who knows how these things start.  some animalistic girl with the air of donation sits beneath the kind of playground slide could convince nowhere of a middle while two boys with cardboard swords keep each of us from the ladder unless we allow her to bite us on the arm.  pretty soon we’re in math class showing each other how many times we went down and pretty soon our younger siblings are smacked or hungry or puckered from being bathed.  some of us run out of room while some of us have two good legs.  some of us pull at our mothers as if all prayed out of playmates.  the girl goes weeks without god before giving in.  her swordsmen move on to pocket knives and loitering.  you see her in the food court of the mall sitting with her wheelchair bound father and brother and tell us there’s no magic that pushes them both.

I acquired you as an infant from a gentleman who needed parts for a radio he planned to invent.  listening to his radio was a long way off.  you sat early.  you called me mother before I was ready.  if I was good, you’d play a videocassette to watch it dream.  I looked at stars and you were a toddler.  our life was life on other planets until the gentleman returned.  he said he’d seen satan in a space suit and that satan had given him signs of ****** abuse.  you were not unrecognizably depressed but did start a fire in a photograph.

if you were injured
before or after
you fell
from heaven-

well

it’s not something
I dwell on.

     up ahead, I am a busy with

the god question

dropping you, loving you

separating
the two.

emptiness
the inexperienced
****

wouldn’t know
the body
from two
failed
twins

-

I followed my father everywhere

into the fire
he wouldn’t
set

-

mama mono
the haint
of foretouch

had three
loves
that were not

ash, sloth

-

glacier…

-

if not heaven
then a place
in its
museum

as references to my brother
appear elsewhere
I ask my mother
if I can use
her lipstick

-

collateral:

I have a friend who was asked
by a representative
of a reality TV show
to be someone
different-

someone famous.

-

I smoke *** under my sister’s bed.

stand and brush her fingernails
from my belly.

she thinks I’m her brother.

-

saying
they’ve nothing
to prove

     many attest
to the hush
of my father’s
congregation

-

when brother is born
I am due
his mirror

-

wager:

in one place
at once

     God

when
did your caterpillar
become
a syringe?

I want to hide the clothes I’m wearing.

something touched
is something
mourned.

the night she tried to eat her parents, her brother walked out of his diaper and I told a bone what the body made me do.  there was no name yet for the limb you were born behind.  no name for what the alien worshiped.  landmine

on the moon
we watch
what we are.

a ghost
sets itself
to dreaming
of a single
rubbed together
stone
and my bones
remain
in blank fire

son
face down
in an empty
bowl
of milk.  

his long hair
carried off
by his sister’s
head.

for Aidan*

my son at nine years takes his easel out to the deck to paint from his dream moon above lake.  in spirit, I tell him it’s about to rain.  I am afraid aloud my words will run together.  in the dream he saw eighteen moons.  it won’t remember he’s painted one.

after three days
in the church
of my father
     in the house
of my mother
in the arms
of my youngest
least evil
brother

     the neighbor girl
ran away home.

from my father
I gathered
that the poor
have many
kids.

from my mother
intuited
the poor
to be dying
at a rate     faster

than.

     took it upon myself
to kick my brothers
when they were
up.  

give them sugar
when down.

become
less evil.

in trying to be what to them she represents, she holds a pair of scissors while looking for her hair.  she is my mother and then she is my mother again in a car with my mother and my son.  the car in front of us goes left of center and said son speaks on the beating he’s getting from the driver of the drifting car.  I’m worried at the sanity of his intelligence but am also driving.  mother is taking his statement with lipstick and a wet notepad.  below me, a whole populace splits on the given permanence of surreal or ethereal when both are equally inexact.  if god needs to beat one body, I’d rather he be this down-to-earth not to use that of the son in my car.  I can’t lengthen my life with all the speaking and the writing and mother can taste it.  her silence introduces a third car as caveat and in it the belief I’m shortened by.

the girl

again and again
until she is born

-

this, too, we miss

ahead

-

here is how I know
I am harmed:

somehow
there is no door

not even
a room

yet I am
trapped

-

I understand why guys say muscular, fierce.

they think in wolf pups and they think
in dog

whistles.

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.

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

we came here
to create
the devil
the bogeyman
beat us
to.

despair.

despair is the wine
we age
imagery
with.

my boy
body
was at
the high
end
of the seesaw
when my brother
was shot.

as a date of death
might differ
from the date
pronounced

my mother
starred
in rumors.

two girls replace two boys and continue the good work of making a ******* sandwich.  

I become a woman to watch my mother die.

father
he jumps
less and less
rope.

things come in three raccoons
to rearrange
a rabbit.  

a baby avoids the plague
like a first
word
amen.

brother gives hell to my sense of place.

from the bottom of the stairs he looks like that girl we saw at the park sitting on her hands at the top of the slide.  I’ll be the pudgy policeman and you can be her doting father from a white man’s perspective.  he doesn’t remember what he did after lifting the baby from its crib.  god doesn’t speak language but I take it to mean if you’ve seen one flower you haven’t seen them all.  when he was himself a baby his father held him upside down above puddles to develop his form.  absent a similar explanation, I’ll share that sometime before lunch his female boss used her broken wrist to push open a door he’d always thought would lead to a broom closet and not to a bare bright hallway with carpeted ceiling.  as long as I’ve been here, said his boss, none have made the far wall.  memory is a man dying in the ocean and becoming a ghost there.

how far we are
from soup
when mother
burns her tongue
trying
to convince
god
they had

the mime and the mute
the same
childhood.

we love her so much
we use our brains
as often
as baby
spoons.

first base is a landmine.

there’s nothing to say
we weren’t
here.

old Kerouac
looking for something
in my mother’s
dark
bangs his knee
on a sharp object
he calls
my father’s
nose
and retreats
to the warm glow
of the wind-up
mouse
which lights
my mother’s
lap
where slept
a desolate
thought

it is odd
at first
but becomes
common
the inclusion

of ghost
on a list

of demands

-

winter means
little
means
ahead

of winter

the mothers
they swallow
snow

worms

-

in no time at all

the bomb-maker’s garden
leaves its mark
on the wrong

snake

-

the infant believes I’ve sent for my body

i.

some dog is ******* the ghost-mourned balloon as mother does her thing in the body of big boy bite mark  

ii.

it won’t come back from seeing father go ace on a bag of flour

the crow
if truly
crow

the power
came back on
the boy
didn’t.

I had my chance
to believe
in god.

the beetle was on its back
and the woman
unable
to **** herself
ordered
online
a rowing
machine.

mother’s garden, father’s ladder.

a black cat
where nothing
grew.

naming
the stillborn
within hail
of the snake
loving
boy
who can psalm
a basketball

to you, my name is matter.  

I shoot randomly
into a universal bed-

giver
of the tattoo
some kid

becomes.

hate crime
thinks
too highly
of itself.  

my thing
for names
extends
to children.

the original thought in my head was to be postdated by god until god learned he had a baby on the way.  I had children until I could only have four.  what I say to self-harm is pay attention.  my daughter raises her hand on the off chance she buried something in her teacher’s body.  (we have stopped talking

but I can squeeze her anorexia into a phone booth)  poverty myth:  I groom my sons with the beak of bird abandoned.  real time I tell my tongue it’s ******* curtains for the mouth I’m getting.  full circle my daughter surrounds those brothers of hers that mine clone.

in a barbershop
one hears

off
with his head

must be
slow town (this)

with dreamy
approximations
of coasting
wheelchairs

and uphill
bug swallowers
believing

it is hidden (it)

like a fishhook

in stomach’s
wig

my son was taken from me before I knew he was mine.

     when this is true
I can talk to no one but God.

I rub my hands under a faucet you’ve yet to turn on.
I hate the faucet so much my hands swell.

your mouth is a bullet hole covered by a before picture.

after therapy, I put my son on my shoulders.
he bites the top of my head.

your legs work.  you are who you think you are.

illness is
as illness
narrates.

I self-pierce.  medicate
like a missing man
at a party
for baby.

take this balloon
from me.

baby suffers
from heavy
elbow

and wilderness.

tired of mom touching its food, the baby comes early.  we call this moment the buzzard’s injured adoration of a surplus crow.  

-

last supper, I see only men.

by death I mean nothing was beautiful for a very long time.

that, and when did you know.

there I was

lightweight, eyesore

baby satellite
and baby
drum

imagination’s
dull witness

my hair
prematurely
cat-torture
grey

my person
the length
of a sandbox
shovel

teeth
a tooth, a commandment
from the past
lives

of milk

I am asked on voicemail if I want to get weird. The message is a week old. I had already a weird week. I don’t know if the invitation still stands. I don’t know if calling this person back would be weird. I call and get voicemail. I ask if the weirdness is still available to be gotten. It is important to me that the identity of the requestor is known only to me. This is why: the requestor is presently dead. That, you can know. Also, that said person died the day of the first message about the weirdness. I recognize this as my life, or more correctly, as a thing my life includes.

for father*

even holding
a box
in the shape
of a hatbox
no hat
ever came from

you either
go unnoticed
or go
unnoticed

the yellow sea will take you away and the yellow sea will bring you back.  in between the coming and the going, your father will speak to your mother about the tales her brother tells.  the one about your father being born to carry a ladder and later in the same your mother born as well and with her an extra shadow.  the two about her brother himself insisting to multitudes how on its mother’s command a tadpole swam into his ear.  the unfinished few about who I am.  the thrice changed account of the man with three hearts just like Jesus.  the one he hasn’t told you about the visitor that eats tongue but is never hungry which is also the one about how we know what it eats.  the story of two men hating the same woman over and over until they can close on nothing but frog-like delicacies.  your favorite where he becomes your father and becomes too sad to release your least.  the hated woman whose stomach is a black tire, the bits of which are found here in the meekest bull and there in a massive fish.

i.

king of my mouth.  king of my open.  my legs

my cigarette
legs.  

the end of my arms in baby country.  

ii.

the start of my hands

their coat-hook
anxiety.

iii.

here is where the child was killed for being here.

why is a spider
not
a place?

iv.

the future, the uphill
the biked
body

most boats
dream of.

v.  

the future
an evoked
salvaging.

it’s okay to follow your dreams, son, but christ
you ain’t gotta
hound’em.

I’ve petitioned my brother’s death to become a delayed reaction to his memory of faking it, consoled my sister who on a good day counts to three, and started The Language School of Jesus Christ.

brother is digging barehanded in the backyard a hole for what he hopes is the alien of god’s choice.  as for existence, my mother’s is low on mine.  my father is keeping out of the same sentence any mention of ****** and totem pole.  no one including you cares for my sister’s worry that this no this is the bottom of a rock.  if asked, I will say I was visiting with my arms the museum of rowboats during the regional spike in baptisms we as a family failed to interrupt.

teeth

the many memories I have of my mouth

the kind of childhood tag

no one knowing
it

because it could be them

let me not pray for the man who, when young, had ambition and traveled the short distance to heaven in hopes of capturing on film for the last time in its environment

god’s bed.

who returned home obsessed with becoming consumed by the inexact art of self-portraiture and was soon so beautifully trapped by aging that he grew his hair to his waist

where it was set on fire as he stood to bow before the accumulation of sight and sight’s potential.

it is harder for my son
to tell me something
through my son
than for me to believe
in the vicarious
angel
stutter.  

     his disease
has nowhere
to go.

putting the meat
back together
in an unfilled
pool

we yawned
at the same
time / brief

painless
the unmothered

between

so often we voice
our want
to turn off
the brain

when in truth
we desire
the brain
to momentarily
empty

that the film
in front of us
can quietly

go about
in the dark

not
for devouring
the mannequin
but for eating
the seeds, it was

(in a coloring
book
for cigarettes)

beaten

by a baby
a baby
could love

the one time it crossed his mind to hit my mother, the garage door opened.  the day I was born, a man called my mother at work and left a message that was mostly breathing.  the story of the message was repeated to those born after me when each became old enough to need a laugh.  when it was known no more would be coming down the pike, mother began hitting herself.  it was in this era of standing room only that I was able to convince god we’d slipped into the water satan said was there.

my sister is a room god leaves alone.  she hangs a sign on the door I cannot read.  by the time I can, I am watching my younger brother roll his ankle wearing high heels.  at night I hear him swallow repeatedly.  another tooth gone.  a boy with a stick is a boy with a wand.  kids die in their sleep because they are boring.  because they dream of things that can really happen.

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.

30% off all print books on Lulu today with coupon code of LULU30

my newest thing is called ‘four’-  it is not a whole creature but a combination of my last four publications.  clever title.  I am sorry it’s 12.00-  I am always sorry.  it is available on Lulu, along with others.

and, some poems, from:

~

(---)

a palm reader
with mouths
to feed
does
my mother’s
nails.  I overhear

I love
babies
but god
they live
so long.

-

my brothers will tell you
I avoid

capitalization

eating
in front of others

threesomes

-

who was it
asked

-

from whose memory were you erased?

~

[warm body]

her nightmare
from the era
of hibernation
revolves around
a baseball
made
by her husband
from the cobwebs
found
soaking
in the mouths
of babes

(mouths)

dry
from dreaming
of the sponge
bathed
by god
in the egg
of a spotless
crow

~

[fathers]

to see a stone
as ruin’s
pursuit
of aftermath

one must share
this dream
  
of arriving
on earth

to pray

~

[prose]

god was created to remember everything. so says the rock to the tooth starting small.

-

there is a gallery of unfinished work and a space for the baby to crawl through.

-

her feet stick out of the mirror she’s been using to give birth.

-

lost: frostbite. lost: space suit.

will work
for feeding
tube.

-

holy asthma
holy

crossbones

-

old hat
this human
head.

~

[black sites]

we indeed
are deaf
from going
****

the floor is writing on the earth

it is better
than having
roaches

childbirth
comes to
in a bat
dying
in a pillowcase
for what
the weeping
flightplan
of a drunk
stork…

what tree cannot reach
mother scratches
with a broom

~

[cries]

we are
each one of us
the smallest
person
on earth

one is never too old
for god, never

too old
to surveil
the deaf

/ I know from your palm
what your hand
will drop, mother

cooks only
meat, father

is every
nightmare
she has
of her exodus

from apologue

/ having populated

the myth
of ******

the baby is empty

~

(also, in the non self-published realm of credence, **** Press published in April 2016 my chapbook [infant*cinema], which is available on the **** Press site)

my second attempt
inspired
by my first.

my third
a success
my fourth
could envy.

my first
a superpower
given
to my brother

who noticed
mid dream

his dream.