twenty-nine inches of
bruises from your ivory teeth--
that is how i measure my legs.

tight are the waxers
with gelatin scrub
their alcove smiles paired
on a check-board slate
dive jackets
and coveralls
mark the blue persuaders
stuffed lockers
and lattice straps
for a cold
pilgrim's stare

cork boots
and poly rot
rest in the C block
rank and file
mask a heavily
worn charade
windows wide
and curtains
thread bare
greasers
and **** rats
pardoned
on principle

chain link and
tether held
firm in the grasp
bead bites and
castle tops
slip in the **** steam
chants and speakers
blast from the back wall
elements stacked wide
for tainted leaners

strummers and pickers
held high on the jimmy jack
a chilled base breeze
at the ****** hole
rogues and hatters
stir at the mixer
an imitation face
closing in on the feast

maiden hands clasp
hard at the inseam
scuffed heals shuffle
on the peripheral scene
a cloaked man scurries
(chilled in his double sock)
moonshine
and mickeys
turned up in the jar

light streams blind
the paranoid eyes
laggards peeled
from the wretched
framework
veneer shattered
on a point strip groove
an overwhelming trauma
from slaughter
harbor

Why yes sir
Of course I can assist you.
It's my job, after all.
Oh, you need to be measured for your suit?
Well if you insist.
I seem to have lost my tape measurer
I suppose I'll have to use my hands
For your inseam.
Your thighs are so thick and strong...
Oh, you're a 34.

My mother is my seamstress,
lapping around a genetic retail store,
she had 23 chromosomes to spend.
Knitting freedom’s peach fuzz fabric over the inseam of  muscles,
cross stitching stereotypes of blonde thread into the pores of a rounded scalp,
hot-gluing  privilege into blue eyes,
kneading the molds of a thigh gap between legs of the race that would shame its way to superiority.
I am white.
My mother was my seamstress,
she made sure the licks of discrimination didn’t scar my back.

Optimism, romanticism, fatalism
All with the smallest dash of realism mixed in.
I believe in kismet.
I believe in fate.
I believe in Destiny,
and all her wicked ways.

I believe in you.
And you.
And you.
And you.
I'm doing my best to believe in me, too.

I take rides and I take flights to get me out of my mind.
I have highs and I have lows and I move on to the next show.
Where's the time go? I'm moving too fast, and yet I'm always too slow
and I can't think and I can't eat and all my past goals become dead dreams
So I just ****, blow, drive, scream, give up on this scene
Find the inseam on my heart, see? Of course it's been broke. You see the stitching?
I'm not *******,  I'm not hoping or wishing for anything other than what this life is giving
me.

Life doesn't wait on anyone.
We've got to move to
the rhythm it wants.
Life doesn't play favorites.
It's luck of the draw
for life in the gutter or the ritz.

I keep on moving
and I keep my head held high
I figure why not?
We're all gonna die, some day.
So my advice to you is
do what you can while you can,
So at the end you can say
*******,
I lived a hell of a life.
I certainly lived one hell of a life.

So live a hell of a life,
Or live a life in hell.
The choice is yours,
I wish you well

Hours. Back. Tideless extreme. Gaunt. Happy face, good luck, forever ago. A go-go. Breakfast. Preference. Slip stream mock tidal bliss. Humpback seal stardom, infinite provocative immortal. Catches me. In between the teeth. Cool, Mach 3. Sumptuous extravagant human meat, flesh game. The flesh game. Heroes air-freight. Wash cloth. Hot breaths. 'ths' and plastic bag I-280 North ***** and sudatorium. Pick a pepper. Cow Palace. Moth ***** and mouth *****. Tea bags and sore throats. Presumptuous candid story-telling anomalies, trite masterful caustic limping brick-pedaling life-goers in major metropolis wearing leather sandals, whistling. Whistling deep cavernous chasm bellowing hollowing, in out in out arithmetic. Sand gathers boulders. Women gather warmer wethers. The weathered. That ton. One of the asinine and aesthete. Curious. Before clause. The story god. The kick to the Achilles and the Satan prance. Bleat of the squeeze. Course set. Picking up the pieces and going spelunking. French maid syndrome. Wan. Wielding the anatomical dollar of the "this-just-didn't-work" childhood. Wears gloves. Has colds. Breaks molds, and reads fortune cookies. Limps lifeless, heavy as a Tuesday and digging its own grave. It owns gray. It makes meals and carries them through broken towns, over smokey ridges, helping out and just- helping.

The line wakes it. One traffic light. Three thousand three hundred lakes. Steals a cell phone. Goes quiet for days in the forest. Kills a wild pig. Bares a feral hog. Opens up a can of sour condensed milk and still makes caramels. The open fire. The children gasping and favoring the brave. The score is limitless. Hours go by. Mites dig into the skins, and the shins of the subtle. The men come back. The palm fronds make excellent roofs. Raised. Reared. Canned food makes abhorrent constipation forest dwelling; syndrome. And excrement. The crowns carry over. The bejeweled mid-rim equator providence. King and queen. Prince and princess. Knees bend and over and over. Mirthy trammeled lots. Egg white clouds scurry through towns scurrying through. The bastion wall. A romance connecting. Two lovers. The lot. A burrow in the ground. Short-haired hares: run, jump, skip. Life settles. No one comes back. The skin starts to itch. Gratitude is and is not. Worry steps in. The chimes glow through the rorschach tree tops. Fires and combustion. Great oversized bells. Who hears the ringing? The canopy overcome with splinters, the eyebrows are furnaces that never spit out the light.

No one eats, anymore. The pleasure is moved. The happy have landed. The girl of my dreams is foretelling, foretold. She climbs into a lunchbox and heads to work. She digs her nails into her skirt and chimes for dinner. All is sentimental and elementary. No one is everyone. There is something human in the air. Something cumin in the water. I love in French. In English. In Germanic. I'm in the water. Feet stuck in the mud. Hands flailing, I'm naked contemplating making shark moves, one hand flat-out, vertical, putting on a show for ducks and swallows. The women return. The girls come back. Catastrophe and the merriment of the seven deadly fellows. I run around and move back. I come to the coast to see what's the matter. It's blue. A neige built snow home. An igloo. A tale of curiosity, of interruption. The wanton exercise. The carnivorous machismo. We work out with our quirks out and lead with the flaws. A tailored finite saw. A ringing through the air. Who can hear the ringing? Makes the men to swine, to amuse muses. To sew buttons. To bring the water from the well. The shrimp from the levy. We all go to war on Sundays. We hate on Tuesdays but the women never come with the water.-

I can't but we can. You don't and I hate you for it. I smell you on socks. On pillowcases and bullet casings. I'm hot and hard to handle. I lay down in front of forklifts trying to bulldoze shopping malls. I am too and too sentimental. I have a 25¢ ring from a vending machine. I love it. I love you. I go to the bottom room. Blue carpet. **** carpet. Tilted blinds. I find the moors and the heaven. I put my books and a sweater in a sack and I start moving. The none-ones ever seen me move like this. It's like I had revolution for breakfast. I sip a small glass of orange juice. Orange colored juice. I'm off like a stereo and walking through and through up into a story. I'm making life easy with my purple crayon. I draw a canyon and a boat too. The boat can't float so I draw myself an ocean, a coastline. I call out for my friends and no one is there, so I draw friends. I draw the seashore, the plateau. I make other ships. I shift in my seat, it's uncomfortable so I make it leather. I write a letter but it flies away with a pigeon. I'm stuck on a peninsula, crying. On the front step of a friend's tenement and I'm sobbing. I'm waiting for the waif and she's not coming. I think her over with coffee all alone in a diner, and eventually I have to leave. I trail like an autumn sun, splashing bits of earth with my tepid light. I plash in the sea and still I'm very alone. I run my fingers through my hair and find a find a crown to make myself king. I'm heir to my own home, but it's not good enough. It never was. I grow curiouser and curiouser. I don't know what to do, I'm without. I'm without use. Eight months on top of six years, on top of the second floor of a third floor building, it's hot, and I'm locked out, I'm fighting off weakness and indecision. I'm starving and I haven't eaten in days. I'm confused and the ******* seems the rite. I've got no one to call and I start swimming. I start swimming in circles. I get verbal. I start crawling and drawaling and soon I'm weeping in a brutal drawl. And I can't hear you. And all I have is the coastline and the ocean, a plateau, a yacht club full of empty vessels. A flotilla of friends but there's nobody home. And I see you. I meet you. I mean to meet you. But I can't. I can't move or be moved. I can't speak or be made to speak. I am gripped by your love and yet wrapped in fear. In the rapture of fear. Its rancor grips me. So I stand up. I'm halved and naked and half naked. In the sea. And I see you. And I seam you, to me. I seam you to me.

I'm not walking
like this
to look cool–
my pants
just keep falling down.

I saunter side-to-side,
head cocked
hand on crotch.
But no, I'm not cool.

I'm not trying to
look hip,
aloof or tough.
You see,
my pants are just too big.

The inseam is far
too long.
And although I wear
this belt, they seem
to slowly creep
further and
further
down

as if once they reach
my ankles
they will finally
escape
and wander the streets

morph
into some sort of Blue Jean
Blob Creature,
and slink
into a nearby gutter

only to emerge
20 blocks away,
apply for a job at
Panda Express
and for a studio
apartment

so that they
may have some
steady income
and a place
to work
on their novellas

Our space doesn’t exist, friend

It doesn’t exist anymore

Stopped being a thing once your Y chromosome didn’t match

My double X

And we realized boys and girls didn’t have sleep overs

So

Take your sticky fingers away from me, dear

Don’t kiss me sloppily on the cheek in thanks for penny candy, dear

Please stop trying to wear my shorts, dear

They are women’s cut, dear, and the five inch inseam... oh dear

You have a girl friend, dear

And you will have another one next month

And the month after that, another one

Our space only exists in-between,

Where platonicy reigns supreme

But that doesn’t exist anymore, because all girls and all boys end up together, right?

Only I’m right here and you’re right here, so we’re togther

It’s just that you’re my little brother from another mother

And I’m your personal driver

Our space doesn’t exist anymore

I want to be the one to make the world seen in ways people can't dream.
My cigarettes create patience that I can't inseam in my bloodstream.
Feelings so deep that make me want to be unseen.
Hope is held onto by a loose string.
You and me is now a deep ting.
Like a metronome my heart beats but I crank that ******* **** to the extreme.
Visceral dreams that only god can release.
Make people dream he tells me...
All I want to do is die in his frequency.

What is in your nature?
For what cause do you bleed?
The lights flicker on and off
You smile amidst the scoffs
Darling, you are so hard to read

I’ve got questions for your creator
You continue to perplex me
You’re the moon amidst the dawn
How are you here and so far gone?
I do not know how to proceed

Something is hidden in the inseam
I see the thorns upon the rose
The coolness amidst the heat
The beauty only hides the beast
The more I learn, the less I know

My dear, what is in your nature?
Where do you choose to stand and fall?
I am coaxed and yet afraid
Take so much pleasure in the pain
Complexities within your call

Oh loveliness inside the tempest
Oh endless pit in which I dive
I choose to venture to the depth
Though it may be till death
It’s makes me aware I’m alive

you teeter
on emotional frenzy
each word etched slowly
in sensuous curves
of flickering candlelight

your taper drips
from tempting fingers
burning my heart's inseam
singeing tender skin
in enticing wakes

come closer
beguile my air
with your enchanting lips
flutter my skin
in your heartbreak's hollow
& seduction's cries
tease my ear, hold me near

I want, I crave
your sleek
whisper's verse

to be your shimmering muse
wafting inside dreams
melding within fragrant breath
to feel your poem's potency
blistering my tongue
such intimacy carried
within the vessel of my soul

there's an inseam to be found
when the galaxy bears its plump thigh
and moves around thousands of stars
as a result

there's something funny in the way
the skin folds over when the ocean frowns
because it can't seem to get
its catch of the day

there's an oddity amongst
the otters swimming in the arctic
like tiny, dotting buoys
showing a line that should not be crossed

there's something strange in the way
the valve in my
mechanically strung body
refuses to automate like everyone else's