Adam ******* shot my mom in the head.
in character, Howie Ratner from the
2019 film Uncut Gems told me
"i hafta! it's in the script! i hafta!"

out of all my nightmares,
there's been worse.

paralyzed,
my heart was a wasp nest
how it buzzed and stirred.
i begged my ribs to crack
and let them flood out.

for what an intrusion of stings could do,
i cannot:
articulate how scared i truly am.

i remember five months from now
how i sprawled across your lap like chainlink
and you traced an urban skyline
peeking through my skin.

i asked which radio tower was your favorite.
what's most beautiful about the city
we have yet to build.

City cops, either
all pigs or all fathers,
break cement curbs with rubber
as the shin of a warm body
brushes a front bumper;
warning sign clearer than headlights.

I stand arrested across the highway.
An idle ghost, mouth agape, eyeballing
the Record Courier parking lot,
officers breaking cement
breaking kneecaps of a civilian.

Where he kisses the ground
I once analyzed the black of the sun,
diseasing slowly from time and the light.
I soaked the now with a present mind
and active heart, living for life

defined by want.
I recall Impressionist interpretations
of Carson Valley sitting on
the windowsill of the Courier,
a hand wrapped around my wrist

using its nails to pick off my skin
naively, so I’ll bleed out
through my scabs and my corpse
will be captured in that moment.
Handcuffed, legs pressed

between my shoulder blades,
but seconds still pass.
Divorced from a faded past,
I wait until three uniforms
shove a man into the backseat

and drive to the station.
We’re now shadows of
our former selves in
the lights of a cop car,
separated from when
our heartbeats were the loudest.

I've waited for you to squeeze me
and feel the chinese newspaper
under my ribs.

In the black summer sun,
we could keel over in the sand
and watch small flares

infract the perfect circle
we'd been staring at
miles apart.

I kiss with my eyes open.
Maybe you'll see it.
Maybe we'll see

carved skin
we don't want to expose
to anyone else.

Or maybe,
everyone finds me
see through.

And my quest for transparency
rendered null
all my complexities.

There’s a house Anne built
with a crumbling frame,
she’d eat the paint chips
off the wood and dream
of a sun set she’d parallel
as an identical being.
A life cycle of  dissolving
lithium batteries in *****,
chasing doctor death
by staying still. Carbon
monoxide filled the cavities
in her brain and her corpse,
a beautiful foundation
destroyed in broad daylight,
do loved ones say goodbye
over the remains.

And in blood visions I see
the home I’ll put together
and tear apart. Is what’s
inevitable a tragedy?
If I stay in the garage
and let the car run,
the wood in the floorboards
would still be fresh. Anne,
my future is in all the
architecture I’ve admired.
If they’re all delusions,
then reality’s a great
impressionist and I’ve
been picking off all
of the yellow paint.

I will set with the sun,
I will set with the sun

when day time comes
to an end. and over
what’s left standing,

say goodnight rather
than goodbye.

i see the same hillside.
with you, completely

there, growing into
something taller

than skylines
with broken ribs.

your breaths fall
out your body

over me. the way
your pupils expand

in shock works
like flood lights

into the dusk.
our lips split

as a still
landscape,

with your breaths
still warm. my ribs

crack to the beat
of my heart.

i see the same hillside,
skyways and all,

with you, completely,
in the black of your eyes.

love is what love is; i've always spoken it into monuments. their eyes would be pearls among cheeks captured in marble, and i spent a lot of time time tracing bone to bone over the bridge of my nose thinking if my touch is the same as others'. love is what love is and i've acted as Midas. under all the suns kisses are dandelions, we run through the blossom. in the scratched blackheads there's pollen and i lie fetal as a raisin and whisper "**** it out". break my shoulders, whiten your hands, **** it out.

love is what love is; I've started to wonder if raindrops ****. intimately, so the pollen pours out at paint's pace. love is what love is what's real is what's slow. i can count blackheads among vacuum suction marks. water trickles down the post, jogs after each other 'til one catches the other in matrimony. i wonder if they ****, if they love, and if the rising action is longer than what i have to live. but love is what is, slowly but surely. moments in time can't be lost if rain ***** forever.

I break down into a heartbeat
through a whipped cream canister;
God’s feet whomp at the Pearly Gates.

Incapable of sin, I’m unable to think.
Love jitters through every pore
of my skin & laughter drools

out. In an out-of-body only
Malcolm In The Middle exists
when Dewey asks, “is your
brain big enough to get

your feelings hurt? Me
neither”. My life replicates
art, choking out brain cells,

and I no longer have to know
what my heart feels. My brain
is too small for that.

i.

i watch people die.

the romance moves slowly
on camera film; a lover
crashing through pvc
to kiss pavement,
windows behind relay
a tragedy captured
with ***** lights.

ii.

i transcribe scripts
to my bathroom mirror.

i see no Winslet.

green in my eyes
mark an imperfect creature,
no feeder's hand to bite.

i speak to my reflection
in self indulgence.

iii.

i don't have a role to play.

who i am is minors and leads
of movies shaped by the past,

but gas on the celluloid
makes the memory blur.

feelings died with the character
dead in the past.

iv.

i just watch people die.

casablanca;
temporary love rejected
when the bone and
the heart shatters.

v.

i don't know who i'll become.
i don't know if i'll become.

I want lithium that tastes like
hair intertwined in chain link
on pedestrian bridges.

It'd be spit.
Your spit I swallowed
eyeing the eye of the storm

barefoot on Kombucha glass,
we both felt safe.
The bridge'd be destroyed eventually

but love's a greater monument
than cathedrals built with
taxpayer money and with

lips locked I'd have no
reason to scream
when winds break the trees

or the wind breaks me.
I'd stand my ground
magnetic banded

to the metal behind
what's in front of me
and I'll have the taste

of lavender and humidity
in my mouth instead
of my own blood.

wherever you go, there you are
in a world of silver legacy
where all you feel are
living emotions of memories
you thought were dead;
hands on the dash,
passenger seat,
their eyes are too friendly.

glass ***** that act
like warm pillows, i'm
ready to fall asleep.

no melatonin,
no split palms or slit wrists,
no fever dreams of vision loss
where i'm left a
broken nose bruised beauty.

i'll be a beauty, or something like that,
but i won't be nothing
like i've been recently.

you said:
"pull my hair",
and so i did.

dragging the albatross across
pavement stretching several states
i turn my back to where i'm going
for a fishermanwomxnbeing
to spear me in the back and
hang me as one of their own
in case your feathers get bent
and crows tear at your meat
until i'm wearing nothing but a
skeleton at my ankles
but even then i doubt any killer
will pry my mouth open the way
you did when you wanted me to
feed and even then i doubt
they would look at me with
the affectionate fear you had
of never having the sight of
two glass worlds you thought of
as yours again and even then i doubt
anyone would be able to **** me
because i'd be dead already
if i was completely without you
and no evasive species
has the strength or the claws
to drag you sea from sea
and open their wings wide enough
to envelop you with the warmth
of the beating heart you've called
your pillow for as long as
you have been sleeping well
and asking me to pull your hair
and so i have but i am tired
of begging for my own ******
as i drag you around because

you aren't my albatross.

you're the one i love
and i'll carry you as such.

saying "I love you I love my baby
I love my baby so yes yes oh yes
you can fall asleep in my arms
forever you will always be safe
you will always be loved"
whenever I'm carrying you

until we can
fly together forever.

People don't change;
I'll still have Bukowski quotes
written on my ribcage
in Sharpie.

Chlorine will go straight into
my nose whenever someone
mentions drowning,
or hating life in general.

Jokes about surf punk and Arizona tea,
everything I've done in the past year
has grown stale. I use the same
three words to describe my feelings.

Things don't change;
my apologies are still faux.
I never felt grief about that death,
or all those car accidents and overdoses.

Radio pop songs derive catharsis,
but I use one pretentious band or two
to combat that. It does nothing,
I am nothing,
or something like that.

Everything won't change;
except for feelings, emotions,
point of views, personal contacts,
and my habit of texting back.

I'll say a bunch of Beatnik quotes
and freak out over small things,
the latest post punk song will be
spray painted in the school's parking lot.

I'll still hate the smell of Chlorine,
but love the thought of memories.
Love the thought of moving on

and the idea of things ending
for a good reason.

I thought I saw Ursa Minor in Lampe Park last night,
but the trees blurred my vision to the point
where I couldn't tell whether it was a constellation
or a phallus ******* on a posy of roses.

Stars don't make sense.
If amateur philosophy has taught me anything,
it's that they can't be social constructs
or a figment of your imagination
because they exist.

They're dead,
but they exist.

and they'll be here
until all my jokes about cancer
or death in general
catches up to me.

do you feel like a boy, boy?
or just like a bad person?

you like it when your bangs
touch your greasy blackheads,
when girls squeeze your earlobes
while you kiss on the staircase,
and the way your calves
look like mayonnaise covered gerbils
every time you flex in the mirror
or cross your legs in the coffee shop.

you don't like playing foosball
and going through all the scenarios
on how people question your being.
                 metro?
           "we don't have those in Nevada"
            

you label yourself as a straight white boy,
because you can't call yourself a feminist.
you want to be a feminist,
but you're a wannabe feminist
according to the ones
you let down and continue to
because you're not quite a man,
yet you aren't female.

what are you, exactly?
according to the history books
we only know what masculinity is,
femininity a vague genre tag of
every other piece of music made
when villages aren't burned
and the ****** has to wait
another day before becoming
a prize in Heaven.

do you feel like a man, boy?
or nothing at all? cause
you can't feel like a bad person
       when you don't feel human.

“i’m done with furries”


i.
i can’t dream your dreams,
but you’ve told me about them.

you wear an owl mask
shaped by fists and transgression;
a laceration splits your side
from a skin split
to your rib splits.

your love,
Bill Clinton or Donkey Kong
(whoever populates your thoughts),
crack your bare skin
until makeup
leaks out of your pores.

you dream of emulating art;
O hanging from a ceiling claw,
clicking heels against drywall
until leg muscles give up
and her diaphragm accordions close.

but who is your sculptor?
who is your artist?

ii.
alas, i am only
a paper mache bird.

i flinch when it rains,
i flinch when i move;
my paper skin
could cave in
from lip crack to *** crack.

(i hate
Inside Out.
but, i’ve only watched it once,
and i’ve been told
my eyes would adjust
on the second viewing.)

i dream of emulating art;
Marat in an ice bath,
tragedy and love and death
captured
without conflict.

but who is my muse?
who won’t break my bones?


iii.
you don’t know my dreams either,
but we could dream together.

two reveries in polyphony
of an owl and bird *******,
making love
before they
make art.

our love
is ******* weird;
a childhood seesaw
we’re trying to
find the perfect balance
to with our weight.

we dream different things;
**** fantasies and intimate kissing,
but that doesn’t matter.
at this point in two years,
we can see through each other.

i can’t make art without you.

you aren’t done with furries.

love is muscular dystrophy.

i can feel the earth cave in
and the mountains touch tips,
a "drunken mistake"
in the church parking lot
they'll never tell their friends.

i get it.
i never told my friends the truth,
i just told them i loved them.

and for a while i have been
attempting to soundtrack
the world's end, my end,
and the realization that
my gastrointestinal system
will collapse before i'm 20
if i don't lift my head up for once.

yet every good poem i've ever written
has been sober and manic,
pessimism with too much hope,
and every metaphor used
never held any actual weight.

i've welcomed writer's block
with half open arms
as i try to write a final track,
or at least a penultimate one,
if the time doesn't feel right.

if i have to promise once more
that i'd try to take care of myself,
stop crying in empty driveways
over broken promises,
stop holding myself over
the diner's staircase
with bulging anticipation.

it felt good being surrounded,
it feels bad being crushed

and knowing there is so much more
out there in the valley or whatever universe
i decide to live in,
yet i can't get out
of my family's trash compactor.

romantic theory states
you can trace freckles on a skin
to match a constellation,
and the line that connects
the freckle between your toes
and the one on your index finger
is reminiscent of a slide.
a fun one.