someone asked me yesterday
                what ever happened to your girlfriend?
          and i didn't know what they meant
or who they were referring to
at first because
                   i realized i never considered you a friend
            and now i can't even spell your name
      but i hope you still choke on mine
someone saw you yesterday
and they asked you, maybe
                 what ever happened to your boyfriend
        and you didn't know what to say

may i suggest:
he treated me like a lady so i left him like a *****

she paid off her bar tab
with pieces of silver scraped
from my shiny metallic heart
and hopped
bar to bar
on ***** feet carrying
liquid pistols
in each hand.

she came
fast
hard
thick
screaming
moaning
whimpering
my name.

we live our lives in harmony according to no one else
and after a saturday night full of dope fiends and loud club music
i wake with her giant hair covering my face like a black sunflower
or wisps of a bonnet stretched around my chin
she is a sedated beauty after growing up in an all girl ***** den
i begin searching for her magenta lips with my own
stopping thirsty at the softest spot behind her ear and
this moment is immortal glowing ferociously in my mind

it's a misty sunday morning i'm
watching cartoons in my underwear
while she paints a bowl of oranges on the kitchen table
for the twelfth time this month
when she has it perfect she strips
the windows of their canary yellow curtains and
dances passed me in sock feet singing cake for breakfast
with a japanese cherry blossom branching toward her belly-button

i am drowsily courting my lady after practicing
barefoot naked yoga on the front porch together
like a cricket struggling at a zippo touch on a midnight
tree branch after the rain stops hammering rooftops like meteors
but the air is still wet hot waiting on a sunshow and
the water has sealed my legs together

after following her into the kitchen hands
lunge fast and happy into crevices of hair and sweat
she poses with a wistful smile as
i press her into a tile corner and she
becomes malleable on top of my fingertips
whispering you are the mountain
into my dilating sternum
and we give the sun to each other
two warriors in an open rainbow
alpha rhythm projected on the wall

after drinking a cup of grapefruit juice
she joins me in a short pair of worn out levi's
and a torn sleeveless shirt for an overcast sunday
afternoon walk by a fissure creek as pine limbs
bend and crack overhead in middle florida
we exhale royal purple smoke clouds in a
deep loop through remembered shame

after a long day of frolicking breathless along
perfect beaches of connecting energies
our toes entangled rolling in the grass
i see the clouds reflected in her green eyes
with her head tilted back toward the ceiling
and lightning fingerbanging a starless sky outside
my hands once again find the deep reaches of her hair
and i pull her close to kiss her face muscles tight
with pain from laughter i confess that the sound
of her late night heartbeat still turns me on

my neighbors all say they can hear me singing
as i sink back down into my earthbound body
still tweaking my ******* with my eyebrows
arched & tongue still stuck lolling in the corner of my mouth

i'm confronted with a syrup mixture
of humiliation & guilt when they find me
in a fetal bundle in the early dawn light
bathing on the mattress ablaze with spiral light from
the window blinds

my shame is a palpable cartoon ****-cloud
of self-awareness as they
stand in awe & fear of the mysterious throbbing phenomena
attached between my hipbones

but in that moment of splendid transcendence
when my wet throat echoed the chirping song
of the radiator before they caught me
i was breathing vapor bent over a shovel violent hot chest
heaving like an attic full of abandoned possessions
liberating suppressed vivid stardust
memories & chanting ecstatically
sweaty complexion kneecaps quivering
like plastic water-bottle minnows
trapped in a meat locker releasing
stress from the bulbous pustules
collected on my face & soft jawline

liquid parts of me chased the low cirrus clouds
through long looping tunnels carved into the taut
blue january sky meadow as silver-tipped steam
hissed from the powerful glands in my armpits
i tried to regain control over my own
turbulent chaos almost crumbling

i heard sock feet stuttering in the foyer
& suddenly they appeared eating a winter peach
under the doorway trellis or with an armful
of fresh-cut flowers between the hallway of tall hedges
slack-jawed eyes vacant like so many broken windows
witnessing a spring butterfly devour a snake while i weep
into a magazine feverish with well-earned fatigue
left hand keeping a tight grip on my only future

later on i'm standing outside on a thriving carpet
of fungus as sunlight glares off my freckled
chest & the damp earth breathes aggressive moss
onto the trunks of old trees
crying bitterly because i
dug this hole in a dream of fitful sleep
my friends must always be high
because they all say
i'm bringing them down but
i'm scared one day i'll wake up
& there will be nothing left to say or
i'll have concrete where i used to see teeth

everything tonight is real
that's a lie but i'm going to continue
whispering it to myself like a mandala mantra
the sunset was almost unbearably beautiful
& i stood defiant with my back pushed against
it between hard edged pillars
of self-destruction & self-fulfillment
as it wreaked its havoc on the opposite sky
gray radio static warped through my ears
when i finally felt spiritually large enough
& my eyes clouded once again
with spontaneous emotion

Lured
by unspeakable, ineluctable gravity
Kisses, vehement, and by no means our first,
speak of experience, a wordless wisdom that now gives flight to innocence,
unprecedented familiarity among two who have spoken so little
a gentle tug of war between souls, transcending feeble sensation, arriving at conversation
Solid, fervid, with perfection of cadence – a meter aberrant, fantastic, unimpeded by numerical confines

Now
a limitless tickling between two souls
like courting doves
And the smoke in your mouth became sweet,
your saliva a quenching potion of forgetfulness,
And at this moment neither past nor future have ever existed,
There is only this delicious wine of our lips and the nonsensical *******
of two sipping souls.

violins screech in a pivotal moment
she flashes a reluctant smile at me
teeth halting to pinch her lower lip
across the farmer's market
she is a life-sized toy of wild beauty
my heart sore in my ribs
and i feel an electric current coil between us
the shape of two lovers curled together asleep

but the acid takes on a life of its own
playing a strange game of backward symmetry
every departure is a return to the eternal center
the great yellow paper mother
lying on her own suede tongue
folded into a fleeing gazelle japanese style

potent nostalgia while peeling dogwood
and the pungent smell of leaves as
our midday shadows are thrown uphill
like two wiggly heat waves
incredible light leaping out of our fingers and toes
we are enormous gods
our flesh doesn't sweat
as we dance on the floor of the whole blue sky
tap-dancing on the manly gate of atlantis
drunk with a new horizon

she with the soul of a barn owl
participating in the battleground sunset
drapes herself around my neck
giggling with easter egg pupils
the words **** me hard
in open and lonely places
projected on her face and in
the fractal sky behind it
hands grabbing fast for flesh
my mouth starving for breast-meat
while my heart slams high in my throat
matterhorn **** waiting at the edge
of light hidden under scarlet silk loincloth

at last we sprawled naked tangled together
laughing about an imagined destiny
i felt power flood like a river between her thighs
and we fell into a receptive darkness
of limbs and hair
an island of velvet to
dream on

this is the perfect grey day
vomiting among the wild zinnias
secretly touching two apples
from savage height
invisible
in stratosphere
*** bare
****-tickled by static electricity
or an underfed spanish girl
hair permed
home alone

desperate spirit between my legs
dealing drugs in the garden to
a scorched lizard intent on creation

savage torpedo almost drowned
special noontime drunk
strange eyes filled
with tragic summertime dust
clothes chopped off delightfully
by car horns and lady-whistles
cigar smoke streams from cheek
clouds green on magenta leaf
aftertaste of lament
dissolving
on the kingdom of tongue

i only climbed down here to think
and hide
my own brown skin
and recover
from the sun
and read
my own poems
in the wealthy river
oil stained
denim jacket in my wake
yellow from the muddy gutters
dead dried palm trees
made into boat oars
against the white sun
high
and low
and, lo!

i got high again

we could hold hands and walk along the beach,
but i just haven't met you yet

we could bake a cake on a lazy sunday morning,
but i just haven't met you yet

we could have *** on every flat surface of the house,
but i just haven't met you yet

we could fool around in public,
but i just haven't met you yet

we could share a silence then burst into laughter,
but i just haven't met you yet

last night when the mothership came
i slept in the trees full of night sounds and shadows
and my hair unwrapped in the wind
deciphering ancient scrolls on my eyelids

she hovered like a vulture in a clean open sky
and i awoke shivering as she swooped down
platooning over the riverbank
and i stood with my arms outstretched
at the edge of the bubbling water pit

for light years until snot icicles grew gray on my face
cringing under the great vacuum sky
and now fog whitens into morning and
i am enveloped in sun-silence
as the last three stars still flash like cities of the future

the smell of grain becomes tweezers in my nostrils
and the sun is a giant roaring furnace
burning a sense of adventure in my southern boy blood
the memory of big pale nutless creatures wearing zoot suits
escaping into the abyss from the green dawn in their classy airship

meanwhile my hairless face being polished by the wind
blind drunk on dew and awaiting salvation
lips pulling away from big white teeth and pink gums
in high song and shrill laughter
a naked schizoid of the morning warped and ****-crazy
silently dancing beckoning the universe with
telekinetic strength to bring another cosmic storm

because i am double minded in this transformed version
of myself and i will ride the electric tidal wave created
by our sweaty kiss like the sound of a trumpet
being blown as triumphant and far away as a lightning strike

i have learned to control the magic manipulate
particles in empty space and i'll ride this
luminescent rowboat under the charcoal sky
into infinity

the mockingbird is four yards in front of me.
it is 5:47pm.
it is just barely December,
but already my heart has frozen.
i am no longer able to turn the great wheel of the stars.
i am but a fragile stem on a withered rose.
the old grandfather of winter has come to live in my heart.
night has wearied my bones.

the mockingbird is perched low on a cushion of oak moss.
he is taunting his feathers the way mockingbirds do.
he is basking in the sun.
he is wearing a beautiful coat of indulgence.
he is twitching his tail and quickly bobbing his neck.
he is deflecting and dodging and eating flies out of the air.

i decided to take aim.
i have no rhyme or reason.
i have a slingshot.
i flex the rubberband once for tension and twice for luck.
the bird sees no evil intent in me, nor i in it.
i place a single devil's eye marble into a warm leather home.


mr. mockingbird is surely mocking me.

women say they want a sensitive man but they mock me when i sit at the piano crying for hours holding a lighthearted paper candle and a smile tucked in between my lips

they say they want a hard working man with ***** fingernails but
they claw at me if i turn a sun-browned shoulder against them in bed

they say they would love a cultured man but they cringe when i kiss them with lips tasting of whiskey & cigar smoke or touch them with fingers gentle as soft old paper

they say they dig the cold but they huddle in blankets when i stay up all night dancing naked across the lawn listening to joni mitchell in january

they say they want their own sugar space but turn sour when i linger and wake up dreaming of becoming an astronaut

they say they're comfortable with my past imperfections but it's my fault when i have a nightmare about being strung out on the perfume of another woman

they want a man who can write a song but they struggle when i anchor a poem to their delicate ankles and fill their empty rooms with shamefully broken pencils

they love my beautiful tattoos and piercings but shake me when i spend days wrapped inside a coral shell singing a lullaby

they want the idea of a man they've read about in books but won't tolerate me when i read them the atrocities in the sunday paper under the lampshade of an oak tree

women say they'll take me as i am but get lonely when i wander for a week and come home buried in the scent of a rock and roll bar

they say they make friends easily, like me, but can't stand to come home to talking & laughing cynical & drunk in a house full of strangers

they want a quiet man who loves them like the stars but scream when i learn to fly at the mercy of the weather & can't be captured

they want to live naughty with the thick musk of a man but act bewildered when they're caught soaking wet and weak in the knees

women say they love men with a tolerance but get jealous when i'm dizzy drunk at dawn on cheap tequila and the memory of my mother

they want a man who lives inside a corridor of words but hate me when they realize artful compliments are only cages of pretty lies

they're helpless for a man with grace but hate me when i'm pitiful and clumsy in the dark after blowing out candles and closing windows in the middle of june

they say they'll only fall in love with a lover of music but audibly cough when i hush them as Coltrane makes dazzling sodium fall across my face

they all wish for a man with careful eyes
but mine are blue and empty in the end
& it gets lonely
so i will no longer carry a song for them in my heart
like a trail-weary cowboy
no lust
no memory
no guilt
no cups
no whistles
or jewels in my vulnerable shadow

no new treats
for me
on hellopoetry,
please
wait while i
****
myself.

i'll let you be recluse & writer
you can describe how strange horrible
it feels to suddenly realize that one of us will someday die
the other left standing in the dark middle of a railroad
silhouette illuminated by a single streetlamp
mouth open with a granite rock wobbling in hand

i pray that it's me who falls first
after our parents so they won't have to bury a child
& you my only brother can remove my name from
the lyrics of every song you wrote for me

i can't give you the words to write
but find them & add them to your own memories
of me on a spring afternoon standing in shorts
on a softball field or rooftop with
hands on my knees & two wisps of hair in my face like
moths orbiting shafts of remembered yellow light

stick out your tongue & i'll teach you to whistle
without your fingers if you teach me to scowl & squirm
**** with my armpit & spit melon seeds at lowing cows
we'll dangle from plebian treebranches upside down together
& when i fall off the monkey bars you laugh
but when you're on your head in a heap of kinetic energy
i pick you up & brush ***** tear spirals off your chin

i'll drift away first into sleepland with a smile plastered on my
strawberry cheeks squirming legs & my body
coiled tight like a bedspring with laughter stomach cramps
from the stories & jokes you whisper on the floor in the half-lit gloom

i will be your darling sister forever lying to mom
about the time you burned a hole in the linoleum
& you will throw rocks at the back of my head
from a young persimmon tree like a noisy bird gargling bug juice
pretending to skip them across a pristine lake in the
blue grayness of the churchyard before dawn

on nights like this it's
old man Sanders across the hall
struggling with his sterility
and raising his wife's ******* son in silence
to be a man who will one day
manipulate a woman's emotions
in a train station at 4 a.m.

it's too early to be this drunk
yet i am
and
he is too
i can hear him shouting at
himself, his wife, and his half breed redheaded son
at the dinner table,
over something like Blondie in the background
and something about baseball in the morning.

One thing
I never liked
about teachers is
how they
browbeat you
with logic and stale ideas.

first goal:
never fall down

second goal:
get up quickly