Turns out,
I’m an idiot
who knows nothing and does no good.
I watch the moon go down
every couple months
to readjust my calendar
and pour my non-organic coffee from
glass pots made in emerging markets.
You may say we’re losing the world
or that the Earth should be preserved—
Fine.
I **** at the feet of your bourgeois children and their plastic, antibacterial lunchboxes.
For me there is no world to lose.

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.

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.

What
          can be said
in eight words
alone?

Even the words now are pictures, or
fixtures holding light, illuminating oil-stained paintings that darkness had drowned.
Exclusion of meaning was power, but all it destroyed now is found.
Meaning in words forms a tower, buckling with pressure it waves.
I hold my breath as it wobbles, as structure feigns to degrade.
I watch every shaking beam-length tremble then snap under invisible weight of doubt.
Like rays of our sun are your eyes furthermore, their radiance only temporarily put out.
Centuries of planning united, now threaten to sunder apart
the lifetimes we both used to build mortal city, formed with material from our own hearts.
I wanted to be certain I’m seeing what my eyes refuse to believe.
A city felled as a tree, lined by satin and your skin perfumed with dew.
Your three names were “I Love You,” bundled and thrown into a Spring grave.
Before, your mouth directed sailors to a shoreline without destroying their boats,
floatation swept from your eyes left every tired vessel afloat.
But now that your guiding-light is burned out, and our city is flat and deserted,
flotsam washes up on the shore, in the form of your words which I pass onward, evermore.

A boy stooped in that lonely corner
saw in the vending-machine’s glass,
self-sufficient, weary eyes; less
reflective and gleaming than before.
--Do you remember the way to the car? Asks the mother--
the planes flew
and the trucks honked.
Each day, a variation of the past
when the boy stooped in that lonely corner
--and the man presses plastic numbers--
for what had come.

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

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

A little passion-- A loss
A little belief-- An unbelief
A little love-- Unloving
A little slack-- left
and unstaying

Alone, no small amount alone
Alone, outrun, outrun, outrun, ALONE
and I jump into the depth without meaning
and opinion
                  and a little belief
resulted in nothing, and nowhere
                   Found I meaning
and nowhere found I
                   Hope
and nowhere found I despair

I lost loss
Loved unloving
Believed hopelessness
Read, left
Alone

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

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.

Beyond the distance of
Your scent
Too meek to glimpse your eyes
I watched your wrists tremble
As you wrestled Gaia
As you laughed
And danced
Animating me by mere proximity
My legs thrashing in the water
My mind gasping for air
I was submerged
As the sheath of beauty, the essence of ambivalence
Embraced me with cunning

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.

A Secret

I’m gonna say something to you that’s gonna sound crazy--
and you’re gonna want to walk away.
and you’re not gonna want to see me ever again.
But I have to tell you this,
because, in the past--
I let people walk away from me before I said this;
and I can’t let that happen with you.
I want to kiss you
I want to kiss you so bad, and
I don’t even care if you want to be kissed.
I wanna hold you right here
and rest my head on your shoulder--
‘cause in the same way that I’m holding you
you hold me,
and it completes a cycle of mutual affection that will eventually
grow into something bigger.
Something that I’ve always felt for you, but you may not feel for me
and that may sound strange, ‘cause I’ve just met you
but I feel this way for everyone that’s open to the world
that’s open to the possibility that someone out there may love them
more than they love that person.
You need to know that I love you, and that will never change.
If you want to ask me how I feel about you,
I will always tell you the same thing, in more or less words,
by repeating that I love you.
I love you--
and I love your body.
I love the heart that beats in your chest, and the feet that carry you
through the world. I love the hips that sway when you dance
and I love the eyes that make contact with strangers
causing their hearts to expand and contract rapidly--
I think you’re a wonderful person.
There’s nothing you have to do to prove that this is the truth to me
because I know that what I think
impacts the way I see the world
and if you weren’t--
everything I made you out to be in my mind, then
there’s no way you could change my ideas about it anyway
or regardless.
I will always love you, and I will always be in this moment with you
with part of my existence-- at this time,
from now on. And into the past, I will have always been aiming at this
moment-- to when I told you how I feel about you.
--
So we have here, the culmination of two minds; two trajectories
through the universe crossing at this point, and place, in space
and time.
--
They don’t cross forever. But, as far as I’m concerned, the duration of their
intersection is yet to be determined--
And that is where we find Freedom
is in how long we choose
to spend with people that are important to us.
And I’m telling you you’re important to me, and I don’t even know you.
So
:
:
:
KISS ME

Tell me why it has to be this way. I don’t want to hold on to one side of this conversation and have the other person falling off a ladder. Yeah, down there on the ground. Get up and look at me!
      I wasn’t sleeping, I swear—he said hastily.
Yeah, whatever, buddy. Tell me what you’re doing in my head?
      Repainting. Repainting over the old spots, the worn out spots.
But those are the best spots, the only ones with character. Can you tell me who sent you?
      No sir, I cannot.
Then it is ok. I suppose I’ll have to watch as you put varnish on top of every dream and aspiration I have ever had. Do you know who the girl was that I first loved in the springtime of youth’s blossom?
    It was Ashley, sir.
I believe I did not love her, guest worker. What are you wearing there?
    A pair of overalls, a cape. What’s the difference?
I’m the one who speaks to you first, and don’t be short with me. I don’t like you standing there in an open room with no windows. How is that possible?
    I’m sorry, boss. It’s just, I finished painting over that memory but the paint’s still wet. You loved her very much, I’m afraid.
    Ashley? I never gave her a second thought. Perhaps you are right. I only remember kissing her shyly and asking permission to see her *******. They were the biggest of all.
      Yes sir, I thought so too. She was a sweet girl though.
Sweet? I’ll tell you Mr. Painter; Ashley was the first girl I kissed. I kissed her in my first love’s house, a different girl. I loved Ashley more than that first love and I’m serious. No one can ever make me forget the day we lay on her mother’s sofa in the basement.
      --I’m sorry, sir.
No, say it is impossible. Say you have some form of soap that can make up for your treachery!
     No, I’m only wearing orange overalls and marching on the word from above.
But who sent you!!!? I have to know. I’m crying.
    Justin, it’s ok. It’s Ashley. She said you need to stop crying. She has a family now.
Well, alright. That house. That basement. That unconscious.
    We are worms, sir. Worms, slithering and boundless. Please accept my apologies.
No, it’s quite alright. If you must take every memory of my second love, take my third. And take my fourth and every other woman who crosses my path. It’s not my choice to keep them captive in the imagination of what could have been. You know, it’s been years since I truly cared about someone—
    Since Ashley?
Who’s that?
    Ashley.
Goodbye forever, harlot.
    Sir, you’re being brash.
No, I don’t remember that name and I hold you at an arm’s length in my mind. Please, finish what you’re doing and allow me to rest. What color are you painting the room?
    Green, I’m afraid.
Then so it is. Goodbye, good friend. Goodbye sweet love. Forever, in the spring. Temporal boundaries and endless playlists. Be the verve, be the melody. I love you!
     So it is. Sleep well, sir.

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!

Battered, abused, some say
Forgotten, if e’er discovered
Alone, a knot of fleshy skin
Together, lips of lovers

Du warst meine kleine Aufklaerung
Obwohl ich noch lange nicht erwacht bleibe
Ohne dich fuehle ich die Waende
Und dreh mich den Kopf im Kreis
Bevor dich war der Horizont leer
Jetzt *******er unfassbar, so wie die Erinnerung an dir
Und alles ist ok so, weil man sehnt immer nach
Unmoegliches
Unmoegliches bist du
Ich werde immer besessen davon
Besessen von dir


[You were my small Enlightenment
Although I long since remain unawakened
Without you I feel the walls
And turn my head in a circle
Before you was the horizon empty
Now it appears intangible, like the memory of you
And everything is ok this way, because one always longs for the impossible
You are the impossible
With which I will always be obsessed
Obsessed with you]

No, we shall never live on
Thus, we are not crazy
Posthumously stated
Although, not so lately

Words quoted by those
Who ignore the past
Lines from prose
Which ignore final acts

“It’s bombardment
Contamination
Shallow, impromptu
Callous and sad”
So dismayed
Are the critics
At what they can’t have

Without a spotlight on them
Without a solemn reprisal
They tediously sip coffee
And watch in denial

“It will never work, it just mustn’t”
“It can’t be done, for it wasn’t”
Oh, I’m tired of these children
Their fathers and moms
I’m sick of this museum
Now then, let’s all carry 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?

The torrid slushing slosh and evening moondown temperature of green-boiled cauldrons
We drove—not we, just I
And, branches falling, found my way
Blind and in a roundabout
I removed my sheathened corpuscle
My metal encasement and violated the elements of fire
Sorrowful electricity and fate blots out all headlights
Those cares—those cars!
SORGESORGESORGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
You hold on, now
You keep trying
And I’ll be back

The world created for us is sick.
It’s decaying.
Wounds, with no scab forming
And we’re expected, without questioning
To live on in such a world
To allow such a world to exist
But it’s infuriating
And it torments the hearts of men
Tearing mother from child
Raising us on malevolence
Scurrying through the fields
Until the hunters carry us away
And every last vestige of shelter
Is plucked from the ground
Incinerated, burned in factories
To make cardboard boxes
That will be filled with promises
Of low cholesterol
For the masses
That gleam over the details
Unaware that hope is lost
And that our species is dying
Hurriedly moving from one space
To another
Without realizing their fright
Without looking at the box
That they helped produce
By failing to protect
Their shelter
A world, ending

There's a *** on the windowsill behind my eye window.
                                                                                              It gets no sunlight these days, in the Winter.
I need you to open the blinds of my eyelids and kiss me,
                                                                                              burning your image into my retina and
feeding that plant with energy.

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

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.

Those of like mind
Stepping down corridors
Toward blurring red signs
Each extrusion an exit
Hapless movement
Containers transported
Memories and anguish
Containers transported
Into meadows of ease
Between trees minus leaves
Nothing but a reflection
Degenerated façade
Ashes vaporized with
Consciousness, my boiling
Water

Benedictine Warlords
Hold ceremonies in ballrooms
Tie knots in dying children’s hair
Demarking havoc to succumb
Red X-es on trees
Placating these
Monsters
These scumbags
These treasons
Against a muck they scoured
A much maligned superfluity
Of words, of thoughts
Of feelings
Of devotion
Sympathy
What of it?
You’ve heard my ideas on living
You’ve killed my attempts
Superavero
Veni
Superavero
Now go, before you learn what life is

A feeling of guilt from my past
An inkling that this just won’t last
A look from the mirror
Yesterday’s smell on my clothes
Your smile is mixed in with all those
That I never was
That I’ve always hated
Just ideas

I’m stumbling slowly through this life
Each step is overwhelming
Every time I put one foot on the ground
The other is pulling away from it
Isn’t this walking?
In a way, I suppose
But it’s not at all relaxing, as walking should be
I rarely manage to notice the breeze on my cheek
Constantly I plunge into the depths of evening
Only to emerge dry and unscathed in the morning sun
Every sorrow and worry that encompasses me
Vanishes, when I turn my attention away
And I fail to notice
That I’ve only failed to notice
As they all devour my flesh
Each anxiety writhing and coursing through my veins
It’s terrible, but my memory is gone so soon
Then again it happens
And I’m vexed
But it passes
Again and again
Every day, tormenting
Every night, strife
And I fear the morning, for it brings the cycle’s renewal
Each birth, a sentence
Each breath, an exhalation of animosity
Although I can’t calculate the fear
It rages un-quantified
And I can’t measure the distrust
But my hands shake
I tear the sheets off my bed in terror from my sleep
And the sweat I bathe in is pitiful

Each twilight goes unwitnessed
I haven’t had a meaningful conversation in years
And as the hours pass between waking and dying
I scarcely feel emotion, I scarcely know life
I can’t remember what I did a week ago
But likely it was unremarkable
And the week before that I might have tossed a ball
Although that seems too recent
Things are harder now, despite the congruence
I could be doing those same things
Without knowing it
And each fetch is like an unanswered question
Soothing, in its clumsy forthrightness
The ***** of my yard, dramatically subtle
I assume the sky’s above me as I bend
Here is the ball, I’m picking it up

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.

Secretly I wish to be eaten by a dinosaur
But I lock my door, counter-intuitively
If it’s the right dinosaur, she’ll rip my roof off
While I’m listening to Sezen Aksu
Coo Coo Cachoo
Self-referencing echo-chamber of doubts
Dinosaurs, mammoths
I **** science

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

It is ok to be
not
what you are
still
becoming. She said
"you're not special." Grinding teeth and sodden rails. My car is exhausted--
downwind, held in the air like branches of birches and pines
humming with each blatant engine-stroke
which fall onto that bleakening
icedock and curl-- culled passengers tossed to sea;
unavoidably
sharp veer left, beyond surreptitious and frantic spectators
and through a once-pearl snowdrift straying into my mind.
M
C
M
L
V
Turtlenecks can't keep us warm and soup can't clear my throat.
I choke on
sliced rubber, seatbelts cut halfway-- from
Spring. pluck us like cattails
amongst my marshy solubles.
Exposes my larynx she-- ubiquitous sonnet spews forth.
What contrite aberration, wears Kalapodi temple dress
made of rose petals blown in beneath love's column
and presses with her thighs my vision?
There is nothing more to say-- meals served
raw on Winter holidays. Steaming
spoonfuls dried up on her palate--
Special in the way I left you there.
Special in being the same as I should have been.
And I, no-- I!
I can not talk any longer! The clouds I thought to taste
won't allow me to
rain
be-- once dangling from the ceiling, my dripping prevented
with a pale, cotton daub.
You see
the paramedics
even as they sheath my torso
and hold your head with thorped sieves:
The driver steered his vessel wrong
an action which robbed his passenger's breath.

Not every word is a masterpiece--
nor every strand
of beach.
alone a cabana-
canopy of sky
surrounding earth:
the atmosphere breeeeeeeeeeeeeeathes
our names into
ocean
and ******
on the ground, as
well.
with dangling-*******
clouds
brimming on the horizon;
what a glorious day!
what a shining moon-shine
standard evening
shining!
wonderment of wonders
shone a seat by flashlight
to the theater alone
alone
alone
the stars are laughing as
we point above
our cabana
and salivate.
without knowing
it
the beach shudders its
******
and we catch *******
with our eyes.

There is a certain moment
in a man’s life
when the *****
of ladies
around him suddenly
and irrevocably
evoke the image of
a stray feline
from his childhood.
Rigid, near the bushes
with a sharply arching back,
engorged ****
and ***** tail.

Their watchful eyes, playfully intent,
reflect
the drops of rain
falling from the naive face
of an eager boy approaching
too close.
Paws haltingly skitter-gone.

Since this observation,
the hallways of our campus
tend to sway,
like the leaves beside
my grandma’s house
with the plastic window-well covers
not yet shattered by the hail
on that spring evening
after the little league
when I nearly had one.

The windsock next door
on my father’s farm
let each subsequent summer pass,
undetected on the heals
of a breezy, desert thunderstorm.
Before it was so tattered by time
unreplaced and frayed
next to the yellow, coregated shed
where you can still see the dent
from my sister crashing that old golf cart.

Years from then, she did her small, black
Honda in Colorado
with a T-Bone
on a U-Turn.

And my dad was in the hospital that winter
but all I remember is a pointless half-time
football toss sponsored by a cola-
company during a Nebraska game.
The people, trained like chimpanzees,
to test their skill one time
and get that life-sized check.
I remember thinking
"What sunken imprint on a folding bed
does it refill?"
After Dr. Pepper's rotation had
ended.

And these books I read
are shaken branches
behind the fleeting beauty.
Their words, silent admonitions for
desire.
The invitations
from those inky bodies,
their full form and sharp curves,
are not meant for my eye.
Momentarily,
their presence ***** my head and purses
my lips,
beckoning
another species--
a life-form
less aware.

I am glad each cat slipped past that
unread sign-post
and made it to the horse pasture.
Unlike those three moldered fur puffs
each bunny became
beneath my bed.

I hope they had their litters--
and their offspring had their litters.
And the nation of cats had its litters.
And the world of cats had its litters.
And the universe of cats had its litters.

But it must stop somewhere,
with cats.

These words aren’t anything
But blood, sweat, tears
Are closer to the facts
Each passing face and fading day
Bear down upon my soul
Sneering, reaffirming my mistakes
I laugh along, unwittingly
As laughter seeps from pores
And tear glands, and veins
Each fleeting moment
And memory
Bearing down upon my soul
As I smile
Because words don’t mean anything
And our bodies aren’t silent
With craters and harmony
We are celestial

As a child in primary school
curled beneath a black coat
with neon-pink and -yellow zippers, empty pockets
holding my chest
beside two gray recess doors.
I’d pretend it was my living room,
with no visitors.
Watched t.v., mainly, and not talk on the phone.
Drank apple-juice beer from my concocted fridge
on my green recliner chair
until the doors opened and my building fell
apart.

I moved to an apartment
on a busy city street-- no green
recliner:
no beer, no t.v.
Stealing internet from Burmese-jungle refugees
to read about food shortages, and indiscriminate mass killings.
Beside the doors with
zipped zippers, and isolated goosebumps--
Monkey bar plucking, screaming
running and jumping-- trip and fall
in love, dancing haphazardly-- well
until the sound of a bell.

Abhoreal realms unreflective and hollow
Unearthed beyond the tendency to gleam
Torrid unhap’ly, oft laid sallow
Tired or dying, life’s tree
Stays open ‘til well after midnight
Constantly piroueeting
This world, tied to a thin line
Forgetting

I sometimes look at pictures of this
pornstar
              who
sort of looks
at me the same way as a girl I liked
when I was in elementary school
and middle school
and high school
and
I guess I still kind of like her;
and that’s why I look at pictures of
this pornstar when I *******.
I feel bad, seeing her ***** there--
this person I’ve transposed with
memories.
It reminds me of college vacation
she was jogging and saw me on a hill;
I shouldn’t be seeing this-- I thought.
Still she saw me peek.
And we used to be friends, or something.
When my crush refused my present during
second grade, I gave it to her.
Her voice came as close to touching me
as anything I’ve ever held;
and her eyes were piercing with their
trust and sympathy.
But I’ll never tell her,
that I can’t *******
with her watching me.
And no, it’s not a love story.
I won’t ever tell her-- even if she always
knew.
Remorse looks too much like
blonde women.
And it’s ruining my **** habit.

The children of this town speak of vacation and travel.
Worrying about the summer before it's even Spring.
I tell them, "why, why, why are you
LEAVING here before you've fulfilled your night-
time fantasy?"
They board a train or ship uncoothed and begging for more time.
I tell them "the ones you want are here already, in your being. They are
present and ready to be called out of the closets and crawlspaces of your dwellings,
looking for the belongings
you forwarded them in the shape of skin and grain and blood."
I tell them "Alone you leave this city and your self returns with you,
empty, even emptier than at birth. This city is your womb,
you can't escape the placental waters of your home,
the umbilical rail, the breathing air."
But when it is summer, they go. To be gone, to starve
the children in the closets clawing at
the fastened latch and watching time escape their follicles.
While they are sitting in darkness, we tell them we left to get away, to catch a sky
that crashes into distant lands or hold up
stars with out bare hands.
We say "bless this city and the state of our birth."
We stand, alive, unconquered and surprised that closet children are dead when we get back
it's just us in this city
                                      With all stars surrounding
                                      Unseen with the same lights
                                      We saw out there which blot them out
                                      The sky has fallen and our hands are cleaned
                                      By the starving blood of closet children
                                      Whom we refused to feed
                                      Dried up under the moon.

The way we treat each other is unparalleled

In the animal kingdom

We beat our chests and praise the relics

Our gods

Tell us what has become of the past

That we don’t see how we act

Things are mistaken in thoughtfulness

The moment

Passes us by and we wither to dust

The time is a useless excuse for action

And we wash it

Like a cloth

I’ve ordered and carried my steaming cup of brown to my table to ignore the falling snow beyond the walls of this box.
My clothes are wrong, my hair as well.
I just cut it, and everyone knows which mistakes I made.
A man sneezes and the song changes.
Better not make eye contact with anyone; I am not in their league, here at the muddy spoon cafe.
Chewing so loudly in the de-creeping silence,
these safe, polite, quiet ones.
I am the creep here. I am different.
My thighs are tense.
Hunching over the paper, arms tense and clutching  a gnarled red pen--
It’s probably self-indulgent to even sign my name.
Someone’s shuffling cards.
I almost forgot.
The awkwardness I’m filled with breathes out a short sigh when I realize
--my part’s over.
“Do you know Sanskrit? Do you know what that is?”
A woman asks another.
I want to choke on the pretension
The tenseness, I adjust my leg to relieve pressure on my ankle.
Why can’t I just enjoy the snow? That’s all I really came here for-- well, and the coffee.
I hear a woman cough with an unaffected tenor, which would convey her gender to an interested party but to me carries no intonation.
I wonder if the girl I recognize from class thinks I’m following her.
I came here for coffee, sweetheart!
Is it yet too hot for me to dare a drink?
I can see it, the steam, rising out of the corner of my eye.
I haven’t looked away from my hand in twenty minutes.
“Who am I?” they may be asking myself for me.
I don’t have a clue.
They can think about that problem
for themselves
while they’re lonely
in their forties.
I’m lonely now and I hope not to live
that long.
Here, we pretend not to see each other’s faces
in the gleaming presence of steaming cups.
“I don’t want to wonder about that.”
I realize there’s nothing I even deem worth writing down.

Why had Andy chose to quit smoking?
He had no job,
                        no ambitions,
                                              no passions.
No reason for salient speculation on the beaming waters
of the immaculate Pacific horizon from those unaffordable balconies
you see in movies, with sports cars rushing toward them on
that unnamed California byway.

“**** them all,” he thinks, crinkling the now emptied package.
He'd rather be reformed and forgiven
            or punished for what he‘s done.

Not both.

Stretched on the rack for his failure.
To acquire a Malibu suite.
To cup silicone *******.

To fix the loose handle on their porch‘s door,
              and smile while reciting, “I do.”

“One more won’t hurt,” says Andy,
as the woman in his shirt wraps her hands
around the shoulders.
The cloud circles his head, as they laugh about the sunset.

Spectrous aberrations of youth
Surround him, embrace him
Leaving him disoriented, dismayed
Amidst sultry belongings
He’s tethered to that pole of vicissitude
Draped by disfavor
Postmarked Valhalla
Addressed to Folkvangr
Teased by irreverent lovers
In pursuit of contentment
His chronicles restart
In an unpublished testament
Bound by leather, cows unfettered
One lifeless body stationary
Crimson streams part chalk-dry lips
As love’s guillotined victim drips
His future’s fortune forsaken
Willingness to triumph in battle
Leaks from this dimension
With each fluxing discharge
Of her stream’s outgoing apathy
And his fluid permeates alluvium
In streambeds near life’s summit

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.

The world created for us is sick.
It’s decaying.
Wounds, with no scab forming
And we’re expected, without questioning
To live on in such a world
To allow such a world to exist
But it’s infuriating
And it torments the hearts of men
Tearing mother from child
Raising us on malevolence
Scurrying through the fields
Until the hunters carry us away
And every last vestige of shelter
Is plucked from the ground
Incinerated, burned in factories
To make cardboard boxes
That will be filled with promises
Of low cholesterol
For the masses
That glean over the details
Unaware that hope is lost
And that our species is dying
Hurriedly moving from one space
To another
Without realizing their fright
Without looking at the box
That they helped produce
By failing to protect
Their shelter
A world, ending

Five:
Chairs surrounded by one empty table
they too, free and unassuming
Empty.
Contents seized by ceramic tray of ash
bolster snow
inside; cold, hard wire support beams
--talking-- pass snow through.
Unseen pale ceramic-- butts, extinguished, moist
musty, odor-- silent, blanket
white, soft petals of
Spring between
wire spokes
of five good friends.