I feel mean and nasty.
I cuss out everyone I talk to behind their backs, saying
                                  'That *******!'
Or,
      'What a *****!'

For no reason but that the caffeine wears me thin.

My only child-friend is Bubba the dog, who gives me those eyes,
      'I've never tried watermelon  before, please Jilly can I try it!?'

And, of course I say yes.

Dogs love you even when their food comes late.

He's a pit bull. I feel someone of importance when I walk down the street with him, you know,
       'Move it, coming through with my friend the tan pitbull with the sad eyes! We don't have all day! We have to eat watermelon!'

He lays in the sun and I think of things.

'Why is he afraid of water?

Why does he step so daintily over obstructions in his path?

What does he really think of those
cats he chases...does he want them to sit down and eat watermelon with us?'

I want someone to eat watermelon with us.

Danny is at work, and the sun is high in the powder blue backdrop it calls home.

We want a watermelon friend.

The bright green leaves picked at by tiny fingers
and your mother taking your boyfriend
red blood
it must have turned from her shirt to your eyes
the night you found them drunk.

Now, it is 30 years later,
those same eyes focused on mine,
Shouting at you in the parking lot of the hospital
to take your badge and burn it
'You aren't my social worker.'

Playing with my life as she did yours.
Me, learning.

How we crawl into the crevices of a mind, crouching in wait
to find a dent
a scratch to pick apart
and send screaming into the light.

We only want the best.
Though, is it for us, or for them?
We never know.

Or do we?

At night, I think of  how we are the same
Twenty-four years apart,
still jumping from man to man like dragonflies,
our colorful wings, torn and glistening.

I found mine, but lose his bright orange youth nightly.
And love is never further away than the next place we look,
but always at just the tip of our tongues,
if we use them right.

I remember at twelve,
practicing break-ups in the bathroom every night.

'I'm sorry, I know you love me, but I have other commitments.'

You were the one with the damage, and it crept over me
a tarp over a clear blue pool on a winter afternoon.
Dead leaves crowding the corners,
tiny bee carcasses: my insecurities piling over the top.

'I'm just not good enough, I must do something about this weight.'

All of your ways boiling over into mine.

The morning I got my first period, you laughed with my sister at my excitement, instead of leaping for joy, and I watched the two of you giggle, my cheeks growing red with anger and shame.

'Aren't I now a woman?'
'Aren't I now yours?'

You always pointed at the corners when I cleaned:
'Do You see that dust? It isn't enough...it's just not enough.'

I've had enough, mother.

The wind blows smoothly into the arms you gave me.
As I write, I am met with a penetrating silence.

This is enough.
It has to be.

Its about noon on Wednesday
UCLA had a shooting

Fox news reports
that the kids are still
trapped in the classrooms
waiting

Now that it is contained,
the excitement has died down
from our side,

but the kids there will always be

The guy in the science building that heard the doorknob wiggle as bullets wailed in the distance.
The girl that peed herself because she was afraid she wouldn't make it to her sister's Quincinera.
The teacher who never thought he'd see the day.

We're left with our hands up,

'Is this it?'

Is this what we're left with?

A man, full in his head,
bored at his hands

and a gun?

'Is this it?'

and two sets of parents, who won't see their children grow to be the ones who walked at graduation.

'Is this it?'

35 people in a row
and 2 that go where no one knows
upon a beach of golden sands
with elderly grandmas holding hands

and giant birds
and ferocious sharks
and dogs that leave their golden marks

in vicious depths
dead children play
never to see
another day

and I with you at the very top
floating 'til we never stop
opening eyes to look at stars
forgetting all the mangy cars

and the bars
and the bars

Thinking of the time they did coke in my apartment,
and they suddenly realized
I was beautiful

I would have been before, too,
but you were always worried about your tutor
and the white sludge
dripping down the back of your throat
tap tap tapping
on your brain, that couldn't take it anymore, but did.

Now, you live with a woman who works with children
they hear the tap tap tapping
on their brain
and they would have been beautiful, anyway.

You are somewhere with no answers to questions,

no weeping
no laughter

and the tap tap tapping on your brain.

You are old, and you cannot see the sky.

a dog barks to start a fight with bubba
and he gets
mean like an ant who's
sugars' been stolen and I tell him
             that's an ugly dog
when ugly people populate the planet, I get mad,
but I don't bite their heads off.
                                        He got really calm after that
and I waved at a gardener
as if to say,
                   'It's okay,
                                   it won't happen again.'

I slept with Danny last night. He doesn't know how good he is,
he thinks he has to learn, but I look at him on top of me
and how his **** sticks straight up, how it hasn't been masturbated into submission
and I think, man
I need to learn.

It's Friday night,
a still blue dark eyed sky
a band plays

It's years removed from the time I wrote about
the bells and how they swing
in the tower to my left
I still hear them
how they cling cling BANG
and I am with you
and I am alone
                          tomorrow is coming
and in two years I'll be here with the bells

cling cling BOOM

and there will be a woman or a man
sipping on coffee
or speaking
                    softly,    and the bells
                                                        
cl­ing cling BANG

I walked into a sandwich shop with a woman who believed in meditation and growling at the dirt in the desert. We saw a well dressed black man and we were 5,280 miles away from him, but he had a nice suit, so I said so.

In these hours
I look at your face  
I think
We two, separated, so long.

You with your drugs and ***, miniscule friends.
Celebrating a pale youth down bright corridors.
Me stagnating inside a corner or a cabinet of a deep red mind.
Brushing away cobwebs for years,
finally, to make room for you.

When we met again,
On the beach
Or on a ***** sidewalk
Or in the basement
Or with you beside me

With patiently thick fingers
Me screaming
**** me, **** me

It wasn't enough that time to ease the physical pain.
Years of ******* standing slouching smoking,

The complete erasure of my past coming in waves and then, suddenly,
Creeping back into the dark next to the spiders:

A man here, taking me for granted,
A dress with a tear near the knee,
An empty space
A mother placing her daughter tightly away in a large granite box a top a musty gray shelf and waiting outside with the key.

And me inside
And me inside

And the music, a century of loneliness and terror
others and their pain and my own

It all crashed down yesterday

Aha!
         I've got you now!

In the wasteland of my mind
an idea like a tumbleweed
interrupts the landscape.

space folds around its pointed form

time scatters like mice before its untethered gait

as it makes its way
to the bright center of the barren mound it was born to,
leaving no stretch of its path unchanged,
intruding upon the atmosphere's stubborn scarcity
                  with the fullness of a growl
darting from the mouth of a shapeless traveler
forced upon the world through birth.

Howling with the bittersweet memory of the womb, calling out for its home in the stars.

Reaching the mound
it lights up with the flame of intention
and seizing its grasp on action,
finds its way to the mouth

and in telling you how I love you

       the silence swallows it whole

                  when you don't say a thing.

I woke up to screams from a stolen razor.    Where is it?   It was a loud scream.          The end comes swiftly, anyway,
and, if there are no razors around, it comes even faster.                        
 
At the top of the mountain, the anger flows to the valley, and there is no scream.                                  
In the valley, we wait.                
There is a pull from a cigarette.                               
Small talk that is not small talk.                                        
A man wheezes   
A woman wonders where she'll go tomorrow                                          
it comes out as a laugh
                  and lightly in the background plays a song that can only be called the disease of the 80's.                                       
 
We didn't need another.                                     

But, thank you.

Any Patriots welcome interrogation manipulation coerce this patient showing errors of my ways challenging thinking need a reboot? Write it backwards a queen asleep in the storm of God's prayers a list to the mother crucified to their delight.

I fight.

Parental ****
Advisory vague
Plague

Use my vision see only derision personal shadow devalued
Worlds shadow that binds to grey vanity in the words they pray
Hard headed we're right moving again feeding that bread
That heaven sent
Fire earth we start again
Fear no man I heard one say
Sufficient
Know yourself
Question on a soul level stand for no shovels
Doctors who probe and answer my yes' nos' emptiness grows on this plane we call home. JOB.

The living breathe every day in my stride I speak I pray the word my home not the bombs they throw. My body my own not the pills they grow. This patient knows and this jezebel crows that she follows the word I heard

no, it's deep in the soul

Hers dark and sold, forgiveness on the day the droning drops
                                               drops
Away

In my mind the play speak on your strength let your regret pass away let the beast decay that you made

In my loneliness
Weeping
Crying to the beating
All around the
World feeling
The home we're receiving.

Charming clever old soul...removing wisdom from those who seek hail mary hail Mary,a presence, knowledge replacing misery in cavernous...peeks royalty in myth and death, to requiem lost those honest pets, trunking ships and warheads eating and consuming course, blood thick tempting toward destruction.

Beautiful carnal sacred soul...you mock her love for salvation, red lips hands shaking a priestess laid bare...sinners, saints in garden deep and devil wakes....royal blood meek heart of Eros.

Spirited angelic ethereal souls...stare into pools where Narcissus prayed, Brutus cleaved, Daniel betrayed, disarming kings, cut off by fates, Jesus, Mary and his flame.

Black Curly Full
      Mother's Violin
as I rushed to the door
                       there she was
Can I not see motherhood for myself?  

A smile rushing to my face, and again I was 17 years old, his over mine. My mother asking for my face to smell.
      What did you smell mother?
black straight full as I left again for the war, there she was...Mother I can see the war in these needles that created your doll clothes.

Nothing but Something

Black straight full
       Mother's Violin
as you cry, slamming the door
                           there she was
Can I not see motherhood for myself?

And again I was 13, a smile crying over my face as his lashed at mine. Father have you seen the war in the needles that create their mothers clothes?

Nothing out of Something

Black wavy full
      His Violin
as I rushed toward the the door
                          there he was
Can you not see fatherhood for itself?

a grin washing over your face...now 27 not yours. Not mine? Father can you see the bruises where they left your child to die?

Nothing

Blonde coarse shiny
       My Violin
as I left for the first time
                     there she was

a home this time but not my own..and again I was four, a blank stare leaping over my face, as hers bore through mine

Something

Black coarse full
      My Violin

As I saw the man beside my bed

teeth baring jaws of steel, mine baring it...27 in january and you are a dead soul

Can you see the births you stopped?

    taken from the planet
    given no home

Destroyed
             Your God cries out to no man.  

My heart cries out to a child universes created, taking time to cry.

Everything

Cut down the borders
                             Of your
Mind
        
          Release the enemy who

Resides
                                                  Op­en

Waters bonded                      Free

       Truth in love                    Flickers

Free

       Televisions on and buzzing
Now                 on to
                  Souls Crushing
                                                  Mental­
      Bonds         direct
                                                  Heaven
I­nside
                will correct their jibes

Come to those who know your

                                                 Name

And to those who hate their game.

I sit here again
with a beer and a cigarette
communing with a lost soul
my own?
    someone else's?
I read scripture and the
words dance around me
a thousand flights of fancy
on the page
my incense burning
this pure incense burning
this pure understanding
of the cruel nature
of humanity
of friends, heroes, lovers
I write it all down
try to solve it
it stands before me
a picture of my steps
to this point
I have reached the point
of unabashed unregulated
distorted reality
my daily life
the breathing
the eating
the sleeping
it doesn't seem any more real
than this life I live
in my head
or somewhere in my heart
and I long to touch the
part of me that is real
but I am so disconnected

flowers in the winter still grow towards the sun
and such is my soul
leaning leaning
toward the everlasting source
                                                     reality fails me
and lights go dim
and I cause the moon to glow for a light
somewhere in this dark night
                                                  and I can't stop believing in a God that doesn't exist
                      but which pushes further down this tunnel into the hell
of my eternity
and I can't
find simplicity
can't find purity
it's all convoluted
I hate the game
   shifting pulling
begging for release
and somehow I am
an ember in a fire
bent on burning out
forever
and I have a soul
I have a heart
someone acknowledge me in this newspaper grey world
I am flat lining
where will I go after
this life has sloughed off my skin
I know I am endless
and I am bound for a world
where opinion doesn't taint reason
                            and somehow
                            I will be there
                            where the sky meets space
                            I will be there
                                                   somehow.

I stepped into your apartment
I saw you reading
  sipping coffee
I saw you go to the fridge
and muse at its emptiness
I slept with you at night
we dreamed together
        you didn't see me
but I was there
       when I went to leave in the morning
you looked up
         quizzically

solitude marks the height of my contentment
no agreements to make
I don't have to see faces
nods smiles masked aggression
I don't have to act
I don't have to trade facade for facade
with my peers
do I even have peers?

at night, I feel a stillness
so deep, so harsh, so honest
I don't have to live this lie
explain why I'm fine
why everything is fine
because, it's not
nothing's fine

I am a million clashing universes
filled with endless dying stars
and I reach out
to the other universes
and shrink back
  back
          and at night
I fill the stillness
  the stars collapsing
every synapse bending
toward destruction

no want
               no need
                             no crying out for more

at night there is no other
no one to say my name falsely
and when I sleep
the ocean of my subconscious
carries me to sleeping cures
takes me away for years
to great expanses of colorful
living worlds
where I feel
where my emotions are tangible
solid
and
       they keep me company for
a millennia
         I wake to this doll world
where a friend asks
how are you doing
and she's doing it out of obligation
                                                and there's no color
and I have no emotion
and I feel nothing

Life is the waiting room for the exploration of that dream world

and every night
I taste it
I touch it
I breathe in its vibrance
and the only want
is to never wake
to this grey world
to never have to answer

"fine"

again

in the desert
a spider traps a mouse
a woman cries
I feel her hot tears
on my head
they drip drip drip
I look out over my balcony
wondering, why?
what is the point?
a man lives alone with his goldfish
he hasn't seen a woman naked in years
he reads a novel and laughs to himself
I hear his laughter
It crowds my mind
I feel its hands and elbows poke my sides
I walk into work
I walk out
somewhere downtown,
a teenager is trying marijuana for the first time
I feel the warmth
the guilt
I feel endless

the world carries on outside my apartment
fighting
drinking
laughing
sleeping
a girl finds a flower
a man drives to work
a woman eats some green beans
a soldier wonders why he signed up
for this
a fat law maker *******
and me
I sit
and think
sometimes, cry
don't know what else to do
summer breathes hot air down my neck
and somewhere a baby is born
it is cold there
and her father is dead

It's Thursday
If it were Wednesday
It would be the same
again, you are not here
So,
     I think to call someone else
and have regrettable ***
and forget you for a night
but I don't
I'm tired of it
I'll be alone
So,
I think I'll sit by myself
drink
    and talk to the gods
they don't exist
but they are nearer than you

a man runs down the road
exercise brings comfort
but who needs comfort
when you have
beer
cigarettes
and a summer afternoon

It's hard to meet new people
they're so foreign
they do things like wear hats
and play baseball
they listen to bad music
they like crossword puzzles
I don't like to hear them talk
but
      at night
when I get very cold
and sometimes it hurts to breathe
I'd like one of them next to me
or I'd like to hear them talk
anything to make me warm again
I can't have it all
but sometimes
I want it.

It is late,
and the beer drips down my throat
                                                             goes to my head
meets the silence
            tomorrow is too hard to think about
                                                                      but tonight
my youth dances with the alcohol
                                                           they aren't good dancers
but no one is watching
and tomorrow is late

my apartment is empty
except for me and my fat cat
he is good company
but I wish he could talk
I like to wonder what he would say
             got any whiskey?
where's the nearest pool hall?
I haven't seen my woman in
8 years
            and I'm lonely.

Me too, I would say,
lets smoke and drink all night
                            lets conquer
                            these blues.

black coffee
and
the radio
    and I'm still battling
    my demons
shooing them away
        "give me a break, I'm so young"
        I say
They argue amongst themselves
loudly
                                and  come to no decision
black coffee
and
the radio

trickling down the walls
the thick red blood
of a dying thought
drips onto my head
drip
     drip
           drip
all I see is red

at night
the sound shifts
and in the low hum of voices
I hear a silence hiding
a flower growing in concrete
laughter and sadness live
in this place
beacons, shedding light
on darkness
and how the dark
        will break your bones
        and turn your stomach
without the silence

The up side
everyone knows your name

The down side
everyone knows your name

When I dusted off the counter today
I found something that was lost before

Jesus was there by the sink,
sitting down right next to the toaster
he looked at me and asked for a coaster
he and the cherubs were drinking diet soda,
and watching the ants eat my sugar

I asked him three questions
and hear what they are
why are you sitting by the toaster?
why in the hell would you want my coaster?
and
didn't I ask you to leave last summer?

Jesus said he wanted to live in my heart
first the counter
then my heart
what's next Jehova, my first born child?

yes actually he said, before he snorted and growled
I really do want your first born child
would you like a brochure for heaven?
its pretty wild there, and the bread's all unleavened

No thanks
No thanks

cold cement under my feet
contemplating a deep colorful galaxy
humming to myself the tune we love
you are not mine
as the breath within my lungs is not mine
I take you in, and then you are gone
we are worlds apart
a century between us as we embrace
the soft night air is our home
adrift on a sea of doubts
lovers and friends
and at last friends
the universe expands
and you float away from me

I smoke a cigarette
at 11:30 p.m
it is cold
even with your absence
I am alive in a world that is home to you
that is enough

I sit and wonder if it is all
ending and if it is meaningless
and I can't see the reason to even
try and then I hear a voice
echo within me that says
you will see, wait for tomorrow
you will see.

If I ever get a chance to
have the kind of love that sits
on the opposite sides of a bench
like two book ends and smiles
into life into death into the black
I will hold it to myself so closely
careful not to smother it, and
I will make it a part of my core
and it will never grow old

sitting in a coffee shop
a man is grinning while
he stares at his laptop
the light from the screen
reflects off his glasses
and his eyes are great
white orbs and he
smiles and smiles and
all I can think is
that I will never
hear you sing again

sometimes the sky is black as hell
and there is nowhere to go to escape from its infinite void
and sometimes the rain drips down
from its steady black gaze and all is
wet and dank and the ground is
cement keeping feet
hostage and
a deep red pain
steals from you the light that once lived in your soul
and throws the light in the sky
so it will no longer be dark
and sometimes a star is born
but sometimes
                           its not.

So the nature
the dirt of the past
is crushed under
the wave of the future
old relics of freedom
stuck in the sands of time
and an army rises
from the ashes of coffee
and newspaper stories
heroes and nightmares
metallic eyes
arms tied to strings
pulled by those
forever gluttons
in power since
the beginning
however silent
they pull
on their little
dancers
and we forget
our saviors
in this ocean
this new sea
of indifference.

just because
the **** is hanging
in an art gallery
and everyone is saying
ah, look at this ****
it doesn't follow that
the **** is worth looking at
its just very well cared for
expensive
hanging
****

I used to bow my head
and fold my hands
and close my eyes
the rules were very important
                 the game was to play by the rules
to watch your mouth
                       wear shorts under your dress

never lie
                never yell
                        
        in dreams
                             that bearded menace
sat on the Golden skyline
                               and wrote down
what I had done wrong
                 the rules I had broken
and screamed my sinners song
into small ears
    that night, I climbed the staircase,
        I would fly,
                         I had planned to fly.
        every cell lifted me to the top of the
       staircase with the eagerness of the adventure
I got to the top
            stood on the rail
    balanced like a swan
                          and as my young knees bent
to leap to the sky
                             above the black lit dark,
  I heard that law mans
                                    booming dissent
Jillian, don't play God
                                         and I didn't.

shirelles
monday night
alone in a big house
light the candles
another one of my rituals
born one hour,
dead the next
to make room
for other
prayers
postures
pen tips
but the way candles
flicker in the sweet
soul
is not another ritual
warm life
to the tune of golden
notes
swimming through
once bleak
     once empty
once impure
       air
and suddenly, I am baptized
more than I ever was
in that sterile, dead
chlorine
    more than spent hymns
in drafty cathedrals
       so, the sound lives.


my bed would tilt
           at twelve years old
I'd wake
               startled of the
                       psychic death
spread like bodies after
            a paid for war
I'd scream like the cats
              fighting by the window
at my aunts house
               I would huddle with
my childhood
                     hiding from the puberty
that stalked me
like a jungle cat
               the mind reeled with
my spent pulse and
                 at night
                        under shamed
                   covers
                                 bitten fingertips
the white light
           on the street
                              looking on

and when your babies were born
you named them for the stars
but the backyard was all they ever saw
when your mother got the call
the world was obsessed
but when we change the channel
you'll still feel him inside
you'll still feel him

so that summer
we fell in love
all of us and none of us were ever the same
and how the music filled us better than any
meal we had ever eaten
and how the smile of a friend was the
only success we'd ever needed
and how the first kiss was the best
but every one after was as soft or hard as
the love we thought we'd lost when the
lies they told us lowered our eyes
and how I thought I knew it would never end
and how I knew it would
and how the music filled us better
than any God

so that summer
we fell in love
all of us

Oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all things
they cease to shine,
and looking up at frail moon's fade
she lost her way
she lost her way
ever toward an inner light
ever toward  a mundane night
you cannot ask for want of asking
ever toward the soils crashing

oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all your dreams
will lose their rhyme

and so on past
the child at play
and past the girl
on bridal day
an further past
the humming hag
until she reached the grave at last

oh dear, she said
there comes a time
when all things, they cease to shine
and looking up a frail moon's fade
she lost her way
she lost her way

I grieve you
the way I grieve my last cigarette
knowing I'll have another
and another
and another
but I grieve him
the way I grieve the very last
knowing I'll spend eternity
searching for
just
one
drag