have no heroes.
deceive your children.
teach dogma.
killing is okay if your cowboy hat is white

,smile like a jar full of recycled screws.his
lips are the sound of it being shaken
teeth flashing like rust against glass and tin
the chime (of it) cuts through the room like a textbook dropped behind you
suddenly
he dips his hat and stands there dumbly- smiling, smiling, smiling.


my fists are clenched
your dress is unfurled in a bedroom somewhere else
          your hair is dirtied by curls
i stomp impatiently outside.

it's raining       [way off, in a short story about corrugated roofs]

kortirion breathes still ∆ though it be but in shallow waves pulled down through  uneroded sands / static filtering the gleaming lonley and untouched through its unknowable knowless pores

↗⤴⤵ out.

we sink
like a trade-off of gestures inside a heavy winter
coat,      out of season
standing gawky
and graceful like little dancer, 14 yo
creeping along, cross-legged as a vampiress

they will be
wild-haired in well kept soil.
histories, cleaner than they should be-
still mourning our lost autumnal,
we
skulkfully, drear around corners, peering downwards at that
which we want to scare us back

there might be
          things
just below the top layer
with teeth
we just can't help running our fingers through-
gut, twisting- hoping not to get
that
text
message.
that phone call. we know might come at any time. any minute now. at any hour of the night



//

like years of church functions
rocking back and forth on chair legs-
******* the back against the corner
shoelaces stained by the summertime.
lock limbs in search of abandoned public restrooms
windowlit  and forgotten planter pots

legs shaking inside.. for want of dog teeth
flaking off. white as oxidized lead
beds. graveyards
for
generations of guilt titrating out of the skin hips

    out
of us like sweat
that iso-stains
precipitate.
your
sashimi eyelids_
my
diorama for you.

Taunts me
Into
Unraveling waves

.


I seek
D i s c l o s u re
    inside your

Folding
    Pattern.of
[ wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww]

the back
of your neck
brings grace to the bus window.the
pink

clogged pores of bad conditioner not fully
rinsed out
do it


each turn
. each bump in the road
each heaving breath.teeming with

innocent life
radiating with static energy_like my fingers glowing against my jeans.your eyes ride the
node

of its wave as they search there.not wanting god
or
pity
not wasting a drop of
fluid
starving out the other animals in competition.blessing
the passing scenery with threats of
annihilation

_                    trash.
like the   compost.   bin in the cafeteria of a school i don't go to
               recycling.

it wears you down
smooth.
neat as the unfurrowed brow of its next victim.
mother holds our hands firmly as we cross-
baby takes a tumble in the road-
but baby, bae af, gets up.

violence loves, more explicit than we, in the pause occupied between our
breaths.
less noble but more real. love> embryonic, ****** goth (at last!)
baby drips forthright into pieces, ***-lunged in the afternoon sun from windowlings- useless. head-lolling and good
enough.

we
get up
go out. find new things to define us.

sugar-milk wants to. knows best. gets rest. spoon floating. doves drink.


don't pray.
society is disgusting.
self-preservation has always been vile.
i am filthy with less than these.

and now we are__

Normalcy is the new Punk.
destroy from the inside, baby.

get me somewhere.







/

fall-off-the-bone priestess
born under the pale grunge moon
offering up her (fingernails)
to the bitey flash of a laptop screen leaking into an unlit room
and the infinite bliss that is:
red electrical tape
over the blue indicator light at the tip of the power cord.
and she will **** us.
amen.

I am Dogma.
I am Poison.

I am "Please, Someone, tell me what to do!"

I am Newly Turned Earth.

door  
$40 used on ebay
cleaned it up. made it good

(wore the **** out of that thing)
i found him there,

i fed him my paintings.
lured him out
with my bad poems. he
found friends in the array of ghosts i maintain under my fingernails,
and
in the old wool watchcap kept stuffed down at the bottom of my studio bag.

i fed him in the framingham night
and in the cold foreign springtime.
and we
made
peace-raids at the reservoir.
kept track
of the hours of "stargazing" spent there. while pale gods lay strewn  allover
the hillside
and in the rain
and the snow.
and the overcalculated days where it was too hot.

outside,
we sweated morphine
and ****** to tom waits,
luncheoned on the grass.
i
bore our banner and he reared his
black
buffalo head.
we slunk down into breakfast booths

i had soapy teeth.

he had a gut that burned slow like a trinket-drawer left
unopened for
years.
the ghost in my jacket, he shrinks down and curls up when he
should get big.
-reaches out to the tops of cabinets nobody can reach.
i remember him
my ghost thinks he's funny,
but
drawers get opened.
and ghosts get nervous
and coats get put away.

the shame sits on the belly like the opposite of adequacy. in the yard, shirt open and tanning,  the last few years have done poorly in this respect. down- hill since the incident with the knee
and the subsequent dormancy of the legs that used to go
everywhere.
i think
burning here feels right.

By a lime-green poison dart frog bracelet
Glowing in the black light

☆
against the ugly light of a brand new
day. we
take comfort in the bruises on our
future bellies
.
my youthquake comes to a theater near
you  
in whitebreakers of overeducated hooves blustering forward without pleasure

and.in recycled boyhoods bandaged together in
peanutbutterhaste

i can_


.
advocate for me on your sly plunge into
Helios
swanlike and stumbling.

solution is
calling


i am unmaker of your radiotheist fire.


wrapt  up in your eternal parka like fishing net for rare creatures.blushing


it brings peace as i eradicate all sense of fashion.pulling on the uneven strings of the hood like a
God
for better people (than you)

i discount you in this poem and amid other things where
1 1 7 55 47 40 30 10
.


i crack open the cocoons you retreat
to
for
respite
like a
pre-dinner platter.washing my hands
in the crumbs
of your
falling cornmeal
bones.

(as)you
get caught
in the depression left  in my wallet when i
get up

to walk away

trembling-
fabulous as
bowie
's
ghost


doing you the most glorious harm.

when you do it:
i will make a decision     between the button sleeves
and the shirt that needs cufflinks.
i will pick the the buttons
because i will be able to roll up the arms
if i want to.
i will pick the shoes                                      that shine.
i won't be guilted into praying at funerals anymore.

honeyfly.

i don't know that i've ever said i love you to my father in my adult life just as he had told me once or twice a long time ago:
that he had not, to his father, until the literal death bed.
i hold no hatred
wasn't mistreated overmuch as a child or anything
my childhood was happy. though that might have proven the worst thing for me in how late i've been able to break from the ignorance and comfort of many things.

i know i was an arrogant little ****.
but i might have deserved some of the pride, certainly not all of it
much of it i have abandoned, perhaps, by becoming less like him.
he has always provided well
tried to support many endeavors as full as he could
even if he did not understand fully

often, maybe lived vicariously in things like the guitars that he probably wished he had been able to play.
i know the music he liked.
he is a leader.
in many ways.
my father always had a need for clear, masculine objectivity.
i've found it hard to communicate things of nuance to him.
there has always got to be a bad guy.

often we have really got along.
we've done things together many times.
helped each other.
share interests.
skills.
abilities.
stature (in some ways).

he often told me he loved me
dropping me off somewhere: school, even into college
i didn't know how to say it back.
i can tell that he was actively trying to correct a greatest regret of his life.
i knew that.
but still repeat it.
his father died about a year before i was born.
i never knew him.
when my grandmother was alive, she had often said i looked like him.
i crossed my long legs in the same way.
my father is a broader man
of stronger limb.
he provided
better
than his father.

he has a kindness in him.
he feels responsibilities for things
done what he could:
boy scout leader, (troop functionally disbanded soon after i left as far as i know )
mentor of highschool robotics team (still there even many years after i left. he might be holding on to something in the way of a need to be that kind of guiding force- and besides, my brother still goes and helps out there too)
there have been times i can almost trust in him.
but then he will do or say something
a joke about self-harm-
about a ******.
i get pulled back somewhere.

he is outgoing.
i am not by nature.
but the more outgoing i get, the less i am like him
except in the type of confidence that comes with deep voice and a large frame.

he is certainly not the worst from the type of politics he adheres to.
far from.
he recoils at much of the things that pollute or replace science in the minds of those that vote like him.
but yet there is something of the
specificity.
the patriotism.
the need to protect most, those and that which are similar-
above others.

life
is but a collection of things around a one.

i, eldest son of eldest son,
care little for precedent as a marker of worth.
and i think i can do more good
if i ever do anything at all.

i don't much care for religion and sports.

my burden is the way you hold me harder than i, you.
and so it goes as
the big dumb line of the sun cradling the edge of your face turns red-

blushing
at the forgotten incantation.
it pauses there for a moment before flitting back into shadowy chasm of laughter- roaring deep with the bile saved up here and there, and collected from songs about the loveliness of
women
i'm thinking on this.
it moves.

slipping off of her like the arm of a relative at a funeral parlor.
sailing close to her body like the evaporated milk that comes stumbling out.
these years in retrograde lay waste to our whinings.
they place bets against us, odd-ball us out of the cafeteria line-up

with the styrofoam trays still clasped between our ******* and the rail. >>

even now,
in the city of your keeping. pillars are erected in the name of those rings that drag across the pads of your fragile fingertips
and in the valley places, we break your hands.
i carry you around in dark tepid forests
and in the wet parts of your lungs-
we dine.
and in the outer ocean
where the lovely bundles of sinew inside your calves curl around each other to keep warm-
we force out our cries.
we gunned down our best chances.
we built upwards towards the sky.

i came to the tower when they went to worship the origin of dead
laptop fans
we want the hum like planes going by ready to drop bombs on babies-
balm of the backs of your hands-
a short- sharp, shifting weight. like the memory of a mother's dress
a weeping, like others before.
and even now,
i dilate down to your size.
i find ways of getting through to you.
i strangle out the folds in my skin.
there, lost bodies convulse to freejazz as the ship fails to come back down.
and the little black dots behind your knuckles shimmer on your bones.

guns in the snow
write stories that stick around
until spring.

i receive the sticky bath of
new berlin.
its morning breath decays beside us in the black leather jackets
too small to do much warming

punkrock won't save us this
time

we
will be quaking
in our secondhand
boots

oh my god,
this group message from 2008
between my now girlfriend,
the other girl that was very interested me at the time (the first to wear my sweatshirts- the one i thought more likely at the time),
and many others i already begin to forget.
  
i know now,
more than ever
that i really am going to die
someday.

empty space
doesn't really mater
unless there is nothing
where something used to be

.
.

they sent me an empty bag instead of the prayer beads i'd
ordered. and amidst my orange lightbulbs and safety glasses, and package-related things, i found the plastic envelope. wherein lay nothing but the label. and a split down the side to tell me what might have been in there once. i gave $20 to a homeless man on the red line because they say it went as low as -8 that night and much worse with the wind.he looked like family, and i was standing up. (on my way to you)but our feet, together in bed- touching through my socks
are like seed packets-dry envelopes that sit around on bureaus. after the garden is trampled with ice-inhospitable even to those **** rabbits whose tracks still pass that way.you say: you will plant them again next year.come spring. come the thawing of the ground. come, a different sort of loveliness. and
i just wanted that necklace because i liked the look of it-
the
yellow string against the unfucked-with
wood.

and that is an aesthetic worth crying over.

i see you,
from flesh to your fantasies-
working towards muted cadence and clarity,
though choice and change-
dog-dare devilry and always the moon

and if i could stand to see you crying,
i would tell you
not to care at all

it doesn't mater
which of our fantasies fall.

in my brows, your words are horse legs
  [i get caught between them]&
the wrinkles around your mouth
are a vague fantasy of being happier on a long opposite coast.

out in the indie paradise
the ferns get wet.

and all i can
ever only do is let myself stay  
dry

the fog rolls off (of) the pacific,

asking,   what
twang
brought me here


i am lying
and it is fine

she will ***** new
rings on the
coffee-
table in honor of me.

for
i am reeking like a moonbeam
i am hitting the dead grass.
through
a hole
in the boards

&
tucked up in a jacket sleeve is all my     lovliness.☆
my arms are less beautiful than yours so i pin them to the
outside,     hoping the wind will **** them.

i give them away

too many sleeves have become dear to me
it is
overwhelming.
i don't know how to be human-like




and big sur

has an appetite

that keeps
the flow steady and the combing, hot
amidst the dark of it all.


as a splash
as sea spittle
as fingers on furniture

you are are finding me

laying down
for life

knowing you.


like a patter
like chimes

she is here again,
in agony

like dharma. like thrown lead.ransomed  .like a hostess with a gun to her head stone. carving metal casting dry mouth hair ropeand as you.            shrank
backwards into the sea.to taste the salt that i become. head around bone thumb entire histories of shoetiers into the innocent briars.like the hairs- scrubmust mosslust.under your fingers.each breath shoveled on
like.every single unregulated prayerdamaging us all. though i stabbed
away greedily-   verily, we could come back home, waiting for the
crash
that never comes.thrushly.tearing awaythe sick branches . tumbling down the
stairs unrequited
and

convulsing.
*if i'm the most interesting thing, than we have a problem.

you ink whalebones in your smile, the sea-dark swarms
  up upon your palate
rushing back again in ruin
                           in a gulp
                           from deep tidal wants.

my hips lament your passing.as i wick away into the finger
numbing mist      lapping at your knuckles

you clothe your small shoulders
                                          with a shroud
every thread tries to hold on to the air that claims them
                                                                ­                      away
                                      ­       from brothers and sisters
                                             that all want the same for themselves.


they are vapid.


each breath is an arrowshaft cloven in two        off-mark

                                            ­    biting me.


i am not the currents dreaming of ******* you down
i am not the wind rubbing cuticles against your back
i am not draping you in
sawdust
.
as i press my thumbs up to ribs i dont
recognize
the feeling passes


dripping inside
presh ******* baby.

as i cast a spell into the gap between the
knucklebones of your toes.we
dangle before

fetishists like raptors

a little too costumey for you to hold me
well

******* ****** toothbrushes to encourage
their
*** of pink
foam into the basin of the sink.reaching
down
the gullet of the drain.my

eyes rinse  past you

in hopes that my blasphemy
will be
as beautiful as yours

though i sort each hair on your head one-
by-one.across my
satyr
lips

in
crepuscular finality


.

tonight

is a ligature->the tap water in the glass full of tap water in the glass
in the glass

dawn is somewhere.                
here
our faces are snoring like a chihuahua gnawing at my ankles.     down
to the Achilles, babe-
inside the stringy things that are holding its throat to
mine.
i leaned back.
you crumpled.

i don't

the ground is littered with these little ugly stubs that
go
everywhere
when you rush a notebook. they're not even mine.

she doesn't stand a chance.

they are waiting to devour her.          all of them.
the ones with teethes like middle school dances. the ones with
gums.
the ones that chew trident while talking on their cellphones in line, in front of you.

it's where it's at.
it's where it breaks apart.

it's gunna hurt
us.

that bird plays freejazz second only to ornette coleman
in the cool and dewy pre-dawn.
the wet, bounding notes
are
suspended from the hillside like -
flesh

there is healing
and a sky to pull on the
sea.

say no and your breath paints a line down the road like fireworks set off the wrongway
you laugh
and in the distance, trees catch and the town is blanketed in dust.

i am stitching it into hemlock.

i am feeling it.     our      
                     chairlegs hit each
other on the way out,
wearing the corners down to blonde
                                 ,screaming
  as the birds    
     swarm.


my hands

start the morning, glowing
that's a **** good cereal. don't ******* say suicide. because i know you don't mean it.
or you do.
i know you like this for all the wrong reasons i know i hate you more than you will get.i want you to get it- but you won't. it's a very narrow market,
it's a thin slippery window
and don't ******* center format
because it's time to grow up. you're not losing anything.children aren't
innocent.
just powerless.
the killing comes with experience.
*****-deep in the way you drown in it. it's better for both of us if you
figure it out.

modesty
is the ****-bait of the world.industry is booming. it's been a long day,
binders
break their spines for lovers.bent-
up. gas in the lawnmower. don't care about television. shredded antibiotics- fist full of antacids.  get
god
the **** out of here.
it's all we can do, to stay grounded.
it's
not meant to save anyone.it's not about moral superiority. its's not about being an ***.
immorality is an applied concept. amorality
is more like it.
because mother teresa was a *******.
if i had more time i'd write you a ******* song.
and the kid next to you in class was a *******.
and the killer was a *******.
and
it's all we can do, to get the hell out of here and
slide
into something a bit more comfortable.you
like
different music than i do.we
drown
in it together. like everyone else_let's hate things while i hate you.let's
plow through it all, willfully
and sensitive.

we ate the years.

the soft of your father's breath decaying inside you has suffered through us
staying up at night-
trying to

long enough.

yet somewhere
in
the meat between your marrows and tomorrow: we were not good enough to
get it.
and all the vulgarity of every single tear shed in your name
failed to be censored.

you cared more for the ****** little
soccermoms
murmuring in the background to cement the violence of
their mediocrity. i stopped it there-
no one left to call me out, they found me.
but
i have eyelashes that walk across the sides of your face, better than anyone.
and
we held if off for just
one more
but- there will be other times
and they are waiting for you to drop your guard
and sail into them
with lids closed and
fluttering.

i am underwhelmed by the way you seek finality.
it really is an adolescent impulse.
and so is neither good nor bad
as some would have you believe.
but don't hold it up so ******* high

and when the silence is broken by your ugly smile

i am spilling out into
mouthy gauze-
a dawnless gurgling-
  and
a minnow's fate.

yours is the knife that
lies in bottles of pickled
berry fingers, the night
is is the way you move- groove:
how it stains them-
the sun that shines on the other side
of the
moon craze.
so shut up (and sit down)
with all the garden things crawling in your hair.
cut it short, babe.
end it
soon. but
gimme good-
eyes like stale jellybeans tumbling out
the bag, over-ripped-open.

he's still out there.

still coming for you.
don't tie your shoes.

don't love me well
don't find a way to
get away

we need these            and more.

and when the toes break
from kicking at
everything,

history will show us that there is no good and evil.
only
cruelty
and different directions in which it falls at certain times.

and when you are brought to tears
by an upload of an old toonami ad-
that ******* takes you there,

you will know about it.


and living,
you will fall into
the spaces
that
sleep
ever just out ofgrasp

churning like a bellow of
me

i'm falling asleep. here, at the wound of your eyes    
and if frailty were a promise: i would have you now- in actual bed of
flowers.
unburdened by metaphor
and symbolism.
on our own terms.
as the afternoon
tone rings
they chime on me.and bells slur their vowels as we
push around
the heavy air trembling behind our swollen tongues.speaking
out loud-                    in deliverables
you.breathing happily at me      as if that were
good enough-
for anyone

gravity found me inside you,
owning up to decisions.and outliving bad ones,
playing down my own involvement in the desecration
of your religions  
we fell through each other’s cuticles like grass-clippings torn from the earth while sitting-
so with one bad earbud you pinned me down to time and place,

we made drawings again.
we pined by windows.
we pinned up our papers in the kitchen
made islands out of our voices-
let go with soft vigor.
tried less than as hard as we should have

did you watch me tremble in the
airlock?
how i fidgited as the
moth that jumped out_when you touched your damp clothes hanging on the line.
whereas there is no moon
for the clouds that choke us out in this
age of
rats
scurrying about the yard.
i
remember
the way you twisted your lips down to me in the pause before
rain.

you offered it to me.

Oh, how you tasted like fibers.

we want browner *******. set them back into the sun. the pink ones are still burning under the shirts.
nothing can stop the radiation
today
and the birds are resting awhile on the fence, with their mean, dinosaur eyes
-waiting to

scavenge our bodies.

the wind shakes the windows in their dressings like a child trying to wake its dead mother . you touch my face with the back of your hand, soft as the things that will be tanned in the slurry of our boiled- brains .      there is a clank from the cast radiator that     musters courage      up from floorboards below .   the mice run
scared.
your brow is deerskin that is pulled formfitting across my    dry,
      cupped           fingers
it wants small holes put in it as it                                      wears
suppler
into
a look
just
like kissing wool

the
heather inside the layers
that get put on-


wicking off like collagen

as the wintry madness finds us

Taking stock
And making judgment calls,
All.

We are that chemical burn in the world .
Monster in the woods .
Sober-suited in the mad house .

Dream/drag

Middletide.Equinox

iloveyou.andgodisgoodandheavenisathing.allmydeadfriendsandfamilys­endmesignslikeflowersandbirds.andsoldiersarebraveandgood.weloveth­emtheymustallbegoodpeopleandimagoodpersonforsayingso.itssohardtod­otheressomeoneilove.andtheymademesadbutitsnotmyfaultatalloritsall­myfault.imaterriblepersonimagoodperson.imjustsosensitiveandmisund­erstoodandimsosmartandgood.andiwrotethisforyou.andiwrotethisinspi­teofyouiwrotethisforme.andimsogood.andtheresathingcalledinnocence­.childrenhaveitgodisgood.andthesun.andbirds.andloveisreal.fate.im­good.teacoffee.cigarettes.theocean.myfeelingsarebetterthanyours.w­eareallthesameeveryonedeservesachance.secondchancesnomoresecondch­ances.iloveyou.moonlightstardustwearethemilkyway.rhymescemesbutte­rfliesinmystomach.hishandonthecock.andgodisgood.andthereisanetern­alobjectivetruth.andsex.andshefeeltoearthwithahammerthroughherhea­dandhertitsoutpraisingnothingbutthesounditmade

Using the cold wall and my bare feet to regulate body temperature. Bracing up against her.And retreating.  Thumbing through dry white pages of skin as a dull orange glow
gleams off the edge of   a     r  i  b.           There is a clinking from the other room. The phone charger is getting hot.
We dream of power plants buzzing  far away; skylines full of towers. Wire tracks leading off limitless unto the
unknowable.  Vast.  Thataway.          And there is something ready to
consume us out there. In the woods and meadows. In the irreverent
nation of pocket warmers and folded map laminated
fingers  



There's no such thing as Vermont. The land doesn't know that name.
It hears the rustle of my dead branches and gurgling of moist earth
churning thanklessly beneath last years canopy, and thinks to answer,  ,,home. Home. Home,,.


None taken

I drag your body from the room As the Bluetooth quietly disconnects from your favorite speaker, and the signal is left empty and waiting for instructions, not coming.

somewhere
out there the radio sits unthrown. and the window
unbroken.
we fall into complacency.
we wake up early
poems go unwritten.
heroes **** up
jackets lose buttons.the glass man goes out of business-

the elixir of daylight crime is sweating off the skin behind your elbows.
squeezing it from the things in the produce section.staining your sheets.
it's pushing together the plastic tablecloth- the settings are abandoned
as they are.we let them sit long into the summer neglect.we are still

eating off

of them with our eyes.   i am slim.i am throwing open the peep-hole of the world.       the voyeurs go running and screaming /fingeringthemselvesastheyflee.
she remained:
pressing the webbing of her toes up against her ****-
one leg
pulled in tight, one ear up against the wall.

we are banned from certain channels.  we are throwing-up in our
mouths.we are winking at each other.  we
are just
resting.

i want my phone to die. i want to scrape my knee.

there is something i knew once
but barely
and on my good days,
i spend the whole of my life trying to relive
or,
.
and in museums
and in thrift shops
in **** sites
in blogs-
strange charity exhales,
slender tendril figurines. come out licking the music about the edge of
your mouth.
so that it might be told
but barely

shrine-headed maidens      
rotting in the sun  
catchers of sediment on their parched lips.
sad like riverstones over beyond the bank,
where the roots tried too hard to forget their fingers
and the air found them.
and breathed into them, new voices
saying,
i begin and end where the names laid upon you grow.
i have burdens borne away.
we have lost you.
and the entwives parting, sighed

gooey paladin you in gun powder real.like bucket like helm.scooping into pieces i can be soup.i can loopdy-loop
lemme show you my favorite
piece
of
meat