on a bare back
some white
from the wall
I was painting.

-

go through me.

-

the itch a home has
after asking
the home
to widen its search
for fly.

-

it snows when it snows.

absentia, angel.

-

blood, palm print, basketball.

-

father, mother, sister, brother, god, dog, *****.

-

I swing sometimes a stolen bat.

-

the children moan
and mimic.

-

give home a fly
it takes
a spider.

-

happiness
having to think
for itself
is wilderness.

father bumps around the house.

-

at night, the night is naked.

-

before one can say
decorate
the interior

she powers on
the television.

-

if twice,

pinpoint poverty’s illness

and

aim a pop-gun.

-

mealtimes
I cough
and the pups
congregate.

-

our bloodied hero’s
shoes

burst.

-

if I am not with shovel
I am had
by a vision.

the foster god has done a bang-up job of resembling your father.  I admit.  my eyes are faithless.  a group of boys beat my son for beating my daughter.  when I carry my kids, my kids relax.  I can feel it in my *******.  the group of boys are uneducated and call a ******* the peter’s backpack.  I would laugh but the group’s leader has a razor and looks none too happy god has promoted him to shave me.  when done, my ***** and its carriage look as if left by an angel to grow alone after not being placed on an infant.  there is nothing to be said but one of the boys mutters away.  the leader shares that this boy is set to star in the film version of your father’s suicide and has agreed to **** himself for real.  once gone, I can’t tell if the boys were never here or if they are simply not here now.

the very sadness.  the very sadness of the intruder who brings his own plate to drop.  the very ecstasy of telling a classmate he or she is ugly along with one finger he or she must choose.  the cutting of the fingers to equal size.  the unintended ecstasy of the sadness I use to *** a cobweb where I wait for something I’ll do nothing with.

I was an entire baby and then a picture of me as a baby.  I had as part of the **** shaming process a father wheeled in and out of the sun.  here is a boy with a red brick looking for an anthill.  the sun was out.  I brushed from her bare back a piece of straw and it stuck to my leg.  in the barn I built another barn so I could go to both.  here is the eater of stones in the privacy of an outhouse.  I lie to her face and then to nostalgia’s outlook.  the collapse of my favorite cow is followed by the cow’s collapse.

for the man
to break into song
he needs
hear
humming
the woman
who paints
her small part
of a nearby
church.

for god,
it’s the ridiculous
notion
that he go
from human
to human
without transport.

for me,
it’s a bird
sexually
abused
I’ve never
seen.

the boy intent on crushing his privates with a seesaw.  the same boy who sees you next week to put stars in your belly.  the boy you aren’t when you’re sick of stars.  when you kick your dog for not being red.  when you put your foot in a blue mouth darker than your father’s.  the things your father says in jail about the bear no one helped.  the things he says out of jail that are prison food.  prison food he says is a stretch if you want to grow as a writer.  your dog losing color in a clean midwestern bank after being shot by a trigger sad teller.  your dog a nervous dog with a last name and its dog-like hope to be unheard of.

off duty
lifeguard
with cigarette
his nerves
shot
reading
an obnoxiously
cursive
letter
about
how a baby
moves
in its very
still
mother

the two play tic-tac-toe by prison correspondence.  the mutual doctor they once met through is now famous for being there when god was in labor.  I love my research when it brings me to my mother’s stone because my mother’s stone is without epitaph and because beside my mother’s stone is one engraved with a phone number which predates what everyone is doing.  I call the number and nothing.  the two unfold a couch into a bed and go their separate ways to check email.  their little devil details the car that didn’t get away.  I want this little devil so badly it murders the actor I look like.  the two stand in front of a movie poster and stand there just as they’ve planned.  a beauty shop closes its doors sending beauticians into a street crowded with beauticians for open carry.  I send Emily to search for Emily when Emily was pretty.

my friend’s father had his legs break from standing after a day of drinking the father’s milk he said would take our guts to places not even babies had been.  friend took what of it he could into his mouth and left some there to smuggle into mine.  the moms thought we were kissing and his cracked a tooth on a cigarette.  my own swooned but kept composure enough to catch something in her stomach.  I don’t have an ounce of quit in me that’s not addicted to keeping quiet.  I know worry has some use but in these woods I’ve not happened upon any age of tree growing into another.

she imagined herself pregnant.  she fell behind her best years which became predictions.  I brought her a cake on her fortieth birthday to show her what I could do when given a cake.  she asked me about the men in my friendships.  candle-makers, mostly.  a few with toddlers a football knocks over.  it took a moment, but she added sound.

you were a white male and I was a white male and we were young and even if one put us together we were young.  our idea was to give winter gloves to those whose teeth chattered and we knew the sound had come to us both.  we mowed lawns all summer and mugged when we could drunk jocks who sat beside train tracks reading love notes after baling hay.  we bought the gloves and held them until winter because our logic had us waiting.  by then we were not friends and hell was the handbasket.  we divvied the gloves in a sad scene we couldn’t countrify.  today I photocopied my privates and printed two-hundred sheets by accident in a hellish place made special by hell.

the young couple think as one
of a baby’s name
in the shower
and emerge
famished-

in heaven on earth every animal will be eaten by god.

the man and woman didn’t feel ashamed until they put on that show for the snake.  hell, it wasn’t even a snake but primarily a rope that couldn’t facilitate their double suicide and then it was a snake from one’s imagination, yours or mine, torturous.

we were telling so many stories we stopped having to make them up.  I dragged the murdered bodies from my dream and buried them in places that exist.  nothing happened and we started a club for our brand of intellectual improv for more nothing to happen beneath.

my children were running and were plucked.  eyewitnesses were arguing over a comma their accounts did not include.  my brother was nearby and heard a voice he thought mine.  he used it to say that’s not a landmine that’s the body of my dad.  my children were running from me when they were plucked.  I was on fire which is coffee talk for surreal.  in actuality I was on fire just a little.  but my kids are **** smart, or were, in the sense they were needed elsewhere.

I use god to spy on the gifts he gave me.  youth is a type of wheelchair.  I can see my facebook page and the back of my mother’s head.  I talk so fine my baby talk is for show.  memories are like animals, not made.  my father is happy one of two dogs has learned to shake.  I can look at my hand for hours and not forget its name.  hand.

I saw you pretending to be part of that family as they made their way across.  I saw you put that doll’s mouth to your breast and enter a tent.  I saw a white van mock the pace of a white horse while you slept.  I saw your mother bite the hand because it was empty and I saw its emptiness wake you.  I saw you eating the password to eat.  I saw you at auction and thought for all I know you could be your father whose stillness was my address.

when the white spots on the baby’s tongue mysteriously disappeared, I knew it had eaten the instructions it had come with and everyone rejoiced.

bothered
by the parting
and not
by the red
of the sea

my mind goes
to the same place
to be unique.  

it is here
I worship your son
even as he models
disguises
for the father
I’m not.

as for my own
son

I am his memory

of where he put
the earth.

father waits for the empty elevator.  in dream, he understands the holiness of such a place and takes to mourning the momentary loss of his interpreter.  he gives me a toy and blesses it with what he calls alone time.  his exact words are you have to like it before you’re asked.  you sleep on the stairs in a house you enter shoeless.  stay put.  the movers of my bed move my death.

poor, yes.
poor in that
what he does
more than once
is considered
routine.

there is no one to do the abandoning.

the last of a kind
had all these
thoughts
and first
choice.

she turns her back on beauty
and is abandoned.

I put god under my wing.
he makes it real.

my dogma for his koan
for my koan
for her.

it is not struck
after all
this tree
where the lightning
bolt
starts.

higher birds
strike a chord
in god’s hand
on god’s fork.

in the book of mild love, a capital letter cares for a typo.  it is not a caring one might do for a newborn, the sick, or for a felon who as a newborn was often sick.  this is also in the book of mild love, which tells us how to care.  

my father was arrested on the tarmac but not before he’d placed the miniature of our city beneath a grounded plane.  when interrogated as to what he’d accomplished, he said he’d successfully placed a miniature of our city beneath a grounded plane.

my father calls his legs hangers-on.  it is not a joke to him like the joke of his botched execution.  my father gave me the book of mild love because he thought it was the best joke-book I could get my hands on.  in the book of mild love, I am given an example of a suicide note and asked to scan it for typos.

my mother’s password is entrepreneur.  it is spelled backward and written across the front of her lazy eye’s lid.  in the widely read book of furious welfare, it is recommended that the initiator of any staring contest be you.  she looks at me as if I’ve thrown a tiny pink bird from a moving car’s window because I have.  I was chewing the bird to keep from laughing at my brother, his nose in the book of I am on drugs.

my father won’t teach from the book of ***.  not once does it mention the bomb.

I tied my bike to a tree and placed a water bowl
beside a food bowl
and kept the bowls
in mind.

she had entered a phase of absolute transparency.

she called it suicide and said so repeatedly.  

any was a reason she would not be around for.

he thought of his mother and father, how they avoided
being together
around the dog.

-

she was okay not being believed.  she chose both

the **** and the mythical beast John.

I am the boy Abraham and I have been brought to this room to be examined because I **** my pants.  the man Abraham is my father and there is also a young adult Abraham who hands out bowling shoes on Saturdays.  the place I am from is easy to write about.  in that place the girl I love dresses like a witch and stands for hours on a high-dive above a drained pool which is closed to the public.  she never jumps, my mascot, and pretends to smoke the same cigarette which can be seen if one zooms in.  there is no food, no water, nothing responsible for hunger or thirst.  no one goes to the bathroom except to look at the toilet so the urge fades more quickly.  I am some sort of god.  if you want to hear yourself think, each house has one phone.  if you want to hear what is now me, there are phone booths everywhere.

kid has a headache.

has headache above
a toy sailboat
the water for which
is a waste
of water.

headache is trying to see the moon
from the moon.

dad is a reader.  written somewhere
is how a headache
in a child
starts out
small.

kid reports on the water’s
temperature.  it burns.

employed
was the angry
punk
to recite
the warning
at the end
of a drug
commercial.

the thinking behind this was sound.
the side effect of this thinking

gave the punk
a tenderness
to his voice
none expected
his mothers

to notice.

it wasn’t exactly the voice of god
but from a god-like stupor
came god

to his son
who was his
and the punk

sang

when he stopped eating
the food
provided
the food
became angry
and impossible
to eat.

the food
provided elsewhere
became so calm
some used it
as a sleep
aid
secondary
to starvation.

I try not to think for my children, it’s hard, they are
delicious
children.

the television in front of my murderous father is a city placed on outside arrest.  further coverage is dedicated to a new unharmed person from a race of desert people that materialized with her inside.  I join in spirit the manhunt for the victim who’s made off with the right to disappear.  I am holding a book I mean to worship and I hold it with two kinds of innocence.  my brothers cross shadows in the brightness of kitchen.  I have many brothers.  their teacups fill with god-taken tea and remain teacups.  the book is first a false god then tells me which of my hands.

he’s a first timer visited by two ghosts that have nowhere to be.  not a single pencil in his house is sharpened.  his days are cut short.  not by sleep.  he is famous for three things.  all three are online.  his mother’s blog sickens him.  has one entry.  has one entry with a link to its visiting hours.  he is working on a fourth.  loneliness as a cure for homophobia.  homophobia as a remedy for memory loss.  the baby in his stomach comes and goes.  at will and not.

I want to sit around and do nothing and I want to have a handful of kids that sit around and do nothing.  I will call myself the end of god and ask women inappropriate questions by way of populating obituaries with written code.  you will want to argue and I will have to get up and we will try together to save the child I crushed parts of.  the face of the child will be our slideshow.  I don’t know who you are but I know who you think.

this foster boy
known for changing
his name
back

and forth
who lit a cigarette
without removing
the paper bag
from his face

has the only
photograph
of my mother
my mother
took

what they mean  
means
there is one place
to hide.

I come from the woman
who knows
they’ll come
for the baby.

my four children, I need them
to hoard
awareness.

often enough, bad men do nothing.

some err on the side of believing
a woman
is an unfinished
man.

bad night, sitting on a swing, I can look or not look
at a star-

is your mother a one-man fistfight?

my father came out of nowhere.

being operated on
helps me sleep.

I was your age
when nothing
had been done.

the turtle in my father’s backpack,
the turtle loose
on a moving
school bus.

I crawled into my mother’s bed
and waited
for my nose to bleed.

you find the cut
like you find
where your daughter
is cut.

a sister ties
knot after knot
and opens
a window
only to *****
in a downstairs bathroom
from a fear
of heights.

god from a previous marriage.

the parents
have each
a flyswatter.

they are very worried
about their angel, about their boy
with flu-like symptoms.

in two locations
my son
is unknown
is achieving
a boredom
his disease
can’t reach.

my father is speechless
after
he is left.  I write
about my mother
who is not pain
held
to the candle
of its possibility.  

the timeline is rhetorical, is a deposit
of sleep
disguised as longing
in the heads
of single minded
repeat
abusers.

my son floats for the first time lame,
it is uplifting, a kind of sloganeering
to keep
hate
local.

I want to weigh it, what is used
by the typist
to see
loneliness
from above.

I want it to be the star
your sister needs
when her eyes
claim her hearing
and hear

for example
chicken scratches
medications
disown.

as a boy
I am not sad
to be sledding
alone-

the count
of my uphill
steps

coveted
by counts
lost

after passing many dogs
with more skin
than fur, that seem to be
the starving men
of my dreams
if the starving men
of my dreams
had been brought
to the same place
to die
if that place
were me,

the man who sold
my brother
a gun

goes

as a father
praying over
a solitary
son

to his knees
in front
of a larger cage
and I see
the smallest elephant
and I keep
seeing it
as if I’m the only
one who can
though I know
it’s there, the sound it makes

like nothing sick, nothing animal-

I am not the brother
I’m the size of.

because god
takes serious
thought

the woman
who will remain
specific
puts a second

spider

in the discarded
freezer
for meat
overflow
that does not
a junkyard

make

we give softness
to the man
whose age

staggers us, we give the man

status, world weary

authority…

we are severe women, I guess, with

been there
did nothing

faces

******

god the claustrophobe



clean

as rainclouds
pause
beneath
the disoriented
heaven
of our
beloved
thinking woman’s
fireman
a cat
grooms itself
in the manner
we’ve been
to vanish



object permanence**

rabbit
named
vertigo

the teenage boys
trade punches
after dark
which
if I thump
my chest
my daughter
questions
why not
say
during dark
and so
I thump my chest
and ask her
why she wears
only one skate
that is not
the skate
sails between
two pairs
of tired legs
and rolls
over
spots
of boy blood
each spot
drying
at a different
rate
the skate
carrying nothing
but stillness
if not
into the night
then
on that which
underfoot
disappears

I talk to my mother
on a phone
and to my father
on another.

mother is tired, father
sick.

when each
rest
I am the one
who knows
the manner in which
they are presently
alike.

god does not exist, or god
didn’t make it.

while opening a wrapper
I am stabbed mildly but stabbed nonetheless
by a man I gather is homeless
and my brother is suddenly sad
but thinks he’s been sad
all day.

my sister presents herself
to the possibility
that I don’t have
a sister.

abandonment issues persist.

abandonment
issues
a warning.

it goes something like
to be loyal is to be partially
moral.

there is somewhere a dog, a cow, a moral cow

and.

the Ohio storm has avoided god.

my son, his rain rake
are both

out of two
of my hands.

you need someone who will ask the serious questions.  a mother insisting on dinner.  a mother who doesn’t eat but smokes your father’s pipe as if the pipe itself has ended televised hunger.  you need an idea.  ballet shoes for jesus.  a brother who doesn’t have to shower.  that it be wholly mourned, you need to lose your mind.  you need a motivational speaker who talks to a pair of female cops as they stand over the tastefully exposed body of a teenage boy.  who tells them to go to a movie because it’s possible.  even if they’ve never seen an invisible movie.

at the local library
books
separate
the victims
of home invasion
from those
researching
the doll’s
propensity
for drunkenness.

I stumble in, stumble out.

I change daily the size of the bird that will carry me to heaven.  I don’t know why my kids dash out of public restrooms giggling at having pressed every hand dryer.  I don’t know how they recognize you from your tv show.  you wouldn’t believe the business a broken metal detector attracts.  my gift is not lonely but it is mine.  when I dream the tornado I dream what is in it is undisturbed.  man in a chair reading a book.  in a tornado.  it is hard for me to exclaim.  I saw a dictionary drop and miss by a mile a baby’s head because the baby’s head was elsewhere.  it is like I am again addicted to those double A batteries that as a boy I’d **** on while outside uncle was kicking that tiny dune buggy at a cat most likely as perfect as any cat we’d come by.  I say perfect because it was there and gone.  I used to be fat.  it felt true.  and then I had a fat friend and I went and told him no bird would be able to take him anywhere.  you have a wife you have someone to have your child.  the success sorrow has brought me is perhaps underground.

heartbeat is god has a drum.  footprint is they held her down to comb the beach.  handful is the blowing of bubbles into falling ash.  bloodwork is the soft biting the soft on the subway.  body type is baby.  see:  commonly evacuated cities.  eye is eyewear for the beheld.  mouth is you’re good with your mouth.  soul is god doesn’t.

the hostile witness
left her dorm room
to the daughter
I always wanted.

my son secretly existed
to burn live music.

the baby had nothing between its ears.

my wife saw the light
that was god
that to her
was bait.

whispering
about baseball
in an outskirts
bar

two men
and a woman
the two men
call roughneck

their six hands
curled
for what
won’t arrive
in the snout
of a terminally
ill
dog

all promising
to name boats
gently
after boys
as it’s not
about her, no

**** is not a ship.

it was not yet an idea the timid had to put the helpless all in one place.  the thirteen year person was not yet.  I wanted a water fountain for the person and I wanted it to know a female by her fingertips.  that’s what I wanted bro.  brother became toy for toying.  he was molested but said it went away.  my father was still many colored.  I couldn’t look his way without falsely moving.  I loved that like I love this:  the true simpleton sets his own house on fire to confuse the devil.  the graduate sets himself.