There is something magical
in the whirring
of a midday laundromat.
A cessation of pride,
maybe.
People all dressed in sweatpants
the air full of detergent smell
and the sound of coins clicking
against great tumblers
as they go round
and round
and round
and round...

The people smile back,
no use pretending superiority here.
Whistlers twitter on, folding towels and socks into neat, organized piles.
The children are well behaved,
their hands full of potato chips
given by their parents as a pittance for their patience.
The patient patrons
ponder on,
their empty hands crumpling receipts.
This, with the crunching of chips
and the distant whistle
over the percussion of clicking
coins clattering
in a dryer
compose an unintentional opera,

an ode to humility.

Humility's honorable honesty heals humanity's hubris.

Noisy trucks pass outside the floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows,
Where the hot air wreaks its violence
and men make their ways

in spite.

When you want something,
but you don't know what.
Maybe it's a want to want,
misplaced in hopes of filling
the ever-present void in you.
Maybe it's happiness.

Maybe it's as close as you'll ever get.

Crushed to death
under falling leaves
Drowned
by torrential rain
scorched by sun,
and fades away,
and never speaks again

the sober simply sickening
sapping all my electricity
the waking under midday light’s
reflecting off the mirror tiles
I placed this all beneath me but
it always ******* backfires

Crushed
under a thousand falling leaves
Drowned
by a million drops of acid rain
scorched by the sun
and fades away,
and never ever speaks again

Shining black, incandescent
watermarks that line the present
and presently I can perceive
a personage, just above me
It speaks nonstop and slowly
and never ever ******* leaves

Crushed
under a thousand falling leaves
Drowned
by a million drops of acid rain
scorched by the sun
and fades away,
and never ever speaks again

crushed to death
and fades away
autumn leaves became a grave
drowned by rain
never speaks again
the undertow of passing waves

the autumn leaves became a grave
the undertow of passing waves.

Somewhere in the South Pacific
a human-shaped speck casts a bottle
from the shore of a tiny island
into the interminable sea.
The bottle contains a note
which bears:
a name
an approximate location
and a desperate plea.

The bottle drifts slowly away
flashing in and out of view
on the crests of passing swells.
It glides on mysterious currents
and a quiet modicum of hope.

Simultaneously,
Above a particular point in the Northern Hemisphere,
a ball of tin foil
labeled Voyager I
is crossing the threshold
into the world outside
the solar system.

On board are a pair of golden discs
engraved with:
images and voices of human beings
the relative location of the Sun to fourteen nearby pulsars
and a plea,
      naively disguised to look like a proud declaration of identity
                             but what proud and accomplished
                                       race of beings
                         would need to search for
                                 companionship
                            among the stars?

                         The little metal ball floats away
                                        blinking bits of data back to Earth
                                                              each grainier than
                                                                 the last

                                     tugged by the gravity of distant bodies
                                                               and a quiet modicum of
                                                              ­                                  hope.

Last night I dreamt I cohabitated with
Two beasts, both loved.
The one, a young lioness
The other a spry lamb
I had raised the both from infancy
But the lioness, who was then entering her adulthood began to size up the lamb.
And it occurred to me that in order to
save
the lamb from the lioness
That I must **** and eat it myself

It is the inescapable nature of a lion to
Hunt and ****
livestock
So while there was no scruple or problem for me to have these two animals,
They could not abide one another.
So I did it.
I slaughtered the lamb and cut it's flank and got at its tender meat
And I cooked it and served it with Marsala sauce and that night the lioness and I dined on the flesh of our old friend.

And I became aware eventually,
Between my ravenous gnawings at the meat
That the lioness was not eating.
She was
Staring fixedly
Directly at me.

She did not blink.

And I stopped feasting on the lamb.
And as I did I saw her eyes dilate
And she pounced across the table
And she gored me with her great claws
And split my gut and spilled my innards
And she ate me bit by bit still screaming
Still covered in Marsala sauce.

Before it was over I had but a breath in me and I cried,
"But why?!"
And I realized that it is the inescapable nature of the lion
To hunt and to ****.
Not just livestock, not just lambs.

She had hunted and killed us both.

I'm nervous.
Like really nervous.
Like shaking like a blender full of gravel nervous.
Like atheist in a foxhole nervous.
Why am I so nervous?
Because I have a nagging thought that soon I might just be the last-next-best-thing that ever happened to you,
Replaced by another, better next-best-thing that blows me out of the water.
Because you might decide I don't have what you really REALLY want.
Because at the end of the day, I'm still convinced that your attraction to me is the product of an elaborate facade.
So yeah. I'm nervous.
Like sweating fifty caliber bullets nervous.
Like ******* cinderblocks nervous.
Like chattering teeth cold sweats nervous.
Like dying young nervous.
Like being forgotten nervous.

And it makes me nervous that you put me on a pedestal
Because from where I stand, I didn't do anything to deserve this
I got drunk at a party and picked up a guitar and here we are almost a year later.

So I'm anxious
I'm distressed
I'm worried and jumpy
But most of all I'm nervous
Nervous because I think
You might one day figure out what I already know:
I'm not that great.
I'm lanky and goofy and kinda dumb sometimes
And I can be just as petty as everyone else
And I'm still pretty convinced you're colossally out of my league
So I'm nervous
Like shake-you-to-your-*******-core nervous

Like really nervous.

I am here, risen up
from dust
and I sit in the sand
beneath the mangroves
as fruits fall around me
thudding softly in the
strewn leaves.

We sit here,
where I am,
these fruits
and these insects
and small reptiles,
watching the clouds roll in from the east,
where the ocean sprawls,
lavishing the beach with delicate hands
under the phosphorescent moon.

We all sit here,
the fruits,
insects,
reptiles,
the ocean,
and I-

We watch dense clouds roll in
as distant flashes of light
and gongs of thunder
grow more frequent-

we sit-
we watch-
and we wait-

for the rain.

I’ve been going to this boxing gym and training every week.
And everyone there is fighting something
You can see in their
Eyes
They’re punching their dad
Or they’re punching
Whoever their wife is sleeping with
Or they're punching
Their kids who ignore them
Or they’re punching
Themselves.
Their boss
Their job
Their alcohol problem
Their poverty
And every week we get to fight our problems together
And we’re exploding inside.
What?
You can’t fight your problems?
It’s not only that I can.
I will.
And do.
Because crying alone isn’t good enough
Because all that fire you build up inside you has to go somewhere
Or it’ll burn you alive.
So you throw it into the heavy bag
Or into the guy you’re sparring
Or into the ground you run on.


We’re all fighting something
So what about you?
What are you fighting that’s so ******* important?
No, don’t tell me.
Tell that heavy bag.
He listens.
He listens when your wife doesn’t give a ****
He listens when it doesn’t even matter
Tell these padded mitts.
That one-two punch says more than a twenty-four volume encyclopedia
And speaks more concisely than Churchill or Hemmingway or Ghandi ever did.
Don’t tell me how it feels.
Don’t even try.
Let that punching bag know.
Because you know he’s listening.
And he doesn’t have anything else more important to do.

I imagine you
in the slot canyons of valhalla
among rattlesnakes and bighorns
at twilight

I imagine you
running through knee-deep snowdrifts
with icecicles forming on your beard
under a full moon

I imagine you
living after dying,
and it's so hard
to imagine anything else

But you can't move anymore
and if there is a valhalla
no one ever deserved a place in it
like you did-
but that's a fiction

it's my imagination

it's my cowardice
and my inability to accept that anyone
as alive as you could be dead.

You're a nothing now
and the truth is I imagine you alive
because it is so much better
to be a something than a nothing-

which I think you knew all along.

Sunrise
sun, rise
is because it was because it will be
sunset
sun,

set.

Motion makes me homesick, home makes me motion-sick.

I've seen some **** you wouldn't believe in the past month of my young life
I'm happy.
Makes me want more.
I want Guatemala
I want Nepal
I want the States by trains and motorcycles.
I want to make something tall enough to shake hands with god and strong enough to last to the ends of the earth
Or longer.
I want to give the world back all I've taken from it and all the damage I've done.
And then I want to do more.
I want to start a revolution,
live on a farm,
paint a mural,
play a symphony,
shake hands with the Dalai Lama,
write a book,
and be home in time for dinner.
I want to fold a thousand and one oragami cranes and set them free from space and while they float down to Mauritania and Portugal, to Argentina and Cambodia
I want to wish for a reset button.
Not to use right away, but just in case **** gets out of hand.
So we've got a backup plan.
I want to sit in my old age looking down that darkened tunnel and see my own birth pass before my eyes.
I want to embrace infinity without soreness or shortcomings,
without excuses or refusals
I want to watch the universe collapse back in on itself and be part of everything at once.
I want more than I can handle.

I guess that means I'm young.

liquid light
oozing over
solid sound,
gasping gas.
static singing
focal filaments,
breaking brains.
lightning licks the
devilish dervish,
knighted king, the

anointed anarchist antichrist,

now nowhere.

"Why do you box?"
I asked one of the gang bangers I coached at the gym one day.
"To stay out of trouble, I guess," he replied.
And all of a sudden I got kinda mushy over this kid and realized he really was in a
Hard
Place, trying to make the best of a
Bad
Situation.
And I said,
"Listen to me. Don't ever stop boxing.
School, whatever,
Work, whatever,
But whatever you do,
Keep boxing."
He looked at me kind of funny and
He said "why do you box?"
And I said,
"I've been doing this a while now.
Boxing's fixed me up through some
Serious ****.
So above everything else, above women and money,
Whatever you do,
Do not
Stop
Boxing."

I'll probably never know if boxing
saves him
like it
saved me.

But I do hope it keeps him out of trouble.

The women drink the tapwater-
even the infants are drunk.

The sun is resplendent and warming.
on this bench in front of these shops in a town we’ve never been to.
Italy’s a lot nicer if you’re in a small town.

I’m watching her peel an orange
slowly,
meticulously
she’s removing the skin from the meat.

She reminds me of a boxer wrapping his hands
before a big fight.

The last moment of meditative solitude
before the **** hits the fan.

She’s finishing with the peel now, setting the pieces on the bench next to us
as she splits it in half, an aerosol of juice sprays from the orange
she hands me one half
and begins to eat the other herself.

I peel the segments apart, eating them slowly
and spitting the seeds into the gutter.
she’s smiling,
the juice running down her chin,
and neither of us are speaking.

Later I’m smelling the citrus on her fingers
as she runs them through my hair;
it’s barely long enough to run fingers through,
and I’m thankful for that.

I’m thankful for that orange.
I’m glad I saw that small town,
the one without tourist attractions or snakeoil peddlers
I’m glad my scalp ever knew her citrus fingers.


it came,

I saw,

it went.

It's like being stuck on the same simple simile
something or other about the sunshine and your smile
waking up to a single sheet
bare feet, frozen
black coffee, scalding
Sweeping winds tousling hair just like
  someone.

What to do, what to do,
when even dreams are not a refuge?
What are you, what are you,
another smoking pile of refuse?

What's new with you?
Don't look so confused.

I'm sticking around like dead leaves in gutters
A sudden remembrance about something or other
Waking up to a single light
bare hands, sweaty
open mouth, dry
Pouring rain drenching clothes just like
  somewhere.

What to do, what to do,
when even dreams are not a refuge?
What are you, what are you,
another smoking pile of refuse?

And you haven't got a clue.
Don't be so amused.

Not sure if you’ve ever
heard of
Phineas Gage,
but he was a railroad man somewhere
in Vermont
and one day he accidentally blew a
******* iron rod through his
******* think-box and
here’s the kicker:

He
*******
lived.

Now, this big metal cylinder,
on its flight path,
carved a cavern in Gage’s
cerebrum, more specifically
through his frontal lobe
and when the bleeding finally stopped
and they got his left eye all sewn shut
he told the first person he saw,
probably a loved one crowded around his
filthy hospital bed
to kindly
******* and Die.

He got out of that hospital bed,
eventually,
and when he did, he tried his damndest
to go back to work
but he just couldn’t.

What’s more his friends said he just wasn’t
Gage
any more. His personality
had changed.

He didn’t give a **** about
the sunset anymore.
He liked his coffee black and his pancakes
dry.
Which is strange because beforehand
he didn’t drink any coffee
and he didn’t like pancakes much neither.
He also became quite
the drinker,
which is funny considering he hadn’t had
a drop
of alcohol
in his life
before then.

You see I always thought that
personality
was something you couldn’t
touch.
That it was some grand unifying evidence
of the existence of the human
soul.
But here’s Gage,
who just so happens to take
a pole to the dome
and suddenly he’s just
not
Gage.

So maybe it’s true
that we’re all just
machines
and you can pull a man’s
favorite color
or his taste in music
or his eating habits
out of his head
and set them on a sterile tray
right in front of him.

That makes sense.

But everything in me
still wants to
believe.

I was born tall and thin
and pink
like a ****** steak.
I cried until I could run
and then ran
like a lunatic,
screaming peals of laughter
and destroying
without guilt
as kids do-

and still I was
skinny.

I was skinny in elementary school.
The other kids took to football
and dirt bikes.
I was still pink
like an underripe
tomato.

I grew up tall and thin
in a world for shorter
and fuller people.
With crooked teeth and
glasses.

I was skinny in middle school.
When the other kids started to build muscle
you could've played my ribs
like a xylophone.
You still could.

I grew up tall and thin
and frustrated
like a ****.
I never fit on public busses
or in the little plastic desks
at school.
My feet stuck off the end of my bed.
They still do.
I slouched and hiked my shoulders up
so as not to obstruct others'
line of sight.

I still do.

I was skinny
when I first fell in love.
What she saw in me,
I can't say.
I was tall
and thin
and crooked
but I wanted so badly,
just for once,
to be the right shape
for her.
She was rather short
and had caramel skin.
We made an odd couple.

I grew up tall and thin,
a square peg in a world of round holes.
I'm skinny today-
a pinkish wisp
with a skinny soul
tucked away behind dark sunglasses.

I was born skinny.
And I'll probably die skinny
too,
and make a tall,
thin corpse
for a much
shorter,
wider
casket.

Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne,
whither I call back

After hours, when all
the lights turn out
but mine
I hear birdsongs
as the sun turns on
the sky

Nocturne
whence she calls me
Nocturne
whither I call back
Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne
Best never to look back

After lights out, and all
the streetlight seeps
through sidewalks
I see her there
she turns the sun
back on

Nocturne,
whence she calls me
Nocturne
I reply
Nocturne
I turn guiltily
Sometimes dreams remind

Sometimes dreams remind
Some dreams rewind time
Sometimes dreams rewind
Some dreams rewind time

Nocturne,
as she calls me
slowly I reply
Nocturne,
shill she calls me
Guiltfully I close my eyes

Magpie alights on the eaves
tonguing a bitter wild berry
***** head left,
right,
decides against this spot
and relocates to a new one
out of sight.

Autumn happened today,
again.
Same as every year.
I was under the shade of the porch,
coffee in hand,
and smelt a change in the taste of the wind.
It's been at least ten degrees cooler
and I've donned the first piece of warm clothing
since April.

Magpie perches on the red wooden
fence on my right,
still gently squeezing that berry-
as if testing its ripeness.
Head ***** left,
head ***** right,
magpie flies away.

The leaves will start to turn this week.
Maybe next.
My coffee is lukewarm now,
same as the air.

Magpie sits in the yard
and carefully sets his lunch down,
prods his beak into the soil,
picks it back up,
and buries it for later.
Magpie flies away.

A rush of cold air sweeps through me.

Same as every year.

I rise and walk,
mug in hand,
back inside.

Sit broken
Sulkin'
Softly weepin' wisps which then
Withdraw themselves from all of this
Fickle
And fiendish
You'd have my arms and legs bound tight
You're sulkin'
Broken
Without remorse, without respite
I'm nervous,
Workless
And functionless in all your eyes
You're girlish
And cutesy
You give them eyes to get replies
I've never-
You've never?
You finish thoughts and work your little fingers down my
Spine

-chorus-
Uproot the weeds inside you
Fine
I'm through with being fruitless and
Surprised
By old attempts to change our ways
Besides
We're newly polished anyways
We're newly painted, off the line

The bitter
And nameless
Are working after hours to reface this
And shame it
It sits and spins and multiplies
With frequence
I feel it
I feed a framework filament fire
And hapless
You're hopeless
I'm hoping on another line-
To find out what's been sanctified
Who sacrificed to tranquilize
And backfired by bullshittin'
So now I'm sleepy saunterin'
To see what life's like on the other side

(Chorus)

-breakdown-
If we cared
We could whisper cloudy whiteness where there
Used to be only filth and flies
I'm sick of sentimentalism
Sick of sinking in
I'm feeling fine.

-chorus-
Uproot the weeds inside you
Fine
I'm through with being fruitless and
Surprised
By old attempts to change our ways
Besides-
We're newly puffed up anyways
I've walked the line from Z to A
We're freshly painted hypocrites
At least this time I won't be so surprised.

-fin-

I threw away an old pair of shoes today.
They were a few years old
and the seams had begun to burst
particularly about the sole, there was one hole big enough
to slide a toe through.
It’s winter and I don’t need them anymore
so they became trash.

Someone returned a relic of my past to me recently.
It was a dreamcatcher,
a furnace big enough to fit my most evil of nightmares.
It was a gift from a person I once knew.
I was looking at it one night
for a long time;
I took it from the wall where it had been hanging
and tossed it into a nearby garbage can.

I can handle my nightmares on my own now.

I’m shaking off the weights of the things I don’t need
because,
if there’s a lesson I’ve learned in my adulthood,
it is to travel often
and to travel light.

Plain and simple, I didn’t need those old shoes.
I have leather boots.
They’re warm and waterproof and will never get holes in them.

They were as good as dead weight-

so I let them go.

Sometimes,
in spite of every moral,
healthful,
or social scruple I may have,
I crave the taste of
monosodium glutamate,
of fried red meat,
of watered-down grocery store pilsner.

Sometimes I even sit,
a cheap beer in one had,
an even cheaper cheeseburger in the other,
and watch snowflakes drift on the wind
out my window,
with no shame, no guilt,
no thoughts even.
Just cheap beer, fast food,
and my humanity.

Don't breathe long and slow-
don't be carried downstream by the current
of the universe-
Fight!
Thrash and writhe and wriggle with all your might.
And of zen, well...

**** zen!
We are alive that we can go against
that mighty current-
for a while.
Don't waste your time in stillness!
Don't accept!
Be loud and fast, and fly in your own direction.

There will be time to be still,
there will be time to accept,
there will be time to dissolve into homogeneity,
more than enough time.

Don't squander the opportunity
to fight,
to resist,

to live.

A figment of fictition
So persistent in perdition
Little distant,
Little hat trick
Lay her down upon my mattress

I spit hot glue
whether or not I ought to
It's never thought through,
never bought new
I never sought another off-tune

Sound
I'm perfectly happy with my own.
And life's an acquired taste (bittersweet trainwreck)
Just like a whiskey flavored sno-cone
So just

Relax.
Take your bags off and lean back
Discheveled chivalry,
Burning bush,
Uttered simile
Muttered quickly
In a sea of young blood and old trees

Just try and make a meek response,
recompose your shattered sconce
Redirect it all deliberately
with my newfound friend tenacity
I report a list of casualties
after a hurricane of history

Recurring dreams are haunting me
Face-to-face with Mephistopheles
Which I ponder in all honesty.
Should I fear the devil within,
even if I don't believe in him
or is it enough
that he believes in me?

When the sun rises over the mountains,
the air is still cool,
                   meaning that by the end of the day,
                                          when the sun has crossed
                         the main ridge and gives light to
                                    the other side the air is hot
                                                             ­    and dry.
                   This means that trees growing on the
                                         northeast face of any given
                         mountains flourish, while the southwest face
                                                        is generally left barren-

              there are, however, always a few brave
                                    tufts of foliage
                         who dare to challenge the
                                                       infernal heat
                                        and survive.

                                                       ­                                      so too,
                                                            ­                        with people.

Inhale-
Exhale.

A smoke signal plumes from my defiant lips
Shivering in the cold
And rises into the atmospheric light of the city
It was never meant to be an SOS
It was intended to say
"Save yourselves"
But as far as I can see it has fallen entirely upon deaf ears
As just one voice in a confluence of voices-
A river of smoke signals climbing steadily into the smoggy air
Like prayers
To a god we know we don't believe in.

Inhale---------------------

Exhale.

Save yourselves
And it twists and bends and floats away
To meet the others
All screaming some collective emotion that will be left otherwise unexpressed;
And it is probably better that way.

When I was young,
and knew nothing of death,
I remember looking from my bedroom window
into the branches of the cherry tree on the opposite side
and seeing a nest full of blue eggs,
still ripening.

I watched it all summer,
each day checking to see if the
new birds had come fully into
life.
One day, playing in the back yard,
I found their discarded shells lying on the ground,
now useless.
I remember the feeling of numinous awe
as I inspected them, knowing the little birds
were elsewhere now.
It was so simple, so effortless,
but so penetrating.

And now I have seen death
by car accidents, on nameless roads
by cancer, in hospital beds
by violence, in supermarket parking lots.
quick death and slow death
painful and painless
with grace
and without.
And now I feel fearful.
Not for myself,
but a simple, effortless
penetrating feeling.

Such is the cycle of life,
whether I am present
to watch its digression,

or not.

Forty seven nights
Spent sleepless
Or wasted, shitfaceded
Stumbling I'm aimless

And fear
Stabs at my mind
Porcupine hides
And bee stings
Wasted passionate ambition
An ad for lost tenacity

Cruel fate
Just world
Full court
Swine and pearls

Six months
Of restless days
Assurance didn't ever run
It sat and washed away

And my hopes burn
like turpentine
In a fire-breather's lungs
Singed ****** hair
And scorch marks
On the surface of my tongue

Forty seven nights
And just as many days
Youth never tried to run
Just sat and washed away

Youthful love,
stupid love
Happy gluttony
Waste of time,
In my mind
Says hateful heartless me

How could you have ever called what we had love?
When we communicated through text
And over phone lines
Phone lines that stretched across
Boundless expanses of desert
A string
Three states long
With a tin can on either end.

So I made you feel something.
Okay.
Well let's be honest,
Love
Is not an emotion.
Love is not a mood you can be in
(Although you certainly made it seem that way).
Love is lying naked
Trapped in one another's embrace
And shutting out all the noise.

Don't tell me you loved me.
Don't tell me that's what you call whatever that was.

What it was was sickness
Manifested in two teenagers
Saying "**** the world,
I just want you."

It was just teenagers being teenagers
Loners being sick
Together.

Do not confuse,
You made me feel worlds better
But don't call it love
'Cause love is not an emotion.
Love is souls dancing
And the space between two bodies
Touching
Don't even for a second tell me that's what you think that was.
Because it couldn't have been.

I didn't fall out of love.
I figured out what love wasn't.

The clock reads three A.M.
And you are listening to radio static
And you are picking feathers from your naked pillow
In the light of a nightlamp you kept near your bedside as a child
To keep the gorillas in your closet from eating you
Or whatever it is gorillas do with small children from the western world

And Somewhere in a country overseas,
A man is standing vigilantly on a beach
Waiting for the small mail boat from his home country
(which just so happens to be the same as your home country)
He is waiting to get any kind of word from the western world

Are you still out there, western world?

The childhood memories collecting dust on your shelves
and faint sirens soon lull you into a sleep that is barely more than a deep thought
where you dream of a girl with pineapple hair and an intoxicating aroma
And you think to yourself
Who still gives a **** about the western world?
And   then you kiss her lips and remember why YOU give a **** about anything in the

Western world

Is anyone out there, western world?

Anyone out there practicing western medicine?
Eating at some massive fast food chain that serves the parts of the pig you can't even name without vomiting?
Sitting on a couch made of the skin of an animal who your ancestors relied on to survive?
Buying jewelry for a member of the opposite *** whom you met no less than three weeks ago?

And in your light, restless dreams
you smell the pineapple girl's tranquilizing neck and you think
Is this happening anywhere else in the western

World?

Are people asking themselves questions they already know the answers to
And picking feathers from naked pillows at three o clock in the ******* morning while the sirens and radio static blare on
Because they're too proud to answer the questions that they know the answers to?
Is there anyone else confused in this vast low-budget carnival that is
the Western world?

And the answer is yes
This is happening everywhere
In this
Western
World.

Every morning I must slay a mighty rusted dragon. His jaws gape as he waits for me. I climb his belly slowly, but persistently. When I reach his mouth I throw myself in. I burst from his stomach and slide down his back and he lies with his wounds and waits for tomorrow. I will slay him again today. These dragons are everywhere, waiting to be destroyed every morning by commuters and diabetics and dialysis patients. We must grit our teeth as the needle pierces the skin or as the engine starts again. We take that bitter pill and emerge victorious. But to what end? The dragon will be waiting the following morning as he always has, as he always will. It is the curse of the modern man. Each day we will slay this dragon until one of us is too weak to fight.

But I know, too, that this dragon is necessary. He is the grain of salt in my morning that seasons the bike ride down his back. I have learned to enjoy riding through the rusted iron bridge that is his throat, and yes, even the climb I must endure to reach it. Each day I must slay this dragon. I must. It is for me that he exists, not the other way around. And I will slay him each day until I am struck by an automobile or die of a blood disease.

So when I rise tomorrow, I will look him in the eye and he will wink. And I’ll know that he is not just a hill capped with a rusted iron bridge. He is the plight of modern men. He is the eternal struggle that must be, else life would be tedium. and we need each other, him and I.

When I wake, I will rise and slay him again.

And again.

And again.

to be a stone worn smooth in the bed of a river rushing to parts unknown, save for the banks and bits of cattail being dragged downstream by a million hungry hands, broken up into the smallest constituent parts by a million groping mouths and spit back out into mother ocean's wide accepting embrace and stirred into a stew of bones and various creatures picking them clean, many of which know not the existence of anything above the surface save for warmth and light, like the embryo turning fetus which also swims in a sea of nourishment, also cradled in mother ocean's loving arms, also perfectly content to feel the light of the outside from a distance until, in time, when the descendants of the same coalition of cells that once made up the body of that fetus breaks back down to atoms, flesh feeding new cattails and a million tenacious sets of teeth, slowly washes back into a rushing river where I sit,
a stone worn smooth,

                                                        ­                       watching it all.

Imagine meeting
Someone
Who has never met anyone
Before
Who has never seen the stars
Or had a conversation
Or walked through the park on a day like today
Who has never listened to music
Or eaten pumpkin pie
(Or anything for that matter)
Or loved
Or painted
Or played
Or laughed
Or sighed and said that it's getting late.
Who has never prayed
Or written
Or read.
With no tattoos
Or scars
(Inside or out)
Who is healthy
And surrounded by people committed to their
Well-being.
Someone without clothes
(Or any possessions)
Without a moat and a drawbridge.
An open book full of blank, white paper.
Imagine meeting
Someone
New.

I live in a city of salty people.
We are all
at times
mean
crass
goatish
people. Like grains of salt
in a salty sea-
-or a salty lake.
but, we are not ever
boring.
we may be salty
but we are doubtlessly very flavorful.
we have more personality
and *****
and character
per square inch
than most of the cities in the world.
most all the cities I have been to, anyway.

anyway.

I am a salty *******
at times
and I have discovered that I
need
a grain of salt in my life.
cold mornings.
a shot of whiskey.
Something to push back
against.
For fighting fake conflict is just
flailing.
I’m trying to tread this
salty
water and keep oxygen in my lungs
just like all the other mouth-breathing saps in this salty pond
pushing each other down to get a breath of fresh ozone and carbon monoxide
and I guess that means I’m fighting
for something.

Silent street
punctuated by a single stag
stalk-still
against the asphalt all around
ten points
facing up at the firmament
fixed frame
the steam on easy breath
pools, puddles.

Noble beast-

neither needs nor heeds my blessings.

I have been aboard this vessel for
Fifty months
Nine days
Ten hours
And some value of minutes
Which is unknown to me.
I am
Lost
At
sea.
For a while it was bearable.
I have enough water,
Books,
And *** to sustain me.
But now all I wish is to see a pair of sails
On the horizon.

I have nothing left
But to wander the seas
And find whatever is there
For me.

Days pass.
I have sympathized with the stars;
For it seems to me that they are also
Sailors
Lost at sea;
Traveling towards their own fate
In directions
Unbeknownst to me.

At night I look up
When the sky is clear
And greet them,
I wish them strong winds.
I wonder if they have looked down on me.
I have confessed all my sins to them
For they are all I have.

The stars and I.

And we sail the same sea
But we will never meet
For we are infinitely far.
This is our curse.

At times I have fallen asleep on deck
Beneath them
In my hammock
As the sea
Rocks me
And sings songs,
Songs of ports and
Sails
On horizons.

It was on the morning following such a night
That I arose
And at long last
Saw
With my own eyes
A sail in the distance
And I maneuvered so fast as my small craft would allow
To be near to him
And as I came closer
I looked with my dusty spyglass
And my heart dropped from my chest
For he flew a black flag
Which bore upon it a skull.
I am writing this now as they approach
For I know I cannot evade them
Nor outgun them.
I am writing this because I now know my fate:
To die by their hands.

I am horrified,
But there is
One thing that will give me peace:
That I may
Finally
Sail
Among the stars.

A steamy trail of particulate vapor issues from her lips
tracing the outline of her silhouette and rising
up,
up,
it diffuses into nothingness

Don’t listen to what your parents or teachers tell you, kids-

smoke is very ****.

she exhales again

slithers languidly through the still air
stretching for something-
rolls across my coffee table
like dunes in fast-forward
drips off the edges-

-gone.

She puffs a thick ring at me
it crosses through the void space toward me;
I reach out to touch it- to grasp it
and it dissipates;
she grins-

such teasing.

Smoke is-
and
is not-
it traces the airflow-
the negative space
like a jungle cat pretending to be
the light between the leaves

she knows this
and she can see that I know she does

Smoke
is why I am so captivated
So fascinated
so mesmerized
so transfixed
by her
and in general-

by women.

I don’t feel very good
She says and she looks at me with those big doleful eyes and
I say
Oh yeah? What are your symptoms?
And she says I feel far away from you even when you’re next to me
And I say me too
And I’m listening to the staticky scratch of the needle at the end of the record thinking about how far from me I’ve been
And how could I have possibly been close to her when I was so distant
From the present tense
I’m tense in the present tense
And I’m sleepy because in the conditional tense I can do what I want
I want to sleep
And dream about anywhere but the present tense and my single bed with its yellow-tan sheets
And that record’s still skipping and has yet to be flipped and I’m
flipping
but externally I’m ice water
crackling on my wobbly coffee table singing me to sleep so I can dream about something else again
something like meaningless ***
because meaningless *** feels good
in the present tense
and I’m present tense
I’m present tense and future tense and conditionally tense and
I just can’t bring myself to flip that record
Because I lost the tracklist
And I don’t know the lyrics
And what if it’s worse than the first side
So maybe I’ll just listen to it skip
Until the skipping

Puts me



To sleep





Again

Gimme the dregs
the sludge
at the bottom of the coffee ***
in a twelve-ounce paper cup
Give me snowmelt
Give me the bile in the belly of the earth
Give me good, clean american dirt
and half-remembered dreams
and I'll show you what it means
to live honestly.

Gimme the sun
up on high
on the other side of nightfall
to tighten the bags under my eyes
Give me dandelions
Give me a candle for warmth and light
Give me the mist in the sky
and a spoonful of rice
and I'll show you what it feels like
to move a molehill.

It’s not a question of
who
but a question of
where
I am.

I am the median between the street and the sidewalk
I am the threshold of every waiting room
I am the space between spaces
I am shadows looming
and fumes pooling above puddles
of spilt kerosene

neither seen
nor heard,
but felt
in the vignette of a dated photograph
the border between
fine
penciled lines

I am the mist after rain
I am scars
and streaks where tears have stained the shells
of crustacean people
I am crushing hangovers
and embers glowing

Who am I?

I am the
    spaces
       between
spaces

Stairwells and parking lots
unmarked graves
        condensation on a whispered word
     floating up into
     frigid twilight

          under an off-white
half-
                               moon.

That's the thing about
individuality.
If you're doing it right,
it's terribly lonely.

Did you hear that
so-and-so
was caught on film ******* into a bucket?
did you see
so-and-so's new
music video?
Have you
seen
those new
Nikes?
Did you hear
that child star
admitted
to doing
drugs?
Oh my god, I love this song it's on the radio all the time!
And the chorus line goes something like
"Up in the club, getting drunk having fun. Spending money like I don't care. All the ******* love me. This is what you want. This is where everyone wants to be. This is the definition if fun"

Is that really the absolute best that life has to offer?
They **** well write about it like it is.
And all the distracted people fall for it.
We humans are
so
good at distracting ourselves from anything of any importance.
Men no longer hunt-
they lift weights
and Women practically objectify themselves.
Art is dead.
Earth is dying.
And the people are perfectly happy
with buying things.
They spend their lives
seeking
sensation
and
feeling
nothing.

The wind is always blowing here.
It rushes down out of the canyon
to the east
like a cavalcade of rhinoceroses.
The cyclists
struggle against it
the pedestrians
have to lean into it
the motorists
spend two dollars and ninety cents extra
each time they gas up
to compensate for it.
The trees on the eastern edge of the cemetery
are bowed-
to the west-
and their leaves don’t fall
they’re ejected
like screaming pilots from flaming cockpits
at wonky angles
until they crash into the grave markers below them.
And the headstones are all weathered
prematurely,
names and dates and histories
erased

while below,
wrinkled shells dressed in sunday suits
sit in metal boxes
pretending
that some shred of them
will last forever.

Madeline had visions of you falling down the stairs this afternoon. She was sipping her coffee and reading a scrap of paper that had materialized on her table from some article about a meteor somewhere and it hit her like a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks.

Doesn't really matter which.

She gasped back into the present and fell out of her chair spilling the tar-black grog she had been pawing at to the oaken hardwood and sat staring at her hands there for a minute or more.

They were pink against the tan-ish floor.

Pushing against it she regained her footing and reached for the home phone her friends chided her for owning and called me crying you won't believe what I just saw I can't believe what I just saw I think we need to call her do you think she's alright?

I had just gotten off my flight.

I don't know I said I don't know who you mean where are you are you alright I just got back into town I was going to grab my bags and catch a taxi do you need me to pick you up

She finally noticed the fallen cup.

Catching her breath he slowed her pace and started to stammer how she didn't know it didn't matter never mind I need to go and make a call I'll let you know when I get out.

I still had no idea what she was talking about.

She hung up the phone and placed another call after a half hour no six hours no six weeks of ringing someone picked up the line she had dialed and she wept and laughed and asked if everything was okay and if she needed to go and if so how far she was a primed cartridge in a loaded gun

Everything was silent and the room spun

A voice replied something inaudible and Madeline laughed and cried not cried and laughed and wondered how she could have been so rash to believe a daydream like this

She rose and gathered all her bits

And together they walked her down the hall from her sun room to the kitchen down the stairwell-

And she fell.

And for two point five one two three seconds everything stood still but her and the world stopped turning she couldn't hear her own gasp or whether she screamed or laughed or cried she just hung in the balance she hung from gods fingers she hung above a pool of sharks and a pit of lava and everything she had never done she fell far and fast and hit the ground

An no one knows whether that made a sound.

The poetry’s gone to **** lately.
Mostly I mean there isn’t much,
but what there is isn’t that good.
Maybe, *******, life’s just
not awful these days.

Maybe my eye for the magic in the monotony’s just gotten
lazy.

I feel too good to even resent whatever it is
making me limp-dicked.

“coward,” I think.
“******* coward.”

And in a minute,
the coward I am,
I’ll probably set this page down,
unfinished
walk to the television,
turn it on
and submit
like a coward

like a corpse
belly-up
under a sky of infinitely small pixels
flashing on
and off
on
and off.

Everything I write is letters.
Letters to my future self,
my past self
my conscious mind from my unconscious mind
letters to dead friends
letters to living friends I can’t speak aloud to
letters to god
letters to everyone all at once
letters to you.

Everything I write is letters

ell
ee
tee
tee
ee
arr
ess

A book is made of letters the same way a body is made of atoms
letters make words
like atoms make molecules
and molecules make cells make tissues make organs make bodies

and then fire breaks us back down to atoms
to ashen dust

So try to see the individual letters
because that’s all we ever were,
anyway
bodies built of grains of sand

books built of letters.

Here I sit.
Clutching this ***** little transfer slip
As the darkness sips the light
and the sky's absorbed by dimness
I ponder in the nightlight
As my self-knowledge reels,
A database of feelings
but which holds the most appeal?
A choice of voice
with little indignations
of different vocabulary
stopped by writer's block syndrome
Cork a drain
Unplugged and let the hounds run
After the *******
After pilfering caskets
Who know their own fear like a monkey knows these branches
snap
Trip wires over wiretaps
Who's the fool now?
and whose shoes must you fill?
When the working dogs debunk the formerly favored gods
and ham sandwiches for the ill
Except those who prefer vegetation to the pleasure loaf
Expressing superficial favorites came down a bit
from last year
After hipsterism destroyed all previous conception
of what "cool" is and does
So soak another moniker
'til the loathing and the faithless
destroy those of us with names
and replace a kid with numbers
Can you reconcile that?
Or count lies 'til they pass as facts?
In politics
Deprived of all that whatchacallit
Respond a lofty little miss
who won't take bribes or bacon bits
who's tripping all the time
and uses fresh air for narcotics
I see her
The same albeit as she spies me
I ask her as a comrade
What in confidence she accumulates
As little life and dictators
would sell me but in reverse
A pause
She responds,
but does so gently
And in a softer tone than she uses with the game-players
Four words one chooses not to forget,
"baby, beware of naysayers"

In fever dreams
The city sleeps
and wakes with a dose of DMT
Daytripping inconclusively
Is yellow to you as it is to me?
For a people of productivity
surely feel no joy.

I am riding through the old-time suburbs.
The city of salt pillars
I pass a bike or three
A jeep
A van with a six-inch lift and chipped orange paint
I round a corner
And suddenly all is quiet
Except for the squeaking of my old bicycle chain.
And I ex-
Hale

If you were here you would ask me why I sighed
And I would reply
"It's not a sigh, I just forgot to breathe"

I just forgot to breathe.

And I'm breathing now
My shoulders are at ease
And my bike is squeaking.
I wonder how often pockets of silence bubble up in the city
For a moment-
In this one spot-
It is still-
And then a car drives by and we resume.
I found myself in a pocket of silence in the center of a beehive this afternoon
And I sighed
Because the silence made me realize that I was holding my breath
So I exhaled
And relaxed

And then a car drove by
And we resumed.