Your fingers,
calloused
or soft
(I can't see
from here),
tighten
round your cart
and brush hair
from your face.
You look like
an oncoming ambulance.
You look like
your father
hates the life
out of you.
You pick out
a mango.

She spread her legs and said "eat this *****!"
I said I couldn't, because it was Ramadan.
She slammed her legs shut
like a door closed in anger
and told me to "eat ****, then!"
but I couldn't,
because it was Ramadan.

The clown would’ve been beaten up and down
a long time ago, if he didn't know
how to force scowls into smiles,
bafflement and battles into laughs
like startled bells and baby rattles.

Who would he be now, if he didn't know
how to play the jester, how to stitch
his words together
like the mouth of a snitch
or a quilt of dodo feathers?

He learned it from pain: how to be a joker,
how to act the fool.
Does it count, still, as stand-up comedy
if he's just crying on a stool?

you said on facebook you hate cops
so i put a pig's head in your bed.
the deputy said, before i killed him dead:
"i have a wife,
i have a wife!"
with a sigh,
i grinned, replied,
a glimmer in
impassive eyes:
"so will i,"
and then i took the *******'s life;
swung my axe until he died.

anyway,
you wanna get married?
nah?

me and the old lady
in our cabin, chillin
livin off the grid
livin off solar panels
and psychedelic drugs
roastin meat and
makin sweet love.

knock knock knock.

i turn to her in disbelief;
we live in the woods
south of nowhere
in a **** cabin
who could that be?

she huffs, shrugs
the knocking
intensifies
so i go
naked
to open it
(we're nudists)

it's a grizzly
ahhhh!
i freeze

but he's wearing
a suit, cradling
a briefcase
in his paws
what
the ****

he asks me
if i'm interested
in being mauled
i ask him
how can you talk
you're a bear right
and then he mauls us

and then i wake up
and it's just me,
my bed,
and my beloved
*****.

I can see my friends' graves;
their names engraved
into unforgiving stone.
the flowers that Sherry's mother
will insist on bordering her date of death
are gaudy, and I can hear
the album Sherry puts on
when she hangs herself,
scratching out a death rattle.

I can see the bear
that mauls Matthew to death.
I can smell the sandwiches
he leaves outside his tent,
I can hear his sleeping breath
and my stomach grumbles
in time with the grizzly's.
Already, if I listen,
I can hear the lack of thought
pervading his comatose head.
at least the bear will finish him off
in a matter of minutes, and the pain
will be so intense that it is barely
pain at all; it's there, it hurts, but then
he's dead. I shake his hand,
I say, "nice to meet you."
he has
a firm grip.

Mike, it isn't you,
it's your heart disease.
And it's not that I'm not attracted to you, Skye,
but watching your entrails pour from a stab wound mid-coitus
kinda kills the mood.
I want to burn both my eyes out, Jenny,
so that I can't sea you drowning anymore.
Karen, I don't really care about you,
or your looming and eventually lethal diagnosis of type 2 diabetes,
so you can go ahead
and put your hands on me.

we used to be "in love".
you yank accusations
out your *** like tampons.

i throw jack daniels:
bottles at your head,
and up on the ride home.

my lawyer flirts with me.
*******, *******, *******,
we're having an affair.

fear of failure is my mistress, who lives
only to control me. she lives solely
in my thoughts, in the corners of my
dreams, and wears a mole under her
watchful, painted eye. i love her, but
she’s no good for me, and anyway, she
makes love to every lonely man she meets.

“That good for nothing Gary
hurled Princess off the balcony -
I don't know why we married!
(It was because of money.)

Sure, she kept him up at night
but God, she was a dog!
All right, so what, she liked to bite?
She was a little dog.

But we agreed it's time to part
and ended on good terms.
Now, Mister Assassin,
let's make that milksop burn."

“Mrs. Darlene, I must decline.
I’m a lawyer; that's a crime.”

"We can do anything we like as long as it is
UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system
tends increasingly to regulate our behavior."

Here, simply, is our delusion:
progression of society
is no idealist illusion.
Surrendering our dignity,
we traded our autonomy
for the same ****** technology
that leads us to singularity.
We could **** the scientists,
and burn the bots before they breathe,
bomb the books; desist, resist!
We offer up no real solutions
So all we ever do is seethe
craving counter-revolution,
so I guess it's up to me
to end Hawking singlehandedly
in the great name of Kaczynski,
the only logical solution
as far as opened eyes can see.

good people travel together
in tamed wolf packs, tearing throats
for each other's sakes
because a good person will,
when left to his own devices,
carry bad ones on his back until it breaks.

if your dad tells you 'get your grades up, son'
beat that nerd to death with his own copy
of moby ****;
what a square.

if your dog's breathing sounds like a vacuum
and strangers look at him with pained remorse,
give him more food,
go ahead,

but if you want to play the clarinet
to your hungry heart's content,
well dear, no one
WANTS TO HEAR IT

i lay stargazing
silent as the absent sun
gravity grounds me
like the touch of my woman
like the very thought of her

"If i was killed in prison, that would be a blessing right now."
-Jeffery Dahmer

november twenty eighth, he prayed
to god, to mom, to sun and shade,
gave thanks to all the boys he ate;
november twenty eighth, he laid
and thought till his last ***** breath:
"well, this has been my life, i guess,"
as scarver beat him blissfully
into his deliquescing death.

he thought of all the things he did
while down came scarver's metal bar
(and not because he'd killed those kids,
but '*** his pranks had gone too far).
the guards went home that night and slept
while someone, somewhere, soundly wept.

silk & saffron cylinders basking in the still light
thoughtlessly as a blue jay bathes in his bird bath
as a brave baby bites for his mother's bare breast
as i watch you from a house across, you stretch awake
your rib cage glimpses the light for a moment and
dissolves, disappears.

i knew i was unseeable first when i was five
watching my mother undress for him and then him and then him
and then again when i was fourteen when my eyes
were white as snow against the unlit room
but still my sister didn't-couldn't see me staring.

i'm a ghost, woman,
and I need to **** something
to make me live again

burning baby
bodies; bathing
books. surfing
crackhouse couches;
catching *****,
getting guns
and gonorrhea.

I am king
of Wal-mart,

sitting high
in throne of $70 wicker chair.

“ this is
my kingdom. “

the toy aisle
thinks me a tyrant,

the way I bend
and break its barbies.

“ son,
we have to get going, “

dad says,
so I exile him,

plastic sword pointed
to his back.

“ no more
of your shouting! “

I live here now,
ruler of spoiling dairy.

i want to be cremated
and remembered fondly
and though unmarried, buried
in a wedding gown.
and, please, a veil
to conceal the pale
tragedy of my sinking face.

When my brother forces me to eat his vegan snacks
i look beyond this mortal plane and through its
hidden cracks; i close my eyes and am a king
in some far off land, sycophants sing a symphony
for me, for me, for ME! "-and it's gluten-free,"
says my brother, and i am snapped out of my reverie.

i made a hole inside my head, a ceaseless pit for enemies
a place for me to put them mentally, because i can't
afford to dig a whole hole in my backyard, 500 meters deep;
i am a ******* poet, man, and ****, big pits ain't cheap.

I saw her picking out a cantaloupe
inspecting squeezing considering
thinking it'll go bad
before she can eat it
but still throwing it in her cart.
I followed her to the register and
watched her pick a pack of gum.

I wanted to ask her name
in my dream that night it was Elizabeth
we danced in a country-western bar
though I’ve never been to one before
so my dream-brain conjured it wrong,
empty and smelling inexplicably
of oven-baked cookies.

we were salsa dancing to techno,
and everyone but us were bears,
but the point of it wasn’t accuracy;
a dream is no documentary.
we’d stopped to catch our breath and she’d looked at me,
opened her mouth to say something,
reached her hand towards mine and
I’d barely,
briefly
felt the cool of her fingers on the back of my hand
before I woke up
in a much darker place.

I met him at his house,
stuck the check in my bag,
so many zeroes.
“Large price to pay,”
said his wife, arms crossed,
not liking the idea
of giving a younger woman money
to go deep inside her husband’s body.

I sunk into the old man
as though he was a post-work bath,
and the pain rose off his surface in steam-like tendrils.
I stretched and widened
to completely fill the shell of his large frame,
and after a few seconds of adjustment,
twisted a clumsy hand
to test my motor control.
I slunk out of his rocking chair,
and tripped over his legs as I tried to walk,
plummeting face down
into cat-haired carpet.

The wife
was giving me the stink eye.
“Arthur?” she asked, stupidly.
I shook my head.
Meanwhile, my body blinked awake from the couch
and was overtaken by a large smile,
Arthur’s blissful grin looking
peculiar on my lips.
The old man,
inhabiting my body,
reached out a hand to glide against
his wife’s mechanically smooth arm:
“Come here,” he requested.
She made a face, said she’d be back
when we were done, and left.

Now it was just me and him,
or him and me,
depending on how you look at it.
We laid down on his bed together:
me because i’d become suddenly exhausted,
and Arthur to take
his first real rest in a while.

No matter how I adjusted the pillow,
My wrinkled head throbbed.

We tried to play cards,
but Arthur’s hands shook in a way
I was not used to
so we had to stop.
He kept thanking me over
and over and over and over as i replied:
it’s my job,
no problem,
it’s my job, no problem,
and rubbed away the aches
in my temporary legs.

When the session was over
he bolted out the door.
I couldn’t move without hurting,
but I didn’t need to chase him:
I called him and told him
if he didn’t bring my body back
I would steal his credit card
and his wife.
“Bodies are places to visit
but you can’t vacation forever,” I said.
When he returned he wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“I’m not really a thief,” he let me know.
“Okay,”
I said, skeptical,
putting my hand on my own shoulder
and cozying back into my body,
which was a little stretched out.

I could feel him watch me leave
in excruciating jealousy.

you're yappy
as a drooling
sack of dogs
and as happy
as a vietnam
bombing.
you're ******
as downtown
new orleans
pretentious
as banksy
unlikeable
as amy schumer
worn and round
as a linkin
park CD
and yet
you're lovely as
a dumb *****
could be.

i asked my mom what's death
what's *** and **** and debt
she boiled me an egg,
said not to worry yet.

i'm a COOL baby,
i ride a motorcycle.
vroom vroom; i'm leaving.

Jeremy draws a snail on his lips,
so that he won't forget how to say the word.
"Snail," he says, twisting his tongue around the syllable.
after he meets a cute limbless baby, he punches his own arm
to appreciate his capacity for arm pain.
Jeremy sells his house for five dollars
*** he feels bad
asking for more.
He also feels bad
pirating movies,
but not stealing donuts
to regift to the homeless.
Jeremy loves his dog
but not his wife.
Jeremy's nice
in a weird way.

good
morning
eggs
frying

milk
*****
babies
crying

drool
*****
m­ommy's
dying

friends are not objects to keep.
they have lives beyond you,
and more important things to do.
they're ever-changing as the leaves,
with shifting values and beliefs.

solitude's a sickness, that creeps
and crawls, a savvy spider;
solitude's a sneaky snake, a viper, coiling tighter.

soon, you will get used to it, the lack
of laughter, the endless quiet.
then you will make friends anew,
but someday soon, they will leave too,
you can't do much to fight it.

dear me, where to begin?
a chasm appeared in my backyard;
a cavernous crevasse, ******* in surrounding squirrels.
the grass around turned brown and marred
and our oaks fell to the underworld.
by force of fussy gravity, my heavy wife was hurled
into this ceaseless cavity, junk food for earth unfurled.
i gasped - alas! - my gal won't even get a hearse,
and curse that cursed concavity,
but perhaps i made it worse.
what should i do?

-desperate in detroit


dear desperate,

thank you for writing in.
that hole (inside your heart) must hurt.
heed my sage advice, good man:
fill that big guy up with dirt.

-wisdom william

the sun heats the water
to a scalding soup;
his skin boils like its cooking.
he rises from the sea,
untethered and free
like the loch ness monster
when no one is  looking.

he sinks into the water,
pretends to be a starfish,
and regrows his limbs.
he goes home, with sand
in his gucci flip flops
and plays him some sims.

She tells me to take things more seriously
or else no one will take me seriously.
I say, seriously?
An intervention?
She says no, no, nothing like that,
sitting in front of a banner bearing the words
INTERVENTION!!! with three
gaudy exclamations points, just like that.

god, how haven't you learned yet
to fix all your problems?
you forklift your issues, and in addition, you put on a front!
yes, all right, all right, but we’ve all got our goblins.
Not to mention your addictions - furthermore, your predelictions towards -
yes, all RIGHT, i know you’re right, but frankly, you’re a *****.
the banner flutters
to the floor.

lets go to a club, pleaded dan. no thanks,
i resisted. not my thing. but please, it'll be a good time, he insisted
and anyway you're lonely, i know.
no im not, i told him, but i was, so,
while my pal talked up a pretty gal, i waited
for him to finish, sipping a bit at my drink
and soon enough, i'm loaded. my self esteem's eroded
within the first few minutes
and by the end, when their flirting's spent,
is entirely diminished. no luck? he came back
and asked, as though he ******* cared -
i felt the world folding in on itself
like an hunchback, or a lawnchair. i rose,
to punch him in the nose.
hey, what the ****? he said,
but he didn't even stumble.
then he bashed my head against
the wall and watched me crumble
to the floor, no more, no more, no more
"but what the **** man," he said, again
I'm lonely, i said, i'm lonely, dan
i'm lonely and in need.
he pulls me up by my shirt:
"no, you're just fat
and full of alcohol
and greed."

at first I was hurt
for a long time, for
many years, i disappeared
into myself because i knew
that he was right. and when i go
one day, swiftly into the light
i **** a ****** up in heaven
(as it turns out
there aren't 72
there are 77.)

they say "write what you know"
so here i go:

you make me feel like a sidewalk worm;
a toenail clipping; a new york rat.
you make no sense at all;
you make bad lasagna;
you make bad decisions;
you maybe thought we had something great going
but sometimes great things end:
blockbuster, britpop, the TV show Friends.

happy birthday,
by the way.
call me back
when you get this.

frozen as a corpse
melting slowly
as a tortoise,
staring blankly,
no remorse,
solemn, silent,
almost done,
dying for
your bit of fun,
and still, still,
as the buried sun.

frogs are jumping, buns are *******,
men are wanting, grunting, hunting.

dogs are yapping, cats are napping,
men are fapping, snacking, lacking.

snails are leaving trails behind
while men are killing off mankind.

You disappeared into the night
and I woke up to an empty tent.
We'd gone camping, and you'd just up and left.

Dude, there was hardly any food,
and I guess my noisy sobbing had attracted a raccoon.
He approached me somewhat reluctantly
but soon, we began to spoon.

His little claws clung to my shirt,
which hurt, and he smelled sad.
He started to take this thing we had
a little bit too far;
I prayed suddenly for the rumbling
of Tom's oncoming car.

As the raccoon began to **** my back,
I closed my eyes and missed my dad.

empathy's a skill to ****
as quickly as
you can
watch folks' heads fall
off their necks in
the fissures of
the net.

if you want no tears, no fear,
you first must become numb
some folk will cry, 'insensitive!'
but some folk are ******* dumb.

(in order for your life to start
cut the cord from your heart
to the net and fall apart.)

fall has fled and taken you along.
it hasn't snowed in florida for
far longer than i've known you
but sleet coats your car windows,
slicks your winding streets
and sticks to your tongue
like i once did. all fall's fault, it is,
that we have fallen in and out,
that our worlds have frozen over.

you called me up.
it'd been a while
because i'd felt bad.
you needed help moving
out of that 'memory-infested
******' ****-hole' as you called it.
a rental truck stood in wait outside your house,
as did i.
we didn't wait long.
your face was the same, your body different.
your body screamed late night binge,
watching home videos
and crying into your takeout.
having a wife
and then suddenly not having a wife
will do that to ya.
you wiped a bit of sweat from your forehead
before it could gain traction
and trail down your face
like a salty
man-tear.
when we were done you looked exhausted,
and it was growing late,
but i was scared to leave.
"do you want a beer?" you said
so i think you were scared too.
we sat down on the couch, staring at the wall
almost pretending there was a tv mounted on it.
i resisted the urge
to tell you i was sorry,
*** who cares,
really, and
what if it killed the mood?
looking back
the mood was ****** anyway,
and i should've just hugged you.

fear, it looms
like jack the ripper.
midnight monsoon
oozes into my room -
shadows seethe and slither
like fervent snakes.
wild winds whir by abloom
in sharp, unnerving whispers,
leaving little in their wake -
fear: it takes, and takes, and takes
and rarely does it make mistakes.

starved for your tepid touch,
i don't speak, and don't ask much.

i can't give you what he can;
i can’t even be a man,

but i've never known such class
as your tapping on my glass.

simply, i like you a lot;
it's too bad i've got fin rot.

run out of misery
or it will outrun you
like usain bolt.

never join sam's club -
it is not a grocery store,
it is a cult.

if you get a girl
pregnant
it isn't your fault;

you'll understand more
when you're an adult.

was a child when 9/11 happened
and i didn't care at all

was an idiot in school,
and a happy genius in the safety of solitude

was a ******* when i sold cigarettes to children,
so over-******-priced

was flipping off my teachers
and my father sometimes

i'm not like that anymore
i try to love people now

slimy snake sam. cold cruel callous. harbor hamwich hats. justify juxtaposed jam-wads.

Hermit ***** sleep deep
piled up and closed-keep,
‘*** Hermit ***** need friends.
but if you ain’t a Hermit Crab
don’t give a Hermit crab an ‘in’;
for if you ain’t no Hermit Crab,
Hermit ***** will be your ends.

good old Geoffrey especially,
his Hermit shell an endless well of money.
you may be taken hostage
by his Hermit eyes of blinding honey,
but close those eyes against the sun
and he won’t even see ya, sonny.

watch out for them Hermit *****,
or they’ll watch out for you instead.
if you don’t watch out for Hermit *****;
Hermit *****
watch you be dead.

just trust me on this,
i’ve, long ago, been There.
I would not be sayin’ it
if I didn’t Deeply care.

you know the information now,
do with it
what you dare.

you are not a fisherman
but if you can imagine it,
the sea will swim towards
you with open arms,
singing, shifting, spitting salt
into your opened eyes.

my boyfriend is a horde of rats,
and no, i'm not just lonely.
this is no delusion, Pat,
i feed him cheez-its
and he loves me.

i give him fancy clothes to wear;
he sleeps below the kitchen sink.
i give him little baths in there
when he begins to stink.

got an issue?
kiss my ***.
love is love,
and that is that.

Oh, *****,
the one I rode
in my old country abode.

Though of length you had a dearth,
I shan’t soon forget your girth,
the warmth of that width a stone-lined hearth.

To wrap my hand around your body
was a breeze; overall you weren’t too shoddy,
and I could hold you with such ease.

Dying one by one, day by dying day, unphased, we dug you makeshift graves, as players in nature’s ****** games. Oh, calf I sat with all night, as you went out like the light of a staggering candle - half the way I felt, smoothing out your ratted pelt, prepared me not to gaze but glare at God.

Weary, we carried your bodies and buried them in the backyard; not hard, you just need a tractor or a strong stomach. We lifted your body down into wet mud, which swiftly sunk it. Plunk - we set down our shovels. The other cows huddled in a bubble ‘round your place of rest, bereft - and then, I’m sorry, but we left.

value people’s time
break people's clocks

ask for forgiveness
not for permission

recognize your emotions
******* again