my excuses breed like the mayflies of the bayou
when your legendary grandmother says
i remind her of cool-hand luke
actually blushing & looking
down at his knees

so i wrote this while i sat
rocking back & forth
on her kitchen counter alone
watching the tanned florida bodies
with muscled calves & stomachs
full of beer whistling songs:

here i am
a blond faced writer
turning to ash
on some radioactive night
gathering paper from living
tree roots & unconscious moss
hair parted in the middle
& slicked back by river water
a little schizoid with a typewriter
telling myself to forget
old feelings
old words
old bodies
an angel filled with my own strong
music & careful passion under
the purple-gray moon & sky
dark like chewed-up bubblegum

i realize i've
laid down my insecurities
like hilarious graffiti
on paper a thousand times
but no one believed a word of it
until i came out of the blackness
of this river with silver wings
growing taller & stronger
nourished by the mud
into smokestack manhood full
of furious breath mouth
searching for a thunderstorm
finally awake on the liquefied air

but this dream will not leave me
like the horizon lost in teardrops
hunkered down invisible
on the banks of this peaceful river
as stars streak like knives across the sky
& beard-faced frogs sing
about naked bellies marching
across a frontier i know
i'm a certain kind of handshake maniac
miserable with sensitive armpits
writing a personal story with
fanaticism about rubber shadows writhing
like fat-eyed snakes dancing between
bales of hay on a clear night
cranked out on a bone-shattering
bullet of burnt coffee
big wintertime sky the color of wet cement as
cumulonimbus gather directly overhead
i'm lying on my young sweaty back
concentrating on large drone-birds
through a tinfoil kaleidoscope
flying free in native space
faster than i can knock them down
with either comfort or refined guilt

& i'll probably die trembling
under fuzzy patches of starlight
ignorant & weeping of lust before i'm 30
after falling in love 3 times a week
because i'm more vulnerable
in a moment of boiling telepathy
than i should be at my age to
grapefruit ******* and
pretty girls in little underwear

to the girl who looked like new confetti thrown into a vortex
who went streaking around christmas trees with me after
the 1st annual ugly sweater & cheap tequila extravaganza:

i live inside a piano unable to tell the difference between lust & love
the only way i'll get to heaven is with the sun & your eyes on me
fighting for supremacy to write a poem & shout it at strangers
bursting from the ground like a masculine transcendental cornstalk
or a thin-***** blond haired man smoking a cigarette
with my hair in a bun finding new secret ways to touch you
my eyes closed & mouth open & armpits smiling skyward

your sweater blossoms now the way it never did in highschool
because your ******* are beautiful tumors that you bought
eyebrows plucked into gentle brushstrokes sent me into a fever-dream
you say you have scars on your ******* & i want to kiss them
after i tasted your raspberry lipstick daiquiri on a shared cigarette

i forgot my middle name when you leaned in & whispered
pretty things in my ear & your long hair teased my shoulder
you said something about a giant rumored t-bone steak but
i asked you instead to sing to me in the dark through a
shining steel microphone wearing a snakeskin trumpet
with your giant-bulbed headlights shining over the
empty shot glasses and half-eaten slices of lime
your hands dancing over the triumphant big pink ****-head
under the neon table beside your bar-lit bestie
bumping & dipping & snapping your fingers but
before my ******* mutilated your ***** bone
                                wait you said
please keep
                               the tv & radio on softly
my face tender-lipped like a deer shivering in your high-beams &
the shadow of my ***** growing up under your skirt
like a black horse bending its head to the stubble underneath your
belly button & around the hollows of your quivering knees

finally squatting on throbbing meat in my
bed at midnight doused in oil & fully on fire
your tongue orbiting around a hard universe
your marvelous face pressed into the seismic mattress
golden buttocks arched toward the sky like a skillful camera
my fingers sweep like feathers down your spine to your waist
shimmering like a teloscope in the blue light of the television

in the morning we held a funeral & buried my lips between your thighs
you are a beautiful new skyscraper untouched by wrecking *****
stiff-necked & wearing loose boots & an italian style blouse backwards shivering in the glow of the fireplace beside a big tall rock in the desert
your scent is still in my bed-sheets & now you are howling eyes
bloodshot & nagging across the fresh dawn prairie of i-10
                        toward         the       endless       coast

indigo dusk spreads across
inexhaustible country sky
torn wet clouds stretched blue at twilight
a big-chested wind comes howling off the lake
dissecting our immortal kiss
as the pink sun meets her planet-doom
leaking on my balcony like a falling curtain
blessed with an affinity for moonlight
lingering drinking pale wine
we took baths in lukewarm vanity

she is a long legged sorceress smoking a cigarette
half awake because i've got the covers again
goose bumps crowd onto her little bare *******
dewy legs sliding among mine
rousing my bones and heart alert
as the bright sun dances silent
like a new carnation dragged from bed
bringing a giant unscrambled sunrise
across my section of heaven's blue sea
but is mercifully eclipsed by the cream-skinned
breast of a purified failed angel
exploring the feather-soft mountain of my body

we drank cointreau in the early morning
against the collage of saxophones
expanding among criss-crossing body odors
and thin magic on my lipsticked neck
i'm gaining strength over my neuroses
all my fear and doubt disappears into joy
no longer huddled in paper misfortune
reintegrated with ecstasy
in the smoky labyrinth of her eyes
as her fingers light as dreams
draw complex patterns in the flesh
of my back and buttocks
like secrets written on wet paper
none of it       was            real        before          this           moment