Dear Friend,

I don't want to be a bother
And,
Not to break any eggshells,
But the reason for my annoying habit
Of saying
“I love you”
Constantly
Is because that is what I do
When my heart is breaking.

When I am called
Fat
Stupid
Ugly
etc.
I say
“I love you”
Because it’s the only way I can
Cope

I do this because
If I show it hurts
I’ll remember how much I wish
I had better friends


But if you don't like it
I'll try to change

Sorry for bothering you then,
Cecilia

A few titles
A few songs
A few artists
Combine
for compound fractures
of my consciousness

For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing
     Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,
     And day by day the fury swells aflame,
     And the woe waxes heavier day by day—
     Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows
     The former wounds of love, and curest them
     While yet they're fresh, by wandering freely round
     After the freely-wandering Venus, or
     Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.

Yes, a swollen skin
fragmented bone
I walk
and flee her capture.

for fifty
dollars
you
park
your car
inside
one
of these garages.
I drive and drive and drive, knowing
that I will not have a place
outside those garages.
I spent fifty
dollars
on a purple v-neck, orange crew cut
striped shirt and ten socks;
it was my birthday money.
I’m going to go inside
restart the laundry
so it will be warm.
My apartment complex has speed
bumps before each module
to slow the traffic
and as I go over one, looking
at a darkened figure standing
in the garage, taking
a plastic bag from their trunk—face obscured by darkness--
I realize what a crude portrait
humanity is.
Trapped on this prison
planet—what was our crime?
In that moment, bobbing head
I thought of love
and how unobtainable its object is;
then I realized
only people who pursue love
are capable of murderous rampage killings.
I thought about how safe my anonymous
neighbor
was
and how lucky someone would be
to know what saints walk among them.
I forget that my bright shirts were bought
to attract someone so
I could attempt to love.

It feels better to be falsely imprisoned
--to be a saint--
than to know ****** and love
are parked inside of you.
The dark figure takes out
whatever's stopping you.

I was asked today "what
are you really into?"
while I was walking to film
class.

He had changed direction
with a flair of drama
and was walking along,
interrogating me.

I had to think.

I wondered how
I would answer his
question, were it posed
by someone I was interested in.

"I like the smell of hormones
colliding, omnipotent in their
decision to do so and in doing
it."

Could I say that?

"I like to feel like a hormone,"
or
"I like being a hormone."
Were these answers?

"I like patting my contracted
******* against the *****
majora of my partner."

"I like sewing," I might say.

That is, the idea
that if I push
and she opens
both testicles
and ******* may pop inside.

Like a **** needle pulling
a ***** thread
through a tight weave.

I laugh, imagining what the little man
would say, but
he doesn't know why.

"Stitch her up, Doctor!"

I'm
laughing.

He just says "you know, I'm into
chemistry, biology. Just tell me what
you're into."

I've been silent.
Is he still walking with me?

All I think to say is
"music" pointing to the earbuds
dangling over my chest, song
interrupted
by his pedantry.

He says "you've always liked music"
as if we've had this conversation before.
As if we know each other.
And it seems like he will follow me
to class.
And sit by me.
And talk about chemistry
and biology
while we discuss Singin' in the Rain.

Hormones, sewing and music.

They installed locks
handed you keys.
Hold them, silver, golden,
shaking with dis-ease.

A vision of the Earth outside.

Squinting in a dark hallway,
why not turn the ***,
nudge yourself inside?

Someone paid for you to live here,
a father, mother, or friend.

Your chain of life extends far backwards
but on this side it must end.

You may have felt forever,
trapped with your despair,
between rough crust,
precious residue
floating in air.
Pressure can't hold us
with clouds
and shapes from dreams.

We'll soon be gone, and you will too.
Don't waste your voice with screams.

It, too, is faltering,
our voice,
our atmosphere,
hopes for exploration.
Heaving, chest
uncompensated by oxygen,
raided like sarcophagi
with your timid, spinning brain
having no peddler,
to whom to sell it?

No, your home waits here
on solid ground.
Keep your voice wrapped around you,
not in the heavens, as you'd wish.

Take off both shoes,
sit down.
Patiently inhale.
Feel worlds shifting their weight
skin, becoming pale.
Shake off saw-dust covering
your day-clothes.

Stretched
dissected.
Carpet does this to frame,
taking you through thresholds
and mindsets.

Evaporate,
see no more today.
Rain down until tomorrow
in this never-ending night
given to trees
collecting your purple-pink
and blue
dews.
Leaves bending
with gratitude
holding drops of you
aloft
before
no heat can take you up
and they,
becoming coffins
for you,
weep
and cover your dis-may.

A dashed possibility.

Like a dust moat in the sky,
preventing
a window past your mind,
what you saw standing atop
brittle decrepitude
through saccharine eyes
is shifting, impermanent,
time cannot be mistaken.

Relax.
A tear pulls
the horizon,
lightning
rips your sight.

Breathe as long as it takes
to stop breathing.

Alone, shaking.
Silver, golden.
in this eternal night.

No one re-writes directions to that fixture
out in space, yet near.
But you know it once was twirling
because you followed its light
to here.

Turn the keys they gave you
and look, inside the frame
of consciousness.
There is one artwork you create
with every facile, blinking motion
every extended being,
your thick paints of colors,
never able to be seen.

There once was chaos in man
he wanted so much to scream.
Instead he reconciled to whisper
and laugh.

Open-mouthed, blind and plodding--
there's no one to teach him how to dance--
he falls through space
alone on his rock.

Wo es war... ____

Eyeing one sticky handprint;
left behind--
another's form, whisked away before
I got there, just in time
with an issue

"Field" Nobember of 2012,
even though they don't print them in that month.

I had empty paper, a notebook. A story
at a ***** table.
I would write on top of all this,
thoughts of avoiding the mess
left, there, unwanted by others.

I have been wrong
in as many ways as I have been right
I have been wrong.

It's true, what Freud said:
                                           Wo ES war! [Where IT was!]
Wo war es? [Where was it?]
                                            Wo ich jetzt bin! [Where I now am!]
ES IST ICH [IT IS ME]
ICH BIN ES [I AM IT]
                                      I am here.
IT
    is Omaha,
                      and
in so many ways,
                              it wasn't. ______

Laurie, it's almost Christmas.
That's why so many quietly desperate people
wear old woolen sweaters, fantasizing about being in
on a joke,
just this once.
Your friends are wildly cackling,
you're not dressed like the others.
I prefer my desperation loud, too.
I'm rather skeptical,
however,
of
forty-year-old Lauries wearing lace tops and wedding rings,
with wet words
sloshing from dank tumblers.

Each seeming mispronunciation evokes
excedingly excessive expectations
in the form of imagined saliva beads extruding
between bottom and top lips.
But they aren't mispronunciations, are they.
It seems that, over time, words have come to sound this way,
for us.
And you've done nothing wrong,
But twenty years ago, you wouldn't have any reason
even to speak to me.
It's fascinating to watch
the canopy of aging shield
youth's shallow perspective
from those rapidly fading stars
of disquieting mortality
which fall, bringing with them
forty years of confused burning
into vision.


How many times have you come to a place,
chatted with a stranger,
and gotten them to leave with you,
in your life?
I've never been able to, myself, but it's different when you're a guy.
I struggle with subtlety, but not as much as you.
There's just no room for ambiguity, were I to brace their lower back,
then casually walk by.
I have no doubt this approach has worked for you.
Only, from my perspective, your effort pulls
that growing chin
further from your forehead,
leaving room for misused eye-
contact with me.

Laurie, I know where you are.
You're in on the joke
outside this bar.
You're still in Nebraska,
as far as bodies go, so am I.
"The Good Life!" you slur,
having never left home,
you never want to go.

Laurie.

Laurie.

Laurie!

Please move.
I'm trying to shoot.
You impede my cue,
thrusting between my fingers.
My actions, words create an un-registering ricochet.
Fine, mock me when I miss.
I am not good at this game,
but I don't want to be.
It's not flirting.

If Nebraska IS the good life
it is the good LIFE, for one.
Like Jesus lived once, so do we, in this room.
He would also agree birthdays are meaningless.
Regardless, I can't be with you here,
because I don't know who is living that one good life,
but it isn't you or I.

I didn't ask about your husband,
I'm left to speculate. Assume.
You'll buy your children presents
and give your husband head he's used to.
Isn't that what rings means this time of year,
or is that only what you used to do?
Did he stop eating like you tell him?
Does he take care of you.
You probably think someone like me
would be willing, know exactly how to.
I can see you touching my arm,
I can feel your friends
rubbing me with their eyes.
My thighs recoil with every shot
as people say their goodbyes.
I know you're ready to leave me behind
and take my body's memory with you
to sleep within your head.

I'll miss you, Laurie.
You remind me that there may be one good life in this state.
Or, at least, someone who wants to **** me without knowing my name.
But the closest thing to a good life I can hope for in Nebraska
is to be noticed by a woman
who will help my imagination
think of a place better than here.
Before I reach your age, Laurie,
I want to find her.

Youth's last call yells loud,
and quells years of chased memories.
I know you can't hear it, Laurie,
but those years are over for you and me.
If you keep the thought of me alive at all,
do this kind and silly thing:
give your children gentle kisses
on their heads before they sleep.
Tell them that they have the one good life
the way my mother lied to me.