Retreat to your blind advance
Advantage over anothers civil rights

There they go
Only one country to be

All liberty says now
In her gentle Psalm
Is
All around

We waltzed into eyesight
Of some flowers
And wet grass together

Two get to a picture perfect
Piece of paper
Yet an entire generation
Still missed the beat

Homekey buildings get demolished on purpose
Otherwise they wouldn't be off limits
And we would have our constitution

That's Watergate
Real estate value
And bondslavery notes
Being held

Within that book of language
Liberty is silence


At the language level you are allowed
Within this democracy of the people
You are held to testimony and thus
Entered into the legislatures diligence
Of historical record, due process shall
Be provided to me upon my request to
Redress this government
Appropriating the funds from your
Department to the street where my
Residence is

In the violation of my civil rights the
Injustice is served upon me daily by
Those holding office on my behalf, as
I am forced and capable to address
These matters without loss of diplomacy
The civil discourse is hearable and not
Counter to the reintroduction of my
Civil rights


As an American unhoused and having
To face the elements
Any further inquiry than that is irrelevant.  As
Such the farmers almanac tells me today,
Mild, wet California is about to be unloaded
On my head.  Now, not being allowed a
Tent due to the supreme court’s opinion
That no such quarters are necessary
For Americans to survive the enterprise
Of California’s real estate market, the
Question remains as to the death toll
We are preparing to accept on behalf
Of your oath and laws governing homekey+
Until May.  I understand these laws
Have been brought forth under no duress
And our founded on a constitution?

Being found in america
Is American

I opened a letter addressed to no one
And found a wet map of my own grin.
The postmark said “Somewhere Between”
And the ink ran like a guilty priest.

The ceiling hummed its usual sermon:
  “You are a question your mirror asks gently.”
I nodded, chewing on glass-handled scissors,
Waiting for the floor to finish deciding its shape.

A horse walked in, dressed as my therapist.
She whined,
  “Your trauma wears a wedding dress.”
I asked for a refund
  And received a gun filled with sleep.

Behind the curtain:
  Someone’s mother melting into a fax machine,
  My ex spelling “forgiveness” with her teeth,
  A child screaming “I’m your future, father!”
  While drawing on a body bag.

I stood there,
  Drenched in six contradictory versions of myself,
Clutching a plunger and a birth certificate.

Someone whispered,
  “Your voice is a privilege.”

And all my response to that was:
  “Shut up louder.”

I was standing in the fields one day, like I usually would be doing, legs deep in grass, the wind nudging my ears with things I hadn’t yet lived. The sky above me was in a shade of grey I couldn’t name.

  “The weather is beautiful today.”

That’s when the horse appeared.

He jumped, upright, landing with the brutality of a ballet dancer, although he shouldn’t know how to. He had only two legs, thin and humanlike, and one of its molars, impossibly large, vibrated, producing a melody I couldn’t recognise, yet somehow remembered.

It leaned close. His breath smelled like burnt tobacco and languages. Then it said:

  “But Aleksejs…”

Terrifying in its intimacy.

And just like that, it was gone.
No sound. No dust. No hoofprints in the grass.

Nothing.
  Nothing.
    Nothing.

I stood there, frozen.
Not cold.

Later, when I woke up (though I couldn’t say for sure when the dream began or if it had ever truly ended or even started), I sat on the edge of my bed and told myself:

  “Was it me he was talking to?”

Frankly, no one answered. But the top left corner of the ceiling pulsed once, lightly,
And for some reason, I took that as a yes.

I am assembling
a new gray tweed
suit. The plodding,

solitary elephant is
wandering on a dark
road. I am not an I.

Pinocchio is missing
an arm and speeding
in a big truck. I am

an eye that floats
overhead, smaller
than a pin-point,

nothing really.
In the murky
night Pinocchio

hurtles toward the
idle elephant, but
swerves at the last

moment, then I’m
wearing the tweed
suit, even though

it’s missing a
sleeve, and all three
of its ivory buttons.

“Some people come from nowhere and become family.”

a girl with books
wobbling as she tries to balance them
she cant be older than seven

A boy in the adult mystery section
repeating to himself
"I need a boys book not a girls book"

A mother with her two children
following her like ducklings
leaving havoc as they pass

A girl and her mom
reading aloud
in the middle of the cooking isle