the wind overturned our trampoline which pinned the wild white pup named Fossil.  the storm passed and was our father.  our mother dragged a broom behind a small brain.  two things that are both cognitive dissonance took root in the dead twin that once bit my arm before going back to eating crayons.  one of the children I wasn’t was thought to be unlovable but later succumbed to an adorable Holocaust survivor.  are we trash?  as the pup relays itself

to god’s headache.

I broke the boy on my knee because I needed a switch.  we ran around an empty crib.  I let him catch a breath and he let me kneel.  we tiptoed in a manner of mocking past private make-up to which his mother had been softly applied.  he drank tea from an eggshell and I declined.  I swatted him to let him know I was dying.  his bent sister fell asleep and the boy was kind enough to believe her hair was a nightgown.  I swatted him again to let him know I would live.  the tea was gone.  the rest is sadness.

ten men beginning to show outward signs of starvation are standing shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the small window my son is looking through while balancing himself on an exercise ball in a room I am convinced expands.  I am not allowed to have this dream.  when my wife whispers, I whisper back and god continues to be here by choice.  repeating myself means I’m here when I wake up.  son, ball, room, window.  ten ******* minimalists.  I am not supposed to admire the travel writing career taken on by my son your surgeon.  I am saddest knowing my wife’s dream is not the same.  ten women and the chance I haven’t done it.  were it the first year of my probable eleven, god is the lie I’d pick to get out of the room.

as a ****** on finger becomes a borrowed cigarette,

what we don’t talk about
when we do
pools into mother’s
fat shadow
and / or

pregnancy
glow.

xmas 19--

my profanity withers her tongue.

his deserters
bayonet
the alien
grape.

wolf, pig, childhood.

a bit
of brother
on

the creative
side.

all in my father’s
imagination
were other
poverties

(where mother
assaulted
no one)  

(but faced)
with a poverty
of disguise
the dog
ate homework
I couldn’t
finish.

though younger
than a father’s
nostalgia
you are
my boy
of 10 years
this day
which has
always been
a reflection
of how I miss you
on the others

a man my mother knows
only in passing
is reading a library book
in the dugout
of his dead
child’s
home
field
while his wife
rounds the bases
pushing
a stray dog
in a grocery cart.

at the dinner table
father says
we’re fasting
in a world
of spirits.

the moment he thinks surely he’s the man about to read something beautiful he’s tied loosely to a chair by his father who calls him time.  his mother measures again the kitchen and again it is small but no other room can set a trap for a cage.  the meek speaking of a fork is a radio in the thenar space of his right hand.

young for a mother she takes daily photos of gravestones she will not develop.  her aside that they are better than children is locally famous.  I begin to want her in a way I can put my finger on.  my brother dies and I wait.  the funeral is boys only.  I rip off the arms of an old monkey.

in separating the health of a child
from the child itself
it is an uncommon
godsend

to be given one
to practice on

he’s not even as special as his mother’s comb.

I am a piece of me.
I am the posterity hell avoids.

when possessed his muscles tighten.
not in english
he smallens.

I am the tiniest knot in the braid of suffering.
I am my brain.

she wore a swimsuit.
he kissed her leg.
his pain rattled
in the strangest
acorn.

my son will never walk.

it is not unbearable
but it is also
not
still.

he rolls from one display to the next.

the beatnik Lucifer
using a fork  
to make a ripple
in the second
bathroom’s
mirror.

the spider’s immaculate web in the open mouth of the baby Jesus.

Gatsby’s gay lover working a hook from a woman’s lip

a day before going blind?

if I am not near them, I do not long for music by them.  at my lowest, they are hardly men and women on all fours eating garbage.  you seem to know they’re naked.  what they cannot eat they pause above.  a baby’s black crib beneath a dream.  the dream a charred tree bent over a rabbit turned inside out.  the ark was Noah’s belly.  the gods and the devils

simpletons dumbly yearning for a more personable abandonment.  

I am not alone but am its aphrodisiac.

male or no, the infant is not making eyes.  before you had hands I had two desperate weeks the books of god were between.  violence is a fattened slum bumping around in the dark.  there are two ways out of you.  one is a comedian.  one is a witness.  both wear reading glasses that rest on post nose-job acne.  I am in the bathtub thinking my son will live because we are skin to skin.  my belief is a chariot flickering beside a dim horse.  a second horse is a mechanical bull with a mind of its own.  if, then I am also a flare.  vacate the young.

his earache
the scorched
zen
of a scarecrow
the man
stands
on one leg
with cigarette
in mouth
and refuses
to lean
on the child
heavy
minivan
seemingly dropped
by god
into this field
to remind him
perhaps
of the lapsed
dental work
that gave
to his famously
unhealthy
son
that terrified
look
which said
I am here
to eat
only that
which was cut
from the cookie
sheet
of hell

like failed
bookshelves
or crushed
steps

the hill houses
of poorer
classmates

worry me like weather
and put in me
visions
of large
men
called away
to feed

at a trough
maintained

by a family
of flat chested
asthmatics
who sell
magnets

one can later
dot with glue
and give
to the mother
who has
everything

quote unquote

crucifix

she lives alone.  from this, one can gather the things she owns.  1970s ****.  she is pregnant.  a week ago she went into town to pick up some new phrases.  while there, she slipped into a house and beat a sleeping child.  our deeds are weary not of a dog barking or of a cat hissing but of the overfed fish.  my belly button is how the marksmen touch me.  she thinks the child’s father followed her home.  she’s about to watch the videotape.

in a country bereft of curfew
part two
of a skit
assembled
by orphans
trades attendance
for the applause
of angels
and skips
the clothesmaker’s
best scene
for another-

a secret favorite
that has Moses
leaving behind
an orange
soccer ball
to be with God
in the sobbing blackness
of an oven.

a woman
in muddy underclothes
looking at all things
starless

feels frog bone
nudge
the base of her skull
as her friends
wade, dive
and wrongly
mourn-

it’s only her costume
in the water.

it will become the small talk
of Halloween
2013

and vanquish
the split apart
three year old
apportioned
to any phrasing

of the inmate
on the Ohio row
who on the day
of execution
dressed himself
as a God
easier found
than vein

my son helps me open my fist.
he rolls up my sleeves.

Christ is still dead.
my mom doesn’t smoke.

the story came to me abridged.  like birth control is a plant.  like one black family.  she came to me from town.  the Amish are being set on fire.  there are no Amish.  tell that to the people on fire.  she was perfect and so perfect to believe it was done by a *** change.  one in particular was prayed for and I don’t know if he ever stopped touching her.  she had a light bulb she’d taken from a hospital lamp.  she produced it like hearsay.  her invisible baby.

in the end, she was a pair of beautiful hands and he was mostly a heavy head.  in the beginning, she fed him too eagerly and wore a short dress of one color.  his own hands were hearing things and she’d put them on his ears.  he was either an unknown writer or a bill collector.  he scripted for her the last lovely times of the empress of bullish desperation.  as a young fathoming she knew him constantly.  I’ve ghosted for them since I can remember but am open to the possibility I haven’t.  touch is not touch but is where it’s hidden.

as the sitting model
for a father

I am actual

sameness / groin

goes thumbtack

repetition is not doom
not to plant
not to animal
life

     whether gang sign or godspeak
it means my child

imagined

blowtorch the little creature.

I yelp in an already
soundless
fire.

the poor are a substitute.

name one thing
I can replace.

my father stuffed me in his coat
and biked me
to a park.

he biked away when a lady approached us waving.
the teeth on the zipper of his coat made me hum to myself.
he said jesus I’ll bet she eats ice cream with two hands.

mother didn’t lower her voice because mother didn’t raise it.

flatness is a landmark.

her isolation has become a habit.

her name is prologue.

too many stories
get smacked in the mouth.

violence did not tiptoe into a trailer park.

her author doesn’t know
*******
a white male.

she does everything
in the outhouse of a haunted astronomer.

addiction did not transform into prose.
familiarity did not breed.

it was not cold, it was heartbreaking.
it was hearing

my blanket needs a blanket.

it was billed as frostbite
with a beautiful write-up
in the archive

of I cannot
move my eyes.  

it was not my imagination.

the baby was a city.
it lost us.

there are people doing what you do.  houses make a difference.  the age of a bedroom where touching.  where tickled I am against the will of my belly.  am engine and am weight.  am might as well be

feather in the tread of still

a fighting shoe.  of the only pair I torture.  make with me on the powerless boat of night.  drop my jaw to match the microphone of hunger.  

it rolls like a flashlight.

I think it’s a tuning fork.  I convince myself and speak to it.  the boy with me says it looks like a ******-up cross.  says imagine jesus got to heaven and was still part human just imagine.  the boy would be ****** if he were him.  next his mother is off her rocker and so on and soon the boy is muffled by where he’s hiding.  I’m okay with it.  I need some peace and scratching.  that’s my father’s, peace and scratching.  he’d set a shoebox with a live rat in it next to him whether he had one or not.  gotta corner that thought.  I look about, the boy has either shut up or died or is living quietly afar.  I sit on three stacked tires and fear a moment for my ***.  I brave what might still be a tuning fork.  I poke with it the place I was male then caress.  rain on the roof of my home makes the roof look like a lake.  one magic possum after another gives me depth.  I snap out.  the boy is circling me, he’s been struck by lightning, is in fact still being struck.  his hard-on looks to last.

the face of Jesus and in it the human aspect of aging.

Anne Sexton
nine years my senior.

some had sports. some terror. all were poor. to all I said I was the best child available. my mother’s diary was mailed and mailed again. declined by thieves. no one will think I wrote this. my father. father standstill. vocal coach. my sister’s mouth a spittoon. her loneliness that of a short distance walker. her tattoo a blanket for a frightened birthmark. teachers were clever. could gain only the ground lowered into the pit by sports and terror. teachers were the future. were right not to waste my fingernails on a chalkboard. this one thought a nail my body stayed skinny for.

funerals are a form of menticide.  also, writers.  undead, I don’t mean to talk.  what I mean to do is approximately yearn.  for something nearby.  an old computer.  plugged in, cursor blinking, hell’s door.  for awareness.  priesthood.  box-cutter.  wayside.  what began as Franz Wright.  what became Lou Reed.

father offers, no, we are bodies trapped in people.

he was known to be monstrous when inside a vandalized church.

if gay, he’d ask
does anyone ask
if you
were born?

yesterday, she was identified by her dentist.
she was recalled as a hunger pain.

man is a rumor
started by god.

since the bee sting, my son is a staccato of worry.  in his six year old frame there is not room enough for any belief that isn’t a bumblebee waiting six years for him and him alone.  I have to enter that darkness.  even with the catcalls of real suffering.  even cradling

your daughter.

in creek bed acoustics    
one can hear    
an altercation
between two men
on a bridge.

when the lesser man
falls     he does not bounce.

one might think the man’s wallet
is a fish     on its side.

the guts of the fish
reveal two thumbs
of two young boys
each on a separate path
with money

for fast food
though none
to remove it.

a dog can still breathe steadily    
as I hold a basketball     and wait
for my ears.

I am someone I am.  a meditation
on a father.  an intro.

a mother can still claim
her belly is an air bubble
kept for the mouth of her oldest
who swims to middles
of ponds    
in jeans    
on the same
dare.

I am the alarm that is later
not
a heart attack.  just a sharp pain

the size of your son

blinded again
by the ache
in god’s
toe.

when homeless, I would try to score a place to do chin-ups.  the false prophet of my inner life ran parallel to god.  I was one side of a custody battle that involved my brother and with him the depression he called Christ because it came and went.  I met a woman convinced she’d become a gate.  not heaven’s ever and not hell’s anymore.  I stood watch while she slept.  no one counts, she was right, the dead made so in a dream.  likewise, if you want to get to my brother you’ll have to go through me.

the soon to be mother
has a new man

he’s good with kids
because kids
are weak

his sister can keep a secret
like nobody’s business

the mother will have a boy
with spiral
fingers

that belong to a notebook
I can describe

after the mugging, my father was asked
to describe the assailant

a man with a gun
who looks like
he’s just seen
two
ghosts-

I am still waiting to hear about my son’s color.
he’s been in the bath for hours.
his pruned fingertips
for him
are a first.

I would rather come from soot
than dream.

there is no light in the darkness
that is not a worried man.

I can tell you nothing you know.

my sons are two.  my sons play faith.

under my wife I am a shadow of joy.

-  

(over which I smuggle the thoughts of my acquaintances)

one-way bridge.

-

my hands are weak or would not be called hands.

when mother collapsed
god had a plan.  it included
the double life
of my father’s

ankles.

-

some I sanction, some I don’t.
some are **** creative.

suicides leftward of the unlit life.

-

I put my fist in your purse and leave it there and you let me.
we mass produce

eye contact.

we are both small, about love, about to bang
our heads
on the poor.

fellow travelogue, and stunted
exodus:

older says to his younger
your pants are a bomb
you have to take them off

man shoots woman
just in the knee
she is on her other knee
refusing to plead
a bus brakes
her children

look at a goldfish
in a toilet
a solemn oval, a broken…

narrative is dead
is not a boy
with a long
illness

the white man came out of nowhere

we’re talking
the biggest
white
man
ever

     I have friends married to men
whiter

this is what I’m saying     about my mouth

it lives nowhere

Ohio maybe, Ohio has just
the four
seasons:

spring, summer, fall, your mom

cruelty gets an ulcer.  this is my first *******.  this is your kid making my kid sick.  I have achieved total comprehension.  you are so vignette.  your kid is a licked window.  my kid is two feet can’t touch the belt of a treadmill.  my kid is love.  is *notaltogether lostly.  is if you have a pain in your tongue like a nap.

I ask the mother if she feels abandoned.  she tells me her favorite teacher had a bible in the back of his head.  I ask for the teacher’s name.  she says it’s not something she returns to.  she calls me child, the little orphan gay, to the brim with unicorns and suffering.  in fact she quotes my pain in this very notebook.  I was left only by what happens.  that bible stopped a bullet.

her dog put to slumber.  thin as a puddle.  there at the end would whimper with any footfall on a gentleman’s coat.  

-

her pup a yip
in a backpack
when on occasion
she'd punch
a skateboard

there’s a mattress on the side of the road that everyone pulls over to jump on. hell, some get half a mile down and come back having thrown their shoes out the window.  others go all the way home to get their unattended children or oldest relation.  some of the cars seem to be auditioning for destitute

rucksack
clowns.  also hell I saw recently a two person bike with no one on it give over and rest on the mattress.  my worst thoughts you beat with a broom.

cutting your **** off is not something you fail at.  when I ask you where it’s at you will first be sad to have a mouth at all and second say legend has it.  my thinking is trying to think in a helicopter.  you climb a tree to drop a rifle from it.  I have so many real friends and I call them my gay odds.  and so many dreams that these waking hours pass only to embellish them.  if there is one thing it is Elliott Smith the name of a hungry deer.

i.

satan is livid.  says the hamster wheel was a gift and asks you not to be fat on account of his nervous energy.  


ii.

     dear puberty,

the body of this letter confirms the messenger
is god.


iii.

thing is
I thought I’d never
see it again

     (I thought I’d sent it into her belly)      

even I made a hamster
noise

in the tomb of my father’s influence
a single
****** on
juice box.

     assigned seating
in biology class
a giant     a boy
beside the me
most grotesque
and we share
a model
heart     as a found
piece
of gum.

in cafeteria I am untouched
as a tray of food     I fraternize
with my new name     jovial
pisspants.

I have been avoiding your paintings.  your paintings blindfold me.  I see what I don’t.  a puppy addicted to its tongue.  a heaven not of this world.  stillness turns my stomach.  outside the womb.