as honeysuckle grows tight on the fence
& the scent of jasmine burns in my nose
i can hear a child's laughter on the hills
& watch your cheeks burn hotter than the sun
when you tell me about your **** addict mother

how she lived in the econo-lodge dumpster for a while
painting cryptic symbols & mountain landscapes
on the outside walls still wearing the unsteady boots
she's had since her life in colorado
but she was scared of someone checking in it
while she slept so she didn't sleep
instead she conversed with the wimpering wind
& used the toy telescope she stole from your baby brother
to sing to the stars so she didn't feel so ******* alone

last summer you say she camped in the graveyard
behind the methodist church in town & spray-painted
the headstones as they climbed up the hill together
because she harbors too much pride to be
just another tweaker with her hand out

she's on guard against wickedness at all times & no longer
sells her love to method-acting men who don't love her at all
but she doesn't wear ******* anymore either because
her last pair were so soiled with *** she burnt them
in effigy on their last night of action

you say you miss her
& wish she'd get sober
but she's never been sober
& that's why your brother
was born with a stutter

she has warrants for her arrest in two counties
& surrounds herself with withering flowers because
she feels dead inside already
when she sinks her face into
the stem of the bulb & inhales she thinks
she is the one thing in the galaxy
god doesn't have his finger in
her stomach churns with hunger
flies hover around her & light on her
big as black crows resting on a dead tree

you say you haven't heard about her in
going on a month & ask me if i think
she's still alive
i say i saw her just last week
i was a pensive beetle perched on the wainscoating
she was stumbling out of a parked car at dawn
to take a wilderness **** down by the river

her smile is no longer a pretty thing i noticed
as she crouched to release the stream of early morning
maple syrup ***** knocking on the biological door
she said she's slept in her bedroom-car
so many consecutive nights that she distrusts houses
says she's scared of walls &
****** outside so many mornings after
that she's terrified of bathrooms
claims an allergy to porcelain
she even feigns an aversion to trains but
we've all seen the tracks on her arms
& the pits in her cheeks like she
sleeps draped across the railroad
at night tempting the cycloptic executioner

but she doesn't sleep at all &
she doesn't dream of you or your brothers or
of the days when she lived in a house
her tattoos have all become crude wax crayon
depictions of sunflower blossoms
needle drags & match strikes
she wraps & braids her hair with gnarled fingers
& bottle caps she finds on the riverbank
she bathes in hysteria at midnight
& washes her swollen eyelids each morning with dew
she fights paranoia with the ghosts in her throat
& stupor with stones from the dark bottom of the river
she is a frail bag of muscular potential living
in a finger-painted 97 pontiac sunfire with
a splintered patchwork windshield
& she is never coming back to love you

I've been stabbing at
the promised land until
my veins collapsed
because drugs make the sun
shine harder than its ever shimmered
in all my life & sometimes
I hear the stars cry
as they fall

because I've fallen too
& my blue eyes have
cried harder this year
than they've ever shimmered
in all my life

but I'll never sleep
in the gutter again

I won't bury
my head
underground

& I'll never hang
by a thread instead

I'll build up a mountain with my life
until I feel the throat of the world
swallow me whole

& when it does one day
maybe you won't
remember my name
but please don't forget
the things we laughed at together
or the sound of my voice saying yours

I swear to God I'll remember
your fingers forever & I'll never
forget the secrets
you whispered about your scars
or the time we threw the lock
on your aunt's bedroom door
while you were babysitting
your youngest niece

i long to live quietly inside a hurricane
whirring thru a dingy tralier park in
an alternate world where my young pink
heart hasn't been reduced to live
under the floor pedal of your mother's
foot powered sewing machine
in the forgotten attic -- a surrogate
universe in which my name
became more than
a delicate vocabulary
flicked easily away
from your tongue

didn't sleep. instead I found
a wall in a cave & grabbed a
chipping hammer & tore it down.
finally broke thru to starlight
at 4:12 this morning.
***** bruised fingernails.
discarded piles of red clay pain
swept into outside corners.
spelunking ever inward. steve knows.
shed some tears, dave, he says.
shed your fears.
warmer in the new cave.
less damp.
room for a rug.
room enough to grow a plant.
room enough to grow.
self-perpetuating seeds.
dawn was a stranger I welcomed inside.
sleeping stalactite makes back tight.
I will wake & stretch when the sun is high
overhead like a cat in a woven basket.
mountain water trickles underground.
do yr homework.
yr body is yr home. put in work.
my body is my home. work is work.
yr body is my home. input work.