i want to slot your nose bridge against mine
giggle when our foreheads bump
catch your lip between my teeth
exchange breaths and find that
yours tastes like my soap
stop eating my ****** soap

the rain makes the asphalt look sad and pregnant.

i turn my head for one moment and a lonely 7 train skitters by, barely grazing my left ear. i close my eyes. i close my eyes because if you look, you get sad and that's how you lose. so i look down at my feet at the soft, shimmering asphalt instead

and i watch the train through the asphalt. it torpedoes by, one silver frame at a time, like a silent film still bobbing around in its chemical bath. i continue to watch, from a safe distance.

(its like looking out the window at the cars zooming by. its all fun and safe until you reach your hand out a bit too far and the next thing you know, some ******* car up and runs away with it.
its like marriage.)

except im in college and the wheels of the train never quite touch the ground, but hover, hover over like some kind of homeless intoxicated guardian angel stranded in a sprawling urban desert.

(he lies on top a one of those BigBellys, lies on his stomach, sandaled feet dangling just inches from the ground. blink blink, goes the BigBelly. Gabriel groans,
incomprehensible muttering)

and the train throws bleachy yellow squares of light throw themselves onto upon the pregnant asphalt in fits of just destructive laughter and when they hit the ground by that time they're already hugging themselves, hugging and shaking all over like fuuuuuuck, it's sooo cold in here (in my body!) each one of em murmuring in a foreign tongue about how someone keepzon etching street names into the bathroom walls

Thayer and Broadway at 3AM on a Wednesday morning is someone's oasis, mine for as long as i stand here, my mind stumbling back n forth from one airpod to the other as i feel like im sinking down, down into the soft squishy asphalt wit the weight of my backpack making my shoulders touch the floor wit my bleachy yellow head dangling from my neck as i blink needily / cravingly / searchingly at a sidewalk that stares back at me with the most deadest honest (to godest) blankest expression i ever seen on a no-body

and when i look into its eyes i can see myself but im standing in the  middle of Times Square and -- hey -- everythings looking up! but it cant be me because im here at Thayer and Broadway dangling my head and angling it AWAY from the passing train because if you look, you get sad, you think of home, and when you think of home, thats when you really know you've lost, not sure what but you've lost and you probably cant even actually go home after youve lost because, well, mother**** it you've lost and life just likes to call you a cuck and hit you in the throat like that

but i wouldn't know, i haven't gotten that far yet

Motion Motion my devotion
on a lyre and on a quotient
you weave most lovely mind-contortions
yet grasp such fair mathematic notions

Motion Motion my devotion
on the R or in the ocean
you ricochet, stumble, and plie
an animal of the Poles, i did daresay

Motion Motion my devotion
in all the bustle and commotion
there were delays, I had lots of Time(s)
but lost track of them all when you waltzed into mine

Motion Motion my devotion
your can- or cannot-touch-your-toes
sha'nt stop your *****, hips, and toes
in Motion Motion,

strike a pose

sometimes. i live in my head so much.

i look in the mirror and
surprise!
i'm an actual,
physical being. (whaat?)

and when someone comes and speaks to me,

"you...you can see me?"

food. i wonder what
money. tastes like, i wonder what
freedom. tastes like, i wonder what
you. taste like, i wonder what "taste" tastes like, you know, like
the
word
'taste'

bOUNces off the
tip/ of/ my/ tongue, a tinny little--

t-uh

skinny little--

t-uh

--a thing,
some-thing, th-thing, th-thick,
a phull-er th-thing to
phill. me. up.
make me pheel

so p h u c k i n g

WHole,
a-gain.

(ag-yen. ag-yaaeeen. mm.)

i've become old...

i can tell by

1) the seasons, growing shorter

trees these days seem to be in such a hurry to
shake their leaves off

2) the growing number of people that are gone

by the time you come back with tea and
madeleines

...

wherever the days went
that's where they took my friends, too

they've all gone in search for
Bigger & Better
(although i can't imagine what could be
Better than my tea)  

they've all gone in light of
promises

"she promised to live with me..."

"i promised myself that one day..."

"the future is promising..."

"more promising than here..."

me,
i stopped believing in these promises
last Sunday when i overheard the neighborhood tarot
sobbing in the Confession booth:

"Father, that's when I realized that
the only promise in this world
is the present"

...

i find promise in
smaller promises,
such as

1) a good chance of rain this afternoon

2) your alarm has been set to 7 AM

3) see you tomorrow

...

people don't remember what they ate for breakfast,
while they remember the life they have yet to live
and so
i stopped remembering

...

i only hope that when tomorrow comes the
view outside my window will not change
and what that view means to me
will not change, as well

the city will still light up all the night with its strange fire
and the people will still be in love with powerwalking

...

in truth
i live in this state of constant fear:
when i turn away, the city will cease
(like dream machines)

if i blink too hard,
this all might just become a line
from some book i think
i read sometime in
grade school
(which name i can't recall)

if i were to move away
would it all wait for me?

do i really love this?

or am i just afraid of losing it?

and while i wonder,
i don't dare take my eyes off of
the view outside my window

...

you say that life is loving and leaving
again and again,

then i'm not interested in life

what's so beautiful about broken hearts?

...

if happiness for me
is 2nd paragraph on page 149,
let me be an inkblot
in time, forever still

meanwhile, at the capital...

streets lined with
mattresses like
piles of flesh

trees above
that shudder
like a final breath

a branch of cherry blossom
like baby pink fingertips
of limp forearms dangling off
edges of crinkled white mattresses,

a flower

(i only hope that it won't be so sad)

somewhere, in an empty row of trees,
that you still exist
is a truth that i cannot believe

and like the gentle sway of foxtails in the wind,
it is a truth, that can be seen
yet cannot be felt by the heart

when i was young i would squint my eyes and watch
those faraway hills, bobbing in and out of my vision

and as if to say
those faraway days will never return,
the hills in my pillowcase
are easy to see and
ever so close

...

when i close my eyes i begin to dream, what is not a dream but a spring that will one day come to me, and in that spring, looking to find again that empty row of trees, is a scene where i turn my head to home, and unlike some melodrama i can feel the sorrow on my face meanwhile i stare and stare and stare with my heart, yearning to feel something that cannot ever be seen, and that is just like the gentle sway of foxtails in the wind...

[Untitled]

i opened my mouth
and i spoke in colors

no fanciful words and no hollow adage

i spoke in feelings,
so raw and unbridled

my lip did a tremble as music spilled out

i spoke in melody,
save rhyme and lyrics

and everything else that's so vain and worn out

i spoke in colors,
from my lips it rose
formed constellations in the afternoon sky

so i spoke in colors,
and they loved me for it

yes,
they loved me for it

as the bus pulls along the lazy river on Main,
a slouching mind and pressed cheek is a swimmer,
dipping toes

and meanwhile
the gentle murmur of pool-goers living inaudibly,
like hunched bunches
in shawls of shade

(interrupted only
by the occasional l-urch)

nodding, nodding
off and on and off and
into the water,
the swimmer slips in
...

Here, it is heaven on earth

an oasis
...

and the mind swims ever so far
ever so deep
...

i wonder...
...

and outside
a boy, barefoot
runs upstream

a shimmering second
an apparition of summer?
and out of sight

everything hurts

the throbbing in my chest is from
the city i loved,
the city i swallowed

the pounding in my veins is from
the race against the very crowd
i spilled myself into

the numbness of my mind is from
the ticking clock and tapping heel
and murmuring and pulsating,

the living, breathing, and the dying
all tapping their watches in perfect
unison, like everything you've ever seen
and more

...

the taka taka tak of the train,
is jagged against my sides

i keel over at the altar as the
train approaches the station

and still,
thank God!

everything hurts

i must still be alive

the tower is,
crescendo is an
arching arching

wave

forever held
in deafening
stillness

and i am
endless

my want,
brimming

“Where, O death, is your victory?
    Where, O death, is your sting?”

- 1 Corinthians 15:55

__


O Lord, sanctify this:

today,
as huddled mourners wept themselves dry

--a grove of blackened birch that grows
around a solemn shadow, a vine upon bone--

as pressed toes crumbled through mausoleum floor

--a great Kingdom that has gone mute
for the buzzing of bees, mindless murmur of wind--

as overcast eyes stabbed blindly

--the billowing stone masts in an ocean of grass
betrayed no signs of the carnage--

in accordance with the Scriptures
life delivered the fatal blow

and death--

death was alive
and throbbed within me.

1.
There goes ******’s nose
Larger than life, breathed in
“Majestic, it sprang” from his face
“The marvel of time, the wonder of men”
Molded by the General and his
lyrical men

2.
Whip Bobbie Lee you may,
for this miracle happened
in the strangest way
in the meadows,
in the bright of day
three invaluable cigars lay

3.
Some men smart in ways unimagined,
appear as Janus in the midst of kings,
feign blunder to catch the unsuspecting plunderer,
who waltzes right in (or away) from his fate,
******* the grit out of men, they lose faith

4.
To His right is the good thief
and he inclines his head
But a thief is a thief, nonetheless?

5.
Two-hundred-ninety-nine-hundred-two men are in the cornfield, their mouths silently forming hurrahs and their hands slack at their sides.
Two-hundred-ninety-nine-hundred-two-men are ****** eagles of Indiana.

6.
“No shock can destroy”, the carnage of Shocksburg
“The world shall behold”, “the triumph of”
“Tyranny, sorrow, and darkness”
“Hurrah for the” “dream
of a madman, the song of a fool.”

7.
McClellan sees double, no, triple.
And Lincoln, victory where there isn’t.
And I, beauty where one should not.

8.
Let men become crusaders, emancipators, and proclamators,
of all things and
all things good and just.  

9.
Your arms resemble corn stalks and your eyes
poppy seeds. Spread-eagle yourself, at the mercy of
the Kingdom of Heaven.
Say your last Hurrahs and clutch that laundry tight
to your chest.

10.
Disillusioned people get nowhere, at least illusioned people can
walk themselves over to the doors of Death?

11.
Samuel is like many other black laborers in the infantry-- mistaken in the most wonderful way.
“Hurrah! for the Union” he says.
and I begin to teach him how to write.

What is anything but a game of cat and mouse? I can chase

these pages all day,
and sleep with empty hands at the end...

We are as civil as domestic animals in our affairs, and admit

to the thrill of the chase.

*O, the thrill of the chase!