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Dec 2014 · 317
Haiku #019
Wait a day and pray
your god forgets sins confessed
under influence.
Dec 2014 · 2.0k
Duccio's Maestá
And now we see the singularity
of the artist, wrists spread bare on
mimed canvas, finally we see
his consistency.
Lazarus is dead on the first day.
Gold background, rocky outcrop,
sense of cluttered space.
Do you see the decay?
Can you sympathize, or do you notice?

I cannot sympathize with Duccio,
I am too vain to admit his Maestá
survives while my brain rots from
alcohol. But I remember Duccio is
at least fifty years old when his Maestá
preeminently destroys my career
as a visual artist. I do not mind.

Lazarus is dead on the second day.
Duccio had many pupils, among them
Simone Martini, whose Annunciation
is a cropped rehash of Byzantine/Gothic
flopped with Duccio's handy flair,
a pious reverence and virtue.
It sweeps and moves. Or attempts.
Lazarus is no longer sleeping.

I have never been to the city of Florence,
not now nor the 1300s, so I need not
explain my lack of comprehension.
Lazarus has risen now,
but it is different than I remember.
Lazarus is all alone, and
Lazarus is alive,
doomed to walk in mortal Hellfire
a second time over.
Dec 2014 · 896
Funnelmouth (V)
I wish I could write poems of distraction. I sit all day in rooms and there are times I am outside and it feels unnatural. I am curious to the state of my insides. Sleep is not reliable. Dreams are not patient.

It is night and it is cold, and as I look up to stare at stars and planets I see car crashes. Orion totalled by a Chevy Cobalt. A pickup dislodging each dipper and sending them reeling to infinity, smacking empty space.

Cold nights are cleansing. I need more time to think. There is so much to be thought, isn't there, so much potential just floating around, pathless, empty. The season will not change for a while. I must build a fire and warm myself.
Dec 2014 · 2.2k
Funnelmouth (IV)
(stopping here to tell you about my first
******* because it was terrible &
the one thing I remember most vividly,
a pock under her left eye
marking my shame & confusion &
this portion of the poem is a lie)
Dec 2014 · 516
Funnelmouth (III)
How many days until tomorrow
(& do not bolster me—I know the day is long)
because tomorrow I promised something
to myself, a sort of present for the hard work
of not repeatedly ramming my skull into a pack of
venture capitalists & I'm pretty sure I could take
the Koch brothers in a fight even though I am the minority &
Fox News killed racism just as MSNBC killed watchable TV &
all of this is so incredibly unimportant because
I saw the sun born of yesterday's ashes
the rebirth of light as so many slept & dreamed
but I do not dream, no, I do not wander so far away.
I think I hold my world closer than that.
Dec 2014 · 596
Funnelmouth (II)
A Jim-Davies-esque poster cartoon of my guts
on display at the Smithsonian as though
I could pretend to be any other poet
with my insides outstretched because
I cannot feel without cohesion or medication or
either, or—
it's lost upon synchronization.

I hear some wormy **** gobbling
(insanely might I add)
about Marx or Engels or one or both twice over.
I'm too busy trying to impress myself with this
Jenga block tower of carefully balanced fibs to notice
why you cry when the sun sleeps.
I don't exactly care so much as it intrigues me.
Another feeling stimulating what's lost.
I imagine sunshine & weep.
Dec 2014 · 522
Funnelmouth (I)
I thought before this writing I might
tear out this paper & roll up
give me some numb for the numbers &
no one is asking how I've been sleeping but
my words caught my urge mid-rip & said
You are so sad and not even you know why.
Blisters on your tongue from bottle-bottoms
chasing a rising air bubble running for life.
Copperhead, half-thing,
whole-brain, funnelmouth,
throwing bricks from bedroom windows hoping to
hit my head at the end of flight, free-fall.
I forget a few times daily how much animal
seeps past this face & I have not been outside this head
since who knows when & I just want it to—
Candy canes for teeth and I am indifferent.
The television smiles for me, red-white-mint lit
in the faded glow of almost-morning.
They would almost certainly mourn for me.
I have to keep believing that is true.
I am funneling and it will not stop.
Dec 2014 · 988
Haiku #018
PSA: please set
aside time today to hug
a gay narcissist.
Dec 2014 · 419
Franz Lehár
However long spent staring & you've yet to move your feet.
Ten yards of breathable space, scent of honey or lemon,
I can't remember.

                                        Her walk, his walk.
                                        Why spoil the fun?

The ****** falls from the branch almost always,
then so too will I fall I feel—less gravity
in headspace, room for words to float.

                                        Step one, step two
                                        Step 3 step 4

& they move like wine together & here I am
up to my neck in blood-tainted water.
No TV show has ever felt like this.

                                        How many cities burn
                                        for sake of
                                        love & death?

I want to build a city of her living bones
magnificent skyscrapers dance with the
slightest gust of my breath—

                                        I send
                                        that city
                                        shaking. They
                                        are waltzing
                                        now.

Lehár's The Merry Widow.
The irony cuts holes in my veins.
Oct 2014 · 453
Haiku #017
Chicken-scratch staining
this prescription glass grasping
on getting life back.
I'm too juiced for this **** this
can't look out the
windshield **** this is
the type of **** I usually avoid
'cause I can never wrap my brain
'round tight enough to think past
          stimulation

LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT
acoustic encoding all ****** & raucous
retinas not working
corneas not working
pupil sized up like puberty
and I say
        let her spin *******

Because I've never sensed like this
it's something new &
something old but I'm here for the first
and I would love to leave soon
          but just let me hang on
          for a second longer

'till my brain shuts the **** up.
Oct 2014 · 555
Haiku #016
Trees bent in, sobbing,
weeping as mists have weeped like
summer rains gone sour.
Oct 2014 · 602
Fall, Winter
Some fresh scent of drowned leaves
crackled into autumn & I am
born again into daylight, breeze
playing with my tangled mess of head
still dancing like soft summer shadows
on the concrete & the basketball goals.

It is no longer hot. I do not sweat
near as much as usual &
cold sticks to night like thistle &
I am awake again & almost praying.

I wish for fall to yield to spring.
I wish this slowness away.

Let me reconstruct.
I am always in winter.
Sep 2014 · 606
Haiku #015
Steadfast reminding
me all good plays are written
one line at a time.
Aug 2014 · 550
Haiku #014
Boys & books & long
lines of bone-dry rosebush &
all of it burning.
He craved a father like a burnout
licking his sugarcane eyes &
slapping them on
any surface they'd stick &

he called night The Kingdom
would wander off for ages
said I don't need to know
where I'm goin'


said Someday I'll have already
found it
& maybe he's right
All people die a little
more in daylight


he was 16
a dry firecracker
one spark away
from infinite eruption
Aug 2014 · 577
Restitute
a dish containing my bones
& several vital organs
laid to rest on a bed
of colander and sage

a pretty platter
a selfless oblation

one hopes a gift of such
heart might be atoned
& wrapped in a cocoon
& sent away to float the sea

my insides ravaged
my restitution complete
Aug 2014 · 463
And There Lies the Lake
Winter, night. Snowfall. Lake house. The family is gathered for a beloved relative’s “celebration of life” (we’ll say he/she didn’t believe in funerals).

Father, mother, two offspring, distanced by 8 years (27 and 19). Mother’s brother and his two children, staying at a separate, unvisited location. And a dead grandparent.

/

Winter was not the most opportune time for Grandpa to die, but he loved the lake, so because he passed in winter we are here and we are pretending to love the lake as he did. It is difficult to find joy or relief in a lake house. The whole idea is vacation. People go to the lake to swim in ***** water and drink and not think about things for a while. Winter is suffocating; it traps you indoors and surrounds you with walls and chills

Egos are firecrackers with short wicks. Do not light them in your hand. They explode and sting needles. Humans tend to trap themselves in the mind and that reality remains unbroken from formation until death. It really is a shame we make it all up. I wish heaven seemed a desirable prize.
I've been reading a lot of Zachary Schomburg lately.
Aug 2014 · 422
Haiku #013
In which life did your
body float the Ganges on
soft cuts of gum tree?
Aug 2014 · 337
Haiku #012
His words kept pouring
in the rain like the rain and
it stung like new skin.
Aug 2014 · 377
PiP
PiP
This wall has skin
     a signal
stretch and collapse
w/ each breath the bent
mind keeps pulling—

See how far deep we can cut
you should have told me
anything but that they say
his pen tipped skin—ax-head straight through

when we left he was asleep and later
I got a phone call and the
voicemail, it said—

you need to get back
but first, you need to
tell me what happened

tell me
tell me
please
tell me


later, as we sat,
he said he didn't mean a word,
said, Maybe you should just
forget about it.
Aug 2014 · 269
Haiku #011
These Men are all in
boxes, taped air-holes and all
still, in time: breathing.
Aug 2014 · 288
Q
Q
How many more seconds until this cigarette is all but broken ash?

How many more questions must I ask until the answers start to **** their way in?

How many people went to my funeral?

How many people didn't want to go and went anyway? Someone give these people a medal.

How many people have I killed on accident?

Was it quick? Torturous? Which is more horrible?

Did it happen too fast to enjoy (or recognize) the end, or slow to the point life was no longer a desirable option? If it ends in this…

Have you ever planned a ****** in your headspace? Where did it happen? What did you use? What were they wearing? How quick? Why? No, not why. No. I don't care why. All good people have reasons.

All bad people have options.
might fish dream of land

to wonder How many sharks
fall concious to the water

they must remind themselves
mustn't they

here is the water & life &
here we are surrounded

we escape via accidental hook or
suction of the propeller but never

on purpose: "fish out of water"
unnatural half-things, semblance

seeing sunlight through a window
and marveling the splitting rays

they jump and catch and dive
so soft

against the buffetting of waves
Aug 2014 · 280
Haiku #010
We fixed the middle.
Now Gaza's desert is glass,
Israel byegone.
Few things spoken
the way her hair played bingo with night air
& she grabbed my arm twice
I remember
                              exactly

1st at the bus stop (the way back)
a wind, chilly, rolled in/caught
her spin in a second—she squeezed
& giggled & goggle-eyed looks swept
the year away

2nd was the doorstep & I am not
sure this was not by accident but
her eyes fish-hooked me & reeled in
I, a hapless liquid-mouth fin-thing
lapping up *******
                               salt water
& where I'm left was/is NOW

she stirred with a spin in that dress
                               w/ the flowers
the ground/foliage/birds &
all their noises & all her
tiny exhalations suspended beneath
tiny worn wings, a current

all moving
up
Jul 2014 · 313
Threes
three days remained;
the decision made
to pull it

no one knew
exactly how to
break the news

the gravity pulling
down a room:
tons & tons

i wonder, softly,
might we change
all our minds

if we should,
don't let it
be too late

never too late
Jul 2014 · 353
Tiny
Let us ignore
the wall
built in his honor

a looming crow's nest
black mangled stone
and onyx

Can we not forget
the bodies
the people lost after

the ground sank
deeper
Jun 2014 · 512
6/4/14
Make my day!
Switch to another time/place to
once again be lost in the ether
     the cold and damp so sturdy in dark

But do not interrupt my impenetrable
bouncing because who are you
     (why are you is more apt a question)

You need not lose yourself in that
lightless chill to make your point, No,
     that is done

So please Friend, Fellow:
follow that tunnel to the end and at
the end you will come upon all that I
     hold dear and

as you exit the tunnel into day
you will be among the life-blood
     breathing in warmth and sunlight
May 2014 · 1.2k
Manitoba
I wanted to die

This house This place I can't

Tried to drown it smother suffocate deprive ******* life-force

I felt feel I belong to some Otherplace

I still feel; weeknight dim-dark

Streetlamps cities and my eyes swole shut a silly haze

No sugar or milk please thank you and could you

The owls sound off—or owl they all sound the same don't they

One too many passersby

Screams far away terrible

Wait for prescribed calm to take hold

Crows are not like owls are not like vultures

No thing is like any other thing

This I've come to sense

I can't shake this pain from my belly
May 2014 · 421
Man
Man
I felt the presence of so many souls in this empty room.

I felt something brush against my neck. The brush was cold.

It smelled of rotted meat and toiled field-ground, sticky.

I broke the ice cold quiet with a question. Who are you.

Nothing. A creak, maybe, a disembodied patter of dust, set flight.



Someone hung from the rafters in the attic, I'd been told.

Only that wasn't true. They found him in the living room.

Apparently his eyes had popped out of his skull and lay on the carpet.

He'd been there for a while, air soaking in his last exhalations.

I was altogether surprised the ceiling fan had held the whole time.



I could touch it, slight sulphur-burn on nosehair and lung.

My arms bumped up, a flat-tire-road-like indicator of augury.

His voice was soft and weak, and he spoke only to me.

"My shoe's untied. Do you mind?" Hair once of my neck ran away.

Strike, redress—I heard his coughed cries from my dented boot-heels.
May 2014 · 976
Lucifer
I received my weekly phone call from Lucifer.
He sounded ill, like his throat was full of
sandpaper. I told him he should probably
cut down on the talking and let himself
heal. He let me know how the kids are
doing, and I told him about the storm
that was passing through tonight and
how hopefully nothing would be damaged,
but he told me to accept this as fact.
There are some things one simply cannot
change, he says. Storms and violence.
For example.
Jan 2014 · 458
Haiku #009
What I would do to
feel the warmth of her skin, the
tremble of her touch.
Jan 2014 · 397
Haiku #008
'Binge and purge,' she says,
'It's a self-imposed poison:
hurts no one but me.'
Jan 2014 · 556
Seventeenth
Walking down 17th, I  found a note in a
dumpster—don't ask how these things happen, they just
     do. Things. It read,
Freely run, gentle traveler, but be wary the ground
beneath your feet; it trembles under the immense
weight of your fear.


I took the note and crammed it in my back jean
     pocket, hoping a vibration would soar up my
leg and shake the coarse curve of each letter off
the page and into the air so people stepping on my
     heels might catch a whiff of exactly who they're
dealing with.

This boy, he carries his fear in his back pocket and
     not beating in his chest like a bass drum.
I haven't
shaken all the words yet, but every traveler has his day.

Today, tomorrow, yesterday. No, no.
     Not yet.
Dec 2013 · 873
Bygone
Spring yielded it's light blue, sending
little spines of fiber-work glass clippings about
and smelling like summer and sun and
reminiscent days long past and gone away.

He, blissful, weary, marched unfettered
amongst the wrecked flora, a hop in his step,
prancing about like someone younger
than he, who had seen little and felt less.

He had an attitude; bumbling, messy,
he was hardly a man for all men, but rather
a stoic symbol of time stood stone still, a
slapdash rendering of a simpler, better era.

Summer gave way to Autumn's yellow chill.
Soon winter stood, watching still and
silent, frigid as the bones in the funeral home.
The seasons painted his headstone. A canvas.
Dec 2013 · 1.9k
Haiku #007
There is blood on the
belly of all living things.
Pity it's so smudged.
Dec 2013 · 626
Haiku #006
‘I set the ******
on fire with a gallon of
petrol. Overkill?’
Dec 2013 · 534
Catatonia II
When the end shows face, what
would or could he say?

When the wind tears trees
hundred-year rooted in thick,

fertile soil hot-lit by an
erupting sun—what does

he say then? Could he process
the light, the colors, the heightened

senses, awake again, alive,
back from Catatonia.

               could he see me the way i deserve
                 to be seen in a pale-white/tan hue
                 & linen & perfect & perfect & perfect &
                                                             per­fect


Asphalt is on fire and
beauty becomes the source of

light for the dark rooms and
undusted corners of his brain.

When the ends shows face,
he could say yes. Yes.
Dec 2013 · 713
The Cancer
Sting of sloppy light.
Purse, bow, amphetamine.

Brown hair & a pink—
wind current cut through
               one open car window

to the other car window
pilling cigarette smoke cheap

               & steady forward.

He's a beauty, that one.
Wallet, vest & tie, coke.

Cut open her stomach &—
waves of salt water
               bolted to the ground

like tiny rocks & hardened
shells lain beneath the sea,

               a doubtless factotum.

Pull & stitch.
Sting again.
Nov 2013 · 403
Dozier
Boldness is akin to desperation.
No no Love, do not
weep for the tree or the
mountains jagged—

                                   w/ their bulldozers
                                and iron
                                                           fist

do not cry Love for
we are all in mourning:

                                    it is not the tears
                                    that sting, but the

ebbing thoughts—

the warmth
Oct 2013 · 287
Haiku #005
When I'm forgotten,
God will scatter my ashes
in the Land of None.
Jun 2013 · 1.0k
Bicker Bicker
He figured the birds were chirping.

It's a beautiful day, just warm enough in direct sunlight. Squirrels hopped around the fenceposts.

The neighbour boys, splashing and jumping in the swimming pool,
mindful they didn't run around the concrete edges or their father would step outside and firmly correct them. He loved them, didn't want them hurt.

Spring is alive.
Birds are chirping.

He wondered what birds sound like.
Jun 2013 · 617
Sexuality
A lightning crack. A blinking television.

His hands, like packed sand melted to glass,
rugged and burning on my torso.

Shoveled feeling and lust and gilded
passion. Tears well, a guilty mind
strung up again.

I stop. Our eyes locked. Lost.
Lost, lost. I see lips. Slowly dragging
his head, I wed them.

I pull back. Flashing lights,
blinking television.

The night is young.
Apr 2013 · 505
Weighted
the rim-rocked voice bellows
'I was a maid once. On the
Titanic, most famous one-trip-ship
in the history of mankind.
A tragedy. A massacre. And I survived it.'

a shapely cigarette clenched in her jaw
'It was such a magical place. The air
was so static and vibrant. Everything
was bright, audacious, unflinching.'

sound of sirens stabbing through smoke
'And as soon as we were so sure the
world we left behind was quiet, mortality
reminded us of its omnipresence. There were
screams, terrible screeches piercing the beautiful
starry night.'

smell of spoiled milk, sour
'I think God turned his back that night.
He couldn't bear to watch. But He knew He
had to remind us of our place. Somehow.'

the sky is never blue before sunrise
Mar 2013 · 538
Wanderings
This city I've found,
ruined and beautiful,
cloaked in floating plastic bags
full of pipe dreams and
unhemmed seams. Shards of light
stitch the surface together.

This city I've found,
benign in all it's wanderings,
never sharing it's secrets and
never quite hiding them either:
the ugly walk the streets in
alluring strut.

This city I've found,
sifting through my veins and
pulsing in my head—

This city I've found
that's yet to find me.
Mar 2013 · 438
NY
NY
All new people
crowding the heavy cage,
dribbling on to West 33rd
in heat.

All new people
mid-mourning, 4am, heartbeats
ring the streets like gong-strikes.

All new people
I've never seen. Faces
who, tomorrow, may
never again see the
lightness of me.
Mar 2013 · 321
If Only
If only your eyes would lock mine.
If only I could stop time, wind clocks
back and back until years passed like seconds,
became nothing more than leaves
drifting in an autumn wind.

What dreams we'd share.
What things we'd see and touch and live.
What fireworks would light the sky.
Mar 2013 · 5.1k
Good Men
A good man
ought to be left
alone,

lest this evil world
wrap itself
around and
swallow him whole.
Feb 2013 · 554
Skies
Blues:
singing, grumbling

vocal chords soaked in a
vat of golden whiskey, aged
like the pain he sings of.

Blues:
white, ivory

piano keys stained red
from the blood his guitar strings
cut out his fingers.

Blues:
chimes, rhymes

more like a feeling
than the color
of the cloudless sky.
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