(I)

Whose coat is this? Sure as hell isn't my coat. I ain't got no coat with this parka ****, it's *******. I ain't no furry flamin' ******. I ain't no ****** chochy Molly-May-Ze-**** chokin' down chickens and nasalin' a'sniffin' snortin' nasty-*** choch; that ain't me. That ain't me. Look at this coat– I'm like an Eskimo *****. I'm like a butch-**** bull-**** crotch-lappin' a'swimmin' laps in that guy's swimmin' pool. Who's that guy? Who owns that guy? 'Ey, anyone here the owner of this guy– guy ain't got no owner? Whose coat is this? It's nice, real nice. Bet she said, "Does it come from France? Where do I buy one?" I want to buy one, I think I need to buy **** more. I sure as hell need to buy one of these. "And I need one these too and one of them too and I need a petticoat and a tipper-tapper and a whimpratic garfielder and one of them new bartlemores, I need more of them bartlemores. I need more, more, more, more, more, more..." That ain't enough. ****'s from France. ****'s from Paris, that's romantic. You think I'm romantic? I eat hearts for dinner, I chew down nails like nuts for my midnight snack. I smoke cigarettes and spit on concrete slabs, you think that's ****? I'll show you ****. I'll show you Paris, New York City, Rome, romance you in Rome. I'll get real ******' Roman. I'll take you to the desert and make love to you. That's how a free man does a woman, and I'm a real free man. Who's ownin' this guy? It ain't you, it ain't me. I don't own you, you don't own me. I'm a free man:

I said,
"Fire and wood, fire and wood, fire and wood. It is late, it is late, it is far, far too late."

I set
fire to wood, fire to wood; feel that fire fired fresh from that firewood.

I dug the pit,
he gathered the wood,
she started the fire.

She really does make that fire start.

O' how she makes that fire burn,
O' how the wood's wrapped in white hots,
O' how they smoke their smokestacked pipes,
O' tobacco teeming teenagers, tormented by and through youth,
O' adolescence, trending topics, and forget-me-not flowers,
O' old age, Floridan coffins, and coughing  cancers,
O' writers in the mountains writing to be,
O' painters and **** bodies in studies by the sea,
O' thinkers in their mindset, mindsetting the table for dinner,
O' tables set to bursting,
O' wallets so thick,
O' community,
O' society, our social games,
O' hope,
O' peace,
O' that I may be at peace,
O' that I may be content and pray only for peace,
O' how about them true believers,
O' how about that love at first sight,
O' sandstone. My sandstone. That guy sittin' on sandstone.

That's my guy. That's my guy. I own this ****.

Is a man breathing on a mirror the sum of his breaths?
Breaths foggin' a'mistin' my view,
my view of a body and that face,
you're a body.
You're a workin' day's bell,
you're my chill in an Icelandic draft,
you're my spare in a Middle Eastern draft,
you're my pawn in chest-to-chest chess.

You've got this. You've got this. You own this ****.

And it is ****, too. I'd be set, real ******' set, with someone like you. I'll make you a woman, check this parka ****. Coat's mine. I'm a classy igloo runner, runnin' a'ragin' a'czebelskiin' meriteratin', I'll be reiteratin' your points. Check the time, it's late! It's late! ***** was in the grassy knoll turnin' trap tunes on her turntable. Would you listen to that? She sounds late to me, does she sound late to you? I like the music; I like the music. What happened to Woodstock? Where's my watergate, Nixon? Where's my generation, Ginsberg? Where's the meaning? This music's too loud! We're so profound! O' profundity!

Tell me something I didn't know, I'm craving' the new.
Give me the new while I spit on the old,
while I spit on this fine art finely art'd by and for fine artists–
******' fine artists. ******* fine artists.

(You can realize radical-realist realism but you can't be real with me?)

O' fine art!
What fine art!
Which fine artists are dead?



(II)

Looks like they're dead.

Looks like them ******* choked out all them ghettos, choked out all them rednecks, chokin' a'stranglin' by-God-oh-God straddlin' the breeders. I sure did like them babes– babes with their laughin' a'lackin' o' cynicism. They don't know the word "****."

I sure am forgetful–
I forgot that smoke doesn't dissipate,
I forgot how to smell autumn leaves,
I forgot to check the heart against the fingertips,
I forgot why my fingertips went numb,
I forgot to cue in the meaning when the sentence was complete,
I forget to complete my sentences,
I forget who you were wanting when you said, "I want you."

I got as much depth as an in-depth discussion, high hats and electropercussion have got me going. I'm goin' downtown, uptown bourgeois tricked me out, johns and yellow Hummers laid me down and cussed me out. That's not a discussion. That's not my scent scenting my towel, this breath reeks of wintry air– my fingertips went numb.

"I want you."

"Oh would you look at that moon?
Take a look at that moon.
Look at that moon with the ******' mountains.
I love that moon.
That's my moon."

I love darin' a'dusty dareelin' derailin' your dreams, whose dreams are these? They ain't my dreams– ain't no dream derailin' a'nileerad radiatiatin' some hint of joy or Jamison Scotch Liqueur. Drink that ****. That's my ****, I own that ****.
I'm sittin' on this stoop like I own this ****, like this **** owns me; I owed me. I don't own me, you owe me:

Pay up man, feet off the stoop.
Pay up man, be real with me.
Pay up man, you ever thought of a man as a man?
Pay up man, give it in.
Pay up man, give in.
Pay up man, I need you to do me a solid. Do me solid from crown-to-toe, we're toe-to-toe let's do-si-do bro-to-** I'm ready go, **, jo, ko, lo, get low… Now I'm ramblin'. You say, "Ramble in to the stoop and tell me a story."

What's a stoop– who's a stoop? That **** ain't stoop– you ain't stoop. You're stupid. You're a joke, check out the joke. Hey ladies, you seen this joke– joke ain't been seen by them ladies? I'm a joke. We ain't laughin' with you, they're laughin' at you.

O' hilarity!
Such hilarity!
What hilarious histories have passed?



(III)*

"I said I loved him once. I only loved him once."
(And how long once has been...)

I sure did like them hand-holdins,
them star-gazin' moments,
them moon phasin' nighttime nuances,
them fingertip feelin' a'findin',
them sessions o'meshin' limber legs unto steadfast *****,
heads cocked like guns toward the sky,
beyond the horizon
but well
below the belt.

Them star-gazing moments seeing stars seemin' small, I love how they gleam- gleamin' a'glarin' comparin' shine to shine, shimmerin' a glimmer shone stumblin' her way home from the bar. She's drunk. She's brilliant, brilliance of whit and wantin' a'wanderlustin' gypsy nomads- that ***** gyp'd me, no mad man would take a cerebral slam to the face lest them moving pictures are involved. Read a ******' book, it'll last longer. Kiss me on the collar bones, clavicles shone shining with slick saliva pining for my affections. You're clammerin' to feel me, clammin' up (Just feel me.) I want to run my hands through long hair and peg the nausea nervosa to the wall. The writing's on the wall:

The sun bent over so the moon could rise, chanting,
"Goodbye and good riddance,
I never wanted to shine down
on them seas o' tranquilities anyhow."*

O' what a day. What a day.

And the wind ruffles leaves and it ruffles feathers on birds eating worms in brown soil.

What a day. What a day.

And the men under the bridge gather in traitorous conversation of governments overthrown and border dissolution and poetry with meters bent out of tune.

What a day. What a day.

And the billboards are dry for all the consumers to consume, use, and review.

What a day. What a day.

And hearts break messiest when you're not looking.

What a day. What a day.

And the ego and the id and the redwood trees are talking. They're sitting **** in the marshes, bathing in the bogwater while fondling foreign fine wines and whisperin' a'veerin' conversations towards topics kept well out of hand, out of the game, nontobe racin' in races, rampant radical racists betting bets on bent, bald Bolshevik racists wagging Marxist manifestos in the bourgeois' faces, yes. Make it be. Nontobe sanity as the captain creases his pleats, pleasin' her creases and the dewdrops of sweat trailing down the small of her back– down the ridge of her spine forming solitary springs of saline saltwater in the small of her back. Aye-aye, guy's pleasin' a'makin' choices a'steerin'– government's a'veerin' a hard left into the ice.

'Berg! 'Berg!
Danger in the icy 'berg!
None too soon a 'berg!
Bound to bump a 'berg!
O' inevitably unnerving 'berg!
Authoritative 'berg!
Totalitarian 'berg!
Surveillance of *** and the sexes 'berg!
O' fatalist fetishist 'berg!
Benevolent big brother 'berg!
Homosocial socialization 'berg!
Romanticized Roman 'berg!
O' virginal mother 'berg!
City on a hill on a 'berg!
Subtly socialist 'berg!
Nongovernmental 'berg!
O' illustrious libertine 'berg!
Freedom of the people 'berg!
Water privatization 'berg!
Alcohol idolization 'berg!
O' corrupt and courageous 'berg!
Church and a stately 'berg!
Pray to your ceiling fan 'berg!
Biblically borne 'berg!
O' godly and gorgeous 'berg!
Ferocious freedom fighters launching lackluster demonstrations far too post-demonstration feeling liberty and love, la vie en rouge, revolving revolutionist ranting on revolution tangible as
an ice cold 'berg.

'Berg! 'Berg!
O' the 'berg, the ****** iceberg–
You'll be the death of me.

**** me like the ocean would the moon, Dear Amaranthine.
Teach me as you would any abecedarian, slow with pace.
My pallid arms are spread, and feet are crossed.
Crucify me, like one of your French girls.

Your endless frame arched over mine
a vaulting testament to the heat
of your front against my back.
This scene should have been a chapel.

Through hazed musk I can taste the saline
as it tumbles from your dripping brunette tendrils
forming brooks and lagoons the color of flesh
in the glens and about the islands of my spine.

I wish I could write about you in me
while you dance a contemporary beat
ceaseless, indeterminate, untold are
your feats within and upon my person.

For a split moment, seconds shattered in two,
I am completely and totally permeated by you.
I whine for you to vacillate me, I am ******* begging
to be occupied, satiated, by a rhythm akin to the sway of trees.

Love me fast and kiss me slow, Dear Amaranthine.
My palms are red, and feet bloodied, too. I moan.
Call me your poetaster but don't come on my chest;
There's far too much weight there already, my dear.

I always feel like I’m running.
Not running away, there’s no such thing.
Just running forward towards something.

Something.

There’s no such place.

With how long I've been running
surely I'd have found it by now.

I've though of what it must look like.

Something could be a field
buried in a brilliant, sunlit cloud of alfalfa.

It could be a tundra,
frozen and without borders.

A rainforest,
vivid with life, green and flourishing.

A mountain, lurching
over a city,
and in the city there would be nothing but good men.

No liars, nor cheats.

Just good men and good women,
good drink and bad bars,
blocks and city blocks of motels
riddled, reeking with  the smoke of cigarettes
smoked sometime post-***.

And in the city there would be nothing but goodmen
railing
good men
raving and ranting, chanting for more
railing.

These stairs sure are steep,
I best not fall.

Something could be a desert.
The dunes would stretch, immaculate, across my vision.
The horizon would be sun, sand, and sun again.

Is the sky still blue in a desert?
Is desert wind built of language and faith, or just oxygen heated to boiling?
Is the night full of hushed whispered deviance?
Is the night bent over the day's sofa?
Is he waiting for sunrise?

Rise, sun, rise,
what are you waiting for?

Do it.

Rumble.

The earth loved San Francisco so much

Boom.

That he opened wide and swallowed it whole

Crash.

I'd love to make an earthquake with you

Moan.

I see the mole.

It lies just south of his petite clavicles,
parenthesizing his fragile neck.

I'd like to find the others.

Moles dotting his figure,
beacons on his frame.

Showing me where to touch.

I'll map them all out,
every last speck.

Just call me the cartographer.

I'll connect the dots, drawing lines,
building routes with my fingertips.

Your body will be mapped like the Silk Road.

But no ideas will be exchanged, nor words spoken.
No empires will be connected across this globe.

Only moles.

It's the skin on skin basics:
You may touch, but please don't look.

I hand him a pinecone,
pale petals,
and some Tulgeywood bark
saying "Feel it out in the dark,"
saying

"Can you tell me what that is?

Can you dab your flesh on those pine needles,
***** your tips in the dark?

Feel it out in the light now.
Can you taste it:

Can you lap it, lick it?
Bite it, mosquito, bite
'til your lips are swollen
and
'til your teeth are blunted
and
'til the thought of one more cigarette
is enough to
make you sick,
make you smile,
make you laugh for a short while or an hour or two...

Spit, *****, spit; you're a jumpy little mare.
If you don't know what a pinecone feels like
I'll break all 13 hands of you.

Can you press petals in your fingers
and call it the skin on the small of my back?

Call the dew in small beads the perspirin' of my lust?

Can you do that for me?
Imagine, for a second?"

I imagine for a second—
I imagine for a second or two.

My heart's so *******
I can hardly breathe.

It seems, to me, that every scent is yours
every sight or sound,
song lyric or strip of poetry
relates back to you and the knot in my chest.

I best recruit a young sailor
to untie and bend these cravings.

These faint and vague desires
not to kiss you
nor to *******
but to see you, lay with you, be with you.

That is what I crave daily,
what I need to loosen this knot.

But
the knot
just
tightens.

I crave to see you alone on a walk
or you with others
or you with me.
I especially crave to see you with me.

O' that which I'd give
to see you with me.

It must have been the grass
or the beers
or the LSD
because no natural occasion could make me feel this way.

I first heard you before I saw,
singing across the fence.

Your voice was like cream in hot coffee
scintillating, mesmerizing
fascinating, and light;
a drop of sweet in the dark, dark bitter.

I never knew that drinking coffee black
would soon become impossible.

Everything is
bitter
when you've tasted
sweet.

It's something in the way you visibly think
about the world and
others actions and
everything I say and do; something in the way you care.

It's something in the way you spit,
claiming the concrete as your own, a primal beast.

You are an incarnadine being,
a vastly deep creature whose
curls I can be lost in for
hours and days if not for those eyes.

Those eyes steal me with every glance,
dark mines of copper and fool's gold.

But pyrite is the sheen to which my mind melts,
and Scorpio sun signs
paint the mystique
that keeps me awake and alert all through the night

You keep me awake and alert,
waiting for the next move.

Yes, I'd be a liar if I said I felt friendship for you
and a heretic if I
dared to touch you.
But you dare to touch me. Every day,

you brush your hand 'gainst my leg,
grab my shoulder and hold,
knock your knee upon mine,
you push me gently,
but I die when you grab my thigh,
grab my thigh and squeeze it tightly
reassuring me that you're there
you're real
you're caring for me
and when the goodbyes come
**** the goodbyes
you hug me so closely and so tightly
that my heart,
knotted as it is,
beats faster than it ever has.

I swear that it beats
faster than it ever could.

And in this speed, this conflagration of emotion,
I feel how the knot
only tightens to where
even the youngest sailor lacks the nimbility to loosen it.

I swear that it's much
tighter than it ever was;

that no one has stressed my mind so,
kept my heart strained to where it
beats
faster than it ever could,

it beats faster yet, than the
rush of a train upon steel.

When I was small I would lie

every single day

and run to the mirror to see if my

nose had grown

because all I wanted was*

to be a real boy.

I am in cold. I watch that garish ward brimming with false light. Bleached air from his lips touching hers. He hides in her mane, sterile and alone. Why is it so hard, such an insurmountable task for you to see how I lather my face with paint each day just to smile at you?

My face, my heart, my mind not a blank canvas that I hide with these diluted pastels but a deep, rich chorus of colors and oils that were never meant to be hidden. But the ward will never know.

There are thoughts and opinions rolling like a torrent behind this mask I call a face. This world was against me from day one, don’t you dare say I’ve given way to cynicism. Nor optimism, pessimism, or God-forsaken realism. Can't I think the earth is beautiful, God is good, I am right, and people are wrong without someone putting an -ism behind me? Of course not. That's narcissism. Egoism. Egalitarianism.

It is what I unknowingly wrote across my mask. But I never chose to attend this outdated ball, masquerades are cliched. Pure romanticism...surrealism, the kin of commercialism whose visage is a polychromatic wheel of logotypes that you just have to know en masse.

What if I stop believing that compassion Himself can hate me? No, no that's atheism. Agnosticism. And if I'm better than someone because He said so then that is monotheism in all it's delicate flavors.

Can't I breathe alone in a quiet corner? Isolationism. Can't I want to simply be a follower, and think about life, literature, and art? Incomprehensible, that would be totalitarianism, absolutism, authoritarianism. What if I want to give God all the power He gave us, and watch the world change? Fascism. Revolutionism. Extremism, because releasing the wheel is extremism. Existentialism.

And what if I choose to remove the mask, break the levees, release the floodgates,    my thoughts and opinions, never watch my tongue, and speak the world as it is: A capital M-madman's schism of logic and faith. As it has always been, and always will be. I will always be in love with the counterfeit ward. And yes, there's a label for that: Catastrophism.

So I watch Beauty and his Beast touching in fluorescence. Bleached breath, save for the smoke of his lungs in hers. Sterile and alone; I am in cold, and cold hurts me.

I wrap my arms about my torso and brush my thoughts 'gainst you,
crying.

Rainwater best cures a torn-soul
when boiled in a *** atop
a burner left burning all night.

Crying,
the sky giveth us wonders and taketh the wonders away.

O' the water's down a'boilin'.
Ye' it all boils down to you.
To you and how you go.
Ye' when you go, you go.
O' where you a'goin' too?

See that go-getter go-gettin' his girl–
Good for him. Good for him.

Send some good for the man with a will when he wills his will to be.
And good for the fingers who first feel a fortune 'fore the fortune is seen.
And good for the addicts relapsing in attics with kisses of dopamine.
And good for the thoughts of you that brush against my skin,
that for days on will hold–

Eighteen! Eighteen! I say eighteen years is the bridge,
the forest fires will forever forget to burn!

I say give it a year and call him on that telephone and
he will answer on that telephone and
you will beg his heart come home, beggin' a'bargainin'–

Eighteen! Eighteen! I have missed you for some time,
bent-to-bet a century's pass'd since we last kissed.

One match done been lit in the county matchbook.
Such is the click-click of a gas stove igniting,
I call that rip-exciting, torn-enticing, fates be a'dicing–

*Eighteen! Eighteen! It was another day–
It was another life.

Running, panting, I would sprint to the alfalfa field
on windy summer days
just to feel the blistering heat blowing across my cheeks
like an oven cracked open.

Maybe I will live in the desert.

In the sandy dunes and hot wind I will find myself
and explore my thoughts and revive my faith.

With sand in my shoes and cracks on my hands
I will walk in Christ's footsteps and drink from an oasis.

I will wander into the desert, murmuring,
"It is late, it is late, it is so very late..."

And then I will wait in the cold for the next day
when I will find relief in the hot air rolling over the dunes.

And then I will sweat.

It's a curious affect, to love hot air
O' wind blow
Find me an oasis, carry me to the water.
My mouth is so, so dry.

I am in love with you sometimes
like when I am riding the bus
beneath luminous buildings stapled deep
into the polluted black of the sky
that sadistic monoliths so horribly scrape.

Then there are times when I want you dead.
I scream loud into my pillow
then press my ear to the cotton
but after my punches it is too scared to reply
so all I hear are the echoes of my scream.

You ought to be ashamed for what you've done.
I am a strong, resilient, independent young person
and you blank face, you liar,
you slaughterhouse chief...
You ought to be ashamed.

Does your heart beat like a racehorse
when the Jockeys come off?
Are you aroused when a man in a suit,
a business-man suit,
tosses the homeless a quarter?

Do you hope that it lands by their tattered, torn shoe heads up?
Do you think they just need a little luck?

If you do,
then I have a secret to tell you:

*You are the most flawless person I have ever seen,
and holding hands on the city bus scares the living **** out of me.

The word 'Montana' has a taste to it.

It is a being, it really is.
There is a spirit in those fields.
And you won't know it!
You won't! Know!

YOU CAN'T SEE

how much it has gripped you,
how firmly it has your heart until you are long gone.
Then you miss it. I miss it, friend, like a distant love.
It is like a massive pylon with bright red ribbon,

INCARNADINE

ribbon wrapped around your wrists.
No matter where you go you will always be connected.
It will always call your name, like a siren
in the seas calling a sailor home

BEFORE

cursing him and
devouring him forever.
Like the earth is to the moon,
distant and gripping,

Montana is my anchor.

"That one looks like a dragon,"

you said, extending your arm to the night sky.

Sure enough,
against the aubergine purple,
there is a head
and a tail and a tongue
and a tiny lick of flame.

The wheat feels frigid
when compared to the heat of your waist.

I pull you in closer
terrified that the immensity of this field
will swallow us.

That we would sink down its esophagus,
away from the sky.

The stars are out now.
And I imagine being
swallowed.
Of falling up into the universe.
A celestial dive.

I lick my lips and whisper to you and the stars and even the wheat,

"This night will haunt me forever."

My bed is empty. I count the seconds down until you appear: 1...2...3 times you've asked me to leave you alone. Leave you alone? How can I let you be so cruel, so uncaring, and so completely and totally near to my voice. I can't. It's not who you are in this world-we call reality sets in and I grab my **** as the black of guilt sets in.

Black. Gray. White. What room am I in? There's ten feet of tile by ten feet heaven bound. The claw foot tub grips at the **** stained floor, fighting gravity's nagging whine. It's all too real. All too fictitiously crisp. All too false.

The ivory room slips into the field as the brown drains from the vomitorium. Bathhouses, **** me. Lesioned tricks, **** me. Loneliness, *******-off to Cair Paravel.

I'm an ice cube in an ocean. Don’t drown, don't go, just come.

Rhythm stops and I study the damage. Laying alone on my bed, skin burning with the genocide of my seed spilt for you, I realize you are gone. With the revival of my senses I realize: You are a dream. A fabrication of lust and desire. But this moment, these feelings are ever changing. This moment is real. This time it's you. Tomorrow night: Tommy Anders, Brent Everett, Mr. Corrigan! Pornstars extraordinaire.

That's all I get nowadays.

In a steady, illiterate static
this room is my study.
And you are my book.

Legs spread 'cross my lap
hands firmly upon my frame.
I lean in to see the words.

Your soft lips graze mine
like branded cattle in a glen.
Wet and cold we sit there.

Then your tongue begins flickering
beguiling like the serpent of Eden.
How could I resist but to bite?

I kiss you sweetly
and you kiss me back.
Minutes pass in the study.

My tongue examines your mouth
like a cartographer mapping a new world.
Each slick and ***** is wholly new to me.

Teeth clink like crystal glasses
during a wedding day toast.
Eyes shut tight make the black of mourning.

The noises dribbling from our mouths sound akin
to a murderer tromping through the forest mud.
Shovel dragging hard. ...Plop...Plop...Plop...

Our hands run over each other's bodies
open-palmed like a child examining the globe.
I want to feel you from pole to pole.

I pull back and run my fingers through your hair.
Your color is rushed with red and you wipe saliva from your lips.
Your smile is without flaws, and you taste like ambrosia.

I love being literate.

Amidst my self-sinkin' a'droppin' down
into involuntary shunts you note:

"Pensive, pensive–
He is always so pensive.
He smokes another cigarette
and takes another bath."

Amidst crossin' o'clawfeet
in clawfoot tubs you repeat:

"Check the water for them words
you were park-wanderin' a'lookin' for
while I was out all last night
a'lookin' only for you."

And as I look,
I do only, for you.

"Sometimes – sometimes I am so in love with you, it's surrealism.
My heart's breaking from the weight, from my romanticism,
a castaway'd castawayer a'makin' memoirs in the morning.
I'm a beach-combing romantic; I'll fall out of love by the morning."

Ponderin' a'wanderin' takes me back to the Fall with leaves, fallen too;
to our breaking point, pointing skywards in the off-season kite flying season.
I kiss the wind washing over my face and curse all the dumb, **** reasons
that I never did kiss you; I never meant to kiss you. I do only, for you.

*"Pensive, dear pensive,
you do this for me:
Go ponderin' for months–
O' sonderin' on o'er me."

Hey, remember when we went to Vegas?
You were the only friend I had.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
I couldn't have done it without you.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
All be a'droppin' at the bridge.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
Inane insanities in the sands.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
I'd bet all my chips on you.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
O' desert night, bring me home.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
Hey, you were the only friend I had.

That was a long night in Vegas:
Take me through the desert again.

I'm telling you, there's something about a dune that's bigger than the both of us.
This tablecloth is singed with the cinders of cigarettes.
Them lights gotta be yellows, just see–

Looks like some yellows to me.
Looks like some skulls stuck up in the stucco.
Looks like a nice trip to me.
Looks like in Vegas I found myself and yourself, likewise, found me.
Looks like the best hours I've ever spent were spent sitting on the roadside
aside the road that sits beneath every star
waiting  for     the      cars        to         pass.

Remember when we went to Vegas?
*You are the best friend I have.

C'etait vraiment une belle soirée,
la plus-que parfait soirée de toute ma vie.
C'etait un soir amaranthine.

I have seen God,
and he is pistons on iron.
Grey-blue eyes, saltwater pools.
That squeelin' a'screechin whimperin' whinin' hydraulics,
Can you feel the hydraulic boom-boom bass-bass..

He is a man crying "Hey,"
he is a woman selling jewelry
he is wraps and rounds, garnets that glow,
he is 'Tree Fort' musically meditating with meditating musicians,
he is a writer writing in the woods,
he is burning paolo santo,
he is iced off dose,
real European ****.

(Boom, boom. Bass, bass.)

he is Scorpio sun signs sun shining,
he is a man's heart shining.

Won't you look at all these hearts,
really have a look at them,
and tell me that they aren't the most

beautiful
creative
spirited

hearts that you've ever seen?

Scorpio, I love you. I really did love you. And how I've loved you since.

It was truly a beautiful party,
the most beautiful party of my whole life.
It was a night amaranthine.

So much to do, my mind is buzzing. My fingers are dancing with perverted excitement as my lips form words with more syllables than letters. I feel as though I were a more capable Atlas. May the world rely on me, I shall hold it higher than an aeroplane as it soars through the sky. Our skies.

A testament to the ingenuity of man the turrets, ******* the weak, and credit God; the asexual ****** he is.

This is no song for the hipsters to play as their ringtones as they feel for each other through their LCD screens. They search for other brazen articles of humanity trapped within their social networks, a web of faces, **** smiles, faces and words with us wherever we we go. An inextricable mass that haunts like schizophrenic vocals droning out the real life. But there is no real life. We are all just like Him.

*****. Not natural. Filthy. Unclean.

Today, I grabbed a handful of sand just to see if I could feel it. Ten years ago, I would have felt every grain as it passed through my fingers; crisp, sharp, invigorating. Now, it’s dull. Blunt, rounded, indistinguishable. *****. Not natural. Filthy. Unclean. Nothing for our worshipped deviant to see.

My life is pornographic; an infographic of my exquisite taste in infectious lies, in the slaughter of old days, in the times immemorial. A map of things that don’t relate to me. A chart of things I don’t care about. I have too much to do, so much to write about! To write about...me.

*****. Not natural. Filthy. Unclean.

My mind is buzzing.

Until the next day, when my bones fall sluggish and my mind thinks plainly of its singular desire: Sleep…*****, sleep...filthy, sleep. But I can’t.

So now...I work. I am alive, alive, alive a lively beat of my heart as blood runs like an inmate from the bars of confinement. From my body: a testament to the ingenuity of *******. My body. Where my heart is beaten.

Beat, beat.

Sleep, sleep.

Fly high.

How about that gasoline
in Autumn rain puddles?

How about them cars that don't start,
can't start.

I just wanted to start.

Playing games like this never amused me much;
I guess I'm more of a reader than a writer than a toy-game-player.

I want the facts.

None of this horseshit media circus,
ignorance is neither knowing nor caring.

Nay bliss,

It was bliss on those cold winter nights,
night twilights pressed hard against the city-smogged sky
where the gases of sugar beets and petroleum reflect back down orange.

Orange on the snow and orange on snow drifts and snow flakes on your eyelashes.
Little orange dusts
(**** your lashes grow long)
dusts fallen halfheartedly like rain in the fall
and rain puddles shone red
and blue
and green
and orange, orange, orange...

Always orange.

Like gasoline in rain puddles,
gasoline in cars that won't start.

They can't start, don't start;
My engine must be misfiring.

(How about them metaphors for a heart?)

Will you call me when you get there?

“I think I’m a coffee table,” I whisper as I lock the door. My hands are cold as I slip them into my pants. Tonight, my icy hands are yours and though I am alone beneath my sheet, I can will you to be here. All I need is the slick of my spit and the broken borders of my mind.

Welcome to Gomorrah. A nation built on depravity.

He is The Coffee Table. No need for names or personality. So long as he spreads himself thick on the stained furniture, he is stained furniture. It’s an art, and he takes it with stride. "Take it," the chandelier cries in the most meaningless of tones. Money for *** never did mean love. The camera is watching.

She is The ****. Nobody knows of her children twice never born, nor do they care to listen to her tales of men who swear to love her as they beat her with their fists. But, like the author, she would rather be loved with a brutal, manipulative passion than to not be loved at all. So as long as those legs are spread, and there’s a chandelier between them, she is content with being nothing but a ****.

She is The Victim. Born forthright into this world under the name “John.” How can God forget something as vital as her *******? I understand He makes no mistakes, but He made a mistake. So she stands on the corner waiting for johns. (Ironic.) Raising some money. (For what?) To fix what God ******* up on the first time around.

He is That Little Boy. No longer searching for answers to why his piano teacher gropes as his fingers dance across the keys, and hers across his lips. Confusion and anguish are washed away by a tide of childish reasoning: His father works. His mother drinks. And somebody loves him.

Funny way of showing it. Depraved, really. But this is Gomorrah, a nation built on depravity.

Turns out The Coffee Table is a romantic. Likes to slow dance to nothing, stare at the stars, and cook dinner for you to the tune of Bing Crosby. He’s not a coffee table at all. The **** is a mother. Third time, she carried the baby, lost track of the deadbeat, and found her independence. His abuse was a rhythm she never cared for anyways. As for The Victim? Cost thousands of dollars, ten STDs, and her family but she is a woman. His mistake is fixed. How about That Little Boy? He is now just as much a monster as the woman who taught him to play E flat. Turns out they have a lot in common: At age 38 he likes little boys too.

That is Gomorrah, no that is America: An explosion of pure sexuality displayed for all the world to scrutinize, slander, and wholly enjoy. Pleasure has no morality, so let's watch the show.

How do you feel about the word: Insatiable. That is my mind, forever devoid of what I can’t seem to pin. It is dull, throbbing hunger for more-more than a distant attraction claiming to be mine. Picture sent and picture received, but my body receives nothing more-more than desperate experiments. Countless hours of sexing in the darkness of a toxic Hummer. Toxic money burning a hole in my pocket, inches from the burning of his slick on my ****. I hope his *** bleeds.

Let's light another cigarette, and watch the cherry bloom. A single rose, shimmering and flaring like a nuclear waste, and the light is out. So let's smoke some more-more mirrors. I often peer alone through those sheets of glass. “Substance, ketamine, satiate me,” I plead as I see me and I hate men. My faith in God is never mutual. These prayers are useless. His want for me is beyond repulsing. His money is useless. My body is rotten from the mind, out. I am the king of self loathing. I am useless.

Yet I go back for more-more pain. More quarrels. More lies. More-more. He only takes more. And I take him, too. Wait for it...wait for it...wait for him to; Come! O gentle souls. See how my confidence sways in thine wake. You are purity. You’re innocence. You're what I crave. To be free. To be whole. To be done. So do me like the ****** you know I am. I hope mine bleeds, too.

My veins are coursing, pulsing, shattering at the edges with blue. I am blue in both my complexion and my complex feelings and thoughts and pains. My veins are blue, and I am cold. Taste the metallic crush of my slang. It is intolerable, and I must not tolerate. The ripe stench of escape burdens my mind. My mind is escaping. I know there’s more. Toss the rug over the barbed wire and run. Run. **** that ***** and make her beg. Make her plead. Make her run. Sanguine with ketamine. Run, ******, run.

Marcy Shultz was a typist.
She typed and typed the day through
but never wrote a single thing.

Each morning she would drink her coffee
with a sunken ring at the base of the mug.

It was her good luck charm,
an assurance that at one point in one moment
someone had truly, honestly cared.

At noon she would salsa with the air,
knowing **** well that she would later devour it.

But the air knew nothing,
Thought nothing, just stood there.
Air is naïve, and she was alone.

At night she would shower with the blinds open
figuring if someone looked, someone cared.

But nobody ever looked, and Marcy never blushed.
She'd type little tales on her little laptop.
Typed little stories of little couples

walking dogs
kissing in park benches
laughing at rude jokes
eating tiramisu in little cafés
weaving stories of passers-by
carving initials in wood
waking up in the dead of night
to hear the rhythm of the other's breathing
before
holding each other's hands
and whispering softly in the light of the full moon
flooding in like spilt milk from the cracked window
saying,
"We are together now
and if a moment like this is happening,
then a moment apart is only imaginary."
Then,
always,
always,
always,

The little couples would make love.
Their moans bled through the window
like timeless cries over the milky moon.

The cats in the alley would circle about the songs
echoing loud from the little couple's little love.

Then always, always, always with frustration
Marcy Schultz would toss the tales and go to bed
and the couples would live on in crumpled paper.

It's been one hell of a night.

She sat in blue light, artificial,
fingers tangled in dreds, natural,
head bobbing to bare beats
and **** draws upon the well of
electronica, O' jazzia,
O' sense-sinking psychedelia,
O' fleeting fingers ******* false feelings in the dark;

And this is what music is.
This is what music has always been.

The arrangement of sounds to tell a story,
paint a picture,
build mindscapes and landscapes upon which stories and feelings
will meld and melt and freeze to ice,
hot ice,*
a paradoxical nocturnal noctuary of dreams and nightmares and candles dripping with wax.

Sing me home, Chet Faker,
bring me back to your apartment.
Sing it long and sing it low,
(This gas station fluorescence sure is ******* the eyes.)
sing me back to Boulder, Colorado;
to Joliet, Montana.

O' jazzia, my jazzia,
my sweet sand dollar saxophony,
will you meet me in Amarillo, Texas?
Will you play me a tune before the water-meter puts me to sleep?

The summer endured with a kiss:

He was the worst thing that I could have loved.

Bulldog called him the Straightened Arrow,
because *"**** like him get all the ladies"
with his curls that turned like a surfer's dream.
But in order to not be, Arrow had to bend.

Because a bent arrow never flies far.

He would pity me with his hands in mine
late in the nights spent buried in his bed.
We shared our secrets and our stories,
our ******* nightmares and our souls.

Through the sage and past the shack
he took me down the beaten trails
to where he swore no one had been before.
The sun was an actor and the train tunnel's arch our seats.

The play progressed from Act Noon 'til Act 6:00.
We sat on the overlook singeing our lungs,
flicking cigarettes onto the occasional train.
The stench of tar, then a nuisance, is memorial to this day.

And once, on the artificial cliff where no man had been
on a day when the sun, tinged terribly red
by the burning of a forest I would now never know
had played its most powerful sunset,

Arrow kissed me.

His lips
were as soft
as sheer air.

That was the day I learned to hate theatre
and the day I first loved a poison.
He was the only boy who ever kissed me because he liked me,
and not because I like boys and you like boys and we both like boys, too.

Because he didn't.

Throughout the summer I walked with him and his girls through the sage
and past the shack to that vaulting arch hung above the tracks
where I watched him kiss them fast, kiss them sweetly,
I noticed how he never kissed them the way he kissed me.

His lips never looked so soft as they did that evening, and the sun never set so right.

*And the summer went on.

My pants tighten as I scrawl across photos of you
alone in the sewing room of my grandmother's house.
Nobody's been pricked here for years, maybe decades.

The stroking of my pen against the paper
sounds rhythmic, a resilient beating and motion
as I delicately carve out ***** verse into the white.

The ink stands black as widows' veils
against the **** colors of your pallid hands
pressed firmly against your etiolated *******.

Your red nails filed into clear, elegant points
act as arrows guiding me to the carmine of your lips
which hang low in a whimpering, begging pout.

My eyes strut southward following the lips' drop
until they arrive to the spread, blossoming like a rose
in the spring, or erupting into the conflagration of July's fireworks.

Photo after photo I stare and write my hedonistic desires
the gravity of which could **** me to the second circle
or rather, I think as I lift my pen, just help me to get off.

"I've missed you so much,"
I prepare as I walk through the door.

The rich scent of sweet cream
waffle cones and
brownie chunks
float in the air as thick as
smoke
in a happy car.

Her eyes are small and poignant,
tiny apostrophes,
commas beneath her blonde curls.

I stand by the door as she helps a customer.
I've missed her so much.

She glances up and her
perpetual glare fades.
The commas light up,
brilliant,
and the sentence is completed
by the curl of her lips.

I love that smile.
"I've missed you so much."

The carpet is stained with your beer.

You used to have the sharpest mouth
a tongue like a serpent's in slow motion
as it flicks, nay as it laps into the dark of my mouth.
Your lips felt like frozen lines of gasoline.

They tasted like the fires of the oil refinery.

I used to beg you to let me ride with you
through the forested paths lacing behind my house
on your mobylette we would fly down the gravel
like birds upon a cloud, with more bumping and rattling.

But birds aren't aroused by the turbulence of clouds.

I loved the feeling of my arms about your waist
holding you close as a reminder that if I let go
I would fall and when the day came that I let go
standing in the living room as you drank beer...

There was no where to fall but up.

The butcher would be a troll,

but there was no bridge

for the girl to cross

in her white dress

sewn by the seamstress

married to the writer

in the grand, white house

built by the builder

married to the girl

who sleeps with the writer

but never tells her husband

because he'd die of a broken heart

and never build the bridge

that would give the troll a home

or get her and the writer over the river

and into the lovely, black city

where they can be heroine pin cushions

and he can write words

and she can look pretty

and at the end of the day

they can all shoot ****

with the seamstress's son

who has been in the city

for years and years and years

because

*he knew how to swim.

The summer began with a cigarette:

She was the hottest dude I had ever seen.

‘Bulldog’ we would call her late in the night
as she danced the northern soul in her Trucker Hat
that fit a little too big, and her boy shirts that wore a little too baggy
to hide the fact that her bra had skipped town.

In an instant she was my best friend
and after a few nights of staying up a little too late
smoking a few too many cigarettes
Bulldog and I had become a little too close.

Near her house was a monolithic parking garage
that we began sneaking out to each and every night.
The orange lights flooded each level,
painting our rescue mission clothes yellow.

“It’s nice,”* I remember thinking,
“Now we never have to buy anything yellow.”
When we got to the top we would peek over the edge
and see who could spit farthest.

Bulldog won.

I’d see who could *** the farthest.

I won.

We would laugh about all the people we loved
and how they’d never love us back.
Then we cried about all the people we loved
because they’d never love us back.

Hours passed, and each night was radically different but always ended the same:

We would sit on the edge of the fifth floor
surveying the city that hated us most
and holding each other's hands because we both wanted to jump,
but neither wanted the other to die.

I loved my Bulldog like I have never loved any man, woman, or person
and like I never will again.

She was my soul mate.

And the summer went on.

Do you know who I am? Do you understand why I do what I do and think what I do is exactly what should be done? Do you have even the slightest respect for my decisions? For who I am? Do you know who I am?

That’s alright. Neither do I.

If I have said it once, then I best say it over and over and over again until you start listening: I feel like I'm underwater. I am in deep oceans, not blue or pale waters, but a horrible, dark abyss. I am drowning in a strange love for the spin-offs of truth, dignity, and cultural revolution. Now that is situational comedy.

My world is composed of nothing but reruns. Clips of him drowning on repeat. And when I drown, he drowns too.

I pray to find the sun so that I may trade all that I have for its warmth to melt the ocean into sky, and this glass from my skin. I don’t need to keep my heart shatterproof, I am no porcelain. I am an independent. Fill my flooded lungs with fresh smoke. Make the water go. Make the bad go. Go. Going. Gone. The sun is gone. All that I have is my fragile body, my ***. I am under sexed, overlooked, and infinitely exhausted of these nonsensical rants. If I could sketch a message into the night sky it would plainly read: I feel like I'm underwater.

So here, in these reefs, will I search for my meaning. But I think it’s best we all come to terms with the plain truth: Submergence is submission. And I refuse to submit to your societal pressures. I will decide what is wrong. I will say what is right. If I wish to empty my lungs of this saltwater, find the sun above the surface, and turn off the abhorrent sitcoms I cannot submit. I can only drown.

“Not another one! Look at him, look at him!” she yells.

His veins are coursing, pulsing, shattering at the edges with blue. He is blue in both his complexion and complex feelings and thoughts and pains. His veins are blue, and he is cold. Can you smell his insatiable mind? Taste the metallic crush of his sanguine? “This world is intolerable, and I must not tolerate,” she reads from his tear stained note. The ripe stench of escape burdens our minds as we watch his soulless body hang. My mind is escaping. Toss the rug over the barbed wire and run. Run. Sanguine with ketamine. Run, ******, run.  

Do you know how to drown? That’s alright. Neither do I.

Set the mood: Can you feel the bitter? Taste it, drink it, **** it, love him. That is life and if these are the best years of it…then I’m not sure we want to see the worst. It’s called an epiphany…a warm rush of ice, slitting my lips. ****** as they are, these lips are open for you. So speak. I am here for your assumptions, so assume. Please, good friend, assume. Right here, write this down:

I need a voice to speak into. Ears to teach me to listen, because either I'm deaf or God's mute. Cause I've spent too many hours branding paper with my pen in these half-hearted prayers they call poems.

I need true empathy, not the GreatValue knockoff from a dimly lit aisle or Made-in-China substitutes worn around my friends' necks. Empathize with our loss. The traditions you and I will never know. The traditions we both know we’re going to miss.

I need a way into your mind, a shortcut through the jokes and labels. Ask your heart to crack its wary shell open just enough for me to slip my secrets inside, cause I know you're just as lonely as I pretend not to be. And I know you have secrets, too. Whispers are like questions begging not to be known, but I'll whisper to you anyways and beg you have the answers.

I need someone to talk to, someone who thinks about the skies at night. Stares off into the nothingness, screams into the emptiness his whispers. Someone who can blink away all the light. I know I am young but I am a witness to the symptoms of true thought. And you? You are infected, as well. You think. You are a liar, like me, and a natural-born beauty, as we all are. I see what this world has to offer today, and it’s you.

So how much time must we take? I think about you thinking about how much world there is. Or how little there is. How little all the people are. How the people look like flowers.

But not us as we sit on the roof of some ****** car. Its walls are ridden with messages from us to God, and he wrote back in dyslexic lettering, “I lvoed yuo all alnog.” I may seem more shallow and less a witness. You may seem like little but a confused sadist, desperate for an experience. But behind your perjury, you are scared.

You need a voice to speak into. To feel your words, molested in the dark. You know more than you say. Speak to me what you speak to your mind. Watch the flowers sway as we sit, immaculate. Slip your secrets inside my heart. Speak to me. Just speak.

I don’t need to love. I need to speak. So whisper #1: Why is the sky so ******* blue?

Helicopter seeds descending from tree houses
and
resting in ponds shadowed by shaken needles;

—I awoke from a dream this morning—

Forests in fiery oranges plagued by pine beetles
and
a man fishing in the dusk, a sole fish he arouses.

—such a dreamin' I had me—

How about them men in the mountains, hermit'd, high, isolated,
and
pensive with pens in ink, draftin' a'lookin' after their suicide notes:

—it was nonsensical, such nonsense—

I can feel my bones aching,
my finger bones aching.

Don't you apologize, fish, for biting bait
lest the others hear that I commiserate  
amongst the fishes in the lake water:
"She could have a mother; she could be a daughter!"

I feel that boom; I know that boom:
That's Thunder's yellow rumble a'stumblin'
'cross the oak-wood floors of my room–
That's naked, **** clothes strip'd.

A pile and a bundle,
my bones are aching.

That's a candle left burning,
that's saints speaking in tongues,
that's men hung like curtains on rungs–
This world is getting old, times are a'turning.

That's a taxi cab afterlife, a mail-order wife,
that's pills on the floor of a Motel 6 in Reno,
that's forty-four hundred lost playing keno.
We can't always be lucky, who calls that a life?

My joints are a'sprainin' aching
with the preempt of a storm.

That's writer's block and cramped hands, cramped hearts,
that's a hovel heated by an oven, heads found in hot ovens,
that's the hillside and the glens past where the track bends but
just before the dens of monsters that I swear I left behind that night.

—dreamin' a'dazin' and days in always let my demons out—

That night I hid another razor in the rafters thinking,
"My thoughts I'll bury."
I ran away to sell maps of the human heart en Algérie.

They sell bundles of clothesline for $6.99.
That's how sad men play shirts from the tree
we named Alice after the ugly old lady
who waters her flowers in postmortem.

Or more likely denial, as water
and love and care and rich soil
is no way to conduct an autopsy.
She saw green when we saw dead.

Yet day after day we drove past her home,
pink paint peeling. White windows whining
and creaking for salvation from her songs.
Alice loved to sing to the floral corpses.

Alice wore pajamas just in case it was time for sleep.
The others called her hag, hippy, and witch.
The others would yell, but we only watched
from down the street or in the park, we watched.

And listened
to Alice
singing.

We sat on the tree named Alice
which hung bent in defeat, an ugliest sin
smoking spewing like milk from our lips
as we murmured along, mesmerized.

She sang low with her tapered watering can
cradled like an infant in her calloused hands
drowning the shrunken bundles of empty stems
just in case, she hoped, it wasn't time to sleep.

And after Alice played shirts
we heard song no more. Just city din.
The empty dead blew away,
the house bought and painted green.

The owners planted hedges in her flowerbed.

The secret irony,
a grand conceit,
was that to Alice
the hedges were brown
and the tree was evergreen.

October 12th, 1998: This is not an apology.

♐ ♐ ♐

Most days I feel like I’m underwater. It’s like a dream where I’m never dead, just not living. Because the living cannot feel this dead. I whither away into isolation singing sweet melodies of love and peace and hope and **** and loneliness. Most days I just smile.

I am a fake. I am a liar.

I am an incongruent youth; unable to be constrained by the freedom laces of society. Tie me down and watch me run, trickle, run like an avalanche down the face of conservatism. A cheap hotel ******: musk and sweat and suits and scandals. On-the-course-to AIDS infection loose ends who walks the streets in pristine filth. The incongruent youth, or what we in America call sick **** and shameful liars.

I am confused. Standing here on the edge between glamour and reality I scream into the nothingness, the watery void, a stark reality composed of my dark humor and evanescent solitaire: How can thunder roar so loud? Why am I part of this ambient isolation? How can you do this to me; to us? The beautiful few and we are beautiful, trust me, we are in the clouds searching for each other, beguiling and anonymous as we may be waltzing merrily through nighttime New York parks searching for rarities. For others. For God. And into the emptiness I whisper: Why is this park so big? And the trees so thick?

I am waiting for "someday." But this someday, this could be, this will be, would be, won't be for awhile. And this moment, this here, this now just passed. So let's look ahead and hope it gets better, because our lives are 1942 cattle cars riding away from the nows that just passed. Moments of incongruence on a grand scale. One night stands with our own hands and imaginations. Moments we thought we knew.

I am an inconvenience on the path to wholesale liberties. To children wrapped in barren barcodes that read “no real identity” when the red dash of judgement steamrolls their sides. God forbid the glamour mix with reality. Because when you are a somebody, you can never be a nobody. And nobody wants the incongruent youth to keep thinking. Because to think is to love. And nobody wants us to love.

This is an apology. I am sorry if I’m not what you meant for me to be. Terribly sorry if I love the wrong music or words or styles or *** is all I can think about. Sorry, but I can only love the beautiful few. I can only smile knowing I am a real somebody in all this hate.

Knowing I am a fake. I am a liar.

I am a human being. Hardly. I’m nothing but an incongruent youth.

It's too cold to smoke.

The thermometer reads twenty-one degrees
imperial.

My chest feels too hot, I best take off this sweater.

You're absent from my bed;
I'd best alert those concerned:

Note to self.

Bar me off, Useless! Cryin' a'sighin'– over cliffs, over.
She caught me a'whisperin' at the docks! Far, yea, far;
And when did compersion to the western wayside go?
Feeling let down. Staircase is a'goin' for a day or two!

Distance between two points. Farther, father, fathoming depths.
Low, now! Lower bent! –you, so far bent, did ask him so.
"Chief Joseph– St. Joseph– Won't he have word with me?
Nonsensical, man. Understand! If only for a day or two."

Yea, some men never call. Some callers a'callin' do.
Blue collared jazz blues– You saving it for the morning?
Where the sea meets the land. Find him by the cowrie reef–
I say that's unnecessary. Stand by me for a day or two!

And them stories be so far bent,
all a'tellin' them so:

He fell out! What a falling out!
Talked about for years to come!
And hear they come 'round the bend–
Lessening distance between points. I see horizon.
O' horizon! Yonder horizon! And the sun all arisin' be!

Huddlin'– All huddled like. Beneath the comet's tail she caught me.
Found me all a'whisperin' at the docks...        and            I             say:

*"Seaside, O' Seaside! Beneath them netherskies you wait. Yea, if a fool's never foolish are his thought's so foolish, see– I never felt so transfixed. Them waters got a depth to them– Therein lies weight. I talk to still paintings– none be a'talkin' back to me! Minds racing backwards. Would you listen to that still? Silence, she finds me in unnerving non-natural states. Psychosis takes a seat. They say them waters at the western wayside foam! A real, true foam! Froth and cough into your sleeve, white foam! Kiss me on the lips and tell me secrets for a day– Frenzy! Riot on! Whitewaters, subtle sexes, and a midnight matinee. I say what a night– What a comet's shone today!"

I want something more than what you are thinking.

I want the sway of your hips as we gaze into the sea,
examine its sheer force and power and immaculate size,
then reflect unto our reflections and realize that we are small.

I may be six feet to heaven, but I am the smallest person I know.

Such is the sound–
These hearts are a'breakin'.

Snap.

Only I know that crink in my neck–
that sprainin' a'joints grinding 'gainst disks.
I know how the cold creeks do get in October,
sheets and slabs, it's wet in October.
Listen to those frost-ridden reams underfoot!

Snap.

Cold conversing, I said, "A'hush off. . . Now, now. . . smirk'd, yea-sayin' open an ear–"
Listen to that shard, to them shimmerin' sheets of ice underfoot: Snap.
You'd think them finger-snappin's was some jazz! Jam! Jubilate! Just do it again.
I want an iced, ambient encore; chilled to the bone-core, I grab that glarin' a'glistenin' glass.
The median is near the middle, give that shard a shove, I want to hear it again–

Snap.

That's my kick, my wake-me-not whistle borne of creekwater:
That single soundin' o'shatterin' of sharded sheets,
two halves of a once-whole gripped,
glistenin' a glass singin' as it snaps:

I, ice, do hiss!
Listen: it's in the hiss, man!
And my snaps sound ballistic
when I break, balletic, in two!

'Twas a hiss indeed.
that ice does as electricity:

O' it does cry when it cracks,
it does fizzle as it fragments,
it does spark as it splits,
it does bend light between bubbles,
it does melt in my midst,
things do get wet in October.
O' it was by the creek that I told her:

"Such is the sound of two hearts a'breakin'–
'Tis only ice underfoot."

His touch
feels to me as stated:

CALLOUS, WARM, DANGEROUS

hand grazing mine
in a crowd

like water buffalo
to a field
or
timid mice
to weighted trap.

His touch
is hopelessly, listlessly

ELECTRIC

and my body the machine
whose lips thirst for volts.

Tell me, Mr. Milgram,
how many more
clicks
until he is in my
pants and I in his bed?

Smoke slips through his curls
in and up and down about again.

FAST AND ******

his kisses feel as they
barrage my mouth with heat.

Heat, heat, so very hot
that I can hardly
breathe.
Hands in pants
and bodies in shallow tubs.

Water feels foreign in the
hopeless intensity.

HOPELESS INTENSITY

only lasts until the player
**** on his stomach.

I lean past his shoulder
so as not to be
seen
dipping in with my
fingers and tasting his.

Sweet like honey
sans a hint of salt.

HONEY

O baby, won't you take me home?
I think I could love not loving you.

Being alone with you is like being alone.
But being alone is like being nothing.

I love to hold your hands while we hike through the crevasses
especially when you could fall and I'd have to save you.

Rocks are coldest when compared to your hands
I think as we break contact to scale yet another.
My favorite lyrics become distant rhythms
the moment your mouth moves and song bleeds out.

I think the catchiest song
is the sound of your lexicon.

But you're not singing,
you are simply talking

about that moment when the cigarette, dribbling with smoke, pulls away
from your perfect lips, the lowest of which hangs in a perpetual pout.
That is the soft line of flesh I would like for my tongue to skate upon.
Pirouettes are crisp and cantilevers are hopeful but I would much prefer

To enter a deep outside edge
while performing an open stroke.

But that is slicing ice, not kissing.
And we are climbing rocks, not kissing.

*What's the difference?