Generations pass as autonomy eludes us denying us the opportunity
to reach for liberality.
Indifference, being a predecessor, digs shallow graves in so many ways,
Watching heritage that once was become something uncanny,
Unrecognizably lingering; lifeless.

Racial force fields, forces fields of incarcerated thoughts to take root,
Keeping us from seeing beyond ourselves,
and
The barriers built to keep those out,
only keep us,
from letting us, to allow others in,
and trust is placed on trial,
looking at a life sentence of death, unaware of its opportunity
to freely avail or elude it’s predicament.
If only it would appeal to the counsel of the majority.

Stubbornness sometimes refuses to embrace what we know needs to
be confronted in order to bring about change,
unifying an outside world
where life is not always fair and those around us calculate thoughts to hinder our progression.

We live in a place of democracy and disdain where street corner pharmaceuticals
****** the weary,
where adolescent girls are forced to become
teenage mothers or prostitutes,
where empty baseball diamonds and dugouts
are replaced by thick scaling barb wired walls and gray barred cells,
where young men and women trade their age multiplied for the number they will where in a system for life, and
where the sound of a crying disappointed child is exchanged for anger and abuse,
in the absence of a father or mother figure,
figuratively disfigured and lost in translation;
an abandonment of generations past.

Who will lead and guide us?
Who will plead and advocate on our behalf?
Who will stand in the gap?
Who will lead us past the captive mind to captivate hearts?
Who will provide the keys to unlock and break us free?
Free from the broken barriers that divide us?
~

I realize now how hard it is to see through the dark stains that have tainted the past.
How difficult it is to remember how lifted I felt,
how utterly blissful,
how completely cared for.
The delicate words flowing from your fingertips soothed my soul.
Your light filled every crack in my body.
You made my glow.
You made every daunting task,
every mountain I knew I had to climb,
seem as easy as lifting a finger.
With you, I could've changed the sky.

Now, there is dark red pouring over every memory until they've been
completely, and unrecognizably distorted.
Now, they match my own alteration.
I wish I could've kept them the same:
unsaturated, and untouched.

Before, you kept me safe, warm and loved.
Then, you changed. You judged, hurt and broke.
Now, you do nothing.

i want to be touched by somebody
with burgundy blood on his hands;
red handed
raw palmed
legs strangled in maroon bedsheets.

a murderers kiss must be a rush,
blood exploding from every pore in my
bled out skin,
wounds opening willingly for his searching
hands to make
a sort of house out of my bones.
creating a home for something
wild
who has only ever met closed doors
and distant, fearful faces.
i'd prove i wasn't scared of
the dark eyes,
and hungry lips,

knowing at any moment he could push the
cool lips of a golden .45 caliber revolver
and splatter my ****** through the
wooden bedpost and the
flaking, collapsing drywall.

i've followed thrills ever since i was
in third grade,
convincing a boy to take off his clothes
and show me what "men" are made of
and sneaking behind my mothers
injured back
stealing things i wasn't supposed to know about.
i liked putting myself through the danger,
unknown
it rushed up my legs and
rendered me breathless and craving more.  

i've always wanted to hold
something shaking
and cold
and let them tell me stories
out of their biting teeth
of when when it all started:
they were small and rode their bicycle
so fast they fell and skinned their
soft pink cheeks on the black cement
and went crying to their mother with blood dripping
down
a mixture of tar and red.

i'll tell them there's some place in hell
in the beating, drumming heart of the earth
warm darkness compacted,
where you can buy cigarettes for
50 cents a pack,
and whiskeys in water bottles and skin is naked
guns are loaded to shoot down the moon
and eat it with crunching, crumbly golden crackers.
where there is no sleep
only midnight writing furiously on the stark pages
of a shredded journal
dawn walks down the lively sidewalks where
other sleepless figures of orange peel flavored darkness
and coffee bean stained teeth dance and laugh and touch
in the darkest parts of the invisible morning
sweat intermixed unrecognizably with tears
and people hold their belongings in
the drooping bags under their bright eyes,
where screams of pleasure echo in every
cavern and creaking limb you touch
to the atmosphere
and people make love easier
than they
destroy necks.

i'll whisper
"when you're rotting underground
with your teeth in a
waxen, strained smile with lovers flesh embedded
in your own homely skull,
and your fingers are feasts for writhing worms,

and i'm dancing chaotically as ever in the raging wind,
a desert flower reduced to
bright-eyed dust
thrown lightly into the sinking seeds of a garden
with flowers growing out of my decomposing
echo of a body
like an
articulate oil painting decorating the earth to remind them
of my eternity,
i'll sink all the way through the soil
and follow the heartbeats

i'll meet you there."

You wrote me like a book.
You made me who I am.
Before I met you I was a boy.
After you, I was a man.

A broken man though,
Unrecognizably shattered.
Heart ripped from my chest,
Then stomped on, and left battered.

It's my own fault though.
I was a man, but immature.
I was blinded by personal problems.
When I should have been blinded by your allure.

But your heart is more broken.
I can tell from when we talk.
I can tell every time we texted.
And I could tell on our last walk.

Trust and kindness is what you sought.
And trust and kindness is what I brought.
But as we developed. You saw different.
Our love was free but became imprisoned.

It's still locked up.
Serving 25 to life.
But if it ever gets out.
I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life with you.

I dreamt of war
Of a glassy sea breaking from its bounds
Of skies opening with unrestricted flashes of light
I dreamt of war
Of a world smashed unrecognizably into itself
Of continents clashing against one another
I dreamt of war
I saw life leaving the eyes of thousands
I watched dispair and fear engulf the innocent
I dreamt of you
I witnessed hatred consume your soul
I witnessed you lead the slaughter of thousands
And I came to know evil
I learned of the intimacy of pain
I learned of the severity of fights
And amongst the war and fighting
In the aggression and death
I cried for life

[premises]

he is cheating
resurrection.

his baby is a baby
in that it tries
to leave

a note
for god.

his mother lets it go
on the roof
of a hospital
about the kids
she saw
*******
in a grocery
cart.  

proof

yearns.

~

[root]

I left quietly
the pet store
of haunted animals.

a drifter preaching polyamory
took mental note
of my appearance.

a man was my father.

~

[outer life]

they’d say his head was hard because it was too small for god to kiss.  when he’d come into town, he’d leave with children we’d not seen except on posters.  his welcome mat was a napkin spotted with blood from a Q-tip.  save for the tiny matter of Jesus, our parents gave him little to do.

~

[the bridge]

let me not pray
for this man
who captured
on film

for the last time
in its environment
god’s bed.  let me not

be consumed
by this man’s return
to the inexact art
of home.  let me obsess

instead
over a portrait
of myself
trapped
by aging, let me grow

to my waist
my hair
might it burn
might I then

to the accumulation
of sight
and sight’s
potential

bow

~

[captions]

underling animals
in times
of quake /

slight
swellings

in brain
of maybe
one mole

bottled
now
for sea /

if on a baby
your hands
would be

so cute

but as
an adult

you glove them /

world as wheelchair
the wheelchair
from which

god rose /


as sporadic
surges
switch on

the sink’s
disposal

pull thorns
from the rabbits
you dream

~

[I saw my youngest brother born]

I saw his mouth.
I thought he’d ripped.

~

[the small]

I acquired you as an infant from a gentleman who needed parts for a radio he planned to invent.  listening to his radio was a long way off.  you sat early.  you called me mother before I was ready.  if I was good, you’d play a videocassette to watch it dream.  I looked at stars and you were a toddler.  our life was life on other planets until the gentleman returned.  he said he’d seen satan in a space suit and that satan had given him signs of ****** abuse.  you were not unrecognizably depressed but did start a fire in a photograph.    

~

[cure]

the dark, the ocean.

I have two reasons to believe god
has not stopped creating.

-

our father
had this phrase

all in good time
psychic

-

my anger has gone the way of the milkman.

his doomed child
with her piece of chalk.

~

[bait]

I didn’t see it
like some kids
saw it-

pain
as clay.

a swat here or there
to the back
of a mother’s
mind.

a man who took a bowling ball
into a closed garage
had no sadness
I could pray
over.

...Santa smoked on the roof
of my father’s house
while I
with a noiseless
stomach

touched
that hunger.

~

[how to live in the country dark]

toss frogs
into a fire
your father made.

find a woman
who’s abandoned herself
to being led
by a stick, let

her blind
mongrel
lick
your palm.

bury a handful
of gravel
call it
the moon’s
grave.

hide in houses
hidden
from road.

make at least one friend
whose night vision
is a glass of milk.

double your body
by walking
drunk.

~
[irrevocably child]

pressing
a cigarette
into the double
absence
of what
has become
the snowman’s
mouth
the woman  
begs
for a light…

it is a thing done softly
in a larger movement
of searching
belly-up
the nowhere

that sober
looks funny
alone  

~

[tell it to my brother]

a widow
with three hands
has ten
doomed
acquaintances.

god’s tacklebox is too light
to carry.

think of it as your ascent into feminine indifference.

think of your son as the incurable
made
thing

on the factory floor
of my son’s
use.

a male mime
bites into
a bar of soap…

***
is a bruise
in a blizzard

~

[mendicant]

this doorbell
is for the inside
of your house

-

to some
you’re the giant
you’re not

-

hearing isn’t for everyone  

-

a fog-softened man
with a baby
might experience
a sense
of boat
loss…

-

hurt

what you know

~

[crystal]

a foster boy using an alias teaches my son to shoot.

it’s the tooth fairy on a sad day finds
under my pillow
a handgun.

you know your father
is a night owl.

again and again I tripped.

the first time
my shoelaces had been
white,
pure from the silt.
I noticed a stain from
the grime,
not bleak to the
first glance
but I knew my lacs
had lost
their purity.

one more time,
a piece of thread unraveled.
again, not drastic
to perception
but it was clear
my shoelaces
were erupting due
to the results of my reckless
wanderings.

again and again I tripped
and by the time I decided to face
myself in order to
reflect upon my ineptitude,
I didn't know who I was
or where I had been.

I was forced to ponder
my shoelaces
for what they really
were: unrecognizably filthy

my shoelaces were now charcoal,
fringed and covered by all the them for were
their ruined mess
muck and dirt I put them through.
I wondered if anyone could
tell that they were
once untainted and unattained
or if all they saw of them
were their ruined mess.

again and again I tripped
and I began to wonder
if there was any reason to get
back up again?

I gave all that I could give
and the result was
anesthetic sentiment
and
obscene shoelaces.

I am a gloriously amorphous glob of tidal identity waxing and waning from unrecognizably dissipated thought systems to cohesively recognizable energetic structures. Behold, I am typing words and as I do so I am dismantling the very foundation of my preexisting paradigm because as it is dismantled it is no longer the existing paradigm but even so the existing paradigm is always the existing paradigm in that it is operating currently. Hurrah!! Onward, to where no one has gone before, to where no now has never evered till this very now! To infinity, and before that!

frigid, fragile, flustered

unrecognizably nervous
unsure
unrealistic

my name? what could it be
lover boy

Im just her toy
play with me? only when it works for you

lay me down to charge, you've got a new fascination

but where would I like to be?
nowhere else but next to thee

its inescapable my love for you
idiotic, irreversible and irrational

yet im your lover boy

it comes down to a smile
when i spend time with you
even if not a while
my ***** turn blue

lust, trust, i hope you dont ever see me with disgust

not sure if i could handle it

woah woah who am I ?

I'm your lover boy

set me free or be with me

set me free or be with me

leave me be or set me free
if you cant bear to be with me

I try to open my eyes
But feel an ache as
another seam rips
down the middle of my heart.

Hungover from the tiny white screen
I stared at for hours.
Investigating your once love-drunk smile.

Stumbling to the bathroom,
I meet my shower in desperation.

Hoping the water running down my chest
will act as a threat and
fix the ever-widening tear.

Instead,
I emerge wet
to find a foggy reflection.

Unrecognizably,
I’m beyond repair.

I acquired you as an infant from a gentleman who needed parts for a radio he planned to invent.  listening to his radio was a long way off.  you sat early.  you called me mother before I was ready.  if I was good, you’d play a videocassette to watch it dream.  I looked at stars and you were a toddler.  our life was life on other planets until the gentleman returned.  he said he’d seen satan in a space suit and that satan had given him signs of ****** abuse.  you were not unrecognizably depressed but did start a fire in a photograph.

father,
bless me
and press me
into the dirt

plant me
like a seed
moon water and
honey

sanctified
like a prayer

unrecognizably
a son
shining

Grandmother clock longing to tock. Her second hand pleading to sweep the face. Graze the six or touch the twelve. It had been a long stretch of silence since the lithium drained.

Grandfather bottle is empty too. He hit that babysitter like the side of a parked car. The chrome finish—split. It had been a long stretch of time since he avoided a headline.

Son long gun hanging on the wall. Displayed like the prey he sprayed with powder. A face unrecognizably rouged with bits slipping down the drain. It had been a long stretch of night since he loved his own blood.

Father three candles on a window sill. A distance spread like an animal hide. Brittle to the touch—no formaldehyde. He reaches into the moonlight, but it had been a long stretch of days since the flames touched his meager face.

Mother/daughter save us with your grace. A gentle tick of forgiveness like the unnumbered  hours in this temporal place. We do what we can & then try again in this vacuum of humanness & deep void of space.