My body will scream
if it wants.

My body will do as it
will as long as I
allow it.

I will not soften
the sound of the screams
from my body
for the sake of sensitive ears

when the point
of a scream is to
be heard.

My body can scream
loudly, if it wants.

My father wanted
a son and got daughters

Much like how I
wanted a lover and
got you instead

My mother tongue
is my father's language.

My mother had a
tongue like her own
like my own and all like

their father's tongue,
whose first father's tongue
was the first to lick up a
word and taste it.

My muse:
where is all the
poetry on periods?

Where is the modern Shakespeare's
"Shall I compare thee to an
Always pad or Kotex?

So absorbent of my
love and ****** fluids."

My muse, where are all the
poems about cheese?

Where is your infinite material?
Is it somewhere in the
memory or tangible space?

Does it come from me
or do I reach for it as it falls
like gravity pulling dust motes
not quite heavy enough

I go where I have not
been once inside where
I've gone, but did you lead
me here? Are we tea before
steeping?

Does the water leach color from the tea,
or do the leaves happily oblige?

My script or
My scriptor

The spectator sport of
reading and representing
present in the temporal
sense that is constant

Confined to its binding
in one setting up the
dictionary of texts

For the scriptor to arrange
For the ****** to graze

my skeleton is
made from the stuff
as sensitive teeth:

it can't take
much cold

instead of a shiver,
there is a stiffening
freeze, and

cavities make them
slip from their folds

My world hasn't crumbled like
a granola bar. I'm ok.

Need a love language
be translated and transcribed
for the masses?

My heart warms
in the same fashion
as when it listens
to music,

From a source of
friction or energy,
not harsh like the sun:

I'm drawn to
the rhythm and space
up or down between
three or four and seven
or eight notes

I don't speak Korean
or Japanese but I
still like the music.

I whistle harmonies
and melodies to
fulfill the satisfaction
of resolved equations,

I can sing along if
given the words.

My heart sings in
the same fashion as
when it listens to music:

a sway, a pause and lull,
a yearning pulled to the surface,
a smiling utterance of sound.

Newly waxed
legs
still have
patches

Even no
shave November
has its loop
holes

Nice thoughts
of thawed nights
sustaining
slowly culminating
-and therefore
ending- in
Emily's goblin
bee stinging
finally; French
Humbert finding
his tertiary Annabel:
American trash

No change
-the only
thing that
remains-

Two sides
and the
ego
needs a win

Sinistral:
It's fine
-having
to switch
arms at the
end of
the dance-
and tiring

No blame
-the only
thing left
remains-

Frigorific:
the oversized pores
in the windows
and the
paucity of
you

No fingers
hooked in
a waistband
or any hand
holding

We're all
adults here

Deals the
same as
deficiencies
in the blood:
ignorance or
vitamins

Hormones
and chemical
imbalances

No hasty decisions
should’ve been made,
so you say.

Is it habit or some
other innate thing drawing
in the opposites?

You remembered when I said
love could be like that thing inside atoms:
A force between the quarks and current

with no real will of its own,
but to pulse and pull

No one to
before
anymore

To think
more than
to do with

The width
of the sun
as remebered
in a memory
-thin as a
road- it
rose in
rows of
somelight

Before us
-around me-
to you, to
no one

Nothing has changed.
Everything happens to stay
the same in an inane way.

I ****** up when I said
I love you after a careless laugh,
but you waited and then said it back
like you hoped instinct would be intact.

Every kiss stains
where you leave it,
and it changes nothing.

Every kiss fades
when you leave it.

The ocean and I
lie in bed awake all day
No bleak place or space

Oh wow
much words
so poem
very rhyme

Ok, I have
nothing

to write but
I'd like to
write, but

it's gotten
an unfamiliar
strange smell on
it now from sitting

out on the
counter too long

know better than
to fall for a poet, and
a poet to any other:
we are oceans where
deserts should be
-drowning-

And the allure to swim
seems swimmingly swell
but the ocean is not still
it swells. Cacti pickling
where
coral reefs budding
should be.

Yet sand is
sand and it
sinks all the same
so yes, within
-I suppose-
there is
some desert
suffering from me

Pancakes plain
with packaged
syrup,
syruptitiously
soaking through
spongey sea foam
substance and
eggs

Not enough
bacon

Part of the pleasure
lies in the silent
treatment:

The sinful thing is the thing
prohibited is the injunction
to talk about the thing that
should not be talked about

The discourse that most becomes
a silence is the authoritative kind,
in the way that a child's authoritative
cry lies in an ability to shut it up

A child cries and you
pick it up like a book and
set it down like a book

Pat, pat pat: what am I?
A puppy, a shoulder, a mammogram?

What makes me what you think I am?
A feeling, a line, a telegram?

Pigs
were
not milling  
about in the
mud

It had
dried up
and they
were forced
to bake in
the sun

Hey,
free bacon

Pillow under the head,
body laid in a bed,

black splotched red

behind the eyes, and
a breath somehow
wakens the rest

Please open seal
gently, the general
surgeon commands
his general army

No more hesitation:
The first incision
made at the
proper perforation

The code is embedded
deep in the thalamus
between -before- us:
A carrier pigeon
bringing his
message

He does not
stop to rest
on his way

This is how
you start a
poem:
one word
and then
another;

make sure each
word begins with
a letter;

-Note some tone
there in each
stanza and line-

This is where the
meaning of the
poem becomes clear
to the reader;

Here is the turn,
and at the same
time its resolution;

This is how you
end a poem: with
one last word

Poetry in translation
is a shower in
another home.

This shower is
not my own-
it is not
familiar and
may have a different
structure.
There

may be a difference
in tub size or water
pressure, or in finicky
temperatures, however:
the water is water,
the knobs twist,
it turns hot or cold.

Foreign words form
and provide the same
function as native words
when you learn things like:
agua is water is eau, and
frio is cold is froid.

Language is a
pantomime of itself,
it mimics itself.
There is a likeness
akin to sameness.

Poetry is
the folds of
a tip in a rolled
spliff: is it an
M or a W?

Pools filled
with pennies

drowned out wishes

Children splashing
in the shallows

Que
he perdido?
Tú -claro-
pero que mas?

Ojala que
no es nada
mucho o
importante

Como
nosotros
fuimos

Quiero volver
a Sevilla
cuando
podemos
levantarse
durante siesta
y volver a
dormir
-pero
solo esta
vez-

Para espere
y mata de
hambre
el hambre

Tiendas cerradas
desde dos
hasta cinco

"Regular-sized Rudy?
Why do they call you that?"
"Just look at me,"

A touch of incongruity,
like a rogue ****** in
the parking lot of Rite Aid
that's like really close to the entrance

He said: "I want us to
be happy, and normal,
and I want to treat you better,"
Just look at me.

"Regular Sized Rudy?
Why do they call you that?"
"Just look at me."

Yes, look at me. Are
the laces of my corset
tied tight enough?

Do I deserve lust
if ******* show
in this underbust?

Is my masculinity
compliant and
where it needs to be?

Sea or broom
the meaning

runs out of room
to have legs to move--
and like the self

(in love) and useless debris
tends to get swept away

Settle down, now
no need to steer a course
already laid out

Hush, nevermind: drink
white hot light wine. Only
say yes— if you’d like to
you can walk away

if you’d rather not
have nothing

Shake
makes up
the bulk of
it

-tobacco in
the tips-

Gum
licked over

Smoke blown
lips

She said I feel like
he's only going to really appreciate who you are
and what you guys have like years after you've broken up.

And I agreed that I'd
shared the same sentiment.
In the end we tend to only be practice.

I added, however, that we have a lot of fun
and get along so well, and she said
But he talks as if you don't exist in his world

She say baby hurry over
so I tell her okie doke

She got fiya and dank earthy buds
I call that oakey dope

Smoke and chillin netflix playin
Hoping I can hokey poke

She's changed and
much more sensitive
than she used to be like:

She'll cry if something
is sad enough to cry
about and say "how sad!"

To herself, she says
softness can be a reverse
blade sword that cannot ****

It says "I will not ****," with
a murderous strike: a representation
of a murderous stroke, twice

Removed from a first killing
swing a springtime of ******
youth and creative expression

Exists in the ego only and
the line between signs a
flash of the you in the universe

How natural and harsh, such
lovely waste: an amazing
mazing system of constructing

She tastes her tongue
-stuttering, spluttering-
and recoils -bitterness
and bile- slobber down
the side of the chin,
spitting it out.

She tapes her tongue
to the front of her
teeth -so that it
does not touch her
uttering buds going
down-

Slurping loudly
the syrupy silence
and its sounds
her thirst grows
to frenzy

Sacrificial  
blood offering
-trembling-
to the ancients
within her

Slit to split slip
knotted strings
attached to every

balloon chocked up
colored chakra covered

balloons Up with Ellie's
babies and belongings in a
cloudless storage space

Unnecessary thus unused
then unreal: the fading of

love as a mother tongue
unspoken for generations
at a time dies out, eventually

the helium depletes or
something pops off

Small disasters
are small marvels

Like how a wave
can stretch its
neck and look
around so
effortlessly

Must gaze
in temporary
wonder

An anomaly
amidst the
ordinary

Like gold teeth

Smoke separating
into two streams
-blue and grey-
before dispersing

The wind
pushes them
back in from
the window, and
they do not fight
its force
-like me-

I'll bend
and waver
wherever
the breeze
wills

Soft spots mark up
the body and spark

plugged up: an implosion

syrup sweet weeps sticky substances
like love, chuunibyou, and other delusions

dreamed: in language strange
spoked, soaked in sulphur

a beautiful man without mercy hath thee in thrall

Some relief
from the
breaking bond
of oxytocin

Something along
the fine line of
leave me the
**** alone

Again it comes
quickly, that
inexorable id
charred charge
charging

Misanthropic by nature:
nothing personal,
surely, as devised
in divided dual
individuals make
a good duo with
moody id

But as a whole?
Those holed and humid
humans imps imposing
postures?
Literally, they can
all literarily eat me
out—medium-rare,
raw—

Something comfy but
ill fit, come get through this stretch
of time for a while