*******.
why don't more people read and respond
to my poetry?
am i doing something wrong?
am i not good enough?
am i fake,
do i miss it more times than i hit?

this thing feels so real to me
and maybe
a select group of other peers--
but am i just greedy?
i read other poets on this site,
and let's be honest,
some of them are ****.

but i like
some others
and i try to engourage
these talented few

but when some fourteen year old has 257 fans
and she's not a REAL poet
that ****** me off

i know
'everyone has something to say'
but some of it's not relevant
or even coherent

and 'one man's trash is another man's treasure'
is a ******* gimmick if i've ever heard one

and i don't ******* understand that.

i know i shouldn't be looking
for anyone elses' approval,
i should just write
whatever the ****
comes into my head,
but maybe i'm a selfish *******
and the viewership of other poets
really means something to me

you all know
what this feels like,
i'm sure

i just signed in
and i have 168 'notifications'
AND NOT ONE OF THEM IS FOR MY OWN WORK.

am i needy?
am i feeling unworthy
of my own 34 fans?
do i feel misunderstood?

seriously?
sometimes i feel
like
joining this site
was a sick joke
on the part of my consciousness
sometimes i feel
like an amputee in
a three-legged race.





(you'd think that i could find solace
in real friends that are interested in poetry,
but those people don't exist for me)

a high school football game.
the field is ablaze with juicy roses
and doves.
the athletes suddenly drop thier pencils,
their coughing hands made of melting wax.
all the trombones are falling apart, and
the flute players are losing their *******
under the bleachers, throwing away secrets.
heartbeats cracking broomsticks, the nuns
were always hitchhikers with resounding
gag reflexes.
i sail forward, snatching the time bomb
from the quarterback, snuffing out
a pall mall on his right eyelid.
the dead angel is summoned to slay
the horrible hippopotamus. she is ancient.
she has a mouth full of cavities and peace
in her veins.
the truth is a piercing thing, whose bitter tongue will decay me.

i cast off pure light in the cellar
i steal kisses and pray
with my tongue sticking out
ask me for a paper favor
& i'll send you a geranium poem
molded in the shape of
a silver swan swooning
i am the sandman's pupil
fighting an epileptic fit
& growling at the governor
i gave my love a cherry
she tells me how it tasted
i gave my love a chicken
now let's start a revolution

i've got to get you out of the sun
because your smile is
making it's way towards my heart
it's wrapping around my head
and i feel dizzy

you are a sunflower,
i will stop to admire your beauty
on my traveler's journey

if i close my eyes
i am alone in a black hole
being eaten by elephants and eels

but when you smile,
oh god you smile
and it's so sweet,
even from so far away

i am burning in
intense white sunlight, but
your silhouette brings water
flowing between rocks and kingdoms
you bring hot shadows of x-ray light
in the twinkle of your eye

i am an ant pushing a cart wheel
in the streets of your mouth
i crawl over your hills, in between
your whirling mountains of grief

i dream of blue skies and freedom
i live in my mind, around paths of
earth and under blue rocks
i can swivel on my heels and
pluck out my eyeballs
throw them in the dirt
but i can feel the sunrise
with my hands

with my hands, i will feel
your undulating valley
and i will pinch
your empire
with a towel wrapped
around my head

my thirst
lives in my cheek
and my tongue

your dress
will dance and
fly in circles
and turn round and round
in my head until i die
in your arms for the night

sweet rest from far, far away.

not everyone who holds a pen is a writer.
not everyone who rides a horse is a jockey.
not everyone who clips their toenails is a podiatrist.
not everyone who smokes knows the feeling.
not everyone who chokes is a sadist.
not everyone who lies is an actor.
not everyone who wears a moustache is a communist.
not everyone who smiles is the sunlight.
not everyone who tries is a failure.
not everyone who shouts knows the silence.
not everyone who cries knows depression.
not everyone who laughs gets the joke.
not everyone who speaks is a teacher.
not everyone who hears truly listens.
not everyone who died really lived.

im too tired to drive now
jesus take the wheel
i will sleep for days
curled up in a ball in the backseat
of my own car
im too drunk to drive now
jesus take the wheel
my face is numb from the *******
my teeth are clenched into a smile
life gave me lemons today,
or i found a bag of citric acid
and i squirrelled it away in my eyes
jesus crawled out of a hole in the ground
and i nailed him to his place in the sky
he will bleed onto my palate
and i will be cleansed by
his desperate sweat.

i have
some vague idea of
any possible universe
without any laws
designed by an idiot

designed by a diety
thinking of something much more abstract

i can't write anything good until i've had my morning coffee,
the words are comatose inside me

i can't write anything good until i've brushed my teeth
the words are rotting inside each breath

i can't write anything good until i've taken a shower
the words will shine or be washed away

i can't write anything good until i've sobered up
until then all you get is
belligerent
repetitive
uncreative
pathetic

tonight, i am far too weak to become a star
i am a drunken river, all is possible until i reach another life
i am a weeping madman on the creeping sidewalks of solitude
i make secret deals with buddha in the desert
we will find the temples on neptune
with flaming radars and silvery kisses
we will battle with this massive electric dream and
undoubtedly become monsters with nowhere to lay our heads

my feet are washed with death
my breath is tinged in ecstacy
i am naked without identity
i am the black felt tip
of a pen dancing
across white paper
i should be left alone

there is a fold in the universe
surrounded by millions of suns
and diamond gold and mercurial fire
we can dance and sing and live in it
without ourselves
without money
money made of nothing
bellowing over eternity
money made of failure

pure thought
written on paper warheads
being fired off
at the moon

i will ***** and become
the hidden son of whitman
i scream
i starve
i will walk through fire
and be reduced to white powder
i will leave jet plane streaks in the sky
i will be remembered bliss on your lips
you will see the mediterranean rainbow
hear the seagull flying over dolphins screaming
and i will swim through the atlantic sun and
weep for this antiquity

the answer
is not
opposed to principle
it is not
against wars or
persecution
it will just
go together with
literature
and it can
be influenced by
time
and the heart.
there is no difference between fact and fiction.
all writing is fiction.
and that is the worst betrayal of
the truth.

my cheeks are blushed in the glow of your midnight kiss
i stand blinking in the corner
i am a smokestack, i rise above roofs and water towers
the space above this city is never populated by heaven
fear of ****** in the streets
in a hotel room
or a bus
bombshell crawling over flesh flashes metal neon
i am a coffee mug gripped by puncture-marked knuckles
exuding white dreams and pursed lips
I went into the dripping door
I drank the yoke of an ostrich egg
I am a hog in sunlight, a dead rabbit on asphalt at dawn
I lift a palsied hand to beg a cigarette.

museums
and televison
soap operas
and rotting memorials

the nation has suffered

i cannot understand

without perspective, we flounder in the dark
in misery
being victimized

for what?

my view
is:

am i wrong
about bears?

silence is the enemy of art
to communicate
the greatest art
suggests dissolution

the music
the eloquence of omission
the sudden vertiginous stop
the space between souls
the final paragraph recalls
the graves

that happened to me
a black hole
dense with rejected possibilities

This sentence is
bits and pieces;
empty manilla folder
postage stamp, but no letter;
a phrase would write of paradise.
feeling
will pass
like every other phase
the dancer
the central movement of the torso
the comportment of arms
a leap,
a winged seed.

So
before
the end,
shout down a street
the consonants will moan
at the ultimate release of meaning.

i
will find you
overdressed

i
was up and
i looked out
the window

i
imagined
i knew no one
in
the echo

the noise
opened
its grimy,
dark quarters

then
a break,
a mere stopover

i can remember what we did on each and every one of those fifteen days and nights.

i'll use this shovel
to find the truth
i will bring the story out of the ground
i'm busy chasing circular thoughts
working long hours
but sleeping, i'm not
television and prescription pills
by the poison in this bottle my
blues will surely be killed
once it's gone
pour me another round
i'll get up and come back to life
i will scatter my notebooks
across your shadowy lawn
we can read and breathe and burn them
long into the dawn
i will never believe what someone else
tells me is true


except you.

i felt your flourescent heartbeat
on a ***** southern sidewalk
i was staring at my own barefeet
and i saw your eyes from a hole in the ground
you spoke like wind through the air
your words whirled above the garbage

i found a corpse under the floor last year
i keep my pages padlocked in the basement
my stomach is a pit of decaying pipes and retching waterbongs
you are a monster squid walking silent and sunk in thought

i have your eyeballs in my sheets
i have your memory in my bathroom mirror
i have your legs wrapped around my blue veins

i keep my secrets in a lump of tin
and we will scatter these ashes at dawn
we will fly forward on the western wind together

i am the mouth of the void
i can spurt unimaginable wit directly out of my skull
i contain jars full of indecipherable arrangements

you asked me where the rain came from
and i told you we'd be frozen this way
you left a message beside my pillow
i heard the music of your mind

i seem to have lost my number
can you replace it with
yours?

i seem to have lost my mind
somewhere in your sofa cushions
can i stay here for weeks
not really looking for it?

i seem to have lost my pencil
can i watch you for hours
so that my mind creates a stencil?

i seem to have lost my keys
are they with your blood red sweater
or somewhere underneath
something secret
something wetter?

i seemed to have lost something dear to me
can i look for it
with you near to me, lying down
with you on top on me?

i seem to have lost my wallet
i think you might have swallowed it
can i search with my tongue
while you **** me off
for fun?

i seem to have lost three quarters
somewhere
in your memory foam
i need them for the bus ride
home--alone
but i'd rather
just
sit right here
and


get ******.

the words are
dangling desperately

tip of my
tongue-brain

somedays i drink, but thats not the point
sometimes i think while rolling a joint
somedays are for sailors and i curse them away
sometimes i feel lonely as night turns to day
somedays i feel stronger, i'm feeling just fine
sometimes it takes longer, im reeling in time
somedays i get ****** up, and then its all over
sometimes i shut up, and you read another

the world sits on the wing of a dove
being swallowed whole by a fiery goddess
descended from heaven on a chariot of ivy
i am incarcerated by shaking flesh and itching cloth
the road before me is giant and knows no bounds
the graveyard is warm and wet with spirits and dew
and red clouds are born from fire in the dawn
there is an intelligent horse being ridden by a snarling insect
and this man has come to claim our souls
our sunset blood burns boils blisters until a million animals wounded
i'm still alive, transfigure me into a creator
choke up my nostrils with the scent of your ***
invade my lungs with the burn of your god
caress my toungue with the infinite promise
enter my brain from above, and regurgitate your anxiety on me
slimy worms devour a psychadelic tomato laughing
into transendency, an eyeless eel has dissappeared into a pocket
i speak from balconies, from terrible heights, from hastened windowsills
in a million desperate quarrelling cities
this is where i **** up illusion, i give up to despondency
i ring the great iron bell that resounds with corruption, with hatred, with hideous *** and admiration,
i scream and cavort on rooftops alone with a black & blue midnight
covered in electric lights and gunpowder tongues
here comes the disintegration of my mind
disgraced by the eye of the earth and spat into
a realm of salivating light
i am swimming through digested heartbreak and melancholy livers
sickened by madness and homemade bombs and ******
the rainclouds carry a truckload of babies' hearts
and it's raining eyes over the city now
the cry of the mind escapes from waving mouths in impotence
as millions of bacteria invade the brain
may these lines be answered by the bird of the sun
by the worm at my ear
by the sight of my skeleton
by the stench of ***** in the air
by the dead gong shivering through midnight
by the bleeding eye of abandoned dreams
by the prophets in proclamation
by the god of all my sorrows

you caught me in a **** show
you watched me falling down
you know i've never been one
to pick myself up off the ground

you caught me in a slip stream
i was aimlessly drifting down
you knew just how to call me
so i would hear the sound

you caught me in a tidal wave
i was tumbling all around you
the moon is high and full tonight
and i'm so glad i found you

you caught me in a fly trap
on a sweltering summer day
my tongue stuck to your paper
in so many different ways

you caught me like a fire fly
in a ***** mason jar
i imagined you as my clear night sky
you saw me as your star

you caught me like a coughing fit
and i could not speak to say
that i will be right there to comfort you
when you are afraid

I thought
I was just going to write
a poem about your eyes
but then I caught a glimpse
of the nape of your neck
and your throat
and your ***** line
and I watched a bead of sweat
trickle down your heaving chest

I thought
I was going to be fine
but then I saw your cleavage
and I melted into sand
and I sank into the ocean

I thought
your eyes were the moon
and I was being tossed by the tides
but then you turned away
and I drowned in self-doubt

i peeked into your secret

i unbottuned your sensitivity
with your own sarcasm

you blew my vietnam

my heart is a touchy speaker cable
and you sparked me up

now
i am empty beer bottles
oscillating in your hand
and then you set me down

i am your nostalgia and
you can only think of bad things
like bruised knees and gout
and that summer you
had walking pneumonia and syphilis
and you cried every night
into your mother's arms

i am the cancer you faked
in order to gain attention

i am that boy that fell for it
and gave you syphilis

i am your shaved head
on picture day in the 9th grade

i am your solitude
i am your noise
i am your virginity
being taken in the backseat of your
brother's best friend's parent's
camaro when you were 15
and more than willing

i'm dawning
i'm dashing
i'm dancing
i'm dwelling
i'm dying
i'm digging
i'm dishing
i'm diving
i'm dozing
i'm dragging
i'm dabbling
i'm drawing
i'm dropping
i'm dosing
i'm dredging
i'm dreaming
i'm drifting
i'm drinking
i'm driving
i'm delaying
i'm drowning
i'm dumping
i'm drilling

i'm dandy
i'm doleful
i'm delicious
i'm dapper
i'm daring
i'm dangling
i'm dangerous
i'm damaged
i'm ******
i'm daily



i'm david

i will rock you out tonight
i will shoot your sputnik to the moon
i will be an itch in the crotch of your space suit
i will be inside you
i will crush a star and sprinkle it in your hair
i will open your eyes and
i will open your mouth
i will start you up
i will let you loose
i will hold pure life in my hands
i will sleep on another couch tonight
i will dream of famine and golden wheat fields
i will dream of contradiction
i will recite the lords prayer
i will pull us under and
i will ***** a device that will bring us afloat

i am just an 8 year old boy
dressed up in church clothes
grass stains on knees, of course
food stains on tie and shoulders, of course
in 1998

you are my 9 year old sister
and i am sitting in a live oak tree
with a slingshot
and a ****-eating grin
against a cheekful of
big chew bubblegum
and you're gossiping
with your friends
you are wearing a
likely sundress
and a necklace that
i will eventually pawn
for 50 dollars

i snuck out
of grown-up church
15 minutes early

i hid the slingshot
here last night

i spent yesterday before
anyone was awake before
the sun had unleashed
her magic on the sky
sharpening my vision
perfecting my aim
feeling the shot
i did 45 jumping jacks
like in phys ed class

and i knew why
i had done these things

it's because i'm jealous
it's because you're perfect
it's because you love me
even when i don't deserve it
it's because you're beautiful
and everyone knows it
it's because i love you too
even though i rarely show it

wrapped up in aluminum foil
head resting on cracked concrete
surrounded by winking lights
and blinking eyes
warmth from the glow of humility
basking in the rays of a two dollar toaster
cardboard dwelling and trashbag scenery
paper towel t-shirt, styrofoam socks
salt and pepper lunchtime
pedastal reconstruction
hot coffee burnt tongue
peanut allergy and poisoned water
locked cabinet, rotting condiments inside an unplugged refrigerator
dying romance read only in magazines
purple heart scrawled on my arm
syringe full of bourbon plunged directly in my eye.

hi, how are you today?
i've broken every bone in my hand
writing you this letter
i've hidden away every past mistake
in the cushions of your puke green sofa
every broken promise from an ingrained diety
coffee cups and cutlery that i keep
as monument to one night spent with you
a thousand killing smiles and a hundred stolen kisses
i bend my knees and take a shot of clarity
the outline of dreams and IOUs
the place where awkward belongs
the sign of recovery hides in a dimly lit alley
***** and hungry and lonely and desperate.

I have been buried in a flowering sofa
I have been buried in punk rock guitar
I was swimming in a sea of orange juice
I wish I believed in unicorns and innocence
I wish my roots ran deeper
I was ******* us over in the middle of November
I was in way over my head
I have a cramp in my side-stomach
I have terrible sleeping habits
I have been carried by prophets up hills of redemption and
I have spent Sunday afternoons with ****** in basements
I have spent days huddled around burning xmas trees
I have a mind that suggests disease, and is riddled with laughter
I have drifted directionless on an autumn breeze
I have prayed to the gods of ***, before and after
I have been tossed about on shapeshifting seas.

there is a ****** on a street corner in a long white jacket
i have descended into a red velvet basement
i have kissed the new generation of buttocks, eyes & tender *******
there is a slow black river flowing under a soft gray bridge
and i have kissed the mist
mob of penguins hands out ecstasy
i slipped ******* into space needle
i cut a white line through puffy sky with a razor's edge
i rode a flaming bicycle through the center of your heart
1000 hands clap in simultaneous ******
i touched my finger to my forehead salute
i touched the hurricane with lighning bolt
i touched your revolution with intention
i touched your trembling hand with reassurance
i touched your shaking head with my soft wet heart