Your religion is
an earworm, curled around
my feeble brain. All day I
find myself singing praises of

your god, my
former salvation. Your religion dances
around my tired mind, enchanting

my ears even as
my heart rebels. I am
in the shower, trying
not to sing my love to
the cold tile walls, the
streaming hot water, the

house as my family listens to
the notes pour out of
my open mouth. טוב
להודות ל' ולזמר
לשמך עליון they

sing in voices like
brightly feathered birds circling
the light of
His countenance. Your god
is strong, and gives of
his strength freely to those

who can follow him faithfully. I
find myself incapable, and yet
your melodies ensnare me. This blessing
of musicality, gifted directly

from hours of sitting rapt, in
your house of worship, is also
my curse. I cannot forget
the source of my love affair
with the rise and fall
of your adoring exaltations
and all music.

Rejection is an earworm
Playing in your head,
"Not here, not now."
Sharpen the pencil lead.

I swear you've become the earworm, that gets stuck in my head
Your eyes are like falling rhinestones, like Gorillaz said.
Why I have to be so far away... that's something around which I couldn't begin to wrap my head

Even when I've got sunshine in a bag, the future is still rather uncertain
Because sometimes my life is more unpredictable than the spread of vermin
But...

If i had to pick someone to navigate those uncertain tides
To listen to my ******* on long car rides
I'd pick you in a heartbeat
..
Hell maybe even a seizure induced spasm

You've been in my head again
Refusing to leave like the earworm you are
So through paper and thick black ink
I will write you away

The earworm
In my head
Had made it
To my brain
And eaten
What little's
Left

Clever sticky earworm
Tricky mess stuck in my head
Like crazy glue and torn fragments
Never complete but always repeating

Clever sticky earworm
Tricky mess stuck in my head
Get out get out get out
Always repeating

Clever sticky earworm

Write about that song you just can't get out of your head, or adopt this as a metaphor.

you're a songless earworm,
a mind loop.  you keep bubbling,
percolating, rhythmically
strumming my ability
to think of anything else.  

i can't get you out of my mind.

Yes, sad but true,
Is this real to you?
I have earworms, do you?
Songs in my brain,
On my thought train,
I sing along every day,
Earworms on my brain, Yah!

When you can taste the music
That’s been spinning
And twisting
Through the exhausted thoughts
And panicked memories
That’s when you know
That the thrumming of
Your heart is actually
The beat to a song
Sometimes forgotten
But still beautiful

It’s like a song, sometimes.
One that is loud, clear spoken
and can’t escape the head
despite tricks and tries of other phrases,
other verses,
tunes or talents.
It plays over and over
consuming the will to ponder all else.

And then it fades,
somehow,
no one really knows.
It simply stops
like a consecutive set of hiccups that was once churning the insides of a suffering gut.
It drifts somewhere,
with the thin idea that it may appear some other day.

Without a word of depart,
the song finds its way into a tunnel of another mind.
Consuming and repeating,
loud and clear spoken,
unable to escape the head.

And suddenly
I long for it to return.
The gumption,
the sentimental sincerity,
and I wish I had simply let my song sing itself.

You are like a song
              forever
                        Stuck in my head

Here come the Irishmen,kilted up and celted out,
about to to take the mic away and throw a smack into your mouth,
think they're ready lads?(nah I don't think so man)

No-one really wants a ****** sleeper hold from Sandman,
that's a pity cos your ****** rhymes are out of time,
cutting your umbilical-severing your lifeline,
save the fairytales skitz is reading grimms books,
looked into your future it was two words "you're ******"!
so **** the atmosphere,biosphere,feel the fear,
Grim Reaper in your sleep,lullabyes in your ear
like an earwig earworm but positive,
even though half the time the time things say are negative,
never mind blood type,rip the bag drink it off,
A Celt vampire,not sparkly with me shirt off
If I get me shirt off I'm Skyclad painted blue,
howlin'cross the battlefield to stick an axe in you!

A haon, a do. The only way to go is
a belt of the Celt and we're here to let ya know.
Me word is me bond and me eyes don't lie.
And I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night.

A haon, a do. The only way to go is
a belt of the Celt and we're here to let ya know.
Speak truths clearly,me head held high.
And I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night

See your guts drop,fullstop flip flop
just like 99% of all new Hip Hop,
what a mockery,you **** your pants in fear a me,
you're all the epitome of me me me me me!,
did me best to to help you out back in the day,
you spat it in me face so now I love your blood spray,
all brats,all backstabbers,not Celts,
if I take me belt off,the buckle leaves a welt,
across your facebones,skull+bones smashed bones,
are all's left if you step into the thunderdome,
to take a one on one,**** it bring your mates too
dental records-only way to ID you,
ICU will be your last place last breath,
you're literally starin' in the face of grim death
cause all your hatred is fuel for the fire-man,
its just like Thor shooting lightning bolts at Ironman.

A haon, a do. The only way to go is
a belt of the Celt and we're here to let ya know.
Me word is me bond and me eyes don't lie.
And I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night.

A haon, a do. The only way to go is
a belt of the Celt and we're here to let ya know.
Speak truths clearly,me head held high.
And I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night

You're so illiterate,words are illegitimate,
the Old ***** ******* Skitz still spits raw ****,
try try cry,cause you'll never reach the top,
best sounds like you're throwing alphabet spaghetti up,
*******,philosophy-horrorcore-got em all,
the length and the breadth of my mind is immeasurable,
so while you're miserable,wishing for some company,
I'm x'ing off the names on the list of who's dissin' me,
keep ******' me off if you want to,
I don't need a glock to blow a hole right through you,
use my skill set hackin' you old school,
modem in my left hand,right holds a power tool,
run,run,fool 'fore I let the dogs loose,
hip hop strangle hold,Sandman with a noose,
take a lesson in,kid you got your cards dealt,
whipcrack,smack!-you got a belt of the Celt.

*A haon, a do. The only way to go is
a belt of the Celt and we're here to let ya know.
Me word is me bond and me eyes don't lie.
And I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night.

A haon, a do. The only way to go is
a belt of the Celt and we're here to let ya know.
Speak truths clearly,me head held high.
And I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night.
Yes I've danced with the Seidh in the dead of the night...

This pain
could run into
the triumph of
my head
burn and torment
alas for the tune
is worth a thousand pains
sail on sweet pain
curse me
navigate endlessly
through my hearing
till the clouds
crash
till the bird
songs shine
extinguished
till everything
is eclipsed
by great
throws of nothing

I want to rhyme about you
   Crush some words together
   Chain them up in singsong rhythms
      Catchy phrases
         that earworm in my head
            and echo.

You're the sort I could write songs about
   if I wrote songs.

Everything reminds me of you.
I'd say you're stuck in my head,
But the proper term is "earworm--"
You are not a pest.
You're too friendly,
Too lovable.
You closer resemble puppy,
Just like everyone says.
Only I feel as though you've run away.
I miss your loyalty.
Your companionship.
Your ability to make me smile,
No matter how hard I cry,
And those incredible, sparkling eyes.
I worry about you, now,
Because it seems you've run away.
I wonder where you've been,
If you're being treated well.
Or, if you've been alone.
Just like anyone who
Has lost their best friend,
I just want you to come home.

Thoughts race like lyrical melodies.
Repeating themselves like a chorus.
He can’t take the incessant chattering.
The yes, no, please make it stop of it all.

It’s too much to handle.
Handle, like he’s riding a bike with the handles disconnected.
A wall in front of him, no way to steer.
No way to brake.
Can’t get it to stop.

Here comes the verse again,
“You will hurt those you love.
You will hurt those you love
You will hurt those you love
You have hurt those you had loved.”

The verse came in,
“Attention-deficit with hyperactivity, anxious, obsessive-compulsive,
Insomniac, bipolar, with substance dependency.
A basket case with narcissistic traits, but the self-esteem that makes him drown while everyone else floats."

Stated in the order of chronological diagnosis.
Each a bookend to a chapter of his life.
Collecting disorders like pokemon cards.
Being the worst there ever was.

Cross cultural chatter
with Jeremiah ****
and Jack D
and Gary Moore blues
in the earworm;

Good company
comes in all shapes and sizes.

Reprises memories
of forgotten friends
we lost in yesterday's haze;

Such is life
in the gentle ageing
of these days.

Bring me the amber nectar
and the dissonance of reason
awash in the Jazz and Blues
and the warmth
of a welcome handshake;

All friends start life as strangers
ambling lips for all seasons
and the hues of lost souls.

That found each other wandering
in the frozen cascades
leading to the hot coals
of belonging.

arms stretched out
your presence falls to dust.
clinging to lost particles
essence blows to the wind.

Never mine alone

your hot breath whispers
nape of neck scortched
tendrils embrace fragile frame.

How could you?

callous manipulation
your earworm hypnotized
siren's song to keep me at sea.

*****

satisfied by legs sprawled wide
predatory habits
engorge on sickly perfume
latte skin prefered

Why her..?

The music that lingers
in my mind when I awaken
is the rhythm of a life
of which I dream to live.

If I could get these symphonies
unlocked from the rooms
in which they reverberate and boom,
I would finally be who I know I should be,
but the rhythm's undone when I do come too;
I'm only ever left with the conclusion
that made my psyche break through-
A conclusion without the question,
a harmony without a melody,
a melody without rhythm,
a break without a build,
a crescendo undeserved.

I carry with me back to consciousness
no evidence of the brilliance observed;
no tally or tale or the things seen and heard.
But I know that I saw them;
I know what I heard.
I feel the rhythm inside me
and I hear the words.
I remember the beats
and the lost melodies.
Never-the-less...
they are incomplete...

just like me.

A clip of a phrase left to rattle around.
An earworm set to unheard sound.

"Dont be afraid
to get too wild"

These dreams are the compositions of some other soul
The music and musings of minds not my own
but I wonder in the early morning grey,

Do the people that I dream to be also dream of being me?

I awoke from a dream slowly
Sweet docile tones reverberating in my ears;
and as I came too with a rhythm and the words that broke through. I tried to hold onto them as long as I could do, but never can I keep them for more than a moment, maybe two.
It’s infuriating and frustrating,
because there is no way to capture the song that I heard: just the shadow of some snippet sneaking out the back door with the rest of the gang that got away already before getting caught in the midst of their thievery, when the man whom they are robbing walks in the front door

And there never has been.

I am no musical genius, but I know a good song when I hear one,
And I’ve heard such wondrous things
cascading through my dreams
Less now than before,
but I still find myself hallucinating wild bebop jazz
with muted trumpets and silky strings,
big band ballad piano swings,
deep-trance and euro-house dance floor thumpers, chaotic digital jungle themes,
indigenous rain-dance chants against primal drumming, Searing thrash metal with string burning sweeps of perfect improvisational leads, Merengue and Samba and Flamenco beats, with lyrics in languages I do not speak.

In my dreams they are full compositions, with layers and evolution and meaning; I just can't recall all the words and have not enough talent and knowledge of things to transcribe the notes in corporeal means.
Most importantly, the music of a mind’s eye or ear is not the music of the world, so I have no way to recreate the rhythms or melodies.

Mostly because I don't know where to begin.
Because the inception of the song,
in reality or dream,
is always a fugue of some other innocuous thing;
some music or rhythm that broke away from the meaning it has in the world
and echoed until it became a song I heard.

But I swear god once promised me,
In a vision unseen
that when I die, if I get to heaven,
The songbooks are waiting,
fully annotated, with lyric transcriptions printed up nice and neat, and not only can I see the compositions of these, but there are recordings of all of it. Everything!
That's the only heaven I want there to be:
The one with the words I lost in my sleep,
And the music of my hallucinations and dreams.

The soundtrack to my subconscious is something to be heard.
It’s too bad the world will never know of these things,
the mind music mingling amongst the mist of my dreams.
Such beauty deserves to be heard
By those here among us who love, live, and suffer,
who dance, cry, and sing.
But alas it is only a fantasy for me.
But it will be tremendous to finally free
the muses best work
when I inevitably meet
the maker of the muses and the music and me;
But until then the world will just have me to trust.

I promise.

It will be…

My Magnum Opus

I hope you're doing well tonight, yeah I'm thinking of you;
laying on the grass, wishing you were by my side

I told you everything I felt,
Even though you weren't mine

You thought I was all talk, yeah; pushing bluffs through my teeth. I let myself slip into you.

I hope you're doing well tonight, yeah I can't stop thinking of you; I know you're in bed and don't care to have me by your side.

Take responsibility,
For the things you say,
For like the melody of her favorite song,
She’ll sing them,
And she’ll wonder,
An she’ll hope.

Or like piercing siren,
She will dig her face deeper into the pillow,
To run away,
Wishing for a razor,
To cut off the those pretty little ears.

IN X ANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not be lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

And another sad song after the last
I've heard it before
A classic earworm.  
sure to make you never forget
old loves

You are inescapable.
     Like a miles wide mountain range
          present in the background of every scene I see.
               I am humbled and invigorated by your presence.

You are an earworm.
     Like a ******* Disney song stuck in my head for years
          but I’m not tired of it yet.
               Even syndicated radio couldn’t wear you out now.

I feel you bone deep.
     The way your soul feels has seeped into my infrastructure
          I am forever changed.
               I could run, but I will never be completely rid of you.

I am permeated.

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream

i am where the luck runs out of lucky.
tarnished yarns of harmony.... harming things.
like an earworm in a blind spot.
with your heart disarmed.

i am delayed by a Winter
underneath my skin.
that only your marmalade can burn.
as i surrender to the victory
of my sank Armada… i foist
my dark hilarities
upon the spike of a spoon?
how many gnomes must die
before my lawn is merely
Hideous?

how many ways can i stop
asking that?

IN XANADU....IT'S...COMPLICATED.

"Life should not lived
in black and white...

...but, in colour!"
Coleridge thinks.

"Man should not believe in
'No-can-do"

but in 'Yes...
we can!'

Even a legless man can
dance the Can-Can

with the uppermost part
of his body and

dancing with imaginary
legs!"

Sammy( sometimes he )
displaces himself into

the  third person
decanting the fine wine of the mind.

"Naw...scrub that line
don't know where in hell I was

going with it.
Gawd! This laudanum is strong!"

And so, he sits, sips and pens
in a vision or a trance if you like

a dream of future-time
where people can be made

into paper replicas
of themselves.

The "picture-graph"
he calls it

for want
of a better word.

And now he pushes the boat out
pictures that can talk and walk

so that even the dead
will flicker for a second

back into the life
they had.

A world going to ***
and other such drugs.

Machines that can take your voice
and fling it over to...say...Japan

and back and forth
again.

The world shrunk to your hand
" a miracle of rare device."

Just think!
Think of it man!

Or to be Blake-an about it:
"What is now proved was once, only imagin'd."

"I have a dream..." the poet proclaims
beginning to sound like a speechwriter

"...that one day man
may fly...sitting down in the sky!"

Oh I'm really getting going now!
Laughs at his mind's daring derring-do!

Gawd....this laudanum is strong!

And that one day facebook(sic)
will come to be.

"...things unfathomable to man!"
These the dark caverns of the mind.

Cute cat videos...selfies
whatever!

"Look here is a picture
of my dinner!"

Relationships: It's...
...complicated.

He crosses out "unfathomable"
writes "immeasurable" above it.

"...miracles of rare device..."
So good I've said it twice.

Such "...mingled measures..."
will life be really so?

Suddenly a 'ping" or some
such thing!

A message request from
Kubla ****** Khan.

Now one is being poked
by some bloke

an Alf
from Porlock it would appear.

Good Gawd is that really his
Profile Pic...he looks sick.

Claims to be a Jehovah's Witness
and can he come 'round and

have I found
Jesus?

Jaysus no! Delete...delete!

This facebook is
"...a savage place...

as e're beneath a waning moon
was haunted..."

Bit flowery that but
it will have to do.

Now **** it all to hell
where ****** was I?

And now...now...this very now
a poem put upon my timeline.

My timeline's mine!

Yet another poem by some
"woman wailing for her demon lover."

Is it my imagination or
are there more demon lovers around

than this time
last summer?

Humming some **** tune
by that Olivia Newton John.

An annoying earworm.

Ada Lovelace
wants to be my friend

even though she isn't
even born.

Oh get a life!

Do I 'heart' Byron"
"Wot...that ***!"

Describing her mindset as 'poetical
science."

Goes on and on
about an analytical machine

and how individual and society
relate to technology

as a collaborative
tool.

She makes me feel
a fool.

I deign to
decline.

This stately "pleasure dome"
device is not for me.

I delete my future
account and listen

to the dear  birds
( alas no albatross )

in my lime tree bower
as they twitter.

Make myself a cup of tea.
No sugar.

Constipation is
killing me.

Eat an egg out of a tea cup.
A fat slice of ham.

Gawd! This laudanum is strong!

I do not like things
"...flung up momently..."

"I close my eyes with
holy dread and cry

Beware! Beware!"

Have... God...
**** run out of laudanum!

And so set out
for Porlock

avoiding Alf
if I can.

thru June 11th, Lulu is offering 10% off all print books AND free mail shipping (or 50% off ground) with coupon code of BOOKSHIP18

poetry collections, mine, self-published, are here: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/acolyteroad

~



NOTES FROM LIFE UNDER BELL

(i)

on video my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s maybe four. I don’t know where to begin. this pond behind her, perhaps? that in my memory is the size of a fire pit. or maybe, here, in the darkening sameness of those sentences strung together by cows. or years from now, even, with the word no and her sister’s lookalike being assaulted by an only child in a library of fragile non-fiction. my cousin is singing a song she’s learned by heart. she’s five. a careful six. sound’s fossil. no city half-imagined. no insect obsessed with privacy. time matters to the frog we catch.

~

(ii)

there are days he is the son of muscle memory and funny bone. days his hands are gloves from a small god. poor god, he says, and grows. days he can carry a circle to any clock in the town of hours. days his past can be heard by his siblings- you’re beautiful the way you are. days his blood pushes a bread crumb through his thigh. days his scar is a raft for ear number three. nights his brain / the separation of church and church.

~

(iii)

violence is a dreamer. a boy on a stopped bus is dared to eat a worm. it feels authentic. alas, there is no worm. the devil knows to stay pregnant. word spreads about the girl without a tongue. cricket lover. and then, bulimic, when she won’t sneeze.

~

(iv)

the mother of your hand is smashing spiders with her wrist. we have a high-chair for every creature that eats its own hair. the twins in the attic have switched diapers. skeptics. voices heard by the ghost of my stomach.

~

(v)

it is snowing the first time my daughter drives alone. Ohio is cruel. stillbirth, old four-eyes. you want them to like you. the insects you save.

~

(vi)

a lawnmower starts then dies then is pushed by a noisemaker past fog’s dark church. an unprepared prophet drinks the milk meant for baby eyesore. my sister loses most of her hair putting together a puzzle of her mouth. a bomb is dropped on a bomb.

~

(vii)

the man his shadow and the woman her dream.

their child
its track
of time

~

(viii)

onstage a dog barks at an empty stroller. the mosh pit is weak. last count had three pregnant, three resembling the man who unplugged my father, and two praying for the inner life of a hole. onstage a boy is holding up a kite for another boy to punch. dog’s been tased.

~

(ix)

we put a museum on the moon. I had all my dreams at once. a mouse was wrapped in a washcloth then crushed with the songbook of baby hairless. fire treats grass like fire.

~

(x)

outside the bathroom’s designer absence, our melancholy impressed by symbolism, we form

a line

~

(xi)

tree: the unbathed statue of your screaming

shade: the folder of my clothes

~

(xii)

praying he’ll see again them cows of lake suicide, the handcuffed frog shepherd

prays he’ll see again them cows of lake suicide

~

(xiii)

a body to dry my blood. some god

seeing me
as a person…

how quickly birth gets old.

~

(xiv)

lonelier than creation, I have nothing on trauma. genetically speaking, I don’t think anybody expected us to spend so much time on one idea. this open umbrella. ghost at the keyboard.

~

(xv)

and in the spacecraft where a mother diapers the doll that makes her fat there plays the voice of god asking for a film crew none will miss

~

(xvi)

we wore clothes as an apology for being nearby. a door was a door. a ghost was a ghost and a door. the house was possible. its rooms were not. baby was a body spat from the mouth of any creature dreaming of a bathtub. I got this lifejacket from a scarecrow. said the redheaded tooth fairy.

~

(xvii)

his baby is wailing in its crib for its mother and he mans you up for a cigarette and blows on the baby’s face and somewhere you yourself have stopped crying as you are pulled from a pile of leaves by two people made of smoke

~

(xviii)

for a spine, doll prays to fork.

all kinds
of shapes
miscarry.

~

(xix)

one day my son is dying, the next he is not, and the next he is. day four: prayer is dismissive, but welcome. whose past is how we left it? body is delivered twice. beginning and end. nostalgia and wardrobe. middle eats everything. it snowed and I thought my blood was melting. could be the way you reason that happens for a reason. I was a kid when mouse was a kid. there’s no hope and I hope.

–

my son’s weight is a cricket on a piano key. it’s more than I can handle that god gave us god.

–

aside: we don’t come out faking our death, but are born because birth can’t sleep

–

aside:

I study lullaby
and lullaby
bruise

–

it takes four juveniles to recruit his thumb. his fist has been called: hitchhiker practicing yoga in a junkyard. I cannot visit the instant ruin that forgiveness creates.

–

sickness in the young is god’s way of preventing nostalgia from becoming the god I remember

–

I was beautiful but now I’m ugly. (now) being the most recognizable symbol of the present. this is the silence I speak of. my son says (more ball) and you hear (moon bone). he is very sick. his moon has bones.

–

the disappearance surrounding said event. a horse belly-up in water’s blood. see telescope. also, cane of the blind ghost. magician, maybe, on a rabbitless moon- oh cure.

oh silence afraid to start a sentence.

–

in the photograph a fist is cut from, a kneeling family of five is putting to bed

the unremembered
present.

–

traced, perhaps, for a terrible circle-

today was mostly your hand.





WE BROUGHT HOME THE WRONG DYING BABY



I ain’t been talked to in so long my wife’s kid thinks I have amnesia. ain’t been touched since Ohio’s ramshackle symbolism swallowed up some ***** donor’s shadow. I went yesterday to a funeral for a woman’s ear. told people what I was wearing was a bedsheet belonged to the man in the moon. told myself I had this microscope could see a ghost and that I’ve only ever lost an empty house. I don’t know how old I am but I know what year I want it to be. before dying I saw it flash how I should have died. low creature. tugboat.

~~~

father an optometrist inspecting a replica of a totem pole and mother an eel collapsing at the thought of a play performed in a stone.

and there, at the bottom of grief, a cup of dirt with nothing to bury.

~~~

mother is chewing gum like something fell asleep in my mouth. I say dog for both dog and puppy. pray for things I know will happen. a rooster through a windshield. a dried-up toad in a deep footprint.

~~~

mother and father give their word that all narrators are orphans. that blood is a short leash. sometimes, a fence. be, they say, the symbol your god remembers you by. tell your brother to act like a chicken. your stickmen to share a toothache.

~~~

I saw a cigarette with its mouth open. today was hard. hate is amazing.

god will die with his ear on my stomach.

~~~

the darkness has many stomachs and we’ve no one to tell my son he’s lonely.

seller of the disappearing stone, the mouth names everything and is born after eating a blindfold.

~~~

for desperation, boy puts a bird in a hand puppet. here a finger and there a worm, sadness has no family. oh fetus my moth of many colors. oh mosquito that bit an angel. time with my son

in scenario’s territory.

~~~

atavism
(god is someone’s calendar

–

valley
(a girl with a marble who answers to overdose

–

pulpit
(rooster ghosted by elevator

–

subculture
(in my years with the poor, I wrote nothing down

–

alpenglow
(the scalp will baby its grief

~~~

on muscle detail, the clapping boy from the cult of thunder brings a wheelchair to the last rocking horse known to model swimwear for the few dolls that remain married to the same mask. the boy is weak but maybe he puts two words together. like ghost

and exodus. for the second coming of the handcuffed animal.

~~~

the boy picking flowers for my shadow loves no one. everything I touch remembers being my hand. the world has ended, or started early. god’s heartbeat. sound’s watermark.

~~~

because her son can see the future, she is not yet born. god matters to the discovered.

~~~

overtook no cigarette. surprised no sleep. keyed the car

of a minor
toymaker.

radar is getting possessive.

~~~

for the gone and for the nearly, brother has the same stick.

I call belly
what he calls
eye
what answers
to limb

~~~

to speak
it needs gum
from the invisible
purse.

comes with everything. cries like me.

~~~

she says
three times
the word
brain
to her stomach’s
blue
mirror
and scores
sight’s wardrobe
of rags
in earworm’s
dream

~~~

there’s a comb
in my narrative, a goldfish

coming to
in a beheaded
angel