i cm frm a planet far out -- far out -- out of this world (obviously).
my lungs are full of nebulae. the space between worlds is nebulae. i am nebulae.
fear is what reminds us of our shadow -- and space is just one big old shadow after all.
cmon kid go to bed there are no martians in your closet

what do little stuckists cry
when their painting talents die?
"this isn't art! you are not artists!
i'm close to art, you are the farthest!"

are my aspirations your nightmares?
are they chemically derived from neurons?
are they a curse from
the birds of babel?
(ready or not)
do they seep out of the fabric of my mind? do they break you from the inside out?
are they dead or is that just you rotting?
(here i come.)

Suppose time is not best measured by a watch,
but by a symphony, two kids crying in the background, one person coughing.
Suppose space is not best defined by volume,
but by ice cream cones filled with fluid sweetness, seeping at the bottom.
Suppose love is not best calculated by chocolate,
but by those games at carnivals you'll rip yourself off for.

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 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.

the shape of fire is the shape of orange
the orange of fire is the shape of shape
the form of the form is a constellation
upon which cosmos dangle over
flames upon which flames dance and
upon which smoke creeps and
where candles bloom into bouquets of
melted red and white wax but
it remains marbled, not pink yet
simple addition crumbles apart:
add red and yellow and mix
all you want but they will remain
separate, swirled but separate;
the color orange is the color of candles
the candles of orange is the color color.

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.

"I got kissed once," she mumbles,
sitting outside the local Sonic,
between her fingers a corndog fumbles,
mixing her slushy with beer and tonic.

The not-so-neon sign of the dive
flickers like a flashlight there;
the activity isn't alive,
its fundamental force impaired.

"I remember it vaguely," she groans,
the seat of her car squeaking,
"The times were full of gasps and moans,
my memories are fleeting."

Many things happen at night
while others are asleep.
Under the not-so-neon light,
the stillness made her weep.

The sea isn't a blanket.
Sure, blankets may have waves,
and blankets ripple when you jump on them,
but a blanket does not host Atlantis.
A blanket isn't full of saline.
A blanket does not hold billions of creatures underneath it.
Instead, a blanket only holds a couple, snoring, unconscious,
unaware of the each other,
unaware of their petty troubles,
unaware of their drunkenness,
unaware of their bruises,
unaware of life, death, and the sea.

"you are dust!" said the tortoise,
chewing a leaf, the one it chewed for a couple centuries.
and i twisted my head and scratched my dandruff-littered scalp,
"why?" i said, my pondering genuine, as it tends not to be.
"because!" it said, clearly annoyed, "death is something you can't avoid,
and someday you shall rot, and be a feast for fungus,
and then your bones will wither away, eroded by time's merciless decay."
i was not impressed (though slightly scared), "i realize that," i replied.
"but how are you seeing me at this time as anything other than flesh?
i know that i will pass, and that my body will be deep underground,
worms will mate in my eye sockets, and the less said about maggots
the better. but here, in this moment, time has not run out for me, so why are you using the present tense when cursing entropy upon me?"
it stopped and slowed down chewing, eyes gazing back and forth.
"do you think my sense of time only lies in one direction? mistaken.
it can go backwards, yes, but it may go forwards too, and
some other directions you will not comprehend. divination is no delusion,
it's only logical."
the tortoise turned around and crawled away. this took a few decades.

in the cabin green my legs were resting within the
sleepingbag on the floor (parents had the bed) i drifted
then drifted back when the door knocked i saw
the night and the night said "let's go" and we went
to wherever the night went when they woke.
down the steps white-painted wood to
the pit where a fiery group coalesced into flames
the amalgamation was chanting stories of disembodied hands
that grab the ankles of unsuspecting campers (i flinched) then
the night lead me, with their starry hand, to bales of hay
which i stacked into a staircase forgoing the horseticks to climb
upon a truck parked overnight -- i wanted to touch
the night but the night, their ethereal moon pointed my way
had to say goodnight and gave way to dawn.

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.

On my way from DC to Manhattan, the sky an odd indigo.
Got some donuts from the local bakery, which I'm munching on.
Some girl sits next to me.
After a couple hours she dozed off, and I whisper to her:
"You might be stardust, but you're no nebula."
She can't see the window through my silhouette.
I hate that inky nothing, I hate that
shadow, I hate
that silhouette.

let's go home then, both of us,
in a stride we found in asylums,
shaking, burning for above.
let the windows crack and doors snap shut,
never to be opened by hand again,
on the earth where passions sleep.
one day we will return there,
a world that we have never been,
our feet ache to ache after walking.