Ode to the shower head, so sparkly and fair
Whose warm words seep through her mouth
To encompass my heart and hair
Such unconditional love and caring leaves her lips
I cannot help extend my arm
Just to feel the drips

But if I in her chamber choose to prolong my stay
Icy reproving hits my spine casting me away
Stinging chemicals blind me as I struggle to the door
Having already decided to soon come back for more

Ode to the shower head, losing sleep but it seems
The memories of your embrace are better than my dreams
You wake me in the morning and comfort me at night
Clear my thought and always, help me see the light

Dearest reader,


My name is Margot Dylan and I am no longer a ******.

I stared at Dianne staring at Frieda Bentley, as she dragged on a Camel Blue and as I dragged my pen across my notepad. I sketched her figure as she walked closer to Frieda, dropping her cigarette on the ground. Frieda smiled at Dianne, as she stepped and twisted her shoe on the smoldering carcass.

And they looked at each other. Not like how normal people look at each other. And Dianne smiled. A smile that was not like any smile Dylan ever gave me.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, with ******* slipping to my collarbone. The ******* tapping belonged to a girl. The girl's name was Thora, a brunette that smelled like bubblegum and 'don't go'. Thora had something in common with Dianne: They both recently came out as gay. Unlike me, both family reactions were fairly positive. In fact, so positive that-What are you drawing?

"Margot?"

I paused, looked at Thora, and looked back at Dianne or Dylan Dunham. "That girl," I pointed in their general direction, as Dianne kissed Frieda on the forehead. Thora followed my finger in time for the kiss on the lips, "the ironic one."

Thora Nelson, daughter of Cameron Nelson and the deceased Geraldine Nelson, looked at my chin and asked, "Who is she?"

Thora's cotton-candy-blues met my puddles of mud, as I looked away, putting my notepad in my backpack. Before I zipped, I grabbed the lime green marker sleeping next to my pack of index cards. My teeth squeezed the leaf colored cap off, as I pulled out the fetus, smelling the aroma of non-toxic afterbirth.

I asked if she wanted a tattoo and she shrugged, "Oh no, you mean I get to choose whether you touch me or not?"

Lightly pressing the fiber tip to her arm, I glanced up at her and shrugged a bony shoulder, "Her name is Dylan Dunham. Well, it's actually Dianne. It's complicated. I used to call her Dylan. She used to call me Margot."

"But your name still is Margot," Thora informed as her eyes followed the acid-green ink trail.

"Some people change, some people don't," I said, with the cap held between my teeth.

I painted her arm in lime hope, by the soda machines. My eyes focused on her pores that I imagined swallowed dirt and bacteria from the side of my palm. I could feel Thora disarm me with her eyes, after I had disarmed her with my words. Her heartbeat echoed inside my grasp.

"I didn't know I was dating Leonardo DaVinci," the words flowing from her mouth.

"I am gay and Italian, so it's not like I was doing a terrific job of hiding it from you," I muttered as I finished and held her pale forearm and bracelet cuffed hand a foot from her face, "Look: it's us underneath a tree."

Turning and wrinkling her nose, she adjusted, moving her head back and forth. " Oh wow. Wow, wow, wow. Meta. So meta. So abstract. Brilliant in its simplicity, deconstructing the concept of natural complexity-"

"Shut up-"

"The tree looks like an umbrella. And we look like we have canes-"

"Those are our fishing poles. In that world, we are fishermen. Fisherwomen. Fishergals-"

"And my **** is too big and your ***** are too small and our smiles aren't big enough-well, at least mine isn't, I can't speak on your behalf," she finished.

Grabbing her arm, I looked at my masterpiece, looked at her, looked at it again, and looked at her again as her smile grew with every glance. "Well, I can see how it'd be up to debate, and you're right: very, very meta. But you do have a big ****, and I'm not one to sacrifice accuracy. Speaking of accuracy: as I look at this green ****, I realized I hit the mark by dating you. Honestly, your **** may have its own zip code..And...I'd like to be in its area? Please stop me."

Her chin touched her knee, as she doubled over, laughing. I played with her hair, wrapping her bangs around my fingers. As my hands were enveloped by her dark hair, I found a scar on her crown. I imagined Thora's milky-white fingers scrubbing through shampooed locks, trembling across the zig and zag of removed glass.

I imagined Thora Nelson, of Cameron Nelson and the deceased Geraldine Nelson, hearing sirens instead of water hitting the tiles. Her slumping to the floor, as lather and water runs down her face, each tear a memory of being dragged out of a steel ribcage, onto broken glass jungle pavement. It was too easy yet too difficult to imagine her staring at the steaming showerhead. It was too easy yet too difficult to imagine her reaching towards a metallic carcass growing in flames.

Her hand grabbed my leg and I saw her for what might have been the first time.

"Hey you. Listen. Are you listening?"

I nodded.

"I'm in love with you, Margot Dylan. Like, really in love. To the point to where I feel like I'm in a Jennifer Aniston rom-com. It's disgusting."

I didn't know what happened between my exploration of her hair and her pale face studying mine, but, before I knew it, my blood shook and barbed wire nerves orbited around pieces of my body.

The ricochet of a soda can smacking the mouth of the machine sounded. Time was either too fast or too slow, as I looked at Thora's cheap mascara eyes and chapped, soft pink lips. She was the type of girl that could make someone happy not to believe in god.

"And I love you. To the point to where I'd refuse Hogwarts because of not being able see you during the school year."

"How sweet, I know how badly you wanted to get into Ravenclaw," she smiled.

"Sacrifices must be made in the name of love, you know. And it ***** because you're not even my type," I admitted.

"Oh, how tragic. And what is your type, if I may ask?"

"You may, thank you. And the falling in love type," I'm an idiot.

"Could you be anymore cheesy?"

"Mozzarella."

She stopped and looked at me, "Hey, but really, I'm in love with you. It's real."

"I love you, too."

Her eyes were speckled,"You really love me, Margot Dylan? Because I'll believe you."

I leaned in, softly placed my hands on her cheeks, breathing the word, "Yes." I alternated between staring at her mouth and her eyes, as her lids began to drop.  My lips started to dab hers and soon grab, as if soft hooks grew out of and connected our flesh. I found the corner of her mouth, the summit of her cheek, and each crease in her lips. Nine or ninety seconds past before I stopped, pulled away, and looked into her eyes. "Hogwarts is overrated anyway," I lied. She laughed.

Her face was red, as she looked down while covering her face, "Don't look at me, I'm a dork. I'm being a loser. I'm infected."

"It's okay. You can be my infected dork and we can be losers together," my voice was a rasp.

"It really isn't. You see, my face always becomes extraordinarily red after I kiss or am kissed by someone, especially by someone beautiful. And it doesn't help that I've never been kissed by someone I love. And I've never kissed a girl before and I'm really glad you were the first, so there. Gah," her hands fenced her face,"I'm just going to hide behind these hands, don't mind me."

I was in love, "For how long?"

"Probably forever, I don't know. Or until the next installment of American Horror Story, I haven't made up my mind yet."

We heard Ms. Calloway scold Dianne about smoking on school grounds. I looked at Thora and the bell rang. Her hands slowly dropped, as everyone started to move in blurs. Bodies gaining more and more distance. Inches became miles. Feet grew into light-years, and, before I knew it, Thora kissed my cheek and said, "I hope I see you later, okay?"

My hand had something in it. My fingers unfurled and revealed high school origami. My name was on it, with a heart or a ****-I'm the artist in the relationship. I began pulling on *****, the tips of my fingers breaking the paper safe. So delicate must have been her mysterious movements.

I opened it.




A pebble flew from my hand and blipped off her bedroom window. Funny thing about bedroom windows, they look the same at 12:03 am. Or maybe they look a little different when the person you love is behind the glass, as you do an eighties-film-esque pebble throw. Before my next pebble hit the pane, her bedroom light came on.

Navy blue curtains disappeared to the sides as Thora came to the window and rubbed her eyes. A second later, she was gone as I imagined her sneaking past her father's bedroom, quietly down the stairs, and through the foyer. As I imagined this, I could hear the front door being unlocked and creaking open. I walked towards the porch and a yellow glow escaped with a silhouette living in it.

Thora's left hand is burnt, but I don't mind and I don't think I ever will. She held my hand as we walked through the threshold. At first I was nervous when I saw her father in the living room, but I instantly realized that he was passed out, as my eyes found empty beer cans sleeping beside him and around him.

"It's not like this every night," she whispered, "he just has trouble with certain months."

Thora tucks her toes when standing in place. When we were walking up stairs, I knew she would be embarrassed if I looked at her toes, so I kept my eyes on the second floor. I don't understand why she feels this way, though. She has very nice feet, and that's coming from someone who thinks feet are gross.

We walked past punched in doors adjacent to perfect picture frames. Her mother was a beautiful woman.

As we approached Thora's sticker-clad door, she turned to me and whispered, "You're about to enter the only place in the world I feel safe. So, please don't break my heart in it and please use a coaster."

My thumb kissed her smooth burn, as I took my first steps into her bedroom. The light-switch flicked and her room illuminated. There were movie posters hugging the walls, pinned to a bulletin board were pictures of lost people and found memories. She looked at me and whispered, "I don't know how to keep people."

We stood before the side of her bed and I looked at her smile, "You sure you want to do this?" Thora nodded and I reached towards her thighs to lift the bottom of her shirt. Lifting it over her head, I looked at her porcelain figure clad in black *******. I tossed the grey shirt onto her bed.

My eyes swam from her belly button to her *******. My fingers approached and stopped until she said it was okay. Tracing her curves, scars, and stretch marks, she pet my fingers. Thora glanced at my hands on her ******* and then at me, cooing, "I'm sorry."

My hands slid to her sides, "Sorry for what?"

She shrugged, "I don't know," her eyes spilling, "Sorry for this," she motioned at her torso as she stared at her bulletin board and then at me before looking away again, "I want to be perfect. I want to be perfect for you."

"Oh no, no, no," I asked for her hand and then placed it over my left breast, "Can't you feel how beautiful you are?"




Her arm was under my ******* and her hand was on my rib, occasionally running her fingertips across the bumps. She slept with her leg wrapped around mine, staying as close as she could to me. I looked at her, in her slumber, and left a faint, burgundy stain on her forehead. I reached towards our shins and pulled the black cover over our fused bodies.

I feel like I have been in a coma for seventeen years and I've just woken up. If I could, I'd stretch this moment over centuries and use it to smother wars. This relationship probably won't last past my senior year, but that's okay. It truly is.

In this moment, Thora Nelson is the love of my life, and, in ways I don't understand yet, that is the most beautiful thing in the world.



May the sun set in our eyes forever,


Margot Dylan

dearest moenhead,
i am so deeply relieved that you are here for me
when I walk in the door
silently waiting to comfort me after a long day.
I look up at your beautiful head,
yes, I have neglected you~ there is rust collecting in your pores,
and tears welling up in your sparkling grey eyes
I wonder how long you have been going on like this?
Oh come now. Don't be cold. I'm home!
We can be together, right?
I turn up the heat
no wasting time
I turn you on, warm you up,
and step into your powerful flow of pure joy...
You shower me with kindness, gently massaging
away my every ache,
all the day's tension down the drain
oh you are the best~
under your washful forgiving eyes,
freed from from the distraction of self awareness,
lost in the luxury of suds and pelting pleasure,
i seem to melt into the cheap fiberglass casing.
but you...
you transform ordinary water into liquid gold and
make this place feel more like a resort
taking me away to places no Calgon bath could ever dream of
oh showerhead,
I can barely stand to be out from under your steaming streams~
your warming current of comfort
washing all the days crud off of me
making me feel clean, energized, vibrant and youthful again
ready to face the world or my dreams.
Showerhead,
sediment notwithstanding,
I am happiest when I am with you.
I am a better person.
you make me feel alive again,
and though I have tried to articulate this into meaningful words,
words are unable to express my gratitude, for alas,
you can never know what you mean to me.
Just know that you are the most wonderful and awesome shower i have ever had,
there is none like you.
from the bottom of my sole,
thank you. All my love,
Geegirl

The coca-cola breath!
Flashing lights, tweetie birds, the rough narcotic stench

The sky is devoid, it is scared of the streets etched in starlight, everything shining-- tangerine and Coit and ohhhh boy
don't'cha know what you're in for?

Twilight and she is a figment on my mind
the bark of cigar is fiery opal on my slender frame
I can hear something along the lanes of love
Echoing behind me, the rising sun

Funny dudes in new suits, pressed, steamed, machine-rolled
pills in the pockets
shipped locomotive
Every etching has its china
every etching is porcelain skin
The fog is a silken balloon, unconcerned, wayward
The men longingly abide in its cool, the breath of an over-excited lover, singing in the showerhead an embarrassing microphone
over the west coast

It's all over! it's the end
the roads are devoid of the things that called you
They are a clarion horn on the Claremont, facades etched with windowpanes
here the americans eat tofu and pretend it's bacon

I am in the rapidly rotating spoke, enjoying the taste of woodchuck, upchucking my guts every Sunday, white knuckle-- praying to god
release
release

what a steal that's a fantastic car for the price!
it is only 10 years of payment
only 10!
House worth 40, kids worth 60, medicinal payments
corn flakes
Fortified iron gates and god says,
naw let them all out until they drown,
I'll never flood the earth but I'll make it puddles
and if they want they can lay face down

I am eating Korean stew and wondering what will happen
when unification builds a railroad from Moscow to Busan
I will travel it and write a novel or two
it will be
"On the Railroad"
and start in San Francisco or a little while outside
on an October evening with not a fog in the sky
Just sky, blue, blue sky
A child on the hillside
blowing bubbles in the apartment complex or the gravel mound
next to new homes, now cookiebread gingerbed frames
Doing tricks on BMX bikes, getting our elbows smashed, a designated paramedic
It's all built up now, concrete streets and lonely streetcorner lamps saying
Hey we're gonna light up this little space
Hope you don't mind
Please don't play too loud

And given that these spheroids are monumentally moving
hurling like a pitched water glass
everything staying put under the motion of it
Such a lovely rooting of mass

I will call alongside it, crawling towards answers etching on murals and on the stamping of curbs
E-5 West main
4451 Lowell Street
554 Happy Valley Road
It's all the fun little tributaries of surface waters
heading with precognition towards seas
roped into it by specific gravity

On the phone i spoke to Mr. Victorious
I asked him about his particular drone
down south there in the more direct limelight of the night
he told me about his uncle, in prose
of course
we just hung our heads over the speakerphone
Not sleeping the way we should
shouldering burdens as ***** in deserted zones
laughing and preaching to cottonfields

Then there was the girl
the one we forgot, truth be told
The one unrequited impetus for all art, all physicality and feeling
loved by god in the corporeal
She is the saffron reed in my eye, the one i forgot to preach Victory to
She that one oblong pebble, rolled by the stream
passing our campgrounds and continuing her journey to sands
small little microscopic tetrahedral perfection
I could get stuck in between my teeth
or perhaps left on the sweat of the skin
the lost moments of beachside living, love for the expansiveness, left in the diner seat of the car, gotta keep moving
Carrying her away and if not careful,
nestling her back atop the summits from whence she came.

it is a cola in the glass on the shores of the bay,
it is a divine moment of contact in the oceans
two sailors acknowledging their vessels
with light shows and the play of eye
off the horizon, a green light o' sprite.

My body shakes from adrenaline
Trying to rid the memories but
Reliving each moment in 3D
Crying and screaming in horror inside.

I don't even want to remember
I don't want to write it down
But it's the only way to get it out
To bring this Nightmare to light

The first thing I saw in my dream
Was my pale pink walls stained with blood
Splattered up to the ceiling beside by bed
Someone had been murdered there

I ran away in fright from this hell
This hell of a lucid dream
I ran the hell out of my house
And ran into a worse hell than my room

Public showers at a public pool
One showerhead a flamethrower
One showerhead boiling acid
Their victims lying there dead

Beside the pool were two lovers
A man and woman locked in a kiss
Frozen dead pale and stiff
The woman held a knife in his back

I ran away screaming only to come face to face
With the family who did all this
A psychopathic group set out to ****
And I was next on their hit list

I ran and ran and ran and ran
Running until I was out of breath
I kept running though my body failed me
I collapsed on the ground and died of heart failure

So that is my dream in a nutshell
Described as plainly as I can
Details avoided the horror unexplained
Nothing can be worse than this

My Nightmare of a Century
The Dream that tested my strength
Tested my bravery
My will power

I may not go to sleep again tonight
I may need to write to let it go
I may need to eat for comfort
And drown my mind in music and schoolwork

It doesn't make me less strong
It doesn't make me weak
It's just how I push through these times
When the Dawn comes I'll sing with joy

Thank you God for being here for me
When no one was online on Facebook
To talk to, to ask for prayer, to reach out to
Thank you for being 24/7/365 --I hate being alone.

I. Parade Square

I can still feel the blisters from the hotplate ground,
the tar off my marred body,
imagine my acid sweat coercing my eyes
to burn with an perverse, masochistic
fire for this
torture
my tongue could never profess.
Running or sprinting blind, and
then a rumble above, force open my eyes to
watch the undercarriage of the SQ A380
hang low like a
ladder.

II. Swimming Pool

Usually we swim here,
or get cooked by the sun,
but there was once we pumped eighty
because the FT was bored and wanted to go
home,
early.

III. Cookhouse

Pre-dawn,
we sit down half-asleep,
milo in hand,
a lump of oily I-don’t-quite-know-what on my plate.
Every table a section-full of once-boys
taking a glimpse at the outside world through flat rectangular
window panes that hang from the ceiling.
At 0600, Channel News Asia plays the National Anthem,
and I wonder why we don’t sing it
anymore.

IV. Range

It is going on two months in this foreign land
Two months of having not shot a single picture

A single snug trigger-click, snap-shot
Burst of colour – bang! – picture

Tangy black three-point-eight-two kilos that
Hang off me like a corpse-like appendage

Two months of wading through picturesque scenery
Lilac cirrus sky, or the sleeping shadows of silhouetted trees

And no chance to shoot any photos
But the picture of simulated ******

As I point and pull, hear the
Trigger-click of my camera go

bang.

V. Grenade Ground

When I picked up the little
inconspicuous
olive thing, and placed it in the pouch
next to my left breast, beside my
heart,
I couldn’t help but ponder
if that was how the Bali
bombers
felt like, moments before they
died.

VI. Beyond the Sphinx bridge

This is another world;
a world filled with so many dark
memories
I cannot write about it.
I would have saved you from drowning in your
waterlogged grave, except
I was drowning
myself.

On the long ride back
to camp,
I gazed into the distant twilight, thinking,
we may sit in the
same
tonner, but in actuality
we all find our own roads
home.

VII. Coy Line

When I shower I close my eyes,
feel the slow trickle of water from
the broken showerhead, and
imagine myself in a hotel villa, or
one of those luxury hotsprings.

When the lights go off I lie back,
gaze out at the orange floodlight that
shines through the panes,
illuminates my teary face,
darkens my world
to a quiet, uneasy
sleep.

VIII. Ferry Terminal

Every book-out
I let the man scan my card,
puff up my shoulders
and catwalk down the dock
with a sense of newfound authority.
I’m a civilian now.

Sit and hear the low rumble of the ferry
get louder and
louder
like a plane on the verge of taking off;
like a soul on the verge of
escape.

as you walked away, in time
with the settling flakes
your shadow grew small enough to fit
inside a snow-globe,
and so he kept you there
in his display case.

he wore your absence on his face
vacant like a handwritten abcess,
when he shook his head, there were
parts of you that settled behind his eyes
and he looked like a blind man,
lost in his own house.
there was fear tucked into his lips.

what didn’t turn white turned red
what didn’t bleed, break or bruise
gave up on the universe entirely
and dissolved into molecule,
he was nothing without you.
his mouth was an empty room.

he shut us out like a shadow
the light was kept away
and on the last day
that we still knew him,
we found icicles under his bed,
the showerhead frosted shut,
his room smelled like shivers
and dust.
every inch of his heart was silent
every song on his skin was burnt

we buried him in the sun
it was the only thing we had left
to give.

Twenty minutes, lost.
I though I had been under my steadily flowing deity for hours. I thought I had had a spiritual experience lasting longer than Genesis.
But it was only twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes
Of standing naked under falling water, feeling soap suds and scratchy cleansers and sharp tangles
Cleaning my skin and my soul of my physical reminder of my connection to the river
To the world
Thinking only flesh and water, flesh and water.
It was the mantra in my head.
We are all just flesh and water.
I was ripping through the harsh curls of my hair thinking flesh and water
Flesh and water.
I caressed my goddess, my god, my spirit, nature’s spirit
When I caressed the showerhead.
I saw it clean me of the plankton of the natural water and replace it with synthetic chemicals
To keep me sanitary and acceptable.
Twenty minutes.
It felt like that was how long it took for the blade to run across my skin, my wet-and-dry-sand skin. Twenty minutes running up from the product of the hills to the home of my womanhood.
I noticed how the man-made razor matched a section of veins on my wrist.
Twenty minutes.
In twenty minutes that were actually twenty lifetimes I became Pocahontas, daughter of Earth and sister of water.
I felt my connection to what sustains me and it changed me.
How did twenty minutes seem so long
Under the florescent lights?

Crash
Over me
This wave of emotions
Comes to crash
Over me
Comes to drown me in tears and screams
And the fear of insanity
All around me the people, they scurry
All around me, they move around me
They might as well go right through me
I’m not here, don’t you know?
I don’t exist, don’t you know?
Am I real? I’m not sure
It’s confusing to think about
Why I am and what I’ll be
Whowhatwhenwherewhyhow
It all spins around so I can’t sleep
When I do sleep, the conflicts chase me
I see in technicolor
A kiss from my love
And a love letter from a gay
Gay boys don’t write love letters to straight girls
A confusion, sparkling prom dress
Left in shreds behind my closet door
What’s happened? I don’t know why
My silver shoes are turned red
Why are my nails crusted with red?
Wake up, sleep again
Wake up again, now sleep
Alarm bleeps, but I’m not awake
**** it all, I’m not awake
Fix a smile to my face
Tell the world I’m okay
Then yearn for the end of a long day
Inhale the breath of my love
He distracts me from
The tidal wave looming over my head
The faces under the water titter
As I kiss him hard, he kisses harder,
Heart rates speed up in sync
And around us, the noises try to send me
Scurrying under a desk, into a corner
Quick, hide under your jacket!
And when I look into his eyes,
Those warm brown eyes,
I see his fear and it scares me
It’s good to know someone cares,
But I hate to cause him pain
The look in his eyes as
he gently pulls me out from under the desk:
Concern, fear, a swirl of stress and anxiety
I don’t want to be the cause of someone else’s anxiety
Yes, it’s nice to be loved
But it hurts to know that my emotions cause them pain
These emotions which I cannot control,
These impulses to eat and eat
To bang my fist, then my head, against the wall
Standing in the shower,
Burning hot water,
I look up into the spray
I see myself with lungs full of water
Gasp, pull away, squeeze my eyes shut
Open them again, there’s the silver cord
The link between the main showerhead and the detachable one
The loops glitters
See it hanging around my neck
God, oh, god, why do I see this?
I do not wish for death, I fear it
So why do these visions come to me?

There’s a name for this, all of this
This insanity which is mine
The first word is borderline.
*(Borderline Personality Disorder)

we break into the graveyard after hours. no purpose, but it's just there, down the road. and it's nice the way it overlooks the ocean.
   climbing over the hedges, we see a middle-aged couple already there, blasting dixieland on a portable radio. we share a confused look, and just leave again, a tad indignantly. it's the kinda thing that's ruined if someone else's doing it.

                                                  summer drags on,


the sound of trucks. bubbled wallpaper in pavement creaks.
wonder with the directed slice of soft fallen pillow lumps.

we
          round the way to the two parks, one with the children mewling on the wooden
stumps and the other with the cigarette butts, sports grounds, snubbed out sunday radio. the wind make a steady jaunt down the long
forgotten corridors. there's little to see here, but it's an easy place to make home. the trees sway something rotten that would make a newcomer uncomfortable, but you learn to shut it out.

we're
standing in the road, hands in pockets, against the chill. no one's sure what to say. not sure if saying anything really helps the fact. it just embroids the situation with complexity, detracting from an otherwise pure, if unpleasant, tone. we settle for a 'see you around.' the claim, if it is a claim, is false. the movers come early the next morning. and the house down the way stands vacant. the boards rot away. a year later the building is knocked down. rebuilt. craftsmen and diggers. but the same lot. same dirt. chewed up and digested. every winter the worms die. are replaced. tendrils expanding and contracting. sit down. it becomes so wearisome, but sometimes the sun's mild presence  makes it okay. the boards buckle in the damp morning light. the
  water filtration system hums down the road. the neighbour's kid crosses the road to the other park. kicks a soccer-ball for a few hours, gets dejected, and returns home, is reswallowed by the painted timber.  


the bible pushers did the usual rounds on wednesday. Mrs. Grensten would always let them in for tea. we'd watch from the other window, and imagine infidelities, convoluted fetish play that they'd get up to. a game of enticing disgust. eyes on the window in the hope they'd slip up, and we'd see a shot of tired flesh among the drawn curtains. a vacant voyeurism. laugh in the boredom of a dreary sin.
       they haven't visited for some years. after Mrs Grensten died, the next time they came Mr Grensten chased them away with his walking stick among coarse shouts and tears. the downstairs windows and now left open, but there's nothing inside


your pen-pal in Romania sent a postcard. they didn't write anything, but there was an old chapel in a field on it


some days the sea is quiet. generally in the early morning, during lowtide. under the moon the sand takes on this expansive pale blue luminescence  
        usually it's either too crowded, or the waves make up for the lull in people. i thought i had a point here, but i didn't


  she stands in cotton robes, stained and dyed with gin. mother says to ignore her. she rings a small ornamental bell. you don't really get it. you ask why she's ringing it. with a finger to the mouth she shushes you. you look offended. as you 're about to persist in demanding explanation, she steps out into the road, just as a courier van speeds round the corner. she wears a soft smile. the tiremarks on the cotton makes a pattern that reminds you of something, but you're not really sure what.


a humming light on an old oak table. there's a peacefulness here. you loose tempo, and the crowding figures look at you with irritation. you feel small and wish to melt, to become liquid and drain away, move in motions already dictated, they ask the next question. Who are you? Why? Justify your reasoning.
       a half ****** caramel drop. sticky.
       pavement grit. coarse.
   they
                closed the walkway due to wasp nests.
you're not sure which route to take. you pass
     by the graveyard instead, and look out to sea. there's a gentleness here. it reminds you of something, but you're not sure what


   we used to find bugs at the pond edge. the area had a piercing smell, but that was part of the charm. it meant we'd never dare enter the water, though. one day in teenage bravado, we did. it was slimy in texture. suddenly, you pushed my head down among the green folds. there was something there. a soft, but solid texture, like jelly. electric scatterings. old tire tracks folding out, like a deconstructed rubiks cube. i shoved your head in as well. we laughed and splashed in viscera.  wye's spoke in empty folds and promised us the world in reassuring tones. the warmth of a log fire on a winter eve, crackling sparks glowing in undulation. the muffled tones of a showerhead, blanketed in feathers. a mellow smile of the certainty of an inviting future. we lay on our backs and the sun shone down through the trees. as it passed the yardarm we headed back to shore, lost rapture of the soft kisses of meadow-banks. you grabbed a rock and bashed me in the head. a solid but glancing blow. this too, was fine. no fear, just laughter. i grabbed one too. with blunt instruments, we chiselled skin and bone. small enfolds of the rising moon. we stretched out, fingers entwined. no fear. possibly regret? but a soft regret, the kind that tracks the passing of time, that lets you register the ceaseless withering of the past, and hopefully, see beyond. rivulets of blood. i breathe in your gaze, and melt into grass. just laughter.


the stitches in the corner of your mouth are rotten. that's good, that means the healing is done. flesh reunited with flesh. you feel it with your finger. there's a bumpiness, but little sign of much else

I

top of the valley
))) showerhead & birdsong,
the womanlike apparition
of previous nights,
  confession buries its warmth within fervent tangerine sheets (where the day is hot and the future is formless)

I approach the dawn
in naked repose/horns repeating/soft a hares tail is
spotted with freckled water from Lands End,
youth & ideal kiss-image lost in bedsheets/
  eyes are painted with creekwater
  
to impermanence, guarding the stones we left there
  drying away/I miss you already
  
  (the island which reconciled my heart to that of a lambs infant noise)
  
  all worry and expenses vanished at the throw of an axe
  
     haze/fire/italian wine/the stirrings of March brought forth for inspection
     in the dim glow of our ashes/butterfly asleep/carved dragon
     draped with the fury in your kiss/

I stand naked before the valley, an initial warmth fills its features. A smile stems in the garden loosely protected by wire, I am temporarily innocent of day/
my restless behavior now soaked into a wooden platform

     Clothes placed on a nearby log, I now cloak an inevitability to my skin, one of a whisper, mute in the heart as yet,
     heavy (molten lead) to the rest of me

(questions starve in my mouth,
  for the sake of any dire simplicity/animal truth in tongue/awakened from its hibernation)
  I am gripping the mothmask
  helpless & drawn instinctually
  toward the fire which
  hurts me
(the witch unafraid of being burned)

  stumbling in black of later-spoken confusion/divided tones/two worshippers of the same trickster idol-

-only promising the subdued rising day,
where you monastically
prepare (with such grace) the next meal of bananas & hot tea, cupped with mint leaves, meanwhile,
Ethiopian rhythm fills the trees with a land who's taste they'll never know

      (& suddenly I am the forest)

II

(out of sight)

-hitchhiked home & let out here, a brown ivory-trimmed wood church hardly the size of a house a little ways down the road, myriad
insect conversation & the dry, eclipsing valley, carrying with me a simple liberation of spirit, one I can't let go of by necessity-

-my shoes are scuffed with loose dirt at the sole, I must pantomime the Sea, now more than ever

(without intervention)

-my clothes clean all things considered-

(darling time acts in accordance to nothing but its own divine & careless will)

-as if ingrained to me by the Summer heat, & the earned sweat on my back.

"Life needs to be lived, not to be solved" - Osho

I stood under the showerhead today
cleansing myself and wondering
if the same thing could be done to my past.

Head first, I
lather my hair,
massage my regrets into my skull
and I let it sit.
I’ve done this enough times that
I think my brain
has absorbed them all
The sorrows seep in
and decide that one rinsing
        - and neither was two, or three, or four
wasn’t quite enough
        - my arms are sore so I guess I’ll just move on.

Next, my skin
is subjected to vigorous scrubbing.
I can never
remove enough layers of shame
I can never
exfoliate all my guilt
and when I look down, my hands
contain ghost stains of crimson gloves
        - “Out, ****** spot! out, I say!”
I wonder if
anyone else sees me this way
I wonder if
the callused and scarred tissue in my heart
can be so easily removed
like dust, grime, oil, blood.

I slump against the tile wall,
letting the water scald the coldness inside me.
Is it easier to live when you close your eyes
instead of watching the things that nearly killed you
swirl around in infinite eddies
down the drain?
I flinch at the way the water
gurgles down the pipes, wondering why
it’s so easy for them to take it in
and let it go.

The water stops. I shake off
the last of the tenacious water droplets
and I run my hands down my wrists, my ribs, my face
It is good to feel like your body is a clean slate.
I remember what all I scrubbed and scraped and
rubbed off, and I think
*No more. No more. No more.

i. before this the trees were alight & the hardwood was tracked with mud. down at the riverbank i embrace a golem made living flesh. her skin when she touches me leaves silt & grief. i grab both of her hands and call this the world. i grab both of her hands and drown them in the river.

ii. this softest horror that creeps in my bones, it begs of me to listen
& i do -

cause: you call me pretty. you beg me to sit in your open palm. you cover my eyes. sloppily, with your fingers. you tell me to be still. you hold me still. you hold my breath. you hold a knife to my throat. it’s not a knife. i’ve told this story before. it’s not a knife.

effect: you call me pretty.
you gut me like a fish.

iii. the stone-girl who lives inside the mirror & begs for scraps asks me how to go home. the showerhead screams. the girl has my eyes but only when i’m not blinking. she has no hands. i say nothing. someone is screaming. she hangs her head in her hands. the water is too hot. the lights keep blinking. i feel everything & nothing. she says nothing, and somehow it is worse.
nausea.
nausea.
nausea.

ad nauseaum.

iv. the house does not fall apart but it is a close thing. the roof is leaking. everything is covered in dust. i fill my cupped hands to overflowing & the first layers of dirt chip away. i pry them apart & open. i put my wrists on right-side up. i excavate. i perform with or without anaesthesia. the girl claps. i take a bow.

v. the wind smells clean & of wet earth. i dig up the body in the front yard. my/her hands tug dandelions out of the grass.

we lay in silence.

our hands touch,
flinchless.

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

Star spangledgraciousness
An empty vessel
Yet not without its redwine
Red wine
& sourness of past inhabitants
The fog of Manhattan
Cries the whale of night
In a street of slurred bodies
& electrical heads &the; train is late &excusemepleasesorrythankyou;
& directionless/compliancy is for the agents who don't know rhythm i can speak the tongue of a sweatfaced
Painterman or
The kindly blind
Who haven't the time for soreness

Its all soupNmute screamin!!!g

"Ur dryer has been faulty /
The showerhead makes cruel sounds!"

My Beltbuckle healthier than
Leather!of my shoe (a horn from up the block)

Rosesmile lovely faces
Being uplifted by balloons &
Kissing hymns

(RedwineRED wine)

Impolite barter
Or 75 cents in Metro
Paused for Rodenticide

(green neon coffin)
Coughing neon green

(!!)


HERE is a wailingCannonBall
Creating a space of drums
And dancing or microphoneAAA

Golden cloud & dripping halo
Words cannot hurt these saintly scenes
of a
Light caught in the rain
As mist rises u p
From my fleecy walk
& protest sirens orchestrate
SUNSET tape
/X and O/
               Do not mind the slipping
               Metal
               Or poorly-tended meadows coming up thru
               Hairlines
               ////////////###
      Transmutable
      Grains to cigarette ash
      Rolling daintly upon the marblefloor
      I have seen scholarly tearjerkers
      Preach about the elevator
      Blinking the signal of the soul
      Holy(soul)
      And potplant lids
      Fantasizing of Mothers
      To shoeshine their world
      A (         eniwder

"hellonothankyou"
    "AfterallthistroubleIwentThrough!"­)
Note of
Myself put into the hardwood of

The blunder
Of thought itself

For a fool beneath a bridge to find
& smoke with aching feetNplastic
teeth
Speaking plastic musings to

The plastic of the falsely opposed
Withdrawn
And unable to prove why this country hates them so much

(which begs the question)
Candles keep to the museum of headaches & irony

I keep to this narrow night under the
Attic of West 3rd

Wishing for a place to rest easy
Except these foreigners slam their

Quiet fists to the map of New York City instead
AhOkLetsBePatientPuh-Leese

This sort of passion for
The stone and it's
many
Bulbous radiant
fingers
While simultaneously
Brushing them away with nervous laughter
Can only be caused by

Spending too much time at the beach
Reading playwrights.

when water drops
from the showerhead
feel like bullets
and the threadbare bed's
springs are rusty
and there’s silent night
after silent night
do not give up.

I’m a stranger walking through a wonder world
colors dripping down my walls
Sudden like hidden koolaid in a showerhead
purposeful like a bath in paint
Watercolors of all my favorite songs
and so many new ones
Today I’m tired and slightly lonely
it’s a dreary day
I’m lighting up with a dizzy rainbow mix
of beats
in the absence of a working tub
I’ll stand up and steam myself to sleep

the bunk
above mine
I call
deathbed

is

my brother’s-

he has
his own
way
of thinking

     showerhead
is spotlight

     he argues often
with sister
about
the staircase

two times
of three
she pushes
him

but today
she is tired
and agrees
by saying

silly
backward
staircase

     and I, as ever
unable
to break
the heart
of either

sleep
for both
as they watch
me

eat

/ had this hairbrush could halt hearing loss in hallucinations.  this theory that eve was adam’s mother and that god was born in eden for refusing to study virgins.  she had her facts straight and a dog would tell my son otherwise.  a way of coaxing both ****** and suicide to breastfeed death.  this bird that would go

like a showerhead
south.  a goldfish, a brainless calf…

You hold me against you as we laugh under the sheets. The radio blares softly through the bedroom spreading the sound of country music. My once shiny, and now dull red hair falls to the right as I climb on to you slowly. Your hair is dark against the white pillows and your eyes glow despite the lack of light. My eyes trace over the somewhat defined lines on your chest then back up and they meet your gaze. You tug lightly on my wrists, which until you moved them, rested on your chest. They now lay on either side of your upper shoulders as you reach up to kiss my lips that once held a bright red pigment but are now a dull shade of pink. During some point of this perfect chaos your hands found their way to my tank top and removed it's straps. You trail your unmatchable hot kisses down my neck and clavicle. You squeeze my hips knowing it'll make me jump and we laugh again after I do.  
In the early morning light the bite marks along my thighs and hips have slowly begun to fade as i turn on the shower. I can hear you cooking in the kitchen and I decide to surprise you, so I walk out in your t-shirt and my lace underwear and I wrap my arms around your waist. You smile, turn and meet my lips once again with your kisses sweeter than honey. I reach behind you and turn off the stove top before looking up at you and guiding you to the bathroom. As we step in under the water spraying from the showerhead, the only thing that I feel is the cold wall against my back, the light kisses of the water and the warm embrace that only you can give. The water accents the muscles on your chest as I trace my fingers down them. The kisses on my neck are soft and loving,  but the touch of your hand on my upper thigh is needy and lustful. I answer these touches with some of my own and I pull you closer and gently bite your neck. Just like a reflex your lips are on mine engaging in a passionate kiss. As your hand travels higher on my thigh I deepen the kiss and bite your lip before sliding my tongue across yours once again. As the water grows cold and we step onto the mat on the floor we exchange loving glances and continue on with our day remembering our night and the games we played

If you love me you will touch yourself and fill my holes
with your smile, step inside me like
you are juvenile skipping through a rain puddle.
Pretend you believe it is tears from the stars that form
****** shapes and still are not full, if you love me
know that I need you to touch me or I will ask an army to.
Those lonely soldiers grasping sand dunes
in their sleeping bags, dreaming of ******* for vitamins:
sometimes your silhouette appears in sweat beads
of my showerhead and I am just like a veteran,
fill as much as I can of myself with my two hands,
I think that if you don’t love me I would rather be dead.

on the rare occasion
that you chose to show me affection

it was two bodys together
two souls apart

I used to shower
immediately after ***

to wash away the filth
to scrub away the feeling

let my tears cascade
like the rain from the showerhead

watching my pain ridden bubbles
slowly disappear down the drain

when I emerge you ask me
why my eyes are so red

I tell you I got shampoo in my eyes
you laugh and say how stupid I must be

tell me, who is the stupid one?
me with red eyes? Or you not noticing i always cry after ***?

Bring it on sandman,
You little ****,
I'm gonna break your ****** nose this time...

Crack you in the face with 3 cans of energy drinks,
Clap your ears with open palms of Clutch's latest album,  "Sunrise at Slaughter Beach" at 100 decibels,
Kick you in the nuts with a steel toed boot of a lit cigarette stuck in the nostril,
Inhaling deeply ,
Painfully sending cinders through my sinuses.

Body blows of cold water,
Blasted through the most concentrated setting on the nozzle of the showerhead,
You feeling it yet bud?!?

I can go 12 rounds,
And your knees are shaking on the 3rd.

Knock out a few teeth with smelling salts,
Kicking that sweet sweet adrenaline into overtime,
Overclocking the ol' brain matter with that brown fluid in the grey matter,
Show me them pearly whites now.

I will beat you this time slim,
I know all your tricks,
Give me your best shot,
And well see how well your blows meet the meat.

Immaculate hit you 3 ways,
Hard, fast, and repeatedly,
Write your will with your blood and spit,
Cuz when I'm done with you,
You'll be crawling away from me,
Beggin' like a little *****.

the mirror stares at the wholeness of me--cellulite creating waves over waves, bumps and hills over the decisiveness of my bones. everywhere, a mirror, a chance to reflect and magnify. here i am, my reflection says, hands waving at me, smile wavering slightly. here i am; look closely. more, the person says. look harder. and there i see it--the person in the person. the hands wrapped around my hands, not hovering there but trapping mine. over the halo of my hair is another head, one sneering down at my reflection, probably thinking its way into this world, are you still alive?

there is room for doubt, never any room for certainty. when i step under the showerhead, grab the loofah and wash, i imagine the tearing of skin against claws. secrets fall over in rivulets of darkened fat, the sick yellow of it all screaming at me in the unrelenting water. there has got to be time for release, however nauseously painful. as the ****** result streams down the drain, i wring my hair dry and reach for the towel, only to accidentally glance at the mirror again.

are you still alive? an answer spoken through a different mouth: more or less.

You are dead and you made us in that hospital.
     That lump of flesh in the pit of you: clay.
          With your hands you grasped it, pulled into yourself: mouth:
umbilical. Like a snake consuming itself. This is what they mean
when they say that circles are perfect. The water
     was warm. It snowed outside for days. I visited
my sister
and wondered about brains. She speaks of her therapist
as a friend.
                       I speak as if I don't know I am
a person
                  and imagine
the rush of light in each of our heads. The heady fire
revealed in MRIs. The showerhead can barely contain the steam
and nothing cools me off. Back to our younger years
                                             in the libraries
when we were still constructing ourselves. You said
                                                            ­                such lovely things
that when you died it felt like deaf. I can no longer

     hear

you singing. Except now, I grasp
at the hard body of a psychology textbook, reading,
some exam tomorrow-- listen, you could've come to Harvard, too,
if that is what you wanted, if your body would let you-- and your quiet
suggests the problem is that I am stuck in the frame of my

nakedness   cross-legged      bottomed

laughing     souped  into the bottom

of the shower curtains: and they open: the steam: the still

images of sliced brains in my textbooks: coffee-cups

emptied by the lips I have taken from you: quiet,

yes, no wonder why. When your hands

did their last thing,  when they reached into your own mouth
to spool yourself into you and the books we sent you
that you couldn't read because you were dissolving
                          
                           ­                When your hands

did that: did you think: could you: and if
                                          you could: do you
                               think
that was what made you: you the whole time?
Or was it: the departing of the air: as if to sigh:
when it gets so cold outside that every whisper:
feels monumental because: you can see: the clouds:
you speaking before you: before: your own eyes.        And then you blink

for a very long time in a single still flutter, stuck.

I stand in the shower with lavender fields in my chest

how do I scrape off the muck, scoop out the loathing
and take off the gloves to pick up the patches of fear
that periodically gather at the base of my shower drain  

how do I heal each limb so that with majesty
I awaken knowing
full and bright that I am a child with wings
and elevation is the right song that pours out when I dream
an inheritance marbled into my being’s skin
                              …
how does a child beget forgetting
how does an adult continue such forgetting

what is the suchness of wholeness
whose scent of remembrance seems mythically far
but its verity present within our plot

                              …
our hands reaching for the bunches of lavender
that can be gathered from a bountiful field
a calm whiff of what we truly are
that can send us back into an infinite space of fruitful life
cusping possibility
                            ...
portable pastures inside our homestead
running water
and a chance to be cleansed
what suchness of being over my body  
how ecstatic
how simple to stand under the showerhead 
on the toes of today
with a meadow in my chest

the madness of the couple
is a broken
showerhead.

the slimmest volume
of collected work
is a drop of water
lands, a drop of water
lands, no memory

is erased.

in time, I’ll prominently cover
the same topic.