right now,
my
bottlecaps
are filled with ashes
and appleseeds.

today i'm feeling like a dead dog
on six day old
august pavement.
no lovers swarm around me
to remember their spontaneous moment.
only flies.
who among you will kiss
my fever-blistered lips?
my bloated stomach wretches
for the comfort of the
old green dumspter
i called my house,
so homesick am i.
i'm so sick of hope and
trust, and no sun has ever
shown me favor without
burning me first.
i'm wearing the best of
my saturday night special,
the old duck sauce t-shirt,
unraveled shorts, sandals.
i wear a culture-shocked heart
on my sleeve so everyone
can see i'm naive.

this is a craigslist missed connection ad
because you were
beautiful and drunk
and i was
drunk
when you approached me
at the beer tent
said 'hi'
and something about my '...bare feet'
but all i heard was 'kiss me ******* the mouth'
we had so much chemistry,
neutrons and protons colliding
when our fingers touched as you
passed me your cigarette, exhaling
i watched as your hair began to stick
to a crest of sweat on your neck while
we chatted for forty seven minutes and
thirteen seconds, near as i can figure
never mentioning each other's names
or phone numbers but
if i ever see you smile again
i'll slip you my name like a prayer
pressed to your lips or a ring on your finger
even though you said you hate jewelry
your ears, so cute and small and not even pierced
solitary necklace adorning the angelic collarbone
now burrowed into your left breast
it's a cheap faux crystal trinket with a purple tint
that you got for $15 two years ago
but you love my earrings
saying you always had a thing for guys with tattoos
you're an environmental sciences major
and a wonderful butterfly
with eyes like an ocean
hair that just won't quit
and the most delicate navel
i've ever seen
you're perfect and
i might've dreamt
of your legs
for the last two nights
those devilish muscles that first
brought you close to me
then, quick as light,
stole you
away.

i stand naked on my front lawn
watching the sun fall into the sea
i have a suitcase full of curse words
and a backpack full of bad ideas
there is a breeze that shakes the bearded tree
and grows chill bumps on my shaking flesh
"Rejoice," he says to me,
"for what is lost is reborn."

"I have kept your soul safe, my son,
hidden here in this walnut tree;
the Devil has only your body,
when you are free of him,
return to me."

last night in my dream
a girl wore a necklace
not a tourniquet
or blouse
or skirt,
just a necklace

i remember her well
she was a girl that i work with
i'd be with her now but
she hasn't told me i'm worth it

last night in my dream
a girl told the naked truth
her words were full of worth
of care
and legitimacy
and then we got down
and took
care of
                                    the
                                               nitty
                                                           ­     -gritty

i ate a banana
Almost 7 days ago
and the peel is brown
and stiff
and it lounges beside my bed.
my life is a pile of ***** laundry
and all i can do is lounge in my underwear
and scratch my crotch
and armpits
because
i took a shower
Almost 7 days ago.

tyrants will fall
buildings will crumble
celebrities will shrivel
dinosaurs will die
industry will collapse
corporations will decay

and i'm just ******* glad to watch 'em burn

have you ever
wanted to **** yourself
after writing something great?
or painting something
you'd never be able to explain?

here i stand
toes on the horizon
arms wrapped around the sun
or
upside down, swimming
on the moon
feet brushing the stars
and arms
racing the galaxy.

i wanted to be black and blue
on a football field at midnight.
i wanted to wear varsity jackets
and give them away to beautiful women.

now i just want to be
a button on your blouse,
the fur lining of your coat.
now i just want to be kisses
and dreams
and a hot night spent
under clean white sheets
with you.

"Forget her," he said

"Like waves forget the
sand on the beach when
tide goes out. Like dew
drops forget moonlight
when a sunbeam makes
them blush in the morning."

But I am not as forgetful as water.
I am a tree standing tall in an orchard
with snow around my ankles and my limbs
shivering in shirtsleeves but I won't for a minute
forget the springtime. Or the sunshine and how she
danced through it underneath me. I will always remember
that summer we spent in fields together laughing at
dragonflies lighting on nettles and catching the
warm breeze in our hair. She was a fully
shaken Polaroid. A postcard.
A Memoir.

"Forgive him," he said

"Like the ocean forgives
the big rocks that break
it against the shoreline. Like
rain forgives sunlight for
burning it away in
the afternoon. "

But she is not as forgiving as water. She is a
woodpecker carving out a surgery niche in the
wide trunk of a tall tree standing in an orchard. They
spent the previous springtime at each other's throats. In
her mind he chased her through that sunlit summer field and
her ankles were scarred by the nettles and dragonflies weren't funny
at all. Pulling twigs from her tangled hair she will never let him forget that
he did not prepare a place for her in his heart. She is as relentless
as the blizzard wind against his bare limbs. He was an
over-exposed portrait. A wet sculpture.
A collage.

i am in an intelligent concrete room
while familiar silhouettes switch direction in the balmy wind
there is a dim stone portal spending a light
so still and small and dissolving into the sunless wall
under the scattered ruin of the sacred world
its gaunt mind studies beneath hieroglyphs
and into oblivion

it is later in the night and i am riding on an unsettling
crucifix doused in drugs and hammocks and the
blind face of eternity is wearing a headdress
filled with plumes of indecipherable intellect
and she has transcended my ego
with holy dreams

today is a day in autumn poised somewhere
on the toasted bread color spectrum
except wetter and chewier this morning
the gold light found me solemnly dancing
in the mud among the cypress knees
digging down to the bone to pass
this skin deep writer's block

the sun seemed huge and flat
when it sailed over the evergreen hill
misty on the beak of a warrior owl
but like me it's burning on the inside
tingling the tip of my spine causing
the blood in my arms and legs to buzz
beneath the unshockable woodpecker
with his tremendous hammer where
the monarch butterfly holds court

my skin becomes streaked with brown
as my bare feet slap the water face sending
slow elongated ripples through the swamp river
when the sun begins to spray tie dye off my shoulders
i'm haloed like a young madonna among the
jabbering leaves and whinnying branches

last night there was no howl at the moon cliche
as i let the hungry rain eat me i burped out
a victorious purple bird-sized butterfly
fighting in a gossamer heap from my tum
for my own confused psychoactive salvation

i'm still splashing and swooping
by the adenoidal afternoon
as the wild fox whimpers on the hill
the angelic chorus kicks in when
an ethereal forest nymph emerges
with her hair washed fresh
by the crisp autumn rain
out of the long trumpet gun barrel
of an orchid and dips her silken tongue into
the blue gray puddle of dew collected
in my bare navel

her skinny fingers flit between
the woven strings of an autoharp and
my arms fall limp like the branches of a wind
bent pine toward the fuzzy backs of centipedes
my chest glistens with perspiration
and my lips begin to quiver nostrils aroused
by the organic mating smells in the
daisy and dandelion clusters i
absorb through my open pores
like clear clean shining light
honing priming myself
into a glorious monumental
semi ***** pustule