You probably look good in the summer. In a dress,
clear and brown-eyed, as plain as you think you are, glimmering
softly and torn towards my arms' perfect oblivions. I'd like to,
more, I mean, we can wait to do the other things until one
of us is ready-- probably me, it'll have to be me, I think I'll be,
the thing that is, that is ready-- but I warm my hands up
your shirt, burn upon your skirt, or the hem of your
jeans. I'd like to imagine your pale erotica as young,
as something that says nothing about me. We can pretend
a manic dream, you can pretend that I am a real person, I can
hope that I'm not so minor as I hoped you'd think me, enlargened
like that part of me soon in your hand, in your mouth. Simple
magic like a hand-holding and strange mutterings and the things
you don't know how to say. How old are you. Are you
aware of you yet. How much do I care. I like your face. Your face.

Tomatoes are nice
fruits or vegetables, I like them.
I eat now. It is nice.
Cheese has a fullness.
Meat a warm blankness.
And my tongue-

The business of living makes me be.
And it is often simple,
         I would cry.
         Could, but can't,
         I could.

In which we drink ourselves
to a certain happiness, alive
      as always, I think, to wake
is such dreaming, sleep to me now
seems such a reality I don't know
      why to continue walking
in afternoons evenings mornings
      what is sleep
(Nas says, *****, finger on ur trigger
                               it is the cousin of death,
                    *****).
                              ­ I still don't know
but everything feels so much more real
with my eyes closed, in which
                  we drink ourselves
to a certain happiness:
       something so quite unlike death
that we must call it life
     (some American college students
       sing some drunken Karaoke in China
       and I promise things will be okay thereafter
       in which the sun might shine again
       despite the eyes being closed and all).

Please remember,
                                I love you.

Turns inwards, and light.
     My chest withdraws towards
itself, and my eyes are mirrors;
      I don't like what I see. I walk
outside and fear and hate
      everything. I rasp, loudly
in mouth-breathing and I don't know why
      I don't know why anymore-- and the sun.
      Didn't it just snow yesterday and the sun.

Two years ago I was in Connecticut in a used book shop. I found very small rare books published as a series of poetry. Red leather- bound, yellowing pages. They crack, those pages, and while this makes me sad if they didn't they wouldn't matter as much. I purchase a few. One of them, "Sonnets from the Portuguese", Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It seemed like the the sort of thing I would buy.

I came back home and I met you and I instantly figured that when you too would leave I would give them to you. I did the worst to you on some day. The other day, you said something to me and I burned for a very long time inside. I might have said something rude in response, but instead I smiled at you. I laughed. You must have burned inside every time I did. I do not care. You might have thought. I laugh at you. You might have thought. I was like that because I thought that They crack, those pages, and while this makes me sad if they didn't they wouldn't matter as much.  

I did not give you the book. Two years later, I have a class and I'm writing an essay about the first poem from it. I have been in bed for three days and the sinking feeling returns, I watch videos about how everything in America will crumble. The audience in the videos laugh. My sounds echo and return to me from my room's walls. Where is the sun and the air that might have been as the home I last saw you in. Not yours though. It was thoroughly unlivable for you though sometimes you think Where is the sun and the air that might have been as the home you last saw me in. It is yours though.

On the moments I do step into the essay-- or rather, I step into the poem for the essay-- I hear her speak. And I would read about her husband. He wrote too. They loved for many years. When they lived, her words were far more loved than his. We send each other emails sometimes. You sometimes call me when you're drunk. You burn. My voice. When I call you through my laptop screen I stare at you. I burn. Your hair. What sun, what air. She says

"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death", I said. But there,
The silver answer rang ... "Not Death, but Love."

She says before she met him her life:

"Racism is over", announced America
and we, like, called it a day and the boys let it all hang,
and hang it did for a bit before they were, too, again
and we said, "I'm so sorry, I forgot about that, too".

To bite into yourself and not bleed, that is hope, "my son,
you will be the beacon of hope in the solitary sky, fly",
and so, I become a Superman fan and tie the towel
around my neck and swoosh, swoosh. When
everything will inevitably come crashing down and all
but my childhood remains, will you too remain
my tongue?

                        Yes, yes. Always, my love. Speak.

These are so many misunderstandings.
To be had. Some built in already.
Mental architecture, walls holding it all in.
Rigid bounce against doorframe, concussion.
Sudden nothing- push back from the dome,
the end of a thought; it is hardly weary.

The sunny yum-yum of eating you out,
I imagined this sometime, when I was eating your
lips. I would defend this kind of poetry.
It meant something, I hope.

Breathe- don't matter if air is fresh
Colour of my lungs- canvas is flesh
phleghm look like thick paint- god, cigarettes
you hit a blunt a lil' much, rather just sweat

out the toxins 'fore problems prevent more mopping
you promised you wouldn't puke again on floor, 'member Mama's calling
She says your sister said hello- is everything great?
said sure- just as soon as I remember where my mind is at again

Sea-shell song, hand-paper gasp
green grass swish crunch, fugue siren drowns blue,
pupil light harsh glitter, blood bite teeth cup sing,
     do not submerge the baby's head again
     again head baby's the submerge not do
why and where are you gliding down like that
aren't you done you're born already- what
significance were you expecting if the corner
of your eyes stops- there is nothing behind you,
nothing. No song shell-sea, paper-hand gasp
      blue drowns siren fuge, crunch swish grass green
      sing cup teeth bite blood, glitter harsh light pupil
again head baby's the submerge not do
do not submerge the baby's head again-
STOP ******* WITH THE REMOTE ******.

I am a quiet poet! Which is to say a frog
without a croak. Imagine a huge stone
leaping from space into our air without flare.
I'm like that! Did you hear that? No.
Punctuation doesn't speak. Professors sometimes
say "space" and "time" and sometimes "heart" in
reference to the bed the clock the beating. So
I have not much to say of the sky. It's blue
and sometimes not. I am surprised with grass
and here how it isn't yellow. The mirror
and my blackness in it shouldn't make me blink. But I do
click refresh. And where I am. Is my mouth
closed? It matters very little. Well, the ground on
which my feet step. It is also quiet. It screams songs.

First line:
ugliness is biological deficit

Okay:
so such
remarkable marked. I am
ambivalent about most
(I mean when we talk,
when we talk
to each other,
that is what is meant) of it

I don't really know what to do
with that

Dance maybe,
drunken.

That might help.

So rhythmless.

No matter how much I drink

So black

No matter how much I write

(Sad!)

I'm pretty sure that none of us can think, thought,
in fact, is a trap, made entirely of language games;
and then some experiments in William James Hall-- reminder:
no one ever knows what thought is! What are you thinking.
                                                       ­          What are you thinking.
                                                       ­          (thinking you are what)

The window creates a square on the red carpet. This is the sun.
It is not in space. It is not even alive. My eye is though,
breathing heartlessly, it attends to each as bean-sprout
splitting earth. As the young ways we were taught to grow
in science classes. The dying of it when I watered it
too much. There is too-muchness everywhere. With you
my watering magiked a desert. The sky
is good today, so good that it has even created its own
on a carpet. The teacher's foot steps there.

Thoughts are so reckless citizens feckless still
Society got me buggin' but thumpin' doe
If I'm gonna dance let it be in this hell
If we gon' romance, can it just end well

for once it'd be nice to hit it and smile, fill
you up and sip-sip all off of that cup, mo'
drink, drink water in the fountain of your legs
where the youth, youth going, no more shots from the kegs

for me, no more, no more
'ready drank too much- what else is in the store
for the night, is it nice? is it Nike? am I right?
be my wife? Not tonight, but I'mma hit you with dat spice

Yeah     let it all go let it all go go
              let it all go let it all go go
              let it all go let it all go go
              let it all go let it all go go

The thing I did was weeks ago. Bones
bend more slowly though set quicker: I
don't like the way your eyes eye across
the room. I wish I could configure
myself to think, "Yes I will never forgive
myself as well", but instead I think "actually,
given another quick thought, I don't think
I **** wit y'all no more".

I want to leave. You
are not what I want
to go. Listen, or wait,
whichever your ears will let of me.
Wallpaper has music.
My walls are empty. My eyes are
walls. Your eyes are
--well, you know how letters combine
to make all sorts of things? You will never expect
them. Sometimes the letters will make new
things. New things will be
spoken. New things will
exist. Like this. My walls are empty. My eyes are
walls. I want to leave
you as the ringing after a person shouts in an ear. Because of how long
ago, your voice.

Song, give me the words to destroy myself. Not this
body, this broken music that wishes only for my peace. Why not
the lightning of genius instead? The cool stare of the man
as lover, loving me. As flower,
instead we mirror-look. Mirror as water:
with water, flowers; within water, bodies; within water,
the girl. She has no words. What singing she has
is this body, is this thing I do not want, is this air,
is the address I flare to you. So, to me. She is the genius.

My heart leaps for joy.
     The river running dry
     The cream of a volcano
     The sun exploding
     The foam of the hot air
How does it taste:
     the oil, the polar bear claw
     the salve of the ice, sweet
     and gloried like you: your
head is the sweetest thing I have ever seen: I like you
and the little things you do before you die. Before
the photo snapshot prints, flutters away, and you shoot
again. And the flash of my eyes is greedy
and would eat you everyday before my own pictures,
they go. They go. And.

I mean, yes, of course, yes
I’m so, so hungry
but I will not eat you, no, not
no, of course, not like that.
      I otherwise like you,
                I promise.

I don’t believe in you but
                             your face.

You see everything and then it is gone: lightning
in a dark moonless night: you before everything
it all happened at once and then never.

My entire totality consists of Beethoven,
                                                   Kanye West,
                                                   Neon Genesis Evangelion.

People are enthusiastically boring
I wish I could get more sleep
*** isn't interesting: neither are my hands
It doesn't matter when you ***
I believe in the Bible once
Physics doesn't make much sense to me
I'm saying that I tried
I don't like the sort of questions you ask me
Ask better questions
Maybe one day people might fit together
until then, please, ask better questions

I.
Now that the philosophers are scientists too, who will be next?
Remember when the poets used to count sounds, pattern them?
They seem so stiffling now, that one rhyme to the next,
the following of stress to shallow from height to pit, fall
towards some ending lasting in history. For example, now.
The poets stopped counting and sang songs instead--
it's not that different the professors say, in fact,
some song is lost. For example, now.

     II.
I practiced on a little plastic flute and I liked the songs.
I practiced with a small pen and it was quiet.
I wasn't that good with sound anyway-- I lost the flute.
I grew up and scratched away and the pen still didn't sing.
I would read and hear symphonies in my head.
Now the philosophers are scientists too. What now?

     III.
The famous scientist says: the poet complains,
I ruin the beauty of a flower because I explain it
like a  textbook  college  lecture  documentary-- look!:
anther  stamen  pollen  photosynthesis  cells:  !
The poet says why can't you just look at it,
thinking spoils it all. Don't cut it up with a microscope.
Just look, please.

    IV.
I wanted to cut up everything into little pieces.
I thought each small thing could sing.
Since the philosophers became scientists too-- quiet.
Everything is quiet.

     V.
I look at the flower and refuse to think.

     VI.
Actually, it is still quiet. The scientists now
claim that their pieces are poems and the philosophers nod
and the market values destroy everything
and the poets are hungry
and we are all hungry
and it is quiet,
actually, it is so quiet.

People want the whole wide world for themselves.
The blue is theirs, they say. I know because I'm smart.
I own the green because I deserve it. I am strong, they say.
There's a great deal to be learned despite them.
I think it's pretty. I shouldn't give up.
There's a great deal to be learned from reading books.
I look outside my window and it's raining.

There's light outside. The blue-blazered man speaks
and I listen with my pen. All the warmth within
my head emerges as if called upon
by private hands. Wind whistles through the large windows. God
is singing low-mood like hormones like a child's recorder practice.
What is literature? we ask.
I don't know but it looks a lot like me.

                                                                             He says
the earth is lost in the future. Predictive
post-apocalyptic longing. Fragile
bones as flower-stems within us. We walk
like jelly. Strange to think of it now,
stranger yesterday still-- and tomorrow, the eyelids
slip away to the night: closing bud-codas.

        Repeat-sign, where are you?

The earth will turn to fire. Our revelations
are gas-large, cow-heavy, burning engines
zooming across cliffs. I drink
because to think of this is not the sort of stumbling
I need. I need arms
and wine-fog hiding them (as children's games). I need a mirror.
And I would want the birds. Them too.

My poetic force is violence, a mile in my shoes
is way more than eight, it's a lightyear in the least,
                                                          ­                               sheesh!
My  distinction in incision when I'm cutting tapes--
to paint the frame I shame the games of all the other lames, yeah.

It's... an issue of access. I suppose.
Can you imagine how my hair curls? Into my skull
as a soft collapse outwards. Each one is named "me", as if
wonderfully parcelled as phrenology. If you grasp at me
here, then
I become something else. Or simply shoot

me and see
then what happens to my head. I mean that I wish
to be considered
as the way that we look
at lavender, and how our eyes emerge from their beads.

Your pupils are two bees buzzing towards the night.
Focused, stumbling whirrs. You see
that I am scared of your looking? A sting
is a question of when; and with it, your vanishing.

It doesn't matter in which nation:
Colourless people cannot sing on beat.

Tsukiyomi is a dream in which each knife issa.

denouement matter matters
nounema matters matter
scatter, sakura flower bossom
autumn, not pink here, but something
very close to a red (orange).

Talk is so largely masturbatory I wonder why even bother.
I thought you were cute until you started to talk.

Roses are red. Violets

         , when violent, blossom; a gathering
         of petals is a flower, of course,
         but

Violets are blue. Roses

         yet, nothing gets me up in the morning
         like a sunny-side up on a face,
         so I ***.

I am running out of ideas.

What are they re-
constructing
from the brain waves inside you.
They say they
can
from the electric signals singing in you,
translate it
and put it up, and then the hot fuzz
appears on a screen
and it is pretty close.

I do not trust the hot fuzz at all. It is not
an image. It is
not me, it is not
what I am seeing. It is
not.

With the frat boys
Drinkin'
[little asia]
Frankie in my headphones
Frankie always

In the quiet no light
The boys touch
Each other like
The girls
                  in all light

(Piano: parents are not
oblivious. They are mere
ly overly
hopeful: isn't
that love?)

The boys like to watch each other
Just like the girls as girls
Everything is fascinating
And is also, unshockingly,
A *****, obviously. Nevermind
Gaia. Eve. Apple. Mothers.

I don't want to be you.
I don't want to be anyone but myself.
Maybe claim you, your body
for some single ecstasy.
But never nothing if not
myself, whom, I love, who
lives at home.

So many themes sound the same.
But it's not so sterile.
       Some variations are other songs.
       I could talk to you all day.
       Bach was a genius.
       He played the same thing again and again.
You all sound the same.

Wherewithal of sight: light
gasps for air in morning: mourning
for                                      
       form, firm, not silhouette of hand, slight
of hand, offhand words of
                                                    eyes-closed,­
                                                    tombstone
  ­                                     (kiss).
You are not much I didn't say. Often
                                        wish       I did.

How do the nights go? Chillin' down there with the white folk/
Ne'er be a token given I'm golden so I might just bolt:/
Usain; when I'm lazy talent swishes down the drain like bad milk/
Ain't cry o'er **** that I spilt, rose from the concrete ne'er wilt/

Narrowly lost my mind sometime ago in this flow/
like slave boats from the Gold Coast with wood creaking dream-songs of lost homes/
I was drowning in unconscious streams of different scenes of this mind's scenes/
I seen through the scenes of green trees turned to yellowing leaves.../

Regret is such a useless thing
I’d so prefer it, if
you did not, look!,
                    at me
                    that very
                        , if
regret is such a useless thing
why preface it with the word
              (poem)
why preface it with eyes.
I will never forget the word
-even if it messes my head.

To breathe is a desperation,
it afflicts us all until it is artless,
a noose or a collapsed lung,
the wrinkles giving way to a baby
that never cried. Hush.

I am no good at talking to things that are not myself.

The crystalline brown of my eyes sings certain songs.

And my coffee breath makes such certain impressions on the mirror.

And my coffee skin makes such certain impressions on the mirror.

In the former case, that mirror is me.

In the latter case, that mirror is you.

I have no idea of how I see myself, or how I should see myself.

But I know how you do. I know your lisps, your staggers, your stares.

And the way you vibrate sometimes to see someone such as me.

"The **** is wrong with you", I say to no one in particular being myself.

But I would scream it to the world at large if they would listen.

And yet the sounds would carry to no where but to some gaze of me.

That glint of me in your eyes.

That glint of you in mine.

And we are not talking at all.

We are only kissing ourselves by looking.

We do not know how it tastes.

(What happens when you give a monkey a mirror?)

Leaving is such a terrible thing. 'To do',
but 'we did' is the specific. Magic
floundering into pale paper. Here
we are.
In the end our only violence is dumb. We could not
know each other as much as I thought. We would not
do the things that they do in the movies. We did not
hold each other in such ways with sparkling angles. The good
camera and smart sounds from our mouths, written. Carefully
in such scenes the music would play as if to imply. Beauty
is something else for us and it did not look like that.

A few more words about: coherence,
it doesn’t exist for me, I’m so hungry
for everyone else and their platitudes.
It must be nice to avoid existential breathlessness.
I like that word: breathlessness.
I resent that platitude: existential.
I am not bitter, I promise.
It’s just that the air…
it tastes so…
                      …(blue.)

My dreams can't fit inside my mouth.
CPU fan spins a lil' too fast, what heat!
    If I was a computer I would have legs.
    I'd run sometimes.
    No one would use me.
I'd write every little thing down if,
well, if, if I was substantial. Then
    something might follow. Then
    this instead. Then,
    somewhat remarkably, a smile. You
    are adorable, let's get coffee sometime! I
    don't even like coffee that much. Is
    that a thing that real people say?
    Say to each other. I'm still
chewing.

There's these moods I'm having,
   life cinematic,
I don't care much about grammar,
   ***** are you listening.

Rabbit, run run
    Poets see things other people can't
Don't
Want to
Where were your eyes, my eyes, where
         do
Rabbits run, run
                               Back then I wanted to kiss everyone
    (everything).
All the pretty girls in their summer dresses, always
    Rabbits, running, run, ran

                        Look at how the world goes by when you
                        walk in these moods
                        Mr ******

***** are you listening to me.

What was it that you were looking for.

     Rabbits run run.

Lives were lived across those school fields the rabbits ran.
                                            I missed those moments of encircling.
                                            Arms of yours.
So soft.
                There's the small body of the Chinese girl
                I wanted to take.
God.
                Shame does not concern me no more.

If you look hard enough there's always a somewhere.

But the trees, the way they sleep
my lungs cannot hold it all
the world is all too all to be compressed
by breath, nevertheless, there were my lungs
squeezing everything at all my chest-

I'm sorry but I can't see anything
everything is too much and all at once
all at once the world is around me
all at once, somehow, saturated, undistilled
thick, slice the air with hand, hold

that breath, I could stare at everyone
and everyone could stare at me. No one does.
I'm not very fond of mirrors. I stare
all the time and each time I learn nothing
outside there is so much and it doesn't fit

it doesn't fit it doesn't

Baby cousin points at my old toy robot
Declares, 'This robot used to be big.'
I say, 'No, you used to be small.'

'What?'

She then crouches down to old toy robot's
height and smiles and laughs,
'I used to be small like this!'

Maybe, just maybe I'll have
one of those little things
and teach them about stars
and boys and girls and words,
but I already told you
I can't live like that,
I think.