Ashland is a small town
on a small planet, in an
ever expanding universe.
The people here are bitter
and so is their spit, from
full-flavored cigarettes
and diluted kisses spun
from the lips of significant
others, that didn't listen to their
mothers, and married because of
irresponsible reasons, like personality,
respect, love, and other, 'Jesus, **** me
the **** now, so help me.'

Abstract thought is dangerous--
to the mind it's cancerous.
Alone and thinking about
melancholy shaped memories or
kisses that would echo through
your lungs, stomach, ******* soul.
Don't do it. Don't you invite the devil,
killing yourself is so concrete, it must
mean more than a concrete floor,
hovering above a rumored hell and a
definite uncertainty so delicate that it
eats into you with its sensitive meandering
disguised as beauty but, really, a violent,
violent, murderous host, hoax, fake but
eating your superficiality, programmed by
someone else, telling you it's you.

Ashland is a small town,
aren't we all a small town, inwardly.

In July, I collect stardust
And text dust
I linger in Shakespeare’s shadow
And who knew
He had a home in Oregon
I walk along his stairs
Finding myself hovering in front
A trio of theatres, tall witches
Brewing a cauldron of magic
Each performance, enticing
Crowds from every corner
And I follow in suit
Getting lost in the magic
That makes me want
To not return home

Doors held open,
smiles and hellos
more often than stares.
backpacks left solitary
among the dozens of legs.

Mountains so close, I could reach out
and brush the snow from the top
Up so high, I look down on clouds.
Palm trees and pine trees,
a little of home.
Air so crisp,
it scorches your lungs.
World so green,
feet rebel against concrete.
Little revolutions every day.
I stumble over concrete,
uneven and crumbled.
Wonder how many
have wandered through
these broken roads
and felt home
beneath their feet.
Wonder how many
have fallen in love
right
here.

Calloused lilies sprout into the cold air
shaking off their scales.

A moment of clarity, before they give birth again.
mercurial joy.
I find myself asking questions from letters,
gluing them into hexes upon myself

growing sentences and growing light
that hides and shivers and runs
before it can fully glow.

My stars prevail.
oh, that fleeting warmth,
I want to melt within the safety of the universe
and inhale the light

so close to the tips of my fingers
ever tipping
further away

look how i was fed guilt - look at how no one
screamed a care for the candle going out,
that roaming stars were born -
trail blazers i and they - i was fed guilt and
subsequently they were fed hopelessness -
they can joke all they want...
i'll be the one laughing over their graves,
people fear reading poetry because they fear
the hemlock - poetry is a hemlock...
they fear the personal, they really do -
you can write whatever you want when
humanity is lazy, and with times such as these
humanity is really lazy - they had to
create a secondary celebrity, not one built
on merit, but one built on per se -
becoming famous is like getting a free lunch
these days - that backlog of Darwinism has
finally spawned, draw back irrational history to
a dozen men as examples, call them Charlemagne,
Philip Augustus, Cnut (not variant of knot with
u but Ka-Noot), Genghis Kitty Chuckles,
Alexandria and the 5th Harem of Macedonia
named after her - Comrade Mao and chow mein -
Adolf and Hinduism... Erik zee Beetroot und Ashland -
we're criminal - we left the tribunal of heaven's sake
for a while to keep the black'e a sack of potatoes
worthy of a boxing match - and every ******* time
people wanted us to revise our vocabulary - every single
time... ooh racist... ooh anti-feminist... well thank
you Brother Orwell... i'll oysters with that observation...
see you in 20; you know what i dream of?
the wild west... yawning quickly like an Apache
making a war-cry - hand in smoke signals,
pop pop cherry, pop pop cherry drop, pop pop
another whitey gets scalped.
send me to the butchers! seriously, i want to go to
the butchers and the slaughterhouse... they really should
send children to slaughterhouses than to see Mike the Mouse,
otherwise know as Mickey - see the butchering -
i'm in one of those moods where i write because
i have a chance in hell to get a prize,
or that i don't wish to have one in the first place...
or because i'm ******* that this woman once wrote
of ****** liberation in the 1960s, and now she's writing
about glorifying arrange marriages, a jewel franchise -
i could be asking: what do women want?!
but that's still feminism with a ******, the real thing
is all about bogs and frogs and privacy,
knights and slap-stick humour -
                                                         thank you, minus the wife.
20 years on i'll be the one who's supposed to be jealous
that you own a Porsche - and i'll be asking about
the M.O.T. - like the two mattered for my care to ****.
i pay zero tax... you pay how much?! ooh, too-shay
and tooth decay, i swear i told you a pea-sized dollop
of fluoride and job done under 20 seconds...
you doing peppermint ******* with that mouth while
reciting a goodnight story to a child?
you know, before the haemorrhage i was such a decent
person... i know, one of the many boring facts i
claim to be a second birth... a Kentucky fried chicken
gets more sympathy at a vegetarians' conventions than i do...
i'm the criminal worth a spank and a nod of disapproval
with a tut-tut-naughty-naughty wandering of the index finger -
the French ******, the English were playing
rosy-cheek-chequers reminiscent of the Victorian black attire
while the Suez swelled in what became know as
the ****** Monsoon in a f.g.m. ****.
well, if my vocabulary be criminal... i should have been
taught to be illiterate, or at least be taught sign language...
if you don't like it... *******!

On Ohio nights, you've got fireflies.
     Out West, we like our rifles.
Never pull your days out from the roots
     'til the nights have all been ripened.

City lights are purpling blackened streets
and we can see our way to habits through
          these neighborhoods...

Our sentences are carbines.
Order up a few more rounds.
I guess it's almost automatic
when the late reports all sound
          like we've got
          rain all week.
        It's rain all week.
And you're so sick of parades.

You say you want a Summer.
One that never ends.
One that takes you back to Ashland,
          brings you
sense of time and feelings for old friends.

I think the party's over.
No streamers on the wall.
Pack your bags, punch a ticket,
          bring a
jacket and I'll see you in the Fall.

          I'll see you in the Fall.

On Ohio nights, you've got fireflies.
     Out here, we've got some mountains?
Never load your words into your clip
     'til the shells have all been counted.
City lights rain gold on midnight streets
and we can feel our way familiar through
          these neighborhoods.

Our paragraphs are Kevlar.
Knocking down another round.
When the night sky tries to swallow
you, the late reports all sound
          like we've got
          rain all week.
       It's rain all week.
I was so tired of parades.

I'm looking towards the Winter.
Know how that one ends.
It'll take me back to Sheridan,
          bring
sense of time and memories of old friends.

I think the party's over.
No streamers on the wall.
Pack your bags, punch a ticket
          bring a
jacket and I'll see you in the Fall.

       I'll see you in the Fall.

Frozen wasteland
Of human remains
Where there once
Were dandelion kisses
And lovers in the grass.
Now there only
Lies ash.

It coats my throat
And fills my lungs.
A copper taste
Forever in my mouth.
Left questioning exactly
Where in my life
This anxious
Wasteland of recurrent
Depression was decided.

Stopper of hearts,
   but what have you done
   to all the lads of Ashland?

    Your struggling cheek
   a soft delight
   chaffed against a world of sadness-



The candy shop, no sweeter,
despite it's lollipops and chocolates
than the ******* alive and prideful
at the fluttering of her naked lashes. 

Civil when you meet her,
she knows where the aorta's at-
Squeezing like a vice grip
at the ruddy heart attack

A starter home on a frozen plain
Located on the corner of
drifted dreams and main
Cigarettes and old ramen
A *** for posture, a dish pile
I hear the storm coming
Have heard it for a while

Lick me like the stamps
on the letters
to your ex-lover,
Break me like the twenties
you got from your mother.
Abuse me like the creep
you wish I was,
Use me then lose me
just because.

Neatly trimmed hedges
Expensive cars and houses
Neighbors sleep outside

Ice cold winds blow through
Ashland, city of wonders
You wear a thick coat

Walking past clusters
Of less fortunate people
They are just background

"Not always their fault,"
"They're human," "it could be you."
Inconceivable

Walking past hunger,
You spend fifty bucks on lunch.
Insignificant

For you the world is,
Nothing more than what you see.
Sad, not uncommon.

Rolling mint
hillock
of Ashland,
estate of my
grandparents,
where I curled
dreams
into the blue
room's sheets.
Honeysuckle's
ladder up
the brickwork
reached like
spring fingers
towards
my window.

From brown
shadows I saw
foxes steal
over the
crumbling
drive. Clouds
crashed
into trees,
deer ate
lawn in
the evening,
uncle's autos
coruscating
in the tall
grass wilds.

In that bed
I came of
age with
thoughts
of women
naked -
Torches
of thought
ached and
led the way
deeper
& deeper
as they dripped
scalding tar
all across
my adolescence.

Years went by
inside me.
Stones fell
from the sky,
hard as ***.
Fox bones
slept
in the wood.
The television
sat like
an idol
on the lace,
a pressure
that touched
every wall.

The sun
a chorus.
The moon
a thigh.
Something wet
rustled in the
eye that
burrowed
beneath
the pillow.