All he wanted was rumble fish,
And that's exactly what he got.
She just wanted to save them all,
In the end he got shot.

His dad drinks a bottle of *****,
And his brother runs away.
The father continues to abuse.
The brother stands near the bay.

Don't box the fish in
That's a recipe for disaster.
In the river he wants to see them swim.
That's just what he's coming after.

There were always six of you in every class.
When the teacher would call roll, lilting over your last name,
you would grin and press your arm toward the sky
like you were the only one,
like you were named after an element
or a constellation no one had heard of before.

We were partners in Home Ec.
and you monogramed the top of our cake
in purple icing. Beneath the sweeping curve
of our shared letter there was a chunk missing.
Your hand had skipped a pace, the muscle forgetting,
and a glass cup toppled onto our finished project.

You caught my face going grim
and threatened to frost my brain yellow through my ears
until I was knocking over kitchenware alongside you.
Then you said if we can’t laugh at what will **** us
then we have no place laughing at all.
I just looked away and continued wiping flour off of the counter.

Stumbled right on through my crooked door-frame,
Took your jacket off and put in that thing.
You could not reply when I asked your name,
Knew your name was Harry without asking.

Laid with me, your head was in my blanket,
Helped you and you didn't even hear it.
Left you with a chrome and crystal trinket,
Pins and needles meant to ***** the spirit.

You fell into me just with a mention.
Bubbling lava meant a sure transgression.
Your eyes never fully paid attention.
These white walls they channeled your aggression.

Love you say, it slept beneath my ceiling.
All I saw was lust without the passion.
She left you, your bleeding heart was reeling,
Then you asked me for another ration.

Where did all the time we spent together?
Why do all the moments run in circles?
Did I tell you I was there whenever?
Who could ever help you cross those hurtles?

Since I've crumbled you don't even notice,
Even when I saw you standing right there.
Dreamed I was your dream, I was your lotus,
Now I see I'm nothing but a nightmare.

i wish there was a warning
i could wear around my neck,
the kind you would recognize
from the beakers in your lab.

careful: volatile substance.

maybe then
you wouldn't be so shocked
over my habit to disappear,
my body evaporating into air
and leaving nothing behind
to even let you know
i had ever been there at all.

it'll settle down before long.
in the left half-plane our
distorted polarities glisten and,
naturally,
all mechanisms leak:
the house gets colder,
the radio becomes static,
we
consistently feel different.

how'd daylight get so aphasic?
where were we when words
struck gold, moved out,
found a better life?

and all the while
the transfer function of our insides
slunk so out of sync;
i guess i'm kind of sorry.
'cause
the last transient to fade
would be you,
but,
you know
how unsigned possibilities,
cupped in our palms,
seep out, like

i leave the windows open
all night long.

The day I fell off a mountain, these shoes were on my feet
When I lay broken upon the jagged rocks, these shoes were on my feet
When we walked the valley and through the creek, I felt Mother's natural peat,
The day he slipped, I rescued him with these shoes upon my feet
We made a fire and sat in peace with nothing but the sleet
The day we grasped and found nothing there, these shoes were on my feet
We drank the icy cool that she gave to us with open mouths to greet
When rubble and we flew with momentous speed, these shoes were on my feet
The day you brought me to the sunny hill I felt the heavenly heat
Nothing below us once off the edge, even in freefall these shoes are on my feet
Together we hike and row and climb like two brothers always in beat
I look down to see nothing but rock and know I die with these shoes on my feet
Rocks we skip on the glass-like river so smooth, eloquent, and neat
We approach our doom with mighty force my shoes laced on my feet
Singing of folk with not a care in the world, I and my brother do speak
We do collide with the rock with unspeakable speed these shoes take the shock for my feet
You lend me your tool out of kindness and I know it only takes two for a fleet
Our bodies cease to move but the water still falls, these shoes twitch not on my feet
I lay beside you, it feels safer than home here with these people tonight that I meet
My shoulder is bashed and I lay on my front, I look back to see the shoes on my feet.

I stand before the sea
and it rolls and rolls in its green blood
saying, "Do not give up one god
for I have a handful."
The trade winds blew
in their twelve-fingered reversal
and I simply stood on the beach
while the ocean made a cross of salt
and hung up its drowned
and they cried Deo Deo.
The ocean offered them up in the vein of its might.
I wanted to share this
but I stood alone like a pink scarecrow.

The ocean steamed in and out,
the ocean gasped upon the shore
but I could not define her,
I could not name her mood, her locked-up faces.
Far off she rolled and rolled
like a woman in labor
and I thought of those who had crossed her,
in antiquity, in nautical trade, in slavery, in war.
I wondered how she had borne those bulwarks.
She should be entered skin to skin,
and put on like one's first or last cloth,
envered like kneeling your way into church,
descending into that ascension,
though she be slick as olive oil,
as she climbs each wave like an embezzler of white.
The big deep knows the law as it wears its gray hat,
though the ocean comes in its destiny,
with its one hundred lips,
and in moonlight she comes in her ******,
flashing ******* made of milk-water,
flashing buttocks made of unkillable lust,
and at night when you enter her
you shine like a neon soprano.

I am that clumsy human
on the shore
loving you, coming, coming,
going,
and wish to put my thumb on you
like The Song of Solomon.