I made eye
contact with a woman
carrying turquois around.
Her pale neck, warm and slender,
contrasted softly, calf-length
shorn cotton colored by
the night. Her heaving blonde
strokes of hair brushed the skin
lovingly and shaded each cheek bone
with dynamic pulsation,
rivaling the fluttering
eyelids beneath my forehead.
I could easily recognize her
before
she told me I could
take an empty seat
facing her
away
to my table, alone.
But then
she held out her hand
gently petting the chest
of another man-- and I was silent.
Wrapping her ankle around his shin
she seemed to stare at me
through the back of his head, but
I was sure I would slide out of my chair
if she saw me watching.
I sat there, feeling her
rough tongue and brittle fingers
from around the world
pry into my mouth and glance my chin,
smiling with teeth
partially inside his skull.
Cooing,
as I had been,
she reached into
my chest
without knowing.

I sit in the open, waiting
            like Earth,
for Apophis to near me
                     and near me
                     and near me
                                 again                 leaving...
What
          *******
                       difference
does it make?

           Each time it passes our compact
dust clod in space
           I will be rooting for it
and that says more about humanity
than I ever could.

             Yep, today
was a good day.
              What the sun hath
wrought!

Scenery contains emotions
Mostly anxiety
Surroundings enclose me
As I speed through them
Sitting sideways, on a train
My bag’s somewhere near me
And you don’t care what’s in there
Which is ok, there’s nothing for you
But I grin, thinking of how strange that is
And everything’s better now
I’m not coming to visit

It’s better looking over shoulders of a
road that isn’t there and leaves held
in the hands of
strangers combing through their sacks.
Eyes, dead, locked-- begging;
Pan the unique kilning porcelain
ornament for gives; stolen heat is hidden under tiles
as salt melts under tires and collapsing
blocks of ice float through
the crevice of your murky stream.
That pine severs from the limb of repose
and jams in meaning to your crook--
where your chasm distorts silence.

She squeezed her ticket
As though it were the brake line
His blew through Fall breeze

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.

Amidst anticipation and preparation
I could hardly hum along
Years since
I hear as the last few months of high school
Moss-strewn desert
Floral, perfume-clouded memories
Drip on
Down the walls, damp musty and alone
That chorus, repeat others
In our hollow cave reflections,
Holds no melody
More sufficient
Shattered, prattled teeth
Vibrate within

Anhänger of bands
Parades in here
Your voice
Feverously
Dancing
In my skull
Coming from our mouths
Each ****** idea we think
Careening through my body
Embedded in my DNA
Spelling out and adding up to somebody
Who somehow
Is,
Just …
Holding on

You read a poem and think about your life.

The words spill over the dam of your reservoir and seep into the soil of your brain.

Why do you hide yourself from this fact?

The writer couldn’t have known any other reality than your own when they wrote this piece.

They could not have anticipated the oneness you two now share.

If you hadn’t let their words into your spine, tingling through the vertebrae,

touching the synapses with fluttering hands, gentle and soft,

wouldn’t they have known their failure to reach their destination?

Days slowly become years as we wander further
Down the path toward the water
The banks engulf us and carry us into
The shallow depths
We cannot know what is below the surface until
We plunge our fingers into the sand and watch the sand
Drift slowly downstream
Life in this way carries on to the next place of settlement
To the next area of contentment
Where the soul will linger inside the banks and
Carry one more body into the water
Where it will discover the sand and it will
Plunge its fingers into the deep

Dying to come here from the opposite direction
Moving away from this place
They pushed their possessions in covered small wagons
With hands chafed and dry
No one ever thought they’d make it
When they started dying here
No one ever though they’d make it
But look they’re there
They have built their sanctuary
They have completed their mission
They’ve gone to the top of the mountain
And realized their vision
So many of them died
So many of them lived
So many born each day
So many

It was the best I’ve seen
They said about me
And my parents were happy
I don’t know why that matters
I wasn’t, but I was proud
And there’s a difference
Pride’s something you can wrap up in
Happiness is a window display
Success was mine, and nothing could change that
We won, because of me
And I’m a winner
Today it’s in the papers
But that’s the last time it was
Because I stopped trying
Maybe if I wanted to
I could lay one down again
Then I’d jump
And ****** my arms
I look to left field and my smile crosses space and time

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’m going to die.
I’m going to wake up tomorrow.
I’m going to die, and I’m going to wake up tomorrow and I’m going to die.
Tomorrow I’m going to wake up and I’m going to die.
And when I wake up tomorrow, I’m going to die, but I’m going to wake up.
And when I wake up, I’m going to die.
Tomorrow I’m going to wake up, and die.
But I’m going to wake up to die tomorrow and tomorrow I’m going to die.
So, tomorrow, when I wake up, I will die.
But I’m going to die.
And I’m going to wake up tomorrow.

(While I was writing this I flushed a Black Widdow down the toilet)

I read the news today
                                            Oh boy.
                                                              About a lucky man who made the grade.
And though the news was rather
                                                                  Sad.
                                                                            I just had to laugh.
He blew his brains out in the car.
                                                                    He didn't notice that the lights had
Changed.

I can’t think of myself as anyone else
I haven’t the slightest idea
After six months, I shall do what you wish
That’s not true
It’s not true. I tell you it’s not true!
Not another word
What’s the matter with him?
I feel that he is my equal
That’s all right, then! That’s all right, then!
Let’s say I’m not worthy of it
When I look a man in the eyes
I become incapable of giving him orders
I’m going out
Don’t believe a word of it
You’ll be more comfortable
“There you’re really yourself”

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

I woke up an hour ago and repeatedly said 'hello' to increasingly disheartening silence I expected to be your voice.
I got so scared I thought I was going insane. It made me think I had imagined you and had always been in this bad place, deluded into thinking I was with you that whole time. It seems saying thank you for the break will make it real again and telling you I need to say it makes me weak. I feel I might throw up and telling you is selfish. So much for convenience and light-heartedness-- if those are things people want from this experience. I think people want to know it mattered.. But maybe I've made this point too clear.

And we see when we were younger lying in the grass below
The hills were high and we were under the heavens which glowed
I saw the clouds white and silver passing above our heads
I looked you in the eyes and you stuttered where do we go next
We took a step holding hands
You released mine, I looked away
You embarrassed me in front of my friends, I still remember it today
You chased me crying through the ally
I laughed at you aloud, I’m sorry that it ever came to that
I wasn’t ever proud of how I treated you that night
But I asked you for forgiveness, we made up and we kissed
You gave me birthday presents
I think it’s funny how it goes, how life fades away
Those times were o so long ago, but I think of them today
And I see that you’ve made friends, you’ve moved on
I shouldn’t even think of you
It’s pathetic really that I’m talking to the ghost inside my head
Those days were sunny, my car was warm
We rolled down the windows, still we sweat
I lifted hair off of your cheek, I kissed you
It was tender it was sweet, my fingers were inside of you
I grabbed your bosoms I held them, I licked each ******
And I pressed myself against you
Can you forget these days the way I do?
Can you forget these days and yet have them inside of you?

Staring at Space
Touching Time
Miraculous Confection
Absorbed in Soil           and
Water                    and
Gas              and Daylight

Jim has 1 rose
Carl has 2
Sam likes yellow
Carl has 2
Sam buys 1 rose
Carl has 2

What for? For what am I waiting so long?
It makes absolutely no sense. Without you I felt
the walls built out of plaster and tasted
coffee from countries that I haven’t visited, with soft hands
I am planted in the earth on the edge of your river.
Yes, so even, yet outflown as I am, degraded and unnecessary.
A thousand thorn centered tributaries.
I would like to feel your thoughts on me and
mys-- “mys,” what does it mean to adhere?

Yes, I know you have them still, these whispered thoughts
they are the seams that hold my feathers beneath your head.
You can lie the same way as yesterday, but without follow up.
“I am not flying toward you!” I call. But it’s no use
You escape me. Shame, Sweet, that we
are together so short.

We hid between fences
in our neighbors’ yards at night
while others counted

Why scream in darkness,
everybody screams there;
It is for cowards and idiots
thinking they can change.

I tell her I need her and I want
her
compass, her train pass, her
watch-
ful eye directed toward my city.

She tells me that she loves me,
and cries.

It was the first time. It was in the dark
night. Then I realized:

Crying is like screaming
in the day.

She tells me I have
Beautiful veins for needles
Too much heroine

I fell asleep in
The shower today, water
ran and ran and ran

What
          can be said
in eight words
alone?

Every day is
Going to be different
But also the same

Hi
I hate you
Bye
I love you

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

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 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 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