you hold your hands up
--to stop it?--
you, erbärmliches Behagen
--to fend it off?--
you pathetic creature
--reaching?-- 
**** yourself
--realing-- 
disgusting striving toward nothing
disregard your feeling and your noteworthiness 
nothing of value
--to stop it?--
you are nothing of value
--to fend it off?--
heart beating
wind howling
permeable gestures in the dark 
green-on-black horizon over an invisible sea
something could be out there
who knows
who asks
who sees
you do, in your wordless way
choke on your breath
muttering incongruously to yourself
was it here before-- has it come around again?
small, blue metal sphere, indifferent to you
flies into back of your head
where it has been
(indifferent or not different from your suffering,
its impact is one and the same with you)
please stay, you mumble as it darts away again

that's why, you wonder
that's why, you think
you are lost in your unsubstantiated thought
you blink
relieved everything came out this way

If I had any courage, I'd read the masters
The translations of the masters by the foregone masters' handlers
Or so I thought
My dyslexic mind
Scavenges for words recorded
For me to hear
Free form poetry is sad, but allows a sense of wonder, or,
jealous appreciation of great accomplishment

I doubt my skill
And wish I knew Rumi's Persian style
So that I could read in silence
Without grasping for some faulty foothold in my own
And falling
Asleep, with his unread anthology on my chest

I never want to feel
my **** rubbing through a pile of broken tree branches
or the thought of dead leaves
piling up on my abdomen
only you can tell me
how it really is, to be covered in moss
to be covered in death
sprouting mushrooms from your molars
I want to hold something
feel it grow inside me, nurture it and spill
out into the wide expanse of nothingness
a false sea
a lonely planet
a fading ghost
and scream into the laughing pit
the empty chasm of anger and self-loathing
baaing in insignificance and hollow
with my chest nearly exploding
I find the words:

I am here and I will die and nothing matters and it is terrifying
just send me a W-2
let's do it all again, next year

I never got to hear your voice
Remaining silent with anticipation
I thought of you, what you may hide within
a pillow, or a slab of clay
How your expression lingered, prepared
blank and austere yet flush
Would I feel thawing satin
beneath, your thighs
slowly unspanning, your flesh
ready for attention

You hear me come
Inside some walls
And gather heat toward yourself
Your eyes engage my willingness
an empty naive gesture
"Is this the place?" I wonder, in my head

No one is really speaking here
the person I perceived you were
rises from a fluffy polyester comforter
Clumsy and ensnared
By a memory of something I can only dream

If I gave you just one word
we would fall together
Like two dobs of marshmallow puff
melting into the dark wood floor
Sticky and diffuse

But it's too easy in this moment
to let it slip away
Sighing, I imagine
one day you'll say
"this is the place"
and then tell me your name

I am an art of human
A seed unto the world cast loose
Holding what's unfurled
Beneath, a lonesome seeker of truth
It is undue to suffer
Through a seemly, caustic night
Unbidden, untoward, unwellitude
Unbeing
And unbright
But in the hull solemnitude
Unmeaning
And unkind
We find ourselves in solitude
Inside a well, unlit
Untied

I hid beneath the cover when she left
smoke filled the black emptiness of my mind
and she was gone

There is a new word describing me
type one, type two, type three
nothing is as it once seemed
brown bandages become red, ******
catheters go up my urethra
when I refuse to take your drug test
by accident.
I'm clean, now, clean and pure
I take Abilify to make sure
and remember that it's all an imbalance
and remember that everyone else is balanced
and remember that the whole ******* world is balanced
on a tether formed by gravity
gravity-- the severity of this situation-- is lost on me
and on that tether we all walk
unbridled by the weight of our bodies
we can shake all that makes us human
and pathologize every thought crime
every idea needs to be cleansed
with a catheter into the brain
we would be able to test it for drugs
and find that all I was high on was existence
and how terrible it is
that we will all die
but that shouldn't bother a doctor at all, now
should it.

What is it to be free in an unfree world?
Madness, as the only escape, is what I have chosen.
Madness in the sense of unrest,
Disavowal of the properties proscribing my actions
I smoke and drink to put off life
to ensnare nothingness with breath
and feel contingency take its hold on me
I want wine, furies and song to be my epitaph
and grasp at meaninglessness with two sweaty palms

I am not comfortable and never shall be
with this notion of decidedness and squalor of the mind
yet it is I

I know little of the great works and can hardly hold a pencil

This is where I meet myself, a worker, unfit for labor
exposed to existentialism and sick

I shudder, alone forever

Good things given to and wasted on me

I am death encapsulated

I tried to write down my thoughts
but I couldn’t because they were coming too fast
Then I tried to type them and they got even faster
I tried to record them but they went through my mouth before I could breathe them
So I tried to hold them in, but they exploded from underneath my body
I can’t tell you where they’re coming from
because that body is gone
and here sits the rubble

Journal Entry 1
I have not much to write today
a time in life where all's ok
I'm going to die and that's alright
I don't even care to try or fight
I've lost before the battle's done
and every victor in the sun
will forget to stop and search my corpse
to judge if I am worth remorse
because I stopped trying and took orders instead
Today's a day where I'm better off dead

"I'm mom and daddy's victory"--
like the song said when I was a teenager.
"Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?"

Well, I'm a coward in my twenties, trapped in the psychiatric apparatus.
But at least I can admit it.

What now?

I could quote my own thoughts:
"The easiest way to escape a bad situation is allow yourself to be a part of it."

Try to know cool bands:
"tripping on the thunder of a paradigm
choking on the thread of a nursery rhyme"

Or imagine having an influence wide enough to drive a few clicks to a link somewhere.

But in actuality, why rhyme.

It's a cruel mechanism to drive information into the collective memory of humans
when they want to forget your song as soon as they hear it.

The birds sing like it is Spring, but it’s just March.
Are they confused, or is it me?
I hold my hand out on my porch and breathe in--
believing, if they land on me, Seasons will change.
They snicker at this, the birds, knowing for them
the change was long ago decided.
I want to join them
almost as much as I want to smoke a cigarette
and pretend to be 17 again
or lose my virginity while remaining friends
and travel to Germany without searching for that kiss.
I want to sit in a tree and sing
imagining that March is Spring.

I was drunk by a glass of water today
when I realized it was the substance forming me.
I felt it fill a network of veins--
like a sweet, sugary soda, fizzing within and decaying.
It burned down what seemed inside of me
culminating with evaporation.
I watched it rise through skin
carried by the breath which had been taken
and escape my pores once more.
I felt the water pull a soul from me today
knowing there was no place inside for it to stay.

Only the imagined faces of spurned women let me ***.
So, talk to me,
let me feel you out.
With my eyes, I'm trying to tell
who's being rejected.

Wo es war... ____

Eyeing one sticky handprint;
left behind--
another's form, whisked away before
I got there, just in time
with an issue

"Field" Nobember of 2012,
even though they don't print them in that month.

I had empty paper, a notebook. A story
at a ***** table.
I would write on top of all this,
thoughts of avoiding the mess
left, there, unwanted by others.

I have been wrong
in as many ways as I have been right
I have been wrong.

It's true, what Freud said:
                                           Wo ES war! [Where IT was!]
Wo war es? [Where was it?]
                                            Wo ich jetzt bin! [Where I now am!]
ES IST ICH [IT IS ME]
ICH BIN ES [I AM IT]
                                      I am here.
IT
    is Omaha,
                      and
in so many ways,
                              it wasn't. ______

There’s nothing I remember, so I shall invent a life.
It all starts with a dichotomy. Speech, lack of speech.
Logos, preceded by the lack thereof.
A heartbeat, maybe, echoing to form a vowel.
And then a sigh, with inexplicably twisted tongue.
“I”…
I…
I’ll tell you. Raising a finger from my desk.
I’ll tell you how it began. I was in the dark, and decided I had had enough of it.
I flipped on a lamp at my side and began to write.
There weren’t any words yet, but there were symbols for sounds, and that was close enough for now.
I pressed enter, and the message flew to a compatriot.
Or an enemy. This flush dichotomy of forms abounds!
I hold my breath and wait.
Waiting, for a response.
Waiting, to imagine words I’ll never hear.
And the light hums.
I…
What is it, inside that filament
which speaks?
What is every minute morsel of matter telling me about my beginning?
I’m not sure I want to read it, when my phone shakes.
But that’s what that behavior dictates.
A laugh, a cold analysis, a response.
This could go on indefinitely.
I don’t even know where you are in the world.
I’ll never see you.
I think of a more advanced dichotomy, I read about.
It was attributed to Freud.
A baby masters the objective universe through two utterances
in a ball game.
Fort… gone.
Da… there.
For now, these words are silent, but if I were in a crib
You would be the breast I long to devour,
The meaning I would choose to fill my mouth with
Muffled exclamations:
DADADADADADADA!
And I cry. But I don’t know what this all means to you.
Because I haven’t told you with electronic signs.
I’m not sure the word “to cry” carries any meaning.
It just stands in for fear.
Fear of being alone in the world, with the dark,
And no logos.
But I could go on for days reading walls of text on webpages developed by people
who have long since died.
I can summon the likeness of every celebrity onto a screen
rubbing my ***** while I look at them.
I can hear the music—
I CAN HEAR THE MUSIC—
Of all the world, vibrating. Rhythms contracting, like vulvas after birth.
And the silky, black discharge is this emotion in my brain after I think of you.
I created you with my words.
I illuminated my world with the thought of you.
And now I have nothing to say to the creature I created.
I am in horror before you.
Fort, fort, fort, away!
You have left me, without ever being present.
You were here, you were gone, I had no control.
And when I weep, the fear drowns the sun’s luminescence
The clouds hide the sky
The air sculpts my lungs
With emptiness
after words have come out.

Laurie, it's almost Christmas.
That's why so many quietly desperate people
wear old woolen sweaters, fantasizing about being in
on a joke,
just this once.
Your friends are wildly cackling,
you're not dressed like the others.
I prefer my desperation loud, too.
I'm rather skeptical,
however,
of
forty-year-old Lauries wearing lace tops and wedding rings,
with wet words
sloshing from dank tumblers.

Each seeming mispronunciation evokes
excedingly excessive expectations
in the form of imagined saliva beads extruding
between bottom and top lips.
But they aren't mispronunciations, are they.
It seems that, over time, words have come to sound this way,
for us.
And you've done nothing wrong,
But twenty years ago, you wouldn't have any reason
even to speak to me.
It's fascinating to watch
the canopy of aging shield
youth's shallow perspective
from those rapidly fading stars
of disquieting mortality
which fall, bringing with them
forty years of confused burning
into vision.


How many times have you come to a place,
chatted with a stranger,
and gotten them to leave with you,
in your life?
I've never been able to, myself, but it's different when you're a guy.
I struggle with subtlety, but not as much as you.
There's just no room for ambiguity, were I to brace their lower back,
then casually walk by.
I have no doubt this approach has worked for you.
Only, from my perspective, your effort pulls
that growing chin
further from your forehead,
leaving room for misused eye-
contact with me.

Laurie, I know where you are.
You're in on the joke
outside this bar.
You're still in Nebraska,
as far as bodies go, so am I.
"The Good Life!" you slur,
having never left home,
you never want to go.

Laurie.

Laurie.

Laurie!

Please move.
I'm trying to shoot.
You impede my cue,
thrusting between my fingers.
My actions, words create an un-registering ricochet.
Fine, mock me when I miss.
I am not good at this game,
but I don't want to be.
It's not flirting.

If Nebraska IS the good life
it is the good LIFE, for one.
Like Jesus lived once, so do we, in this room.
He would also agree birthdays are meaningless.
Regardless, I can't be with you here,
because I don't know who is living that one good life,
but it isn't you or I.

I didn't ask about your husband,
I'm left to speculate. Assume.
You'll buy your children presents
and give your husband head he's used to.
Isn't that what rings means this time of year,
or is that only what you used to do?
Did he stop eating like you tell him?
Does he take care of you.
You probably think someone like me
would be willing, know exactly how to.
I can see you touching my arm,
I can feel your friends
rubbing me with their eyes.
My thighs recoil with every shot
as people say their goodbyes.
I know you're ready to leave me behind
and take my body's memory with you
to sleep within your head.

I'll miss you, Laurie.
You remind me that there may be one good life in this state.
Or, at least, someone who wants to **** me without knowing my name.
But the closest thing to a good life I can hope for in Nebraska
is to be noticed by a woman
who will help my imagination
think of a place better than here.
Before I reach your age, Laurie,
I want to find her.

Youth's last call yells loud,
and quells years of chased memories.
I know you can't hear it, Laurie,
but those years are over for you and me.
If you keep the thought of me alive at all,
do this kind and silly thing:
give your children gentle kisses
on their heads before they sleep.
Tell them that they have the one good life
the way my mother lied to me.

You want your pickled herring
you want de jure
you want all the caesar
sections
gobbled up
pure
and shallow
waters
drip
from bellies
to replace salt
to preserve
the children's minds
you eat
while you
transport them
to the other side
of your soulless
empire
with no objective
existence
in reality.

I can’t think
Because I hear the noise
And the noise interrupts my thoughts
So I play music
To cover up the noise
And the music creates more noise
In my head
I’m not safe
From my thoughts
With all this noise
I will never hear them coming

Nebraska has over 6 million head of cattle
and is perhaps the largest beef producer in the world.
This is strange, juxtaposed to my neighbors
who are Hindus, from India.
On all sides, I am surrounded by young, attractive,
friendly Indians
living in Nebraska,
studying information systems.
I rarely eat beef, but I joke, for them,
this place must be some kind of sacrilege,
or purgatory
where they go before returning home to join the "growing middle class"
we hear so much about.

They have gatherings, food,
language and ways
of maintaining hegemony among their group
while they are here, in my hallway,
and I am alone.
I have no information to manage,
no home to return to.

They gather in my neighbors’ apartment
talking, late into the night
I once made friends with two of them
who, unlike the others, were both atheists
instead of Hindus.
They told me that Hindu women, like the ones next door
do not have *** before marriage,
but the men do.
This seemed like a paradox, but I believe them to this day.
And when I hear this platonic conversation, muffled by the walls
it sounds like pigeons
cooing
flapping their wings in an alleyway
And having nowhere to go.
The countless, devout Hindu men
visiting my charming neighbors
remind me of adolescence
how I used religion as a cover for my shyness
I admired these men, in their pursuit
of something I was told to be obtainable
and then I remembered all the people
who were not devout
******* the religious girls I tried to flirt with
while I was in high school.
I laugh.
I wish there were a high minded reason I stopped believing in the zombie Christ,
but it was the fact that no one from my church was having *** with me, because
of God and all that, but they were having *** with other people.
**** christians, really, you can have them all.

It’s easier to imagine my neighbors as trapped birds
subtly fighting for scraps
without ****** desire
than to imagine them as people like me,
who know what they want but assume it’s out of reach.
The alternative, to know that they are having ***,
and I am not,
is too upsetting.

I want them to sound like cooing birds,
shy and timid and lost,
because that is how I feel.
But, if their voices, distorted by the walls,
sound like pigeons to me,
what must my silence sound like to them?
How do they want me to seem?

Lonely people, quiet people,
sad people, fending for scraps of trash.
That is not them, but it is me.

I realize it is easier to be a Hindu
than an atheist
in Nebraska,
and it doesn't matter what (or if)
you eat
when you're alone.

I walked to buy some Marlboro Reds
the kind I always used to smoke when I lived at home
with my parents
"Cowboy Killers"
"Coffin Nails"
My mom would relentlessly criticize my choices.
I tried to drown myself most nights,
but my parents broke the lock on my bathroom door
and stopped me, taking to a country hospital in-patient
facility.
I felt alone, and my shoes were stripped of laces.
But I drew a picture in an art therapy session
of my car driving over a bridge
like the one I'm crossing now,
that spans a creek I don't notice for the first time.
It was a clear day, in my picture, but I had been stripped
of my car keys, as well.

It is a clear day today, too, but it is still Nebraska
and the wind is blowing
and I still want to swerve into traffic, on foot.

My family liked my picture, and made allusions
to helping me cross this metaphorical bridge.
No one asked me about the way I imagined the bridge ending,
how I would fall over the edge and die.
But I successfully crossed the overpass, alone,
my shoes permanently tied.

When I got to the counter, the cashier made me aware
that the prices had gone up since 2006.
I had expected this, but they were already expensive
before
for my body, for my lungs.
I was thirty
pounds overweight back then
and ate mostly fast food, and cheese tortillas,
but the body I carry now seems heavier.

I wear earplugs to combat
the unrelenting flow of traffic
and people going to their houses, families.
I try to fabricate a reason to tell my parents
I won't be there
for Thanksgiving.
But I can't,
I just won't go.

I walk harder now.
The trouble I had breathing
as a fat schmuck
remains
as a skinny schmuck
and I go back inside
to ask for matches at the counter.

I just want to smell the sulfur strike
it reminds me of the chemicals my father used at work
and it is extinguished by the Fall wind, like I knew it would.
But still, I stood behind the gray gas station
the red trim.
I find this oddly exhilarating
this moment,
this fading scent,
from failed matches,
reminds me of when I got a friend to buy me cigarettes
in middle school
and I hid them in my room, until my parents went away.

I took them and the matches, to my parents' porch
and smoked one, imagining my neighbors saw me
imagining they cared.
The crinkle of the foil, the match strike--
these were the experiences I wanted.
And the nicotine.
But I did not want the coffin nails
for the dead cowboys.

I had a lighter with me, though.
I knew I'd have to light one.
I pull it from my pocket and inhale.

I had removed my ear plugs to ask for the matches
and all I hear is wind and vehicles.
I start to walk across the bridge a second time
I spit on the dying grass
that hangs in the dry chill
between the cracking sidewalk
in front of a gas station employee
getting off
her shift.
Her shadow races mine, and I am going to win.

I don't feel the nicotine yet, but I expect it to
kick in
as I listen
for a sign of life, not drowned out by thoughtless travel
for a moment,
I hear some young birds, sqwuaking under the overpass
spanning a creek
no one takes time to look
but I do.
All that collects there is trash.
There was a torn, Tar Heels hat on a rock, in the water, once.

I start to think again. It's working.
I'm open
Enlivened by the sound of hatchlings,

I hear young birds!
But I can not see
an anachronistic Spring
in my step, I am sure
for the first time in weeks.
I imagine having hope
and stride, watching my shadow crash
against the concrete ditch, relentlessly.

Suddenly, I realize,
what I thought were baby chicks
bound to freeze
were clanging coins
in my pocket which
I couldn't distinguish
until I'd passed into a parking lot, away from cars.

My momentum faltered.
The ******* my knee-support lost its velcro hold
and before I knew it
I was under the leaf-less trees
where red berries dangled
and no squirrel felt brave enough to ****** them.
I thought of reaching up and grabbing one,
but I knew no one else would think this seemed brave.

I smoked the cigarette until it burnt my finger,
then put the **** in the receptacle beneath my stairs
and went inside.
Enabled by the substance, inside my body just ten minutes,
to write again
19 times.

Hallelujah, I’ve found you
one I could have chosen.
Were your body pliant, capable
more slight, more saudrey
a subjectivity
easily disposed

I would be able to hold your breath, capture your voice
contemptuous, mocking and wholly undue
spending more than a half a day
being who you are would make me hate you--

But for a morning, maybe from eight to noon
I’d take on your face, look straight in you,
my mirror.
Shout out my name three times
with hope, I would appear,

without your bated breath
from jagged mirror, foggy-eyed by shower
I'd be able see me touch your body, glistening
parting your quivering lips for
myself inside, to feel your smile.

A phantasm to myself.

I want you, my significant other
my lover,
my ontological
displacement
of
milky
misfortunate
malaise.

Your substance is my fortuitous down-going.
My ship-sinking speculum.
Desire, mediated by a lack of being-there.

Klage.

"Love, Love is a verb. Love is a doing word.
Fearless on my breath. Gentle impulsion
Shakes me, makes me lighter."
                ~~~
Snipping, mechanical apparatus of air
pushes around, the slightest elements of sound
unknown torment, blowing
leafs strewn through the corridor.
A reverse vacuum, no bag
only the earth
which perpetually maintains
the forceful stream of words
like
"snip" and "blow;"
they are verbs,
just like "love"
only harsher.

Your decisions don't merely impede the flow of days
relocating things that would like to stay
like crunchy leaves, unacknowledged beneath feet
until cries of ecstasy are heard by neighbors
who have nothing to step on.

Those discarded vestigial coverings would,
with a gentler blowing
have turned tepid, flaccid and freed.
Emerging from a snow covering
thawing and lying there, unashamed of their repose
shriveled and fully reclosed, recumbent.
Protecting from rough, sodden clothing, parts that can’t be hidden any other way--
diverging water toward infrastructure needs more urgent and vital
fallen leafs would not only **** grass, but let flowers grow
flowers of intimacy and exuberance
touching the hands of young women.

The sounds escaping mouths of leaf blowers are a demand--
they are a type of love lacking tenderness
myopic utterances of planning committees
who don’t know love is a doing word,
like snip and blow, an impulse, only gentler.
Ordinances are the "circumcision-for-hygiene-purposes" of urban planning,
never seeing that leaving things concealed by Fall
is the best way to see Spring
and experience the joy of new awakening.
They should let each leafy-******* grow,
covering our shaft, our ground.
Prevent the pleasure-impeding growth of grass!
And the earth will continue to cry
out!
Tiny sensations of pressure
moving delicately along its surface,
cause soil to writhe with lost control
then erupt with wild flowers and shrubs.
And if not these, then at the very least,
trampled torsion of plodded soil
covered by desperate human debris, collecting upon it
showing what we try to hide:
our wastefulness and discarding of things we really need
ripping off our closeness sheath
and replacing it with dark, green, translucent barriers
of grass
and blowing machines with blades
their maintenance demands.

Our apartment complexes have ambient
tones of industrial malls
when your procedures are taking place
you cut and snip and blow.
Maybe your attempt at concealment
has been a revelation.
But the fearlessness of love
I feel
is something you thought you could snip
and blow.

Yes, mechanical leaf mover,
create the shrillest sounds known to man.
See if it doesn't just slowly make the world a ******* place
by taking away the joy of crunchy leafs,
which gradually become moist, squishy leafs,
then, after a long period, emerging from a snow covering
thaw and lie there, fully exposed, recumbent,
depriving the dormant seed of grass its sunlight, preventing grass,
freeing up water for infrastructure needs more urgent and rational
than supporting the most boring of decorative plants encompassing our lives.

I guess what I'm saying is that, not only are your sounds annoying,
they're just another of the short-sighted endeavors our present society insists on.
You are the "circumcision-for-hygiene-purposes" of our urban planning.

*******, leaf blower. ******* and the excruciating environmental ignorance you represent.

I SAID *******, LEAF BLOWER, YET YOU PERSIST!

You need to let that leafy-******* grow,
covering the shaft of ground.
Rid it of the pleasure-impeding growth of grass!
Let the earth cry out for the sensation of tiny points of pressure
moving delicately along its surface.
Let the ground erupt with wild flowers, or at the very least,
the trampled exuberance of plodded soil
and the desperate levels of human debris that would collect upon it.

Or are you trying to hide our wastefulness from us by removing something
which is nothing, a nothing, invisible barrier?

You've already succeeded in giving my apartment complex the ambience
of an industrial production complex
which I suppose it always was.
Maybe your attempt at concealment
has been a revelation.

Or maybe I just can't think straight,
because there's been a god-**** leaf blower
circling below my window all morning
and now a heavy, riding lawn mower is coming to cut the grass
that hasn't grown since September
but has been watered every day
even though it froze last night
and it's almost November.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that no man is an island, whole unto himself/herself.

Every person needs to feel safe to express his or her desires in as open and direct manner as is available.

Each person should be told what is expected of them, and what can be done in the case said expectations cannot be met.

Each person should be encouraged to pursue his or her own interests and given the tools necessary to do so.

The striving of each person is as important as the collective aim of all mankind.

We believe in a world which achieves its goals through the focused, deliberate behavior of determined agents.

Any person striving against another’s interest or aim should declare their reasons for doing so.

No person should secretly plot against another.

All motivation for action should be weighed against the public good, and all actors should be held responsible for behavior directly hostile to the betterment of one’s neighbors.

One should act with the mindful awareness of the impacts his or her actions could have on the other.

We are indebted to each other’s needs and desires for our very existence, as it is the movement of the commodity market which ensures our existence and this is dictated to a large extent by real human demands.

We are dependent on one another to use resources wisely and economically, bearing in mind that waste threatens the survival of our species.

Being the bearers of a legacy stretching back to the haze of pre-history, and an even longer biological chain of inheritance, we as humans, are dependent on each other for a collective understanding and appreciation of the world.

Without wasting time, we must acknowledge that it is in our best interest to act deliberately, without giddy outbursts of petulant exasperation, to solve the problems that our mutual dependence creates.

There is no alternative to the necessity of working together to understand and amend the dire circumstances of our existence.

Echoing inside
empty buildings bolted with
fall-ed trees, hollowed stones, were reverberating
hand pats. Clapping will go
on.
Mourning cries,
tears won’t echo as well; rather, staring
hand, clasping
shriveled hand
shaking and bouncing
off wooden panels,
fake storefronts.
Acts
incited
feigned appreciation;
palms crashing, esophagi grumbling,
bodies jostling
for view.
As a species, we watched our own performance.
There, bursts from imagined forces
generated sounds, echoing
an otherwise empty darkness--
a yet empty darkness--
through purview.
Voices and people:
gone.
Objects, unacknowledged.
Thoughts, acted on.
Contained by walls
illuminating anything there was
with echoes from voices
and fingers, flapping on impact,
hitting corridor materials.
Below trap doors, no surprises are
waiting.
Everything that could have been said
is permeating,
blissful
nothingness.

They installed locks
handed you keys.
Hold them, silver, golden,
shaking with dis-ease.

A vision of the Earth outside.

Squinting in a dark hallway,
why not turn the ***,
nudge yourself inside?

Someone paid for you to live here,
a father, mother, or friend.

Your chain of life extends far backwards
but on this side it must end.

You may have felt forever,
trapped with your despair,
between rough crust,
precious residue
floating in air.
Pressure can't hold us
with clouds
and shapes from dreams.

We'll soon be gone, and you will too.
Don't waste your voice with screams.

It, too, is faltering,
our voice,
our atmosphere,
hopes for exploration.
Heaving, chest
uncompensated by oxygen,
raided like sarcophagi
with your timid, spinning brain
having no peddler,
to whom to sell it?

No, your home waits here
on solid ground.
Keep your voice wrapped around you,
not in the heavens, as you'd wish.

Take off both shoes,
sit down.
Patiently inhale.
Feel worlds shifting their weight
skin, becoming pale.
Shake off saw-dust covering
your day-clothes.

Stretched
dissected.
Carpet does this to frame,
taking you through thresholds
and mindsets.

Evaporate,
see no more today.
Rain down until tomorrow
in this never-ending night
given to trees
collecting your purple-pink
and blue
dews.
Leaves bending
with gratitude
holding drops of you
aloft
before
no heat can take you up
and they,
becoming coffins
for you,
weep
and cover your dis-may.

A dashed possibility.

Like a dust moat in the sky,
preventing
a window past your mind,
what you saw standing atop
brittle decrepitude
through saccharine eyes
is shifting, impermanent,
time cannot be mistaken.

Relax.
A tear pulls
the horizon,
lightning
rips your sight.

Breathe as long as it takes
to stop breathing.

Alone, shaking.
Silver, golden.
in this eternal night.

No one re-writes directions to that fixture
out in space, yet near.
But you know it once was twirling
because you followed its light
to here.

Turn the keys they gave you
and look, inside the frame
of consciousness.
There is one artwork you create
with every facile, blinking motion
every extended being,
your thick paints of colors,
never able to be seen.

There once was chaos in man
he wanted so much to scream.
Instead he reconciled to whisper
and laugh.

Open-mouthed, blind and plodding--
there's no one to teach him how to dance--
he falls through space
alone on his rock.

I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
It makes me anxious, and it’s not only the chemical interaction.
Somehow, I associate it with “adulthood”—reading the news,
Drinking coffee—I can’t tell you how many days of the last few
Years have been spent entirely in this fashion. The coffee
Growing cold and the news colder still. I don’t even taste the
black, fluid drops. I don’t hear the screams of people I read
about. I just want to hold on to something—so I raise the glass
to my lips. I can’t say

the shocking words when my mouth’s full; I can’t tell

about my experience, my privilege, when I’m drinking it.


The production of the commodity

creates a line from some equatorial region
to central America, and my mouth.
I think about the Autumn I worked in a corn-seed
sorting facility. What a short experience—
and yet,
something that weighs heavy on my imagination.
I was a temp worker.
I chose to work there out of shame and guilt for having
missed the deadline for college enrollment.
I could have done anything else; but there were people
there who wanted nothing more than a job. They needed
to be
there.
And I think of the people involved in producing coffee beans

in much the same way.
Removed
from the thing they’re making, as the raw materials are shipped
to places you pay workers more.
Why shouldn’t I swallow with difficulty when faced with the pro-
spect of a person supporting their entire family with the type
of work
I did
reflexively, as a choice?

Now I sit here, reading about North African riots,
a region, where coffee is produced—
ARABICA COFFEE— and I think about what’s sitting
in my cup, how I have
spent more money than they make in a day
to buy
one container
…
and sit here
for an afternoon
doing nothing but reading about their families’ misery.

I am a human parasite.

And like the bedbugs that have crawled meticulously
between my mattress and bedframe, hiding in a safe spot
until they can come out, undetected, and **** my potency.

I sit here, in the comfort of an apartment furnished
and paid for by my father who grows corn in a highly-
mechanized, agricultural society. I take more and more,
festering to the size of a blistering, red dot
blinking in the dark, in the form of the record light on
my voice recorder.
I expect so much more from myself, simply because of
this position of luxury.

But I don’t take time to think about my reaction to these
stories or how I am involved in them, in shaping their plots.
I’m even eating more now
as I’ve nearly lost my concern with avoiding certain super-
markets.
I smile at the greeters, make small talk with the cashiers
whom I am openly exploiting. But it’s ok, because
I worked for a month at a cornseed manufacturing
facility
and I read Marxist Ideology,
and I know about the Arab Spring
and I was against American intervention in Libya
and I disdain the air strikes from robotic planes
(unauthorized by congress)
and I disdain congress
and I support gay marriage
(I stopped eating chicken).
I don’t drive to the suburbs of my city.
I walk and ride my bicycle as much as I feel like.
I use public transportation at times.
I try to get to know women.
I practiced safe ***, once.
I write poetry.
I tell my mom I love her.
I bought my nieces birthday presents.
I’m not overly nice to people of different
ethnicities.
I voted for Obama.
I’m trying.
All these things make it seem less bad
to smile at the cashier.
But then I think about my black studies Professor
who used a walker to come to class
because she fell
and spelled the word Amendment “Admendment”
on the board when talking about Reconstruction.
I think about the war in Syria.
I think of people dying from cholera in Haiti, in 2012
A.D.
I think about fracking and oil spills and …
irrevocable damage to Indian reservations.
I think about football coaches molesting children
and people eating fried butter.
I read about people
upset
with a movie
who protest in the streets for days.

It makes me realize I shouldn’t smile at anyone.
I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.

I was asked today "what
are you really into?"
while I was walking to film
class.

He had changed direction
with a flair of drama
and was walking along,
interrogating me.

I had to think.

I wondered how
I would answer his
question, were it posed
by someone I was interested in.

"I like the smell of hormones
colliding, omnipotent in their
decision to do so and in doing
it."

Could I say that?

"I like to feel like a hormone,"
or
"I like being a hormone."
Were these answers?

"I like patting my contracted
******* against the *****
majora of my partner."

"I like sewing," I might say.

That is, the idea
that if I push
and she opens
both testicles
and ******* may pop inside.

Like a **** needle pulling
a ***** thread
through a tight weave.

I laugh, imagining what the little man
would say, but
he doesn't know why.

"Stitch her up, Doctor!"

I'm
laughing.

He just says "you know, I'm into
chemistry, biology. Just tell me what
you're into."

I've been silent.
Is he still walking with me?

All I think to say is
"music" pointing to the earbuds
dangling over my chest, song
interrupted
by his pedantry.

He says "you've always liked music"
as if we've had this conversation before.
As if we know each other.
And it seems like he will follow me
to class.
And sit by me.
And talk about chemistry
and biology
while we discuss Singin' in the Rain.

Hormones, sewing and music.

for fifty
dollars
you
park
your car
inside
one
of these garages.
I drive and drive and drive, knowing
that I will not have a place
outside those garages.
I spent fifty
dollars
on a purple v-neck, orange crew cut
striped shirt and ten socks;
it was my birthday money.
I’m going to go inside
restart the laundry
so it will be warm.
My apartment complex has speed
bumps before each module
to slow the traffic
and as I go over one, looking
at a darkened figure standing
in the garage, taking
a plastic bag from their trunk—face obscured by darkness--
I realize what a crude portrait
humanity is.
Trapped on this prison
planet—what was our crime?
In that moment, bobbing head
I thought of love
and how unobtainable its object is;
then I realized
only people who pursue love
are capable of murderous rampage killings.
I thought about how safe my anonymous
neighbor
was
and how lucky someone would be
to know what saints walk among them.
I forget that my bright shirts were bought
to attract someone so
I could attempt to love.

It feels better to be falsely imprisoned
--to be a saint--
than to know ****** and love
are parked inside of you.
The dark figure takes out
whatever's stopping you.

However long ago the bluster shadows roll anew beyond my pale eyelids and out mornings aloud shouts ‘awaken’ the post—scribbled and crossed with meaning

There are words there are words there are words there…

But some remain obscured by others, however long ago the bluster shadows roll anew each bundled ***
of news we read one word: war.

There are words there are words there are words there…

War. Word. Word. Word, other word.

And we held hands in December of 2011, then said goodbye on the morning of January 2nd 2012, when the bluster shadows rolled anew beyond my pale eyelids the words there:

Love. Word. Word. Word, other word.

I blinked. Was on vacation with you, at your parents’ home. However long ago the bluster shadows roll anew, beyond my pale eyelids, and upstairs, outside, and gone was I. When there were words there, I blinked.

Word. Word. Word. Word, other word.

Nothing mattered anymore—not love, or war.

I’ll never try to read the future in the news again.

As few more days the bluster shadows of mind are rolled out on a bleak December of frigid interaction—another fifty years of human life—before I see you again in empty nothingness beneath my pale eyelids, without thought looming like a bomb plane, or chemical attack,

scribbled and crossed with meaning, shouts ‘Awaken’ the words of the past—

Laura. Laura. Laura. Laura. Laura, Laura.

There were --, there were --, there were --, there were -- there

A few titles
A few songs
A few artists
Combine
for compound fractures
of my consciousness

For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing
     Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,
     And day by day the fury swells aflame,
     And the woe waxes heavier day by day—
     Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows
     The former wounds of love, and curest them
     While yet they're fresh, by wandering freely round
     After the freely-wandering Venus, or
     Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.

Yes, a swollen skin
fragmented bone
I walk
and flee her capture.

I’m sick.
I have a fever and flu-like symptoms.
I am alone, and have been for hours,
lying on my bed
with a lavender candle pulsating
to the sound of classical music,
dancing on the darkness of my
ceiling.

I am not aroused
but, playfully,
I slide my palm
over the underside
of my hairy
behind
and begin
to gently stimulate
each hair
with near-static
force.

I occasionally push
my fingertips
into the crevice—
my crevice—
my end.

How good this feels
to be sick
and allow oneself to
feel
the emptiness too
dark
and bold
and powerful
to be contained within us.

The comforting,
soft touch
we can give ourselves
is like a loved one
holding our hand;
it almost tickles, and this sensation
although distinct
reminds me
of the pretend animals
my grandma would parade
across my back.

Beyond our view
the guillotine,
existence,
slowly begins to descend
as we lie,
holding hands with ourself
on top of the covers,
sweat pants around the ankles,
grabbing our own ***
as the steady rain
trickles from the roof
of tenement housing
and beats
on the aluminum gutter
for hours
until it’s over.

The night has fallen
like a punishment
for finding no one
and it occludes my sight;
I shiver, and cannot *******.

Existence is too dark
to allow dancing candlelight
or baroque masters
to tickle its space.


It is filled with falling heads
and clutching grasps.

I’m sorry your football team lost, state.
Maybe you should invest
more time and
focus
on the things within your borders
that make any difference at all.
Like the thoughts of a young man
sitting at his table
watching ******* all day
                                            waiting
for a woman
who knows what it feels like;
He worries so much
                                                    For
a country
that spends more energy getting
drunk
and eating bleacher food
than wondering
if there’s any reason to be
Anything
Anything
Anything
                                   ANYTHING
at all.

--You are like that man
                                   wearing red,
shouting at your tv
and cursing;              only
you are without an
idea.

And you'll be that way on Monday
and Tuesday.
You'll have a thought
of where to eat on Wednesday
or decide to have a baby on Thursday
and forget on Friday
while you're dancing.

But you won't ever ask why;
not even on Sunday, when you're
sitting in church
and thinking about Kansas City
Chiefs' scores
or whatever worthless *******
you people think about.

I'm *******.

I’m lying in the fetal position
at the bottom of a muddy trench dug during World War One
or
I’m queuing outside a gas chamber
skin exposed to Winter air by burlap
during World War Two

In one of these fantasies- - and that’s what they are- -
a man looks over his shoulder and asks
whether I deserve
to be alive.
“I don’t think so,” I mutter.
Then another man stands over my emaciated frame
and quanders “Have you had time
to
zink about your
life?”

I raise a muddy foot
or
adjust my weight to face
my conversation partner:
“What do you want me to say?”

I want you to say everything
(pointing to a field of shell-craters)
before you go out there
or
I want you to have a chance
(pointing to my head)
before you go in there.

Then, the vapor comes
or
it starts raining.

I no longer mind
the laughter of people,
leaves falling,
sun rising—
all is destitution,
squalor,
our dirt-clod--
Earth.

Moons snicker, too
at our moon, which,
sneering at me
becomes dizzy
from its hypocrite
cycle.

Pulling tides,
the way it has
a quarter-century,
my life.

I want you
to die;
I want you all
to die before I do.
Moons, stare on.

I want to steal an abandoned air-
liner for you.

As far as possible,
I will climb toward
your towering grimaces
crashing, directly,
into the ground
without wonderment
or acknowledgment
on this Earth.

Trending topics
of the day
could not take stock of my
demise.
Shallow conversations
sit on barstools
put off
for eternity.
They showed me love
by suggesting
“change”.
I show them
love
is coming back
to earth
and lying with their putrid
bodies
against my will.

I think,
what you should keep in mind
is the thrusting
pulsation, my
veiny
body parts
do.

My heart and
others'
stop
to feel
the coursing
flow.

You don't.

But you should.

Wait for breath;
catch it and,

yes,
use it
to pull out
every ounce
of air
that seeps
from lungs
and touches
on your hollow throat.

Let it vibrate
through your empty
self, into
the
sounds,
which form
my name.

"Wo es war,
da soll ICH
werden."
--
The self is manifest in the signifier.

Please don’t mind
my interpretation
of your fixation
on Others'
words to a
page.

Wires holding
limbs holding
folders holding
papers holding
words holding
contrived
meaning
tell me something
about the way
we see each other.
I need to know
if you want to hear
the tuition I paid
speak,
because I don’t
need to be tested
daily
for my ability
to read
when the message
you are sending me
has one real-world
application.

That application is submission.

We can't all be teachers
and you are mostly
spineless cowards
with no weapons
but breath
removed from heaving chests
of those who died
thinking
those thoughts
you systematically
rehearse.

I need you
to combat dreams
I can’t control;
to keep me warm
in-between
seasons and days.
You help me see.
I’m not addicted.
I just have high ex-
pectations for my mind.
The connections
you fasten;
the faltering awareness
you calm and persuade
to remain.
I do want you here,
boiling with the pressure
of my stomach
like the worries which
brought you into me
from a cup
poured by my hand,
shaking.
While you were emptied,
I smiled, and thought of
the focus I’m gaining.
Please disperse yourself
throughout my body.
And tell the thoughts you bring
along with you to
leave me in peace
with my imaginings.

(...)
It is perhaps this association between birth and beginning each school year which led me to respect knowledge. The entire month of August tends to fly by, unnoticed, in anticipation of the day I see children forced back into ill-ventilated buildings to emulsify themselves in education, for knowledge. Knowledge, that Moloch of an idea! Hobbies, interests and Summertime activities were heaped on flaming tongues with words in order to illustrate their ultimate insignificance. We hoped to bring out the blessing of wisdom from its mouth. “What matters is the coming Winter, not the frivolous activities of undisciplined youths.” It is as if the leaves of every tree were humanity's hair, and August had pulled back every strand to blow the woodsy breath of Autumn smoke into life’s ear. "You won't be this way forever." I am yet seduced by Fall’s cryptic murmurings and led to believe in endless, Halcyon flight. With arms draped around us from behind, knowledge draws me into oblivion, with unlabeled memories and I throw my desires into Moloch’s mouth. Now that I am burning, my self is the voice of this demigod. My birth certificate is my body, holding a memory to be inscribed on some later form beside some other numbers. Life has only so many Decembers.
(...)

you appear to be real
when you really appear
then I look in your eyes
but you’re not living there
I hold out my hand
and I cling to cool air
I grasp with my mind
a subtle despair
and I glance toward the sunset
at least once a year
to see where you're hiding
because it is you
whom I unfathomably
fear

I hold in my hand a paper
It is blank, and dark
And shaped like a Sony voice recorder.

I tell it “I always wondered
when entering leaves
and leaving comes in—
where we go when we
begin,
and who says it’s over”


The little black box catches all of my thoughts
and stares blankly ahead
waiting for more.

“Why do we think it matters
that we suffer alone?
Beaches
cliffs
and valleys,
erode time and Other
forces.

Unread letters
dissent
to their homology
of patted matter
and solitary discomfort under
gravity.

Solace in solitude is wonderful.

Only I feel the weight of Earth’s atmosphere
in the sound of a dialtone—remember that?

Yes, the other side of the conversation
waits for connection—but you must choose
the coordinates.”

Hawaii is volcano islands,
but
Rock and sand
Air and breeze
Prairie and trees—
this is the Midwest.


I’m going to sit down
and envelop myself.

When I am done
The poem will have delivered me
to a place in the grass of a prairie
a cave on the side of a cliff
a beach it pebbles for sand
and a steep descent from the
volcano.

When this poem
is read with gathering perspiration
it will cool the still-flowing
lava of Hawaiian islands,
soften the edge
of each pebble;
this poem will hang a cloth in the opening
of mouths
caving in
to protect the traveler
from his shadow.

If you do not hear this poem
of the Earth escaping itself,
trees fighting their way into
its soil,
rocks being worn away to grains
of sand sifting through our fingers
and clouds taking moisture
to a more deserving place,
let the consolation be
a life
full of prosperity
and feigned kindness--
ready-mades,
hollow handshakes,
doors beaten
by little hands
asking about breakfast
on a Saturday
and
selling thin mints
to your neighbors.

I love you, sisters and brothers,
just weather our sod
and air
and water
and fire

--it will find you
when it is ready.

I swilled pupils behind your glass               Then sighed into the telephone.
                                                      ­      (…)
reflections of me peering out.                     /Against each felled bough
The sneering nose,                                       /blooms indignity
supports a wire                                             /swelling like vineyards
framing your visions.                                 /over sultry horizons;
Beneath                                                        /I float and stare
a satin camisole                                        /at equanimity
connected to me                                      /vanishing in undue time,
below the belly. This was our ship     /like my young grapes
taking on                                                 /dripped on your bodice
water.                                                    ­ /while you drank with no conscience.

A Monday Poem
I always forget:
Is today the first day of this week,
Or is this week the first week of today?

This subtle reordering reminds me that structures we place on pedestals
And signify through complex rituals
Are banal and meaningless
As traveling for some unknown, still, despised enterprise

And yet:
To ignore the difference between a month, a May
Or more particularly, a week and day
Is offensive,
Punishable, even, if maintained
By being made redundant at a job we hate
In the same way days become weeks
--Or was it the other way?—
We slowly fall into line

Our whole civilization is founded on such times
Delineation between yours and mines
Months and seasons, seasons climes
Climes and seasons, suns and shines
Generations and centuries,
Januaries and Februaries

We maintain our separation
And produce indoctrination
With the idea that Monday is a rhyme
Which ends with giving more than half your time
To the owner who insists
With pleated pants and flinching fists
The difference between week and day
Is a year’s labor
Handing out stock animal’s salaries
To the ones who know the difference between
Week and day.

I was fading out
Searching for the horizon
Fading on... To the wind
My sheets carried ideas,
my sheets restricted flesh to flies
Eyes sailed... Did my bed
On...                 My tears
Four years... Toes tingling with numbness
Held sky... Inside this room
And that
of prior walls dooring
to that dock
I waft... Away
I waft...
After the fade
I will waft

On the Mediterranean coast of Africa
I waft
with the seeds of a Phoenician queen
in my corpuscule
her sweet fruit
being eaten
by your
heavy tongue
perverse, Moloch sun.

Today, I watched a heavy insect of
indeterminable species
repeatedly slam into the wide picture windows
of my college library’s
third story as I read a book
analyzing one poem
Teilhard de Chardin wrote
after carrying casualties
on a stretcher
all day
from a war for which no name is presented
to me.

It is inferred de Chardin's time tells of world wars,
yet his poem deals with virginity
and mothers
although of each he was in just one.

Resistance to our ****** urges
and the potency resistance drains
was compared to
minute prosperity provided by the pursuit
of retaining 'innocence'.

The book was named "Eternal Feminine"
and its author's argument functioned
as a double victory for remittance
to a cloud kingdom
and shivering loneliness
seen through invisible barriers
on earth.

Hooray!

He seemed to be
rationalizing the struggle
with sickly pleasure
from repetition of denial.

But I lost interest in his foolish, war-time words.

Watching the flying thing reverse directly,
then continuously speeding ahead
into various windows
which were thought to be bare air,
confused and jolting with every attempt
and frantically circling in my sight,
I was led to thinking of a
demolition derby
at a fairground to which
my parents brought me
each year
of childhood
in the Autumn.

I watched, fascinated
machines stave-off
self-induced decimation
until the very last collision, after which
their motive force removed itself
rushing off to pilot
some variant of bumbling insects
and stretchers
in the form of French theological poets
throughout the past
carrying bodies
into the hands of a college student
backing up determinately
to burst through, toward the one who bares
no sons, who may become warriors
or demagogues.

This kind, secular Hannah
crosses my vision
walks out
beyond frames and doors,
clothes flowing with her
body, like a
sweet corona
sweltering with unseen heat
the fading horizon
of my day.

He sees her reflection on the moon.

Now he may not see space’s vacuous expanse
while
she may not be able to touch time’s clear fabric,
although they each feel
glass’s frozen liquidity
in silence.

Each
continuously strikes their head
against motion’s transparent barriers
with force
stubbornly flapping
into matter
with passion
and wings pulsating
toward a new direction
which does not seal them off
to the outside
of a building
in which they would be swatted,
punished for what they are.

Then the moment passed
and the sun’s thousand year combustion
had reached my neck
and penetrated matter
to massage me;

for eight and a half minutes
it travelled
toward a shadow I pushed
across the table
when the sun suddenly was helpless
to tell me where I ended,
which windows I flew through.

I was on top
de Chardin’s stretcher
as he looked at me to say I shouldn’t
charge in that way,
but I fell down
when he let go
or he evaporated
when I doubted he had lived.

Pressing my cheek against the glass
I reversed my propulsion
like the flown insect
and sounded again
my body's tinging
reverberation
on every surface.

Anne drew in a drag of thick, suede cigarette smoke
she turned to her lover on the pillow,
pivoting her jaw to face him
and muttered:
“I miss the way you used to
spank me, loudly proclaiming your passion
for my inner thigh and rubbing my ****
with your tongue.
I haven’t been happy
in a very long while. I sit here, each night,
waiting for you to tell me that I love you
but you hold it in, like a drag of thick, suede
cigarette smoke.”

Andrew turned to Anne and smiled broadly, saying:
“I’ve loved you since the moment I set eyes upon
you. I caught a glance of you gleaming in the moonlight
after we left the disco in separate cars, friends
surrounding everyone.
I told you then to call me, and you didn’t. But
I waited three days until I found you
at the coffee shop, alone, and said ‘hello’.”

Each sighed and dropped the pretense of knowing
what the other was seeing.
Then, they turned toward opposite directions and slowly fell
into themselves

Everyone has an idea
what music is
to them.
Still, with knobs tuning in
to different concerts within
variegated steel vehicles
that drive toward chagrining
clock radios on Sunday's dresser inside
disavowed hotel rooms with flashing, red
lights and sound
reminding us all
where we are—what for
a time we hold to be real.
But all concepts from shaking heads
forming to join a choir that sings
a hymn to 'here' and flashes,
in the face of fear
a light from stars beginning with one
collision, across time then
claps its hands in unison
with 'now'

Someone’s white golf ball
lies, abandoned
between moist grass and
desolate wanderers through
municipal courses
during Evening on
Father’s Day. Holding my pin, my quill
Frantically stitching point de capitons
between myself and the calm, fair way
I walk with conviction
alone, among firing-
flies toward all fathers
tonight, as swathing sprinklers gush, displacing
***** in-utero, past fences protecting
femme fatales whose unknown aspects
hang off tree rows
protruding from shoulders
sand-like limbs, flexed, stringy biceps
connect to its plastic dimples
through sturdy, wooden
fingers burrowed under grass and
swaying, pink clouds within
my eyes. Beyond hole
nines, red markers markers and ladies’
tee boxes
unacknowledged from
the green.

Rippling blades cede to setting-
star’s sacrimony in
vacant son-rooms, the
porches left of center, gurgling
traffically enveloped by laughter,
disinterested.

For this sight I cut my hair
inside my cozy, beige apartment
complex with a blue shower
curtain-wearing green, graphic
tease
printed by gray palm trees
swoops a hunting eagle, into the ebbing
stencil-tide of late day
orchestrated by man, this occurrence is
vagueary and seductive machinery
programmed by man
producing all, we are.

Waving tufts and leaves fall from
oaks wafting time past my nose with
rhythms out ciccadas, harmonies out
couples pulsating the sky,
ease pressure on vestigial nerves under
their atmospheres, droning vibrations, hollowed-
out and upholding
like arms do, Earth’s giant didgeridoo
We hum beside propulsive kangaroo
Tendons—see!
we’re becoming
taut on
empty bones holding-
black
birds with wings thrown desperately
toward others, panic
aloft in velvety
blue oxygen.

Picturing our streets’ concrete
burst asunder by
metesticized pipes watering formulaic
grounds
unearthing rock
and shrub
I passed the mangled corpses of adults
their kind, sighing.

I know it is as lifeless as his faint,
decomposing golf ball my dad
may have allowed me to
see. Our drowning star swoops
into the ocean
as eagles stamped on chests do,
unknown to time,
and loving shadows
untouched by yellow,
translucent lamp-
glare avoids the fallow structures
built with cement
inside the boudoir
of this day.