I am the unknown bug in the bed creeping up your sleeping body.  Only in your dreams can you brush me from your leg.

You are noiseless, stirless. I'll feel you with feelers, rip you apart with them until your soul splits into my light and guide.

It beckons me upward until I clumsily climb into that dark, mysterious end.  I am an alien in your black cavern of truth.

I want there to be hope in there, to be light. Where are the cut-paper shadows and leaves that show us what is real?  Only you can sense the white-filmy substance. Tell me about how it sparkles like reality. Tell me how to find a cave of my own.

Spread open and let in the silver moon of the night. I'll tear the program down.  We can re-do it together. And then you'll say "You can't deconstruct what you can't construct."

I come back to you when the sun puts his harsh face over the edge,

In the cold, sunken bed I eagerly await the moment that long, defeated look hits your morning face. You stretch, scratch your body, and wonder who is taking your life.

god gets hungry too
one time he mistook the sun for a cookie jar
and pardoned his reach over top the planets for a pecan wafer
but burnt his greedy fingers
so he made the world with his fist

In comes one every week,
tracking into my home the filth of the streets:
some are patterned like cows,
some wear tuxedos,
some have turtle shells on their backs.  
One looks like a whole spice rack spilled out on him.
Barn cats, alley cats, stray cats, exotic cats—
she says no to none of them.

This home is wild and foolish like her mind.
That compassion pours out like acid on my bones.
Then I’m forced to shoot her down  
with words that fly out like bullets,
and more mouthfuls
and more mouthfuls of bullets
that all but ricochet off her iron clad will.

You turn so perfectly
down your roads of passion.
Creep on through the stop signs I put up
and mount on my head the horns,
the ones we pretend we can’t see,
the ones that let the bullets soar,
bullets to **** you again,
horns to undress your sister.

This girl struts into class abnormally early the other day,
and my mind immediately begins to spin
because she was always bent on being late—
like some undiscovered oil.
She said she turned over a new leaf.

Next class she was late.
So I asked about the new leaf,
and she said that it was no longer that way
because leaves decay and wither
when they are unattached to stems of sustenance,
and its quite easy
for the dark gusts of life
to blow ‘em onto their other side.

There are skunks in there
every night burrowing
into the yawning parts
of my wife’s dream-filled mind.
Night by night, their numbers increase—
as black as her stare,
as pure as her smile.
Backs that bear the white-tipped
senses of God.
They float through as an endless
dark stream
that glistens with my motives,
and confirms my drunken pleasures—
beaming out the secrets of my every move,
my grief,
my thorns.

The truth
is a cage.
My mind
is my dungeon.

She says the skunks are the alcohol.
I say they’re the dogs.
She says maybe they’re everything.
And she was gone before I could move.

There was this one time
you told me
if I ate too many carrots,
my skin would turn orange,
and then you laughed,
and I think I looked at you annoyed,
trying to act like you were being stupid,
and you were being stupid,
but I just thought I would tell you
that on the inside I was laughing,
and I ate a lot of carrots yesterday
and thought of you
telling me my skin would turn orange,
and it did turn orange,
and on the outside I couldn’t stop laughing.

As a child, everything was free, real,
like early spring air.
Birds were infinite
and could fly to heaven.  
Now air is stiff wood,
and birds only **** on cars.

I took out the dagger to take a stab.
I yawned.
They fawned over the shops on Bond Street.
I yawned
We drank Cristal Brut.
I yawned.
The lights of Times Square dazzled.
I yawned.
The toast crumbs were ******.
I yawned.
The people prayed.
I yawned.

I asked God,
“How do I settle this?”
“Give me your sock,” God said.
So I did.
“Sever all your limbs.”
So I did, one by one.
God stuffed the legs, arms,
and drippings into my sock,
blood-soaking it.
And with that cocktail sock
God smacked me  
and sat silent.
“Now what?”

God yawned.