there's no reward for the children.
there's no love during a power-outage.
   
a dog-biscuit god,
lonely on the 4th floor landing
tired.
biting his knuckles
as the night sits on her hands and waits for something spectacular to happen.  

somewhere a huntress is hurting.
somewhere we finally live.

we are beautiful- clean, like some ocean drug,
smiling out of nervous fear.
sitting shirtless in the dark,
slapping our fingers against our thighs to warm them.

we wanted heroes
but god kills like a hero.
we found a crumpled hand and a cigarette.
saw a girl hiding from a killer in her closet

man with crow on his collarbone-
for some hot, damp woman
lost a piece of our prize in the coming of the sun
***-runner's daughter,
sign of the father.

we need no such badge of courage on our sleeves.

the sea needs the stone face of the shoreline to dash upon, else it won’t know how big it is

a shower, like a casting away of minuscule multitudes
singing along and misremembering the words
a dredge into origin
a deluge of removable things

a distorted reflection in the soap-****-nickel-alloy-plated places

a chance

i'm 7 1/2 inches  old. 8  by you.left. a film on me
like melatonin.leaking outside of it.vocaloid choaking. kawaii grunge in the  
waterlogged
meniscus.my genocide- your ears.ihate the way it ran
down the wall then.   better.if i crouch inside your cradleface18+ years
ago. like an inflammation.    you qualify for
recursion_  
like the newer- more appealing nightterrors.we escape      certain
allegories. by gutting them. filigree-
whipped outside.to punish the exhibitionist inside: your lanky breathing.i am tired of borrowing your guilt      i must be good.you
think.i break my wrist.
we.




anyways,.

the greatest sickness remains
fear.
so much in the way of ill deeds cemented new realities while the whole world hid away in long hibernation

do not go quietly this time
do not go quietly.

Fill your spaceship
With things you will want and need

Me and my space dog
Shoot on and
On.

Faster than  the  speed of bad decision
The light bounces   off the hand and into eye s
When, the
Hand moves / it
Shutters all around
And encroaches.       Into

Billowing stacks of molecules , roaring up
With a  purposeless ,and burning
Desire.


Feed, heart. feed

Dawn gurgles past the horizon somewhere
As the sparrow lays dying on the sidewalk
Waiting for the

Neighborhood stray to to find her.

I have seen their eyes :
Dying birds

They watch you

I don’t think it is quite “fear” there .
As death comes, their is a quiet acceptance to the light of dawn
And the promise of warmer pavement on the chilled and broken body
Before
Nothing

[the eyes watch with the same energy
As the sleepy dog curled up in the corner chair when you enter the room.
The eyes open to watch the rusting of bags while you search for lost keys
. But the dog does not stir much. Trusting
you. And being too tired to play
]

It is a casual thing
And nothing much else

That’s how it is with mornings.
The sun warms the pavement
And
Sometimes that’s
    Enough

will you
place my face on shelf of trinkets meant to startle you.
paper momentos. and
pewter figurines.
think twice,
or look over your shoulder one more time before you turn to step away
from this

kami-caress-
soul siphoning
season.
or toss me with a
splash into a fountain. meant to splatter up droplets-
black as succulent stag bone bowels.
rinsed over
maidens.
wearing porcelain faces and bedtime.
-rising like a timid ghost from me

in
this
straitlaced summer.
spiced red water.
linseed lull.
easy,

tame hands
can strangle too

turning to indian summer,
turning to the crisp
cool
autumn.
turning
my body to

wet
sinewy
earth

.wet as

long-sound
footsteps on the scuff of downturned sidewalks

estranging.
distance
.from us

as wrought iron bridges
meeken,

aching.
like a saxophone

.the
pin-patter

cyber-book-burning on both sides.
when did erasure start passing as
love

And remember kids,
Only dead people can have acceptable ideas about the nature of our human lives.

when i stepped on a dead mouse- or a crushed leaf- or something
and the milkweed was long gone
and my hands were wet. and fingers cold.
i stammered onto the edge of the opposite curb.

we all have a box of cigarettes stashed away somewhere
whether that's a metaphor or not.

but i was walking to the reservoir on another one of my nocturnal visits.
and i wish i could remember all the things that i've learned about the night sky
or at least see it better by the spotlights on the side of the d.p.w. building.  

and i forgive you like i forgive the mothers washing the last of the dishes in their kitchen windows
and i forgive the low, traffic-lit branches on the way back that cause me to crouch to the side
for fathers must scold their children.

and in 1955 there were black and white movies about madness and ******,
a man who comes back to find his father dead.
and at the end he discovers that he himself, had killed him.
four years ago.
forgot it all- fell to pieces

we are collecting
preventative measures
             like assembling
       an
anthology
of misplaced
               tiles
in mosaic
memorandum.

if           we have a year
left,
if we
continue to postpone
              the
destruction,


art may
yet
retain its
artists

as artifice transcends
artifice




.

i'm listening to the crickets outside the window tonightfor the first t ime in a long time

If ignorance is bliss,
Then omnipotence must be agony.

But the more I know about you,
The less, I can breathe .


I yet breathe

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.

To have lots of wants
But have your needs met

my doki doki is

barking over like the skin of an ancient
creature dying.


and
i remove words from my keyboard's
autocompletion.
i feel decided upon (the worst possible
outcome)
i hold onto arrogance and we





[talk about how to get the real feelings that no one yet has managed to get out of their ******* heads and on to paper or phone screens or whatever.]

it's like understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding
understanding understanding

new **** walks in with purpose
here to speak ugly and true

the tufted rafter-huggers whip stares downwards at the

hate-*** hero

all cowboy, again
but this time - good.

help me baby, akira-kun shot me in the head.
i feel
beautiful.
and poor little midori's out there
bleeding in the car.

their breath is pop music you can't have.
we know about it

the art is in the attitude. it's what's giving us away

I spy with my little- I
Spy with my little eye

a sleep cutter
red sheet maker
wet pillowcases and
wet pillowcases and
blankets.

|the porch door|
is not a set of words
it’s a thing
   a sound
of slamming shut
the rolled aluminum rattle
the smell of wind , maple buds , and
days that have beginnings and ends

i can see the grass
back when green was still a
color
i can hear the creaking piston-hinge
and
the
reckless
slam

of all the futures being
shaved  down
to the
core

||

i love you
egregiously.

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

threshold thrum thrasher
belly waster
a
water gun kind of hurt

If there is any human history
Left to be written,
I hope that you will be
Remembered.

Oh. Oh. Shaboom.

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

the salt_white sun.like a flawed promise amidst the chalk.swath of a sky ,the dry cupric oxide around the circles of
city
eyes

a broken baby carriage under the train platform :
a husked substrate for the gathering
ice .

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

rot-gut mornings and the exiled king of []
digging through grave-heaps
like
searching through
drawers
seeking:
seeking:


trading
  manacles
           for
madman's
  manacles

there is passion and there is numbness
and there is something inbetween.
something that's alotabit a both-
that's all mixed up and frantic.its quiet on the outside
but unpredictable

there's the meanness in this world
and there's the not

and there the winter time

and an old LP of houses of the holy jammed up at the cardboard corners and worn down to the white  along the spine

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.

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

Grass strains are a treasure
traded for dullness
For a long time

Shaking like dry spiders with the cellar door opened
Waking up without .


With the
Personality of a carpeted bathroom

eating over the chipped plates reserved for
only /truly// honored guests
we don’t care what we think about eachother
because it’s
             like
f e a s t i n g.

somewhere in the distended belly
of
our longing:
you
were
scraping out the bowels. of
those that bound you here with.me

with each of your heads coming out.covered  
in
ugly slender mandorla:
floating atop like a flame of
mountains.slithering into the air, as ready to fight someone as to
forget it all
and
fall back into quiet loathing.

FIGHT FIRE
WITH
FIRESIDE TALES

there were uncounted, beautiful things
housed in scuffed plastic bins, clicked shut tenuously
in a perfectly harmonized disarray of
                       continuation

and i’ll never forget going through those treasure boxes
with a wonder

both somber and
rapturous

to the

late stage coopt of corporate agile cultists,
usurpers of the diverse paths of our futures,

the human condition is
a
temporary
inconvenience

in pursuit of a new and truncated eternity


CLUTTERED rooms full of minimalist art-objects for the unconstituted mind

there is a term applied to religious
   paintings : mandorla which
literally means "almond" in italian.
it is an art history term referencing the shape
of the halo around
gods
and their mothers.

the word seeks to describe
the shape only.

w/out context
the almond shells in my hand .give way to
the metal hand-held ******* of years passing from
(those pictures)

i speak,but

my _breath.is caught in the jacket loose rubbing
elastic cuff
ribbing
stretching out
reminding
.hairs around the toes in the shower
stay behind. even under the sock
throughout the rest of the  work day
trill
evidence that memory connects to
event
[]][][[]0][]]
looking through my husked fingers to block
the light of its halo,
the sun bakes dark objects only
in winter
with home dragging along ;*****
in wool'fibers
home drug
like old music
unlike new music which is recorded
forever;
stomach pangs for sandwiches but the
mouth drags.along
      a l m o n d s .

frominside
  the heaving molecules
gargles,a new lament

for courage, they cry out
as electrons are forcibly
stripped_

leaving art-****
nuclei
in voyeuristic
[ display]
for hungry
magnetic mouths   to
                   s p li t

i could out you.
      in an instant
but.

The secret is
Active rest

Just as water seeks its level,
So too, do the oceans
Churn.

Winter is a string
Plucked and vibrating sharply against the skin pan
Of my head
Like branches I bend,
Young enough still.  to yield pliably
Under the burden
Of snow.
The ashen sun   rises like dust .   about the windowsill
We trace the paths they draw    in particles and movement,

My face tightens around my bones
Drinking collagen  from the exposure
And learning

Cozy between layers
In the history of the world

Steaming as breath around the mouths  of
Rivers,
Not yet sleeping
Not yet filling the spaces with
Me

grooves grip
the road and wet
                     fistfulls of brainmatter
schluffing-off
idiosyncrasies
like a culling of
outside voices
in
favor of
deadguys in sunglasses

ditch-skid kid
doing what he’s told and
following directions

Kindness
Tolerates pain

the world has spat itself inside-out
in the ******-flash of the
claim.

piercing thin tunnels of
flesh
through less-than-best-laid plans,
as if
laying itself were
virtue enough to ****
by






as the dishes
drip

in failed echo
of
the
windowsill


and
i,

glittering fangface
upon the instant spell
of


opportunistic .
encompassure .