Cats could walk tightropes,
but they'd never think
to brag.
They rather hunger.

We may blood better
but pretend we don't.

Instead
we love cats
and people keeping balance,
love purring over pork
and going 'ooohh.'

Oh! Thank you!
thankyouthankyouthankyou.

Thanks.
Thank you.

That's nice, thank you.

Oh wow! Thanks!

Thank you. Thank you.
I appreciate that.

Hey, thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Thank you.

You washed
your hair
in your
dream,
but I
did the
same
just now.

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.

You can't clean yourself
with plaster
and tile falls
like water.

I click
and click
and click,
mining new words
to mean new things.

I could move
so much faster
if I knew
it was toward
and from
only paint.

A stranger knocked
on the wrong door,
so I showed him
where to go.

Someone built this thing I ache in,
someone got paid
long ago.

The Greek, the cowboy,
and the soldier know,
that what we do next
began long ago.

You cannot help but cannonball,
you thick-thumbed thing of trying,
mauling all their myth.

You wear down the wicker
they hoped would hold weight.

You say,
"I'm sorry I said them.
I thought they were jokes,
I thought they were poems."

But it's always honest razors
you haul in your hair.

Just outside your soul
lies a gentle breeze.
So gently move your soul
toward anything.

It's been a minute
since i was
permanent,
was wondering
if you'd
write  a bit on me.

Darts in all directions
draw lines directly
back.

The space we make for hate
is space
that we make.

I.

you grinned at me
simple and syrupy,
a dollar reason,
a summer treat.


II.

like a road map
on a car hood,
we checked and folded
checked and folded
each other's lines
again
and again.


III.

you winced hard
against acid mist.

i watched
the bug spray bead
on your calves
and neck,
thought about blood
and the taste of you
later.


IV.

we drove around
looking for lakes,
or parks,
or picnic tables.

any new place
we could be the same.


V.

no matter how used to it
we get,
the sun stalks longer
than we'd expect,
jealous of our colors,
worried we'll set.

clementines
scatter the counter,
bruised and browning,
a seedless deadline,
a citric clock,
some recent kid's
acid ambitions.

In the desert of south Utah,
lies a staircase of gods.

Follow the southwestern wind
there to the middle,
until you find
the tomb of The Gore King.

The smallest version
of a frightful legend,
five-inch fangs
in sutured jaws,
a skull like a comet,
dragging death forward
to
any
next
new
blood.

How quaint,
how horrible and honest,
to demand your meals,
to roar your lust.

You should have stood straight,
practiced grins
and built museums,
friendly temples
of natural history,
yesterday's dangers
made safe
in cartooning winks.

Now,
your reign of terror
diverts
our screeching young.

A friend recalled
some minor news,
that last decade's
daring
moved back into town.

I remembered her height
for most of an hour,
and now,
my skin's a compass.

No matter where I turn,
there's a
buzzing buzzing buzzing,
somewhere straight East.

I like
to pretend,
the dirt
I track inside,
followed me
on purpose.

That maybe,
I'm somewhere,
earth
would like to be.

i mourn the joy you gave away,
though you would never think to.

you belong to the ground you stand on.
it never occurs
that your shedded ghosts
could stand somewhere brighter.

you are the saint of gritty teeth.
martyred over meatloaf,
thought it merely dinner.

you polished our crowns of thorns
while we howled like haughty lions.

and in the face of
nuclear
commercial breaks

you kept to your gardens,
crossed picketlines of suffering,
made happy horrors grow.

I get dizzy daily,
doubting deadly.

I go mad with
breakfast,
and manic
miming,
chaining
choices,
changing
timing.

It's not
choosing one thing
that smalls me,
but refusing
all else,
like a spoiled
king.

They will tell you that they're happier
than you.
This will be true.

They'll confuse your courage
and limp all your lyrics.

They'll beg you to borrow,
curse the curbs,
gently grief you
to suit yourself,
to buy better guts.

They'll set you up
with the shiny sons
of their duller deeds.

When they ask you
your curfew,
promise you peace,
they will make many
many good points,
and they may very well
be very right.

Don't ******* do it.

"What right do you claim,
to mug so little
and swallow yourself,
to make us **** and beg
to find your
thinking guts,
as if you contain
any multitude
that wouldn't fit
on this table?"

"And you?
What right?
To slosh yourself
clumsy,
over paid-for
digestif,
to gorge the air
with your tongue,
and pass on lean,
to leave so drunk and ask
me
to clean my table of you?"

every morning
boasts its ripeness,
begs a beginning,
nothing cleaner than a feeling,
nothing fresher than a poem.

Plummet heavy
through the clouds
or spread a little,
float around.
Pose or timbre,
chosen vow,
home or god
is always down.

Sometimes it's nice
to flick a finger
and make
pretty heroes
happen.

Every few hours
I convince myself
all the edges are
sinking
and the air's gone
rotten.

Until the next corner
where some crooked smile
stabs me sober.

I know
you have
so much to do,
pretty power things
too big for me to see,
but
please please please,
sometime soon,
breathe a little slower,
and play some games with me.

Writing poems
about writing poems
about telephones
about missing home.

Cautious on a couch
we made mild plans
to go to the store
just to come back to bed.

I sniff old poems
like ***** clothes
to get me through
the weekend.

Sunlight may
disinfect,
but it's only just after
the night is over,
that the air
feels truly
clean.

My neighbors find me strange
but grow to know me
as another friendly stray,
pacing and glancing,
smiling at my feet,
slumped and
overslept.

I got sixty bucks
and three jokes.

One day all of this
will be yours.

i lost my mind
and hit the walls,
found vines inside
and
very old friends.

it was a wood-paneled hell
with two doomed friends,
nicotine-stained,
beginning the end,
the dust of our daring,
the carpet's latest layer.

the shards of glass
we stomped on
were duller than the stones.
we'd crawl out at dusk,
and pace over
and over
our inside jokes,
in that motel cul-de-sac,
circling like trash.

"someone should tear this place down."

*

now the streets seem shorter
and the root beer parking lot
where i read youth to sleep
snuck up on me.

a quick dangerous flick
of eyes over shoulders,
a last-minute dare
for a chain-link slice
of where the ending
all began,

but the ******* tore it down.

I asked someone to kiss me
and they did.

Ofcourseofcourseofcourse.

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

My clocks unwound,
I tell time easy,
by the angles of shadows
piercing
my floors.

I let them point me
to how to be
next,
follow them in circles,
chew lip askance
at whatever sun
I'm slowly crashing.

Growing braver,
I take big bites,
clean and cool,
with waking-up
dripping down
my arm,
spit out poems
like watermelon seeds.

Scared of nothing
or sometimes
anything,
you somehow know
what's made for
climbing.

Your thunderstorm
of giggles
booms our sleepy
spirits,
insists that it's morning,
and therefore, time to
laugh.

Little girls,
you stir me
with electric
beauty bolts,
shock me into sharing,
then soothe my
scared-of-nothing
with ambushes
of touch.

You have no clue
just how your
brazen
boyish
bouncing
bombing,
dares me to dancing,
demands me my best.

Got up early
beat the birds
found their secrets
sold them all.

something pretty
something scary
breaks in me like bread,
i can't stop crying,
can't stop laughing,
or slinging poems
like sticks and
stones.

I want to shave you
'as iron unto iron.'

Let'***** each other
just enough
to scrape new skin,
get real sharp.

all this gravity
inside me,
dragging like bricks,
melting like suns,
where where
what's under there?

my favorite coffee mug
lost its handle,
i burn my fingers,
don't look back.

When you find the shape,
the dirt,
the light
you need,
you'll want
to give
the same
to something
else.

There are parts
of women's dresses
that have
earned
specific
names.

I'd like to learn them,
apologize,
give thanks.

i let three prophets
peek through my window,
and now i glow,
tremble as they chant,
'more, more, more.....'

The clatter of dog paws
on a wrought iron gate
thunders a newness,
that something is coming.

I think that it's friendly.
I think it's been paid for.
A storming of something
that's coming for me.