I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
It makes me anxious, and it’s not only the chemical interaction.
Somehow, I associate it with “adulthood”—reading the news,
Drinking coffee—I can’t tell you how many days of the last few
Years have been spent entirely in this fashion. The coffee
Growing cold and the news colder still. I don’t even taste the
black, fluid drops. I don’t hear the screams of people I read
about. I just want to hold on to something—so I raise the glass
to my lips. I can’t say

the shocking words when my mouth’s full; I can’t tell

about my experience, my privilege, when I’m drinking it.


The production of the commodity

creates a line from some equatorial region
to central America, and my mouth.
I think about the Autumn I worked in a corn-seed
sorting facility. What a short experience—
and yet,
something that weighs heavy on my imagination.
I was a temp worker.
I chose to work there out of shame and guilt for having
missed the deadline for college enrollment.
I could have done anything else; but there were people
there who wanted nothing more than a job. They needed
to be
there.
And I think of the people involved in producing coffee beans

in much the same way.
Removed
from the thing they’re making, as the raw materials are shipped
to places you pay workers more.
Why shouldn’t I swallow with difficulty when faced with the pro-
spect of a person supporting their entire family with the type
of work
I did
reflexively, as a choice?

Now I sit here, reading about North African riots,
a region, where coffee is produced—
ARABICA COFFEE— and I think about what’s sitting
in my cup, how I have
spent more money than they make in a day
to buy
one container
…
and sit here
for an afternoon
doing nothing but reading about their families’ misery.

I am a human parasite.

And like the bedbugs that have crawled meticulously
between my mattress and bedframe, hiding in a safe spot
until they can come out, undetected, and **** my potency.

I sit here, in the comfort of an apartment furnished
and paid for by my father who grows corn in a highly-
mechanized, agricultural society. I take more and more,
festering to the size of a blistering, red dot
blinking in the dark, in the form of the record light on
my voice recorder.
I expect so much more from myself, simply because of
this position of luxury.

But I don’t take time to think about my reaction to these
stories or how I am involved in them, in shaping their plots.
I’m even eating more now
as I’ve nearly lost my concern with avoiding certain super-
markets.
I smile at the greeters, make small talk with the cashiers
whom I am openly exploiting. But it’s ok, because
I worked for a month at a cornseed manufacturing
facility
and I read Marxist Ideology,
and I know about the Arab Spring
and I was against American intervention in Libya
and I disdain the air strikes from robotic planes
(unauthorized by congress)
and I disdain congress
and I support gay marriage
(I stopped eating chicken).
I don’t drive to the suburbs of my city.
I walk and ride my bicycle as much as I feel like.
I use public transportation at times.
I try to get to know women.
I practiced safe ***, once.
I write poetry.
I tell my mom I love her.
I bought my nieces birthday presents.
I’m not overly nice to people of different
ethnicities.
I voted for Obama.
I’m trying.
All these things make it seem less bad
to smile at the cashier.
But then I think about my black studies Professor
who used a walker to come to class
because she fell
and spelled the word Amendment “Admendment”
on the board when talking about Reconstruction.
I think about the war in Syria.
I think of people dying from cholera in Haiti, in 2012
A.D.
I think about fracking and oil spills and …
irrevocable damage to Indian reservations.
I think about football coaches molesting children
and people eating fried butter.
I read about people
upset
with a movie
who protest in the streets for days.

It makes me realize I shouldn’t smile at anyone.
I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.

One: Sleepy
When your spine takes cat-like curves into the recesses of blankets
And crickets and thunder and howling wind all sound like peace
And puzzle pieces fitting splendidly against each other
You’re sleepy when your eyelashes are weakly magnetized
And pull gently towards one another in soft but stuttered motions
When white noise and static fill your ears the way that water can sometimes fill a glass a little bit past the top without spilling
And you look forward to the lure of dreams or of dreamless nights
Because you know you’re sleepy when the only reason to be awake in the moment
Is so that you can appreciate the split second of falling
When you finally lose consciousness

Two: Bored
When you switch from counting ceiling tiles to counting the colors that you can find when you close your eyes with varying degrees of tension
And you’ve become so bored with distracting yourself that sleep seems like the only genuine option
Even if you’ve only just woken up
Even if you’re not feeling comforted by darkness and silence yet
Even if distractions are abundant
Because they just aren’t distracting enough
Sometimes boredom summons misery just to occupy your mind
And you’re bored when you remember you were supposed to be in bed an hour before
And you actually listen to yourself and go

Three: Drowsy
When you wish you had longer limbs just so you could properly drape them from the edges of your mattress and stretch at better angles
Suspecting that maybe the odd crooks in your bedframe are the crooks that have been thieving in bits of the night and stealing the ends of dreams and the beginnings of alarms
You’re drowsy when you can feel the burn of smoke sloping against the walls of your lungs
Even when you’ve been breathing clean air all day
And the dizzy spin of the room is more of a waltz that’s moving just a little bit slower than expected
Until you turn the music off

Four: Fed Up
When stress is snapping at your synapses and igniting fizzling fireworks at the back of your throat
But the forward corners of your eyes pull together to shut out the world
Because ignoring is a temporary retreat into forgetting
And permanence isn’t something you’re in the mood to believe in any way
You’re fed up with the world, and with existing
Or maybe just being awake
When you know there are better things that you could and should be doing
But shutting down is all you can manage right now

Five:  Faint
When the world appears not only blurry, but verging on translucent
And there’s a steady hum lacing the edges of reality
With sporadic jolts of memory forcing twitching sensations down your back
You’re feeling faint when you’re hopelessly holding onto consciousness
Because you’re a little bit afraid of falling
But you would never admit it
Because there are too many blank spaces in your vision to allow for any vagueness in your thoughts
But sometimes the body can’t keep up with the mind
And you collapse all the same

Six: Weary
When time seems to thicken and stick to your skin
Weighing down your movements like steel beads of sweat
And pressing palms to your eyes almost seems to drown out sound as well
You’re weary when the grass feels a few inches too long and the ground seems a few inches too close
And the ends of your limbs feel as though they have been reaching for something a little bit too far away
And you have only just given up
So you grab handfuls of the clothes you have on and pull them tighter against yourself
Forming an artificial blanket
And imitation slumber

Seven: Exhausted
When you can feel static buzzing through your veins
Stretching capillaries into threads to keep yourself sewn together
Knowing that consciousness could spill from the cracks in your skin all too easily if given the chance
And your eyelids hold together like the grand doors of a cathedral
Opening only with a struggle that everyone tries to make seem effortless
You’re exhausted when you’ve been writing this poem for days trying to find the words
To properly describe different degrees of fatigue
And you’re sure that you’ve probably recycled a metaphor or two but you don’t bother to double check
So you keep trudging along
Until nothing makes sense anymore
And the seams that encase your consciousness begin to strain
And snap

Eight: Hyperactive
When despite all reason dictating that you should be experiencing the drag of being awake for too long
You see clearly and think in double time
With energy flickering behind your irises
Foreshadowing the dread of sunrise
You’re hyperactive when you’re knitting your voice with your friends’ voices in a collage of laughs
Each indistinguishable from the last
And you start counting the stars with flashlights until
Like sugar and smiles
And fast cars on icy roads
You inevitably
Crash

Nine: Emotionally Drained
When you’re worn to the point that mental distress manifests itself physically
And you can feel the chains of your own thoughts around your wrists
Almost wishing they were tighter so there would at least be proof of their damage
You’re emotionally drained when you can scream without making any sound
And you've perfected the syncopated rhythm of a nervous twitch
You realize that you've been grinding your teeth for the last two hours
So you switch to biting your tongue
And you don’t rest
You don’t rest until there are tears mimicking a Jackson ******* on your pillowcase
You don’t rest until the clock is judging you for testing it
You don’t rest until you feel empty
You cannot rest when you feel empty
No matter how desperately you wish you could just fade
And drift away
You do not
Rest

Ten: Tired
Just…tired

when I see us its at the white-sand beaches
the scent of turmeric in our hair and
wild quicksilver kisses—
why does salt turn up in your
sweat when inches away from you it laps at your feet miles
away crashes against the
cliffs of dover

does the sea rush through your
veins through your eyes is that why our
seagull cries scatter to the
muriatic air the buoy of the
bedframe bobbing against the wall my hips anchored to
yours should I learn how to
sail

I awoke this morning with all my
nanoseconds whizzing by—

spiraling, they broke for their exits,
they disarrayed my sky.

Each now and now and now
seemed a face, flash color,

many worlds. I could not sense
their place of start or stopping.

Morning sun peeped blue curtains.
I tried my usual breath, felt
heartbeat, wiggled foot.

My dog, he stretched
and bumped my bedframe
with his chest.

Against my fear I placed and pushed
messages of gratitude.

I thanked all things changing
and all of changing time.

Rather than elsewhere, I was here.

Instead of dead--
alive.

She said
When you're done slaying dragons
and fighting for thrones
will you come back and stay for a while?

But there are not enough puddles
Not enough dirt

He is the king of the living room
when the carpet is lava

Don't come out of the kitchen
The carpet is lava mommy

She says okay
and watches as he jumps from couch cushion to chair to tile
to save her

There will never be a man in her life who can save her like he can
No man who knows the exact distance from doorframe to bedframe
so the hands underneath will not get them
if they jump right

No one's ever thought to save her
From the things she cannot see

I wish I were old enough to use a saw

He is stomping a tin trashcan lid flat
Cuts kite string with his teeth

Discovery says its duck season
If I have armored wings
and get hit by a shotgun
I'll still be able to fly home

I wish I were a shark
I wish I were the wind
I wish I was a lost boy but didn't have to be lost
Can I be a boy forever
and still get homesick?

If peter pan came and offered to whisk him away to neverland
The hardest thing would be for her to let him go

Maybe he can be a boy like ten more years
she thinks

With fistfulls of crayons
and constant pleads for one more of everything

Just one more night as a boy
Just one more day as a dragon
Just one more day as a bird with steel wings
One more day as the wind

But she knows he'll be a man
And he'll visit
and call
talk about
The damsel in distress he met in college
When he saved her at a party
How she spent the whole night laying on his chest
While sleeping on the grass
And for some reason
The cold biting air smelled like home

She knows mothers raise the best men
Because they know what they want in a man

It's not always okay to be your father's son

She says,
When you're done with dragons
and steel winged flights
and being emperor of the living room

Be honest
Women love men who are honest
Smile about everything
Smiling is attractive
and sometimes it's all you need to make yourself feel good

Call me now and then
Or I'll call you every five minutes

Now go
*The wind is calling you home

With frosty breath and empty-shell shoes,
I await the steady driver who returns for me,
to hurdle our car down cliff into sea
with cracked headlights and bowtie come undone,
what more could Night or Water honestly have won?

Moon painted gleam masterfully upon my eye
from falling trees and ivy-shined leaves,
whispered in their ears from knoll-bound knaves,
"The sun gone over, never to return for you."
They watch for pleasure, sent-to-ground from dew.

I ramble on and on along rocky coast line
over iron guard rails with trusty companion,
head-tilt weighed a stone above water,
gone plunging in toward black surface below,
face-first and tongue-tied with heart so hollow.

Up, up, awake. All but a dream.
Soaked tie above bedframe,
slept in mustard blood sheets.

Leave, left, leaving
I never felt the grass weaving
I never felt my skin peeling
off my shoulders and into my hands

Bent, break, breaking
I never left my hands shaking
I never held my throat, aching
down my spine and into the bedframe

Held, hold, healing
I never kept my knees kneeling
I never felt my mouth bleeding
off my chin and onto my chest

Heal, hell, heaving
I never slipped my hands, thieving
I never caught my feet leaving
off the grass and into the street

From my bedroom, I imagine what it would take to become nothing. Some days, all I am is the comforter. Others- the mattress. I could waste away and become this bedframe forever. I mean, I've been thinking and what does it mean to be here anyways? I mean, how much effort is required to exist in these tired sheets? This narrowed gaze some called alive once is fearful of the windows now. The walls shrink across these hallowed bones and here is heaven. Spirits rising or angels falling. Here I am. The casket sits below this windowsill where the dust collects and dares me to make the first move. Home is stuck between these rib bones and I've been looking for a way out for a while now. Existing just hard enough for a pulse. Some scattered breaths. Feet face down stuck above the floor boards- quivering towards their next step. Yet I am here. Seem too worried about the timing of it all. And how I never loved the ground enough. Never cherished that fertile soil swelling beneath these feet until it could become me. And what now? Escape this body?  Suffocate under the promises these pillows keep? Or stand.

it's 5am
they lie down holding each other
they can't sleep
she gets up
she's sitting on his lap
as he lies on his back
she stares off, out the window
of her college dorm
with wooden closets and a wooden bedframe
with drawers underneath
and a wooden desk
the light from the sunrise barely reaches over the horizon
a moment of silence lingers
"what are you thinking?" he says
"why... are we still... up?" she replies
"i don't know"
she notices him looking deeply at her
inquisitive, curious, affectionately
"what are you thinking?" she asks him
"i kinda want to kiss you"
"why are you asking?"
as she brings her lips closer to his

I locked you in my closet,
And put your memories under my bed.

But now,
the flesh has fallen
and you are the skeleton in my closet
and beneath my bedframe,
your memories have spawned
a monster.

I find bits of poetry in my bed.
Who left them there?
They smell of neroli and wax...
Are they not missed?
They are not particularly beautiful or true...
They speak of a lonliness,
the impression of my spine,
My heels lightly digging in,
Of a passion my bed once thought it knew.
They tell me how the rattling of my bedframe (like cold bones)
is only my constant readjustment,
The facing and de-facing of my world.

! A frantic
venus-vision,
rising pink impressions/
potent operatic amen/halo snaking
Ouroboros
light-dream

I've been resting in the silver lodge/
I adore you and your
slumber,
it's causing mandalas to spill out of your
ears and into my mouth
like candy
birthed in the sun                 eyes/lapse of ocean island rain
                                                            ­           (ocean island rain)
starfish gaze, in sky, over city, over the banks,
into the kitchen, settling presence
(water) becalmed, sprigmask lip-
leaf smile, wide autumn orange                     (afterlife shade)

heavy breathing, hot, in Wallachian fabrics beneath the moon temple,
"Zahrada"
forgetting the living kitchen
which scurries off into my night, the holy architecture of a dream,

(to NIGHTMARE/silhouettes, wax-teeth
carrying a girl/unconscious, doll dress/brunette with blushing cheeks,
they forge a labryinth out of air, Persepolis
wide spread chalky
limbs thin like Cypress/
praying with a certain discordance, sword in hand
I tread with a careful
fire-heart
palm tattooed with a phrase from Matsuo Basho to guide me
thru a schoolyard, cement prism, myriad violins and lucid
eternal wheatfields, abandoned rosary/
chased by Quetzales, crowned explosive heads/
bells/wrath/bells
girl now devoured by the bedframe maze, darkness enfolding,
I'm alone, a cavern, smoke
thickens I taste its poison, fall-over
trampled by black horses/Nocturne/
out of NIGHTMARE)



       everyone has a different image of the Isle of The Dead....



                                        (na shledanou)

...wakened to green tea, pattern rug spread on sand,
unworldly passage
in distance, I've been out on high, travelling blind.
Someone laughing about my nakedness
I don't know when I lost my clothes (in my pursuit?)

There's a song, a no-song, Nada, two men
are writing on large papyrus

“At first, the sounds are like those proceeding from the ocean, clouds, kettle-drum and cataracts; in the middle (stage) those proceeding from Mardala (a musical instrument), bell and horn.”

when I ask what they're scribing I'm
hushed by my own inner voice

“The mind exists so long as there is sound, but with its (mind cessation)
there is a state called Unmani or Manas (viz., the state of being above the mind).”

Each word erases the previous as it is written down, until all that remains is the last word,
a final impression,
my internal voice hushes itself
now there is no

inner voice
to be quieted


II

Intoxicated & raised by the spice of
summer yarrow,

attention drawn to
a place beyond the fence, The Farther.

I sit cross-legged
on a stack of logs, it's June,
I scan the florid heat for
a birthplace I may never return to

"Le Foret Enchantee"

It had been
one of those
microdot nights.

I woke up feeling
like I had run
three marathons.
All I could remember
was feeling good
& flesh-blurs,
those patterns of
sweet movement
etched on the inside
of my aching skull.

The bedframe
had been destroyed
and gossamer
floated from my mouth.
Magenta lip-prints
made a trail
down
from the middle
of my chest
to other sensitive-places.
It appeared as if
I had pulled out
all of her tail feathers
in the place she was lying,
a true fairy in repose,
I drowned in her spirit.

Wrap my hands tight to your bedframe
tickle softly on my arms
use your tie to tie my feet up
so my legs are wide apart

As you make me think you'll kiss me
hold a hand behind my head
And the moment that our lips touch
grab my hair and pull it back

Put your body in between me
be my master everytime
that I push my hips towards you
to get your flesh so deep in mine

Make me rules and make me break them
for I crave your punishments
Comfort my skin after and
drown me in your sentiment.

i have these dreams, smelling
the three-AM summer night
through the screen of my window.

my hands are pressed against my
stomach. i am in bed and i keep my
eyes shut the entire time. i am
trying to hold everything inside.
my hands trail up and down my
arms, im begging
myself not to forget your lips,
i am holding every place you touched me
permanent. i am tattooing the way you
look at me to the spaces of my ******* ribcage.

in these dreams, you have always just
left. i can still smell you on my skin and
in my hair, on the clothes that need to
be washed, on the sheets.

my fingers are gripping the bedframe
and im begging it not to change. the Sun falls
in and the dust falls over and over the blankets
in a rhythm that makes it look like your
side of the bed has life in it again. my hands are
around my throat and on the back of my head,
looking for places that have a trace of you on
them, looking for pieces of you that you might have
forgotten to take with you.

in these dreams, i am hollowing out the
walls of my body, trying to find every memory
so i can feel it vein-deep and to the bone, you have
always just left. i am always just looking around for things
to replace the space you used to occupy.

when i wake up, and its still dark out, the dust stays where
it always has. the Sun won't even help me pretend that you're
still here. when i wake up, its like you have just
left all over again.

I woke up this morning to you towering over the foot of my bedframe.

Anxiety

When I stared blankly at my cereal bowl, disinterested and afraid to eat.

Anxiety

I take a shower at a snails pace, petrified of returning to the mirror to be bathed once again in your foul cocoon.

Anxiety

When I leave the house I look down at my feet, to escape the gazes of strangers with motives unknown to me.

Anxiety

As I cry alone in the bathroom stall, not knowing who to turn to for a problem that never leaves.

Anxiety

I just want you to know that you're killing me.

Anxiety

Tell your secret to the nourished grass,
And your secret will be swept away by the wind.
Tell your secret to your bedframe of rusting brass,
And let the polish cover up the secret, hidden.
Tell your secret to the broad cobblestone wall
And let the ivy cover it up until it’s tucked away within the cracks.
Tell your secret to the grains of sand
And let the ocean sweep away the remains.
Tell your secret to the flame of candlelight,
And the flame will die down before telling.
Tell your secret to a crystalline raindrop,
And it will become one with the earth before whispering.
Tell your secret to the moonlit night,
And dawn will come before dusk can begin singing.
Tell your secret to an autumn flower,
And let it be crippled by the winter’s frost.
Tell your secret to the running  waterfall,
And let it spill down into the river with your secret, lost.
Tell your secret to the tobacco in the pipe,
And let the smoke be lost within the brilliant clouds.
Tell your secret to the buzzing bumblebees,
And they will never say it aloud.
Tell your secret to the purest snow,
And by spring,  your secret will melt away into the well.
Tell your secret and let the  fireflies know,
And your secret can’t be retold; there is no one else to tell.

The steel bedframe you helped me pick
Is so cold
and Now you sit
In the cafe we used to
And we'd argue the most complex things about whether we'd work or not
And that time is long since gone
Facing away from the street
You have your next man cornered
So he maybe gets his stuff together better than me
While you inquire
And offer him the world

I had a dream I was falling
through blue sky and stars
falling, falling, falling,
crash   jolt,   wake up
And find I am still falling
through this bedframe
and the floorboards
down to the molten earth
falling, falling, falling
crash   jolt,   darkness.

On my side of the bed
Is a broken picture frame
From when I got a little too drunk
And you ****** me off
A CD and brand new journal
With a pack of unused pens
Waiting for inspiration
There are articles about the storm
That stole you from me
The sheets are torn and tangled
From many sleepless nights
The lamp with a broken shade
You said had character
And an unopened roll of Smarties
Because maybe
If I can make them pants you'll come back
But worst of all are the jars and jars
Of pennies hiding under the bedframe
For every kiss I wish I could give

This palace is grand.

Roses lined the roads that entered,
And a crisp green carpeted the plains that lay beside.

The marble columns rose to the sky,
Their sharp white sending glimmers into the distance.

Warmth filled the rooms,
As too did the scent of Maplewood crackling within the fireplace.

Mould grew spotilly on the ceiling above,
It complimented the flaking metal of the bedframe.
A hole in the ceiling dribbled water onto the damp pillow.
Drip.Drip.Drip.

This palace is grand.