of the bed,
I look up at the burnt-out
bulb above me
--superior life--it tells me
a light moment of irony
before I lay down
to sleep

here's to all the burnt-out
bulbs above us and
the rest we find
below them

i live in a brightness
of worlds
paper-thin

a screenshot of
malleability
introduces my reckoning

today, the serpent
lays hold of
the egg
and starvation
is kept at bay

belly full
cut the cord
the descendants
hang heavy

all my life i've wanted
a reason to
die well

tonight, I hear it
in the sirens...
I hear it
in the coyotes...
I hear it
in my soul...
tonight, I hear it
in plain sight--
as clear
as a daisy

i was allowed
to slow down

to see my life
in a different gear

to venture a guess
towards life in payment
of a different path

i was
hungry
and hung-up

i was held-up
with my pants
down

i was a man
living his life
in the modern
mouse-trap

and nobody
cares about the
man in the
modern
mouse-trap

forget about the
cheese...

find your way
own way
out

what are we
even doing?

I can't
promise you
anything

I'm leaving,
I have to
do this

I've never
been on my
own before
and I want to
see if I
can do it

I can't be what
you want
me to be

if it's meant
to be
it's meant
to be

I saw your
doppelgänger
at the bar
last night

it's not
that I don't want
to see you,
it's just that
I don't
have time

I would
say we should
grab a beer
and catch up
but
I'm only in
town for
a little bit
and my family
comes first

you could've
reached out
to me too
you know

you have
my number,
I don't
understand
why you
stopped
talking to me?

just thinking back
           on
my twenties and cracking
           a
smile for every tree I hollowed
           out
to make room for a new universe.


now,
in my thirties, I laugh at windows
           stacked
on top of Mercury's head as
           Venus covers her mouth and hides again.

there is a price to
authenticity that
most people
are not prepared
to pay

the cost
(at least in part)
is:
indifference,
isolation,
rejection, failure,
anxiety, madness,
etc.

it's vicious
strangers and
deadly lovers--
all of them
with spinning
flowers for
eyes as they
dig in: the
elbow, the
heel, the
knife

becoming who
you are demands
that you sacrifice
every inch of
what you
thought you
were to the
eternal flames

it means you're
gonna be hard
on yourself--harder
than anybody else
has ever been
on you

it means you're
gonna think
about killing
yourself
sometimes--you
may even come
close--

and,
make no
mistake, it
will be the
death of you
someday,
but
it will be
the best death
you could've
offered yourself

you will look
back upon
your life with
a cutting
smile and
piercing eyes
knowing that
you stayed
fighting

through every
cheap shot,
backstab, and
bad call

every
knockdown,
defeat, and
sabotage

you kept
coming, no
matter what
life threw at
you:
poverty,
shame,
guilt,
loss,
exile

these things
mean nothing
in the face
of true
becoming

and what
is becoming
if not
annihilation
and that
which remains
after its
totality?

stars align in
a blanket of
        future snow
dusting time's
plateau with
        a smear of
red paint across
the fallen angel's
        face shedding
tears in the naked
light from the
        hollow of a
mirrored heart
playing shadows
        like a work
of art

it's an expansive
drama of forgotten
         leagues keeping
memories in silence
between the ravines
         of what has and
what has yet. digital
ridges serrate the
         landscape of quiet
burdens borne by the
beings of beastly
         countenance
counting seven in
perpetuity in honor
        of the bell that
tolled so long ago now.

there is a low roar
bellowing from the
         womb of novelty
coming to upset the
balance bristling with
         charged particles
of transmutation and
flashing in a dance of
         lightning from
the void. born from
eternity to create in
         time those wildest
dreams from the
darkness of God's mind.

i am Orpheus in the clouds
playing clown for the masses.

i'm half of the shaft of light
breaking mosaically into
millions of pieces across the kitchen floor.

i'm a smoky chandelier swaying with
the bravado of a censure on high-holy-day.

i'm the royal velvet lining your blood.

i am a poem, without reason, read to you
by a stranger.

i am 200 tons of cracked granite one thousand
feet above you splitting off from the face of
the mountain.

but more so than any of that,

i'm a peculiar kind
of nothing

typing words onto
screens before
i die.

the   view
                            stands beneath
the carousel efforts
to blast through
impregnancy aBLOOM!!!!
(w)ith feral legacies
aligned intimately ornately
     posthumous adulterer
awakens    in               need
       of
****** corrective agency
towards Fenitbow
           and Glightrovee  ab-surd as
qua as qua
asqua aqua qua
a^s is trite melody infer[no]
t a x i     yellowing  each pavement
by truth in yo ' fa ' ' lo ((lo))
    i by horns and turns
in plyable waves arrest
what justice      juices
      freel_y
                          oblig­atory
                                      antecedent
quai noyh thlume
                            ye
           HEaVY

it's obvious,
isn't it?

it certainly
seems
like it

you see
it too,
right?

maybe
i'm imagining it?

it's probably
nothing

but

your head
is upside
down

facing inward
and
laughing at
itself

and there's
a light in
there

that's always
on

just
thought
you should know

~           *light on,
still-frame freeze of black bodied eight-legged life
     clinging to stained acrylic. we stare at each other pretending we're not real
until one of us moves.
                    
it was me.

you've never been
more beautiful
than when i
don't know you
yet

all that
hidden skin
ignites
my
raw furnace

every drop
of light that
kisses your
body
is an invitation
to rise
like the
sun and shower
you in
blazing
desire

every orbit
of your
celestial body
beckons
my flames
to lick and
lash
as we spin
through each
other's
gravity

coming

so close

you
threaten my
core
with eruption
as you
pass by

lightning-
tipped *******
at
twelve o'clock
on top
of orchid
petaled hips
perfuming my
garden of
thirst

i want to
do to you
what the
bee does
to the lily

folding the sirens of
eternity in on themselves
as this scant hour
rebuilds its stage
over and
over
in the light of my eyes

already there is a perception
of being caught
in a loop - of a lesson
playing out
before a malady
of ignorance

i am free to see it
and i am free
to miss it

it is the long
breath
of the breaching
whale - an exchange
of currents for
the transformation of
sky into
ocean depths

it is
the
hidden union
in transience

recurring
in beautiful
obscurity

listening to
Father John Misty in
pink
over
pink time

schism-
shifting
into
poppy red

with a pleasing
depth
of shadow
just
within reach
between
them

(while)

our faint
blue
light

speeds

through
the universe
towards
the
ultima Thule

i'm no good, but
here I am anyway,
again
typing words
into poems.

i'm afraid that
all this is
a waste of time.
that I read some
poetry somewhere
long ago and
mistakenly believed
that I too could
do that.

but I can't
help it,
these words still
show up
somehow.

even
when they
don't end
well.

Displaying myself for the auction of love, I stand poised in the light of anxiety.
     "we'll start the bidding off at ten dollars, do I hear ten dollars?" cries the auctioneer. I run my hands down the buttons of my shirt making sure it's neat and straight. "come now ladies, surely one of you lovely creatures would trade ten dollars worth of paper and cloth for this tall drink of water! Do I hear ten dollars to start the bidding off?" I use the sweat from my palms to tame my hair down. Scanning the crowd from under his sharply slanted brow the crier retreats a step, "alright, how about five, do I hear five dollars?" I put on my brightest smile, conjuring every ounce of good-heartedness I have in me. The room is silent. No hands go up and it's clear that lowering the price of bid won't change it. The auctioneer bangs his gavel and declares 'no-sale,' then gestures for the staff to remove me from the stage. Two sharply dressed men then lead me to the back for 'processing' where I'm told that 'someone will be along shortly.'
     Behind the door is just an alley with dumpsters and trash bags full of glass bottles. They shove me out with a pat on the back where I land right next to another man dressed just like me, only much older.
     "how long you been waiting, pal?" I ask him as I sweep away the garbage from me.
     "any minute now," he says weezingly.
     "come again?" I say.
     "she's going to turn that corner," he says, raising a brittle finger towards the end of the alley. "I've been expecting her for some time now, but you know how women can be, she's probably just doing her hair." he laughed and it turned into a hard cough.
     "look buddy, I don't think..." I begin, but just then a beautiful woman comes around the corner and starts toward the gentleman caller.
     "ha! I told you, didn't I tell you!", he says through a mostly toothless mouth. "My lady, you are truly a vision, just as lovely as I remember!" he proclaims, holding up a bouquet of long-dead flowers. When she reaches the man she pulls out a pistol from her purse and sends one straight through his flowers and into his chest. He falls back into a bed of garbage bags still holding the flowers, his last smile frozen on his face.
     I look at the woman and she winks at me as she puts her pistol away, turns and walks out of the alley. I stand there for a few moments, processing what just happened. Then I bend down and pick up the dead man's flowers, run my hands down the buttons of my shirt and tame my hair. "Did you see that," I think to myself, "she winked at me!" A smile stretches across my face. "I wonder if she's coming back? Better wait here, just in case."

newspapers. everywhere.
it was yesterday
when they turned up.
must've been stacks
of them before they
were like this - scattered
throughout the park.

i've thought about
taking a garbage bag down
there and picking them up
but...
there's something
pleasing about watching
them interact with
their new environment;
the way the wind carries
them, the way they spread
out        into       all
       that                     space
as if nothing neatly
arranged wants to
stay that way.

i watch as they attempt to share
their news with the world.
but the trees are silent and
the grass is oblivious.
the print on their pages
means nothing to
them.

i wonder what news the leaves
tell of in a language we don't understand.
of golden and green.
of things passed and
of things to come.

"change," they say.

that is the message they spread
on the wind...
change.

i never thought this day would come
with death's dusty pink collar
blooming in senescence as
the goldfinch flies with
exuberant locution.

what tome have you written in your
faulty hand? blameless brokenness
becomes me as
the light of tomorrow's sun
reaches these cracks today.

i'm no puzzle...i walk the line
of cynicism and bitterness
leaving yesterday's
nubile romance face down
in a shallow puddle of rain water in the
street. the sign said 'STOP' and that
was the end of its instruction.

as i live and breathe
and
as i die and shed:
moult,
transform,
undulate,
flourish.
a line or two
for vitality,
for becoming:
   a lake,
   a chasm,
   a riverbed.
a line or two
for mortality,
for becoming:
   a library,
   a prison,
   a crossing.
bodhisattva,
i drank the sun that morning,
golden brew,
a potion upon
my face.
bathing in warm light
eyes closed,
lungs sky,
my blood is a river,
mountains for bones.
my resonance is vitality.
i am becoming;
through death and life
and
through death
and
through life
i alight.

brief echoes of the past
arrange themselves in my present
like shadow puppets on the backs
of my eyelids while i sleep.  

there is an uneven fulcrum
digging into my lower back no
matter how i turn my long
body.

my eyes open into
the same familiar room, with
the same familiar speckles on the
ceiling that they always do.   the
shadows resume their innumerable
forms and i wake
to write another step towards
the beveled edge of immortality.

two (or is it three...?) weeks in to the
overnight shift and never have i wanted
   to wash myself in
the golden rays of that nearest                     star
our sun more than i do now as the ineradicable
   cloak of night stretches
itself over these my newly waking hours.  this night
i feel massive but
diffuse, like the ghost of a
   glacier lingering amongst the scablands;  nebulous
and immense,
   like a short-circuited god-machine
cannibalizing itself in a forgotten
corner of the universe.    the sleep is broken, the
mind needs rest.  the mind needs
   rest.

"isn't that something you
want?" she asked.
"no" i replied. "what i desire cannot be given. only by providence can that which is unattached be realized and only by letting go can it be integrated."
"well then...", she said with a smile,
"...perhaps it's time, hmmm?"
and at that she folded
in on herself
over and over
like complex origami
until she became
a butterfly.  

then she fluttered
into my
chest and took
root in my heart
like a seed.  

she grows there
now like a low moon
lover bathing in moonshine,
dripping in starlight,
changing in
the glow.

she's in my mind
only, ever
in my mind.  i am
a beast drinking blood
in cold shadows.  she's on the stairs towards the gods with gold-flake mirrors on fire.
i can't be soothed by their plasma flesh pixels anymore.
i can't be soothed by their carbon copies.
i will soon be below their real for good.
in need no more of the soft same semblance displayed on the shelves.
i swim in deep pools collecting aloneness on high. the
romantic disaster laughter is muted. these days i can't
help but feel, every now and then,
that death
is
a great kindness
in disguise,          but

not in the
way you
think.

"This is a collect call from: 'Darlene Ryder', at the Nielsen County Sheriff's Department, press '2' to accept charges and be connected."

beep

"hello? Bill?...you there?"
"**** Darlene, how many times we gotta ******' do this?!", he threw his voice at her through the phone like a fastball wrapped in firecrackers.
"I dint do nuthin' wrong! they jus got sumpn' against me s'all!"
"uh huh, the **** d'you do, huh?
"the ***** had it comin', I was jus tryin' to have a few 'n relax then she come 'n talk 'bout how I was lookn' atter funny but I watn't- I was jus mindin' my own talkin' to Charlie. So all's I need from you is to get yer lazy, belly-picken', beer-guzzlin' hole fer a face down here and unpinch this ******' mess!" and hung up the receiver on her end of prison.
      The guards shoot each other a look then raise their eyebrows.  They'll be recounting this over beers tonight beneath the monstrous glow of 47 90" TVs in between attempts at the waitress young enough to be their daughter.  They'll shovel in the wings of a total of 18 birds drowned in hot sauce and butter before the sports bar stops feeding them.  Then they'll all drive home drunk with hot breath and testosterone like molasses, ending their nightly routine with their ***** in their hands and their pants around their ankles drooling at tiny glowing screens.  
      Long live the American gods of New Olympus.

all the
great religions
of the world
are ships

i am more
interested
in the
ocean

it's also
a trust
and without
any deposit
there is no
balance.

a minute too late
or a minute too
early?

solitude in spades;
loneliness laurels.

no avoidance of
the void dance.

shamanism in the
modern age.

the glow of consumerism
fading in and out
like shallow breaths.

the light flickers only
a moment before red
turns to black.

a lifetime arrives
like that.

"A revolution is afoot!" shouted a young man as he ran past our window.
      When I got to the window to see who he was, or where he was going, I couldn't find him - in fact there was no one in sight.  I poked my head out to see a bit more and was startled by something flying past my face, a small bird. I watched as he darted gracefully from thin branch to thin branch foraging in the light of the new day. Then the little fella launched himself high, high into the sky and I saw it coming down on us - FAST. It was a colossal foot and it crushed our little home.