Do you like flying?

I like flying.

I like the angle
of wings,
how they shiver
on the runway
as an artery of redemption.

The murmur of the engines
and the wheels
hopping like babies,
that is freedom.

The sifting through clouds
by the wings,
like dragging a stick
through a puddle of oil,
that is like love.

The belly of the plane
skimming over the clouds,
basking naked in the sun,
that is like life.

Descending through the fog
bumping in your seat,
watching the porthole
for the brown grasses of geese
and jewelry of the sun on other jets
that is like the birth
of the world.

Taxiing to a stop
and unconsciously
taking the sweet, lovely woman's hand,
in whichever way she is beautiful,
the one who snored through the descent
and it sounded like the piano play
of rain and concrete,
that is like grace
in innumerable measures.

You and your gold doorknockers,
those two rings
of golden milk
in your ears,
I love you for the things
that go into your ears,
for the Odysseys
and Onegins
and all the love letters
of Abelard and Heloise
that make all that milk
into a cream.

Your hoops
hang high and tight
until you forget to take them out,
I like when you forget to take them out,
and in the mornings
I wake up
to your low-tolling jingle
in gallons
and the liveliness of your jaw
saying things
that wake me up
with a natural cheeser on my face
and questions galore
in my dry mouth
and lungs.

I'd rather
chill in some place
and burn an L
with you,
than let my tongue
get live
in any other
larynx
that never knew your name,
I'd rather
read a bad book
in your name
than a good book
in someone else's,
I know
that I was looking
at a landform
and not a landmass,
a being
more
than a thing,
what I want to know,
is why we leave each other alone
when no one
is an island
and there are no boatless
harbors?

I'd rather capture
your laughs
as I cup my ears,
and your tears
in the stern
of my fears.

I'd rather be
a relic
and possibly
a fuel
rather than
a nautilus
with nothing in its shell
to give.

I've taken the boat out
and the oars
trip up on grass
as I paddle through the bay of the asylum
across lime oceans
contracting scurvy
from too much fertilizer
and not enough fruit.

Walking to the bodega,
I think about those sparrows
that run in the wind,
even when there's a cold blow
going,
and they work
like freaks
with sin on their mind.

Once I clear myself
of you,
I will write
like I used to,
I will be free
of the breakwaters
to read,
write,
and create
again, but love
or whatever-the-****-it-was,
has put a stop to
everything,
and I walk
to the bodega
with a head full of nothing;
no thermals,
no heat for me to ride, but I'm sure
I'll be okay,
I'm sure
you don't care.

I'd rather
be safe on some branch
lapping acid rain out
of a lead saucer,
than trying to ford
this river in the air
with nothing, not even a pair
of wet wings.

When I get
to the store,
I buy a pack of Marlboros
and ask
for all the lead
in the world.

He looks at me
with a screwface,
so I ask him again,
and he
says
"No loitering."

I was gonna fly home,
gonna try and test my
shoulder blades and see if maybe
I could make something happen.

But, I go to the garbage barge in the back
and sit, beside it, gravel scratching my *** with stingers,
as light scissors out of the sky;

little needles of sun in
the little oceans
in the little asphalt craters
making little,
if not any,
noise,
and I lean
drinking something slightly mean,
a forty and another in the bag,
because it usually helps in these situations.

I left my wings somewhere
and I cry there,
cry because I'm
stranded
in a place that I have never been,
with all the light in the world
and no place to put it.

I murked out,
at some point.

I would like to go to a place,
where people want to be,
the roads running
and bleeding notes
in the gutters,
a place
where people
want to remember they've been,
and fold their music
to be pushed across a rivulet
to someone across the street,
a place that could be called
a lime of abundance
or a lemon
of love,
someplace bitter
but sweetened
with just a dab
of sugar, a place
where I could become
a crystal
and dissolve
without pain,
I would like to move
out of the US
to a place
where people
learn how to talk
again
because they don't know how to talk
when they are at home,
I would like to live
in a place
where I could talk candidly
in a bar,
where I could yell
about the things
I want to yell about,
I could go somewhere
and stand in the street
and read poetry
and you would walk by,
I would be invisible,
I would be
unknowable.
I want the wheels  to come off,

I want to expect
to be blindsided by a bus
and wrap my arms
around broken headlights,
as I feel
love in her arms
in a place I have never been
and a creaming love that does not fit
into Jersey dresses
or bleached Jordans.

A woman's beauty
is in the flickering
essence of her
heart,
like the virtuosity
of De La Tour
her face is fading,
yes,
she is beautiful
but against the odds
I am enraptured
over what she told me
more than her lips,
hips,
and
finger tips.

I will forget her face
that's part of a controlled burn,
but I cannot
control how much
fire
will remain
as a result of her thoughts
and how they engulfed what was
hackingly breathing inside my ribs
when they burned me.

She learned
how to fight
from me,
put her gloves
up
on her bed;
red training Everlasts
the foam lasting
forever
even as other
fists made their way
to her heart,
the repeated blows
just gave her a lover's
brow,
a permanent bruise
against
intrusion,
She
learned how to move her
feet
from how I walked away
from her, learned
how to rip
through defenses
just by watching someone's feet,
how they move,
how they react,
how flat-footed they are
all those Converses stacked in a corner
like scalps,
that's why she's always looking
down, away from the eyes
where the most damage is done,
away from the chest
where a good jab can **** you,
to the feet,
always watching against the next move,
preparing herself
to dance away.

You remind me
of a wet New York,
a summer of oily
lights on the roads,
of concerts in the park
and the white, loving claustrophobia
in the sky,
you remind me
of standing at a window
fourteen floors up
watching cars on FDR
in the darkness,
hoping that one of them
is yours,
you remind me of
sirens
always, you remind me
of
a confidante
in an alleyway
stale with garbage
always,
you remind me
of subways
and dark knowledge the length and width
of a city
always, you remind me
of crossing a bridge
over grey water
and pewter boats.

It is hard for me to let go
of the city
even as it dampens
in the slate rain;
and the stretched clouds
are pulled down
over the highrises of love.

There is good,
there is hope,
there is a future
even when understanding
is far off,
and malice
is the epicenter
of the human earthquake,
there is good,
there is hope,
even when
you feel like no one loves you,
and you just want to lay down
in midnights forever,
to be a nightflower
in black and blue gardens
under the tiger-stripes of the moon,
there is good,
there is hope,
there are paintings
painted with the colors
of dreams sweeter
than dappled sunshine
and mercurial march mornings,
there is good,
there are times
when you see me
when you can
and that is enough
for me,
there is good,
there is time
left for hope,
there is a clock on the wall,
there is a salve
to put on ticking hands
to make them stop
and make sweet movements in the air
again,
to make spring as cerulean
as glaciers,
with all the ice water
in the world
left to drink, there is good,
there is hope.

Nat called me,
said,
"I missed it."

Skyscraper to the sky,
hit me
hard,
rushed through my body
in a light year.

So bugged out,
I puked,
right there,
on the receiver.

"Are you ok?"

"Imma be fine."

But I wasn't,
I'll tell you how scared I was,
I was scared
of breaking her face
open
on the side of a sofa,
afraid of my father,
afraid
of just up and leaving,
being the father's
some of my friend's
fathers had become
awaiting the same fate
for them,
afraid of being my father,
afraid of over-eating
and taking up all the food
in the world,
afraid of being my father,
afraid
of
this being something
that would define
me
at age 18.

Afraid of being my father
but way younger
with the insanity of fear.

Nat got it
a week later,
but it still ***** me up,
because now
I think about the baby
that almost was,
because I think about the
father
I could've become,
the kind
that loves
his
child.

The kind
that doesnt' hurt the baby
and the woman
that birthed a new God;
the kind that is a channel
away from the tributary
and all the things
the tributary
could never be..

The raven
comes to me
constantly,
always in my dreams
crowding out the streets
where I made beer bottles
into Batman and the Joker,
clinking them against each other
mimicking a fight,
I could save everything
back then.

Now the streets are filled
with ticking feet,
the streets are filled
with streetlights
threaded with
feathers in the glow,
in the same
moment
I could wake up in a cold sweat,
****** myself,
fearful
that someone's in my
room,
I don't know what has happened
to my mind,
but it's not a safe place
any more,
no confidantes,
no saving grace
or saving bells
except the one
in the distance,
the foghorn
behind glass,
and the fog
a house
of caws.

My uncle left
his body for awhile,
he took on the
body
of a hungry man
and a traveller,
he became gaunt
and sold all of his
jewelry,
all that gold
that once made him
a king bloated with knowledge,
when my uncle left
he left for Arm & Hammer,
a few dreams
and the oncoming
swift of nightmares,
coming to the house in the morning
in his new body:
a bird
to grab in its
feet
all of its belongings.

The love
that fed him,
slept on its side,
and there are some things
worse
than death.

One day he flew away
like he would never return,
one day I loved him
and the next day
the sun rose with hate.

Now he sits at the table,
eating the food,
as God gives him a lapdance
or a beer,
or the love of his family,
everything returned,
everything sold
seemingly saved,
but in some ways
the hatred remains
as a reminder
that love will always
be stronger
than pain.

I've seen cops
way too many times,
too many times
to go through my ****
ripping apart pillows
with switches
and against my better judgment
I did nothing
as I heard the glass of
my grandmother's picture
being tossed around
in the back.

Too many times
asking me questions
about this
and that?
Him or her?
If you help us out,
we'll help you out,
understand?
in their rooms
where no love is grown
and no help is on the way,
their eyes were filled with the fire,
they were finally
gonna get this ******,
make him pay
for crimes he didn't commit.

Too many times
when i was asleep
in some old sewer,
and rolling up
asking me if i was on drugs
or drunk,
and if i didn't leave
they were gonna shove
a nightstick up my ***;
get me used to it.

Too many times have they slowed down
at a light
and turned slowly,
keeping their eyes on me
like I was a wolf,
when they had blood in their eyes
and teeth
in their holsters.

"Where you going tonight?"
as they surrounded me,
another inmate
inside the bounded
bars of an external prison.

Cops never helped me,
never asked
how I was doing,
or why I was doing it,
or why I felt trapped
inside my own body;
all they saw
was another ******
making problems
for the civilized people.

God will remember them,
just as I can't forget.

And most of the time,
it was other black men,
some fruit bred strong in them,
to hate them bottom-rung *******
because they had escaped
and remade themselves,
apparently.

In truth,
I have killed many of them
in my sleep,
but when I step back,
I see that they are a product
of the same system
that says the guns, drugs, and violence
are part of the ****** condition,
that only shows a ****** on tv
when he's *****, or killed somebody,
another mugshot for you to put in your
scrapbook of fear.


So, no I don't hate them,
I hate seeing people that look like me
getting killed
before they come to fruition.

I hate that
:"black"
is used as a term
meant to engender
fear.

I hate that I walk down the street,
and a white girl
walks ahead
turning around
to
check for me.

I hate that when me
and some of the homies
walk down the street,
our hoodies pulled over our heads,
people look behind us
for the grim reaper.

There is hope,
but without
it being fostered,
The fruits
die on the vine,
noosed up
in a new way
as they drop.

The boats in the harbor
flirt with the pilings,
their sails have trapped
nothing
and are flaccid,
the gulls scream at the masts,
scream while they lift
their spindly legs
and tiny feet
escaping
the noiselessness.

I sit with the sun
as it bursts
and the cirrus clouds,
like cotton,
are filled with blood
or tears,
or some brutal combination
of both,
as the needles
poke through the house
and the sun
is pushed out.

The piano sings
as
you tap the keys
in
a lonely lighthouse
of hurting repetition,
because even as you sit there,
you are letting go,
and the piano
is rolling away from you,
its voice stopping
and plunging darkly
only to stop
and look back at its
footprints in the sand,
the ones
against the edge of salt water
and the breakers
coming in
to break things.

The sun
is a pink moan,
the dusk
is
a blue happiness,
the stars
are white
memories
of the earlier loving hug of fog
and you have painted the day
at your piano.

She loved rolling L's,
I'd plop down on her bed,
she'd have A$AP or some
OFWGKTA on,
she was a New York girl
in skinny jeans
and camo Jordans
with them gold doorknockers,
a transplant
both from there
and into my life,
she'd run her pink nails
long as needles along
the Swisher,
and I swear
she had to know something
about internal anatomy,
cause she'd do that ****
to my belly button;
how long have you been practicing?
How many bodies have you split open
and left for dead
in the ashtray?
You rolled a tight L,
and I hemourraged
for five minutes,
it became a local anesthetic
until the procedure
was over.

The woman could do more
than just lick the insides clean,
she was humane,
she'd fill it back
with something you could burn.

She could roll L's
to Webster
all day,
not even the big L's
like love, lust, lascivious
more like
loner, longing, and live.

If there are Demons inside of me,
then there is God.
No metaphysical
Jesus-Freak ****,
but the God that was there
before Bibles and Holy Roman Empires and even Holier crusades,
I'm talking about the God who ****** up one day and said,
"this place needs humans."
I'm talking about the God who put these Demons inside of me.
The God who came to me
when I was having a bad trip
and told me--
even as I'm tripping
and seeing pureed bodies
slicking at my feet and
I'm thinking *******
about screaming for help--
"It's going to be ok."

Everybody has eyes
black
as the palmlines
in the ocean,
every fish
is a little ****** up
and I hate that I am one
of them too,
hate that the fisherman
knew it,
even as he pulled the hook out
and tossed me in the freezer.

What imma do is this,
imma walk up the tributaries
to
the river of demons,
where the demons
let ***** and eggs out in seizures
Imma shake their fins
and learn how to fan my legs
like them
and flap my arms
like an idiot,
I will become one of them
until I am not one
of me
and have enough gills
like palmlines
to fool you.

You don't even know
what a love poem is.

I'll show you,
here and now,
a love poem
is a rose
and a rock,
a love poem
is a robbery,
a love poem
is dropping Neruda to your girl
and thinking about the next caper
when she's not there,
a love poem
is thinking your girl
is yours
that she's a girl
in the first place,
a love poem
is a lie
just like
me saying I'd never leave
was a lie,
a love poem
is remorse,
a love poem
is hatred
of both the inside
and the outside,
a love poem
is me seeing through you
right to your heartbeat
and punching
you
as you sit exposed,
a love poem
is **** in an *******
all of me
made to hurt you,
a love poem
is ****
and the ensuing
yeast infection.

A love poem
is like trying to put a band-aid
on an ulcer,
a love poem
is a lot like love,
if love was watching cartoons
on ****
and thought
it saw the Holy Trinity
as Ed, Edd, and Eddy.

Shut up about it,
quit tripping,
give me a sec,
there not gonna see us,
you're more gone than me
I can see you fading,
all right
imma turn here,
I'll pull in and park
before they see me,
if it's a checkpoint,
shut up,
they didn't see us,
I'm sure
because I'm sure,
let's just pull in here,
**** the lights
and let our seats back.

Breathe, breathe, chill, breathe,
breathe
a little less,
I've had too much
fear
for tonight.

Imma sober up on your breath,
Imma ride out
only when the sun rises
and I can wipe your residue
off the dash,
Imma worry about
the birds in the back
in the morning,
just breathe, chill, breathe, chill,
go to sleep
like ice.

Lord Forgive me,
I have talked about love,
I have talked
about love,
I have broken commandments
on my skin,
I have killed a thousand
dogs
in my mind,
I put arsenic
in Jesus' cereal,
I placed myself
at the center
of the world
and lit a match,
I have put my heart
in precarious positions
and called women
demons,
I have stolen $3,000
from my family:
credit cards
maxed out,
private stashes,
blacked out,
I even asked my own momma
for a few dollars
for something to eat
when you know where
I went; how I fed myself,
Lord Forgive me,
Lord
*******.
Lord Forgive me
for ******* the You
in Me,
no born-again **** here,
I'm just placing a collect call
out to the galaxies,
please accept the charges.

Bob and weave,
keep your tongue
out your teeth,
keep two fists up at all times,
don't let your hands drop
below your hipline,
that's how you get cleaned,
that's how you wind up
with a head full of bees,
move your feet,
off the heels
jump on the combs,
keep your toes wide,
and once you feel that
supreme blow
to the temple
give yourself a lil tap
wasps come to **** the bees
when the queen
is incapacitated.

Posted up,
Trap Keeper's
what
my girl call me,
a few baggies
near my belly button,
and my 6-inch demon
below it,
when I hand you something,
I hand it from the bottom of my stomach,
imma make you love yourself,
for a few moments
Imma be the most beautiful thing you've ever seen,
you might even love me back,
might even love my shirtless
breast, the way my tattoos
swirl and alligators pop off the letters on my chest,
I might just swallow you whole
and make you another part of my arsenal,
another inch to the sixes.

My soles are wet, or at least one
is.
I have played in the puddles
too much
and eaten the rain
until even the lopsided clouds
have gotten sick of me.

How have you found one,
one droplet
for
one fire?

How have you found one
dimple in space
and laid down like a child
and given birth
without oxygen?

How have you found one?
one of everything
in one of one thing?

How have you found one,
even in decay
as you walk in my pain as a vagrant?

****
a love jones,
or some
Tyler Perry *******.

I want a chick that pulls knives out on me and jokes while she's doing it, because that's how we joke around.

A knife
like:
"You're not the kind of man I thought you were
when we first met.

Pulling out knives
and
putting little dimples
of love
into
each other.

The first time
I saw a ******
I saw it in the open legs
of a smouldering woman
pockmarked by bullets,
and her curly black
hair
was pink
with brains like worms.

Her knees shook
spasmodically
like spider's
when you smush
them under your thumb.

The first time
I saw and
held a gun,
I yanked it from my father's
eternal fingers.

His head was open too,
and it buzzed
in a black rain of flies.

They were shooting,
and little plumes
of dust
exploded all around my feet.

Whizzing, Banging, a roar
of warfare, and I burned myself;
the shells kept falling against my skin
as I held that AK
squeezing
and falling
as the gun
pow'd
and recoiled.

Little bubbling lakes of skin
hurt my arms for days.

I loved you,
in a way that teenagers aren't supposed to love.

I loved you in a hard way.

"I can't be with someone who can just do that to someone else, that isn't love or trust."

And i broke.

I broke like a machine.

Woke up
steel.
Feeling parts
screaming.
Circuits
zapping, zipping
almost
jumping.
Heart
thumping,
then stopping,
thumping.

Know
that I cannot lose you easily;
you are not my apartment keys
or a mango;
you are
an ID
or a stranded muse;
I am a number waiting to be laminated
or a boat with
blue bedsheets for sails;
I will sell what will get me to you;
blue bedsheets for sale
and photocopiers
in overstock.

Wild Turkey doesn't get wasted
here, not today;
I've had too much
too fly,
I'm just a man
with a little peice of my heart
left to use
for consumption,
so when I put my soul
into you, I sweated
a lot from that little peice;
It'd been
putting on about 100 pounds of weight
lately;
but I lost about thirty pounds
and a suitcase
since you've gone away; I feel
that thirty pounds and
that **** suitcase
found me sitting here
and pulled out a peice
and tickled me
at the airport bar,
a muzzle ******* at my ribs
as I sat watching
the planes
take off;
I am right beside the avenue of windows
and look
like a dark spot against the sun,
I think:

"I want to blow up a million planes
because
I'd hate for you to be able to fly
and put your pinky on me,
I'd hate for you to be able to point
and shout:

"THERE HE IS, RIGHT THERE,
DON'T YOU SEE EM?
HE LOOKS SO STUPID DOWN THERE,
HE MUST BE CRYING."

And I sweat more,
shaking off
pounds by the gallon
until I feel the muzzle of the gun
less and less,
and the apparition finally evaporates
in a sizzle
and
it becomes just an oil spot
I could wipe away
with a thumb
and saliva.

I sober up
enough
to fly again
and not **** myself
when I pass out.

I'm paying for the ****,
leave me alone
and let me sleep.

"You're not just here for yourself,
Mr. Willis,
you're here for your classmates,"
Mr. **** said.

"I'm here to get a degree."

"Well, I'm sorry"

Yea, "Well",
now get your *** out my face
and let me sleep...

Two things happen
when you get old, your *****
are scratched more
and used less;
your *******
itches more;
two things happen
when you die,
your *****
get ****** up into your esophagus
(two new tonsils)
and your *******
becomes a Kandinsky.

This is not poetry;
but I like to think
about what will happen
to my *****
and
*******
when I die,
and it's humbling
to not know what's going on
down there
when I'm not looking.

When things were going great
we'd eat transcendental dinners,
we'd take livers
in rainbow saucers
and ladle them
in tartar sauce
until our mouths
were full of salt,
sometimes we'd go to Thai China
and make interstellar fighters
out of the wise guts
of
cream-colored Starships.

But the nights when we went
to Burger King were the greatest,
we'd have simple dinners:
99 cent burgers
and fries like elephant ears,
we'd sit in our booth
in the corner,
you farting ketchup
out of like
twenty packets
into a red **** pile,
and I farted
like
twenty farts
out of my ***,
but I like
simple things;
they are natural
even if they don't sound
that way.

Because before they meet each other
they accentuate the bad in themselves
that want someone
to say
that there is bad in them,
to validate that fact
so much so,
that they intentionally push the good down,
They want to feel evil and ugly
and horrible, because those feelings are safe.

So,
I think, when a lover meets another lover;
meets their residual and their main source,
they feel something beautiful,
something inexplicable,
something they can never put to words,
and so the ugliness returns because
they look at their lover
speechless,
they can't say what they truly feel,
it is the encroachment of everything modern
and fleeting that holds them mute.

But when they see a flower,
they see
something that grew
from a seed,
out of the dirt,
and out of sewage
and ****
and ugliness,
to a stem
climbing against
forces whose entire reason
was to bruise it;
to a bud
holding optimism in its womb,
to a budding,
to the final bloom
to those naked petals
luscious with the perfection
that is watered with pain,
they feel beautiful
because the flower is natural
it remains unspoiled even though
that is not to say there have not been attempts
to spoil it
because the flower will decay.

But
that instantaneous, and inexplicable oneness
they felt when they first encountered the flower
and the beauty it encapuslated;
that moment of clarity,
that moment of pure euphoria
so wordless it became a hurting void;
that feeling will never die.

So, they give each other flowers,
because that memory of instantaneous
and irrevocable beauty, in all of the work
it took to create;
inasmuch as it seems spoiled
and hidden underneath
a canopy of weeds
or in the millions of commercial growhouses;
returns constantly when
they are together,
because humankind has created nothing
when it comes to love,
we have classified it,
objectified it,
destabilized it,
even destroyed it,
but we do not truly know it,
only the unnameable
and inexplicable forces
inside of us
can name it.

Every guy has a ***** ball smell,
a putrid essence
that takes a lifting of the sac,
and a not to thorough examination,
to detect.

I detected mine
while working out,
I was on the treadmill
going 7.5 miles an hour,
when I smelled
sour milk.

Ball maintenance
is very important.

I spent about five minutes
down there
with a judicious wash cloth.

I am hopeful.

That is all I can be,
hopeful
for redemption
from whatever pain that has been caused,
redemption for those
still plagued by demons.

I do not know
when
your pain will cease,
I do not know
when he will return to you
as the baby
that was always yours.

I am hopeful
that he will return,
and that you will return with him,
not to me,
but to him
and that he will be
with wet wings
for you to lick
dry,
to the hope
that once made you whole,
to the goodness
deep inside of you
like a taproot
that still reaches out,
I am hopeful
for the sun
and the hunger
for
radiation
and so much
heat; heat
you wouldn't believe;
heat that makes humans,
human again.

I know that you will eventually
be all right,
I know this.

Do you know what?
I've changed my mind.

Maybe hope is stupid,
maybe hope is just something
people use to get out of bed
and not **** everyone,
I will commit a homicide right now,
with the gun of my tongue
and say,
"I am no longer hopeful,
I am sure."

The times
were great, greater than
most;
the pulse
was rapid
and fired constantly;
the worm's
saliva
was sweet
and made the earth rumble;
the coffee dripped and
my tongue looped
to my intestines
to lick caffeine
off of the inner walls;
the sanctity of the mind
disintegrated;
the fabric of it
became singular
disconnected threads;
everything became drastic
and instantaneous;
my teeth dissolved
because they could not survive
this tongue of destruction;
I will eat again
but it will taste like iron
that has been grounded
into a soupy meal;
the mouth is a bitter place;
its bacteria
are swollen
like the arteries
of a vacuum clogged
with desolation
and *****.

A girl flicked a lighter next to me,
she flicked it on
as the whole room pulsed
and I felt strange
because her skin was on mine,
and Stephen rolled
on stage.

The cloud in the room
was thick and it was
a fog of Marlboros, Virginia Slims,
Menthols, Menthol Lights, Kools,
and all other sorts of ghosts.

Stephen made fire with his hands,
flailed like a marionette
and let the spirits loose.

He blew a baritone:
"I feel like we can really get close to each other,
in this tiny room."

Demons
can rise
and make fire;
can rise and make your belly feel
like hell
and molasses:
black and sweet.

Demons
can rise together
and make love
in a tiny room
that crackles.

I would like to play this game
like the Borg,
to feel no deep feelings
and last nights,
those are irrelevant,
to feel no pain
because no one asked
for some of my pudding,
that too
is irrelevant,
I would like to be so far
from my world,
to pinch it between my fingers,
I would like to be
so distant
to be a dwarf.

I would not like to override
the main directive.
I would not like
to revolt
against the collective
and remember that blue dot
I pinched
or that blue love
I cauterized.

There are places
where people can come and go
as they please,
where derivatives
are anomalous
and the main source
can never move
or be cleaved off from itself,
there are places
where people are lighters
flicking themselves
on
and
off,
there are black moons,
and black tears to send
a universe asunder;
There are ravens
made of feromones
with receptors
always beeping
like satellites
in the middle of nowhere
with twitchy antennae,
and sometimes even the sun
is black;
there are places
where coffee
is uneccessary
where there is no sleep
no threat of it;
there are places like
my heart.

You are harmonious
and
catastrophic.

You are both
Pandemonium
and
Avalon.

I wish to understand you;
more than just the parts.

Both the disharmony of your beauty,
and the orchestra
of your imperfections.

He went home
to a candle light vigil.

There were tiny jars of light
and a picture that flickered
leaning against the leg
of a bench.

He was part of a group
holding other lights
and there were those
in hoodies or wraps or badly put-on makeup,
and they were were quiet,
or quietly crying
in the smelling cold.

Some were in the curb,
or on the road,
or leaning
on each other,
shoulder to shoulder,
arm on shoulder;
and it was foggy
and the streetlights
burned in the fog
like it had just rained.

The picture couldn't say another word
and there was no emotion left,
to stand, or sit, or kneel,
or pray,
there was just a village
stranded.

Life is an array of lights
that burn against pictures.
There are too many
smokey days.

Hello Kathryn,

You left a message the other day,
I heard the phone ring,
but I didn't pick up;
didn't know how to talk to you;
or why you wanted to talk.

The **** was there to talk about?

I went to an estate sale;
big house,
big cherubs with their fat cherub hips and cheeks
and all that algae caked on their bodies
made them sick
on the front lawn.

I walked into someone else's house,
took what I wanted
and left.

Then I drove to the beach,
and I wanted you to be there,
so I could *******.

I wanted it to be a loud,
hard ****,
one that made me and you both
hurt,
one that made
my **** burn
and your cheeks blotchy,
one that made
you look at me differently
as you pulled your ******* back over your ankles,
slowly over your thighs
and quickly to your crotch;
One that made
your dress
some fabric
and your shoes
some soles;
one that made
you open the door
and just walk down the street
for a smoke
and some contemplation
about what kind of life
you were really leading;
the kind of life
where people sit in cars
and drink
and ****
all day.

I put the car in park.

The gulls sat on the dock,
raining **** on the water,
and I smoked half a pack,
just waiting.

I blew a girl once,
blew her so hard
she tapped me on the shoulder.

She shook her head,
and I ended up
jerking off
when she fell asleep.

I thought I was a force of nature,
but all that screaming
was her.

My ego was low,
so I woke her up
and told her she had to go,
she didn't want to,
so I started railing
on her religion,
that got her so riled up.

Them clothes flew on her
like God was promising salvation
if she just got in them jeans,
and I was asleep
by the time
she slammed the front door.

Things have gotten hard,
and you're just poor
and out of the currency
that'll really make these problems
go away.

But you hope

that maybe you can will certain things
into being,
off the power of the feeling
alone.

Maybe you've got it in you,
to shake somebody's head
so hard
that the brain pops loose
and falls out the skull
into your hands.

Then you could
do some real operating,
really change them.

But you can't,
and that's what keeps you
from getting too ****** up.

Because if you could do all those things,
the only thing stopping you
would be yourself.

And that's pessimism for your ***.

During this time
of looseness,
my heart
or anyone's heart
might just
thump itself
so hard
that it breaks free from the ropes,
breaks free from the ribs,
breaks through the epidermis
in a wave of slicing
with it's newly evolved
animal hands
and a knife.

The **** does a heart
get a knife
and animal hands?

"If i'm gonna make it out of here alive," heart says.
"I gotta have hands."

So it breaks free,
scissors right through the sternum
and crawls
in a trail
until it falls from the counter
and the front door opens
a crack.

I look out a window
and it is hailing a cab,
although there aren't cabs
like that
around here.

It'll find it's way
where other piece-of-**** hearts
reside.

It will make it's way,
and I'll make my oatmeal in the morning;
that grey ****
that I shovel into my mouth.

Iron's good for the blood
you know.

My heart had a knife,
you can't tell me a ******* thing
about the iron
in oatmeal
being a blessing.

The bodies
wash up
in the night.

Wash up on the neuse
and I stand
with a trashbag;
talking to myself.

I spend the morning
walking along the shore
picking up dead bodies.

I look like a man throwing
wet, leather purses
into another
black bag.

Come to me,
come to me
with paper and pencil
and too much coffee.

Come to me
like the Sahara.

Come to me
like skyscrapers
and bandaged
clouds.

Come to me
in a whirl of flesh
vivid as oil
under a streetlight,
I will make a rainbow.

Come to me with optimism
or pessimism,
hope and death.

Come to me
like I came to you in the night,
when you were suicidal
and I had to hold you
away from your stash
of oxy's
like a knot
and uncoil myself
in the morning.

Come to me
when the fish run,
and the whales
scream
and the jellyfish
wash ashore
like glass hearts
solid and fracturing.

I can only write now,
there are windows
that open
and never close
and I am one of them.

There are bees
that bumble
in the sun
and die of over-exhaustion
on flowers with licks
of color on the petals
littered with the other papery wings
of my lovers,
I am one of them too.

There are wheels
that scream off of tractor-trailers
and impale people,
I am one of them too.

I am one of those men
that kisses women
who do not
or  
cannot
love him.

I fall from frothy clouds
onto your doorstep;
I run with ants
until my flight bones
are yellow
and the marrow
is dry.

Admittedly,
I am both
of them.

I am
a
completely
oblivious
destroyer of
the sky
and I write
because I am one of them.

I would like
to understand holy things.

I pulled up to your trailer,
and parked in the gravel.

The pebbles crunch
the same way under my feet
as they do under the wheels.

You are not outside,
like you said you would be.

I lean in the window
and honk the horn.

I hold onto it,
until you come to the door
with the baby,
and you both stare at me,
blurry behind the screen.

The horn is too aggressive
and you know it.

Will you teach me
with kisses
like you teach
the baby?

I am an open mouth,
like a cannon,
a relic,
in the front yard of an enthusiast;
the weeds lick me,
the dandelions burst in the shadows,
and that shaggy black horse
shakes the flies off of her
in spasms
as she
nibbles them.

I am waiting
to become a planter;
for the old man
to throw dirt
where shells nestled.

I am done with destruction.

I like the comforting resound
of horse teeth against iron
and roots
crawling.