i was living life on my knees when
I met JB, he was a song with a body part
in the title, a guardian, a saint, maybe a one-time
guitarist for Kiss.

(The last man to see Jesus, as far
as I am aware of, was the apostle John.
sometimes in his sleep he still whispered
“please don’t bury me, please
don’t bury me, please”.)

but JB had bowed to Baal, had kissed him,
bought a 20 dollar nosebleed from
a man with seven stars in his right hand,
a sharp thing in his mouth.
JB was not an apostle,
but he knew the knees of my heart,
gave his knees to the needy,
shoved soldiers, stared.

we spat in our gloves.
he said I have a swordfish mind,
but I have left 7,000 in Israel,
loved the oh of his mouth as the
stone rolled away, I have
met Jesus, face-to-face.
please don’t bury me.

these were the Great Days,
the First Aid: a myth that cost lives
taped us tight, and when he told me
that 150,000 people die in Britain every day
I said “instead, tilt your head forward,
pinch your nostrils shut and breathe with
your mouth; a half-sitting position with
your knees bent and head and shoulders.”

he did as I said and, later, John
put his **** in my mouth.

Reactive arthritis
affects the large joints, the knees,
causes pain, swelling,
an ectopic tongue on the floor
of the mouth.

when in doubt-i-hyphentate.

this-also prevents Microsoft-word
from capitializing my i-‘s when i-want them
to stay bite-sized humble pie,
but it still capitalizes
itself)

Microsoft word
               big ‘m’ added by bill gates

misspelling it prevents this

micropoft word*
* i-am the best kind of rebel

i-refuse to be told how to write by anyone
gate-related or otherwise,
even if i-may occasionally **** myself
on paper, the rain will take it all off,
we shall all be healed.
we *will all be healed.

carried away from the squaggly
green/red/blue lines of a processor
which doesn”t understand: poerty so often is
sentence fragments and uncapitalized i-s
untied shoelaces in a dark boling alley,
my bad breath and watered down alcohol,
stains and the hours spent rubbing them,
sounds on a dead tv set, rubbing carpet in
your aunt’s living room,

i-can spell
things how
i-want to
poerty is fun
like this;

she was called forth
from the rain, sing-screaming through
the lonesome pines, scattering needles
like a ****** angel; stomping
the dust into mud.

festivals strung on her wrists, the
flags shouting louder through leaves
than even that hung-up sun could muster.
rocks rambled up her spine, feet
calloused from dancing, she shrugged,
suspended above the moss.

                                                          ­the fire was never so bright.
would the black streets in a
harsh, dead city be deeper or
stronger than this?, can the skyscrapers
cut open clouds with their teeth
like she gnashed through God's hair
and tangled the sound of her blood
with the river?
                                                         even her chin was a boulder;
                                                        ­ her knees flat skipping stones.

she wore soft bark and orange.
(aspens on hillsides with sunsets,
roots blending with bones and vein
                                                and skin)
her hair spread out as a tree underwater,
or braided tight into vines.

a cup in each hand,
a sword in her mouth,
a wand on her waist,
pentacles on every inch,
forever breathing with the skin
of the earth.

and when she had left:
the missions departed, coals are black
in the cold city, skies scraped and scabbing.
burnt with the deep of a flame-led
memory.

the shallow graves upturned and cried out
into the rain,
*where has the base of my stream
flown from, if not the sharp
scent of her skin?
what shadow have I carried if not
an absence tied under my feet to
only  be free in the morning
with her hair in my mouth?

where does the river flow
from here?

shivered in a thin sober jacket
I wonder why you are not here
again, the sleep alone, the Sisyphus sun.

      every night my closet is dark.
I am filled with the fear of knowing
                  the light again.
of your firecracker heart, your soul
outside you, not afraid to say it.

                say it (again), tell me.
                do you know your own fingers?
                can you speak for the dance they
                took on my shoulder at night
                with nobody watching, can you hide that
                spark flown through my skin?

                        (I am alive with the light of it.
                                     the fear is a valley.
                                     the fear is a wet rock in my throat
                                     the fear is a little death.

I slept in your smile,
there was the hard tap of your fingers
          that could have been my fingers
           that could have set me all free,
           pressing the fear until it hides deep
           between cells of sparked skin,
           lit from an argument of hidden beauties,
           unknowns, you drew the X
           out but did not feel it;
you kept the beauty hidden and you did not feel it.

          so again I am filled with the fear of
          holding the light ignited in my palm,
          casting shadows out like uncertain nets.

                   how full of orange flame you are
                    and green and blue of afternoon sky;
                    a swirled breath kept tight in the center
                    of a pond, a sharp shock, trembling hands
                    leaf-bent on a branch

            the hand hikes over you, a
            quick brush of a lark in the dark bush,
            calling for seeds to bloom, for the
            spring to slip on the branches
            and fall to the ground, slow and
            smooth and emptied pollen;

my hand hikes
over the hill of a shoulder,
the valleys.
and I sing with the pain
of it.

              of the orange of the fire on the
              purple night cloud, lightning
              in an empty field
              the red dust on the palm of  an
              upturned arm, waiting for rain.

                                      I sing with the pain of a
                                      spectator, shivered through
                                      thin sober jacket.

*every night my closet is dark.)

I have been told since I
learned to read
that holding someone close
says I love you with my
heart inside my body inside my head.

she said "fall in love with someone
who's comfortable with your silence."
and still,
          I only find you in the dark
           crushing my toe on your frame
           the scratched black nail in the morning
           shines like the love I gave was too
                     loud and bright, so blinding

that you sank behind the sun
as I played "She loves me,
She loves me Gordian not"
with the sword rays.
splayed across my tongue.

the razor-blade foreplay
was violent enough to carnage
your room to a crime scene wrapped
yellow tape package CAUTION
you yelled with the nothing CAUTION
do not cross do not cross do not cross
                 you fake messiah
                 you save yourself savior complex
                 of a narcissist, drowned in his own pool
                              of backlogged traffic jam verbage
living with a rearview mirror in every room
especially our bed.

           I find myself
with arms wrapped too tight
around a precious thing,
screaming until the spit sling blade
found every secret place inside your ear
and carved it to echo the only word
                 I have ever really known

ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
ME
MYSELF AND EVERYTHING INSIDE ME

living with a rearview mirror in every room
especially the ones you're in.
especially when you are too quiet
to be anything but a noisemaker
in my cavern of a head
filled with my own claps
singing my own song
playing by my own rules
until everything I knew of you was
dust and shivers in the mist.

Cadillac Cross

they were held up, two handfuls
of ripe fruit, an offering to the camera flash.

and you seemed only a child, forced
into the skin of a woman, the world
was watching you laugh, but no one would
ever know why.
the private conch you kept
offered for love or lust or heat,
now a deer in the headlights.
now cast out like round die
now handled until grimy
now silent
now hard.

I cannot imagine your
pain, how nothing is safe;
we made a pillar of you, a statue at a temple, rusted roadside attraction,
thousands of rubber bands in a ball, a house of crushed coffee cans,
the longest loudest brightest ball of flame
that side of the red carpet,
and then there was a sound
like a wet rag
falling limp and ****** onto the floor;

how will the decade treat your eyes?
will we find you in the forest
with a cadillac cross on your chest?
or bleeding in a hotel
with your publicists’ card twisted
between clean fingernails?
or scotch taped
with a tapestry backdrop
hostage with cameras wide-opened at your head?

the audience notes the strings of saliva that stretch
blindly from one full lip to the next
like the string of a bow pulled taut
and then lost in wild degradation,
broadcast.

how will the decade treat your eyes?
will there be bags where we do not want them?
packed with sag and soft nights,
will we find you in the forest
with a Cadillac cross
                    on your
                                                    chest?

there is a straightjacket noose man
                   gauzed inside my chest.
breathing with inside fever and moving
around the edges with a mumble and
a shuffle he crowds the walls
                      with blue light.

the tapes fuzz and hiss when
his hands raise up to the glass
           the security operator is crying
            into his wrinkled shirt collar
and the wind whips itself
to a frenzy, the tapes fuzz and hiss
when his mouth opens up and
crawls a gasp straight to
the shout the shout rises like
sharp pockets of steam

            and the director is shaking so hard
            the pens on his desk chorus like
a thin drum choir, the desk is too hot
to touch, the noose man slips
      to strands then to particle
           then to simple sugars and
                                    energy like light
right through the floor and the ceiling
                                     and we are live
so live.

the glass once slow flowing moves faster
and sand is everywhere and
his eyes snap and chip into the
locks and the tape.
           he rages in the deep the
           lightbulb left, in the dark desert,
                                            the red dust.

he lights like sparks and rises again
       until my every muscle trembles
and the mothers chatter and my
teeth chatter and the director shakes
and the neurons shake and operate
                                  like telegraphs.

(outside, I am a clenched fist.
a tired pillow,
the shadow under an open hand
and a closed eye.)

inside there is a crack and a moment
of confusion so brief as the smoke
clears and the neck has broken
on the noose man,
cut open by the speed of
       his own sharp snaps.