You caught lightning in your mouth
and kissed the world a thunderstorm
All Four Winds bleeding out,
               moment by moment
and stilling the night;
instill it with silence.
Infuse it with waiting
                bait our breaths--

--The ocean's saline, and
               I'm surprised to say,
it seems to like us.
Lips can clamp or loosen,
catch and hold or unleash.
               Choose one?
          it's catch-and-release.

I gulped wondering into my mouth
and I spit out an omen.
               Dolmen smile fading now;
                    twin teeth releasing
                          floodwaters
               from this tomb door of a frown.
Quell the squalling night;
implanting our silence.
Infused with surrender.
               Hold no breath.

                         Anyway...

          We don't check on each other...

          ...or look at our neighbors.

           Yesterday's just that, friend.

These 4 walls, the only friends
The hours tick away, but swelling
Winter, hurry — freeze my blood.
Sweating through these supine steps,
           I'll stumble on.

A/C buzz, electric hum.
The room lit yellow, bathing jaundice.
          Fante & Hamsun.
     Folding pages, scratching dog ears.
          furrow brows.
     "**** this color paint."

     "**** the Summer."
         I say it, always.

4 new walls, my only friends.
The seconds boil away, but slowly.
Solitude, please freeze my blood.
Snowfall in my reptile dreams,
               all serpentine

Heater hum, alone again
Wish they wanted my chanting voice, now.
Footfalls hustle. Frozen, crunching.
Clothed in funerary coat
          The wine explodes.

Shake this thrumming midnight buzz,
and rooms lit dimly, sweating blizzards.
          Trudge & debate Blake —
     —use my degree for ******* something.
                    Shoulders hunch.
           "Just me. In falling snow."

"Tyger Tyger, burning bright—"
    
                      Here I stand, a dwindling flicker—

"In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fires of thine eyes?—"

        —I can barely see tonight. And thicker lines
                            have failed to lead me home.

Alone.
And kindred with the cold.

You gild my haunted mind like Carnegie's ghost
A shining parenthesis for brass-poisoned dreaming.
I wish I could reach my rhizomes through time like you do--
          or space, even!
I want to watch you do anything.
  Fill a Passchendaele shell-hole with
  your triumphant tears; heal it, like it's easy.
I want to watch you do anything
  Stretch your equinox smile from atop Hyalite Peak
  across all the townways and then right through me.

Reframe my failings, won't you?
(If that's what you think they are)
Or rewire my frowning night times, at least?
Spread me thin across your time, if you like;
but let me have some.

Find some worth, won't you?, in my fraying wires
  my decaying lines of code,
  my fear of success?

I have only my vagueness, and banks of bad metaphors
to measure against the tradewinds you blow across my minute bow.
You are such victory, such mighty reaching.
     Don't fault me my anxiety.

Leak into another night
     I am dead mechanical
Cut black lines into my skin
     Tattoo me with asphalt
Touch my face one time--kiss me goodbye with an insult
          I'm just fading tail lights
          It isn't my fault.

               Your fingertips are tracing something...
         And my reddened eyes are craving something...
     Some might hope for for the weather's improvement,
                        but, me?, I'm hard in love
                        with the cold front that's
                                     moving in.

Let me crawl across the sky--
     a skull coated in red wine.
The Titan's getting tipsy.
     I'm at home in the sweating night.
Cracked my ribs one time, kissing asphalt on Orange Street
          Then I had to stand up
                    screaming
      after sweating through sheets!

                My memory surrendered something...
            Your frozen face was mending something...
        Might have hoped for condition's improvement,
                        but, me?, I'm hard in love
                           with my aching--that's
                                     all I am.

Dead Mechanical
     Romanticize it.
Dead Mechanical
     I can't eclipse it!
Make me fiction, or ***** my fingertips.
     Let me lie. I am Dead Mechanical.

I'm damp from soaking in my spite and
I don't have a jacket.
I'm dumb for eating up your crumbs and
filling up on famine.

Your hands
     are death traps
Your eyes
     are road maps
faking destinations.
Making preparations
     to sever me off spitefully...
     lacerate me, sight unseen

     Our town is an eraser, now, and you've made me into fade marks
     Stayed quiet on the margins til I marked your words and got smart
     Smarting heart and scabbing memories...Already! Let me peel it off
          Let me peel it off. Destroy me and then peel it off.

Street lights are laughing cruel again and
I can't even blame them.
Stupid, I drowned in the belief that
believing was an agent.

Your words
     false star maps
Your laughter?
     A death trap--
A blooded incantation
A prepared exhalation
     So sever me off spitefully...
     slash out my eyes so I can't see.

                                      Claw me up, while I wait
                                      tear every single atom
                                                    I have
                                                     in me
                                                  from me

     Our town is an eraser, now, and you've made me into fade marks
     Stayed quiet on the margins til I marked your words and got smart
     Smarting heart and scabbing memories...Already! Let me peel it off
          Let me peel it off. Destroy me and then peel it off.

The way that Villard Street composes a tease I take every time,
as if I'll get all the way to Bozeman Creek;
drive my car into the culvert and wash away a year or 15...
Or how the trees on South Willson won't let me forget
the bookstore I loved before, back then--

Back when?
...when it was there. Never mind.

Leaves breeze-swaying/dancing to the rhythm of a laughter
     caught bitter in a swelling throat.

I remember a reminder. 7th & College. I'm not supposed to be here
          by now.
A future my youth had rejected.
     Never signed up for.
There's a piece of my fingerprint removed; it's shaped like
Scott Street--like rain in Osborne Village.

There's a piece of my Gallatin ghostwalk that's the color of Polo Park Mall.
It makes a Province of sense, but States nothing at all.
I'm invisible here.
                                Might be there too.
But my insides--my infrastructure--were built for Corydon Avenue
and the R.M. of East St. Paul.

You-me mailed a promise to me-you back then

     BACK. WHEN?
NEVER MIND.

from this Cat pawed zip code to R2E 1B9 and then what?

                                                          ­been a long time

Been a while for brown eyes to run dry. Drag my blue through the mud on Pembina Highway,
Dry my tired center out and sew me up, I guess, with
   a stitching
of 11th and Alderson. Try to debride these festering wounds
I gave myself, back in Kildonan or sliced open on Bird's Hill Road.

Had long enough to heal, ain't ya?
        I guess I've had long enough

Shriek

Throw this flesh into wind for to be tattered.

Flense & flay me; sprayed hot onto cold asphalt. Ribbon shred.

This isn't loving Summer, no. Springtime is
planting-
     gestation--
          gasping births---
                violence.
The invasion that is existing.

The Green of April is no gleaming emerald;
It is fury. It is ravenous hunger. It is manic desperation to be
It is the razor's edge of bleeding insistence.

Remove these bones. Festoon your thoughts with the sting and the ache. These verbs are command form. It is Spring.

That ripping. That fibrous, fluid tear. You hear it, yes?

Tilt me over and spill my ******* guts out.
Clouds of grey and bright red rain--squall of ichor. Knife wind.

Let us weep thunderstorms. Chagrin these Gods of Drought.

Howl

Scream for us both. Wail until the throat bleeds. Blood decanter.
Pour us out of you until the sidewalk hides from the cold.

Chilly today! Should've brought an anorak, eh?

Gale force wind. Tear me up. Spare no expense, accept no substitutes.
Leave no intact iota. Return me to my component parts. Atomize me.
Untangle us, we are a tragedy.
...And, after all, this is a slasher, yeah?

I mean. At least distract me. Ya know?