He is Sicilian, skin tawny the color of
toasted garlic
knobby knuckles but strong palms
steady and smooth and graceful
never wavering as he slowly depresses the plunger with his thumb
pushing two clear drops from the syringe
he ran out of dope so he soaked his old cottons
to **** out the residue
and deposit it in his vein
fist clenches twice and holds
and he dips the needle in
so light
so little
then his fingers shimmer away from his palm
and drop to his side

When I was 13 I took a trip to Alaska
my aunt brought me there and we rode on a boat
along the southern coast and through the fjords
One day we saw a glacier calving across the water
so ***** it looked like a cliff, but when a piece fell away
the ice that it revealed was deeply blue

He'd only traveled in the desert
from Austin to Iraq
but one night here
in Duluth, Minnesota
we lay on the roof and watched the Northern Lights
I told him that they were the color of glaciers

The sidewalk granulated so,
yellow from the streetlight though it's not quite dark

it's difficult to set your feet down normally if you look at them
while you do it
I can't watch my body while I use it, like a dancer
it's easier just to feel

stand in the wind although the shelter is empty
not sure why
I don't ponder my actions while I take them, like a philosopher
it's easier not to think

cigarette burns quickly, the wind pushing it down
before I can pull it
and for awhile I forget about it while I watch it
unraveling ring by ring in bursts
against a sidewalk now blurred with inattention
eyes focus on one plane like a camera

I read that if you look at horizontal stripes with your left eye
and vertical stripes with your right, then you will perceive a grid
our brains lie
and take shortcuts

the heart and the liver work hard no matter what
but they're just along for the ride

I have one tree in my back yard
with deep roots
and few leaves
and from it I have tasted a dozen red and gold crisp apples, still
this is the only one that has kept me past
the first bites
and I will gnaw it down to the seeds
and then I will devour those too

swearing oaths
boiling in the urn AH
WHAT'S THIS BLUE
**** Warwick man dies
crossing highway
his grocery cart
full of
whipped cream cans and cereal boxes
and a tattered baby's quilt

okay I
feel kinda feverish
need Chinese food
pass Chinese food on the way to
the light circle center of the city of the worlds
Greasy hair I have
greasy hair man it's frigid to the touch
and stiffly trapped in the smog wind tunnel I
jumping from bus to bus
from light to light to light city

Bill died on a Saturday, early in the morning.
An old man, alone, but not lonely,
or was it the other way around?

As I put on Molly's dress,
my father wondered aloud how many times Bill had zipped it up for her.
I thought to shudder from having so many dead hands on my back,
but instead I felt warm.
Hands are hands.

you said to me in November of two thousand and six
that I was separated from other women
by the joy in my motions
and my genuine lust, not fettered by guilt
or glazed over with obligation
plus, you toothied up at me,
your ***** is grrrgeous
but in may of two thousand and eight
when we bumped into each other at a concert
you called me Katherine

When the waves roll up
to our feet
standing on the shore
I know I will go with them
Wherever they will lead me
alive or dead won't matter because
once I roll away
I will just be another fish drifting somewhere between the
sand and the cold air
I love you too much
and this place too much
to try to stay

in the bathroom
in the morning
I pack little bottles and brushes into a paper bag
nothing left of me now but my armchair and the hole
that I'll soon kick in the bedroom wall

we'll sit here and listen as it envelops our existence
silently we'll witness the instant come with no resistance
just reminiscing about how it was
how it is how it never will be and how come
letting the sand slip through our hands like an hourglass
our last thoughts of how fast the hours passed
back when time mattered + we shattered every dream we ever had
and then walked on the shards to bleed and understand
my feet never healed. it's a constant reminder that
things fall apart
and that life is defined as
an action that you would have taken differently
if you had only known

like this epiphany of you and me alone

looking into your eyes as they reflect the chaos in the sky
yeah - better late than never
although we would've been great together

I got your text message this morning
at 12:49 AM
as I was barreling down Interstate 90
surrounded by caravans of trucks
who flit up and down the easy hills between Erie and Toledo
like sheet metal moths in the lamplight
I could see, feel, taste nothing
outside of my hulking lepidopteran companions
and the white dashed line I'm pulling in
racing to the sinker at the end
and that's you

read New York Times op-ed
said text messaging takes the care out of conversation, allows people to speak to many others, make open ended plans, find the best possible party, lay, ***
said that our generation does not love itself, the young women and men are just juggling each other, trying not to drop or get dropped
why doesn't anybody care anymore?
texted Sharon
she doesn't get it either

an important object in your
but what do you
what do you do?

I guess I'm just regular
no special what now now my pen works no special can't say I lost all of the what was I what I was aiming for put it through a prodigal massacre with what I did what did I do?

Tonight we never got lost although the way had changed but the black lines raced before the pen's tip could reach them spinning we glazed over the stars and the blue light on the street and just found

What did I do?

I sat for hours on the brown velveteen couch while people faded on and off of it next to me and the cat meowed I sat for days
and realized I hadn't eaten so we put garlic salt in a *** of water and let it sit for about an hour and then we thought and then we went back to the couch

Where did you go?

I saw a picture of you in the inmate list and when we went to your house all that was there were three months of bills and a stray cat hiding in the garage I'm not sure when a live man is better or what exactly the difference is
everybody thinks of the braindead fondly

This whole night
I tried to think of something while I couldn't find what it was what do you do?
What did I do I CAN'T REMEMBER IT ANYMORE but it was all the same fuzz of a full brain roving rambling spilling over sometimes into my body when it found instruments there for an ugly music

WHAT WAS YOUR QUESTION I live like it's an easy thing to do

Three children sit behind a dumpster
outside of the Pier Pizza Parlor
unaware that they are children
Seven years later walking past Bridge Square
a girl remembers

**** we're out of cigarettes
and my mom's fucken car is locked. man.
and joints rolled with single ply toilet paper
burning through precious *** in the seaside woods where Indians
used to die

She, curling hands,
flattens a photograph of three kids in swimsuits and baseball caps
crouched under the rainy eaves of a waterslide
lighting a one hitter and gazing at their tiny dying world
now like a centerfold
it's covered in lubricant sweat and spittle
after too much time under the wrong beds

She sits on this small fountain
wistfully blinking and ******* down the cigarettes she wishes she could lock back up
kneading her dead legs and wondering
if it's better to have a past smudged by erasers
or mottled with bruises

Stumbling my way through a hazy maze
trying to fill up my lazy days.
It turns out that if you're
dropped into a beer vat
you'll sink to the bottom
and fade away.

Flying over whitecaps
and the uncertainty of opaque depths,
suddenly the blue dropped away
and I was speeding through the sterile mud
between the cornstalks, where wheat once grew.
You had said that you knew a place
and we stumbled back through the woods,
falling and thwacking our way through tangles of branches.
When we got to the river, all we found
were junk tires, a tree, and a ******.
Stalking off with a cigarette in my mouth
and one behind my ear,
I found myself back alongside the cornfield
and staring in
I discovered that the green of the corn was as cloudy and evasive
as the blue of the ocean
and guarded as many mysteries,
but they are quiet mysteries
and the pain that they hold
is a quiet pain.

airy though they are,
I can feel the heft of the cigarettes in my pack of Marlboro No. 27's
cigarettes I hold in my lips to think of you

that fall apart now
burning my wrists and remind me
of the night that Jordan dropped a firework from Wisconsin
into the fire pit
bringing angry tears to the eyes of Eric's drunken father
and your friend
a stranger to me
turned to you and told you blindly
that another fire just as bright ignited
between your hands and mine
and not to let go

I wanted to cling to you then
but the world already pushed us apart

I send messages to you now
telling you about my gas grill
and the new varieties of malt liquor that I have discovered up north
(Schlitz?!)

once you told me that you'd like to get married
when we are both old and alone
driven from the places we've tried to call home
and with my Colt 45 and your No. 27 supported loosely in my hands I said
Yes

dropped to your knees in front of me
so drunk you could barely see
and your blind eyes cried
as you told me I'd
be your final chance to be set free

so

cloaked in ***** and a couple Quaaludes as I told you all my thoughts one night
and my shaky plans and my shaking hands seemed more fragile that I thought they might
running up my street with our fleet young feet when you took my hand in yours
and with certainty I could finally see what my God had made my hands for

(CHORUS)
clutching a bottle
empty hearts at full throttle
flying blindfolded down a rollercoaster of love
I've got you by my side, but I'm not sure you're enough

all my friends are gone as I write this song, and I'm not sure they'll be back
they got frightened, got mad, got sick , got sad, didn't want to see me crack
but you stood by me, though I couldn't see if it was because you cared
or because you, too, were alone and so getting out made you too scared

thought I'd gotten away until you found me today
thought I'd gotten away until you found me today

(CHORUS x2)

so I lie by you
and I hold you tight
every night feels like
it's our final night

so I die by you
hope that you die too
in the end my poison's
what I found in you

and a lot of the time i'm frightened and a lot of the time i doubt myself
not because i don't know myself but because i do i know i haven't got much of a place in the world
no one to hold me to what i am what i have been and i'm scared
and when i saw that same fear in your eyes it made me want to love you
but it made me worry too
one of us could be an anchor
and the other a leaky boat
though i'm not sure who is which

at least we'd end up together at the bottom

A forester named Johnny Splinter
could never find work in winter,
but when summer was nigh and the fires were high
he'd make twelve thousand hosing down tinder.

my neighbors still slept
as the zombies crept through town
they awoke undead

mom threw a grenade
the zombie blew up, alas,
blood got in her mouth

gunning down zombies,
my arm was bitten. weeping,
i hacked it clean off

later i saw mom
dead-eyed, moaning, and ******
and slit my lone wrist

nora burned the stairs
zombies piled up beneath her
rotten hands grasping

nora stayed upstairs
after five days of terror
she starved to death there

dad was cleverest
he fled to the Atlantic
to escape by boat

wading through driftwood
he found a russian u-boat
full of gnarled corpses

not dead as they seemed
the kremlin zombies leapt up
and ate my dad's brains