there is blood and grime and rust already
in my backyard and on my hands.
the unlucky baby birds that fall down during june
into my over-chlorinated swimming pool
are ironic.
there are yellow flowers in my garden that i used to take pictures of
before i grew
bored.
and love became a hole
waiting to be filled.
and men
and life became predictable as windchimes.
and
i fell
into all the cracks.

compasses, clocks, knives, are useless now.
clues, few.
coffinlike rooms full of certain exclamations,
4am empty train stations full of dangling questions.
selected memory, particularly of being
cruel to love. character,
existence, poetry, it all becomes layered
like crime novels.
blurred and unblurred,
in stained-rag mind, faces and places and
the theme,
tense, it is an age
where nothing begins and i myself begin to
(be) mean
many other things
in addition to what i say.
"what is the meaning of this?"
"i don't know."
"what should we do?"
get jilted again, spiral drunk, die on the
floor, bored, playing
sick,
i don't know.
"been there,
done that,"
it's a slow slowing and a trying to forget,
hands dirtier, shards smaller.
i don't even know if
this was an accident?

through climaxes and comedowns,
still carrying clouds
around; to cash the check, to the party,
to the pharmacist,
to the burial ground,
craving a reason to go hungry.

god, how big are your hands
god, will tomorrow be better
god, what have i done, what can i do, how

the more i remember
the more i just remember the young day
i had screamed so hard for so long at the unanswering rain

before i bury myself
in the fallen leaves,
i paint
a golden picture. idolize
unreality. force open a dream
of spring
and what it should mean.
and whenever i see two ready eyes like the
gestation of a new cosmos,
my anxious fingers tinker about;
there are fruit and flower
worth the time it takes to focus upon
like a man who is
worth the time it takes to love--
but romance is not natural
for such an animal
as i have been,
unread, not belonging within, clattering, preparing false wings
to abandon
a family. i grow old and young inside depths
that i cave
in.
attuned to noise, some crazy flute,
i go cacophonous toward the sound of sickness,
calling the name of no one into random abysses;
an abstract heart is precious, the selfish self-hatred however
, a practically biological second nature.
bred. arterial, laced
in a genome.
it has nothing to do with womanhood
god
or area. now by the side of whatever is wrong,
future dies
prematurely.
observe the scolding history
rearticulating itself. how i pressed barely visible
to wrought iron and plexiglass
kneeling to whitecoats, a sinkhole stomach pillfilled,
for extended temporarity a frenzy lent to me,
i drew unintending daggers. there was no defense,
but there was no bravery either.
escape and escape and escape and
claim loyalty and value to
somethings, but i did not follow
to that other end
where light lived.
where they were talking
and talking and talking about me
and shaking my shoulders,
jumping in after me,
i wandered persistently so far
so deep and so dark until
they dared not enter. fascinating strangeness,
still they are afraid of what they do not know
and i continue to be afraid of what i do
know.
miserable as unwanted rain,
lamenting the instability and
inventorying uncontrolled damages.
i have no reliable property, i have no money, i squander potential,
restlessly i change shape at night like a fabled figure,
like my father, like a jeckyll, like a hyde, like an
addict or
adolescent rat.
reclawed, hand out free kisses, rest in forbidden laps,
ashamed at the summit,
with a deceptive shadow, i don
a foiled crown gleaming
and scream into the fabricated storm.
the trees all crack their necks.
by morning i slap myself and untangle my hair and
play with my suitcase.
flipping through pages of what i wish i was,
what many people wish they were.
staring at the washing machine long-motionless,
i have a favorite stained outfit, a few clean shirts.
i will probably learn to anticlimactically dump into the sink the crumbs
that collect at the bottom
of the toaster. i will stop running
and take a time out in a place with no season
or color soon
but before i step further into the same street
godwilling i say something
important.

dwelt,
dwelling,
spend years dwelling in what pools
afterward.
there is my face in blood,
there is my face in ketchup,
there is my face in the grocery store floor,
there is my face in front of a padlocked gate,
there is my face in liquor ambivalent, in *****,
there is my face in ravines unflashlit,
there is my face in a wadded poem,
there is my face
in my hands.