****, I miss you.
My eyes are bending down into this face.
I was smiling, but now I stand on my head…
I don’t feel I’ll ever right myself.
I gossip about you to everyone.  
You are a pillow cut open atop this twisted steel skyscraper,
loose the feather and no one can retrieve it.

We all watch you fade so slowly away on the wind.
We try so hard not to jump after you.
We are not as light, and less aerodynamic.
We would fall like stones,

and so

eyes misted with the dew of loss,
we watch you
fade away so slowly on the wind,
farther,
father,
until your point of brightest azurean love
is lost up in the deep glass sky.

I wanted to write you a poem
but the words wouldn't come
I searched across my mind
I searched between every line
but found nothing and suddenly I realized...

There are no words
I could use to describe
the way these butterflies spasm inside
the way my heart reflects in your eyes
the way the starlight can trace your lines
the way my tongue ties up speaking desires
the way my life is more by your being alive.

And so I sit, silent
in front of a six-foot tall altar,
carved of white marble and onyx
covered in black raven feathers.

She has become my idol
her image replacing the god
I no longer believe in

and I pray to you each night.

I'm reading the Codex Gigas,
one hundred and sixty pounds of flesh,
black hairy tongue,
penitent Battenti sponges staining the robe with blood,
stalking through Campania.

Crushed insect nests,
a shiver up the jaw from food not had in too long.
Squashing caterpillars,
the insides squirt from their ketchup-packet bodies
in a spray of slime-neon green.

Pheromone cream drips from your *****, I gag it down,
curdled milk-paste.
When pulling the dress down, one never knows
whether you will get a paper cut,
or a gaping jaw of hairy
life.

We all live like pigs, but need to clean up to appear to live
like everyone else appears to live when we visit them.

You rob me of myself; a teacher
walks into a food bank ashamed and finds his student working there.

My life experiences pile up like broken infant bones,
fragile phalanges of famine,
until all I add up to are decades of
Holodormo,
the Killing Hunger.

You hide in the sea,
I lick your left palm.

My fat, fleshy pale belly
pushes the inside of my shirt out,
and I'm ripping off Bukowski.

The sign for the travel section was far too obvious
for me to have noticed.
And you can tell you are by the woman's magazine section
by the perfume scent that burns your nose.
Strangers watch me type these notes into my phone notepad
thinking how superficial young people are these days
texting all the time.

And suddenly,
I am shooting **** into the current.
tossing my wedding band into the ocean waves
reflecting the moon like...
trying to write fast enough to catch up to my thoughts
and the words come crashing into them
a train going off a cliff.

And suddenly,
weaver ants are carrying eggs,
devouring albino widows.
Ochroma flower licked by Kinkajou,
insects lapped up from their grave of
sugary water.

There are names for girls like you:
pretty, pure, and more...

But I know ones that are liked the best,
you ***** ******* *****.

How that camera captured the unseen rays of crystal sunlight,
it is almost 1990
but our young bodies
are stuttering in grainy silence,
spinning film on a machine that wasn't even made back when
it was almost 1980.

Look at you,
taller, stronger
sister
towering from that diving board...stronger, taller, older -
but I was always bolder.

Boldness.
Bravery.
A glamorous fearlessness towards the dangers of life.

You were always jealous of that,
weren't you?

Notice the toes.
Yours are so very close to the edge, aren't they?
But look at mine.
They curl down at the joints, peering over the edge,
ready to fall
pull my smaller body after them into a deep blue oblivion,
like the one you've abandoned
me to now.

My star went supernova
and burned away all the love from the face of the Earth.

Hush little babygirl
don't you cry,
Daddy's gonna read you
to beddy-bye time,
And if that story
doesn't work,
Daddy's gonna *******
until you squirt.
And if that squirting
don't make you sleep,
Daddy'll fill your ***
with His special treat.
And if that treat
don't make you swoon,
Daddy's gonna cuddle you
like a little spoon.
Cos Daddy knows
how to care for you,
and wash away all that
makes you blue.

I bend over
drag your fingers on my spiral spinal protrusion.

I want you inside of me,
fist in a mother cattle's birth canal.

I'm elated at this.
I wonder why it feels so cold, when I'm so hot and wet.

Take it,
a focused heresy.

Say my name
if you can guess it.

I know yours:
Chastity and Life.

They said your footprints
were still on the windowsill
when the authorities showed up

I wonder how long my hand prints will remain

as I lean out and see the last thing you ever saw
speed towards you
like that camera trick they use where the background speeds forward
but the person stands still

I feel you in my nose here
all that remains of you is
a scent of yellowed dime-store novel pages
and I can't help but agree
when scientists say that
our sense of smell is the one most closely tied
to our memories.

They always said you had an old soul

but I know better

You lived with the clarity of a newborn's eyes.

Hypnotized by your blank kaleidescope
caress you like a Kwashiorkor belly
rotund
smooth and round abdomen, empty and
covered with flies
an allegiance to parasitism,
supported by the skeletal mass
too thin to pull the body along,
ground-glass ground
ochre earth,
away from the feathered death
stepping lively behind you
hooks pierce the sand,
soon your meat.

you scream at me
with colic voice
cut you open
I have no choice

We've shared secrets no one else would ever want to know,
but now your brothel hair has become a nest for dead birds.

Where once you were a wet marsh,
perfumed in tangy musk,
you have now become a dry
steppe covered in rotting fish.

I'm writing acrostics of your name,
remembering you like discarded tire husks
on Arizona's August freeways.

She has brittle pale wrists.
She hides them,
like sunshine,
in her pocket.

There was a time when I was driving towards you,
highway lights passing by as if they were hyper-drive stars.

By blunders I somehow found your address on the scrap
of paper that I write this on now. It's still stamped with your lipstick,
scent of your armpits,
blood,
hair,
and the smell of your palms after they'd cradled my face
while I cried for you not to leave but just to make this daybreak
moment last an hour longer
to make that sun rise slower
drape your body over mine
one more time.

I swear I'll enter you if only you'd just give me one more chance.
I swear...

I was waving goodbye
but you never
saw. You never
even looked back.

Little girl,
lay your weary head in the black space
that is unwinding between us,
a void to lose yourself in.

A train-station railway burning down to bare metal,
a dove flying away and spreading the ash.
If only that dove could carry you away somewhere
safe inside my mind.

The bone in your heart
chokes you sometimes.
I'd ease all of your concern
with a touch.

Your heart is dark-clouds.

Lay your weary head in my lap,
little girl,
dream of dandelions floating away
through this cloudless, broad blue sky,
bend your chest up into the calming sunshine,
let go,
and rest.

I'm busted, baby.
Swollen and brittle
Soft and pliable
And there's just nothing I can do
Excluded lesions collect in pools
In sorrow, I've dug for you
But I'm busted, baby.

Milk white,
pure as unbroken *****,
innocence lain bare.

My touch,
aches, despoils. Alarms,
so soft; a feather’s caress.

Creamy smooth,
lotion filled *****, disarming
with a frown, down-turned; tears.

Teases me, terrifies me in its shroud. Free me, set me loose
from this cage, this frigid incarceration, lay me bare. My *****,
split and opened; exposed. Soft, pink tongue, coated crimson,
makes love to my wounds. My kitten, sweet, laps the saucer.

Abstracted from the fragments, broken in the wind of
your Madonna, holy, sincere. Shadow creases the
wrinkled skin, veins; varicose. Age comes ungracefully,
my beauty, wrapped in plastic.

If I had you in my hands,
petal,
cradled from the rot
guarded from the corruption
the world assails you with,
I would hold you firmly
and never let you go...

Never let you go.

I am only three thrusts away
enjoying the girl,
oh her little bones,
sweet somber hair
as my pants
become tighter.

I watch you brushing teeth,
foam on your lips,
as my crippled spider
legs sway forward on
towards your tender little ***
hole like a cherry,
hidden within the cleft of a peach,
sweet, then a flash of violence
towards your haunches, hips, shanks.

Older women are sweet like saccharine,
but you are pure cane,
****** peppermint
cinnamon disks,
which drip
the same as crushed
maraschino cherries.

Scaffolding in place by those that value
a structure arranged and supporting,
housing community.
Community from its root of ‘commune,’
what exists from the efforts
of all those involved.
A building housing
opinions,
creativity,
debate,
and art.

What was once a poetry free-for-all,
now a pay to play disaster
crumbling down
at the swinging of a dollar-shaped
wrecking ball.

"Your marriage is falling apart, Rick,"
she had cried in pain

but I knew better:

She'd already given up the moment she decided
it was no longer "our" marriage.

All my apologies, worthless.
All my ego, a *****.

I spend the days peddling my wares through binary,
relapsing into the folded paper daisy chains of atom bombs.

My stomach is a pit of ice;
it winds its way into growth, cold fungus,
clutches my chest like a mastectomy of tar.

I've only had zero peace.

The birds I watch, the scars they show,
leave me stumbling over their hollow little bones,
like the words I try to say to you.

My burning hands caress your body's baby hair, *****.

I am drowning in you,
and I am suffocating in nicotine stains,
falling from balconies of acrimony that you pushed me off of.

My clipped wing feathers burn in bursts
of red, cyan, and lemon.

I crash down into you one last time
where my seething nails dig into your skin,
searing you right out of my ******* memory.

Go away morning
with your sleepy eyes and sad-dream lies
Disappear my morning Star
and melt into the shadows.

Leave me here, alone in bed
longing for your touch.
But dreams are lies that will not hide
how my heart is crushed.

I was sailing back to you,
I would have sailed all the way across those
vicious seas, through the rocks,
on your breeze.

I would have caught your tailwind,
and sailed, like Magellan, around the globe,
but you were turning the Earth against me.

I would have sailed back to you,
tattered sheets on splintered masts,
makeshift oars to guide me, broken.

I would have sailed back to you,
to your harbor, crumbling,
and helped repair it, fixed.

I would have sailed back to you,
but
your tailwind became a headwind,
you burned my sails,
shattered my masts,
stole away my oars, and
destroyed your harbor.

And now I float,
desperate
starving
thirsting...

But I am now finding,
in the absence of your blinding star light,
that there are other harbors
that could save me from
the storm that you've become.

Your life may never be the same,
but there will come a time when I don't
drive you to distraction
occupy your mind
engulf your every moment

but I am not here for the conception of new memories:
coffee
arguments
commercials
Sunday dinners
shared cigarettes
pregnancy news from family
getting high
getting sick
car ride album listens
dark room hair pulls
bright room eye locks
glances across the table because
          everyone else is so stupid, aren't they?
squeezing into a too small bath together

They are all disintegrating
moments break apart
fall away from you,
left only with the clichéd sand through your fingers
like the memories of the

sme l of my b eath
f el of my tou h
so nd  o m vo ce
s  h   f  y fa e
  ve I h    y u

The lips that met,
never touched. Or could she only
dream?

The sweat beading upon my brow,
as she was spread out like a
feast.

When certainty is unpronounceable,
and air beats harsh and stark,
can anyone not see me screaming,
at these never fading blister marks?

All of my books are committing suicide
dive off the ends of my shelves
fall into oncoming traffic
pages ripped away by tire rubber
just as if they were hair

from the head of a trichotillomaniac

bandages from a burn victim's
rice paper skin
still wet and half-grafted
to dull pink gauze.

Smell of you on my lips
taste of you on my fingers
gaze of you on my skin
warmth as you envelope me
shuddering of skin
shedding of sin

We consummate in a shared womb of ink
above and below cotton blows like springtime,
a perfect non-sequitur segue where
flowers of aloe bloom
swollen pods that explode
spraying pollen everywhere.

to the rhythm of "Miss Muffet"*

A lone little girl
sat in her room
holding her stuffie so tight.
The terrible shadows
wrapped close about her
forcing her sad eyes to cry.

she cut at the shadows
but cut only herself
wishing the shadows would leave.
she dreamed of a plant
that could bloom over her booboos
where she had made herself bleed.

Her shame was so mean
and crawled bout the corners
where all the mean memories lay.
"Can't sumbudy save me
an chase out the night,
befow I cut mysef away?"

When suddenly to
her surprise and delight
the door opened, pouring in light.
The shadows hissed cruel
as they slinked off in fear,
cursing and suffering blight.

The sound of His voice
was all that it took
to chase the bad memories away.
"Come to Daddy's arms
my sweetest of treasures,
Daddy's now here to stay."

"you will not be scared.
you will not have fright,
as long as you hold Me tight.
Daddy will be here
to cuddle you close,
all throughout the night."

Today I was driving in my car, looking at my notepad
shoved without care
corner of a page bent
spirals grasped for life on the edge of that dive.

I thought that I felt I wanted to write,
but the glass inside my head was empty.
Forcing it full just causes it to break,
and so I wait for it to fill, fill, fill,
overflow and
capsize.

It comes suddenly:

a stroke in the section of the brain that biologists
have yet to identify.

a phone ringing at three thirty-eight in the morning.

a cat leaping from behind the corner, hitching a momentary ride on your calf.

a rush of amniotic fluid from a pregnant woman's crotch as
she stands over smooth tile.

How many pens have come apart in your mouth?
How much
redblueblackgreen ink
have you ingested in these pen-cap chew moments of inspiration,
trying to steer without looking,
shift with only *******,
scribble without seeing,
glances from concerned motorists in adjacent lanes.

How many
slips of napkins
notepads
envelopes
bills
book covers
receipts
skin
have you marked in fits of...

I want to unhinge My lower jaw
like a snake, and swallow you
whole.

Not simply to posses you,
but to hold you inside,
where My heart and stomach and lungs could keep you warm;
where anything trying to hurt you
would first have to **** Me
and cut Me open to get to you.

It feels like Winter’s fingers
and they’re pulling me under
by the ankles
once again.

I struggle but it is
never enough,

I thaw out from my freeze but it is
never enough.

I spend thirty days in a blast furnace but it is
never enough.

Oh save me, Spring,
that I might live,

as no matter my struggle,
or how strong I am,
or how well I swim
or tread this slushed and frozen lake,
chunks of ice
bump against my exposed flesh
splitting it as I am pulled,
choking,
down and under that frozen pond
where I am drowned.

Remember me?

I'm the man
who stood by and watched
as your own Mother
your own Father
cut you out of their lives
and your own brother
told your husband he should have succeeded
instead of failing
to **** himself.

Remember me?

I'm the man
who pulled you out of closet
you would hide in
screaming, crying, wanting to
hurt yourself while
your own Mother
your own Father
your own sister
were deaf to your cries.

Remember me?

I'm the man who was there for
half a decade, learning to
care for you
bathe you
give you space
(Just don't lock the door, love.)
laid on your back
when the weight of me
was the only way you could
feel safe.

Remember me?

How quickly,
shamefully,
selfishly,
you forgot
on that day last June,
when you told me,
you were leaving.

I didn't forget you,
or that kiss I knew would be our last.
And I wish I could remember that
last look as you drove away,
but the image in my mind
is blurred,
just as it was on that day,
as the tears bent the light
from the face I loved,
as it drove away,
free of tears.

My stomach is full of feathers,
and in the same manner with which you pour venom from your eyes,
I leak ozone from my pores.

There isn't enough time in the world for me to impress you
to the point of ******.

I cut little pieces of your words apart
in my head, like paper dolls. Pulled
apart slowly
(don't tear),
stretched in an accordion waltz.

The tune they sing
is spoiled milk.

There's an igloo
glowing auburn-yellow from the inside
miles of empty snow and ice around
lead-blue sky bears down:
an endless weight squashing reality.

I'm trying to remember which muscles are required to make me stand.
I'm braiding the coarse-twine letters of your name into a gallows rope,
tie it around our necks,
place the knot correctly so the vertebrate split,
separate fragile cord that brings all life to the body,
same as the delicate thread that held us together.

Did it ever,
really?

I drip away from you
charred
marshmallow held over the flame
too long.
This ceremonial rattle shakes
full of seeds within dried husk
the sound tickles your eardrums
as you **** on the snow and ice
covered with its coat of
honey,
nectar,
black gall.

Mija, if I could
I would reverse physics
eliminate the gravity wells that pull
you down.
That leave you starving weeping bleeding
hurting,
crushing you within themselves,
beyond the event horizons
the tragedies in your life have left.

But I am not that strong.
I cannot alter basic
rules
laws
components
of reality.

I cannot save you from the monsters in your head.

I cannot guarantee that you will always be safe.

I cannot say I will always understand.

But I am strong enough
to hold on to you,
beyond the event horizons,
until my fingers
are stretched by warped Time,
and I no longer exist.

But I will fight the monsters in your head,
until I no longer breathe.

But I can guarantee you will always feel safe.

But I can say that I will always listen, and try to understand the
nightmaresandtearsandhurtanddisintegrationofyourchildhood

Because, Mija, I know
that there exists light
beyond the dark break
of your event horizons.

She stands in the truth,
a puddle of lysergic acid
that seeps into her bare soles,
as a tuning peg twists her gut.

The single page, crisp,
bends, hangs limp
where index and thumb tips
barely touch left and right edges.

Her blue eyes quickly sweep left and right, work
their way slowly from top to bottom, absorb his self-eulogy,
drain their color out and onto the page.

As each drop hits, ink blots change from explanation and apologies
to a Rorschach Test to which she will never have an answer.

Moisture leaves her body faster than she feels it will be replaced,
she is mummifying herself alive in Sokushinbutsu,
attempting to join the Xerces Blue letter-author
who flew away into extinction.

The walls around her now close, tight, stone;
her only contact with the outside world the string of her memory
attached to the bell of loss.  

The weight of the page
she holds destroys her.

The last time I saw my son
he was smiling
waving his little eight year-old hand
in front of his scarecrow-gold hair
shoulder-length

The last time I saw my son
he was joyous
at simply another day of school
mom taking him in her car as I stood by
unemployed

The last time I saw my son
he was blissfully unaware
of simply another day of sorrow for us
and the unatainability of life
missing

But I smiled back and the window between us
hid my welling tears
as I stood by the car that pulled away

The last time I saw my son
I knew he'd come looking for me
but I wouldn't be here any longer
just words written and songs made
photos and pictures and comments online
a ghost of electricity
a haunting blast of brain and regret
whose last thought was
the last time I saw my son.

I could bleed from these arms,
into my hands,
which once seemed so strong,
drown my prize
in nitrogen and scar tissue
and maybe then I'd be happy
to destroy myself
again.

If only it were justice to ****
a mocking bird.

The fauna that derides one,
stares one down
and dominates
with the entirety of Nature behind it.

I'm stuck, my blood dripping
fresh from its feathers.

It leaves me empty with its cries;
lonely and one dies.
Absorbed, engorged,
elapsed, and relapsed.

Nothing works,
and nothing's clean;
everything's a nightmare,
and it used to be a dream.

I'm sending out signals,
trench warfare's got me down.
Digging through this foxhole,
looking for believers.

There isn't much left for me now,
as the yellowed gas rolls in,
except to look at my flare, high and bright,
(your angel-tongue hair, blowing in the wind)
and hope that you will see it.

Sometimes we feel a bit of pain
over things missing from our lives:

gifts,
childhood
toys,
that old silverware,
memories...

But there is a special kind of pain,
a person feels over people missing from their lives.

There is a trick;
it is not this simple,
see.

The trick is this:
Often, it is only when that person begins to come back
into our lives,
that we realize just how great,
acute,
that pain was,
and is,
and this mutes the happiness one would fully feel
at the reconnect.

There are three dresses,
drinking the rain
and the sky is doing somersaults
in your bones.

I am wrapping my open mouth around your flesh
teeth are brittle
but skin gives quicker.

How wide could you spread?

Spread you out like a butterfly,
mascara running down across my fingers
you desperately grasp for air through.

Your words
cannot escape through my palm,
but by the time I remove it,
you will no longer be capable
of forming them.

You won't even remember your own ******* name
by the time I'm done with you.

"If you love something, let it go.
If it doesn't return, it was never yours,"
they said.

Well it WAS mine.
There are no two ways about it.

What they don't tell you,
is that some things don't return,
not because they weren't yours,
but because they die
without you to hold it.

I carve you like marble
grind and push my chisel over every inch of your body
feather your skin with a brush
buff you with my rag
rub my polish into you until you glisten
push you down the elevator shaft
touch myself as you fall
come as you explode.

I've lost myself
in you
but much prefer the me
that grew.

Oh son, my porcelain prince, if only your eyes were flesh and not glass
you could see that these things will pass.
Oh child, my fragile leaf, if only your roots reached deeper,
you could feel that this is only a short while.
Oh little one, my broken boy, if only you would grow up slower,
slow as nature deems,
time will give you foresight -
be patient.
I say this to help you avoid stumbling over roots,
or falling under the weight
that will surely come,
and too soon it seems.

My son, my pride, my knight,
my willow branch,
you will grow strong,
but remember to bend,
and do not let them break you.
Do not break under
the weight of words
the cold of shoulders
or the pollution of popularities.

Hold to those around you,
with deeper roots,
who have grown through the rough dirt
you are pushing through.

Hold to those around you,
because we love you.

I spread gravel once
flat across a lawn...
wishing it was me.

I made a trash bag-wreath once
white-pure strips of plastic...
wishing it was me.

I looked up at the delicate sky
held in place forever
crying to be fleeting
trapped in existence: eternity.

I heard family ghost stories once
stained branches on family tree...
wishing it was me.