Your bony knees, like shovels,
bury themselves into your tummy.
Your hands clasped before your heart;

You've taken the shape of a praying child,
while you sleep on the couch.

The glow from the television bounces off
the sharp lines of your face.
blue,
and black, then fully lit,
and dark again.

The host from this infomercial
explains why my life is incomplete,
in three volume notches higher
than anyone should ever speak;  

It chops, dices, and something or the other,
"Satisfaction guaranteed!"

It is the first week of winter
and my limbs have turned to icicles
to prove the calendar right.
I'd like to slither my way under your blanket,
I'd like to tell you that I love you,
but I should not wake you with such
ordinary words.

I tuck my cold hands and inadequate feelings
into my sweater sleeves
and continue watching just about the ******* TV.

(the city had fought the fortnight before)
fire burned through the little skirts
and plastic lunch boxes
carrying the nourishment of our future
doctors and worldshakers—

                                 Future
tax paying Americans
And beacon of the nation.

Wide awake, in the thoughts of a light bulb,
(Where sidewalk stairs politic with the devil,)
A raindrop fell and whispered to the asphalt,
“Tell me what you know about happiness…”
And somewhere, in the middle of a pineapple parade,
A Pepsi can smiled and danced the night away with Nyquil labels.

the pitch dark symmetry
of spiral engraved
glossy jet black
vinyl

the ***** claws
and webbed spiders;
graced with impeccable
scratch

words come back around
from dog day afternoon;
entwined in ritual
beatology

technique absorbed in prowess
dedication assimilated by passion;
human form and synthetic resin becomes
overlayed

polyvinyl chloride or
unsaturated hydrocarbon radicals;
a derivative by any other
name

I'll leave that nugget for the pub quiz
and relax, post-Christmas stress;
the street scramble bustle,
embrace a pint of
black magic

When you plunged
The light of Tuscany wavered
And swung through the pool
From top to bottom.

I loved your wet head and smashing crawl,
Your fine swimmer's back and shoulders
Surfacing and surfacing again
This year and every year since.

I sat dry-throated on the warm stones.
You were beyond me.
The mellowed clarities, the grape-deep air
Thinned and disappointed.

Thank God for the slow loadening,
When I hold you now
We are close and deep
As the atmosphere on water.

My two hands are plumbed water.
You are my palpable, lithe
Otter of memory
In the pool of the moment,

Turning to swim on your back,
Each silent, thigh-shaking kick
Re-tilting the light,
Heaving the cool at your neck.

And suddenly you're out,
Back again, intent as ever,
Heavy and frisky in your freshened pelt,
Printing the stones.

what is a telescope
-a tyrannosaurus skeleton
-a reluctant birthright
what are *****
-a state line
-an obsolete receipt
what is a wave
-grandmother says: she will never forget as long as she lives
-a forest trail in thick fog
what is sea sick
-he ran over a dog
-wettest March of the century
what is an hour
-no smoking allowed
-the fuming face of a buffalo
what is sunburn
-inedible black toast
-I think she slanders me
what is wine
-overnight contact lens solution
-a humble canal
what is a mirror
(child | beluga)
~(ham):o + ¥ineapple
what is travel
-a last minute thing
-warmth within a windshield
what is revision
-a slow explode
-milk in coffee
what is antacid/calcium supplement
-a bottle cap
-handy clutter
what is a fist
-something to try eating when in circles
-flour, 1-to-20 eggs, some ennui, expiration dates
what is a sigh
-a fresh seismograph sheet
-sound mechanical in early morning
what is skin
-a shoelace
-child labor
what is a workshop
-scalpels, piñata bats
-a lunar module
what is that shiny dead thing in the green eyed river
-New Year’s Eve ball drop
-otherworldly return to beginning

Supposedly beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Which is super gay
So when I say you are beautiful
This is what I mean

You are beautiful in the same way
That the word, “believe” in sign language
Can translate to being married to your own thoughts

When a person sees something beautiful
Their pupils can increase up to 45 percent in size
I’m not high today I swear
Just that
You surprise me every time

Your left lung is smaller than your right
So it can make room for your heart
That’s just biology

And when they say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach
When people blush
Their stomach lining turns red too

Laughing lowers stress
A 7 year old can laugh almost six hundred times in one day
An adult
13 to 100
I want to make you laugh like we are 7 again

I was 7 once
I’ve had seventeen years practice since then

When you put a shell to your ear
What you are really hearing is the sound of your own blood
Rushing through your ears
There is a ******* ocean inside of you
That swells like lungs
And rushes a steady current of mostly
Unattractive creatures
You are like the bottom of the sea
All single celled and fight for life
In darkness

And maybe that doesn’t seem too beautiful
But you don’t really know what’s down there
Do you?

You are beautiful like old people
Who think you are sweet
Because you’ve had enough patience
To match their pace
“I don’t know when I got old” she said
“But I wasn’t ready. It took me ten years to figure this place out.
“I’m 94. I don’t have another ten.”
And she kissed me

Beautiful like poetry
When poetry hurts the most
When it gives you goose-bumps

And I bet if I stuck my arm inside a music box
To let my chilled skin pluck the metal keys inside
There wouldn’t be music
I am too soft
And it would hurt
But it looks like if I were hard enough
There might be
It would sound like chaos
The keys are beautiful
But the sound inconsistent

Beautiful
Like the collaboration of molecules
That understood pointillism enough to make me
But still experimental
So they gave me cancer
And I’m shorter than I want to be
And I am pretty sure they are laughing
About what they did to my brain
But my lungs are perfectly uneven
So my heart can pump oceans
So I can move and be stupid
And do things like tell you

You are ******* beautiful

I am there
Wishing that if I pressed my fingers to your lips
I could understand the broken Braille of your breath
When your throat locks in the noise

Gentle butterfly gut
Fanning flames over burning cinderblocks in your belly
I am there

When you wished the moon in a rearview mirror
Heading west
Wondering if you really could go far enough to see its dark side
When you wanted to turn back
I was there

When she drank razorblades
And Tylenol ink
Into a botched suicide note
I was there

This is the journey

When he wondered when he could hold somebody again
Like a waterbed full of blood
Without the motion sickness
I was there

Every moment y’all
Of your ***** sacred
I want to be there
So when you see that this place is so big
And you are so small
And our souls might be stardust and minerals
Burning blue so far away
At least you’re not alone

Your body is built for love
She said
Beer breathed and true
I smiled
I was there

Kiss me with your car parts
DUI this knee buckle
I want to be tried and arrested
Spit out and spanked
And I will still kneel before you
And praise all that is good in you
Because you are holy

Every moment of you is holy

I was there
Begging to be baptized by your presence
Because in a place so big
I don’t want to feel so alone anymore

I want to kiss you
I want to kiss you
Like you are better
Than everything you’ve ever done
You are

I was there
When the world inside your breastplate
Spun natural disaster
And sunshine
Anvil remorse
And sweet laughter
When I held you
Any of you
And our worlds
Vibrated a conversation only our souls could understand

I was there
And all we could speak was “LOVE”
All we could speak was “Us”