we missed each other like bricks,
talking into navels.

each sighting uneven.
always just leaving.

somehow we made home,
kissed bellies,
and met.

I'm at the point in summer
where the heat doesn't hate me,
but bullies at my being,
like a hungry cat
or pop song,
will not go away
until I love it
like a brother.

each knife gray morning
and slate gray night,
i held vigil on a treetop
bare and swaying.

kept time with its nausea
til it was my nausea too.

i watched the sea horizon
for glints of gun scopes
and unfriendly flags.

hungry others,
who wanted me and mine,
for their cabinets.

they did come,
i think.

i heard them play kings around me,
curing as much as they caused,
humming some friendly ******* patois.

it didn't matter much by then.

i watched the sea horizon,
my newer me and mine.

Between the borders
lie bubbling mires,
thick but porous,
pockmarked and soft.

A chorus of croaking warts,
"Slither through my friend;
take back whatever
is yours,
but please
please
please
add us to your maps."

This bed
creaks
and swings
when I
shuffle
and shift,
but I like
the way
it makes
the most
out of
moonlight.

A man told me about a woman
who lives in the desert,
eats only locusts,
honey,
and whatever's
bad in you.

Carry her to a nearby
nexus,
under certain stars,
and she will whisper
things
that only foxes
know.

She has a website,
and all proceeds
go to the
truth.

I pelt you with puns
while studying slate.
Insult all your friends
til you bellow and trill.

Clumsy and desperate,
I break taboos,
like a ***** boy
testing new squeezes.

It's just that
when I make you laugh,
I can risk to see.

Like a solar eclipse
I can meet your eyes,
in those brief brutal breaths
where I made Light snort.

"It finally got to her that Buenos Aires
was her own private prison.
That's when she decided to run away.
She went to Montevideo
and got a job singing in a nightclub,
started divorce proceedings,
and met a man.

Amado Mio."

If I insist on writing poems about movies,
I'm gonna have to find some
with worse scripts.

I flip you
like pages,
you make me
ticker tape
dizzy.

Should we see
at the speed of grass,
find it stretching
good morning
at the growing heat,
we would notice it pulsing
and step more softly.

Hell is a dry place
with coffee stains and fruit flies,
with lesser vowels.

My fingers through your hair
leaves your hair
through my fingers.

We chase each other
in circles,
cause we like
where we're at.

when i kiss
your clarinet
fingertips,
i honor
the arcane arts
that unlock
ancient melodies,
lifting
catacomb curses
and stirring
restless devils
within me.

When I saw her again,
I learned she named
all her pets
after exotic spices,
like cardamon
and sweet flag,
flavor she found,
life she had earned.

Every little
noising,
some dried-out
decision.

Like a miner,
or a lama,
I spiral
deeper,
getting
quiet,
lighting
candles,
to read the backs of books.

I spent a penny
on another,
and now it's
raining dimes.

Angry sparks
get lost
in light pollution
until they spiral
to the bottom
of this season's funnel.

Brilliant blazing warmth
for the night,
then a burned-out
barrel,
next to the others,
a museum of flaking moments
in the cold morning air.

Death is too big
for ten words
or less,
and these bobbing signs
and chanting rhymes
make myths of our meaning.

Or at least
so I sneer at my screens.

I have no right
to ask you,
to stir my stuttered spirit,
to rouse me from my
contemptible
somnolent
overfed
indifference.

Nonetheless,
I have to say,
for better or worse,
this just doesn't do it.

I take
propranolol
and it makes
my jaw tight,
like mushrooms,
but I flick
my fingers
somewhat
less,
and I'm less
distracted
by beautiful
things.

I was blessed
when you found
several seconds
to twirl for
me.

I blessed you more
with many magic
manic
hours.

We were both so
stupid
and so blessed.

I remember
our soggy ears,
barefoot braving
the asphalt,
jumping
from white line
to white line,
checking
with our
angels
how much
longer
we could be
brown,
loud,
and young.

Birthday cake tutus,
bobbed barbarians,
these children
screech
when they aren't
dead-eyed
or
cackling.

The stone you strive against
with no success,
becomes the perfect
welcome wall
to rest your head.

Lizards, snails, birds, and *****,
tobacco plants,
thornapples, obscure types of
buttercup.
Pinecones, arrowroot,
the more striking moments
of fossil remains,
foreign fish and normal bugs,
a terracotta monkey.

We took the things that matter,
gilded them in squares,
glassed them astride.
We enshrined your lazy gardens
in a temple on the cheap,
reminded you to
visit,
to look up
at the world around
above.

While I while hours
and wonder where to be,
by the time the *** is empty,
I like the view from here.

How do you end the future?

Palimpsests
of first footsteppers.
Old starships
and kidnapped daughters.

For forty years we've watched
the screens of lower stars,
their clean floors
and hateless dilemmas,
taking tours of the best of us.

Our problems,
their past,
left lightyears behind.

And the next generation
is always always next,
like planets first federated,
like first contact at last,
a speech undelivered.

An ending that satisfies
may just well be
where no man has gone before.

Coffee is for
mild apologies
and introductions,
sometimes to
yourself.

I took a week off
to draw maps
on your legs,
so that whenever
I felt like leaving,
I'd remember
why to stay.

These kids can't cope,
don't eat on time.

They stomp craters in sidewalks
on their way to the
culling.

They choke me in comet tails,
blear beauty through brains,
cursing at cops,
stooping to saviors.

They streak their spit like evidence.

These kids get angry,
get plosive,
like it was kissing or grinning.

These kids get angry,
and I've yet to say thanks.

The heights
and plummets,
the Saturday
rocketeering,
all look like
gentle slopes
from space.

you send me sheet music,
i juggle jargon back.
i parse you all wrong,
while you squint
and rub your temples
at all the dead languages
falling out of me.

Give a penny,
take a penny,
spend the rest on stickers.

Dying artists nurse
on youth, beauty,
and foreign cities.

They think that
making marble
is their gift,
and not simply
the belch
of their overfed
souls.

my friend bakes bread
then breaks it,
feeds me freely,
and we argue
over which of us
to thank.

Like a tax return,
once or twice a day,
I wondered
when you'd get here,

thought about ways
of making you
spent.

You always think
some physical
thing
will change
the
*******
air.

the hours play pianos
through the scaling
spiraled
march of truth,
out my window
afternoons,
fleet of foot
and sharp of tooth.

stranding through the moments
come glimpses
of tomorrow's
news,
inked in future
blacks and blues,
just off beat
and out of tune.

surely there's a braving
somewhere
waiting for a
nickel rube,
selling something
old men use,
softer eyes
or faded suits,

where sighs are money,
and sleep is grace,
i can settle in
the spot they've saved.

There's a river city
close enough
to pin my sloppy
dreams on.

You fanged at me so proud,
but I only eat poison,
I only kiss snakes.

There's red,
there's white,
there's blue.

There's other colors too.

I found
socks
and poems,
a cat,
found
get-well cards,
under my bed.

I wrote poems
for half an hour,
so I guess
I still do that.

I made the books on my shelves
straighten their posture,
I dusted lamps and practiced jokes.

I bought new things
for you to sit on
and next to.
I wondered which fruits were your favorite.

I suddenly
grew clean
and brave,
because I knew that you were coming.

Feel free
my friend
to let your eyes sparkle
upon the one
you love.

But keep in mind
there is such a thing
as too many orchids.

Wood-fired summers,
spiral iron curtains,
cloudy watercolors,
a stride away from certain,
brazen vinyl blearing,
lazing under searing,
sighing over greening,
reading over fleeing,
gritty teeth and halfway crying,
brand new air and album trying,
one foot keeping
in your hiding,
noses stretching into braving,
loudest laughing,
neighbor waving,
counts-as-living,
public sinning,
barefoot breathing,
hornet seething,
coffee filling,
spirit swilling,
someone
smelling
later
grilling.
.
the safest sort of being,
only just outside a door.

There's an overfilling
happening
somewhere next week,
kissing you.

It's so nice
to be so high
without doing
a thing.

If knocks on doors
frighten you,
think of the courage
it takes
to knock.

novels are rocks
to be kicked and chipped,
impress that they remain.

poems accumulate
like ash,
are made to breeze away.

The sweat on Sydney Poitier's brow
might just save us all.

How dare he
sell us our own souls
with so sweet a tenor.

Anne so sleepy
so tired of gritting.
Her lungs pulsing
for a decade or three.
Only she could kind enough,
to grant the night off.

Quincy moans and mourns,
but won't pick a side.

Switchboards tie us to each other,
like saxophones,
eventually.

This movie's about suicide.
Telly Savalas stood stone in the wings.

And I guess,
if we're going to just quit,
it's right that
Kojak should be there,

scowling on a sucker,
to call the time of death.