sharpie bats lit against knotted wormy water in the fugue reservoir

wings caught and pinned on lonely patches of grass

her nightly squirming huffed and inked into jittery night critters

swarming her thighs

a bearded moth dazes off over the Gordian whitewash

pipes pumping a current of his brothers bodies

wet wings and carcasses, the lure of consequence

the bearded moth did not get too lost, sensitive to

the drawings of his furry devourers from the girl beside him

she says insects have never touched her blood

from the ether he thinks startling wing twitches,

punk echolocation, apologies learned not to be given,

touching water, even distribution of limbs

dripping disintegrating becoming the age of the earth

but the bearded moth

plays it cool and dries in the shape

of a man that looks apologetic. maybe honest.

she’s satisfied and sends a thousand

paper bats to rip apart the reservoir and

pull the grass closer together.

this is no one’s chance.

i keep two buttons in either pockets

they’re part of my usual pocket cluster, wallet phone keys headphones matches

both hands in my pocket now, i run my finger along the ridge of the left button on the hard days

i roll the bridge between both buttons before sneaking out back and pressing the right button

but like all psychoactivities, relative direction, cardinal hand eye, the right button looks identical to the left and I left them both on the table in between tobacco pouches and empty beer bottles

things that press the left button: ominous psychosis, soma mania, fire flushes from ******* not listening, an empty checking balance, an empty emotional balance, an emptiness

things that press the right button: herbal breath in the nice chair, glassy eyes and extra papers, a quiet hour in surround sound

I stare at the left button while my dad calls and hover over it, pausing mid drag to weigh the consequences, weighing the empty balance, feeling an overdrawn surcharge to my soul, taxed in tension, fumbling headphones

the left button sometimes makes me yell, dissociative silence or telling strangers to go **** themselves because I can’t afford the time for anything else

It’s usually the left button I smash against the wall, slaughtered, obliterated, my friends hand me broken batteries and shattered screens and say things like, “press the right button, stop pressing mine”

things that press the right button: not me, usually.

things that press the left button: the left button presses the left button, leaving me with a locked right button, pressed permanently and I fidget with a flathead trying to pop that ****** back out

why can’t I hit the right button?

why am I stuck with the left button, ad infinitum, added insidium, snarling and suffocated, shaking it out in the center of my bed

it might be easier if they left me in a blue gown, *** exposed, *** laid down, pressing that ******* button by the hospital bed, pressing that ******* button like I know how in the coward’s way out

irregardless of what button I press, or what gets pressed, or what’s pressing me and pressing against me, they find their way back into my pocket cluster

pockets with my hands, fingers that get skinnier until my fingers are thin lines or circles or buttons themselves and I have nothing left to do but give them to you and have you press every button, drugless and dampened

things that press the right button: you when I need you to

and when you press it, the left button and the right button are one in the same

they are you and you can withstand being pressed or being there to be pressed

out of my hands and a little lighter

i waited for you to

deposit bumble bees down my

throat with your mouth

they will safely disarm their stingers

and bring them all to me in a square envelope

‘shake it’ i tell you

the stingers become the poem i wanted to write

a really lovely one that tells you you’re a campfire warming my nose

that you’re pretty


it isn’t all roses though

it feels thorny somehow

yeah, i say, ‘i meant to take those out’


my throat and limbs are

fuzzy i say

but you find this, contradictory

the creature has noticed me. it has thousands of broken legs on its face and keeps tabs, never wasting an hour without checking in, watching my home grow bigger in the corner. i am a long bodied cellar spider, suspended, inverted beneath the guitar case, just right of the bed frame. food is scarce, but i sense we share this hunger in the humid subterranean habitat. it takes on thinness, shakes at times, makes day into night, flips pages, tele-spells, turns night into day again.

micro-fibrous dust settles on my spinnerets, a twitchy sneeze draws attention, the cruelest of details. while unraveling undaunted one pseudo-day sort of night, a pulse was released comma intent to ****. it came like resolute qualia, something my eight eyes can’t see. the plastic cave, the broken allegory, all ghastly and converging. as soon as the web gets jostled, a switch will summon my stunning epileptic display. i am ready to give it a leg, but only from the calve. it has never come this close.

you wanna take a guess? you wanna take a guess at this? guess nice long and hard. take a second guess if you need one. it’s ok to second guess. in fact, i insist you take another and keep guessing because guessing is smoke. in this tight circle, we’re taking guesses.

i am an educated guesser.

bummed guesses for awhile. bought my first guessing glass one July. play the guessing game all my days and guess my days away. they make guesses into the same thing as candles and its spiritual. it feels like taking an infinite number of guesses in one breath.

your guess is as good as mine.

drop to the next level. it is the doctor’s thesis of guessing. It is conjecture and formality, but with the fractal reasoning of a true American pack of guesses. they’re the guesses at the end of something replete. the last guess you have left.

out of guesses.

There is a string of panic tied to the last guess, which we tuck, flip, hide in the bottoms of cardstock caverns. when the time comes to draw the last straw,

B. there is nothing to guess at but a missing paycheck. These are the only answers we ever get.

A. she is there, all smiles and fresh questions with a bunch of guesses. she is my best guess yet.

you heard me correctly darling when i said i was

going camping in the witherness. look in this bag i’ve already

packed sun strokes, swill trunks, an array of emptying

books and a flashlight that projects white moving dogs.

in the witherness, we stack silent burning gavels, achieving

the balance of a permanent new moon. we are arriving

by cheap chernobyl trucks and we’ll know when we’re there when

the engine dies and we open the hood to find a blanket-less

girl. don’t worry, she is environmental. made of mist.

we stomp on her sisters, **** like holy anorexics,

steady our foreheads on the ancient bark of

the witherness (dark hallways in a house of leaves)

Quiet now. lay your spine on eggshells so that your joints

may hatch asterisk chirp double asterisk something

akin to what asteroids do, but with a murmuring whistle

the only noise you can hear at the edge of the witherness.

Silence is now. The sun is risen 5 hours where you are. It is the deepest twilight here, traffic lights disrupting. My window is playing a videotape of an invisible sunrise. It was directed by viking film students. They included your paintings in the credits. i hate to spoil the ending, but i leave you. The soundtrack was going to be radiohead, but Yorke’s record label yanked it. So silent film. Silent students acting like they never learn for my benefit. If it isn’t already obvious, the film is me. And you’ll never read this letter, as i’m already loading it into the movie reel and projecting it into snowy pine trees somewhere in Canada that i’ve never been.

Previous Lover and Grateful Friend,