oh jeez...
look at how unsanitary the air can be
this area's apparently embarrassed of the error
so please excuse this breeze abuse
& breathe in deeply...heavily.
be ready for the steady supply
of thickened oxygen that's boxed me in
pressed against the rocks again
fending off that wretched wind
it bends me with its petty whims:
my lazy lungs got stretched too thin.

this air
this air...this heavy necessity
wrestling emptiness endlessly
TESTING TESTING
please inhale as you're listening
i'm invested in your empathy &
especially your circulatory circuitry
every blood cell has its worth to me
every photosynthesized sympathy
is my chlorophyll currency
& i'm spending it like burning leaves.

You and I would stand in front of my bathroom mirror and
just hold each other, naked, acquainting ourselves
with the strange, biblical union of joints and hair
and skin and crevices and curves that we make
together...

Fingerpainting reverently on your chest,
I'd kiss your freckled shoulder, eyeing your reflection as it melted,
falling for me again-- and you'd
tell me in return
that my eyes are beautiful, and that they are green,
just like yours.
They are brown, I'd say, and
laugh and
leave
you to
confront only yourself
in my mirror.

Every day that I stand again
in front of my mirror alone--
a similar but emptier amalgamation of joints and curves--
I could swear that my eyes
look a little bit paler...
like if I
point my nose up to the high hat on my ceiling,
with the fluorescent light spilling into them
the color could certainly pass
as the same green in your eyes and
I wonder,
and I hope

that being wrong all this time
doesn't mean I was wrong about you, too.

I have heard a heart
drop and a
heart burst,
but I've never quite felt
a contraction
or inflation
as red
or
as full of life
as you.

You are blue
in an ocean
that never knew.

Yellow paints
the sun,
and your hips,
too.

I gather flowers
in valleys,
blooming without
any stems
for you.

Monsters are depicted one dimensionally
Paintings illustrate the difficult decisions
This is the observer's farce

Blood on one's hands paint the canvas
Fingers comb through the valleys
Defining the geography of pain

Trauma sets in, and out goes precision
Distorting one image to reflect another

A change is needed in perspective's pallete
Hands soak to wash away the day view
The crimson stain nevers leaves,
Vibrant ideas left to wade in the murkiness

These dead stares across the shopping mall
Wouldn't I care if I could have them all
Fingerpainting these eyes
**** photos: camera shutter sighs

But her breath is morse code
And my words are falling
Her dial tone dilates
As her moans are calling

She fell in love with a filter
And I fell in love with someone's daughter
We took pictures in the summer time
And she threw them into the water

When she lies, her cheeks flush
She swears that she doesn't care much,
as she sits in her underwear
with a light grin and a heavy heart.

She felt her pulse by the bed light
She was sad that she was alright
I watched her paint her dad on fire
while holding infant her.

I heard the window shatter
She never said what was the matter
I found her on the driveway,
broken like a family picture frame

Calling nearest janitor
response to minor spill
unidentified indefinitely
a k-11 spill

It bruised burned
extinguished extraneous existence
left minor mess
ignore and maintain
absence of mentality

Shuffle left
avoid sticky shoes
unattended children should abstain
from carmine fingerpainting

Chocolate rations rose
red rose
again this week
enjoy the rapture
thank you come again

A leaf falls
unnoticed

A **** at americana
not from it
belittled no napoleon

Big boy voices only
at the counter
naked pockets mean
no thing
nothing missing
no thing messing
me sing
last mess
cleanup, aisle twelve

you said you only felt alive that time you almost fell off the Eiffel Tower.
some days I wished you did just so the suspended image in my head would fit –
eyes wide, lips parted, fingers splayed, every part of you split open head to toe,
spilling secrets into grey Paris wind,
settling like ***** snow on rooftops where I
play guitar and sing and pretend
that somewhere we are fingerpainting naked
and learning how to surf on beaches in Santa Dominica,
climbing trees and ripping jeans and loving

I am in love with
Melancholy.
He is the sweetest of suitors,
Bedazzled in jewels that glint so smoothly,
And just enough,
And right in your eyes,
To shield you,
Maybe protect you,
From his abuse and his repetitive,
Cyclical nature.

He is so handsome in any light.
I sometimes love to just stare at him
And contemplate the rigid, weepingly gorgeous
Features that make up his seraph's face.

There is a sharp angle just beneath his perfect
Ears, which hear me splay cheeky compliment after
Cheeky compliment toward them.
This angle turns into his jaw,
Which opens up and down, not like a hinge but rather a
Hatchet, to tell me
So many lies.
He presents them just so - as lies.
But he sways them so wonderfully,
So persuasively and professionally
That I can do nothing but fall
Asunder to this dark suitor's mouth.

He pulls me towards him,
Like the Earth pulls the Moon,
Like the Spider pulls the Prey,
Like Love pulls the Fool.

Intoxicating, really.
His lips move like planets.
They orbit around his weightless voice,
And they spin on their own axes,
And sometimes they spin toward my own.
They plant themselves like magnets,
As if we were meant to be,
And they move in harmony,
Just as hard and stubborn as magnets,
Just as ineffably wonderful we sometimes
Find physics to be.

But then they release -
He releases.
He floats backward, his beautiful
Demonic grin enticing me,
Telling me, "I'll love you and
Leave you, and you can do nothing do
But enjoy it."

My Melancholy.
My beautiful, beautiful angel who blots out the night,
Sweeping the stars together to form a
White, blinding fingerpainting that he tapes to the heavens,
And delivers unto me what I believe is daylight.

But then his head bends back,
Exposing that beautiful hatchet-jaw,
And his crackling fire of a voice beams
Like headlights right into my doe ears and eyes.
He cackles, tells me he loves me,
And flies away.

There are worse things
than a broken heart
but to a romantic
to a poet soul
it's fuel, it's fodder
we keep scratching the scab off
and fingerpainting in the pool of our own blood

an infant with still hands is said to be fingerpainting in hell.  a man who wears a hat to bed is said to give god hair.  a boy who strings up dead rabbits left and right is said to be fighting a toothache.  a girl who punches herself in the nose is said to be a plain woman who on roller skates entered a strange traffic of hearse and horse as two of her mother’s footsteps.

I like to think of my palms as poems
or perhaps, my poems as palms
as I hold them both, hands up,
in offering.
begging for you to take them by the handfuls
grasping them with your own,
poems, palms,
palms, poems
I blow them in kisses
so another may hold them grippless
letting them slip to the sky
fingerpainting the framework
that pillars the planet
presented in feather light
poems, palms,
palms, poems
I breathe them in doses
healing myself in the powdered pressure of
poems, palms
palms, poems
to my wounds, cleansing and mending
in the touch of words, these
poems, palms
palms, poems
in offering, as I hold them both
for you to kiss and breathe and mend
as well

when i close my eyes, i still see light
a spectrum against my eyelids
hands outstretched
knowing its close
another uneasy step
victorious
hop-skotch dodging
trusting strangers is dangerous but sometimes neccessary
endless paces of paranoia
1 man snowball fights
repairing broken connections
realizing yet again, life can get much worse
snow on halloween?
fingerpainting and worksheets on feelings...where am i?
strategy is all i got in here
its easy when all you got is a basic blueprint

but with a liquor tongue & sober head
drafting and redrafting the words stuttering
on my teeth to keep you here
falling backwards on my *** will
prove nothing but that i’m not content
to be anything but in the table of contents
not a side character
in your favorite book
but god i can’t stop tripping
over air and chalked-up asphalt
am i first?
am i the only one? i growl
apologies & maybe’s
but honest to hell i am
filled with vice
glittering with ill-intent
dented craniums
punctured fists
bitten up pen caps

oh sure, you’re inked up pal
but those tattoos for the weak
aren’t going to lift any skirts
her lipstick ain’t gonna paint your mouth
for you
“rosebud”
hah

we walked with ghosts that one time
kicking trash, dodging dead squirrels, singing
punk rock---betting quarters & Arizona cans
to run fast against traffic
(this was back when) we wanted
to look for truths in picture books
and lies in the law
chubby fingers & a BIC stick pen
tracing imagined cartoon lives
our speech planned in bubbles

timestop: fastforward
snarling, “oh baby she’s a classic /
          like a little black dress”
with opened siamese mouths /
          rolled out tongue
fingerpainting bruises on skin
with pixie stick smudged thumbs
          “she’s a faded moon /
          but you’ll be faded soon”

between muffled dashboard speakers
streaming swears came the stillness
of carving numbers (each other’s
biography pages)
safety pins hinging on rawed knuckles
forever scarred visual bookmark

waiting for words to cause earthquakes
and fault lines in lungs
what was painted across the wall
in looped ‘*******’ cursive
timestop: graffiti
          i fear the human condition
don’t look at me or i’ll shatter
a powder touch would ****.

Blue was your favorite color
and I haven’t worn it since.
It reminds me of the sky that I thought you had painted for me,
how you always saw faces in the clouds
and you told me their stories.
The midday horizon matches the hue of your deep ocean eyes
but only my eyes have ever seemed to flood.
When you moved on I finally knew what green felt like
as loss and envy went fingerpainting across my bones until my bloodstream
was slow-flowing emerald,
the same shade of green danced alongside you
in the form of a dress.
I wonder if she ever felt the glowing yellow that illuminated my insides
every time that you called me beautiful and made me feel
like a gold ray of sunshine on a summer’s day.
But now,
I’m starting to favor winter.
I still inhale icy breaths as the shades of red you evoked within me
linger like migraines,
sharp pain that you left behind,
a scar that cannot be concealed because it’s so hard to hide
from the shades of scarlet that once painted your face.
I see your colors everywhere,
I remember feeling safe with you,
I never knew that I could become homesick from people too.
You were a rainbow and I was a shade.
You brought everything to life,
you made the stars dance and my face new tones of paint.
Then you decided that light tones just weren’t for you
and I missed
shades of perfect blue.
I’ve become a morning person so I can see the sky before it turns tones of you.
The orange-pink horizon has become my new favorite color
and I wear it every day in the highlights of my eyes and my skin,
it begins to feel warm again
and the long car rides and radio dials that sing melodies
no longer remind me of you.
We loved each other like change of the weather but can never make sense
of the storms within us.
If souls had colors
I remember I used to think ours were the same.
Same shade of sapphire storms that brewed within our lungs,
the words you screamed went heavy on our tongues.
All I hear are the winds through this hurricane.
I can’t see my way out
I only see you
I can only scream out
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
I poured everything into this but we were always empty,
empty minds, empty hands.
The ground we built has become unsteady to stand on.
I remember when you left I saw the red seeping through the cracks in my palms
of where yours used to fit so perfectly.
I don’t remember the sorrow,
I don’t recall the pain.
I remember the relief
and how every color was just beautiful.
I thought the world was going to be so dark
without you.

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~

below are some poems from ‘eating the animal back to life’ (July 2015):


[tautologies]

an infant with still hands is said to be fingerpainting in hell. a man who wears a hat to bed is said to give god hair. a boy who strings up dead rabbits left and right is said to be fighting a toothache. a girl who punches herself in the nose is said to be a plain woman who on roller skates entered a strange traffic of hearse and horse as two of her mother’s footsteps.

[first appeared]

father kicks me under the table
for biting
early.

a ghost hears thunder.

[notes to abuser]

I have had to tell time using only repetition.  there is a tattoo I want on a body I don’t.  I can see what you see in me.  none of my sounds echo.  I have a son.  I prepare for him past meals that leave nothing untouched hoping he’ll learn to chew on his own.  he has three rooms upstairs and three down.  when his bed can’t move, he says something to a door.

[immersion]

your attacker has a history of being baptized. identifies as male. was found hallucinating in a movie theater run by his father. we shot him not knowing he’d already been. his mother says his stutter is an act. she is what we call empty inside. you look like your father.

[onlookers]

I blow into the infant’s mouth as if I could prepare an echo for what’s about to happen.  in my dream I am turning on a flashlight that thinks it can scream.  in yours, reincarnation is all the brevity our lord can stomach.                  

[maker]

when I think about you

I don’t

[incarnate]

after we roll the dead dog from its towel and into god’s mouth

we take
for its tooth
a fly’s
grave.

satan’s kid continues to play chicken with a farm machine

in a slow
not still
life.

[exposure]

in a hotel bathtub
beneath a crooked
showerhead
two boys
on thumb war
number seven
are seen
by the same
hallucination
their colorblind
father
had
during
his dry spell, his bug
collecting
craze
when their mother
was the god
she went back
to being

[a photographic memory that applies only to acts of eating]

in the oar I broke on my brother’s knee
I found
a human
tooth.

here is a lamb
floating
in the reflection
of a star.

the night before
the moon grew bold

I felt the darkness
move in from above
in ominous grey
opaque

it reached for me
half asleep, I
acquiesced

relinquished
pillowy clutch
splayed sheets
like legs

for his
chatter bones to chill
where my sallow
is tissue thin

his hail knuckles
affixed to wet tongue
drug me to the floor
raking my hollows
over and over

reeling terrors
on sepia filmstrip
some scenes repeating
some to-fro rewound forward
some hovered gory ending:

frigid tools cutting
to expose my insides
stirring entrail with bone
tugging ruddy strings
to see what sounds
they made as I
buckled; choked
on my leaks

I closed my eyes
tried to escape body
but he projected on
my shuttered
darting

knotting esophagus
around the backbone
fingerpainting my end
on worn flesh walls
in char-red spectrum
choreographed in
perfect harmony
with rote fear
chanting

this is how
you die -

alone

I felt it all
happening.

dangling my happy
memoirs with nooses
ungraceful reanimating
decayed draggy dancing
Xs where bright eyes
were once upon
and wide

open

every ache and
smothered secret
chirped by dark faeries
too quick to swat

but when all
the pushed down
were given mallets
they crescendoed
into discordant jarring
and in its peak came
a piercing shriek:

so loud -

all stilled
to look around

I couldn’t tell
if the voice
was him
or me

but after terror climaxed
the hear ripped and
grip released

I allowed myself
to loosen, breathe
headthrob slowly
melded into felt
beats:

limbs and tips
all pulsing
relief

and I
could see
no one was there

but me.

wielding expertly
book in my own hand
thick with tested maps

to exquisitely torture
every tenuous strand
in my fragility

I remember meeting the girl behind me
in poetry class.

I remember fingerpainting with Jeremy
and loving her
in the grass
by a stream

I remember hills and cold and wine and you

I remember dim-lit rooms

I remember your sister and your parents and your redone bathroom
The hot tub and your dogs and the bed in your room

I remember the traced hands and writing
Under the drape hanging above your bed

Your things were in boxes
But not you, not you.

I remember the singer in your band,
and the drummer in your band,
and your friend from high school.

I remember taking your benzos.

I remember losing my first apartment and moving back home.

I remember that Panic! at the Disco show:
Shut up and dance with me

Moving back to be close to you

Comics and friends, books and loose ends
Arguments and apartments
And dog sitting weekends

I remember me asking for the beans and you spilling them
And trying to hold the beans down
And getting way too mad over them
And throwing your fish at your house,

and driving to Florida and back,
it haunts me.

I remember what it felt like without you around

I remember sending a picture of you
that you said not to send.

I remember saying things
I'd rather not have said.

I remember being blind to Tara and selling my guitar
And cutting myself and arguing with my parents.

I don't need the perfect summer daze

I don't need that song you played
I don't need the things you said
About me
I don't need going to France

I don't need getting engaged

I don't need holding you up with strong arms

I don't need to dominate your ****** desires

I don't need to get dizzy and dance around beach towns,
I only knew you for a year

I don't need to be your friend but I'd love to be your friend
And I could
But that's never going to happen

I don't need that one last word
before we both are dead

I don't need to envy you anymore,
I don't need you
I don't need to compare everything to you
But I'm not sure if i can stop

?
I don't need your legend
So why did it pierce my heart?

!
A year is not that long.
And fear is not an art.

I stepped back, feeling butterflies in my stomach as I tried to take in what I had done, taking care to hold my hands up high in the air. I was wearing one of my favourite outfits to paint in- it was ridiculous of course, when I was so often fingerpainting- but I couldn’t resist picking it out today.
As I scanned my painting, taking in all the details as well as the big picture, I smiled. The strange little touches here and there- a splash of odd colour, my handprint in the corner- all made sense somehow. The overall feeling of the painting for once was right. It filled me with the joy I had painted it with as I looked at it.
I step back again, shaking my hands in the air, trying to dry the paint so I can touch things again. I want to find my phone and send my painting as a photo to my mother, but I step on something unexpectedly, twisting and twirling ungracefully, landing in a heap- or would have, if he hadn’t caught me.
His pale hand had grabbed mine and awkwardly supported my back so I wouldn’t fall. I stared into his eyes for a second, and then laughed, apologizing for stepping on his toes. He smiles as he apologizes for being in my way, and I can’t help but share his infectious smile. I want to paint the feeling his smile gave me- the little crinkle around his mouth, the pale skin dotted by freckles of sunny days, and his warm and shining coppery curly hair poking underneath an old, ochre colored cap.
I have to ask. “What’s your name?”
“Vincent.”
“Hah,” I said, smiling.
“That’s my name,” he insisted, a curious smile lighting up his face as I giggled.
“Like Vincent van Gogh?”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Right…”
I asked him what he was doing here by my painting, wondering how old he was, what college he might be going to, did he live in my city, and a million other questions. The answers were vague, but I didn’t feel upset by them. As we kept going, I realized I’d be disappointed if he didn’t say something mysterious in answer.
“Oh!” I said during a brief lull in the conversation. “Golden hour’s already gone. Man, and that’s my favourite time to paint! Guess it’s a good thing my painting’s done for today.”
I started to pack up my things, not believing that Vincent wouldn’t leave. He actually placed his hand on mine as I reached to take down my easel.
“Don’t go yet. Wait.” And he pointed to the skylight, showing the darkening sky. I watched and waited, entranced. The dark blue turned to black as petite points of light made their nightly entrance. The stars seemed so soft and so bright, the clouds swirling around in the pitch black and blue as the moon took her place on centerstage. She was gold, unlike the moon I usually knew.
This was Vincent’s doing. I turned to find him and realized he had faded away when I wasn’t looking. I’d heard no footsteps and never felt his touch leave my hand, but he was gone.
Feeling surprised and empty, disappointed, I pack up my easel. But as I turn to leave the station, frowning for a moment at the paint that had managed to streak on my outfit, a golden speck catches my eye.
I turn my head to look at the wall of the abandoned subway and find A Starry Night in graffiti, signed “Vincent” in the corner. And the emptiness fades as I remember the feeling of painting a smile.