please!
i want to grasp it
between my fingers without nails
(i bite them off in my neurosis)
and dig my dull digits into it!
please! the truth -- what color is its blood?

i want to hatefuck socrates while
he moans about the mixolydian mode
being drunken and sad.

we tried, that day, to find it
but looking up at the stars
is just a fancy way of looking down,
into our mineral navels
into our vegetable innards!

i understand the ocean better than you
ever could, an inlander within a prison built of
browned ivy. i rose and rose again from the sea
after the waves crash and yet i know nothing
of how the tides swirl, besides me being part
of that neverending cycle of salt and bits of
coral. can summers go by without a seagull's
cry carrying me from the inland and plucking my
soul towards the great waters of home?

i had died the other day and from my grave
i saw a hand with rings upon each finger. on each ring
was a gemstone that spelled out the infinity known
in my fearful tongue which bleeds whenever
i bite the knife that cuts the flesh of time;
will i ever understand the meaning of decay?
will i ever comprehend my bones giving way to worms?

come to our shore and scoop up the water then
splash it onto your face, feel it trickle;
don't you smell the saline? a seagull dives
but we pay miniscule mind to it,
for we are rising, fingers tangled,
and we feel like one again.
the moon can't shift without the sun and
the tides can't ebb without the moon
and even when caught in a tropical storm
our eyes can lock despite the rain,
and no amount of its swirling rage
can fog up our eyes, for we will always see
the sea has become our stage -- let's perform.

heaven! heaven! far too long
    have we forgotten to
whisper white clouds
                        into existence, the wavering
uncertainty of birds
    made into rote algorithms;
    the unnerving way that
lungs fill can
                 begin to unravel the yarn
that wraps around the trees
                 and trees
        are nothing too special -- i'd say

stratus (stratus
(cumulonimbus)
) infinity
at stake:
        streaks
(oh there's my
    soul somewhere
amid the pneumatics)

UFOs spiral figure-8s around
pillars erected by watchful eyes
above a sheet of unwatchful worms
beneath a blanket of hyperwatchful stars
between a hyperlapse of comets eternal
faith isn't a constant,
god is the internet

i sent a sigil through public broadcast
and cursed peoples' eyes to undulate
until, swollen enough, those oculus rubies
explode in a maelstrom of blood and pus.

through tv static, untuned, unhinged
a series of hexes float across snow
as muzak fades in and flesh fades out
'til senses give in and odd bells grow

off viewers' arms -- the flower's hue
based on the individual's willingness
to let hummingbirds feed on blood clots festered
through sweet-tasting nectar, golden, confined.

how many idle landscapes
and unturned stones of fancy
have dissolved to into light
at the sight of the rising sun?
pull back the curtains of your phantasy
then pull back the curtains of your window
and let the dreams melt until
the night is a somnambulant pile.

the thoughts of your skull being pounded by morn
the unborn remains of the musings of muses
eyelids drooping and, with hesitation, rising,
and then your body does the same.

children of march warmth -- the
dust hovers over the parking lot

a winter ghost. faded coca cola logo
affixed to the concrete slab of a building.

here:

french fries are expensive
all the patrons are old men
the lanes are smooth
a lonely party balloon hovers by a scoreboard
the shoes are too tight
rubber duck claw machine

re
enter

exit

diet coke can
knocks over
with the wind

that's the tree's whisper.

the man with his hammer had sat in the theater
and gazed upon gazers whose eyes were transfixed
he hammered the heads of the headless thespians
and went to break streetlights trapped in the moonbeam

i have zeus's skin saved somewhere but i lost it,
whose eyes were gazing on moonbeams unshadowed
by nobody's thunder with water unfiltered
mineral-laden and godless surprise

i think it might be lodged behind my dresser
hooked to the outlet and sapping out lightning
the hammer of nobody's head is a streetlight
the thespians hammered their theaters full.

the sun (plus all the particles
that make up its purple ghost) rests
over the winter-weary streets
and, seeing all the people walking
with their heads down, recoils
and shivers.

the building (with the glass
all over, exposing tired office
jockeys), even as it looms, shows
sympathy to the mourning cosmos.

there is no sun chicago
there is no glimmer in DC
the lights are out. the grey
days are here.

even in the cold, the boiler
rumbles. the grass
crunches slightly
beneath your shoe.

wobbling returns to emergence
the sine wave resonates, it is
oceanic, fluid, bulbous
and bobbing, all at once
a whole and not a whole

bleeding out salt
and tropical fish, its
tissue paper curtains covering
the last ruins of
the forgetful earth

a hole, yet not an absence
but a presence of a triangle
a missing number, unsevered
flowing together, keyboard
abstractions, not there

oh but it's melted snow
the opposite of noise
a vague feeling of nothing
and presence, wrapped up in
a paranoid returning

it's like argon -- like chlorine without
lungs, veins without organs,
pain, inert inertia slippery
spine breaking
on the ice. the moon

i've shot a dog in the back of its head
i don't remember in which life i did this
but it was a life i'd detest to live again

i have no dog inside my chest
i have no cat inside my mind
i have no bird inside my gut

oh LCD night! the incandescent yesterday
is burning to the touch--
my cathode-ray tube dreams, once switched off,
leave a film of electricty that leaves a shock on your finger
whenever you touch the doorknob.

the streetlights turn off when i step under them
and only when i look to them they glow.
i must have passed by this light a thousand times
and not once did i stop and think of it as anything
but a dim, yellowed, moth-ridden reminder
of the departed souls of roadkill
underneath.

how many secrets are hidden beneath this concrete?
how much bubbling rage does gravel conceal?

the distance from a mouth to a note,
the space the lies between notes in a song
the distance between lips and straws,
the space that can be found in the neuron unfired,
an idle synapse,
an untuned radio.
the sound the bed makes when it's old and you're
too big, overgrown, your lovely new york skyline t-shirt
won't save you from the groans of disowned metal.
the space under a keyboard key before it becomes a letter
and the space between letters and words, indefinite.
an undisclosed location where extraterrestrials are
meant to be is currently beds and lost hopes and bits of paper

all the city’s a womb, a constant buzz,
a dim blue night that a river bisects.
you huddle
around the window
and gaze
at the faint traces of the sun
left in the sky’s retina.
midnight is just a suggestion
that lingers in the back
of your filament brain. the
wordless candle, its aura. ask
the dawn for a kiss.
the bed
is your doom. the night’s black
mist bleeds.

when the sun has regained some
confidence, its reach on the land
reestablished, its lucid eye alert,
you hide from its gaze. you cower
from the great daisy in the recesses
of inverted sleep; 6 in the morning
to 3 in the afternoon. rising out
of your slumber is like
challenging a rip tide,
only to find
the shore exposes
your naked body.