I have left, pig-mudding drunk,
having sipped from stock to stock on fraying cheer, stages.
I have stood in foreign basements; sweaty cellars of youth;
begot by attitude breeding spaces of the hip;
drawn circles searching for love in recreating nonsense:
a silly pupil, moon-eyed, out of breathe.

I have heard them quack, reveal their cords;
heard them whisper a thousand and one secrets,
heard them deconstruct their circumstances as pilgrims, penniless and sick.
I have their memories now, an image of a depressed,
***-imprinted pillow soaked in liquor and a feeling of nausea
where ribs sleep on this couch tonight, every night.
I have heard one refute the weight of living, ******,
on the banks of his best friends hospitality, and thought
How much is it worth?

And I have envied every **** greasy pored hipster,
the ones fixing on makingitnew now kind of clan; stared blankly at fashion,
a culture back door where pink fish scales sparkle high from runway halters
to the tops of grown men, bearded and chesty.
And your mothers pearls sit, not your mother’s pearls but your mother’s, mother’s pearls,
that old world clout ornamented around those hairy *******.
Oh yes, I have seen men become peacocks, charmed animals of *******;
seen them teeth at discourse in the noise they create, wide-mouthed and pointed;
I have seen them masked like frantic felines: wooly bully cats trying-to-roll their own meter,
their tobacco stained black charcoal over soft bricked lips quiver to their beats:
those painted lemmingings, without a parachute: kamikaze felons.

I have desired absolute sterility: white china,
in the egg of a toilet bowl I spewed out, shut-up my exuberance for the night;
sorry-pleaded my resolutions to gag out the naughty nouns in my life.
I have quit; turned in my lust for performing the lioness, paw-licking,
snarly creature: the predator of my youth, and now,
I am pretty-headed, tamed in bath oils and schedules;
a spotted fox, in plain view, one medium-sized mammal getting by.

****** a self bone love
where only crystal skulls *****
in morphine harbors of youth.

Penetrate the gentle pink dawn
of dead days hanging -
moon rising red mouth, half-open.

Savor the metallic ******* ragtime
of cold handsome lips.

Razz the fluid glutted
plop of fossil *****.

Slip the light, hot licks, squid squirm
tight snarl back to spread-eagle rising.

Gnaw at the fresh goose-pimpled flesh
in tribes of sweat crossing.

See the green railwayed eyes,
half-smile sprouting.

Urge spasms to go slack, end-to-end
like hair bellies over, shudders run-
down one foot flutters, fluid waves drop.

Flash on the swamp cypress relief
as the **** sputters out
and faded pink curtains heave.

Allow the bring down roll.
The two planes, silent park
like some ***** bed repose.

I am barely a mineral now, not yet a woman in the ground,
not yet growing gardens and begging people to cook my peppers.
My home is dizzy from my constant re-entry, which helps me to cheat,
in life I am looking for the harvest in  people. I am a thread of cotton pulling
every word like it is more porous than the next, which helps me.
I summersault through conversations rather read in sharpie,
on the last corner white space of bathroom stalls,
alone and blushed. I remember love like a tagline inviting a smile
and messages to strangers. When I look in the mirror I am always inhaling,
my mouth says O, O I am out of excuses. I tell everyone I’m tired of working,
which helps me to hide in my comet ways. I am tight-lined,  
which is to say I feel love on the hairs of my arms, the wind,
the blades of fans speak to me at night when I have nothing left to say.
I am licensed to moving. In the dark in the cities public spaces and
also in alleyways I am soft like a moonbeam. I am convinced the world is a sewer,
which helps me to explain the exchange of waste and skin and the secrets hidden
in tunnels of shadows. When I move the world blurs with me like a heartbeat.
I am underground like the sewer, rotten in negative spaces, which helps me,
to hear the echo ripple swish of every piece of trash call my name.
I have no response. Some days the world is too *****. One day I will learn
to quilt and stitch together every important face, which will help me
to remember my grandmother and how she loved to balloon to the sky.
I dream she is a large magellanic cloud beaming out of the universe, the force
of believing is the word Hallelujah sung from the lips of Leonard Cohen.
It is midnight. It is noon. I close my eyes for a second and I see myself as miles
from the moon. I am running every day now and there is nothing left to see. My heart
is a kitchen door swinging and it does not want to stop.

Butterfly globe make light in a passion pit.
My beach house is surreal, is a high water mark,
is the heart of all the radio left in this world.

But I am here writing technical reports
about environmental beasts in Massachusetts,
in New York in Connecticut where I think

people stuff air, drive slow and waste everything.
I can tell by the aerial maps that geography is
tethered by our parceled teeth of desire.

In the office I whisper, love is urban
a little too loud but no one decides to hear
and so I scribble it on the FOIL and send it

to municipalities in search of property records
in search of environmental concerns,
old pre-industrial gas stations with nameless owners.

I like to zoom in and out real neurotic  
When I should be looking for the Site,
with the – Conditionally Exempt Small Quantity Generator.

Instead, I’d like to live between every green space on GoogleEarth,
an ubiquitous witch fevering undulating land,
thighs straddling the seasons between documentation and myth.

Release. Repeat the Response Action Outcome.
Instead, I envy the road – all wide open
yawn stripe and ticking yellow. I’d write,

"Tank Status: Removed," in purple chalk across
the brick and vinyl siding of all the buildings on Columbus Avenue.
This morning I am impossible.

This morning I believe I am Earth and I can’t say no
to the height of caffeine in subterranean climates
and the reflection my mouth makes swallowing navy blue,

waves like falsity, waves like any nation flag
under screen.  I often think an office is not a space,
there would be less sighing, there would be love in action.

He touched me and I said,
“Lock it up, dear
lay off my skillet, *****
I’m running wild fire, anyways,
You know nothing about the smell of burning lilies,
You know nothing of me
I like your winks but only because
the way the lighting frames your face
so beat it solo
and face the clouds alone.”

When my uncle Frankie died
I didn’t think much about death
or the short fact of living.
I thought about my cousin Siobhan.
Everybody did.
He left 3 children dying,
but Siobhan was already dead -
the part that harvested hope anyway.
But people tend to focus on what’s missing
probably because we're all obsessed with growing.  
Anyways, I knew then that she’d try to fill that void
like a hoarder, collecting anything within reach.
But her father’s watch wasn’t a token of relief
it sent her body into epileptic shock,
clutching white-knuckled at his biological clock.
And his glasses? Well she still wears them
but if she misplaces them for a moment
she’s liable to panic into another dimension.
Yes, Frankie’s death defined a tragedy
but Siobhan’s living only defined a tragic heroine
and all anybody could do was study her face,
know when it wrinkled from living
listlessly expressing that void, the missing,  
the agonizing in the glass of her eyes
that tells me she’ll never again hear her father call her,
Blondie, creep up behind, massage her tired shoulders
and tell her without words that he will always be there –
there with her.
Siobhan would count her losses like this
making grief tangible in memory –
like the loss of language her and Frankie shared.
Sometimes at night I think of Siobhan
at last thanksgiving watching her daddy wave back to her
on home movies never saying much but smiling wide,
wide enough to make you gulp and twitch
and feel the hairs of your arm rise.
I remembered thinking that not many daddy’s have kindness in their smile.
But I knew then that everybody was playing detective
secretly watching Siobhan, screening her face
for clues to a crime unsolved
talking to every other family member in the room.
I often wished I felt brave enough
to grab her hand and squeeze it to stone
and tell her very “undetective” like,
“If this isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”

Yellow is ***** or is it? I know a lot of yellow people that think like dishwashers
spinning turning loose their causes for finding likeness compatible. I know people that like to machinify the living and talk about furniture as if it heard the rumors in the fabric already supposedly threading. I know people that lust after red draping rooms thinking it more desperate than the sun I’ve seen them click at it looking directly into the lighting of things making drama more dramatic than modern living. I’ve heard people make relationships out of these resemblances as if every eye had an ear to be heard without looking making silence appear chilling but every bit thrilling. Was it just yesterday a girl confessed she named her plants with each passing lover? There are people that attach themselves to objects so violently they fall in love with a chair a chair worth a thousand words more than it gives in its cedar vintage dress but that’s just one chair. I know people that vacation to inns retreat to estate sales to hoard stories in bracelets and oil lamps tracking floorboards with time uttering words no longer used like duvets and chesterfields and smirking into their dusty reflection from an embroidered hand mirror. I know people that would buy used postcards. Yellow. All I’m saying is I know people that avoid white at all cost.