this time something feels different

this time i'm an angry toucan spitting eager saliva & i want you to rip my plastic beak off & whisper secrets into my slippery face

this time i'm an open book & i want you to place your fingertips on my soft worn pages & read me between the lines forever

i want you to be a magnifying glass mirror to show me my inconsistencies made of stretched wool fibers and hemp and wood held together by shiny clots of ink oil and glue

this time i'm an open door numb with apprehension & i want you to surge into the threshold of my bare bones like a molecular flash flood burglary polishing my darkest stained corners with spiraling velocity

this time i'm an oak sapling planted in your backyard spinning & dazzling in the sunlight & i want you to water me daily so i can grow
with you to unbelievable heights & suddenly sprout flowers from my sinewy arms

this time i'm a babbling brook cascading over slick brown rocks on a lush hillside & i want you to stir the moon like the wind & listen appreciate my serene grace

because this time i need someone whose lips
can be a tissue to the tears on my soft cheeks
before they turn cold & calloused

i need someone to sink their teeth into my
shoulders & collarbone to wake me
from this superfluous daydream

i need someone who beds naturally
into the ribcage nest of my plaid flannel shirt

i need someone who will dance with me
across an empty landscape into
something bigger & deeper
than just the starless sky above us

i need someone who wants to learn
the overlapping language of my eyes & hands

someone who will lounge with me
like an odalisque on the birth-bed of aphrodite
drenched in the shivers of the moon canopy

someone who can blur the lines
between my cerebrum & theirs
so that we become a stitched together
quilt of soft memories in our imagination

someone who has been in a trainwreck before
& knows precisely where to kiss
to make it all better

th' fog--
just like
m' old man--
hangs & swings
from
th' old oak tree;
each of
'em is free.

right now my browning chest is
propped up with beach sand buried in my elbows
i was dozing off underneath my shades
with the salt spray at my feet
& the seagulls swarming overhead
you asked for a story so i'll tell
you the only one i know
it's about making an exodus
& the accident of my personality:

the last time i was shot at
i was making a collect call at a pay phone to my mother
i was living out of a backpack
                                                    in a hostel
in sticky sweet new orleans
in 2008 post-katrina

after spending half a year without a friend
i decided to live what i write and become
the mythical warrior-poet or
                                                 just a sun-haired boy
fighting with the sky searching for his spirit animal
wearing old wool dress slacks cut short above
the knee i was only cargo trying to get
as lost as i possibly could

they came out of an empty socket shop window
blasting through the doorway onto
                                                            ­ the steaming street
jittery & starving roaring on the collapsing mist
but i'm no one's pigeon crouched behind a sedan deathtrap
poised to flee but with nowhere to go i can only hear
                                                            ­  my own heartbeat
                                                       ­       mother screaming on the phone
                                                           ­   hanging limp

& my own feet beating a new path on gravel through a strange city
when the windows grew lighter &
i slowly emerged from invisibility
in a world sprung new not defined yet
shrouded in what i only assume was
                                                             ­   special magic

for a while i was scared to sleep alone at night sometimes
i heard downer & buzzkill other nights that i cried
                                                           ­                          beneath the ivories
& i thought i'd die alone if i had to
but i was too young
to be that cynical

now i'm rising like a big owl out of a meadow
finding good new ways to fall apart as lightning
blooms on the horizon & clouds gather unnaturally
into pale blue ribbons & dance in a pinkish sky
& the sunset burns the treeline down
                                                                ­no one else can fix me now
                                                             ­   no one believes in me
but i believe in myself more than ever
the only person i've ever really loved is my mother
& she says i can't make a name for myself writing poetry
but i'm immortal among these words like stars
being blown in plumes of dust across a night sky
i'm looking for a new better place to dive in from
so if you've got a certain star in mind or a secret
cliff-space combination treebranch hangout take me
there or whisper it to me while we're already high
& hugging don't kiss me unless it's hard & in a precious place
because i'm feeling invincible again instead of invisible &
i really really really cannot wait for someone to try &
                                                                ­                             ******* stop me

it's a pink morning
and only just quit raining
-- a faint milkwhite drizzle
so the sidewalks shine
with the sun's slanting rays
and the grass is all so vivid

my face and chest are warming
where the halation light spackles me
thru the branches of the
cottonwood tree i'm reclined against
-- my spine matches it notch for notch
the air is thickly humid and leans on me
thru the hazy light and the quietude burns
my conscience clean

i sit still and pious letting my ribcage
expand and deflate gently in the slow seep of dawn
i sit and listen to the earth wake up
i do not disturb the red spider on the geranium leaf or
the softly purring girl who shared
her dreams last night with me
i only catch a sloping breeze as it twists
across the parking lot

the first intimations of her waking are feline
-- the kneading grip of her sharp fingernails
on my thigh, the arch in her back as she rises
out of the sleeping bag into the alkaline brightness
to let her nose brush against my cheek and put
a sweet and overripe morning breath kiss on
the corner of my mouth

i wonder what kind of bird that is
singing tentatively over there
i wonder where my cigarettes are
and if there's any cash left in my sock
i wonder also what her name is
and then it all comes back to me
and with the bird i'm humming
the opening melody
of Cassidy

i've spent months like moths between poems
sacrificing gods for endless answers
but always losing the light or dying on a too-hot bulb
unable to comprehend infinity as a spiritual fly-swatter
but i'm learning how to surrender to silence
diminish into campfires
wash in busted fire hydrants
meditate inside the figurative dumpster of solitude
perhaps forever this time

but my attraction to her is raw
like the sun today at 3pm
burning away my anxiety and shadows
not fueled by selfish lust or vanity
but by surprising vacuum
she is frightening in her beauty
her mind filled with incandescent chaos
her voice a softly spoken flute singing in a canyon
her hair a delightfully suffocating gas
her belly, her smell, everything from
her nostrils to her feet marching
through my tingling limbs

she was from the far end of the universe
a dream of the temporal lobe
polluted by the spike-and-wave blips of computer music
halos around mouths chewing ecstasy pills
her mystic lips curled and eyes lightly fluttering
over a simmering can of cherry coke
my hands an unsteady inch away from
her heated and heaving rib-cage
my lips whispering breaths onto her ivory throat
after a 4am romp donald duck explains
childhood memories from a buzzing television box
the smell of man-musk and sandalwood
spilled whisky and patchouli thicken the air of the room
as weak dawn light streams in through philodendron stalks and fingered leaves arrested by the wind

i was sitting drunk alone in a yellow flannel on a dirt
and patch grass hill beside an empty picnic table when
you sat down said hi my name is sam and i'm tripping face
that was no secret judging by the size of your pupils and smile
i asked to borrow a layer from your lip-gloss and
you happily obliged after verifying i had my circle-circle-dot-dot

you laughed hard and said you'd never been this high before
when you let me finger you on the ferris wheel with
the scene from the hill a distant seven minutes in our past
you watched with tears in your eyes
and smiled as i pulled my body
away from your candy thighs when the ride stopped
and stuck my sticky fingers back in my mouth

you said you listened to music better with your shirt off
and sure enough your ******* perked up like antennae
when my fingers slipped under
your half-shirt like an innocuous splinter
in the great pink epidermal amphitheater
you proved to be a nudist burlesque queen wearing
a hailstone necklace and a gold coin skirt that jingled
when you walked or skipped or rubbed your *** on me

i felt so immediately attracted to you
and i still do i can see you when i close my eyes
dancing free in a delicate psychotropic mushroom haze
whispering slap me silly as we walked hand in hand down the hill
you kept talking about your girlfriend being jealous
of my fatal blue eyes as the music drifted like breath
between us your hair was heavy with the smell
of mushrooms beer sage and rain

we took several overpriced shots of tequila and i lost
another six dollars in drink tickets when
we spent a whole dj set lying in the grass in the dark
with the lights from the stage spraying over
our heaving naked sweaty chests with my
hand in your gold net skirt and your tongue in my ear
the clouds were knotted ropes of wet white cotton
the sky became the sea and your fingers found my
feverish lips like a cool prayer

i looked up through the oak tree porthole
to find the strangulated sky
whirling in on itself like water
in a washing machine and i
let a dolphin carry me away out to where
the waves were boiling and wild
the stars salty and deep

your morning breath ricochets
off my cheeks, you're still
drooling dreams into my pillow
my warm, bulky down comforter
hoarded around your petite frame
as i spit my sanity into the ceiling fan
i glance down at you
your face is somewhere else, painted on a canvas
i move a lock of hair behind
your still-sleeping ear with a fluid
passage of fingers and wrist
my thoughts pumping
into the margins of this dusty room

you are a man's sister and another man's daughter
but all mine last night in the bathtub
beneath the skylight my grandfather built
as southern stars too thick for constellations
sang into our laughing faces
and again on the kitchen counter top
my **** made of steel and flint
neither of us minding the extra weight
our sweat became fire and water ripples
as we stumbled into bed like birds
confused by the strobes of spanish candles
forgetting to fly

sunrise dispenses glassy light
deep into my mouth as i dance
across a wet morning swaddled
in awkward feathers and
you appear as a statue in wine colored velvet
struck by light from the bay window

Please wait,

I must

smoke a

cigarette first.

Thank You.

the morning that you left
i bought a black felt pen
and almost drew your face
in the mirror

the morning that you left
i bought a flower
and thought about watering it

the morning that you left
i went for a walk and
caught a cactus
in my foot

I only write
with a pen,

I call it
Strike.

You are like the rising sun,
only not joyous
not happy
or gentle

Instead, you are a
vengeful sun who
Burns away
secrets said in
the dark and who
scares away shadowy fun

You are not bright.
You are not glorious.

i have remembered this night one hundred and sixty-seven thousand times
i have written these words with an iradescent hand
where were you at the beginning of the darkness?
were you smelling the glitter of the galaxies,
did you have the blast of disillusion in your ears?

right now, i am standing
openmouthed & exhaling
into a spacious sky and i can see
the Lion breathing lilacs in the garden of Eden
i can see a Ram dying in a thornbush
and i watch as the Bull devours the matador