ask me only
what I’ve done
in the short life
of god.

ask me about my mother.

ask me
if it removed
my fingerprint
from a fish.

ask my why a disease
with the ability
to travel
travels
from one present
to the next.

ask me to procure
oral
input
for the boy
whose mouth
won’t move.

ask me if meat
keeps
its sorrow.

ask me
if I’m
a day
old
which angel
discovered
fire.

ask me why your mother
would feel
in her words
like an ambulance.

ask me what I see.

a man on horseback
casting a line.

what started as a joke
became a sick baby
whose first sentence
put my writing
in writing.

-

no matter how widely
unknown
it was
that I could burn
bathwater

my wife
had to eat.

-

humility
is having to thank
god’s
sibling
for woodwork.

ice on a wrist
after scrubbing
whole sets
of knives

-

in the bed
of a truck
on a lawn
a throne

-

you were not
born today     so stop
acting out

-

for a gun, unscrew the handle of a water hose.

for a rope, find a rope.

-

brothers     sitting

back to back
in an outside
bath

-

no, no whisper
to speak of    

     they are far off

     they curse

-

any foot
a dead bird

blue

-

     think a finger    
reviving
a finger

puppet

-

think hard    
on nothing
on a farm
machine

providing for a child is like trying to hide one’s mouth.  the first thing god said god said in the dark.  before I brought my son, I couldn’t place him.  things from this world make me think of another.

drunk above a son I cannot feed, I don’t long to swim

but do
to have my mother’s hair
combed
by a horse-

birth
oh when
was I tamed

I slur
my saying
of moth.

I trudge
ahead of time
my dream
belongings
behind me.

god is a lantern
dropped by awe.

awe’s hand?
a sighting
none report.

when your man
sloth
of a brother
says he’s applied

for a job
in the abyss
as sentiment’s
echo-

double
your efforts.

was the fruit
made them want
teeth

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.

/ horns make zero sense to the boy tossing horseshoes at a rain puddle

I wanted to help my father

finish the book-

     I could see he was thinking of a title

by the door light
of an appliance.

-

later

     my mother admitted it was not unusual to find a carton of milk in the dryer.

-
  
illness:

he began to speak of his favorite tree
which appeared only at night
when he spoke of it.

-  

also later:  he was reading, not writing, that book.

map
in dream
what you can
of heaven

be the hurt
child
who fascinates

(birth) *****

thunder
with the soft

horse of male

privacy / my angels

are graves
in a country

of wind

how to grieve, how to startle
an echo.

the map is desired that maps the afterlife.

my only (is for a hope)
that bores
god.  

by now
my son
knows more.

I am the light at the end of blood

or blood is my favorite dress

I was a fish. it wasn’t enough.

–

we’re the founders
of absence. off the clock

–

like newborns

prayer reminds god to grieve.

paragraphia
in its entirety
is anecdotal.

my mother, in two acts:  secretarial / secret exile.

     noumenon / father.  together,

the one that got away.

the enhanced sameness of being alone. the last name of a circle. suicide has done its homework. pretend you’re the someone pretends to be you.

musical chairs

telephone

these must’ve been
the first games
of the poor

he’s with his ten year old son
at the mall

they buy a leash
for a dog
they can only

describe

the crow
in each
of its two
dreams
had
an arm.

father said
be
on the lookout
son

for the receiver
of an old
phone.  to this day

I ask god
because mom
won’t

how sad
can one person
be?

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.

35% off all print books on LULU today with coupon code of LULU35

mine books can be found, there.  

~
some recent poems:

[loneliness]

the only
animal
recognized
by the magician’s
one-trick
pony

/ touch
giving itself
a childhood

/ an alien’s
crucifix

~

[liftoff]

the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.

-

my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.

~

[the cross]

the haunted clock
in tornado’s
house

the weightlifter’s flower

the rabbit’s
bliss

~

[scare]

I know it is nothing

or a relative
of nothing

what mice
make
of a mouse
possessed

/ my distance from the unborn widens

~

[homage]

like some verbally abused parrot

the crow
the phone’s
god

~

[depictions of reentry (iv)]

/ the tadpole torching my stomach in the museum of the heartless alligator

/ the spider the star in suicide’s eye

/ the crow in the devil’s purse

~

[depictions of reentry (v)]

/ you can work here for nine months

/ it’s not like riding a bike
it’s more
like kneeling
in the center
of a stickman’s
nightmare

/ never you mind
the bloated
baby’s
yellow
tooth

/ at least the sick

they confuse
death

~

[depictions of reentry (vi)]

night terror, the handwriting
of imago’s
child…

/ resurrection, a memoir

~

[depictions of reentry (vii)]

/ the hands and the crushed mind they crawl from

/ god of the briefly ugly

/ the homeless child of nostalgia’s native

/ graveyard
our game
of telephone

~

[depictions of reentry (viii)]

we laugh about them now

scarecrows
the stepchildren
of apocalypse…

pregnancy as suicide prevention.

be wowed
by stuff
on earth.

~

[depictions of reentry (ix)]

before I got sick
there was a sound
my mother
could make
and a bird
perched
on the arm
of a snowman…

angels, yeah

some
grab their ears
when trapped

~

[depictions of reentry (x)]

the unlit candle

desertion’s birthday

-

the voice
is not god’s
that experiments
on children

but ask
away

-

the dog we buried
is sometimes
on fire

watched
we think
by our sister’s
cooking

i.

when it opens the bomb
it knows
like my brain knows
what it sees

ii.

homicide grief
is a recording
god’s message
speaks to

iii.

eight years old
she leaves the trampoline
in her body’s
fearful
accounting
of self

wherever they are
they are washing
soap

god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist.  renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city.  the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves.  I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman.  my only tool is comfort.  in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.

somehow sweet in his want of no trouble, the unwashed man takes the door from your father and there they go hand in hand to the backyard where they wrestle as if hurts were people keeping them apart.  your father’s jaw comes loose, the man’s ear seems held by too small a magnet.  at window you a sickly child with overbite and a scarecrow’s pipe stroke the puppet corn hair of a sister’s doll and walk it cloud to defrosted cloud.  amidst this bartering of vanished weight your mother is being made to balance on her bare stomach a glass of lemonade.  

in three days the man will come back;  your father a bit healed, your mother less angry about straws.

I don’t know who it was
told my brothers
to stop
drawing
rabbits
to look
like ruined
footprints

/ I was washing my hands
when your water
broke

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.

safely, without miracle.  a process the locals call grandfathering.  I want to tell the devil about hell but we’re not on speaking terms.  in visions I nuzzle the backs of angels.  I come to, upright, in the aisle of a private library with my nose in a book of debts.  you worsen.  I believe in order to have something I can stop.  god is everywhere.  I have a job.  a boss heavy on atmosphere.

     I provide ambiance.  no place to raise a child.

the child you won’t have because the child hates surprises.  the story, your mother’s, of the pillow that struggled like an owl.  the werewolf, humble, and afraid of clowns.  the ramblings of a newborn.  the twin boys of Cain.

suicide
writes of you
in third
person

–

if played too long
hide and seek
becomes hide
and hide

–

I crawl in one ear
and you
the other
as the name
of the insect
escapes

god

–

our love of dolphins…

I am ruined.  I am ruined because I cannot speak without moving your mouth.  I am getting younger.  if my mother dies, I’ll have nowhere to go.  I wake up.  in the morning, I have one finger and use it to light the rest.  my muscles are whispers of a mass firing.  my father throws a well dressed mannequin from the fourth floor and disappears.  I wrestle it into the burning pile.  meat is scarce.  supplies a tiny church.

you are to receive a photo taken two to six years before your death.
it will arrive by mail in a white envelope.
if you receive a photo in any other colored envelope, it is a fraud.
in the photo, you will be asleep.
if the photo does not reach you within 30 days from the date of this letter
     don’t let it keep you awake.
     in the event your age does not permit an appropriate reception of mail
you will be referred to one of our many sadder departments.

but not a ditch
in sight

the one
my absence
ceases
to amaze

who eats
the eaten
way

who cares the same
for bird, for gum

the god of where
the chewing’s
done

in which my son dies for the few hours I’ll have with god

when I was old enough to come home from school and take a nap but young enough to be the only born, I lived with my parents in a black house on a block no longer known for the brightness of its children.  we were there for such a short time not a story burns from its recalled exile.  no, not a dog digs in the dollyard of my adult sleep.  but there are nights when the bones of my most afflicted boy are the bumps that stir his siblings to spoon each other and in the morning I tell them how their grandfather, propelled by the moth in his mind, walked three times into our door to rid his head of his god, of his wife, and of the secret knock they shared.

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.

dropped on its head for saying footprint, the baby begins its work of collecting only those sounds it can scare.  its father mothers otherness as one who watches a film to make the world worse.  its brother hunchback and sister backstroke are viewed as two stomachs waiting for hunger to dry.  because my mouth is empty, I talk all the time.

you will have to trust that my parents entered the world after a long absence and that they brought with them no appetite large enough to entertain a child whose sole skill was to avoid being eaten.  to continue beyond this point requires a lax diet of forgiveness.  I cannot guarantee there won’t be those who will call to you from underwater, fatso.  or from trees bowing to your weight.  parents are the dark times we know of.

i.

brother
while slicing
an apple
changes
his name
to earshot

ii.

an orange eats everything
but its mask. there was no ocean

iii.

until we hid from the storm. ticks are crickets

iv.

that belong to the poor

this
from the angel
raising
a zebra

the longer
I grieve

the more

for Katherine Osborne*

falsehoods
I was sure
to say
to a horse, things like
god is sending
his middle
child
to collect
a drop
of my daughter’s
blood, or

it’s a sin
to be
1989, things I felt

I owed
the horse, that were
horse-like
in their stillness, that went
nowhere
when nowhere
was

come fly
or flat
earth

the dark’s
*****

30% off all print books on Lulu thru the 24th with coupon code of LULU30

some of mine are there, including:

~ shuteye in the land of the sacred commoner [& other poems]

~ MOON tattoo

~

poems, from:

[ally]

the robotic jaw
lifting otherness
from a hole
in a body cast

no litter
of bewitched
kittens, no wild

crop
of soundlings
angry

at the wrong
life

~

[tocsin]

the singlemost mother has heard of a skin cream can turn one into darkness.  

a bar of soap that reads palms…

-

on display for the poker face of birth, you are the vision footage dies for.

-

you have this father
leaves
no stone
unseen

this brother

haunted
by surplus
aftermath…

-

before it was an ear, it was where

she scrubbed  

~

[On contact]

hold kitten
like a rifle.  pop

a paper sack
at your father’s

ear.  ah, your father

who was made to kneel

for two
maybe three
things

(god, shrapnel) a flying saucer

from the wreckage of his church

~

[purlieu]

a bruise, a school

of fish.  a caterpillar

crossing

the floor
of hell.  a thought

sick
to a son’s
stomach, a winter

glove
in spider’s
nightmare.          

~

[notes for eggshell]

beneath the tethered astronaut of his dream

the impossible boy
misses

something small

the human ear, its recent
brush
with whale

~

[domain]          for Katherine Osborne

falsehoods
I was sure
to say
to a horse, things like
god is sending
his middle
child
to collect
a drop
of my daughter’s
blood, or

it’s a sin
to be
1989, things I felt

I owed
the horse, that were
horse-like
in their stillness, that went
nowhere
when nowhere
was

come fly
or flat
earth

the dark’s
*****