heart is heavy
a trainload of lead
better get an adjustment
listen a little
get out of my head.

my love is in lock-up
gotta spring her today
do what i must do
do what it takes

walk through what is before me
with great gratitude
lessen the gravity
these are my shoes

i sicken myself
i smell my flesh rot
it's a symtom of something
that can't be reversed
probably something that i deserve
death by decomposition

i am in love with sadness
i am in love with your sadness
i recognize and know it
it is not dissimilar to my
own sorrow

i
while quietly sobbing
perform drunken newly learned alchemical rituals
in a desperate attempt to
set aright
madlove gone off the rails
with half-spells and muttered incantations

knowing the aura of
impending heartache
i stifle a sob into a
long one note high pitched
quiet wail
i am doomed

ill equipped to cast
my lot
ill advised to continue
i closed my leaking eyes
and held my arms up
in supplication
to a god i have always
believed in
but do not believe would hear
my believed mewlings

i remember the hour of my undoing
i remember the sadness
i feel today
from then
a touchstone to your sadness
the only stone I have

i would tie it to my
neck
and jump into deep water
were i to think it would
hold me to the bottom

though no hero am i
nor courage do i know
in your sadness i found
a simple purpose
a certain failure
sadness my own

i remember your shy smile
and your hands

blowby smells
like gasoline slowly burning
that rarely happens

i once put a small flame
out with gasoline
when i tried to repeat
this magic
for a friend
i nearly burnt down
the entire back yard

it felt
like an emergency

Vision loaded
In a gun
Spin the cylinder
Point it at my
Head
Pull the trigger for fun

Soul sad and body lonely
I can't be that wrong
We'll see i guess
When it's all done

Coffin calling
Measured for a suit
That would never
Have fit me
Were i standing up

Catching the west wind
Zephyr sweet life
Just a little curl
For a barrel roll
If you like the surf

Walk into the morning
Through trees and stuff
Swing into
The river
When my work
Is mostly done

Sweat my way up the hill
Play a little
Eat something good
Go to sleep
Wake up
Do it again

mad and tiny toed
she came to share my asylum sleeping place
a wonder in the moonlight's dust-ride
a wrangler of the dreaming

winterworn and coatless,
i slept soundless,
wept tearless,
woke restless;
for the hinges of time's doorways creaked non-stop with our leaving

now is not the time for tears
bind whatever is broken
prop yourself up
your confidence seems to be flagging
a death sentence for straw dogs and hollowmen
such as we

awake in my skin
all night again
sleep is paralysis
memory is a throw-away
in a self hate crime
never return
just quit and die

money shots for skin
drawing lots again
keep me in the loop
forgetting is a keepsake
in a stranger's house being robbed
go to sleep
return
never quit and die

false god
false prophets
idols from the street
ears full of lies
betrayal and deceit
history is yesterday's weather forecast
knowing we make the weather, man
off of your knees
learn
quit your mind and die

rights aren't real
without slaves
death is the only guest
worth waiting for
forward now reclining
wiggle in the sunlight's heat
she slips out of her molt
wearing the mask of her quarry
and her second skin

i am Spring
i am the second son of autumn
a representative of pollen and dawn
I am old friends with the longest day of summer
I have known the icy night of winter
since before he grew
into his dark and starstrewn coat
I am spring
I speak the language of bees and everything blooming
all things that are living will quiver
with desire and promise
today i am keeping that promise
sap from the root to the tree  
sap from the tree to the leaves  
invitation from the leaves to the sun
to the sun

once i get everything rolling
the earth gets a little more juicy

I'd sure like to get in there

I'd never need out

Never need out again


Blood on my hands

Except the floor 

The couch

The bed


Blood on my hands

This ain't the first

Time I've been 

Let down


It's your blood

Running

Out of me


Forget, forget

Running out of me


Blood on your hands

Way down

The way

It used to be


Blood on your hands

Simplify

Harder to recognize

Simply


Because we've blood on

Our hands


Scared to recognize

Butterflies

Inside the 

Way it used to be


Moving my hands

Hard to fly


****** my hands

Simple

Sacrifice


Blood where my hands were once

Simple

If you are really in love
You have become incredibly important
as you have never been

I won't enter the contest
But i may crawl or slither
across the floor
Sometime this winter

only because i want to save you with dancing

note to self:
The mighty says that she doesn't name a poem before it's written or maybe not at all

so I try not to
I try to write her with no name

words speak and write themselves
faster than the slowness
of my naming

good god, i falter
fly south for the summer
ring my neck
shake a wing
flying further north
because it's winter

so i try not to
because she speaks
fluid now and real
and in her ocean there is
no name
worthy of not forgetting

a gift to me for sure
a wordless azimuth
to describe
a pearl and its own life's making
and I am impressed

pretenseless
some remainder pure
and laughing still at broken
who shakes me awake when I wrong down the words

and try to name them

yet in the night's dark farmer's market where
flickers are rare and cost
what's real

I lay down the word that speaks to saying
and guides what's said and still saying home

and she is special
special now

when now is long and slower
and meanings mean themselves
where moments are rooms with echoes and time stands quiet; nearly still

when memory is no longer
so
and I not so full; myself
I'll forget the grass is green then
maybe I'll lighten up

remembering the road i wrote
the author of one dream
where words were meant to say themselves

a fairly special thing

smoke rings
and bells do as well
and the lamb man's
got all the fleece
we are all gold in an egg-shaped sort of way
way on down the street

the good girl needs a bell
nevermind the ring
i ring my bells for that good girl's favor
ring your bell for the good girl's favor
the lamb man keeps his peace

Underhill
understanding
bells
toll now instead of ring
underhand and under thumb
under-way the lambs run
up and down the street

the wind blows through the leaves
leaving traces of where it's been
it's been down collecting lambs again
dew-run
up and down
the street

wash your wool
for the lamb man's leaving
wash your hands
he's gone
wash your hair
for the lillies blooming
blooming all along
all along
the street

Panic sets in but i ignore it again
It's just your name caught in my
Throat
I'll Heimlich myself
If i don't start breathing pretty quick
Or maybe I'll just throw up

Slide under your locked door
A 3×3 inch card
A small scissors
And an engagement ring

If you can figure a way to get the card around your head
The card says
You don't have to marry me
Keep the ring

But if you can't
Which you can
You'll have to be my bride
For this short time
That it takes
Me to suffocate

Took until today
Finally
Broke the machine down
Vitriolic wasteland
Infrastructure be ******

I'm going on up again
Against my better judgement
Again I silently decide
No one else will
Do it
I'm going back up
It's got to be done

There's alot of lean
To it this time
Ice, now rain on a hot wire
Never survive the strain
I'll climb.

With tears in my eyes
Remembering names
Knowing nothing proof positive
Except for the fact that

I've got a long vacation coming
When and if I come back
down

blithely turning toward a closer ground she measured her body in the mirror's reflection for the inside capacity (adequate at any), of the ornate casket she had ordered to have intricately carved and lavishly inlaid.
she was in a fantastic space for a good-natured case of the ****-its. 
Dani was dying.
she was small in stature and large in awkward.
jotting the numbers down,
her eyes - just a bit of dust 
smiling through and reaching for 
the coin she tossed 
-her way out the door.
     god how she mystifies me.
in awe, slack-jawed and my face hurts from laughing with her.
it's like a hundred million tiny yellow butterflies were released at penelope's wedding to a sky of falling ashes from a small grass fire next county over. 
     that's what i feel like when she laughs. i am going to miss her when she goes-
i can't really wrap myself around a comprehensive strategy for creating a space within myself that will be without her. 
i have lost interest in trifling 
i spend my time at a job that's just a good reason to walk that far. 
     i come home with fresh fish and flowers and a couple of album finds from "the pig and the gator" record store.  
guy clarke, Willie's 
"redheaded stranger", and an early Romones e.p.
     Dani loved, i mean loves records. so do i. ****. loved. that sort of tears me up that i wrote that. 
     anyhow, we crack beers and eat fish and listen and talk and laugh and spend the rest of most nights trying to find my disappeared dog Luke Sidewalker. i miss him so incredibly deeply that my gut hurts so as to nearly stop me from breathing.
     i feel that i am so many people when i am with her.
     that's the mystic. she sort of leads me to where i am most comfortable in her presence. she showed me where.
that you could be in pieces and not get nervous about it. 
     i can't imagine tomorrow. and i can no longer remember yesterday,
but as the ******* ghost of this day;
i hold no real promise. 
this is it. 
     here she is; opening the door as she thumb flips her coin with something near to indifference. bloww.
she puts a smile on me like she's swinging a haymaker. 
"tails", she whispers. she is looking at me as if there is something worth looking at. 
she hands her coin to me.
tails. 
butterflies and ashes.

chewing her words she bit her lip
then trying not to bite her lip once again, she bit her cheek. still chewing the same, she couldn't stop bothering the hole in her cheek with her tongue.
which she bit soon enough.
what could have been a fine sentence,
one made to make someone feel good,
wound up coming out of that grinder,
covered in spit and blood.

you hear in my voice that i know you
if your ears don't
the rest of your body does

you can read my words
say i love you
but you say yes
yes because

you ache for me
you miss my lips
on your lips
and the turn-a-round
way that you feel

I'm the quiver
between your thighs
and the bright spot
on your mind

Tattooing with a gun
With no ink
Stare in the mirror
Until my eyes water
Smoke and blood and
Dust from my skin

Like a pilot writing your name
In the sky
Or I LOVE YOU.

I'm rooting around in my skin
Bleeding your name
Am I finished?

Cut smoke, bank left and roll
Down

I hope she saw me in the sky today
He thought

Shut off the gun
And with that the dust 
and
the rest

Blades of grass
Crocuses and lillies and daffodils
Sunshine and trees and 
Music and laughter

All in this tiny tattoo

i met eyes with myself in the mirror this morning
we had a moment where time seemed to freeze
i saw that he'd got back his bearings
he saw I'd filled back up with light
we leaned back and laughed then kept staring
as yesterday limped out of sight
dragging away its bag of dry bones

my mind reassembles you in your own image
a far better version awaits us
-still-
things you aren't
fall away like dead skin
as you put on your future's possibilities like a cocktail dress, bare foot
holding your shoes
in your right hand

as much as I would like to be holding your left
i watch goodbye
it looks so perfect the way you hold it while you walk
almost skipping
into the warm salt-night

your man
courts you in silence
because his words don't fit in your wallet.

your man
courts you in the future
because his now doesn't strike your now's fancy anvil with it's patina of past

your man
courts you while walking in sin
because to the icy gospel truth: real,
he is a lie

your man
courts you
nevertheless.

your man
courts you because he loves you
not as an object,
but as the subject matter of the story
that has been written in his heart

Making the best of a rotten situation
When the going gets hot
Don't go away I'm on fire
Self immolation drills
Paying off in spades and thrills
I Like walking with you
Seems you're a real bad mime

Fill the earth
Full of filth
Fill bags and boxes
Full of death
New world burning
light up the sky
Push it on back
Demolish
Destroy

When's it end?
Never so far
Forever free or imprisoned in
Black space and stars
Returning forever
Remember the wheel
And this house full of monkeys

Where
The forgetting
Is a lie
And escape is laughable
Stuck here and out of gas
Like a dead-letter postcard to ourselves
Dated and sent from some parlour-trick fantasy future
Where the switch-up is almost like dying

Do your best to remember
This day
When the new morning calls
It's the one thing we can do for Ourselves
One another
For us all