He says, “buckle up.”
I say, I AM A CAR CRASH
with silly puddy metal doors
and ****** hair and a hole
in my windshield and I am on fire.
In a bad way. You cannot tell me not to wreck myself because that’s what I do best.
I am thin ice on a popular lake.
I am an abandoned brick building and I welcome the momentum of a swinging pendulum ball.
Topple my structure,
I hold up nothing.
Knock me over, I have been empty for too long!
I am the combination of deep roots and wanderlust.
I am two colliding passenger trains in the middle of a tourist trap
that you never expected to visit this long. Long like 5 o’clock traffic amongst trainwrecks,
I am the obstacle and the road.
In my own bed and still wanting to go home
because he taught me how it is to really feel alone
like a 4am songbird
or an easter island cannibal.

That panting belief of men;
a thirst for that which fills the glass,
beckoning the hand to grab the cup
like the itch moving the mind
to believe in
what?
Whether or not it’s enough we still fill that cup;
with some things,
others put in nothing.
Grab your cup and get drunk, get crazy,
love the world who is a capricious lady saying,
"Have one on me, fill it with everything!"
It’s a prayer without word or plea, the sound of everything ringing inaudibly.
It’s the power of song pursing lips to kiss dreams where we believe.
The canvas of our body, mind and soul
where we draw the ink,
imagine the dream,
and become reality.
The moment when the pen is the same as the beast starving for a feast only fit for men.
The same as the artist holding onto their vision.
The same as the language translating the soul within.
The same as the stars burning away the wick of entropy that ends the same as it begins
insofar as all finite things have their dreams in essence of their being
and yearn for infinity.

I dodge most every postcard      
to be washed away in defeat                                                      
because there's something                  
about self destruction                
that keeps the world off my reality        
other people spitting dust bunnies
when they speak
clouding my language with their foul mouthed debris
becoming a mountain of dirt
I can't get over
these words
for real
aren't me
I
am
becoming
a valley where I hide between
the outside of everybody
and my wildest dreams
From the tops of moments
I breath
in slippery slopes
and hold for backporch memories
the neighbors are away
so it's ok to get loud and free
my darling there are
the cattails from your mamas creek
connected to the dots
that I trace back through memories
from my perch upon now
my junkyard soul
noticing wheels that are missing
from the things they were made to roll
into a tire swing
into racing streetlights
for scraped knees turning to
children remembering a wedding ring
because we told them marriage was how you take honesty
and make it concrete
before we took their honesty
and made it history
I
am trying to build something
that wont blow away with the leaves
oh I turn red blushing blood though my veins that are like trees
bound to be framed in some hillside autumn landscape of me
with words that have always been too vague
to translate my name
but as I grow that's subject to change
as is everything
so I'll consider of what I am made
and all that water may wash away
all of desire's delays
turning fatalistic denial
into some authentic decay

Electric flowers
grown for all the homes, people
have made from midnight
Ushering alms for themselves
In the form of addiction and fist fights
thinking back to the first time
You ever felt alive inside your own life
Saggy skin that sheds
reluctantly in the daylight
A body that's an anvil
Under a temperamental sun
that we no longer need for our gardens.

(Written to be spoken to babe-y)

When it comes to putting what you are
into words
do you trust yourself?

I understand there are many ways for another to mistake their symbols
for your sound

I've been wrong about more things than I care to count

and I still try to count on all the things up in the air that I haven't nailed down

but my love is so unreal it's getting kind of hard to figure all this unreality out.

Harder than stilling shaky hands from all my mental pacin around

and impossible as that one poem I read to you aloud.
You know the one
 about how heaven and hell
are also just trying to figure each other out.

I can imagine the view
 from up there and believe me
I know my sleeves shouldn't be so ******* filthy

because from this distance and from what I wear, some may confuse 
my heart for the muck

all the love I've tasted with a pinched nose trying to stem disgust

I could never wash any of it away 
but



I should remember

I do remember and recall much

that has made me into someone I love.

Born of dirt and trying to be enough.

Just two in the running tally, 
of my error.

There is no volume control for my daydreams

and there are no knobs for this kind of radio

so when living poetry around the clock

you either you dont like the song 

or your driving foot gets a little heavy and the windows come down.

Faster, faster coming to me faster 
across lines that blur into the trees

that blur into the blues. 

My favorite song,
a kindred color that without

I wouldn't be able to see you

Dancing on the edge of my vision 
blowing bubbles in a see through room

I've made out of the words beauty and grace

glued together with tiny memories of your face.



I remember.



One eye staring from over a pillow full of a moment we'd rather stay awake for.

A tangle of your hair bolting across your cheek I liken to drinking black coffee  

and those electric lips owning the words that almost drown

in the wake of your thunder

but I'm listening

and oh god I hear you. 

Sounding down my spine with lighting striking from your mouth into mine.

Under a storm of blankets and mixed limbs that become the eye

A perfect stillness

a weightlessness

where there's not enough gravity to go around 
for all my weatherfall still there

rain snow and shine stuck hanging mid-air 

you are a timeless weather woman

with no need for percentages

because you give me

what I've always known to be real

that the other forecasts 
predicted only to exist in a halo

eternities chance approaching zero

the circle that's but a fraction of an instance colored in you totally

smothering me slowly in a symphony sparing no noise

impossible to be wrong about

the correct answer

nobody ever told me to jot down

and baby I've been tested

I graduated from broken records

and the bad side of town

from black sheep flocking to 
darkness
with clothes shaven from the light

Top of my class with a degree in acceptance

at a university where we take left and use it to make right.

My friend, these are some heavy credentials 

so I hope you understand the weight 

behind my certainty in your footfall.

I'm some authority on mistakes and heartbreak

so treat me like a scholar 

or a weatherman with forecasts known to account for everything and the decimal.

A dotted i

Hear me place the you in me down to a point

the one I'm making

with all I've ever been wrong about

beckoning us

but never doubt.

There's a monster
    
           that's made my dreams
          
                               into her haunt.  

She's spilling into days where I wonder;

                                     How does a creature like you exist?

You are

              unreal.

I mean, the way you toss your head to the side

                                                     whenever you say something contrary

                                                       ­                                                   plagues me.

Following me like some gorgeous features that wont let me go

and a smile

that fills me with holes

opening me up

in ways I'm terrified to show

but what tugs at me worse

are all the ways this ghost could be known

I knew thunder that rolled off

                          electric lips
                                                
                                                every time
                                                                ­      
                                    pink
                                            
                   ­   lighting
                                      
                                      bolts
                                               
                                               mo
                                                  
                                                   ve

Speaking unafraid                                    she's free in that way
                                                             ­       
a kind of free that                                      makes liberty ashamed

and me calmly sm                                    ile while my insides are

gawking wide open                                down the middle with                              

clucking of a single coo                        coo clock keeping time

in this game of chicken I've           made out of looking  

                                                you  
                                           in the eyes.

                  Shaky hands swerve yet hope to collide
                                    
                                                                ­      sweet demon
                                            
                                                      rattle me no more
                                        
                   ­                        come closer

                               hold me still

                   show me how

a ghost can be felt.

The children of liberty’s voice
has been but a mute ripple
on the drums in this march to war,
death
   and
       de
              ca
                      y.
The voice of that capricious lady’s child could provoke the evolution

of the entire ethos and consciousness of mankind.
****!
That baby can sing!
Probably can do all the above
because it never cared about
ruling the world.
It was just trying to walk.
Those impish,
little
monkeys
with hands over their senses,
to speak no
hear no
see no
evil,
were barred entry
to Club Oligarchy.
(They’d make a mess.)
No limb left
to bang
on the drum’s of
society’s rhythm.
So hush now child.
We’re fond of *******
It makes (each) one of us
feel in control.








You’ve never been in control.












In this causal verse
you’re meat in capitalism’s grinder
and we are voting on everything
(and we really mean everything ((but you don’t know it))
you live in.
We’re gonna sit real smooth
as the misers of oppurtunity and wealth,
until our outdated and stagnant values
die with us
and take with us,
                                  more likely
                                                    than you’d
                                                                   like to
                                                                                be
                                                                                      liev
                                                                                               e
                                                                                                c
i
               v
               i
  l
i
                 z
                  
    a
                                                                                                        tion.
If you stay here and close your eyes,
you can work for a minimum wage
that couldn't help much with rent let alone a dream
But if you try really hard at a game of Simon says with ole Sam
you can carry this crippling debt around for a few decades
and get yourself learn’d
and we’ll even give you some ink
scribbled on some dead tree
to wear like a badge
of your pedigree training.
It may even get you that first option.
So you can pay what is owed
to your crippling
defeat.
I mean debt.
Sorry, we’ve rolled up the ladder for the rising tide.
But “social security”
TOTALLY
has your back when you want to die,
like us.
(Really, it will be the same and we’re good for it… promise.)  
All of you
do not pass go….
Actually, stay in this square and try not to go to jail.
Oh and you owe us two hundred dollars this time round.
There are some circles to be shushed.
And Sammy means business,
really
that is what he’s all about.
When you go to ****** the free
make sure there is no way out.

Summer beats
                                                   down on me
                                                                                         owning the sweat

                                                                                                                                       on my body

                                       the kind of heat

                                                                  you equate to distant memory

                 sweating and swearing as mother

                                                                               attempted to beat the blasphemy

                                                                                                                                            out of me.
How fitting that now,

                                     I should find myself baptized in a lake by the place
                                                                                                                                          where she has wrestled                          

                                                                                                                 a mortgage into a home.

                                            Her hands grabbing at digits

                                 from her master the banker.

                 My hands reach down

sifting through debris,  

brush

and

discarded

cigarette butts

all for a stone to cast into this baptismal bath drawn by mother.

                                                          While the only memory of my father is him teaching me to skip rocks.

                        Smooth

                oval

                                            in the wrist.

                   My record is 7.

                                              A much smaller digit than the ones that concern my mother.


           I see myself in the seven.

Gliding,

                                bouncing,

                                                                 resisting

then








sinking.

So I wonder,

                              from this place
where I peer out of my

tiny

human lens;

How much of my wrists

                                           can make my heart skip.

Had the hospital to himself
   He had broken his childhood against Army historians and mothballs
When reassembled he would say
I could carve a better man out of public demonstration and a woman's hair.
But the world had to bury him
In a coffin lined with a transparent curtain,
False perception,
And blame.
Until it all caved in
Pointed back to him
Reborn again
A stranger in  
The home town.

The
                                                audience
         was
                   sleepy.

                                                                                    So were
                                                                                                       their mouths
                                                          throats &
                                                                         intestines
                                                                                                                                         weary from all
                                                                                                                                                         the tired
                                                                                                          digestion
                                                                                                                              white wash
                                                                                                                                            
                                                                                                                          auto-subscription

                                                                                                           that's bound to die
                                                                                    
                                                                                      like you

So lace up those boots

                                            and

                                                   live.

I'm trying to
but
I could go to jail
                                                             for fraud

                                                                                            because
                                                                                                            
                                                                           old pals
                                                                          
                                                & old sweethearts

                           made a slow deviant

from what's expected.                                                                                                                                                                                            
                    
                                                                                                                    Grown men

                                                                                                                         afraid of the rain.

Sensual
Rings
          Still alive
                           Wet with hot water
     I.                                                               Cried
                   Like  
A dream
                             I
                                      Can't
Can't remember.
                                                      W­hy
                                       But.                     I
Know
Was
There.
Only forgotten when       I        Live      L O N G
&
Wide.                                                         Open
                    Containing  nothing
A  
    Pillowcase
 ­                       Full
Of yawns
Or me becoming a recording of myself
                                   The   Tugboat
      A.           D.          T.              E.         O.    E.    N
              N.                          H.       ­              C.    A

Of drugs
And wrinkled clothes

That never killed me so much
               As
                       Expectation

Your lens is                                                                                 your language
       hurting you faster                                                        to write words
              broken                                       ­                                 beauty                          ­ 
                    slowed to a                perfect                   wonder
               ­              which could                       be called
                                                          ­  ?

                                                     Impossi­ble.
                                                      Throwi­ng
                                                         honest
                                                        ch­ildren                                                                                                    ­                                                                 ­                   
                                                           into                             
                               ­                           some
                                                      dead thing
                                                      that lingers
                                                      on through
                                                         ­ all this
                                                       and takes
                                                        the form
                                                            of a
                                                        question.

Stick a lolipop
into the mouth of moments
your life is a child
and somewhere in there
you give a flying ****
about the moon
and no it's not cheese.
That mouth knows what dirt tastes like
but that wont stop me from pouring caramel
and cigarettes over it.
I need a fix
of candied dirt
and addiction.
I'm not afraid of the eclipse
because I'm already hooked on the dark.
So lock the door
&
draw the curtains
&
be content.

The tide wont be knocking
no matter how much you
want it to fill the room
or how big is your sweet tooth
because
hunger
is BIGGER
and eventually
anything will do.
So thank the moon we were wearing seat belts.
Otherwise we might be vegetables
eating only exhaust
like Hiroshima
force fed the sun
because
you only make war on an empty stomach
or with an insatiable hunger.

Be content

for the civilians and their children
who only know the taste of war.
Idiot flavored idiots with a hint of
dead mothers
that will bore a cavity so big
it'll put holes in the head
of kindergardens everywhere.
Who write their valentines on bombs.
Who's love murders buildings,
topples families,
plowing through bodies on city streets all to reach
nobody.

Be content

for the people
who aren't
you because when parents ******* in a box
you call a country means
you don't care
you put genocide on the menu
and there are some things that just wont do.
As I grow weary of rivaling chefs pointing fingers
in circles forever
becoming a porthole to the ****** business
becoming the unsuspecting manhole for
the human animal's existence

in crossing.

Mothers may find safe shelter in the sewers
but it reeks of prepackaged liberty
express delivery
to
every where.

Be content.

Because to start a revolution means living it
and what better way,
to ******* a reckless pace
that finishes first in hunger,
starting fist fights with other people's lives
and forgets even sooner,
than
to
be
content.

(- This is originally a spoken word poem. Read aloud for maximum exposure.
-Asterisks indicate the necessity to pop your cheek with your thumb.
-Answer the two questions correctly and I will give you a hug.)

He fell asleep while traveling time
where a true name
becomes everything else.
So please give me a minute to explain myself
through the doorways
that I see champagne on a windowsill
walking across the room with blue
and fine china feet
saying again and again
drink me.
Until somehow
the words become a song
singing and swinging the bottle like a dinner bell for thirst.
A kind that we've settled to quench
with television
and somebody else's dream.
So don't pour my drink.
I'm trying to uncork it with my thumbs.

POP

It's flat
and I still have a tongue
so I will use it and I
I will dream of a time
where ******
becomes a baby.
Dr. King becomes a baby.
Until the left and the right and every dead genius in between
becomes
a baby.


Tiny feet trying not to crush the wet salad of the lawn
because it is green,
like my heart
that has learned
how to break fine china.
From experience,
let me tell you
it's a lot more tiresome than a blue dream
but he fell asleep on a boxcar crossing Germany
where mustard gas
drowns you in your own lungs
and he tries to breath between the joints in the track

the

click
...                         
click
...
    clack

as years
hurtle by.

Asking again and again,

"Who killed me?"
           &
"Who am I?",

until dinner was served without grace.
Until my head becomes stiff and bubble shaped
having been conditioned by
their
piles
&
piles
&      mounds

of
obfuscation.


So we should tell all the baby Hitlers,
that become children
that become us,
that a lie
is what you become
when abusing language to distort a reality.

And when you make a fist
you are handing worlds out at random on a silver tongue.
But I still have one
and I still have thumbs
so sorry to burst your bubble but,

POP.

Child,
I don't mean to put
barbed wire
between us.  
I know it hurts
to have something so precious as the world
taken away.
But walls hurt worse
and through them only muffled sounds are ever heard
until your world is made of mute prisoners
that have forgotten what silver
really sounds like.

Blessed be
for I also have ears
so give me second place
and I will throw the medal against your walls.
Ringing out,
the universe doesn't look like an ebony tub,
with knobs we can't ever see,
full of infinite shining marbles to everybody.
Your mind
is a library
so free will isn't a book written in just English.
And tourists,
those know nothing infants trying to travel,
belong
where
           ever they
are
                             going.

Belonging like this medal bouncing trying to sing
off your wall
and
falls

into


your world.

Where again it will ring,

we've all been runner up

and somehow
we still can become disappointments to ourselves
when another doesn't enter our library
instead of loving the stories on our shelves.


So,
let me say grace.
Let me set l o n g tables
with the gruel that's been given
served on b  r                     n.
                         o
                           k  
                                        e          
china,
spooned
with sterling silver.

She kisses me with cream
and lemon yellow
making me pucker up
for lips
that are like doorknobs
covered with red velvet
driving me crazy
for birthday cake that I don't need to taste
just light all the candles
and ******* away.
Wishing for things I don't think
I am allowed to tell you
and even if I could
I'm not sure I would
because her body is my church.

And

that's not what I mean but it's the closest my tongue will get
with words.
My god
is merciful.
She plants kisses with rosewater
and
green seeds across my landscape
and confessions are
sincerely *****.

Forgive me mama,
I have sinned.

And

she does

with gifts of limbs
from a better half

the pagan's god

                                           split.  

Because this kind of man
with this kind of woman
made them weep for symmetry
and envy
how permanent every one of our moments
are.

There are small moments in my life
where the waking world
slows to a dialogue.
Asking to let the river come.
To wash away the sawdust
from woodchips
set to a fine puree
in the blending of my heart
sounding off midst thunderstorm
midst sun shower
midst silence
midst hunger pang
midst every hungry lover and everything in between.
A little mental friction
for a lot of features
content to become words.
Sounds that become symbols
becoming a box.
Express delivery
intending to deliver me.
Here, here, it’s here finally.
Talking to flowers
I feel guilty for having starved;

"Wake up little ones,
the bees thank you for breakfast
their queen sending her regards in all in an instant.

Heralding her approach  with a question,
"If ever body of water is the same then how come we give them different names?"
My insides swell as the pitcher empties
a cascade of the liquid life force each of our bodies are known to contain.
Despite all the knowing,
despite the constituents of our anatomy being hardly a mystery
I still find myself capable of pondering a stranger's.

Even stranger to think of any beauty before me
as a complex wave function.
trinkling into my sight on waves of light
like water over hungry flora hoping to make something of those same waves.
She's here
the queen's words shining in every droplet
and they say,
"given enough time stars become people, becoming you,
becoming a cog in the clockwork that becomes the reason
we thrive."
Reminding me, though the light may play tricks with my sense,
anything anybody else ever has told me about beauty has been a lie.
This is THE soul reason to even be bothered to write this dialogue down.
So I may lie to you.
An open book so you may be certain.
Have you ever been so certain of something?

It seems all that could ever be true is the royal you.
Sliding perspective's scale over a notch
you become the queen's resolution,
laboring to unify a single mind
and the world becomes you
watering flowers out of guilt.

Transforming what you know to be most real,
washing over you  
like seredipity on a day
where everything has gone wrong,
into right
into a dialogue
into you
into everything
and back.