"She talkin
about quittin me,
she said
'I'm tired of you coming
over here
sweet-talking
just to get in the door,
then
you go upside
my head
once you inside,
no,
not anymore,'
I said,
'baby,
I apologized for all that
before,
why you keep bringing
up
old ****?
You need
to learn how to forgive
and forget.
You know
I don't mean nothin by it,
fuhreal.
But all you ever do
is talk about
what I am
doing wrong
what I have done
to you,
can't we just be cordial
and sip on this thing
I brought over?'"


"So she let me
in
and
we sipped that night."

I picture them glued hotly to each other
on a couch;
a bed;
scrambling
together
drunk out of their minds
on
the ***** tile
in the kitchen;
two plaster figures
stuck together
by
bad chance
and
some fault of fire.

Where is the soldier
who floundered in his backyard?

Amidst the windswept sawgrass,
(Which, by the way,
Cut so hard against his skin)
He felt the sensitivity of his own lost soul,
So on the surface,
that it was hurt by its own feeling.

He, who dipped and swayed,
And felt angry, perverted, and *****,
lonely, now,
He lets his mind wander,
When he's never done that before.

Now he is away,
Careening through space, time,
and *****.

Peicing together destruction,
and how much humanity and evil,
Well up from us
as a reaction to death,
How so frail we are,
How ***** releases a man.

Where the horizon finally finds itself, he has been lifted,
Too heaven,
Among God and Gods and monkeys
and clouds.

Too where gunsmoke rises eternally,
With the heartbeat of man,
A slow, hollow drumming,
emptiest,
The emptiest.

In the brotherhood of the melting sunset,
Where molten horizon simmers overtop the edges of the pines,
And the whole world is finally pure chaos,
sadness and beauty.

He reaches the bottom of his dreams,
and still wandering,
Goes back into the house,
To ******* so much and hard that it hurts,
To sleep.

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.

Once the levers are pulled down
squealing and removing themselves from silence,
once we become noisy
and our baritones are barges
across rivers that separate us,
once you become the Rock of Gibraltar
and I can point my nose at you in the fog
to gauge not only distance,
but time as well,
then I think
it will resume.

But as the night holds your tongue
on its own tongue, moving you around
inside its mouth in a *** of dense
violet clouds, as so many cities burn in the sky,
I will never hear a thing.

I will only see
your eyes running the gauntlet
of a dense violet night and its violence
of lighthouses revolving quicker than pulsars,
increasing the walls of space.

They scream in the void
for some empty barge and its horn
of compassion.

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.

What does a grown-*** man
do?

Does he wear a suit
and
tie?

Does he fish on the weekends?

Does he go to work in the morning,
and deal with constant pressures
on his head?

I think a grown-*** man
kicks his kids out
when
they're not acting correct.

I think he cries
when they sleep
in places that aren't home,
and scrounge
pennies
from their pockets
to get some Micky D's.

A grown-*** man
loves his life
because this is the only one he has
no matter
how
bad.

When he goes to work
he listens to jazz
because the trumpets
remind of him of his
baby's
gurgles
and
that child going hungry
isn't an option.

His wife and him fight
because he thinks she's not
raising the kids right,
when she really is,
but he's really got fear in his heart,
the good kind,
the kind that makes him compassionate
when he kisses his
baby daughter's
lips
before the sun has come up.

When I think of a grown-*** man
I think of my father,
even when he's ****** up
to the nth degree
and I can say I love him
because he is the tree
and he has carefully
tended my plot of earth
even when he dealt with a dearth
of love.

A lucid mind
is bad for this.

For this
you need to be
broken
or
bruised.

Free concerts
are full of potheads,
they get all in your ear
and start talking about
the land of milk and honey,
DENVER ******* COLORADO.

The beers cost
15 bucks
for pisswater
and barely a pint.

The girls
all wear pink spaghetti straps
sagging acid-wash jeans,
and a smell like
old milk.

The old people
dance.

the old people dance;
there wrinkly
pterodactyl arms
flapping as they swirl the air
with bad knuckles.

The air smells,
like sweat.

Sweat smells like
toilet water.

Free concerts are usually outside,
so hope to ******* Gaia that it doesn't rain,
because you're stuck there,
drunk and yelling
dancing and laughing
******* and falling.

Matt, Dang and Me.

We spent our summer going to free concerts,

because the girls that go to free concerts
think tattoos and finger-******* and toilet humor
is more ****
than money.

The old people dance with you
performing some type of necromancy
in the air
that brings dead things inside of you
back to life.

And the bud,
it's so ******* sticky,
and it causes a hacking
paroxysm of coughing
to the point that you can
taste the blood in your mouth,

because those people from
DENVER ******* COLORADO,
really know their ****.

"I don't really like sports."

I feel like
you've been mis-advertising
yourself.

On your profile
your likes are:
Soccer.
Basketball.
Football.
And
Rugby.

"That's cool."

I'll say anything to get
a girl
to let me stick my hands
in her pants;
even if it means
sacrificing
morals
and
sports.

**** cops
and everything they don't do.

**** cops
who don't talk to peopl
like they are people,
who talk to them like witnesses
or victims.

**** cops
who put their badges down at night
and listen to their friends tell black jokes
and don't say a word.
(This goes for white and black cops.)

**** cops,
I've got nothing more to say,
all they've done is taken
when i've been around;
ransacked my room
and talked to me
like I'm an idiot,
*******.

Cops don't keep ******* safe,
don't want to
and never wanted to.

I eat your face
with my tongue
because it tastes good,
and the rough
fang-like pores
take flakes of your
soft skin into my stomach;
flakes of you;
I have broken you;
I can break you;
I can take tiny pieces
of you
and digest them.

I can eat your face,
I can eat your ears,
your nose,
your mouth,
the cleft in your chin,
your *******
a whole ***,
a cheek of your ***,
a calf muscle,
your upper quadricep
your lower intestine
your right lung,
and finally
your heart.

I can **** you with my love, because I will become a monster with a belly for you.

**** it,
imma go to the store
and get a few more
beers and some marlboros
im stumbling
all over the place
making circles in the hardwood
with my feet
and swing doors in the air closed
with spaghetti in my veins,
but imma make it,
imma shut that *******
dog up
too,
keeps barking,
shut the **** UP.

"That's Rob's dog,"
Elcie says,
spit ripples at the corners
of her mouth,
and some baked ziti
is rumored to be
in the toilet.

That ******* thing
is getting six 60 milogram
perky sets in his morning kibble,

right after I puke
some more baked ziti
and wodka.

It's that time of night when i get feverish
in my dreams, ******* girls with **** loaded,
thighs gloating and supple, pressure of *******
in between us, when I hear the thump.

A slamming; a jarring; a catapaulting into never.

Carlos lost his wife, she dipped in the middle of the night
when he'd passed out, she'd slipped out, gripped the kids
over their hidden mouths and whispered something about tipping out,
Pop had gone insane now.

Carlos broke a month later.

Told me and Ash to take everything. Exhaled a marlboro,
shucked his shoulders, ripped open that tiny Celica
and shifted. Gone.

Burns black-eyed into the carpet, bottles on the sill, pacifiers thrown like condoms--
haphazard, but carefully placed.

Now the people living there
throw the girl around,
she cries.

there are two dimensions
to this living.
One is the surface,
the ethereal,
the light to the dark.
The shadow to the skin:
The depth of pigment.
But then, there is the deeper sin
the battering within.
The judgment of blackness
based on skin.
It has hounded us,
through our history,
from House to field.
from basketball court
to court house.
From boardroom
to dorm room
to class room
to living room.
Granny used to say,
ooh girl you've got good hair.
Nice and wavy,
like your grandpappy's.
Used to say,
see you're the pretty one.
Running her fingertips
along our cheeks,
mired in awe
of our caramel complexion.
while like tar,
it stuck to the minds
of our classmates,
cohorts,
coworkers.
With jealousy
they said light-skinned,
not black enough,
not us enough.
not us enough.
when one day in class,
the teacher had asked,
"what do mommy and daddy do?"
Janitor.
Works for the state.
Garbageman.
we piped up proudly,
"my mommy and daddy have college degrees,
one creates houses
the other works in network security"
all the while,
our classmates had laughed,
made fun of us,
"so, that's why you don't talk black"
Two smart ******,
bred a smart *****.
And so the story of us,
had morphed
from the days of Angela Davis,
to this new form of self-hatred.
the valley between us
suffered a cataclysm
and became a canyon.
Continued to grow,
our skin a stain,
and as actors we had to train,
mellowing our dialect
just to make it seem as if we had intellect,
cause we all know a succesful black man,
has two distinct voices,
and not through his own choices,
it is bred from necessity.
can't sit in front of white man
and talk like pickaninny.
got so comfortable out of our own skin,
that we felt we were the ones
digging out the edges of the canyon.
So far thrown from blackness
that maybe this is how they separate us,
make us hate ourselves
and love they wealth.
make us hate our hair
and love they locks.
Cause like superheroes
we switch from day out
to day in.
Being dark, light or caramel complexioned
we stay hounded by
how close we get to whitening.

Half a world away
I day-
dreamed of you dancing in
the sun
your eyes a thousand stars
lifting to the heavens
as the music coursed through your veins
and your body shimmered
in the glittering rain
a thousand souls beside you
all heartbeats one

Your spirit finally freed
your wings unschackled
the soul no longer heavy

I dream
that in that
crowd
a face turns towards
you
in the sea
two pairs of eyes meet
a nova explodes
a giant star collapsing pulls
you
and he
and you do not think
of me.

I swear,
I love
a girl
with
biggg-***
lips.

The kind of lips
that could pull a ****** into
a sanatarium.

I'd go crazy
willingly.

Put me in the strait-jacket
of your mouth.

I'll kiss every crevice because
you've got two anacondas of muscle covering
perfect teeth.

I'll grip the shoulders of your jaw,
as you squeeze me with those
biggg-*** lips
so hard
that my backbones
break.

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.

So much time
has passed
since you grabbed me by the shoulders,
and yelled
at me
about stealing money from my parents.

You are the asphalt.
You are the reflectors.
You are the speed limits.
You are the road.

I came to visit you,
when you were laid up in the hospital,
and I felt all right
about crying.

I have been in love
by now,
and you know about it.

Bojangles tastes like happiness
when we sit in the lobby,
over cajun fries,
and you tell me about
my grandmother.

Because she was so strong
in her love
and you
were so weak.

"You are my hero,"
I said.

And meant it,
even now
when I am
restless
and unsure.

Bills
are not paid in full
by the end of the month,
and I have a thousand loan checks to fill in;
but I will pay them in your stern and gentle voice.

I think
that there are some things that I am missing on,
so,
I will never plan
your funeral.

Sometimes
I check up on her.

(I believed it to be
Some masochism
deep within
me.)

Over facebook.

We're no longer facebook friends,
but I gather snapshots
of her life
through her profile pic.

I
now
like to think of it
as a healthy breakup.

A way of communicating
while not communicating.

But before it was horrible;
before I'd get depressed
just seeing her hair.

He is wearing a tux
and holds her around the waist.

Her purple dress is ruffled
at the hips and where
her tiny ******* nip outward.

Their eyes are closed full
of something that only they could explain
between each other.

Lips are smushed,
her very red,
red giant red,
lips are softened against his.

He is taller than her,
but not by much.

And they seem happy
at whatever wedding,
gala,
or whatever Bourgeoisie **** they were doing.

And
before now,
I probably would've raided my stash of Wild Turkey;
cried in my room for a few days;
skipped meals.

But now,
I feel content.

Happy.

Not so alone
and wishful.

I don't miss her anymore, or love her for that matter. And I'm happy that she has found someone to begin that journey all over again with.

This is how we atone for things.

A ritual
of constant pain
ending
in
contentment.

I'm tired of seeing dudes
get killed
over some *******.

STOP THE GUNPLAY.

Stop the role of the gun
and misused bullet,
it penetrates
too much.

Too many kids
getting strangled
in the dark,
too many mothers
left behind
in the acrid past-tense;
too many of the homies
seeing blinding lights
and useless flights.

The gravel crunches
as we walk
and it's cold.

We push our breaths out
of chapped lips, and wipe
away dried spit, with nicotine
fingers.

Pigeon feels the baggies in his pockets
full of vicodin,
that's gonna get us ****** up.

His fingers look like earthworms through his jeans
as he gropes for the baggy.

I get that jolt, just thinking about it;

that jolt of happiness you feel right before you get
real ****** up.

I look around and pull out a Camel Light,
because that's all we smoke.

And light up. It's real
white out, white and cold.

The moon's fat as a snowflake
and foggy up there too.

I move my toes,
and can't feel a thing,

****.

We crunch through the woods,
catching glimpses of the moon, and the lake
through the trees.

I want to hit this fifth of Henny
jerking in my backpocket,
but I'm saving it.

Pigeon stops.

Me and Gus keep walking.

Pigeon coos.

We turn around.

He whips out the plastic baggy,

In the moonlight the Vicodins look
like those tiny, candy skulls you get on halloween.

Daddy
woke up
one morning
to mommy puking.

The curly jet-black knots of hair
on his pink-white chest
shivered
under the slicing ceiling fan.

He scratched his *****, and cleared his throat in a metallic ****** of congealed beer and bile,
it sounded like he was cutting something in his mouth with his tongue.

Rolling over,
he fumbled for his golden Rolex
on the night table,
pushing off
mommy's bangles
and bracelets
jingling to the floor
in a golden mess
that seemed wet
with light.

Rolling over,
back again
to his back
he clicked on the Rolex.

He held up his wrist in
the sun,
and,
**** me,
the light
was coming off it so hard
and strong
that he had
to cover his eyes
just to keep from seeing
all that light
and talent.

"You all right in there?"

He asked,
slipping on his boxers,
working his ****
with his golden-wristed hand
into the fabric.

In the bathroom,
mommy heard daddy's wrist click,
she wiped her mouth
on an oversized shirt sleeve,
and held her stomach.

An accumulation
of cells
split
over and over again
floating and shaking
in mommy's ******,
and she didn't know
what beer and bile
could make.

She didn't know how hard it would be
to cut that thing out.

The liquor doesn't bite anymore,
it comes over me,
in a flowering,
a thunder-wave.

I have dreams of killing him,
with a chainsaw and a rose,
the rose for you
to place
over the tendrils of his separated neck.

Or smashing his face
into a stone lion's mouth,
then forcing him,
inch by wriggling inch
into a granite maw,
trapped forever
behind the vicious wardens
of stone canines and cement incisors.

I usually dream drunk,
too wild in myself,
to roam the day sober.

So, work is drunk;
eating is drunk;
breathing is drunk;

Orange juice spiked,
ready to go.

Meatloaf dinner; date with milk, *****, and sweating
at five.

Can't you see the carnage?

The flotsam;
The raft of bodies
of stupid, pale men
who give out their positions
to hateful women.

I'm not one to hold on,
when I know that I am being let go.

Don't cry and act like I've wronged you,
because you know that's not right.

When I reached out for you countless times
you burrowed deeper into the mud,
and I do not chase crayfish,
because we are not crayfish.

Pretend that I am evil and malicious,
but you know that you can only act that way.

I have a heart and it doesn't lie,
even when it finds a mattress of magpies.

I never had intentions to get you in bed,
I just wanted you to come inside
for some coffee and some sober.

I cannot speed up like a high contrast mix,
I cannot slow down chopped and *******,
I can only operate on what my heart feels
and what your heart tells it to feel.

And your heart is telling me to move on,
to churn on the exit ramps.

I have not wronged you in the right way,
or righted you in the wrong way.

Is caring about you the next left?
Is that where the houses knock their feet
on the concrete and the guardrail
at the dead end?

If so, hate me for good,
**** the engine
and idle with your lips on the guardrail.

you look so good
like a goddess
where's the courage to tell you?

do
I know the right words?

An innocence of love like
a bird in the sky,
in its cerulean heaven,
all its purity
untainted.

all the painters in the world
using all their colors
like ravens and vultures,
and the advertisers
using maroon and crimson
like doves and love,
they just don't know.

How you look in a snapshot,
is better than a mural.

I hate that we can't talk any more,
seems decrepit, I'm so poor,
spoiled by the gift of your lost love,
like a pearl in my mouth,
every gulp of the sea
is a tearjerker.

All I want is love and affection
from the eden of your love,
the juice of your apple
a knowledge
only concerning to gods.

The seed of your body,
a peachtree paradise,
each pod dropping to the body of my death,
like the shroud of renewal.

Each new picture of you:
the destruction of your youth,
and the eruption of your wonderland,
is another nail,
another regretful wish
that I'd seen and understood
everything beautiful about you.

Even in the moontide hours,
when the dawn brawled
and your teeth crawled against the loose skin of my earlobes
as you gripped with pearly whites
my lying flesh,
and my lips touched every truth you'd never known.

Only god could ever know the pain of now.
Only I could ever wish I knew your heaven.

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.

Have you had enough,
I'm okay,
the pianos
are in baritone.

I wait on the shores.

I believe that anger
is a result
of intensity.

The heart knows
no
flower
better
than
anger.

So,
I work it,
I put the anger in my belly
and put
whiskey
in there
to dull it.

I have had loves,
but I wake up to you.

I have known
heartbreak
but steel is inside of me.

I could break
because it is inside of me
to break.

But i am not angry
to break over you.

I can pick apart
objective pieces in others,
but the sculpture of you
is too real
to understand.

I could say I love you,
that's a lie,
I need you
in order to become a better me.

There is a man
who writes signs
for the homeless,
puts different lives
on display,
spends his time
night and day
over squares of cardboard
or triangles of vinyl,
he turns them into
war vets
or leukemia survivors,
he slaves away
so that they'll get
people to listen,
he wants people
to hear the heart
of the world murmuring
as it cries,
because we have left
them,
their lack of a place
to reside,
is our society's dark side,
so he is not a man
of the people
he is a man for the people,
he wants that spare
nickel,
dime,
or dollar
as much for them
as his words
are for himself
and his own sense
of redemption,
because this world
has gone cold on the surface
but it's heart
still burns,
still makes you uncomfortable,
when you see his signs
in the hands
of men and women
in the grassy medians.

You are too drunk, now.

But the ulcer juices;
and you know it's finally true.

I have run down
broken stairs,
I have twisted
inside
twisted showers,
bent backwards
on five-fingered clocks,
in the fray
I rumbled
with a spider
of a woman
as she crawled on eight legs
over my sternum
to my lips,
at the top of the bridge of the world,
the world
turned
rightside
up
and the sky
was peopled by
clouds the size
of goldfish,
and the sun
was a dappling bowl
in which people put their
hands
to wash them of pain,
and so the world was all right,
but I couldn't handle
so much happiness,
none of the other
fish
looked like you,
even as I looked up
out of my
apartment
made of jenga blocks,
so I travelled back down
the twisted
showers,
broken
stairs,
and over the underbelly
of the bridge,
until I held you in my arms;
your tiny body
whole to me again,
I could touch the sky
when I touched your body
and told you to call me
whenever you needed me,
but you walked away,
and so I returned
to that hell
of perfection.

I hate living in the sky,
the ocean where the fish
look all the same
and there are no real clouds
to speak of.

I hate taking twisted showers,
and rumbling with spider-women,
I hate bridges that bridge
worlds.

Firstly, I hate love,
Secondly, I hate heartbreak,
Thirdly, I can't live without those two things.

I'm patiently waiting
for a gift
from Satan,
or the heaven's above,
something to get me
through this,
this little pearl
of wisdom
makes me push for it
through self-derision,
so when I say
that
I got the seed
for the next
demon
in my sack,
I'm telling you
that I'm at the lowest
point
of the world,
the deepest
heaven,
a heaven
of pain,
and malicious
thoughts
birthing
something vicious,
I want you to understand,
that I need
a few wishes,
a genie
'needs to start doling
out pearls
instead of blazing palaces
and
some federal loans,
I can do nothing
with the biggest houses; the biggest debt
I have to pay
is my pain
which is boiling underneath
my skin,
and it doesn't feel
like God is listening
or handing out grants
with my name
in gold ink.

Touch me with your love
and I might touch your temples
with a fist
and in its grimy depths
there is salvation
that can get you and me both
out of this
heaven of pain.

"Oh my god,
mane,
this girl
she just broke apart,
so soft too."

Heck takes his hands
and makes this snaking motion
in the air.

He starts at the top,
his hands shaking
where her **** would be
then he curves inward
moving down her body,
his tiny, reddened, scabbed knuckles
shake at the invisible waist of her
then his hands flash out
wide,

"Oh mane,
this girl had a big one,
thing was big and gorgeous."

Heck stares
off,
lost in the reverie
of the soft girl
that just broke apart for him.

He stares off
as his drink gets warmer
and the tiny yellow bubbles
at the bottom of his mug
wobble to the top
and pop.

I take a few more drags of my Marlboro
and snort some more of my drink
and as we sit at that bar
where there were girls everywhere
Heck sits in his stool turned toward me,
his hands massaging his thighs
and staring up,
thinking about the girl
that broke herself for him.

Just to be with him.

Apples and Oranges
means
that I give you something
of lesser value
and you give me something
of even
lesser value.

Like Natalie asked for the rent money
and picked at the lint in my jeans pocket,
formulated a ball of it
worked that little ball through the hole in my pocket,
to my *****,
they smelled horrible,
I knew it,
massaged that ball around my *****,
pulled it back through the hole,
out of the humidity of my pocket
and put it in her palm.

"You *******,
either you get me the rent
or I'm calling the police
and having you taken out of here."

"My name's on the lease too."

"I don't give a ****,
you're not paying it."

Apples and Oranges.

One time Heck found me in a bar bathroom, lying unconscious.

He carried me home,
even as he stumbled
under his own weight.

she's so anxious, she's so real,
she wants to move on,
but that **** just won't heal.

wants to forget about the past,
but she's real forreal.
keeps her lips juicy,
but they never peal.

Her thighs are getting bigger,
her waist is getting thicker,
and when she looks in the mirror,
she can't see what I see.

You and me,
we don't connect
like we used to.

The days are searing,
the sun's a cowboy,
clouds are wolves,
we are the unbroken plain.

We are simply the stage.

We are nothing new.

We won't make it like this,
gnawing at each other,
lying and pretending
that we aren't interested
in the running of the wolves,
or the cackling gunfire
that cowboys let loose in joyous screams.

Ravaging ourselves,
the west blackens as the smell of coal,
acrid, spreads through the air.

Somewhere, a burning
is beginning in the most unnatural way.

Somewhere we feel a tear
in the fabric of ourselves,
where a giant, constant fire
destroying
burns.

No more long, slow days
of pushing through
fatigue and boredom,
we've stagnated long enough
they say.

Now the wind kicks up a renewed warmth
that greets us in the morning over the white-capped mountains.
Now the sun sets and shrouds a cloudless sky in gold.

We hear voices, whispers
saying someday soon we'll go out
to ****
or be killed.

And it's scary how much it excites us
to fantasize about death;
about our role in catastrophe
and the empty glory.

Sometimes death hurtles through the beautiful
high, azure sky. And leaves
not a mark, not even a cool shadow on the ground
as it flutters harmlessly to the earth
bemusing us. underwhelming us.

Some weeks are so quiet
that we touch the nuts and bolts
of true nothing
too much.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
feel too little and lose sight
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
of our purpose. Lose sight
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
of the need
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000d000000000000000­000000000000000
for one. Lose sight
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
of memories of ******* by the fire.
Lose sight of what there is
to guard inside of us, to keep
000000000000000000000000000000000000000
whole and untouched
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
.
Lose sight
of why we're
guarding it, why
we're trying to, need to. Lose sight
of what the air tasted like back home.
We just lose.

Sandstorms kick up giant tornados
of dust, pebbles and sand
cutting silently across the burning concrete.

We stand
in their way,
constantly.

To keep busy
we tell
the same stories
so many times.

Now they dive out
of our mouths dropping weightlessly,
not even the strength to carry a wingbeat.

We barely believe ourselves anymore,
that's what we say.

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.

The chaos of my childhood haunts me.

Daddy's fist, mommy's ****** broken nose, streamers of blood, lawnmower catching on fire and the firemen trying to cop a feel of my mother, mommy yelling, me getting kicked out of pop's house, living nowhere for awhile, dumpsters, stumbling drunk into an old sewer, sleeping on ****, ******* in my sleep, waking up smelling stale like ammonia, car accident, fighting the guy who hit us because he called Josey a *****, pop slamming me into the refrigerator, me knocking him unconscious, levelling a knife on him once, fighting everybody, feeling like life was a fight, like i couldn't trust nobody. Even my new friends, brought beef to my house, a kid brought him and a whole bunch of other shaved-head ***** over in a jeep. I came outside with a butcher knife.
now i've got this flock inside of me,
because whenever I feel someone talking ****,
i just want to fight,
just want to react.

I hold all the good things inside of me
deep within,
even the little lambs
with pink, innocent lips
who are suckling and hungry for the thing i was really missing:
love.

Hello love,
I've been away for a while,
contemplating this degraded earth,
putting different things into place.

I know you've moved on,
but I still think about your lips.

The sweetest joy of an impermanent heaven,
and the messengers of hope.

I took too much time loving you,
too much time holding you.

Our bodies were the worlds
separated by eternity,
your eyes
the distance
I could not bridge.

Wishing I could make you mine
was stupidity
marching in time,
and off-step.

Pearlesque moon played the lighting,
in our drama,
as I held you on top of my car,
lavishing in your plums of delight
and your wettest ******
of ecstasy.

Don't let me go now,
when I've just begun to remember
you.

My teeth feel like plastic,
and I'm
going
hungry.

Today, is the day,
that I become a man.

Don't you know
I'm freaking?

Or did you think
the biggest control
was the one at your knees?

When I finally get out of here,
all the cardboard in the world
couldn't box me.

Punch me Love,
make my nose bleed.

I want to take it;
I need it my brutal valentine;
from you to me
I have nowhere to go;
you are desperate.

We are holy creatures,
and don't even know it.

Nelle says
like too much salt
there's such a thing
as too much love.

When it wraps you up against yourself
and you become the wall against which you are trying to force
through.

You become the line of fire
and the angling arrow.

Sometimes too many slings
reach the heart,
and everything tastes like wood
or lead.

A good rabbit can go bad,
with too many arrows
or
too many bullets.

Like hunting
love takes patience;
like salt,
a person can get stones
inside of themselves
when they get too full
on love.

The kind of stones
you can't **** out.

Home is
a hurt place;
the cut umbilical cord;
the roaring in the ears
and
the solitude;
what a person becomes
when
they build something
inside of
themselves;
crying;
thirty miles away
of a thousand miles
plus the moon;
crossing the train tracks
not knowing that there was such a thing
as crossing the train tracks
before
you crossed them;
a swing set
swinging
forever;
9/11
and Ma's
in the living room
bawling
while
Grandma
holds her
knowing
that those two towers
meant something,
more
than
just two pillars
and travelling back with Ma
as she weaves her way
with a tissue
and blotted eyes
to the day
her brother
and father
went to the top
of the trade centers
and stradled the railing
almost flying;
grandad
having a heart attack
because of his daily morning
tonic:
two eggs,
lemon juice
and a cigarette,
before
the umbilical cord
was cut;
Uncle
not being around,
disappearing
right after
Grandad
died;
dad
beating the **** out of
Ma
one night;
is Ma,
Joci,
Grandma
and Me;
getting your *** kicked
by Gary
and Ma
sending you back out
to get some more;
fear
and biting nails;
distant;
thirty miles
away of a thousand miles
plus the moon;
a distance;
being so hot with blood
in an all-white classroom,
while somebody asks you:
"Have you ever been shot?";
isolation;

Home is
hatred,
a slow growing,
well-tuned,
well-constructed
reinforced
aluminum bat
that dings
the ribs.

Home is the sound
of hollowness,
the ability to ding.

Home is a distance.
Home is further.
Home is the hurt place
inside the ribs.

Hometown girls
are real with you.
If they don't like you,
they'll even make their *****
look ugly;
pulling them in all the way
to the tops of their thighs
through their buttholes
and you can smell the stench
in your brain.

But when they let you in,
when they let you sit on their ears,
it's like warp-drive.

They smoke virginia slims,
because that's what their mom's smoke,
and the bags under their eyes
are filled with nicotine,
but they're pretty bags,
purses of flesh
full with the kinetic beauty of coal.

Hometown girls are mostly black,
mostly white,
fifty-fity,
but nobody's checking
and when they whisper something nice in your ear
it's colored with a microbrew
or a wheel of Jim Beam.

Sometimes they'll take you by the wrist
into the bathrooms;
sometimes they'll take your drink
when you're not looking
and smile when you catch them
with it on their lips.

But that smile is good even,
on par with a supernova
in its ability to crush
and make beautiful.


But most of the time,
they stand around
outside Casbah
and Motorco
--if they're bougie
it'll be West End--
in the middle of the night
under the porch of the sky
looking out with amber
slitted eyes
like cats,
their legs twitching thoughtfully
as they wait for cabs
and pick at the night.

Hometown girls
are ****/beautiful
because they'll watch your every move
from the gallery
out of empathy,
knowing they've been that ***** before,
knowing they've been that lonely,
knowing they just want to get drunk
and want to be around randoms
that aren't so random.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Blueberry pancakes."

And she got out of bed,
tapped me on the neck with her lips,
a good love tap,
and walked out naked to the kitchen
her *** and quads just bouncing
and beautiful.

I could see her in the kitchen,
all of her,
and i rolled over to her side,
where her pillow was,
took a long drag
of her smell,
and just passed out.

She woke me up
and I dipped blueberries
and fluff into lakes of syrup
and we watched TV and laid together
for a while.

Just close to each other.

I worked on her car the whole day,
changed her oil,
plugged a blown gasket,
and came back in when the streetlights
were starting to flicker on
And that Saturday
I got to lay down with her the rest of the night
and we were realistically happy.

What I really think it was,
was that
our dreams,
when we allowed them to,
coincided
beautifully.

He drinks, he forgets
Where he is and why he is there.

He begins to lose himself in his darkness,
Begins to erupt from within.

He stops caring,
Or begins to care too much.

He wishes himself born again
in the purifying sunlight of dappled spring mornings, because he wishes to start over again.

He starts to do things harder than ever,
He gives himself over to the mercury of the moment,
He bathes in his own sin,
Finds the wash of it freezingly refreshing
And repulsive all at once.

He stops talking,
Starts wishing to enjoy the ornateness of youth.

Feels he's old at 25,
Starts to change his mind.

Forgets everything he's learned over a quarter century
And goes back to rudderless childhood,
Even worse in adulthood.

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?

Get them to hate me,
that's how I get
over heartbreak,
that and drinking Wild Turkey,
smoking Marlboros
and ******* off my family,
is how i make it through every
one,
even the real sun-filled days
with girls of skin made of coffee-colored ultra-violence.

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.

I don't know what to say to you,
To keep you from hating me,
And maybe that's what'$ best for you right now,
To hate me.