I stopped as I went
past RDU International.

I killed the engine
next to a sky plastered
to a lake.

With a thousand wilting
banana trees
in the back,
and a needle jumping
in the red,
I came to a stop.

Planes scoured the sky with their screeching,
soured the lake
with their contrails,
the geese watching from the middle of the lake
in flotillas
idling in the heat
because it was too hot to move.

If I didn't get these bananas back to the nursery,
they'd die.

Taking out a gallon jug,
I walked to the shoreline
and reached in between reeds,
and cattails and contrails
and cirrus in globs of clay
to lift the water to the radiator.

As I poured the water
into the radiator,
I knew that humanity
is neither the geese, the truck,
or the airplane,
humanity is the needle.

I am a **** writer
when I'm sober,
too much thinking.

The liquor
lets me get a breather;
gives me a chance
to process
the haywire;
the game slows down
when I've got even the cheapest ****
in me.

We place our wishes
in the canines
of spackle.

Above us the teeth
wait
to be broken.

While we watch
the Dog Whisperer
breaking
mustangs,
I wrap my arm
around the eternal flatness
of your shoulder.

We say nothing,
we don't even whisper
as our dreams fall around us,
in an automatic spray.

I get on the coffee table,
to fix the fan.

You arc your neck
around me,
like a diamondback
you coil until you feel the heat
of the tv in your eyes,
on your cheeks,
on your lips.

As you watch Cesar
more than me,
I dust our dreams off
of the fan.

I am a sculpture
that you must break your neck to get around
as I fidget with the monkey wrench.

There is nothing eternal,
we burn our love
like shoots of wheat,
so much beige grass
extending over your shoulder
into forever.

What kind of dogs
are we?

The ones that no longer
know the plains
of each others' fur,
the fire in our teeth,
the sun of each others' eyes,
the rain of our lips.

There is too much heat between us,
too much dryness now,
not enough calcium raining
from basalt clouds.

What I'm trying to say,
is that I do not explode
like a force of nature,
I am rock.

I don't know
how to miss somebody
in the right way,
I can wake up
in a bad state
still bitter
over things I said
or didn't say,
hungry for brine
and salt licking
my open chest
and curved spine.

The ribbons curling in the sky
move out across
the bluest bay,
I have fished so many times on the rocks
overlooking the military base,
the carriers roll by;
the submarines hum in the deep
there antenna in an operatic frenzy
and the captain is to busy to sleep.

I wonder what is moving
inside of you
just beneath the breakers.

Each time
'I throw a fish back into the fray,
I hope the bombs of their bodies
make noises that you can hear
even where the ribbons
can't tie up your soul.

I always leave around noon
my gills burning
and the air crashing
with all those sonic booms.

I gulp,
and gulp,
and put myself to sleep,
with some bottled ocean,
and a few good memories
of your heart,
that trembling, silently scared
deep.

So let me know how to be right again,
take your line and weight and
squirming bait,
and teach me how to miss you
in the right way.

I was hanging out with this girl

I just didn't care.

We were sipping,
I was doing the most of it
so I was drunk then,
and drunker when I said,
"I'm just going to pass out."

"Maybe I'll just leave,"
she said.

Yea whatever.

Her footsteps
were ice on glass,
I didn't even count them
as she broke out.

She left the bottle
she brought over.

So I've still got some business
to finish with this
$9 Evan Williams ****,
but all the ****
in the world
couldn't contain
the boredom
of my lonesome.

Sometimes a girl
makes you bored.

Sometimes
she makes
you think.

That's when you get
apathetic
as hell,
when you're chilling
with a girl made of ice and glass
instead of a girl
that makes you think
about what she's made of;
what you're made of;
what anything certain
is made of.

Sometimes
you end up
with nothing
and cheap liquor
tastes like Robitussin
on ice.

Irritable and hateful
at the computer.

Coming fully down from a good buzz
when the whole world
was a jar.

I could hold it in my hands.

Now
coming down
and not buzzing for ****,
not even a beer
in my crib,
I get lonely
and I feel like Atlas
again.

That jar
being
too big
for
two hands,
and feeling my heart
taking scalpels
to my arteries.

It's trying
to find some new space,
new strength,
new alleys
for new blood
that'll be able
to handle all this
new pressure
of a planet-sized jar.

So now,
I'm irritable and hateful
at the computer,
and telling you
about being
broke and no longer
drunk
with nothing
in sight.

It's so sloppy
down
there
like runny eggs.

So smelly
like
hippo diarrhea.

So humid
like the inside
of your mouth,
in the same exact places.

How is it that this seems to happen
over night?

I'm not a grimy human being.

Hygiene
is the closest thing
I have to a religion.

It's time for a washing.

P.S.
I write a lot of poems about my *****.
They are very near and dear to me.
Don't hate,
appreciate,
ruminate,
metriculate
down there
and do a good washing
yourself.

"We need to maintain our nether regions
for the sake of posterity."

Barney Rubble
said that.