Even more so than us
our stomachs are in love
and long after we're asleep
our tummies are still up
gabbing in gurgles
with voices acidic
pronounced with chemicals
that we cannot mimic

I wonder what they talk about
in whisper-burps and gurgle-shouts
Maybe about current events?
Perhaps of snacks and condiments?

But when we wake, they separate
and then must be content, and wait
For the next magic evening
And another night of speaking

So it's up to you and me
to keep them in close proximity
Our love is not just me and you
but between our tummies, too

So let's sleep like spoons
bent together, tight
so our tummies can banter
through every night
and talk about everything
while our lungs breathe each other in

Now my strength is failing
My already tiny muscles screaming
At the weight of your words
As they gnaw and gnash
At the filaments of my fragile world

Now my strength is straining
Shopping bags of poor plastic
Stretched and tearing
Pinking my fingertips
As I hold on for my life

Now my eyes are tearing, bitter
Angry tears
When I am not enough
When I cannot cure your illness
That plagues your angel bones

Now every day is a battle
That I do not want to fight
I just want to be happy
I don’t want to fight this cancer
That eats my failing mind

Now your monopoly on madness
Is being taken over by me
And I cannot contain
The fire that burns my all
When I bleed my words of comfort
And the stains aren’t red at all
But plasma
The empty hollow coat of life
That isn’t enough for you

I wrote you another poem
That was for your birthday
But now I don’t think you want to read it
For it will surely spark tears
In your beautiful, wet eyes
I cannot be a rock always
I cannot just be the wires
Trying to contain a bowl of soup
That liquefies and solidifies
As often as the sun lives and dies
On our earth

I’m trying so hard Katie.
Just please try as hard too.
That’s all I ask of you

On the way to class today
I found a bag of clouds
Bouncing on the fresh-cut grass
Making soft sounds

Sounds that touch your ears like cotton
Sounds we have since long forgotten

As I picked it up
It began to shake
Damp as all and every death
From the rain the clouds make

I ventured then to look inside
“Like Pandora” thought my curious mind
And just as She, I did then find
The contents at once left the bag behind

And soared, now free
Through ****** air
Blotching the blue
With their long grey hair
And cried upon the earth
Missing the ocean, their place of birth

Soon an ocean did arise
Between the earth and the skies
And despite my human cries
The water rose above my eyes
And so I found something that floats
And stole their cage to fashion a boat




And as these children of the sea
Rained and rained eternally
All of their memories
Washed over me

Finally my makeshift boat
Reached my morning class
I wondered where the clouds would go next
But decided not to ask.

The downpour outside rattles
Like a thousand sand-filled flutes
Echoing in the night air
Singing through the storm
And providing the melody forlorn
As the rain giants are born

As I lay and listen
To the symphony of beings
Ancient and always
In their core
Born in storms
As always before
I tuck myself into the noise

And I fight the heat of summer
And its unnatural reign in the dark
With a fan fluttering softly
Next to my heaven of slumber
As the thunder thunders
In even numbers

I ponder ponder ponder
Through my empty mind I wander
Picking scraps up off the floor
Every each one ever fonder
Drifting calmly into my shore
From an ocean dancing evermore

I lay here in the dark
Hearing buzzes in the shadows deep
As I drift into sleep
And forth the dreams creep
From corners of my psyche
In groups, holding tightly
In waves of light and lucidity
Combatting this humidity

And I savor summer nights here
With eyes of smoke
And stomached beer
I sleep in soft movement
As the heat retains its endurance
And warms my dreams
Filled with muffled, happy screams

The oceans are seas of fire
The land is a charred dough
That crackles and breaks
Into tiny flakes
That mingle with burning rain
As waves crash and rise
In fiery tides

And singe the shore
As they have never done before

I stand on the hilltop
In a cloak of embers
Wearing boots of coal
And watch in wonder
As the world burns slow
Wearing clothing caked
With ashy snow

And the northern bombs fall
And troops march in
Civil unrest
Age-old fight to be king
An aged old bomber
With no heart to put in
To this hell of war
To this clash of man
To this devil plan

To this horror




When we awake in our beds
And we open our eyes
And read countless
And countless
Uncountable lines
About burning
And crying
In far off lands

That we pronounce with hesitance
And we act out our penitence
With button clicks and haughty words
And ideals upon ideals
That crumble like cookies
When we miss our own meals

And we watch the world burn
From our fluorescent screens
We smell the decay
But cover it with a spray
Concocted with lies
And “Its-All-Okay”

We are separated by glass
From the poisonous gas
That at others eats away

We trust what we hear
When the suits calm us down
With promises empty
And soothing sound
Their masks have become
A heritage
That we accept
As our parents did
And we let them go on
Spinning their webs of Teflon
Until we are in comfort
And no longer strong

As our brothers and sisters
Of different skin
Burn in the ovens
We stay linked in
And choke on the *****
That we are given
And believe that our kin
Has anything at all
To do with skin
Or what books we read
And lives that we lead
When we eat our dinners
Or go to sleep
Or fast for our gods
That we have created
Our outlets for our convictions
(They satisfy our hunger
To make meaning)

And if they meant anything at all
When they made our world
It wasn’t this.

They did not mean for us to bleed
For their names, as if they need
Our suffering to feel pleasure
-A fatally human measure
They did not mean for us to hate
But to love, and with love make
A world that is a place of light
Not one burning through the night
Like gasoline
This was not the dream

Now is the time to make a fuss
The oceans are burning
Because of us.

There are beetles on my skin
Attacking my bark
With pincers sharp
-trying to get in

And as they cover me
Head to toe in a blanket of living death
They tickle in bitter giggles
At my senses, set ablaze
By their exo-skeletal steps

I do not build a scream
For the sound would die out in between
The sheet of beetles
And my trodden lips

Instead I lie still
Commanding them with my negligence
Fusing with their fear-mongering
They take my shape; I don’t take theirs
I am the alpha insect
The form of their nature
And now I stand
In beetled armor
A figure against the sun
My shadow raining over the undergrowth
Reigning over the under.

In this symbiosis we travel
Across valley and valley
Coleoptera-covered Rand McNally
Covering the earth, showing
The dominance of man
The man the man
He who holds the plan
In the palm of his life-colored hand

I am he
The guardian of land and sea
Infected with a voice-in-hand
Who writes eternity
Whose pen is the land filled with ink of the sea

And with beetles of lead
I harmonize
That between myself
And quaking skies
As the world shakes in its roots
During a spacequake
That bends our atoms like dried glue

But then I am not alone
And as I rest on grass of gold
The heroes step forth, dressed in animals
In a dark, ****** harmony
That is the nature of our home, our Terra
The brute beauty in black void
Swimming through time like a turtle
On which the souls of man rest
On golden grass
Our spherical nest

And our evils are justified
By the good of our pursuit of beauty
Though selfish maybe
Though hellish for he
That swims on land
But drowns as he walks the sea

We are multitudes.

We are Gaia, we are the mother tree
The ****** bliss of humanity
Dark and light, both are we.

Purple on the wall -
An asymmetrical sheet
That hangs limply
Like a teen on the street

And what is more
It is covered at the bottom
With demonic machines
Whose function I’ve not gotten
Quite clear in my mind

But yet I value
What they represent

A sort of adoration
Lives in me
As I consider all these
Confusing boxes
That come in threes
And sometimes fours, too.

And in these dull hours
When time trickles into me
I gaze and gaze with vision rays
At this technology

And I wonder:
Was it not a blunder?
To make machines that amplify
Sound
So that it fills all
Between earth and sky?

Such arrogance
Is not found in a mouse
To make such a screaming score
Emit from its house

And yet I admire
And cherish the noise
That fills the emptiness
Like water in a cracked jug

It seeps out slowly
Just slowly enough
That it waters my flowers
Without drowning me
In auditory atlantis

For that would be death
So far as I understand;
Not a whimper, no
But a marching band.