Do you reject Satan?
...
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth?
**** no.

If you believe in God,
how pathetic do you feel
praying to the clouds
like there's someone above
them? What do you do when
your *prayers aren't answered
and Mom dies of a botched surgery
at forty-eight?
Do you know what *prayers
really are? They're excuses.
AND THEY DO NOT WORK.
If your sister needs a new kidney
and you're a donor match, give
her your ******* kidney, you selfish
*****. Don't get on your *******
knees and ask a Lie in white robes
to do it. God only exists in this world
because we created him to feel better
about ourselves. We're all going
to lie down in a satin-lined coffin
and rot in the ground one day.
Don't think yours is going to have
a higher thread count than mine
just because you spent your whole
life swaddled in the Shroud of Turin.

God isn't going to save you.
No one is going to save you.

Samuel Coleridge.
Lord Byron.
William Butler Yeats.
William Carlos Williams.

Man, if there was ever a time
where those two hands mattered
more than just pointing
out the obvious or tracing vague
memories on paper in swoops,
zig-zags, draw-backs, or the capital
cursive "Q" that still eludes me, it's
now. 6:26 A.M., and I haven't slowed
down since 9:20 yesterday
when my girlfriend gallivanted
about her room, her ******* perked
before me.
*******, she looked so good.
We, my friends and I,—the ones
I wrapped in cellophane and tissue
paper two years ago to take
out, reminisce, and put back
whenever I forgot their faces—
got in my boat of a car / bathroom
tile white / and drove through
thick I-80 fog to search South
Side for Santa's front rotor biplane
dropping Christmas joy mustard
gas down molded-brick, soot-caked
chimneys to get people in the mood
for a day or two before the egg nog's
spiced *** negligee stopped feeding
their stocking stuffer lungs and the blisters
that decked the halls like boughs of death.
Then we sat—I, uncomfortably on my car
keys,—by the bar, drinking refills that filled
the IBM-print bill $60 worth of Sprite Pepsi
Huckleberry Lemonade. My one friend
leaned over our cornucopia of unfinished
wings and said that he and the bartender
had been exchanging loaded gun glances.

Neither would ease the trigger,
or even aim well.

She could've been eyeing the waitresses
working the floor like a dart game.
Sharp when your drink's low and feathered
by pathetic tips. We stopped by Lyco. Lynn—
softly steeled—still sung her circular saw blues.
Baby, don't cut me so deep. Just let my girders
meet the street. Let me feel small trees and admire
nice cars signing their makes in last week's thin snow.
We took away two cups of coffee, some Modernist talk,
and a salt & pepper flannel past Market, Maynard,
and slowly spoiling milk to the Mansfield exit.
Over the occasional window defrosting,
we talked premature families, North Carolina
classmates, prison sentences, and that MU
***** who hates my guts. They're out there,
and we're here in this box going seventy-five
and skipping exits like rope.
Double-dutch dual-enrollment college credit
transfers, losing Foundation money talks
****, but can't leave her grudges on the rock
salt steps we sulked up. Hallways with
carpets and our cars parked poolside,
but we chose air conditioning over breast-
strokes. My God, would some lonely preteens
**** for that. Metal detectors to detect
our insecurities and greasy faces full
of acne acne potential. Potential some
didn't use. Potential that went wasted.
Potential that could've gotten them out
of this miserable hole, but instead rented
them out a sad shack on the outskirts—
nowhere near suburbs—of town
where they could inhale
the Ox Yoke's smoke stack laying fog
down to the county line.
Galeton High School, regrettably,
here's to you.

I made notes of docking posts
pointing out to murky reflections
of tourists that didn’t have time
for a souvenir mug or a picture
with a black trumpeter content with his brass,
and nothing else, blowing life into the seagull
sky, making the clouds pop and drop spray-
mist jazz, which accompanied his trumpet
with a gentle washboard scrape.
He beat his heel to the thousand pin-drops
of passerby earrings, crab sweatpant draw-
strings, and trawl nets dissolving into the sea.
Baltimore filled the margins
of a travel notebook alongside
pencil sketches of the Aquarium,
Prufrockian split claws
wrapped in algae bandages,
that homeless man weakly thumbing
through a pocket bible, the 32
cents wearing sea salt jackets,
and my cold girlfriend pulling on patron
sweaters in an art museum closet.
But it’s all a gimmick.
It’s $22 crab cakes
and paint-splatter-printed
sweatshirts that say New York
or D.C. or Everything on a Disposable
Kodak Camera.

Tired of the idea, I threw the page
over the edge, hoping to drown
it in green, but I never heard it hit
the water. I braced myself on a life
ring rack, leaned over,
and watched it settle into a natural
barge of dead leaves and orange peels
while sea foam circled
it like a bed skirt that’s only
noticed for the few seconds spent stripping
down before going to sleep
just to wake up to rain on the Royal Sonesta,
kids racing down the hall, the obligatory
alarm clock,
and the black trumpeter’s groove
four floors down.

She sat, back to the paint-drip
furnace and the little, drywall
mountain beneath the single-
pane sun. Though we were hunched
over a tablecloth of ink and Xerox
study guides, I knew we were there
with our legs swung over, dripping
parallel to the faults in the face
where it threatened to split itself
and leak sweet, Colombian dirt.
We could feel the push of fifty million
coffee grounds at our steamed-milk heels
and the edge crumbling off into teaspoons,
but we didn't move.

We watched the teal-crystal sky
boil over instead.

I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray
legs, counting the khaki strands
in the beaded curtain that dices
the hallway up into barcodes. The table
by the fridge is a cable spool lead-
painted to match the molding. Around
it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal
fold-out from a SoHo dumpster,
a spill-trayless booster seat,
and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s
wearing second-hand sport coats
with seam stitches as loose as telephone
wires tacked up with undersized lapel
pins.

**** Capitalism. **** Disco.
Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint.
Bleed *******. Smoke Local.
Espresso, Or Genocide.
Dresden Was A Lie.
Shrink-Wrap It All.

Everyone is clustered around the cinder-
block stand record player, grooving
to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide
change beneath the broken-oar ceiling
fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves
tight like corporate ties to keep their throats
from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco,
and *******. Amid their rubber flower talk,
I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing
Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some
guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary
Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of.

They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook
while I skim through a copy of the Onion,
teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.

I rolled my ankle last month,
but didn't pay much attention
to the swelling because it didn't feel
like nougat flesh with a pushpin
center. It felt like skin, tendons,
and fishnet bones.
But now, when I make my bed,
I have to waste two or three
soft pillows at the foot of it.
So, I'm left with the burgundy ones
from the couch that I tried to patch
with boot liner and an eighth-grade
comprehension of sewing.
I stuck a rat's thimble on my ring
finger, so I could push the straw-thin
needle through the beefy seam.
No such luck.
Finished the stitching
with a Band-Aid beneath
the thimble. And I left
the cheetah-print liner hanging
off like a piece of skin,
hoping it'd fix itself.

8:30 A.M.

She wakes him up with breakfast
on the night stand.
Two eggs over-easy and lightly burnt
on the bottom so the yolks don't run,
two pieces of sourdough toast cut
diagonally, and a cup of coffee /
no sugar, no cream / brewed
at 8:15, two hours after
she got up to clean the house.
She mopped the floors twice,
tied the trash bags and set
them at the curb. She tested, dusted,
and retested the stagnant ceiling fans.
She vacuumed the rugs and wiped
down all wood, granite, and steel
surfaces.

She lemon Pledges allegiance to him.

While he's at work, she cleans his laundry.
She clean-presses his button-ups, making
sure to cut any stray threads and neatly
mend any loose seams. She irons a firm
crease in his pants and shines his all-black
wingtips.     She doesn't use Kiwi. Something high-class
                      that I've never heard of.
When he comes home and sets his briefcase
near the furnace vent to sulk in his leather
chair, she consoles him. She pulls the lace hem
of her sundress to her waist and ***** his ****
until he comes to his senses.
You look like a billion-dollar, gold-plated
monument feeding the world rosegold birdseed
from your immaculate palm binding my hair
like a Dutch Warmblood's tail, darling.
She dabs the corners of her mouth trying
not to smudge her lipstick, straightens
her dress, and hurries off to wash
his car.

Every Saturday night, the band downstairs
covered King for twenty-or-so retirees at the bar.
They held onto their drinks and memories
as they applauded the classics, their rings
and watches sounding like wind chimes
against frosted glasses.

Broken wing love birds smiled and laughed
with one another. The bartender cut limes
and dropped cherries as they rose a drunken
toast. *Here's to this moment, where we're
anything but old.

—Chet Baker, '88

I put The Lost Tapes
on while I shaved my face, inching
around two chin nicks turning
the lather into the remnants of a strawberry
shortcake paper plate soak-through.
I tapped my Chucks on the pink,
checkered floor to the cymbals.
Heel toe, heel toe strut,
stopping every few measures
to re-tuck my herringbone-detail
tie beneath my collar. I heard
his trumpet wail, and mimicked
it on the rusted shower rod like a cheap
snare, deep drumstick strikes patched
with meat tape. I carefully ran the flexed
blade beneath my cheekbone
like a piano-park saunter, trying not to step
on the drummer’s heels ‘cause he hits
it just right. And the brass birds
are just right. The bench creaks, the cinder
snaps, the twilit fountain dance, the pop-
skip needle, the slick floor, the jazz faucet,
and the shave
are all just right.

I held my swimming pool stomach
as they unraveled the hose from the side
of the house. I laid on my back in the needle-like
grass that perforated my skin. They cut beneath
my ribs and lined me with a wood tarp to keep
the water in. No anesthetics, just a cup of fruit punch
to numb the pain. The yellow parasol inside dropped
deeper into the cup with each sip. They placed the hose
in my incision and sewed the skin around it.  
As my stomach expanded, I sipped harder, so the pain
would go away. But as I neared the bottom of the glass,
the liner ripped, and summertime was ruined.

Her eyes are like tidal waves,
constantly threatening to break
the cornea and drown me.
She lures me past the buoys
and lets the tides pull me farther.
My hands are like paddles,
pushing water behind me but never
enough to regain sight of the shore.
I take in a few more breaths of dry air
before I'm completely submerged.
I cannot see the sand beneath me,
so I take one last look at her sunflower iris
blossoming above the waves before
my lungs give out.

St. Eulalia's gushed cinnamon disks
engulfed in licorice. The smoke stacks
were now purely cosmetic. The M & M roofs melted, heaped thick,
and dripped charred caramel turtles
to the Easter grass below.  Maybe the
chocolate cross on the steeple
is filled with fudge, maybe it's not.

The black, iron God arm punched
placid-blanched clouds, and dangled
cat cable down to lemon-vested men
with chalkboard faces.
Basic algebra, today's date, daily
syllabi, God-fearing anecdotes,
and the evils of homosexuality.
Fornicating with other dudes
is like moving Jesus' rock
with your ******'d *****.
Let sleeping dieties die.
We find them buried deep beneath
**** ceramics by T.V. criminals,
rapists, murderers, buzzers, free-
lovers, angelheaded sweethearts.
They have nearly four dollar souls,
barely enough for a Wilpo dinner
at Hepburn Diner. #2 breakfast
with one cup of Columbian cartel
coffee with a pinch of whole milk
to take the edge off, so he won't
be gripping the booth vinyl when
a "freedom" flash cop car passes.
Police cruisers are just bigger bicycles
that we're afraid of, sporting cereal
box baseball cards in the spokes.
Cops were the kids that needed help
their first time fresh off training
wheels. Training academy training
them for low-speed cat chases through
flower beds.
Sweet daffodil, you didn't have to die
like this. You could've drank straight
from the pitcher at a stranger's dinner
party potluck, seen the guts of a New
York highrise, shared the coke left
beneath a woman's botched nose job.
You could have been more than this.
You could have been more.
You could have been.
You could have.
You could.
You.
You, daffodil, stamen-down
in Miracle Gro and dog ****

could have been more.

I'm a sheltered nineteen-year-old
from Northeastern Nowhere,
Pennsylvania. I spent my preteens
worrying about girls and digging
holes in the backyard. I had my friends.
Two or three middle-low class kids
down the street. We rode bikes, played
video games, and occasionally watched **** together.
It seems a lot weirder now than it did in the moment.
We made memories daily and spoke our
underdeveloped minds. At thirteen, politics
were simply, "**** Capitol Hill" or "the prez's
a crook." Things change, though.
I still know little about politics, but I'm sure
there's at least one good policy in effect.
Everyone eventually goes their separate ways
and the phone lines between us get damp
or get cut. I haven't dug holes since a landslide
filled in my work. I traded in my bike
for four wheels and a piece of wood. My Nikes
are now Toms, and I don't worry about girls.
Just the one I've been with for almost four years.
Instead of ****, I look up synonyms, so I can
sound a bit smarter at 7:30 AM typing my thoughts.

If my GPS didn’t take me the long way,
I’d never see the luscious mountain tops
spilling trees down their faces in spring
or mallards coasting downstream.
I’d miss out on a patch of stars
filling in for absent clouds
or a leafy overpass catching
the sunlight just right.

I stayed up late last night writing you this letter
by desk lamp while you were three streets
down in Nowhere drowning in boxed wine.
If you got caught, the box'd be bigger with iron
bars and a bench where you'd sit and reminisce
about two hours ago when you were too gone
to sit down. Mismatched couch cushions
and black light posters of Marley and psychosexual
women in spandex. Then there's you with a cup
in your hand and a hole in your skirt, dabbing
the corners of your mouth with my late night
confessions. Thank you.

The actors that did not shirk
their lines before death
were the ones most deserving
of life.

Kids in pajamas cut at the knee,
so they won't trip barreling down the stairs,
beat on their parents' door.
There's a Bible beneath several self-help books
and a vanity mirror sporting a crucifix etched
in with scissors. Mom and Dad toss the blankets
at the headboard and follow their kids.
The sounds of squeals and running water come
from the kitchen. A pill case sits on the counter
while one kid fills a plastic cup half-full of water.
The blood of Christ and soap stains.
The kids smack the table trying for the rim
of their baskets. Jellybeans, peanut butter cups,
and shredded plastic bags fall from one's.
The other is showered by a cascade of prescription
bottles, daily dosage instructions, and torn-up coping
pamphlets. Carrying a handful of Prozac to his mother,
he tugs on the hem of her nightgown and smiles.

Pure cane sugartar that sits on teeth,
sits on a canine porch swing
and swings too far, kicking the enamel
siding, wood knots, and greying-thin
windows. More exposed than Brad
Pitt's marriage or JonBenét Ramsay
on the cover of Old World News Daily
in the dentist's office. And there we
are. We're bleached white and burning
beneath paparazzi bulbs and a
a ****** case. Brief case money/
two thousand fourteen and it's still
relevant, still useful blood money.
Novocain lightning flash; burn a tree.
Cali home tucked behind parsley
palms. Fortune teller, baby, O.J. didn't
do it. Not The Juice, not him.
The gloves. The gloves. The gloves.
Comfort of picket fence rainbrushed
paint stripping. Raymour retail
of a mocha-cushion couch half-off
'cause the back's spattered with
toothpaste and taxpayer juice
like Grandma's cancer handbag.
Put your feet up, stay a while.
Don't leave.

I drew pants out of my backpack
like a well bucket brimming pennies.
Legs upon legs tied together
in a campfire circle and sitting
on moss'd rocks, listening to rock
music, drinking Rolling Rock,
and nothing else. I pulled up
on inseams to a single black
pocket liner sixteen cents richer,
but the fire. Oh, that fire, flames whipping
weaker than slave drivers weaker
than the wind bailing low-lying
lake water to the faux Dover beach
mound of sand by the mud shore
like the crayfish were drowning.
The sand was like trampled
"welcome" mats worn-in by sidestepping
horseshoe players setting down
their tin cans by the mound.
A pitching machine on the pitcher's mound.
Machines have made the big leagues.
I quit baseball when Coach Seth castrated
my half-friends with a robot.
Some took red stitches to the face,
the lucky ones. But the fire—if you could consider
a Bunsen burner-esque flame a fire—turned
our burnt sienna bottles into burning-out beacons,
tiki torches between pine trees, street lamps
kicking off in four hours, a box of matches,
and a lightning bug's ***.

When kids pop more pills than balloons
at a fair, take more rips from bongs
than Beyblades, shake hands with *****
dollars and plastic bags, steal more money
than hearts, are in more mugshots than family
photos, **** more than war, sell more ****
than lemonade, read more billboards than books,
go through more girlfriends than socks in a week,
text more than they write, inject more ******
than flu vaccinations, drink more beer than fruit punch,
put their lips around more pipes than Popsicles,
and die more than live;
then we'll know we've failed them.

High on Cateye and Ghost Sight,
I stumbled through the streets
of Salida del Sol beneath
the watchful eye of Father Elijah.

The roulette spinner cobblestones
clicked as my feet dragged
past the courtyard.

Like an effigy, the homemade martini
between my fingers burned
my gin-soaked lungs.

Sweat and vermouth settled
in the circuits of my collar
as I gasped for relief.

Hologram gamblers tossed golden
casino chips in dried fountains
as they strolled past me and through
the Sierra Madre's gates.

I unrolled my sleeping bag like a rope ladder
to get a better view of the searchlight stars
that filled the sky and the river at my feet.
String lights washed up on the rocks unplugged,
but the ones above never stopped shining.
Minnows danced to the clouds passing
like slow motion strobes. Flashing lights
from a private jet made a few stars seem
bigger than they actually were. I assume
the same goes for the ones in California.

This guy was on the bar steps,
but mentally by the tap, mentally
lip-locked with a long neck lover
mentally on a beach  in Vietnam.
"Red Beach Two," I swear he said.
It could've been "we beat you,"
aimed at the Vietnamerican
bartender straining Manhattan
Projects for faceless suits toasting
by the jukebox beating out Springsteen.
Something about a bomb, millions of lives,
and innocent Satan. But that war's over now.
This guy must have seen some ****
because he kept his arms down
and eyes at attention like a death
march. He watched everything
like a liquid sky slowly draining,
leaving the Sun tacked up
to the cosmos. He pushed the crescent
moon over to get a better look
at Andromeda's guts, and tore
a hole in the pool lining. He revealed
more ocean with U-boats and Albatrosses
and the Enola Gay sobbing for what it had done.
And bombs / bombs / bombs. And Nagasaki,
we did it. It's our fault. "We're sorry"
spokesung to the beat of a two-finger
tremolo on a stretched hide drum.
And Hiroshima, we're sorry. We didn't know,
but we did. WE ******* KNEW ALL ALONG.
We made the bomb, we tested it in the desert,
we put a bow on it, and left it on your doorstep.
We left it beneath the arch. THE ARCH.
That arch I've seen in my dreams.
This guy,
broke and begging for a beer,
has seen it.
He is it.
He was the atom bomb and the bomber
and Hiroshima and the universe.
He is it.

Slumped shoulders, a spine wire hanger
holding a jacket up. Taut sleeves, out-
turned pockets, warped collar,
and a gap-toothed zipper.

Elastic wrists plunged into shallow
pants pockets, tight like shoelaces
before the midnight untying.
Rose-gold hamper slid

beneath the box spring, dragging
cereal pieces to a fine dust
then dissipating with
the morning ritual

bed spread, bed sheet tearing from
a sweaty body to the tune
of a near-siren on the desk.
Leg swing and saunter

to cold tiles like broken glass. Clockwise
turn the shower dial, act clean, turn
it back. Fingers swipe 'cross
the medicine cabinet,

leaving droplets to race to the white wood
frame. Bridge thresholds past the fan-
diced ice air hallway to the closet.
Creep the door closed behind,

pull drawers to the end of their tracks,
find pants. Unhook jacket from bed
post, throw it on one sleeve
at a time, and plunge

elastic wrists into the shallow pockets
and leave.

I took my eyes from the white, tiled floor,
placed my fingertips on a frosted window,
and used my sleeve to clear a view of Williamsport’s
skyline. I saw the buildings as part of an unfinished
masterpiece. Ross and Hepburn had their visions,
but lacked the essential skills and supplies.
Ross couldn’t overlap shingles, and Hepburn’s
red and yellow palette put the project on hiatus
until the spring when the snow melted.
I receded from the window, dried my sleeve,
and looked back down at the unfinished tiles.

I'd like to think that we
could unplug our Ethernet
arteries, replace them with
notebook spirals, and still
live long enough to fill
the pages.

Under winter's breast,
we were calmed down and tucked in,
but not very tight.

Winter coats were pulled
off wire hangers as fast
as they were hung up.

Last night, Winter placed
one more layer on the earth.
We added one, too.

Grandpa’s heart stopped before
a doctor demanded
Atropine of a nurse.

My dad knelt to obstruct
my view of grandpa’s bed,
and told me he was fine.

I pushed past Dad’s blockade,
gripped the icy bed post,
and pulled on grandpa’s sheets.

I took Fifth Street home last night—
two blocks back from the corner
store selling dry-mouth Camels
cheaper than the shop downtown.
Away from the newspaper boxes
selling the Gazette, Times,
Tribune, Post, Weekly, Daily,
Whatever for one dollar
and fifty cents a pop.

The crumbling sidewalks
took the glare of porch lights
and slid with 'em the length
of this rusted chain-link
fence spanning four yards,
three front doors, two
pipe railings, and a doghouse.

The ice salt sprinkled
from the stoops earlier that day
made the glasswalk melt
and bubble up, popping
like Christmas bulbs
beneath my shoes.

She rested her thin hands beside her keyboard
and proofread the email to her landlord.
She was adamant about getting the most
from her lease and, though wealthy,
insisted on knowing the price of everything.
Milk is almost five dollars and gas is almost milk.
Littered around her bedroom were shoeboxes
of handmade jewelry, pearls, and war correspondence,
each as fragile as a land mine. Loose soil footsteps,
shrapnel, and a Sofield soldier torn in two.

Our first time was in a honey-colored
Cadillac on the caramel seat covers.
My hair was combed back;
yours was corkscrews at the ends
of fine blushes both ways.

A man stumbled over to Catherine’s car
and pounded on her window. She cracked it.
“W-welcome to New York. Want to buy a map?”
A cigarette filled in the large gap of missing teeth
in his smile, and the stench of alcohol ran over it.
The light changed, and Catherine sped off.
The man stepped backwards out of his sandals
and tripped on the curb. He landed in a pile
of garbage bags as Catherine readjusted
her mirror.
**Welcome to New York.

She and I exchanged disdainful glances
across the parking lot. The verbally brash
invitation she gave me at 10:30 two nights
earlier from a low-riding car resounded
in my brain. She wanted our graduating class
to get together and sit awkwardly around
a campfire while a few reminisced
of homeroom and half days back in high
school. And as the last few embers glowed
like residence halls, she would clear
her throat and bash college. She’d denounce
the curriculum, professors, and parking spaces
then praise the days of hurrying through carpeted
hallways and freshmen traffic. To see our classmates
laughing with hands outstretched to the flames
would bring a smile to her summer-chapped lips.
But we’re no longer classmates.
We’re just seventeen people trying to live our lives
outside the confines of Galeton High School. Sure,
we’ll bite our tongues and fake smiles every now
and then, but we’ll never be more than superficial.

So down, I'm drinking coffee grounds
to stay up. Pieces of bark in my

cup like a tired dog running on half-
woofs. Half & Half fizzles, sizzles

West Coast Folgers corporate doorstep.
Step lightly / hardwood floorboards.

Each creak, each door hinge "hello" couldn't
make me go. Fetch me the paper, some

poetry, a pen and a pad to write on.
To feel right on.

Lines so loose that delicates / zip-ups /
camisoles lie on the hillside

trying to poke the clouds, pop 'em,
with their tags. 100% cottonpoly-

estersilkrayon blend. Pure blend,
breakfast blend. The mug I stole

from the caf 'cause they steal from
me. Thousands of dollars every semester

for Cheerios everyday. Cholesterol doesn't
matter to me. Not because I don't care,

but because I've lowered the good kind, too.
So low, so low, the parking garage elevator

girls can't pick me up. So low on morale,
my textbook battalion would rather shut

me out.
So low that I'd let them.

The phone crazed against its plastic receiver.
Tossing her clippers on the counter
with an exasperated sigh, she picked up.

"Mary's."

She began to pace around her paisley-floored
salon when she read the Caller ID.
Crosby General Hospital

The cord stretched further across the room
with each diagnosis like a tightrope that was
threadbare from decades of grim news and heartbreak.

A single thread kept her composure.

When word came across that her daughter
had died, the wire snapped and her faced turned
scarlet like she was crying barbicide.

I really do judge
what I write as I write it.
Childish, boastful, self-
absorbed, morbid, pathetic,
simple-minded. You
know, the works. We all have to
be critical in
life or nothing is sacred.
N o t h i n g
m a t t e r s .
Everything will exist and
it won't mean a ****
thing.

Almost blue
like some stained-glass Christ
that never felt the saving sun burn
his caulked stigmata soft like
cinnamon toothpaste in the creek
bed.
Were his robes Robin's Egg, or Giotto
like the clergy wanted?
And when their fake pearl bracelets
rattled, fishing out cheap change
from brass-clasp purses,
did Christ stoop to gather
the sixty-something-year-old pennies
from in-between the arm rests
while they sifted through
the silver?

Almost blue
like a southern / western overcast
that never calls New York in advance
to schedule time to sweep up
the sky, standing on cold water flats.
Buys a Southwestern ticket straight thru,
walks past Madison marketing
her ***** underwear to anyone—everyone—,
buzzes in, third floor, apartment B-6,
but the door's locked, and the canary
curtains dance out the window like a house
fire.

Almost blue
like the Dawn dish soap
glass I neglect to rinse well.
But more like a lazy oil stream in a gas station
parking lot beneath the perforated banners
yakking in the still-cold March midday
about $12 sheet pizzas or unlimited
free coffee for $1.19 a refill.

Money better spent on a pack of Marlboro
Blues saxophone squeal by the plastic-
wrapped firewood by the almost-
blue wiper fluid and the antifreeze peaches.

People always want to forget
their pasts and live in the now,
but they can't because their tire
swings are still tied to dead trees.

With a fallen branch,
I drew a line dodging pebbles
in the path, but I haven’t
the will to cross it.

I slipped into the walk-in cooler
to escape the kitchen heat for a few
minutes. I sat beneath a wine rack
holding up a chardonnay chandelier
with zinfandel bulbs. I'd swear
I was at the Ritz if it weren't for
a lemon box slowly collapsing
beneath my weight. The motor
to my right churned out frigid air
like a 43rd floor air conditioner
in a luxury suite with fresh fruit rolled
in on cardboard carts. Everything
was buffet style and there were no lines,
just the painful thought that I'd have
to leave paradise soon.

I suckled my mother's Bluetooth breast
while my father built me a bassinet
of series circuits with high, motherboard
bars.
I've got that artificial baby glow.
But Mom put my ****** on Facebook
at four weeks and I still haven't re-friended
(forgiven) her. My upgrade's in nine months,
but I want my downgrade now
'cause all I get are social invite excuses
from Facebook fuckfaces. We pack
our lives into little boxes that we're
not even allowed to open.
We drink to technology, keep our lazy
eyes on our news feeds, and recycle
ideas like their owners would even
want to see what we've done to them.
We misquote Confucius and credit ourselves
with mangled Robert Frost stanzas.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I think
it's awesome that Pepsi used to be blue."

Reblog, revine,
retweet, FaceTime.
Folding chair fold-out on someone's lawn.
White-out Yeats, Keats, Byron, and Auden,
and write John ******* or Tom Whatever.
We're caught in the chicken wire of an LCD
fruit basket so neat, orderly, and brushed
aluminum. How can people write in Starbucks?
S
   B  
       U  
            X
B  
     S
The cooler's too ******, music's too shy,
and the sugar, no, not just the sugar.
THE PEOPLE are too artificial.
The carpet-suit inlay I'm standing
on has pencil lead, sock lint,
and receipt shred lapel pins.
Even corporations play dress-up.

But what happens when Y2K kicks
in tomorrow?
Lives will be lost even before
the missiles **** us.
And the planes that drop
from the sky won't even come close
to when the bough breaks your little
girl's heart, baby, because your phone
can't raise her anymore, so you have to.

And based on your search history,
tweets, and recorded dreams,
she's better off in the warm
embrace of a hard drive.

America'd get its independence
two days after I lost mine
to a high school halter top
twisting my heart like funnel cake.
Although love was still
much a concept four years ago,
I new what "a break" was.
It was the last fifteen minutes
of geometry, ten seconds
beside the Homecoming goal line,
it was me on a rotting bench
watching myself in shallow water
two slow moments before diving in.
Blue Skidoo into a boulder
because I don't know what I'm doing.

I forced my razor knife down
into an anniversary coffee cup
crammed with pens, pencils,
two pairs of scissors, and one
roll of color film I'm afraid
to develop. I jammed it in blade-
up so I'd have to deal
with the hard part first
like a blank page before
an accidental tongue slip
drips ink and makes the page
pretty. Some tree I've never met
and some pink dye died for me
to cover this pressed pulp
in illegible squiggles;

and I'll be
                  ****** if I let it down.
'cause I'm drawn to things
without opinions. Sketchbooks,
inkwells, rubber band bracelets,
a mixed-nut dragonfly rested
on my trampoline net. // Cut it
free // cut it loose.

Find a brick behind the shed
and smash it dead,—preteen me—
young Wordsworth me.
I pulled the sepia tape from Queen
cassettes and finished the glossy
plastic off with a vise grip in Dad's truck.
Old Brucey had mustard pinstripes
down the driver's side, all the way down
to the Germania General Store.

He was a blur to me before I could buy
my own Dreamsicles. Passing the chicken feed
and the resident, caged dachshund couple,
I saw his face for the first time. Seventeen-years-
old, staring at my grandpa through picture
and plate glass panes.

The angels he swore were real—the ones he payed,
praised, and prayed for every Sunday and everyday
the sun shined and everyday it didn't—

were now less deserving of heaven.