my son’s creator couldn’t settle on a disguise.
     the top of his skull is more like a wet rag.

your work computer can only deny
so much
****.  

Hansel & Gretel were two rich kids who killed someone’s mother.

you are born in a great house and given to a great man.  your birth is the earliest predictor of forward thinking.  your servants spend their days believing the great man’s thoughts of suicide are contagious.  on your fifth birthday, at the age of ten, you are kidnapped by a woman who says the sack is for show.  who says be loud.  you are taken to a river where you meet your brother who seems happiest when holding his breath.  he tells you the woman is your sister but good luck seeing her again.

luck is for the naked.

dear line break,
sleep
is a hoax.

the color of my skin
represents
the time
I’ve been given
to meditate
on my blackness.

in retrospect, we belong
on earth.

the son of an archivist
and the son of a librarian
meet in a shop
where both
step in
to resolve an argument
over

a nesting doll
before pursuing
separately
the same
arsonist.

all angels want to be the angel
known as the man
who smuggled
into heaven
the sacred
text.

I write nothing my tutor can’t read.

before touch has a body, we can see only

the hands of god
how they fumble

loneliness
and imagine

birth
for a family

of small
permissions

On a bicycle I was a priest. A girl who liked me told her father that her mother was dead. She gave me orange peels and said they were from a book she couldn’t read. I put them down my brother’s shirt then hopped on my bike. My brother said it burns it burns but not enough to put a wasp inside of god. I rode until my friends had daughters who shot them near cemeteries that were never used. There were days when I could string together days that I was well enough to drink. I don’t know that my sleep ever touched yours. If you can get the skin off that rock you can throw it.

I cut myself near a doll that wasn’t meant to look like me.

Nakedness,
find your nudes.

The angels let us drink for six days before telling us about god. Day seven, they give us each a son old enough to bite us on the arm. It’s a lot to process. This rabbit is all ribs. Eight is wasted on angels who miss their ghosts.

Touch has taken every handwriting class in hell. Eden is Eden because it’s the only place god doesn’t remember. Do not worry about where I am. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down. Jesus is futuristic trauma for those sleepwalking from the waist down.

My mouth somewhere open in the unmarked church of naming, I cover my face when I go to sleep. Each night god believes in you a star loses its memory of being seen. We don’t always know how to feel attractive and worried. Angels tell our toothaches to imagine a fly living too long with a small part of the sun’s brain. Your breast dreams of the hole in my lung. Eyes are on the way.

The body’s been to the body and back. Catching fish presses the eyelids of god. I look at my brothers to see if our *** dreams have overlapped. I look at my brothers with the unmilked violence of nostalgia. A church painter works backward through the bible. The painter says if the mother’s nose is bleeding, find a baby to put under it. Does not say that touch returns in an image cooked up by the face of pain. Meanwhile a book as quiet as a book turns blue in the space between belonging to the strangled unhoused and beheading the hand that starts a fire with a nail. Meanwhile, the past. You’re never far from the unborn.

A squirrel in the guest
blood
of god apes
history’s unthinkable fetus.

A brother and a sister
forget
at a funeral
who they look like.

My son’s
hot ear
smells
like the cigarette
gave Jesus
away.

I love you.
Terrible
that we’ve met

so the dream
of my hearing
heard it
said:

the child
arsonist
is dead

and after
his lantern
of illness
dropped

what shape
his common
ear
became

(to record

the noise
of a mountain

boy) of a flame

the burning
stopped

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.

sadness
has only
the followers
it takes
from melancholy.  a dog

a dot
of a dog
see it
master
the secret
farm.

dancing
badly
in a small
eye

–

by beehive
what churches
know

in spirit, a grey kitten
curls into
the crystal ball
of an old black man
whose white readership
never materialized.

across town, the man’s first book
is buried beneath a tree    
that was not a tree
when the book was buried.

as a character
in a far death experience
a white woman with a shovel

     her face a storm cloud
above a prison yard
with no prison

adds a bit
of humor.

the doll and the dummy wore for god a wire.  she had a dog whistle and she a ****.  my fist grew faster than my mouth.  your dad was asking a ghost looking for its head how to hold a baby.  thunder what it remembered.  your mom the palmreader with a broken wrist was pumping milk…

in the video about how to give my son
a bath

that’s
him

-

the woman beside me
takes her health with her
wherever

she goes

-

my wife prays
for a boredom
much like
the boredom
of the baby
Jesus
whose hair
my son

lost

is it okay
to rename
a lost
dog?

whose stripes
mimic
prison bars
behind which
a man is on fire.

the man whose blindfold I touched

I said his name
in the dark

he carried me once
on his shoulders
to a cemetery
where as a boy
he’d seen
a turtle

most kids see a mother’s
UFO, a stone

is god’s
giftwrap

that suicide
be
a medical
procedure

for the layman
in
you. that evac

be exodus.

the brother was my age, not a looker.  my parents were nervous and slicked his hair back lovingly.  their hands touched.  I had other presents but I was thinking about the blood in my body and about Stephen.  Stephen was an across the street foster I for a summer could not separate from.  his nose was constantly chapped because his parents found out he had no manners at the table and would have his older sister sneak up behind him and hood him with an empty feed bag.  I went in with Stephen once saying his sister had called him a ******* and his parents liked me enough that they soaped her mouth in front of me then tied a string to her seemingly always loose front tooth and then tied the escaping end of the string to the **** of an open door and slammed it.  because of this honesty Stephen and I were allowed to watch a movie where a white man and a savage pressed their wrists together after cutting them.  the movie looked away from the cutting so we improvised.  it didn’t make us any closer.  the night Stephen ran away I didn’t wake up without having to ****.  it was my dad found him days within the week making boxes a mile gone at a pizza shop because he said his name was Billy and would work for free.    

I looked at the brother and couldn’t see it being so without my blood.  but the brother pulled me to him anyway and I could feel in the heat of his elbows all the time he’d spent mourning the loss of Stephen.

the brother was my age and not a looker. my parents were nervous about displaying him and slicked his hair back lovingly. their hands were careful and if they touched they did so without independence.

I had other presents but I was thinking about the blood in my body and about Stephen. Stephen was an across the street foster I for a summer could not separate from. his nose was constantly chapped because his parents found he had no manners at the table and would have his older sister sneak up behind him and hood him with an empty feed bag. I went in with Stephen once saying his sister had called him a ******* and his parents liked me enough that they soaped her mouth in front of me then tied a string to her seemingly always loose front tooth and then tied the escaping end of the string to the **** of an open door and slammed it. because of our honesty Stephen and I were allowed to watch a movie where a white man and a savage pressed their wrists together after cutting them. the movie looked away from the cutting so we improvised. it didn’t make us any closer. I knew this for sure when on the night Stephen ran away I didn’t wake up without having to ****. it was my dad found him days within the week making boxes a mile gone at a pizza shop because he said his name was Billy and would work for free.

     I looked at the brother and couldn’t see it being so without my blood. I explored shyly but with faith and was heartened when I could feel in the heat of his elbows all the time he’d been born with.

Stephen was an across the street foster I for a summer could not separate from.  his nose was constantly chapped because his parents found he had no manners at the table and would have his older sister sneak up behind him and hood him with an empty feed bag.  I went in with Stephen once saying she’d called him a ******* and his parents liked me enough to soap her mouth in front of me,  loop a string around the least loose of her top teeth, tie the free end of the string to the **** of an open door and slam it.  because of this honesty Stephen and I were allowed to watch a movie where a white man and a savage pressed their wrists together after cutting them.  the movie looked away from the cutting so we improvised.  it didn’t make us any closer.  I knew this for sure when on the night Stephen ran away I didn’t wake up until I had to ****.  it was my dad found him days within the week making boxes a mile gone at a pizza shop because he said his name was Billy and would work for free.  to my knowledge his parents called him Billy from then on.  to my dad’s they got money for both.

/ those who’ve boiled mouthwash in a baby’s bottle

/ my ice-fishing father’s crystal ball

/ the leaf
that prays
for hand

I slip with god into a movie about a crying baby  

/ the museum
doesn’t have
a bathroom

when you were with god, I alone doubted the sincerity of your absence

just as art
is not
the external
sadness
of one's
inner
monologue

this poem
is not
an apology

for blackface

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

I think I’m in hiding.


of two men, both go to hell.


I was given a glimpse of the dumb glance.


violence is a nothingness.


god has one hand.  one eye.  and one son he takes back.


     you take retrieval so personally I am sent again to start a war but I’m early.


some of you were children first.


to whom it may scar,
I drew a flower without a stem and it sealed your belly.


terrifying
idea based
ideas.

I call often on the disappearance of my sister.

she is the ghost in the town of my shadow’s envy.

     daily use, reading or writing: friendly fire. blind copy.

when her ball cap was given to my father he returned me this:
I think she can survive without it.

she went once from her window to the window of the neighbor boy
whose dream had him believing his parents dead
no matter what they did.

she knocked the following morning on our front door. and later
showed me the tree
which was not so high.

I marked the day she became my younger by sleeping.

     if I love women, it’s something I should’ve done
a long time ago.

I don’t have the temper my memory has.

skin cell, star.

a mouthful of the flood’s
haunted
soil.  an entry
made by a god
at seven
days
sober.

overseas, another ant
in the darkness…

the boy was shirtless, was pocket knife
and pentagram.

where I’m from
this is how
we
go naked.

to attract other houses
my mother stays in bed
all day
claiming upright
she is fat.

awake, I visit
the white limo
in the white
limo’s
dream.

the boy lured my daughter
into being born.  I wrapped him

in a towel
and buried him
beneath
my brother
who had it

coming.

to erase hell
from the window
washer’s
memory

father mustn’t

hurt
one by one
the poor.

from ~The Blood You Don’t See Is Fake~ selected poems (September 2013)

[multitudes]

oh, here they are.  the interested persons we will find later.  for now, this field.  my gestural father holding a broom for what he calls the welcome mat of exodus.  if my mother is watching it is because she long ago dropped birds from a single passenger plane.  if instead she is privately seen by god, then the whole bird thing was a bit of a stretch.  in memory alone I am alone.

[another ****]

in such times, it is constantly 2am.  a friend pulls carefully at your ear.  a friend’s thumb is a hologram of a thumb.  you are being told that what you’re about to be told is highly confidential.  because it’s dark, and because your bed is the prize winning bed of a formerly dethroned insomniac, you are nothing if not empowered to listen.  your friend’s tongue redacts the parts of your body that have been marked.  this is done in secret.  what you’re hearing right now was scored some time ago.  when things were the same.      

[word of the devil’s death]

     my mother and father cower under the kitchen table and my brothers are dead.  my father has clammed up since asking me to tell him something he can take to his grave.  this last week I’ve mastered placing my ear on the table in such a way I hear what I am supposed to do.  impossible things that are no longer terrible.  dispatches from a simpler region.  for example, hack your roommate’s youtube account.  also, poison the non-pregnant.  my baby sister laughs with me when I say some of these aloud.  she believes the table is possessed by the devil’s ghost.  her beliefs are clear and specific.  the ghost thinks itself the actual devil, and will need a good amount of therapy.                    

[men statuesque]

I am struck by the urge to pray.

my trauma has yet to occur.

the stress my father knows

knew his hands
as he waved them in front of nothing
on a tarmac obscured by speech.

night is a ruined crow.

I see the city as possibly bombed.

[steganography]

every day is a scar’s birthday.  this is how I am able to start most of your sentences.  I praise your god, you worry, and worry keeps him from finding out.  on the day you started talking the rooms were horrified.  the termites fled your blood.  a cold stone appeared outside beside a stick.  the home’s most loved dog died without spatial awareness.  your mother began to compose a series of poems by Franz Wright.  for inspiration she put her hands in the dog and in doing so dropped a sack of black groceries.  a thing that changed over time rolled into your father’s mouth.


[the wave]

we let the phone ring out because it keeps the babies quiet.  we have this dance we do to straighten side leaning semi-trailer trucks.  the sports we play require that one’s sickness occur only when it’s run through the others.  we limp beside any creature that limps.  the great romance of a complete thought is something our parents plan to leave each other.  our father is two mathematicians who argue.  our mother says her feet feel as if they’re still in prison for what she’ll take to her grave.  our guesses mean little because they are facts.  at school we are voted on and kissable.  if you see us coming, *** is a small unplugged television on top of a small casket.  details belong to god.      

[fixture]

dying of young age, your brother nurses at the breast of the stage hand’s version of a mother.  the stage hand is off arguing with a lamp on the impossibility of attracting moths.  beside a tall cake, a groom with lockjaw and a stiff neck has to take life’s high point on faith.  if you remember, brother made for the groom a bible so light it could be held by a cobweb.  and then it was.      

~~~~~~~~~~

from ~father, footrace, fistfight~ selected poems (June 2014)

[future stabbings]

you take photos of men and women who aren’t all there. you post the photos while your dog barks. you doze on a hot day. your mom calls to tell you about the spider in her eye and while she talks you look for your dog. your mom thinks you sound desperate though you’ve said nothing. you go outside and see your dog in the backseat of a parked car. the car is not yours. your mom has the hiccups and says the first part of goodbye.

[dog years]

the longer
I grieve

the more

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from ~Eating the Animal Back to Life~ full length poetry collection (July 2015)

[uppers]

god gets ******-up about which hair to harm on your head. in some, this goes on for years. I have a lucky razor, a father who’s blind in one hand, and a suicidal thought that scares me to death in front of cops. my last meal came to me on a toothbrush.

[themes for orphan]

you will never be
a virus

-

the animal’s moment of bliss
before it is named

-

*******
as the seizure
had
by hologram

-

the cyclone
that makes a baby
you can’t
put down


[accession]

starvation
is the invisible
cannibal’s
birthmark.

water
is nothing’s
blood.

for Noah*

my brother was blinded by a crow.

I’d tell you the story
but know
you hate it.

*******.

brother’s darkroom
became
the crow’s.