the way clouds swirl
like milk in grey tea
when it rains

i have chewed this gum,
once mint,
until it rather tastes like metal
like blood

and i worry.

can i ask you a question?

if it came down to it,

would you **** me
if you were certain
i'd never know it was you?

an accidental intimacy is committed
between the right-now me
and the me-a-few-minutes-ago
as i slip onto my body,
(made cold by the air of the room,)
the warmest shirt i have ever felt,
soft and hot with the heat of
my own body
that i had already forgotten.

two me's converge, here.
i wrap my arms around myself.

i forgive my old self for all he has done to me
yesterday
because look what he would do for me
today,
he would keep himself warm
so that one day he would be cold
so that one day i could pick this hot shirt up
and wear it.

we waltz, we dance,
until the heat calms under the fan,
and then we are just one man
and i catch myself missing him.

rest assured
you taste
exactly as
i thought
you would

it behooves you (me)
as you write this (I)
to maintain an air of transparency
to build a connection and yet stay opaque
to watch them move and speak and act
so many times that it becomes all you know (I)
until it's all the words you have left (I)
until you're not sure if it's even you anymore (I'm, I)
but it makes your words, less serious (my),
and your fear, less powerful (my),
when you say, (I)
"i am terrified of your attention because,
if it should continue,
which, by God, i hope it does,
there will be an expectation for more than i am right now,
more than i can handle, i think,
but i am not sure who i am anymore.
i am terrified of intimacy because it is a language i thought i knew,
until perhaps the tenth time i tested it out -
of course, i say tested as though i wasn't sure,
which i'm certain i was.
i am terrified because the words i say are part of the script,
my thoughts are not,
and your responses are not,
and the control i have when speaking is not the same control i have
when you reply.
do i have control when you reply? i hope not.
and yet i do.
but yet i don't all the same."

you shouldn't say that. (I)
it isn't appropriate.
they'll figure it out.
there's no time.
it's getting late.
you should rest.
(I)

i spill the words like coins into the couch cushions.

you look at me.

i say, hello,
in that way that people say hello when they
really need an answer now,
before panic, ideally,
before regret.

you look at me.

you look at me.

you look at me.

is anybody in there?

is anybody in there? i joke,
because i'm joking now
because that is how to salvage things
or, at least, it used to be,
pretend it's humor,
pretend it's a misunderstanding,
pretend it's anything other than what it is,

but you're grabbing my face
and your nails are sharp
and you're pulling me into you like limp cloth
and my hands are out to the sides like limp cloth

and you're calling me
idiot, idiot, idiot
and i'm saying
sorry, sorry, sorry
and i feel the metal of my cents start to warm
under the bodies we've got

what a bore, to be corporeal

i want to be lonely in the way
that stars are lonely -
bright and purposeful in their distance.
i want to have beautiful isolation
the kind that people paint
and take pictures of.

i want to be any poem
that is not my own.

this poem? *****.

in short,
this time is wasted.
it is breathless and dim
and it dies
without audience -

my loneliness cannot have audience
because, then, it would simply not be.

stars are millions of miles off
and yet are still visible,
still spotted with a camera on a hill
while two photographers hold hands.

if you are close enough to take
a picture of me,
it is implied that
perhaps i am not as alone
as i thought i was.

and perhaps you
should get out of my house.

ephemerality is derivative.

i’d rather live forever
with beautiful pain
than for approximately
twenty three more years
with whatever the hell this is.

(suddenly, very presently,
very cosmically aware of my
body,)

i find myself upset about
the prospect, the
inexpressible and
inescapable fact,
that as i use what i have,
it will disappear.

what an awful
thing to say.
i look at my hands.

i will have to
ration, i think.

i sit, i look
at these hands,
present and
cosmic.

i guess i just
can't love anything
anymore, i think.

i wiggle my fingers
and they fade.

yeah, i guess that's
what that means.

it's just a joke,
guilt-joke-trip-wire,
funny feeling lasts four hours
i didn't mean to let your dog run away
i just didn't know you had a dog.

does woman love woman
on the same floor,
or is it merely that
men get to their knees
and place themselves beneath
and weep about the sensation of
being beneath,
so low that they feel below the floor,
being beneath,
and does man love man
still on this floor,
still lower-than,
still on his knees,
or do they have their own floor,
do they have their own world,
do they love each other
with the beauty that
they prescribe onto
the girls, the girls,
the girls in heels,
so above,
or do they love each other
competitively,
flattening themselves,
killing themselves,
proving they will be smaller
for their fellow, but greater,
taller, safer,
stronger, realer
prettier man?

crescent nail between bottom teeth,
weak enough to bend with the tongue
and fidget with until fracturing
into something invisible
and perfectly sized to swallow.

it picks things off its body
to feed itself with.

its cells, its scabs,
its nails, its spots,
its hands, its eyes,
its touch, touch,
touch, touch, touch,
searching for so long,
for so long, it says,
and gropes the corners of the room
feeling across the floor,
through the dust, tracing grooves of wood,
for something important.

it picks things off its body until there's
nothing left to search with.

it wants a friend, and it wants more

and i want more than more than more than that.

it's been cloudy for so long,
she thinks, as her head falls back,
squinting up at the tear in the sky,
she almost doesn't recognize the city
without its hat on.

my bad habits do not heal.

they disappear for a moment,
stepping out of a room as if
to take a call that they're certain is bad news,
and they reappear,
wearing a different suit.
brighter.
worse.

i bit my nails,
i found peace and stopped.
then, two months later,
i found myself eating paint.
the kind for nails.

clearly they are linked,
one i wear on my fingers
the other i wear in my teeth.

one is in a tan suit.
the other threatens to burn the tan suit,
and dyes it green instead.
ghastly green, the kind he knows i don't like.

my bad habits do not heal, as much as i wish they would.
they take the call in the hallway, and they cry,
but they do not tell me they cried,
because i assume they don't think i know,
and they re-enter
and sit in the corner,
take a drink,
and they start again.

i am drowning.

the work is becoming me.

i am not living
moment to moment
but task by task. my phone is
a long list of numbers and names,
and they all need me now,
now, now,
and yesterday and tomorrow,
but i rank them,
because life is a long
list of ranking and doing,
but the ranking is a chore
already, and i get tired,
my feet sink up to
the **** of my ankle,
and i'm no further ahead
than i was before,
the same spot, just
a few inches lower,
a few pounds heavier.

i am in no condition
to write.
so i smoke, i
let the spirit run
all through me,
and through him,
i find the second
mask of mine that
loves to write letters.

i am drowning
in letters.

the list swells,
shifts, squirms
in my hand.
every screen begs
me to write to it.
and everyone's got
a different medium,
language, favor,
passion and preference.

i am thanking and apologizing.
i am scheduling and dismissing.
i am losing steam trying to
wear all these hats; i
am sinking, i
am sinking, i am
sinking, i am sinking,
i am fifteen people at
once, all singing and
stepping on themselves,
i am so noisy, and grateful.
i am so sickeningly small.

i am drowning.
i am grateful. i
am swelling; i am
building an image;
i am becoming. it
is so uncomfortable.

it is night when i finally
sit to paint. these are the
things that sell and yet i
feel so much like a glass
jar already stuffed full
of change. nothing to
show for it yet though.
so i put the
ink in a big
circle on the
canvas and i
crawl inside it
and it is warm
and soft and
unforgiving
and it doesn't
expect a thing
from me but
color.

in a few days' time,
i will bleed again.

in all the places where blood is concerning,
where blood should not be - at least, not visible.

every year it happens,
when the memory fills to the top of my body,
and it clasps me, my skeleton,
and displaces everything that is not
firmly fastened in place.

if i ask for a tissue, calmly,
with blood flowing down my forehead
where a wound is not present,
please respond in the same way i present the question -
calmly,
and with purpose.

i'm stealing the rain, tonight.
i'm putting it in a big metal bowl,
and i'm carrying it on my hip.

i'm going to water my plants with it.
on my own terms.
to show them i love them.

i take my frown,
and the grief that hides beneath it,
and i drag it onto a wooden block,
and i teach it how to breathe.
is it then my child?

if i leave it here on this block,
will his wheezes turn to calm exhales?
if i leave it longer, will he learn to talk?
do i dare hear what he has to say?
to you? to me?

if i leave this grief on a slab
in a house in the forest,
will i feel guilt?
will i mourn?

is it my responsibility to grieve... him?

will i have anything left inside me
to do so?

HOW MANY KEYS DO YOU HAVE ON YOUR KEYCHAIN
HAS IT CHANGED SINCE WE LAST SPOKE

i, lonely, sit in empty rooms
a lost cause to convince
for i am just a ghost, here,
and you do not exist

and i can float, my sheet, my gloves,
you clack and clink beside -
a pair of simultaneously
silent, noisy guys

i sit under the showerhead
so viciously aware
that I've been writing poems to
a quiet gust of air

the man to which i rhyme to,
to which my life i owe,
my love in life, my groom in death,
my garrett jacob bones.

the sink guard catches ice cubes
but moldy coffee grounds slip through
the mesh with ease.

one of these is the problem,
one of these is the reason i put the
guard in the drain.

i drink coffee more than i use ice cubes,
a lukewarm-preference i cannot shake.

the best cup of coffee i ever drank was one you made,
lukewarm instant coffee from a packet from a hotel you booked
two months prior.
you said this probably won't be very good
and i decided it would be perfect.

that may have been the problem.

coffee grounds mold in the french press in the sink because
i am disappointed with each cup i brew myself.

i bought a sink guard to remedy this.
it is the traitor.
1/10

divine loser
screams into
a tunnel
of his own
design.

he receives
a laugh
in response.

laughter used to hold such beauty
coming from human tongues.

laughter is beautiful when not
emerging from a cavern built to sit
vacant and silent.

divine loser
sawed off
my hands
to hold them
in a past life.

the mouth of the cave
is shaped like a promise.

taking the trash out one night,
i begin to fantasize about my own disappearance.

with the way it's raining, loud against the
metal of the house,
of the car,
of the little, singing bud in my ear,
i think to myself,
i don't think anyone would have seen this coming.

i find my place between the mazda and the bins,
walk there to the beat of this song which sounds
so much like an insistentlyapproaching bootfall,
and the bag is heavy as i swing it up and in,
and i return inside for the second.

right, the second.

i think about the documentary after i'm gone,
when they do the re-enactment.

and he walked inside again, mom will say and
dab at her eyes, for the second bag. i saw him, saw him go.

out of focus, the false me will wooshslowmotion with
a grocery bag of scraps around her and out the door
and then he will be gone forever
and he will have been taken so much for granted
and he will have incredible ratings.

this bag is smaller.
it takes no effort to toss,
and i latch the lid of the bin closed
with bungee rope like needy restraints
and i slip through the gate,
unfollowed,
close it behind me,
untaken,
up the steps beneath the awning which shouts
with rain,

and when i enter the house,
it is empty and sleeping
and dark and nothing.
there is no one to miss me in here.

wake up, get kissed on the head.
one-two, just like that.
if the day must be what he makes it,
this is how he’s got to start it out.
it’s got to be gentle. and genuine.
warm and earnest. it’s got to be all
of these things without hesitance
and without fail, because this,
and only this,
is how paper men can keep
themselves comfortably distant
from the betrayal of being cut.

there are many betrayals wrought down
upon the fragile and feeling man;
many of which he has imagined,
or predestined. maybe wished for.
it is more comfortable to admit failure
through a burst lip.

he must be cured of this notion,
radicalized only by love.
awakened by seeing his body treasured,
read.  he is no longer a napkin, in love,
but an almanac . no longer a paper man
but a hefty recollection
of his plentiful passing paper peers.