This is the beat
for the future.

Slow.

Continuous.

Quick in paces.
Slow in the right
places.

The bassline of the future
should be love.

Let's make it as slow and continuous as our ideals have said it would be.

In the last moments
of the world
let every man kiss every man
every woman kiss every woman
every love see love.

Fuhreal,
let's take love
to a whole new level.

Let's make it so beautiful
that we stop killing cockroaches
and poaching
the god's green broaches of branches
full of howler monkeys
howling for conservation against the parasitism
that man has become accustomed to.

Me and the homies
built
up
a foundation of beer bottles in the corner of the living
room
that slide
down
when we play our music.

It's a pyramid
of transparent brown
******* bodies.

We stick our tongues into mouths
that will never fully be
ours,
and throw each new brick in the corner
with a clink,
*******
our
pants
and waking
up
in
entrail pools
of their digested innards the next morning.

A brown shimmer
like flashlights on the lake
bounces off them
bumping against our hips
and
mesmerizes
our upper thighs
and
inner groins.

Our cries for hope and peace and stability were usually the signposts for an innate and cultivated bitterness. From birth we had planted ourselves in the middle of a struggle for both hope and a good hold on realism. We chose pessimism as the avenue to realism. Once we began to hope and hope only, we couldn’t look at ourselves fully in the mirror. We’d start smiling and thinking that goodness was as easy as smiling at the other person, whoever that was, who was on the other side of the mirror, bus, or classroom. But as we got older, we saw this hope as stupid. It contaminated our bodies. Hope is a wound that festers. Hope not only festers, but it grows even in the worst conditions. This is why we grasped for realism and pessimism. Because hope could so easily grow and wrap around us and make us stupid with its poison.  We had been hurt too many times by this stupidity. No, our philosophical doctrine was to **** or be killed, to feel hurt constantly so that we could despise the poison of hope more acutely. We still cry for hope and peace and stability, but we hate ourselves for doing it.

Your first ****
is very important.

If you don't get that first **** out of your ***
and mess up the good routine you've got going
then you're headed for trouble:

wake up.
scratch *****.
feel *****.
feel ****.
smack stomach(listen for the sound of new fat deposits)
burp.
wheez.
get up.
go to bathroom.
look in mirror.
hate self for not exercising.
brush teeth.
begin formulating exercise plan.
****.
feel 10 pounds lighter and label self
idiot
for talking about diet in the first place.

If the **** is not taken
between brushing your teeth
and breakfast,
your whole morning
is ******.

This is how it goes
without the ****.
First:
you forget to put on enough deodorant.
no biggie.
but you sweat a lot.
that extra cake-clod of speedstick actually does help.

Second:
on the way out the door
you forget your ipad.
no biggie.
except it had those quarterly numbers
for your sector's growth on it.

Colon gurgles
as you jingle the keys
down the stairs.

Third:
You forget your wallet
on the counter
in the kitchen.

Your ipad's still on the bedside table.

Colon gurgles.

You run back up the stairs,
grab the wallet,
give your apartment the quick once-over,
steadying on that $300 couch you bought in college
thinking you have everything.

Now you're going to be
five minutes late.

Should've taken the ****,
but you don't realize that now.

Fourth:
You get to work
five minutes late.
Everyone's in the meeting room
already,
nobody says anything
but mustache-face
aka
El Jefe
gives you the look.

El Jefe asks for your quarterly numbers
as soon as you settle into your seat.

Colon whistles.

"Was there any sizable growth,
do you think there are areas
we could devote more time and energy
too, in favor of others?"

You don't have your ipad
in your computer bag
with all those numbers on it.

People have been getting laid off lately.
"It's just the economy."

But really
"it's who doesn't **** up."

Colon screams.

This is how your morning got ****** up:

Usually when you take your ****,
you go back to sink in front of the mirror
to wash your hands.

After hands are washed and dried,
you go under the sink
and pull out the speedstick.

You put on a healthy dose.

Not only because you sweat
a lot,
but because you think the ****-smell
will follow you like a pervert.

After the speedstick,
you usually go into the bedroom,
because while in the mirror;
staring at the excess fat;
thinking about how good you look,
lighter;
the thought pops in your head,
"don't forget the ipad."

You don't know where it comes from,
but it comes.

Since you take the ipad to work
everyday
you count on having this thought
everyday.

You look on the bedside table
and there it is.

Quiet, black and glassy on its surface.
So placid like a lake contained within
the reaches of a pool.

No monsters.
No forgetfulness.
Just routine.

You should've taken the ****.

Night starts
with a drip,
and roaches move your feet.

But when day comes,
it comes.

Fear is
as good as sunshine,
it keeps you lose,
then tight.

The Jamaican bones,
having been ground into
sugar,
are whipped into coffee
and grey goose.

A mouthy mix,
and it seems
to cleanse the whole earth;
cannibals praise the lord
in all of his glory.

And on the way
to the first day
of forever,
the iron in my blood
clings to my gums.

I know you there
on the highway,
as we both drive with our
heads downwards,
our evil hearts
cuddling cowardly innards.

Press your fingers,
dismember what lingers.
Crack those knuckles,
smack those palms
and blow that screaming bone.

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.

Oh ruinous apple,
the flesh
is too much
and sweet as hell,
sweet as
chicken meat
dripping off the bone
to swim in pureed flesh
on the tongue,
oh ruinous apple,
your stem
is no longer a caterpillar,
there is no tiny butterfly
of a leaf
on your dorsal.

Oh ruinous apple,
you say
"I have grown old
and
hate my skin,"
hoping that it will finally
be shredded
and given
to my belly.

Oh ruinous apple,
you are not so old to me,
you have become
a cougar
in your old age and
the seeds
still make tambourine noises
in your *******.

A crazy *******
got in my face
the other day.

"This is my shop!,
I put the work in this *******,
see ya'll young people come in here
trying to mess up my shop,
this is MY SHOP!"

"Mmhmm," a fat ****
in the corner affirmed.

Crazy *******
are often your
barbers.

He's pulled this **** before,
I've seen him do it.

He'll just throw the clippers down
and get in somebody's face,
while they flip dumbly through
Sports Illlustrated.

It's funny as hell.

He had spittle
in cakes at the corners of his mouth
that wiggled
like eggs on an unbalanced beam
and fat lips that looked
like rotten peach slivers;
all brown and ugly pink.

He's in his forties and stumpy.
But all he ever does is yell.

I punched him
right in his lips.

His teeth were hard and scratched my knuckles,
but he backstepped,
gave me one of those crazy people
"I might just cut your head off" looks
and walked to the bathroom to clean himself up.

Crazy *******
think
they're the crazier than everybody else.

It really was a great time,
me an Gnat went to the planetarium,
and watched the stars
swimming above us
in the Olympiad of useless love,
we had calzones
across the street
after,
and laughed at each other's jokes
out of politeness.

I took her back home
blowing a Djarum out the window,
when she asked for one.

I wanted to ****,
she wanted to ****.

So we ****** on the fouton,
truly bored with each other,
but having nowhere else to go,
no other ***** or *******
on the horizon
and comrades in our loneliness.

But it was good and tight,
and I ate her out,
because I'd always loved the maple syrup
of her ******,
and I don't think
her
or me
coming
was out of lovelessness,
I think the rawness
of her and my *******
was pure.

A bad, worming feeling in your belly
because
you've had nothing to eat today,
and
you hopped in your car,
giddy as a bird,
and rolled over there.

There being the magic store;
the store with it's keychains of glory,
bottles of distilled religion,
and a whole lot of prayer
that your debit card sings.

Tomorrow means work
and the evil dollar that drags Jamaican children across
intersections
as they scream at the Americans in taxis.

It seems we all need a break.
We all need a chance to forget
and say we're not culpable
for anything.

This is the magic that'll save you from your whiny conscience.

**** isn't the poison,
the poison
is
what you preach
from diamond-studded
constructs
of impermissibility,
you trace the path
of the ants across
the earth
with your finger,
telling them where
to go
and when,
so when we have
a new king,
he will dream of dreams
on ocean planets,
with the stars
swimming,
the galaxies
breathing,
the cosmos
deeming
that all
is right
although not altogether
good.

I’m  at work
Buzzing to get out of there
Out of the fluorescence
And the din of screaming children
As it downplays the howling heads
Of their mothers who
Dream of their children’s exposed
Necks and getting out of the grocery store
Before it starts to rain.

I am Bobcat Goldthwait
underneath
The large hanging lamps,
pale green as barge lights
I make little sounds with my lips
And tongue, little incoherent sounds
To push the time forward .

A man comes through
My line holding a beige patch
Of cloth
Over his exposed trachea beneath,

with a voice like he crushes cement
puts it in his coffee
and ***** it up through a fiberglass straw.,
He drops some
Toothpaste and a brush on the counter
And says to me with that mutilated
Voice:
“there are only two types of *****,
Big old *****,
And old big *****.”

His skin is blotchy in the cheeks
like the husks of craters seen from the sky,
and the corners of his mouth
are dry and cracked
snaking and splitting outward like dry riverbeds.

For a second I want to laugh so hard,
That people will think I’m crazy, and
Maybe one of the twitchy managers will have
Me committed.

If he says any more, it’s this:
“You’re young, enjoy it,
if you worry
About the fuckups now,
you’ll Be worrying
until you’re an old ******
and that doesn’t do you any good,
***** hates the old **** ups.”

This is a place where you can see everything coming
from far away;
a place where people come
to leave;
a place where people pack in the middle of the night,
and wake the children
while it's still dark out,
hoping for hope in the cholera
of a sunrise
and the 5 a.m. Greyhound;
this is a place where there is no flea
market, just a strand of people
on the side of the road
a table and a parti-colored distress,
while their kids play in grass lots;
this is a place where factories are built,
clandestine factories; factories with no
signposts, and no barbed-wire fences;
this is a place where there is always something green
in the tilled rows crowding up against the road,
not necessarily growing,
but maybe the signs of an arbitrary decay;
this is a place for old trailers and rust tears;
telephone poles more than a stake in humanity,
communication rather than introspection,
redemption more than salvation,
revitalization more than pleasure,
insight more than hope,
promise more than dreams,
this is a place where a father rushes up to the bus,
pushing the kids,
as he ushers his wife on board,
the little children hopping up each step,
as he says
"Get on, and we outta here."

This is a place where families don't have belongings
where you don't belong to anything.

This is a place you can leave easily,
because it is a place with a name
you can't remember.

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.

I only smoke
when you're around
or when I'm around you,
I don't know which is which
just that a consumption is going on
within me.

You reach down into your pocket book
and pull out a few killing sticks
hopefully,
I'll die of consumption.

That little creature
inside me,
the pink satyr,
jumps
in between my ribs,
whenever you go rummaging
in that golden shimmer of stripper's purse,
and **** out the Marlboros
with a wet-lipped,
wide-arcing
smile.


The creature,
the real me,
plays with his
satyr ****
all day
and bites his nails
and soft cuticles
until the blood runs
and pools in
little
red
pearls.

I am love-starved,

and the satyr is afraid
when he jumps
because that means you're around.

When I'm around you,
or you're around me
something smells,
possibly the iron
of the ******
left-over finger flakes.

The satyr picks up
the soggy,
spit out nails
and shingles
my heart with them.

The satyr shingles my heart
with the fear that you will leave
and that I will have no one
to consume
or be consumed by.


You are my ******
nails and cuticles.

What a ******* emo
you
make me.

I am uncomfortable,
even,
with the notion
that you have an effect
on me.

That's why I dismiss it,
with that whole
"What a ******* emo" title.

And that whole
"What a ******* emo."
last line.

A quiet kid,
lonely in the rain,
fingers the nickels and pennies
in his pockets, waiting for the bus
to splash around the corner,
so he can get to work.

He lives with a demon of a roommate,
and shares snores with the roaches,
Bathing in the shower of their incontinence.

After college, he lost it and wrecked his mind
in a haze of liquor so foggy it
swallowed the moon for awhile.

He stumbles through pitch black nights
with an ugly soul and redemption on his mind;
The worst kind of late night wanderer.

Coffee and sugar keep him alive--
just like war and famine are the black angel's wives--
bringing him back into this liquid reality.

In the mornings he breathes in this world,
totally sober.

It tastes like sourness
and the milk of ***** entrapped in blue jeans
in 100 degree weather
all day.

It was the worst kind of sobriety.
All the horrors of birth.

He lives many lives:

One for his mother,
where he plants fruitless kisses
on her cheeks.
Little wreaths of future disappointment.

She hugs him so warmly.
It makes him want to suckle his .45.

One for work,
all smiles
and plumb submission.
9-5.
5-2.
12-9.
6-3.
4-12.
And if he's lucky
12-4 on saturdays.

All this in 5 dollar clothes
and a rumplestiltskin attitude;
trying to weave his own ugliness
into truth.

One for his girl,
the one who'd hurl her tongue at Appollo,
puke up her month's sugar intake,
and curl her fingers so tight that she cut the cappillaries,
making a red and white fist like a christmas cinnabon:

If he ever told her who he really was.

His love for her is secret.

One life for himself,
to keep the mirror happy.

This kid.
He's all or nothing.

This is how you squeeze
a dollar
outta fifteen cents.

Cut the bottom of the tube
of a toothpaste
and lick the mint jelly
onto a toothbrush.

At 21,
I am the scaredest
I have ever been
in my entire
life.

More scared
than I ever think
I will be
ever again.

And it's not that concrete fear,
like the kind you feel
when someone's yelling in your face
and your tip-toeing sanity
with them.

Naw.

It's the kind of understated,
weightless fear
of being in a plane.

i know I could've been the one
who caught
the bullet
instead of you.

I could've been in the crossfire
of hate.

Trayvon
will you forgive
me
for walking up to the ABC store
in a hoodie and jeans.

I hate that the world
has become a place of suspicion.

I wish that love
could
conquer
stereotypes.

I wish my love
could
conquer
racism
and
misplaced
suspicion.

i could've been the man
shot down.

That's why it's so important
to don
a hoodie
in 80 degrees
because the degree of separation
isn't that much
of
a
degree.

Across town, there’s no across. It’s just the town.

The dogs being fed by master, master toys,
Makes dogs bend, cower, quiver, then shoots dog
Out of the bow. Dog gnaws air through gritted fangs,
Finalizes his stupidity, gives up on his own self-confidence,
And lets it roar with a hand up his ***.

The pigeons coo, cluck, ****, fly,
Coo, cluck, ****, fly,
Coo, cluck, ****, fly.

Foxes run around the yard chasing tails,
Motives based in circles,
Saving slowing down and puking for death
as they Yap like pups.

Master watches from a high gallery
of Windexed windows so clean,
That you can see master’s muscles tightening as master laughs.

happiness and darkness.

Cars, trains, automobiles,
Flying machines, high ideas, fulfillment,
Continuation, carbon and all things irrelevant,
Master loves you.

In town, Pop tells the kids he’s on his way,
Mama shatters into a million brilliant pieces,
And Grandad’s sigh comes out his mouth with the care of a habit.

The kids are corralled into the basement to play,
mess with each others genitals, and put on azalea dresses
And heavy suits with black ties.

With all the venom of moths
They let their little mouths flutter in the dark,
as Mama and Poppa hurl everything they can.

Master gets drunk on equilibrium,
High on acid, perks, dipped bud,
Brushes teeth with alcohol
And spits out his/her teeth in the morning.

Way after the dogs were put to bed to tuck their tails in their legs,
The foxes following suit, the pigeons in the middle of the mess, somewhere.

Mom, Pop, Kids, Grandad, finished talking in low voices around 11:16 pm.

As they shredded the charade, ashamed at all its pieces,
Their mouths watered; I have no hope.

Across town, it’s not a town,
It’s a random house.

It's supposed to be
98 and cloudless today.

By the time I roll in,
and park my car,
Roman's walking up to me,
his gold tooth a
full yellow smile in the sun.

“Hey meyer,
I need you to
Pull the box truck around,
We’ve got some plants we’ve gotta load,
Then we’ve got a landscape job
About an hour from here.”

“Are we gonna be back here
Today?”

“Probably not
until
late.”

The box truck
Is a holdover from the old owners
Of Ken’s Nursery,
It’s still got
Ken’s Nursery in large comic sans
On it’s rust-streaked sides.

The wheel wells are rusted
brown as salt deposits
On the shores of sulfuric oceans,
and little ringlets of decay
rock as the truck bounces;
It’s old springs
Giving back after all these years.

Today we have:
Forty-two veriagated ferns.
Ten dragon lilies.
10 cannas,
But cannas have to have a male and female to flower,
So 20 cannas collectively,
And we’ve gotta mulch.

By the time we’ve loaded all the plants;
stuffed the mulch in with the Bobcat,
And thrown in our picks and shovels,
My shirt is soaked through.

98 degrees and cloudless.

Roman walks to his car
and takes off his shirt
To reveal a pink belly
full of folding skin
and matted black upwelling *****
Singing with sweat-diamonds
In the unperturbed vision of the sun.

My shirt is soaked already too.

But even as I loaded the truck,
I thought about Melissa.

When I get home,
She probably won’t be there.

When the female is separated from the male canna,
Nothing dies, the two live happily ever after.

But the canna does not flower,
And doesn’t remember enough
To miss it.

Just continues quietly with a black bulb
The color of a skink’s underbelly.

There’s a rooster
that runs around trying
to ****
every hen,
goose,
guinea,
and
sometimes Super Dave Osborne
will even make a pass
at a close-enough finch.


Occasionally Super Dave ****** off
the Rhode Island Red.

Red measures twice
the height
and weight

of Super Dave Osborne.

Whenever people see that dog,
they think of drooling,
hunger
and
boredom,
that dog
bit a few people
so they castrated him,
and he lays in the corner
all day,
licking at fur,
nuzzling out his pink ****
with his tongue,
and he's bored of being a dog,
he's just bored
of being alive.

That dog
comes to his bowl
like a ward of the state,
like he has to
and doesn't want to.

That dog
plops down at the back door
staring at himself in the glass
and the world outside
all day,
and sometimes they
rub his head,
most times
they just let him lie.

That dog
won't bark
for anything,
even when
he sees that *****
across the street,
he doesn't have it any more.

That dog
wants something now
more than anything else.

That dog
with his ability
to make you think
of ropes of saliva,
belly's bloated with malnutrition,
and watching tv all day;
that dog
wants to love something
the way he used to love
everything.

What'll happen
when they finally give that dog
a bone?

Cotton is everywhere,
it's on the ground;
in the ditches,
all brown and soggy like
wet hairballs; in the wheel wells,
the rotor tiller;
the SNAPPER'
the squash;
your wife's *******,
tingling her constantly;
the speedometer,
the pulled pork,
collards,
mashed potatoes
and most definitely
the gravy;
it's in the eyes,
makes them red
and explosive,
it's in the dark loam
and gloam; the unwashed streetlights,
the blue dark
and even bluer
lampposts in the middle
of fields black as oil;
the pink sun,
white clapboards
and redwood siding
of that burned-out homestead;
the cotton is everywhere;
thrown up by the slaves;
a ceiling made just for
February lovelessness
as I pull on my Marlboro
and crook my arm
like the cornices of a power station.

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.

Paul Masson.
Hot sauce.
Colgate - old and stale
as puke.
Grease.
Newports.
Former head.
Recovery.
Country dirt.
Pecans.
Cotton.
A black fist held high.
Hope that one day
he'll be able to fit his ex-wives
into a nice,
cordial sentence.
Love.
Real love.
Man love.
Type love that kicks *** when it has to.
Sears cologne,
OG ****.
Some Christianity,
but not a lot,
not nauseating
and obnoxious,
more like
quiet
and
almost not there.
More Masson.
More Newports.
Gold fillings;
the Midas Touch
on his tongue;
the ability
to blind you
in the glow of his breath.
Rotten *****.
Real rotten.
Rotted to viral nostalgia
because it tastes
like ****
and makes him lick the roof
of his mouth
to get that smell
out,
just to make
room
for it
again.
Chitlins.
Obama's saliva.
Collard greens
with all the vinegar
and red pepper
in Satan's *******.
Herman Cain's armpits.
Fear
for
me.
Love
for
me.
Power.
Former riverboat
porter.
The smell of rich white men
that talked about
*******
while he stood
stoically.
Strength
like
you've never
smelled before.
Human.

The bookbag leans
on the aluminum column.

The column is blurry,
someone cleans it
only when their are inspections.

The bookbag has been sitting
collecting the sounds
that leave the Staten Island Ferry
by foot,
for God knows how long.

When you get off,
everyone looks ahead,
but out of the corners
an entire black sea of iris'
rotates to the aluminum column.

It might be a bomb.

The girl behind the Ms. Anne's counter
is skinny almost,
but her *** is too big,
almost.

Munching on the semi-soft pretzel,
you think about empty calories
and the corners of your mouth get sticky.

The Ferry won't be back,
for another thirty or so
minutes.

Somebody takes out a guitar,
and starts playing
a little Dylan. People
form a circle around him.
This is the American Pow-wow.

You reach in your breastpocket
for the Marlboros,
but you can't smoke here,
and an official looking person
squints at you,
just to drive the point home.

******* smoking laws,
some places just feel good.

This place with all it's ringy sounds,
like the guitar,
and phones beeping with texts
and babies,
deep fathers,
and high mothers.

Just to puff and puff
and push that sugar down
with nicotine would really
up this feeling of comradery.

A guy with a gold-plated shield
on his breastpocket and a blue-button down.
Walks over to the bag.

The iris' move,
people keep talking but
they're just saying words
to make it look like they're talking.

By the time the ferry
rings in baritone,
the bag is gone;
the column is still blurry;
the man is still playing his guitar,
but there's an emptiness.

I am not a writer.

I am a fox
in a man-suit
pretending to be a writer.

Just to trick you all.

Just to trick myself.

If I put down
the pen
and the pretententiousness;
pulled the costume off
in a papery rip like a jet breaking the sky,
and
looked in the mirror
to see
that fire of fur,
then it would mean
that there is something inside of me that I've been using as fuel.

Something
non-renewable.

I can’t really tell you
About love,
You.

I’m interested in *******
Till I’m raw, and holding
You like the universe you
Are.

Sometimes I go around
With hoes,
Smoking blunts till we fume
And sing and laugh
And start getting handsy.

Sometimes they have their kids in the other room,
And they yelp and laugh; when I look into these hoes
Eyes, all I see is aggression. I’m not seeing myself.

I’m not saying these things
The way I want them to be sung.

Most of my money
Runs out the door. Like a bandit,
Trouble likes to peep me when I’m at my worst.

The cops have never been so *****
As when they see me, and they ******
Holsters.

I go alone a lot. To a lot of places.

Hoes, Money, Depression, Debt,
Bad Credit, All kinds of Addiction,
****, Alcohol, ****, Codeine, Nicotine,
My brain is a Chemical Frenzy,
Most days I’m hovering like a mote.

I graduated,
Look at my degree: **** Me.

I have come home to a confining place,
A spit-swallowing place, full of half-breathed people
And tight-lipped sorrows.  

I can only
go
when it’s convenient
And necessary.

I can only
be
when it’s part of a digression,
Never progression.

Food tastes like paper,
I’ve taken a likening.

Lights are fastened to the sky,
The glue wears, washes my eyes in milk,
The jewels drop,
The world ends.

Then it all snaps back into place, eerily,
So clean I never saw it.

Ask me if I can tell you about love,
When I can remember your body
And
It’s casual thump,
Clothed or not,
Drunk or sober,
Speaking or silent.

Ask me if I can drive home and peel back the sky with my left hand, while steering Earth into oblivion,
As I lean across wind-swept galaxies of dust, ash, and settled nicotine
To kiss Florida Orange lips, sip the nectar of insanity, and
Swerve on universe eyes.

Today there were two
people talking too much
and too loud
in the library.


Guy says,
looking down
nose moving with his eyes
over the Times New Roman legs
of a book.

"He broke up with her because
her ***** smelled like ****."

The girl across from him
has tiny fingers with no knuckles,
fingers that make tacking noises
on her Macbook.

She smiles,
in aquamarine
as the screen dazzles her pale
face.

"She probably had a yeast infection,
or something."

There are too many people talking,
but what rights do I have?

The right to laugh with them,
to be a part of it,
to be a comrade
to be mad because they're talking
while I'm pretending not to listen
and agree?

I broke up with a girl
because her ***** smelled like
an *******.

There are too many people
full of double-entendres
and irony.

I make
stupid decisions
when I'm drunk.

I drink whiskey without food
and puke up yellow bile.

I put my hands on girl's *****
who have protective boyfriends
and get into shouting
and physical
matches
with dudes I can't remember.

I talk about love
and stupidity
in the same
sentence.

And I yell
like a *******.

Sometimes I yell some incoherent
*******,
while Josh drives back to the crib,
****
about how
I love the girls I can never ****,
**** the girls I could never love,
and don't know ****
about love
in the first place.

That's what I mean by stupid.

I'm a smurf that doesn't know it's blue
when I'm drunk.

Blue smurf.

Some dudes are down to fight
but they don't.

But what's crazy
is that *******
won't fight around white people
they're trying to impress.

They don't want to be a ****,
even though
they don't know that we're all *****
in some way.

So when I slug you,
I'm not slugging you,
and when you slug me;
you're not slugging me;
we're just trying
to break free.

I miss the days of black pride,
black panthers
and black determinism,
when we weren't killing each other
and we weren't killing them
we were killing
what needed to be killed;
a mindset.

Without Marcus,
Malcolm,
Tupac,
Martin,
and Carlos
we are lost and we fight,
because all the black flowers that used to bloom
no longer bloom,
and the hope the resided in the birth of a screaming child
no longer resides.

I used to love
the ripple
of her.

I Cherished
placque suns.

I walked amongst
the withered oaky clouds
reaching to the earth
in capillaries
of lightning.

I made
****** on journeys
in the night
to the
licquor store.

I could take refuse
and morph it
in my hands,
because they were
her
hands.

She was the gravity of neutrinos,
I spun
and
spun,
and threw off layers,
as her bra
lay on the floor
and the laces
of her ******
lay
whitely
in the corner of the room.

I could've been anywhere
in those final seconds,
the club with it's thousand
orbitals of dancing brilliance,
the park
with it's millionaires
of hate,
the senseless
desert
of my
heart.

I was in the rainforest
feeling the universe
in droplets,
and my pores screamed.

Destruction
is something to reminisce over,
and I moan
like a cat in the night
with it's broken leg.

I moan
like a dwarf star,
getting smaller
and
smaller.

I am a man at
odds
with the sun,
my body
runs
away from me
and my shadow
has seashells in it ears
and wet, floppy, dead gull feathers
hanging from its mouth.

The sun makes
a man
a shoreline, a landfill
when he was once
an
ocean.

I've been playing a game lately.

I stole four or five plastic eggs
from the dollar general,
and when I'm drunk I place
them
around my room,
and look for eggs
in the morning,
hoping to find sobriety or at least
level-headedness
in plastic air pockets.

John and Eric
had gone to New Orleans
to get drunk,
so when they saw the girl
hanging over the railing
of the balcony
pulling her shirt
up and down
up and down,
they hurled beads at her
aiming for the top of her head
so that they'd
circle the drain of her neck
in a circling, shimmering starlet
down
her shoulders.

"Come down here," John yelled.

The girl pulled down her halter-top
one more time,
exposing two
globes of bouncing flesh.

Thinking he had said,
"Pull them down."

It was so loud and everyone was whistling
and there wasn't just a single color of light;
the aura from the club
was a nebula of parti-colored flashing.

later that night
she did come down.

She bumped in between John and Eric
as they navigated her through the crowd
trying their hardest to keep her
from falling over and puking,
while trying to do the same
for themselves.

She hung to them like they were long singular beams of steel.
When she rolled her head around at them
she remembered that they looked
hard and unknown.
And while holding her
in the crooks of their arms,
they maneuvered the flesh in their jeans
with their free hands,
trying to subdue the worlds
rising out of their pants
like volcanoes.

They got her back to the hotel.

A small room
with a tiny old bed, with flower-print
comforters and
an antique dresser with swirling
sculptured wood at its corners.

John slipped off his black leather jacket
and shook his mop of
curly black hair.

Eric plopped onto the bed,
pulling her with him.

She felt him pull,
she felt the gravity of him;
the warp as she bumped against
the bed.

"You guys should come back next year."

"Maybe," Eric said.

She didn't know if she was here or not.
If she'd been here the whole night
or if she was dreaming.

But she felt something physical
on her body.

Eric sat in the corner--
beside the humming a/c
as it vacuumed out the room--
watching with lifeless eyes.

It moved across her stomach.
Slow and continuous.
It moved down to her
pelvis,
slow and continuous.
It reached inside of her
slow and continuous,
and she felt the vacuum of space.

John and Eric
tag-teamed her.

Eric
taking her mouth
and working it around his *****,
saying
"Come on baby,
****."

John pushing against her
his glowing body
making a slapping noise
as he struggled
with his hands under her stomach
making hard dimples of flesh
on her mid-section
as he tried to hold up
her limp body.

"She's out cold,"
he said.

I make trips to the corner store, at 12 in the morning.

Calling all cars to get the **** out of the road,
I'm swerving.

Calling all lights,
blink and be gone. Streetlights,
stoplights, lamps, lighters,
blunt tips, cigarette butts,
all lights be gone.

Dear Earth, get low in the darkness.

On my first trip,
I was accosted by rabid dogs who drooled shoelaces
and I could tell they were being hounded
by the kilter of their angry maws
and sawed-off minds.

They barked like guns.

And they saw me--completely irrelevant---
popping caps off Lokos
taking sips that could **** up an Orca,
completely swimming.

I had to kick them home.

At work today,
Someone got caught stealing five pesos worth of food,
and got threatened with a felony,
but they've got some lint in their pocket,
and knew how to keep it cool.

My girlfriend operates in ideas.

I've been at work for so long,
that I yell and walk around,
like I'm in the shower.

Because there is an opening
fire all over your body
the tight space in your pants
being its nexus.

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.

Some things are sadly poetic
Like the cougar whose boyfriend
Won’t come back outside and she’s alone
At the only table in the cold
smoking a pall mall,
Having a beer.

Some things are refreshingly poetic
like leaving the office for a bit with the boss
and going somewhere
where there are domes made of pure gold
and priests who pour milk on them from
helicopters.

Some things are interestingly poetic;
like the poet, turned novelist, turned artist,
who does landscaping to cover the spread.

Some things are courageously and nostalgically
And hurtfully poetic,
Like not seeing your family for nine years
Because the money’s good where you're at,
And plane tickets and passports are outrageous.

Some things should not be
poetic, but they are, because they are truthful
And that is verse;
like the waitress who was *****
when she cashed her check at a grocery store
after the night shift
and she wasn’t the only one in her car
when she got back.

Some things are poetry because they come
Into this world quietly
And bleeding internally,
and yet they survive
Even though their lungs are full of fluid,
And they can barely breathe.

Some things are poetry because they happened
And nothing can change that.

And because
Poetry is
unchangeable, immovable, and
grotesque, beautiful, uncomfortable, calming,
disfiguring, life-giving, ****** up,
Possibly ******, possibly a nectar
That God
or whoever the ****
allowed to be put on paper,
Possibly a way to talk about pain,
Possibly roided up with someone else’s words,
Possibly a way to talk about
the pure dream of a girl’s body
Without being  a ***** *****.

Poetry is love in the worst
and most unimaginable ways.

The police
watch the *******;
put bass in their voice
when they talk to me
"Hey buddy,
you know your tail-lights were out?"
All that bass.

Cops always call me buddy
and I just want to flick my switch
and cut a *******,
but I don't
I gotta stay steady.

*******,
I'm just trying to get to work
on time
and you might get me fired,
but that don't matter,
you want to keep me in my place;
make sure to rest your hand
on your holster
as you're leaning into my driver's side window.

I'm just trying to pay my bills
aren't you?

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.

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.

Black girl
with eyes
like coals in snow.

Black girl with super-dark skin,
that just  
makes
me
cry.

Black girl
with long
curly hair
littered with light.

Black girl
with lips like slices
of wet wings,
lips thin
as
happiness.

Black girl
with hazelnut eyes
with a grey
bent.

Black girl that knows how to make
me so happy in the cold,
with her closet-full of words
that can make a ******
think of warm weather.

Together we meet
in the woods,
at the cabin front-steps
taking turns
twirling
each other's cheeks,
touching each other's
lips
and I just want you to know
that there are no dreary
days
ahead,
even when it is cold
and we have to hold
each other
to hold
everything
inside.

Because we might just burst;
explode
in a thousand limbs climbing like spiders.

When I place my heart
in hell,
I place it in your frying pan.

When we ****
I see the listlessness in your eyes,
and I'm not hurt,
because at least you're there,
and you're letting me enter
you
for
a
moment.

At least your letting me be a part of you,
and that's what I think *** is,
more than an entering of the body,
it's an entering of the soul.

So when I push my *****
I push
my hopes
my regrets
my hurtfulness
and my
******-sociological
*******.

Can you take me,
because I'm crazy
and I've got a few ****** up
idiosyncracies.

So when I catch
this love **** quick,
it's on a whole 'nother tip.

I might just fall in love,
and Natalie might come calling
again,
so don't be hurt
when I resume with her
and I chase every single girl
I could have loved
into the distance.

Don't be hurt,
because
misguidedly,
I think I'm meant to be with her.

Carmen's legs
are pixilated cerulean.

Rubbing beasts
that itch at untouchable
bruises beneath her skin.

Her computer is on.

She rests crossed legs
on its desk.

There's something sticky about her skin.

Carmen's date is calling,
her speakers make a sound
like **** plopping in a toilet.

The webcam blinks
like Sauron's eye.

Carmen has never had
any of the cards
in her hands.

Not a whiff of a queen of hearts
or a jack
of all trades.

It seems she's been slipping for awhile now,
in her black room, colored
by the glow of some
techni-cyclops'
cavernous mouth,
crimson, heart-shaped teeth,
and scythe tongue.

She has never known the war machine
of love,
or the war machine of self-determinism.

Now she does,
her compudate buzzes on-screen.

Tiny sprouted pixels
jump into a constantly
buzzing whole.

He's got a bored face,
and Carmen knows this is the look
of the generation.



Carmen lifts her legs from the desk.

Puts her hands on her lap.

Licks her lips.

She wants to know
what lowered human beings
do when they are restless.

She is seeking something
moreso
philosophical
than
******.

"Bored, much?"

Carmen asks sardonically.

He took it literally.

He jumped at attention.

"Oh, no,
now that I've seen you."

"How do these things work?"

"Well, I guess we talk to each other,
and if you like me
then we go from there."

And to Carmen this was reticence,
this was blasphemy.

She had the cards in her hands,
finally.

Carmen's legs are pixilated  high cerulean.

Cerulean the color of
a tiger ocean,
****** cakes,
slushies,
a sun-****** sky,
a corpse. Skin against a computer screen.

Just another black man
Just another black body
Just another black tomb
A bullet pushes itself
Through a skull
Pops out the other side
And skids
Along the asphalt
The gun is still in
His hand,
He can’t release it now,
He will forever
Have a clenched fist
A ball of fury
A chamber of memories
A prison inside the palm
Shackled to the ground
They don’t even have
To snap on the cuffs
He’s somewhere else
But that doesn’t matter
Just another black body
Black bag
Black tomb.

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 have written so much
****** poetry across this city;

left it in bars, under streetlights, and

In the bathrooms where people have ******
all over the toilet seats
and I had to use my poems
to clean it up.

They are on napkins
and receipts;
pieces of toilet paper,
and even a one-liner
on the carcass
of a piece of paper
that once held a straw.

The words get soggy on wet bars
and bloom like black flowers
losing all consistency and coherence.

Sometimes
I write them out of pure impetus.

To get me going,
I need a couple beers and those
Pabst-drinking, past-drunk
drunk girls that get close up to you
and put their lips on your earlobes
like they want to tell you a secret

But all you get is a present
of soft stinging breath.

Sometimes
I write them for some girl I meet,
like the one who came up and sat down
right beside me.

She said her name was
so and so.

I said my name was
so and so,

so we got to talking

And the topic finally reared its
fat, ugly head:

“Are you going to school?”

“Yea I go to State”

“Oh that’s cool, whats your major?”

“Creative writing”

Then she smiles at me
like I’ve got some broccoli
in my teeth,

and she wants to figure out a way to tell me

without breaking
this three-beer-good-buzzing mood,

finally she says:

“write me something”

And I become a dog for her.

In my doggish way
I take my tail
out of my pocket
and tuck it's wiggling self
onto a napkin.

I write
about how meeting someone new,
is like trying to figure out
if what you’re looking at is a skyscraper
or a mountain,
or just a Norfolk freight train
barreling down the tracks
with your name on it’s front grille.

Angela,
would you ever
come back?

I've been asking
this question
as the licquor
subsides.

I've been
sleeping
on it,
just to take
its weight down.

I ate
three tasteless burgers,
and rummaged
through their tomatoes
looking for your lips
red as cherries.

Hopefulness
is a disease,
a cancer
because it spreads
in violent fingers.

The **** of my heart
has begun
before the burgers
settled.

She says I have a ness
about me,
a sadness,
an angriness,
a hatefulness,
a loch ness.

I haven't washed my hoodie
in a week, the toothpaste splatter
on my shoulder
looks like come,
maybe it's laziness.