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

her name was Grace
daughter of the school's nurse
but in the sophomore locker room
after phys ed the boys called her Tubesock
because she was
known to take a foot or more into
her superhuman mouth from time to time
& my time was a quiet wednesday afternoon
when school let out early
for a faculty meeting & no one
was left in the administrative wing
except their children

"I want you to possess me"
she led me a trembling ape
into a medical supplies closet
full of gauze & the scent of latex
(the latter curiously adding girth to my ******* for years since)
i must've been dreaming or
i'd found the ideal mixture
of breakfast
vitamin capsules
& perfect stride during my daily phys ed mile
because good god she was down on her little red knees
incredible mouth already on **** through pants
unbuttoning them swiftly with one hand
actual tongue
actual girl
actual sweet lips
actual ****
which she then quickly released
from a too-small sports bra
during the hardening of the meat slug
slipping it smiling in/out of her mouth-soul
in my head i could only hear
synths
screaming saxophones
bass drums
maracas
permeating percussion rhythm
the closet a dark conch shell
resonating shifting vibrating
like the uncarpeted floor of a dance hall

proud, brave Tubesock taking my pink *****
in as far as it would go
radiating like a sun
teeth to tonsil
cheek to collarbone
with a deep southern-gospel choral hum
vertical as a sword-swallower
performing under a streetlamp horizon
my legs silent & stiff as she sang into it
glancing up at me at the base
making the smallest choking sound/lady like
fumes of her own ****** arousal blooming/flower like
into my nostrils from her scarlet tights
her left hand
holding my coin purse/doorknob like
gently pulling twisting kneading
her right hand
inside her own self
seeking a fire or some source of heat
in the drafty dark closet

when i came too quickly
(still a victory in my mind)
shooting my cannon smoke
into the midnight of her mouth
adrenalin shivering in my shoulders and throat
my hand locked around a lock
of her crimson hair
she unplugged herself & without wasting a drop
smiled back up at me
returned the unstiffened dagger to the
cold nest of my boxer briefs
but kept kneeling in the dark closet
split in half by the thin crack of light i created
as i emerged among the sound of seven hundred bells
to kiss the soul of revolution
a brand new too-tall man holding a lamb
bigger than god himself
standing on steel pistols for legs
shouting cursing beating my breast
under the sharp fluorescent light of a high school highway

when you asked me about certainty
and if my mind was a tree
rooted in cement and truth
i was on my unaccustomed knees
blinking into a sunbeam's architecture when
the brilliant wind brought you to me
to cure me with the miracle touch
i was alone by a window dreaming through glass
you bent toward me in a mile wide sky
a butterfly with a skinny voice
or an adorable tomato in a retail uniform
before that i only knew the clouds
as bears wrapped in pastel baby-blankets
before i first kissed you in the street
i knew the sunset as a drop of fire
in a barrel of whiskey and
suddenly your eyes like a deep pool in a forest
seeking out my past with the molecular traces
of your fingers across my abdomen
mandalas blooming out of our palms
only touching at the fingers
as flames from mosquito torches filled
the round coral faces of my gauges
with apricot light

my ***** throb this morning
the way they do when a girl
demands to sleep in my bed
but refuses to cup them with
her hand or mouth or a com-
bination or rotation of both.
they hold pent-up anger or
cruelty, energy or love and
destruction that will be wa-
sted into the toilet bowl, or
a bed's sheet, or kleenex or
all three of these before 12.

i showed up at your work with a bottle of wine
and stood in the parking lot for two hours
with your skin in my thoughts like
sin and sun-heat on a garden of blacktop
twisted my ankle, leaning into the wind
with a sign that read
'i feel alright
i won't stop dreaming
i feel okay'
until you quit your job with a screech
took off your apron, spinning into bright oxygen
and crashed into my majestic arms
showed me your legs in a sundress

we ran and danced on a july breeze
and sang to each other the songs our souls
kept secret for so long until
your father and brother found us
and dislocated your arm when
you said you loved me like
the wind at night

i repaired you with kisses and tears
the next night when you snuck out
and we swayed to jazz in the dark on
the old bridge a mile behind your house
as the moon wept radiant heat
we giggled and smashed windows
the trees exploded with laughter through
the canyons

you caressed me with your eyes
this morning between shrieks of tightness,
your father and brother long forgotten
in a field in our hometown,
as you wipe last night's lipstick from
my throat and chest and stomach
your heated cheek-flesh screams whispers
of being free as you lap me

and i drink milk from a cold glass.

you told me i was an eagle
simple as that, i believed you
tied my shoelaces together
took off my shirt
jumped from the roof with you
holding my hand

you told me i was unstoppable
so i never gave up
still making propellers
out of paper mache and
over-watering the succulents

you told me you loved me
with your fingernails in
the soft young flesh of my back
you swore you weren't a liar
but we were both drunk
you wrote your phone number on my cast

you told me once
that i was a big engine
and i took it to my powerless heart
did some body work
ran screaming through the streets
roaring naked at midnight
perched on a solar eclipse
singing sinatra to a cat.

He was a frat guy.
he spoke loud at the dinner table across the room and I listened
Someone touched him as a young boy
And daddy's expectations and denial of homosexuality fueled his sons speech
Speaking hypothetically about the colloquial term for jacking off two dudes at once and if that name increased quantitavely what then was the appropriate term for jacking off 100 dudes


His friends laughed

when i recite my poems
i don't shout
or laugh
i'm not asking your opinion
seeking your approval
or challenging your belief
in god

i don't even have them
memorized
and don't want to
i'm punching out words and feelings
from a page
like the grand marshall
of a ticker tape parade

i'm so tired of poetry slams
where dignity is stomped dry
and teenaged lesbians try
to change the collective consciousness
of the older generation

there's nothing original
in poetry anymore
every black kid has a poem
which starts with him holding
a black and white photo and
the lines on his great grandmother's face
as she sweeps the yard with a broom
made out of a bundle of twigs
and no shoes on her feet
and he's put it in a book
or won some scholarship with it

while every feminist ****
and post-pubescent *** have
heart-wrenching tales
set to the soundtrack of a john hughes flick
of a time when they were
mistaken for a man or
forced to **** a fat man's ****
in an alleyway somewhere
in Cleveland or Boston
someplace where the cold
pavement left their knees bruised

what if i told you
we've all ****** his ****
and nearly all of us hated it
we've all shoveled ****
and your sob story
doesn't make us cry

i still shake and crumple
the paper
no matter how many times
i read on stage
i still mumble and cough
and spill my drink
but maybe that's why
i've never
won
a
prize.

i wish i was a black poet
or a woman with a twisted ankle
even a teenager filled with brooding angst
because then my poems would hold more weight
people would listen
i could recite them with my eyes closed
brow furrowed, talking with fists
my throat swollen with passion
i'd get applause -- an ovation even
for spitting on the microphone at poetry night
blowing the roof off
destroying walls
seeing all rooms at once
instead of despondent laughter
in an empty bar
the clinking of glasses
and the obligatory whisky after.

but i'm white
and only in my twenties
living in a vaccuum
nothing terrible has ever happened to me
sure, i have problems

but who the **** wants to hear about
not learning how to tie my shoes until i was 9?

quitting every sport, not because i was bad
merely because i wasn't the greatest to ever play
and no longer saw the point?

adhd and couch surfing in new orleans?

how hard it was to learn to roll the perfect joint
when i was 17?

the fact that i had an itchy ******* last month
but switched to organic detergent
now it's a field of velvet daffodils down there?

no one's posting youtube videos about
doing laundry on a tuesday
not meeting a pretty girl at the laundromat
instead teaching a mexican boy multiplication tables
and a couple jokes, then leaving with
half your clothes still ***** because you gave the boy
the rest of your change to buy a girl he likes
a pack of her favorite gum tomorrow
or
losing your cell phone until thursday afternoon
then the bill collectors start calling

i have good credit
i bought a used honda last year
at a good interest rate, i haven't missed a payment
i'm never bothered at airport security
i live alone, take my coffee black
or with cream and sugar
write checks and balance a budget
on sunday mornings
hate cats, never vote or testify in court
i went swimming yesterday
laid down in thatched grass, alone
don't smoke anymore
quit drinking too
don't own a boat
time moves so fast
i cook, sometimes with wine
friends seldom visit
i stand on the balcony, naked
my house is quiet
except when it isn't
and jazz floods the kitchen
i dance through the hallway
with an invisible lover
and she drifts silently away
uninterested in my melancholy poem
as i slosh sweetened tea on my bare chest
i hang on
she hangs up

you were there for me the first night
i got drunk and drove home
smelling like cigarettes
you were inconsolable
gave me ginger ale
got on your hands and knees
scrubbed ***** out of my mother's new carpet

when i tried to apologize the next morning
through tattered lips and clammy pores
you just smiled, kissed my eyelids
gave me water, let me orbit the drain

on my 17th birthday, you were there
when i drank myself into impotence
showed you hidden things in dresser drawers
we snored our futures into the same pillow
you lied to my friends, said i took your virginity
and i didn't ask you to

i was there for you the first day
of the 9th grade when both your eyes were closed
but you were pretty in your
matching purple sundress,  i kissed your ears
as if i could leap into your body
live there awhile
you said your brother gave them to you
he was born drunk and mean

i was there for you when he died
early on a cold morning in december
we shot bottle rockets
into the sky, so glad to be alive
welcomed the sun shivering naked in the river
drank an 11 dollar bottle of champagne
giggled and ****** on the floral tablecloth
of your mother's kitchen table

i was there, whispering lyrics in your ear
watching white pigeons in my periphery
as the grave of your best friend
pulled salt out of your eyes
you were inconsolable
i held onto you as if
you would float away
i still believe you might
i've been holding strong ever since

my mother was a dental hygienist and dad thinks he's an architect
which means i'm used to sharpened stainless steel exploring the interior of my jawbone and lying to my father to let him keep believing he built me from the ground up.

to the pretty girl with dreads whom i met stumbling down the strip last night around 1:30, i never asked your name.

you were drunker than i, which is an impressive feat. i followed you into a greasy dimly lit punk rock bar and we danced to 80's *** pop.

i remember i twirled you.

at last call you asked where i lived and then laughed when it wasn't within walking distance. you led me by the hand to your house.

descending the stairs into your basement room, you referred to yourself as a "cellar dweller" and we both laughed at that.

i met your dog and he liked me. you offered me a beer but took off your pants instead.

we had all kinds of anonymous *** for an hour and twenty three minutes and then i left without cuddling. you were already nearly asleep.

i left my wallet tangled in your sheets.

i remember the taste of my own blood
fondly
i remember my broken nose bone fellating my own
grey brain-mush
and how i could smell my own
ocular nerves
and my scattered smile
like a third period hockey player eating
a puck
and glancing at his mother in the crowd
i remember a moment suffering in the opposite of blindness,
and a canadian wearing a sombrero and chinos holding a guitar
i remember high testosterone levels
and blurred vision
i remember what knuckles taste like
and how bone feels against bone

but he remembers it too
he remembers how concrete tastes
and how embarrassment runs
like blood to the head of a man hanging by his feet
he knows the conclusion of concussion and
how much a hospital visit for a broken arm costs.

i am a house with a door
a lighthouse with sand around it
where a man takes a **** at night
away from his friends

i am a cold accidental touch
of the false pinky finger of
a janitor at work at a high school

i am burned to death in my apartment
flipped out on ***** coke
sold to me by a ****** salesman in
an envelope marked "Kotex $$"

i am disappearing into roots
a rusted out minivan in a trailer park yard
that no one drives
filled with fast food bags and baseballs

i am a glimpse into a  lifespan
but only the part of the road that you can see
from your apartment building

i am an adventure
a warm wet raindrop
landing on your face
as you walk out of the door
onto your lawn in springtime

i am not a voice or an expression
like the quiet tattoo of a boat
you keep hidden in your brassiere

i am the cool dry pillow that you dream into
i collect butterflies and stamps
and old shoes from unconscious men
in the alleyways behind bars

and that's how i've decided to make a living

a liar once told me that i write good poetry
i laughed and continued drinking,
the sudden rush of despair, the wicked beast, the dry pages
the man had no credentials
but he persisted, declaring me an inspiration
like seeing a strand of hair attract a magnet
or amber jewels lolling in a dimly lit case

imagination is a felony, i wagered as i poured another
a combustion i know like the back of my hands
i told him i dreamt of a morgue where everyone i ever loved
sat upright as sunflowers, declaring their love for the sun
and of a newspaper rife with disease and the passion of a janitor

there is a raccoon near a river somewhere cleaning an apple
with a heart as big as an artist in drunken euphoria
taking better care of it than me when i sit down at a typewriter
it's wearing a cape just like edgar allen poe
and having better conversation with an oak tree than i've ever had at a party
about the sunday crossword puzzle he completed  

yesterday i drank myself into a masquerade ball
arriving in a limousine being driven by a bearded mickey mantle
i was the guest of honor, sword fighting on table tops
and lecturing the guests about shakespeare through a garbage disposal
while a horse played backgammon with my father's brother
and there was a girl there behind the facade of an owl
who danced like the wind and everlasting light
and no one could stop her or look her in the eye

i am the only connection between my mind and the paper
merely a vessel, a john boat clearly breaching it's depth
either drowning like a fish in a sand dune or
being bounced like a baby on the knee of god
slavery, i call it, and hand him a glass of warm bourbon
as the splashing of my journal pages slap my crushed trachea

the typewriter is padlocked and painted over with cement
the metamorphosis trapped inside a bullet, boiling with sheer fury

the destroyers are out to destroy
they are the heat of the night
******-burned bodies trembling in the jungle
they are bullets nestled silently into the back of one's head
babies dangling from their mother's limp arms as
she builds herself a new body
made out of the countryside & the trees & dynamite
and she will bring the explosion at dawn
i could fit the memory of last night in a wine bottle
i fell asleep in the dumpster and you kissed me with your wine stained lips
in the morning i hoisted the sunrise into a wheelbarrow and headed west.

now i don't know who or what i am
all i need is a soapbox to stand on
or a cliff to climb
a little solitude
i need to be regurgitated as smoke
hanging over three lanes of asphalt
i need a valley with soft green carpet
and a pretty girl's adolescent thighs
i need my face shoved in her *****
i need the enormous bliss of a long afternoon
i need to find the intersection of
our intimate streets.

she brings me pancakes and lights me a cigarette
my ***** are cement and icicles form on my toes

she opens the curtain to a dying dove on the balcony
the banks are closed and the stock market has crashed

the periscope lens, so lucidly balanced, has fallen
irreparably into the crypt of a dream

i take a bite of an apple and stare into the mid-morning sun
after bagging the bird, she drapes herself across my chest

she is worshiped like a cradle, or a gravestone in a thunder storm
in her ecstasies, a prism, a poem fits like a glove

as the sunlight warms her ******* she heaves remnants
of last night's whiskey into my adam's apple and it burns me

the words she struck me with still sting in my ears
her fingerprints remain on my back and my bathroom mirror

there was a time
when we slept together in train cars
and you kissed my ***** cheek
like a mother

you used to say things like
it'll all be over soon
or
no hope out here today

and we were hungry and
lonely until the sun came up
and made sure we were fed
and held a conversation with us.

i woke up in a place where white girls
don't wear socks and she tickled the small
of my back with her icicle toes under the sheets

now the bulge of a small animal
is confronting fear in the form of
one loving glance

i was not poetic enough
until i lifted you from behind and
set you on a cloud

you pushed me towards a megaphone
and i announced you to the world, saying
she's a wild dove

and the wind pushed back
the lapels of my jacket and
you kissed me on the collarbone
without fear and then we
doubled up in laughter
like two souls tossing in hell,
on a grill

parked like a limping jalopy on an amputee park bench.
watching young soft girls sell hard against the boulevard
so they can do smack out back with the white trash boys
who size me up.
hats crooked and backward like their mothers teeth and their own beliefs.
slouching and leaning in their stride like two drunken penguins
shuffling home from the ice bar, fighting over fish sticks--no real threat to any one but themselves.
their drawn out skinny arms with bad backs and barroom tattoos already turning blue.
this is our future--or part of it.
while a young couple breezes by both with their noses buried in iphones.
oblivious to anything outside their happy little bubble.

remember the last great
unpredictable summer
deluded by codeine and cigarettes
pulled by lunar cycles toward reproduction practice
interconnected over coral reefs
before real estate won the forest
we slept untouched on the beach
encouraged by chemical overuse
with our hair tied together in knots
and seagulls flocked on long leafy wings
their beaks pointed out passed the big rubber sun
and i struck your vein with a needle
and you struck my strange heart like a runaway slave
you danced naked in the florida sun
and i stood behind you on tall stalky legs
laughing, getting high like an osprey
sweating into a shrine, wringing out my heart
on the banks of that lazy river in my hometown
when the sun went down we chased each other
through the thready umbrella of vines and pine roots
under the old abandoned bridge
a mile long

a few summers ago
i climbed the water tower
wearing overalls with
four beers and baked in the florida sun

i almost spent the night there
but you saw me from your window
and asked if i was thinking about airplanes

i hadn't considered them
up to that point
but then i was swimming
on a hot tin roof
with paint chips in my mouth

i stood to my feet and flew
like a pencil or a piece of paper
folded into a football
flicked at a 4th grader

and i landed in
your hips
and on
your
kiss.

if it were possible to tag
an individual in a poem on this site
i'd syphon tulips from the ground
and lay one  across her ear in the sunshine.

likewise, i'd talk lots of ****
and single out cowardly writers
hang them from the flagpole by their underwear
until they're humbled by their nakedness.

i want to kiss you underwater
in an aquarium
while strangers admire us
from their captivity

i want you to be the only thing
keeping me alive

i want to taste your stale
exhalation of whisky breath
and you
can have all my spent cigarettes

i want to drown
with you grasping at my abdomen
digging into my chest cavity

i want to give up
all my oxygen and watch you
ascend into refracting light

i don't usually rhyme much
but my thoughts are coming quicker
i'm lifting into the sky right now
drunk on a curious liquor

i recall a scene in a bar last night
one involving a french tickler
i'm seeing her much more clearly now
my memory no longer flickers
i offered to take her eyes home with me
and her body didn't bicker
i took her to a street in pound town
and oh god, did she take me with her

at the top of her lungs, she called my name
sometimes she called me mister
but alas, it's the next morning now
and i think i'll have to ditch her

98 bottles of jack on the wall
my stomach is getting sicker
my mind is sharp like a noodle
my tongue is getting slicker

wish you could see me right now, mom
*******, i'll take a picture

i remember that night on your front steps
smoking cigarettes and talking with your mother
while
i cradled your heart and
you cried on my chest

i remember middle school english class
and your first thong,
pink and white and blue

i remember we made that bourbon summer
last until december

i remember bottle rockets and champagne
the morning your brother died

i remember carrying you home
in the rain
the day after you escaped from the hospital
and you cried then, too.

i remember lying on the cold ***** tile
of your mother's kitchen
whispering Neruda in your ear
shivering & sweating with you
that night we took ecstasy

i remember the first night
you let me slip an honest prayer between your lips

i am a citizen of the terrible landscape
preaching to savages
hair-raised, growling and
sniffing each other.

& the wind has
not a penny to spare
for the frightening world

i am the thought provoking senator
of this state
i dance naked on broken wrists
and beer cans full of tobacco spit

my mind is crazed
on cartoons and
my lungs absorb my own
existence in a cigarette.

i am perched on a roof
the green dusk sky stretched
out like a beach towel
above me.

thirty-four stories up
and i hold the moon in
a cradle.