the zombie has opinions about nutrition
but lives off of tasty urban debris

the zombie is standing on the beach
whipped by grey
watching the waves roll in high

the zombie is on the computer again--
where nobody knows he's a zombie

the zombie seems to be listening but is looking at his phone

the zombie is not a joiner, so don't be uncool and ask
though he might join and then drop out, which just proves
joining was pointless in the first place

oh definitely the zombie likes to go down

the zombie bites the hand that feeds him

the zombie does not mind poison if it means saving money

the zombie is against bad things.

the zombie is not a sheep.

the zombie is dying of loneliness but can't ever seem to connect.

the zombie is spreading deserts
and drowning deltas.

the zombie is standing up for what's right, on facebook.

the zombie knows that *** is safer than alcohol
and it makes him safer

the zombie feels guilty sometimes but ultimately
not personally responsible.

the zombie is tired--not enough sleep, not enough brains.

the zombie doesn't need you,
he just wants you,
when he sees you.

ahem: the zombie wants you for your mind.

the zombie is free.

the zombie embodies Csikszentmihalyi's state of "Flow."

the zombie may have made you one of his kind,

you will never know because
zombies don't know they're
zombies.

You weren't there,
but this morning was a love song
for us.

The sky grew from black to blue,
birds awakened and sang
just as they have, year after year
for hundreds of years.

I uncurled my arm and rested it against your left side.
You did the same in your sleep, your arm clumsily unfurled over my torso.
We were each
equally warm.

The sky lightened
though the sun was still hidden.
The trees were then visible
waving and turning their
acacia fingers and flickers
and bowing and touching.

One bird sang on
of his empire.

You grunted and rolled awake,
and looked at me with a crooked, sleepy eye.
"Still up?"

there's a curtained circle that emerges
and sometimes it's one of care and thought
while it can also be one of soft absolute obscurity
and it can be cold, toothy, rasping, devouring
and these are such different kinds of danger

Let us love,
hope,
hear me.
Let us drink
and forget
everything
besides you
numb
to the world
around us.
Let us love,
whatever that means,
surrounded by old men
and their pennies
of despair
worth about
what rumors are worth
in the journals of
cowards who lust
for our pleasure which we
don't have for we stand
over beds, seeping and
bleeding strange
substances each
expressing part of the
universe as we
are part of the
story to which no one
else has access but us
in our bedrooms so
violated and
alone,
alone
alone.

sitting inside the air loom,
weaving my fingers through the rippling warp,
a little song sung by each traveling strand

and today I've woven a tapestry of fantastical someone
and his warm, calm regard
and the open walls he builds
to complement the light

sitting inside the garden spaceship,
the sky in my eyes and the jungle at my back,
whispering sweet exhalations against the wide windshield

I fly into a story of fantastical someone
and he's climbing over mountains to see what he finds
and his open heart is a mouth and an eye
open and scanning the horizon for a glimpse of a memory of mine

each strand of desire
woven in the air loom
into a gauzy nest
hidden in the air

there to tell you
how powerful
is each element unseen

each future, each word
each possibility, each touch

and all those desires
hints of which were conceived
long ago, tendrils opening
with powerful wills, stretching outward
along time

do these twine into your air space
or just see you from far away,
harmoniously twirling
in the wind

Most of these are just an ache.
Writing's fine, but there's got to be another way.
I'm battling my better instincts--sleep and strength,
for two--and it's got to stop.
Acceptance is always bittersweet--mainly bitter.
Yet it's the only peace, so why does it
feel unnatural,
unfamiliar?

make no mistake
we look for what's funny
when it's not funny.
we look for the humor
on the edge of despair.
it's always there.
alone, we struggle to survive
though we're fine.
and that endless loneliness
is humorous.

how many more times
will you have to break my heart
before it is finally
the right shape

kindness is the sky vault.
up high, stormless, all-seeing,
powerful, empty.
kindness is hidden here.
storms pass through it,
sun passes through it.
kindness is not of the storm.
it is still, and vast.

I'm always played out,
now, pulsing in my hard shell,
hungry hopeful thighs,
unstoppable but sometimes very slow
mind.

I've no one to
address these to, come to
the window and see.

Give me a reason
to let it all go, come and
make it make sense
and I swear I

have wings as wide as the world
to show you,
colorful,
penetrable,
hungry,
we will

rewrite the world

us two

It's hard to read
even a simple poem.
It waits
like a net--
full of wide gaps,
dangling strands.
It's meant
to be spare
but it's so
easy to sail
through the holes
and miss it completely;
only to have
some vague memory of words.

Sometimes you turn and think
I should have paid closer attention
but the moment won't come back
and the holes remain
even from behind
just so wide
as in all consciousness.

oh ache,
let me praise thee
let my voice rise
and in turn upraise thee
oh ache,
love in disfavor,
flung to the walls
of the heart's many chambers
you possess vision
like a dark pool that speaks
through the mouth of the vessel
in lifetimes or weeks
oh ache,
lost underwater,
wait a little longer
to breathe again.

It's spring and I mainly feel morbid,
dark, in my bitter little room.

Watch, the blossoms are falling from the trees again.
The year cycles through another series of imperfect moments.

Outside open mike night clubs, each evening, the young mustachioed hobos
hobnob in their fine tight pants.

I stride past them and wish that I wanted to know.

I pretend there's some kind of north star
and I have pasted an invisible face
on it,

but you won't go along with my play pretend.

I could be sitting in the center of a web,
with a long cigarette and my lips dark red,

but there's no devouring mouth at the end of my promise--
I just want them to want to know.

I have an incoherent proposal for you.
It is incoherent because I lack both the courage and clarity.

Anyway, as you know this world is riddled with
brailles and imaginary synaesthesic hints over all that seems
to be what it is.

Yes, all that *******.

So here I stand before you.

Punctured and drawn, pulpy and inelegant.
Wry, silly and dire. Cultivated and ridiculous.

It’s.

Scratch that.

In the mind

you have said emotions

we are

not lines.

nope.

Sky wire.

Erm

If

None of what I say is true.

Look past me and see what’s real.

And that.

I’m hoping you want that,

to touch the electric, liquid-ish paths

and vector strings.

If.

I’m a non-bundle of emotions
lately—not sleep though—

and it’s not you.

Just desperate for

not someone.

Just desperate to
get past selfhood
with somebody else
to keep it interesting

and it makes as much sense as anything

so I don’t want to talk ******* but
would you, as a complicated instrument,
like to get outside ourselves
and not play
but be wildly serious?

I'll stand here and carve out a place
for myself in this dark mass, a womb in the wax
into which I can climb, warm it up
until it's fragrant of factory.

And inside I'll carve out a place
in my chest for this dark mass,
a wax in the womb to plug
the ache with an imitation of obscurity.

what does the river say,
her eyes and mouths and fingers
blinking and glimmering in the light
forming an endless flickering web
traveling up my legs and skin, never quite

what does the river say,
running fast through trees on stones
rippling and pulling

what does the river say,
carrying the lonely barge that floats
into darkness, his long face
looking forward into obscurity from high above
what does he know
(where does he go)

what does the river say,
her body arced and wide
and waiting, never quite

Whatever goes on between us,
no matter how small and subtle,
I am afraid you might miss it
completely.

That would be a loss,
no matter how small and subtle,
for even in the heart and mind
we can watch the force of nature at work
and it is as much a rapture
as to watch great storms unfold,
and then to turn and watch one slender strand of grass
shaking, weaving in the winds.

This isn't the poem I came here to write.
I'm circling round it, and will circle
for years.
Not to write a good poem.
Just to find the truth.
So very many facts
yet truth so rare.
I'm circling round it,
and will circle for years.
Circling, soft circling.
Gravity calling, hungrily, for a pair
for another part.
That pull feels true,
but I don't know.
What does it ask in the glass?
Ask, night after night?
For what does it cry?
What

(love)
is enough?

You've kept me awake another night,
meanwhile you slept soundly another night.
I really must
find something else
to think about.
Someone that thinks me back.

Some of us have the luxury of vulnerability,
sweet, but ripe
for invasion and colonization, or simply
a day of pillaging here and there.

Others are hard and dry, knowing, already been there before,
already having tried.

Others are keen-eyed, looming over,
tasting it already on their tongues in anticipation,
the fragments of words rippling over the edge,
watching your eyes and your squirms and your sighs,
seeking the entrance to groans and writhing--
or the hall of sorrows, well-locked ossuaries, or sky gardens of private joys.

Some of us know what's what, this goes here and that goes there,
like it or not, know when to stop, now, early, soon,
the knife cuts
here,
in the fruit,
to pierce the skin and separate the skin and the flesh and the pit,
nevermind what it was, now it is something else,
more purposeful in the mouth,
and while once it was the seed of a tree to climb in the sky,
now it is something new and so we will grasp it, display it
and eat it.

You don't mind the lines quite.
You mind the times nobody saw your eyes without lines.
You mind the lovers you didn't have
and you mind some kinds you did.
You mind that worry lines came first and stayed.
You don't mind the age,
quite,
you mind the time that
merely passed.
You mind the friends that moved
far away and further, forgetting.
You mind the conversations never had.
You mind the days and nights passed without remark.
You mind the waiting gone unanswered, year after year.
You mind that your body didn't stretch out with adventure,
but with disuse.
You mind that quiet was a better choice than disaster.

You mind that you will change now
before you got to be yourself then.

Now you can take comfort that as the flaws slowly change
from flaws of youth to flaws of age
it will be a long time before anyone notices
because no one is paying attention to the little details

not any one of them.

your side of the bed is filled with books now, though I don't read them
and as for the day when the bottom gives out, it's just a matter of when
and then, and then, we'll see where it goes, this hole

We're so busy.
We're so busy being tired.
We're so busy with our IV lines
of dull amusements
and distant passions.

We're so normal.
We're so tired of being normal.
Nobody's had a grand love affair
or great invention
while caught up in
all-absorbing boredom.
Not while we're all normal and tired
and tied to our IV lines.

My genius is as shriveled as a leech
clambering step by hungry step
down into the dark cellar
to wait forever in hopes of
a white soft dinner.
I hope yours is better.

It seems like we've forgotten what
we should be doing together.

You are my race forward and backward,
and my truth and my lie.

You are sorrow and joy in one cup--
and a sobering high.

You are my wild ally, or I am yours,
and this is the celebration
of our uneasy truce.

x

I give you my heart, as I might give it, tied in a little sack, to a stranger passing on the road--
yet the bird is a heart that flies where it wills, and renders all ******* into illusion,

so you can not keep it,
any more than I could have kept it
in its safe cage.

What use do you have for a wild bird, anyway?

I take it all back. All of it--I'll eat every word. Every contradiction, every idea, every excuse, every truth. I'll eat it all. I'll turn myself outside in and start again--