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.

It's true,

I think you've forgotten
how to skip rocks
so as not to have them

sink

into that murky, swampy
artificial lake that crosses
beneath the railroad tracks.

down

beneath the tracks there is
nothing but muck and a few
corpses weighted with stones.

below

the corpses at the bottom,
their faces twisted with
decomposition, there is

earth's

body for miles and miles, and only
a little patch of Hell deep down.
The rest of it is has seeped onto the

surface.

Just look at the city and talk to the people.
If this is not Hell, and these are not demons
then did we ever really have anything to fear

after all?

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.

I want to go for a walk at night.

We can listen for frogs near lakes
or
crickets in meadows
or
bears in the mountains.

Cars in the city.

Then we will come across a dock on the lake
or
a patch in the meadow
or
a tree in the mountains.

My room in the city.

California isn't so far.

Kiss me.

The world isn't that big.

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.

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.

This was the tree I first slept beneath.

It was summertime then, when
nights were warmed by hot breezes
and spritzing sodas were the drink of choice.

She could overthrow a king with the fall of her leaves.

These leaves fallin’ a’briskin’ the air
hung-hangin’ leaves in air cold and frozen—
iced off leaves hangin’ a’swayin’ like a gallow’d man.

Now she is gold and old and losing leaves.

These leaves crinkle like foil
snap, crunch, crinkle
Oh I do hope they are ok.

I pray that Winter will be good to her.

They say it will be a cold one,
I think to myself as I rest against her.
The air smells spiced and dry.

I hope she will be ok.

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 say, status seems pychic– How! Za-zoo! And how!
O' that brain be electric as a buzz!

I'm all a'fixin' to be boxed.
These joints are a'sprainin–
Winter wind snakes done
constricted and strainèd.

Out of place. Almost out of time, I swear:
Never enough place, barely enough time.

Korean girl's all a'watchin' to see
how I sip hot tea... Out! Get out!
I got them delusions, deliriums–
All's done. I'm diluted, sayin':

“Medicine for my grievin'–
Aye, my confidence has been gone.
Never did speak of leavin'–
I met him at the ditch at dawn.”

And left unsaid was better yet,
coos all a'whisperin' by waters.
Water's runnin' thin now.
Creek's gone, ran dry.
He's a man of stature,
he can't just go!
Anthills and ant
burrows 'neath
sands gone mad–
O’ bore teeth! Yea!
Where's the meter
meeting the rhyme
when your bliss'd
metronomicist
loses pace
and dies?
Slows
and slows
and slower yet
his heart does beat
and the last of his words
do run across his teak frame:

“O' bore teeth!
Bearing ‘em all;
All is a'grinding!”

It’s but a machine to keep one’s rhythm,
to help one maintain the desired beat.

She kisses me on the forehead.
I return the gesture on her cheek.
He whispers to me through darkness:
“There are many worlds we’ve yet to see.”

It is thoughts like that which grant me focus.
Where all’s good and wishes, like prayers, be lent.

My thoughts lag behind, weighted by you.
I strain them through hot water for tea.
She watches as I drink. I waited for you–
Drank it by the ditch in the morning.

I fend off these demons in the courtyard.
Winter spells done summoned my greyest thoughts.

Here all's good! Yea, all be lent–
I tacked your name to the corkboard.
Alas, none was meant for you–
I fend off thoughts in the courtyard.

O’ that mind be broken, still-painted grey!
Not much I can do but keep the winter at bay.

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?

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.

**** 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

i am very very sad.

and when i am very very sad

all i want are flowers

because flowers are pretty

and dont care to know it

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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."

I promised myself. I met you and I did everything I could to bring you down, to break your obvious beliefs in your beauty. I worked and worked to get you to feel like ****, so that I saw you as nothing but a filthy little ****. An average adolescent marring the face of society. I assumed you knew you were flawless. I mean, how could you not? Look at you! Listen to you! Listen to me. I promised myself I would not let this happen.

But it happened. That’s what I keep telling myself: It. Just. Happened to be the right things you said to get me feeling this way. How you asked me simple questions and actually cared about the answer. Cared about me. But I just kept whispering, “He’s nothing, he’s nothing, he’s nothing but the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Brad, you can not **** this up.”

Yet here I am. Sitting in this archaic basement, listening to your words as they shift my views. Listening to my heart as it beats ever faster. The drugs in my veins urge me, they beg me to pull you in. To show you how much I care for you, how many questions I can ask and actually listen for the answer. Tell me it all. My hands glide behind your head and I lean in. Inches away, you whisper, “I’m in love with her.”

My head shifts to make this almost-kiss an always-hug. Her. The girl that makes you happy. That fair creature with her carcinogenic cheeks and strings of average hair. Her bountiful mind of average thoughts. Her average *******. I can’t be that, not for anyone. Not even for you.

You ask me what to say. How to tell someone you are in love with them. So I speak, your arms wrapped around me in the pale darkness of my eyelids. I tell you everything I have wanted to say. I give my speech that I have prepared in the lonely darkness of my room, or in the nights spent staring at you as you sleep beside me. I tell you I love you.

The saturated lights of reality bleed in as my eyes hesitantly open. “Well spoken, Brad,” you whisper in my ear, right in my ear. Your breath is warm, and I want it. Your pulse is slowed, I have to raise it. Your mind is made, and I can never change it. So I give you an always-hug, and imagine that never-kiss.

“Tell her that,” I say, “And there’s no way in hell she can turn you down.”

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.

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.

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 think often. It's a habit I can't seem to break like a gambler with his gambling and a priest with boys' knees or what brands red A's on our chest. I think we're a bit too trusting and I know we're a tad naive. I think it's best we love each other from the safety of three feet. This finite planet and our infinite greed pair up wondrously said the axeman to the tree.

The world that has made us has gone from a fine fitting coat to an ugly old shoe. We say we've outgrown, but what of the sea? Let's poison it. What of the the ice caps? Let 'em melt like a bowl of forgotten ice cream on my coffee table. I have more important things to devour. Gotta run, culture's waiting.

So I follow the rabbit down the hole wait I stop! Curiosity killed the cat I bought with a two dollar bill my grandmother gave me as payment the first time I cleaned that labyrinth of a cellar beneath her house: musty, dark, repressive I thought I was inside of my ten year old self then through the dark I can hear a rustling, "God?" I plead, my hands clutching the windex. No answer, there never is so I head into the shadows when I see the rabbit and this time I bolt for the hole but my head hits a wall. I concluded that life was a cruel joke as cynicism ensued.

I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't dance, couldn't sing because boys like girls, and girls like boys and boys don't cry, but I cry. As does the gambler and the priest and the woman on the horizon. I could have bet it was an angel and the gambler, he did. She steps into the reef and we hear her song and I know that she's me and I'm him and he’s all of us and the reef is that cruel joke I learned in the basement chasing rabbits but it's awful pretty from here is a warning to you when you think God is dead and death is synonymous to halt:

I'll swim inside this reef 'til the day I die. Water slipping through my fists and I'm yelling no I'm whispering no one's got a verb for trying to help. Water's to my neck but I'm not stopping. The coral ends here where I can finally sink sink sink my body in the trenches, spread a dustier me across the oceans, fill Earths' blood, a mass of veins and rocks and steel blemishes with my own maze of veins and thoughts and inauthenticity…


♐ ♐ ♐


Bury me naked cause where they say we're all headed headed it's gonna be hot hot hot like a medics sweat dripping down his nose as he beat beat beats on her chest but she's too big to get through. Too big, too fat Lady Liberty's choking on fries we're the world's laughing stock, the UN's singing jest for me, jest for me, jest at Mother Nature's giving way to political pressure same as Gods giving way to backwater pleasure and curses, a moment of weakness but 14 billion years? He’s old.

It's 2011 and more people hate hate hate from pin ****** in the ocean spewing bile in the deep, now whose fault is that, really? We're all shallow like my lagoon, my tropical retreat where there's no oil. No God. No smiles or tears. Can't sing, can't dance...can only be me. Who's gonna say that they're one in the same? Heaven's not a cloud and Hell's nicer than you think and I do. I think often.

"I expected better from you..."

She has a way of making me feel like a real man,
as she plants her legs across my chest
and whispers into my ear,
her tongue inches from my face
inches from my mouth
feet from where I want her to be.

My eyes close as she drapes her tongue over mine
I feel into her cheek and a nausea rises.
You tasted like coconuts and your hands were rough as sand.
I love the beach.
She tastes like picnic sandwiches and her hands feel like cold rubber.
I love the beach.

And, "If only, if only!" the Red Rover would cry
we played all the day and I had fun with her.
But I could only have fun playing with you.
And how desperately, suddenly ******
the press of my teeth had become
as I realized we are picnicking still.

I let my mind wander.
Kissing is a sport for the focused and lonely.

"...they say you're the best."

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.

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.

We should be finished by next fall. Last autumn was a good time and I hear history repeats itself. Sleeping under trees, smoking Lucky Strikes and tending to our hobbies. Lackadaisically bent over antediluvian scrapbooks, I hear this winter's to melt into a flood. The ark is under way, we should be finished by next fall.

It was something in the calm drift of the clouds or the tick-tick of the water meter. There was us and then there was them. We were flushed, the world was bluffing. There was us:

Deep breath.

We were the lost children roaming 'round Cair Paravel; the boxed kit youth unboxing on a caravel watching hypnotic YouTube videos and firing fire out of firewood; that was when I fell. Beside the flames under cover of conversation of God and Hell and all the proper nouns that we fear so much. But fires burn out, so let's be civil. We should be finished by next fall.


But how can I be civil when I hope that your spit flies back in your face; that when you flick your wrist, your muscles tear because I've torn too. It's torn past the heart into my legs, immobile, and my arms, useless. These hands are cramped and shredded; scraps and pieces and bits, drill bits carving their way in. You carved your way in. They say an animal in a tailor-made niche is an animal in a found home. So carve away, carver, we should be finished by next fall.

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?

(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.

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."

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.

"I went back home when things got ugly."
O' things be a'gettin' uglier-ugly these days.
These days spent slipping into subtle sub-absurdities.
These days spent alone with the maimed voices of vocal minds.

I caught a ratta-boar-ship sailin' across the mellow seas.
Its engine burned on days past and the trimmings of willow trees.
Oil pools and plumes. How all colors do break!
Tongue-in-cheek statements cross my illogical state.

I’m all a’breakin’ down on these dead-leaf mounds.
The rabbit breaks swiftly at the neck without sound.
I pledge fanfare to the reeds in the marshes between woods.
Aye, this confidence had been borne of harshness, all raked.

You line'd and fume'd– body and mind and breath.
Yea, my love burns long before fleeting into death.
Spin some honey in mud, them lies are laced with truths.
Honey hunted down from them hives all exhumed.

I exclaim, for I know.
Facts gathered from sea-salt snows
were read concisely and plain.
One must share what one knows:

This craft berates waves.
So intent on indexing all of those days.
Such absurdity. How vexing.
Confusion! Confusion! So bent and off-putting.
‘Twas Confusion who first sank in simple, mud-less footing.
Her clumsiness could not be stayed, nor postponed or ever-praised.
No, not by slipshod attempts at brewing a lightly-dark grey.
Spare drops a'dribblin' 'round the base of the water tower.
Shadows of clouds with night approaching by the hour.
Knocks a’rappin’ on a door hung without hinges.
Stomachs full of hunger. Hearts fearing blood.
Lungs on smoke-binges. Forest fires during floods.
My body's burnt-out on them rank soul-singes.
Confusion bating breath through chapped-lip fringes
whilst catching fish without string.
As the sun at dawn and the moon at dusk,
steam rises when eyes have been cast far from us.

Waters be a'ripplin' beneath your trudge-boots.
In the marshes makin' movements in the moonlight.
Only patience will bring the sunlight.
"I’m raking harshness in the morning."

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.

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.

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!"