If things worked out I might have
stood on an Olympic podium
holding a gold medal or

awarded a ten thousand dollar
check and a mahogany framed
certificate for winning

a Pulitzer Prize; instead, on good
days I run down alleys looking
for **** spots and comb

streets for drunks and lame
people who make for
interesting pictures.

On the first hour of my first day
in the front trench I fell;

'Get up,' bawled Sergeant Major,
'and stand eye to eye with hell,

and look ye on the plucky dead
whose chests swell out with pride';

but t'was the rats that swelled them
as they plucked them from inside..

the kindergarden down the road
                                         had a revolt
            and the children insisted on self directing story-time

   two thirds in
     the hero abandoned their quest,
   turned into a bubble
   and evaporated

       the adults insisted a story needs a proper conclusion
                                                but they knew better


walk by

    light in the distance
bares at me

is it moving?
...
no
      it's not.
ah-
  it's gone now
...
  no
    there it is again

there     gone
there     gone

a silence becoming
and a silent vacating

unnerving  comfort


    the skateboarders down the road
         chiseled all the letters out of the road signs
    till all the tourists were helplessly lost
          / excuse me,
          / sorry,
          / what way to the lookout?

              \ you're already at it
              \ just keep going


a wail
   oscillating
bares at me

a bird or a car siren?

too organic for a machine
too regular for life

…

never mind

head home


  the church groups down the road
                          formed an action committee,
                                                      ­      after the flood

                       even had some humanitarian in
                                                              ­ to give a slide show

     but the software was updating
                        so we ended up watching the loading bar instead

              while the kids played in the puddles outside


    the asphalt damp
is borne to me

figures keep passing through
unformed spaces
with unfathomable ease
  alacrity

fragments pop glitter
     valley sparks
         of disheveled winter

pass by

tumble down through
grassy banks
  to the vermillion ocean

caulk the lungs
and drift

Love,  be gentle and kind,
take that rusty gun from under
my pillow and shoot me twice
in the heart so I can feel the hurt
from the first time and the pain
from the second again;
but don't bury me in the dirt
beneath your bare feet,
just burn me like the memory
of your brown soles I saw
running away, oh, so long
a time ago, I can't even remember.

In the dark age before reason
warmed his sharp knife,
I took things to heart
that left scars with no wound,
like lightning without thunder
or melody, that barefoot gypsy
I fell in love with, like Night
and her moon, woman with child
sinking below frozen ground,
I learned the loneliness
of cold seasons, and the wood
of the wild cherry will **** you.

Dear Joanna,
I am drunk.

And halogen lights threaten suffocation.
I think I'm going blind. Really, this time.
Do you recall a day spent craving defective
Melodies in our high school hallway?
And really, do you remember what you
were wearing the night spent too close
to the teepee? Green. Your arms, organic,
and your fingertips clean. You know what
I mean? We once raced up the mountain and
watched the world spin slow beneath trees.  
When I think of snow flakes forging down to
Mother Earth, I taste cheap whisky sugar water
--- (the kind we stole from your father).
Tell me you remember that night. The first
evening spent alone, side by side. Falling hard
for each other's coats. Screaming out to oblivion -
I swear to you, we'll write a book.

I swear to you, we'll write a book.

Dear Joanna,
I am drunk.

My head feels hollow and my bed feels heavy.
I keep dreaming of asphyxiation, and I am
terrified. I wish we all crashed our cars in
the high school parking lot all those years ago.
Nothing can reignite my soggy, stagnant vertebrae.
Your breath was in my lungs when you were born
far from city lights. I listen to the music radiating
from your Shins. And I wish we just crashed our cars
into each other or something. Can you gift me a few
sleeping lessons? Or has the nocturn taken your
tiny hands, placed you in the haze of a night's blue
middle? Kissing lipless kids on street corners, we were
both murdered by the ghost boys in the dark parts of
our collective, electric skulls. Jesus Christ, Joanna.
We were kazoo babies in sweaters, and **** it,
We Were Kind. You suggested we murdered time.
And you know what? You were right.

Son, you were feral to remain within your sac;
the doctor slit your mother’s perineum
and you gasp breath.                                                          ­    

My  secret to you on that  day is the same
as I whisper today;  be the rare
pearl but do not

couple yourself to a strand, I did not raise
you to be like me,
not one bit.

there's a wasp nest in the roof tiles
when it rains they all drown and get angry and stab you to death

the school up the road
   kid with the big cardboard
whacks the ground
envy of class
   ******* mother dripping
croissant ears and belgium tails

no this, isn't where i -

  no matter
if i pass through myself i'll get to you
god i'm pathetic
pathetic pathet-
Ah,
good. Here we are
back again

yes, this warm embrace
feels like styrofoam
in winter breeze
crawled on by the ants

your plaintive smile of
split wood
rusted tin and copper green
damp coffee beans and barley mold
tumbled **** and dry retch

light a candle in a puddle
watch it fizzle and melt

beneath the pavement flecks
you once dreamed of caverns
of solitude and lime
biscuits and frozen pizza

distance is always warmer in memory

now
                 we're just

rows of slates stitched break and crack cross hatched
the greased snide of new age atheist
scrambled eggs of surplus tongues
muzzled **** of an aphasiac dynasty

weightless

yesterday i read an essay on post-colonialism
and then watched some ****
of a japanese woman ******* on some african man's feet
he looked mostly scared
    somewhat confused

its all so
  unbearably inundated in discourse

i tend to prefer sleep these days
i guess that's getting old

but there's always a guilty disgust
in knowing you're the intended audience


white man is a gaze
reified in disappearance
immortalized by impotence

a genocidal roar
of muffled incompetence

The beer is flowing
All hot and high,
Insect repellent on the house-
A restaurant by the roadside.
The streets a little easy
Now that the tears have dried,
But the population still dress in black
For the year the King had died.

I’ve been doing a little dying too,
All the faces I have been,
All the places, all the names;
All the waste I’ve come to see.
It piled in the entryway,
Too many obstacles to leave,
Too desperate to sit and stay,
Witness the death of the autumn leaves.

Too much steady state back at home,
Over here, it’s chaos in the streets,
Used to take a pill to make me calm;
I used to lie and steal and cheat.
I used to have a drink to **** the day,
Now I take a load off of my feet,
Nurse it back and eat well and full;
There’s no trouble in falling asleep.

I see the waitress get a head massage
In the middle of the working day,
I mind my manners a thousand times
Still, my brain does not behave.
*** lingers on every corner,
In every blind-alley retreat,
Every time she smiles at me,
Or hands me my receipt.

Now I sing for life and I sing for death
And neither is full of fear,
Sometimes I tell the world to go to hell-
But at least I sound sincere.
At least my poetry is full of me
And not the absence in between
When I wake in this sober state;
When I fall down to my knees.

This is not the perfect life,
I would never claim it was,
But it’s a thousand shades brighter now,
In the shifting of the fog.
My notebooks are all clean and new,
My eyes alight with love.
This is what true living means,
This is not what dying does.