There was a girl
I used to swap paperbacks
and spit with, once
I fixed her wiper blades,
I remember the soft dead wings
on the windshield,  pretty
as you please

She was alone in her shoes
listening to something
that kept getting darker
and glowing like morning
on the oil spilled under her truck,
she was drifting through
the rosewater of her soft red hair

She only wanted to be rolling
off a swollen river, sliding
out of a clean slip, turning
over in a deep sleep, trailing
a shimmering thread, hiding
under a pile of wet leaves

Then there she was sailing
in her river of blood,  going
white and smelling like smoke
from a struck match behind
closed blinds on a ceramic floor,
a white blouse red as a sharp knife
collecting the light of mourning.

Rain falls on the windscreen
in shades of grey brown and fogged-up blue,
car become boat in the rain-clogged road
floating away like in a Monet,
into the evening mess.

Frayed nerves, rules break, as dangers lurk.
The wiper slow tells its tale own.
Irrelevant discourse, irreverent songs,
the FM trend for DJ fame.

And we have two 'rivers' in our city,
swelling in refuse, bolstered by the rain;
And we have two beaches in our city,
soak in the surf, if you can ignore the rubble;
And we have many parks in our city
where litter garlands our heroes daily;

The last patch of green, cramped between
rising heights all around, accursed of
dump and construction junk,
steals a dying look at the moon late.

A walk in the woods, by the mist, by late evening.
A stroll, warm, through a field covered in snow.
Nice paintings on my concrete wall.

I'm told, the money plant is good for one's health.
Trees, a luxury for our wealth.

These are all good developments.
Hyper malls round the corner.
Home prices, soaring to Kepler.

Please pour in more investment into my country.
Guaranteed, riches grow in multiplication.
The markets are all about manipulation.

2-[[4-[(7-Chloro-4-quinolyl)amino]pentyl]ethylamino] ethanol sulfate

Sulfate- dry collision with salty white plaster, plaster walls, my plaster teeth in the palm of my plaster hand, the same palm you touched nervously with your fingertips, when your translucent skin showed we have the same blue veins, you with no love line. I’ve ran into walls, trees, dead ends, bursts of hail, but worst of all– you

Ethanol- black liquid gas,a nozzle in my car engine, fracked through my exhaust(ion) burn my esophagus like sweet ginger ale gin, double chin. I’m drunk, so I’m seeing double. Re/frac/tion.

Ethylamino- alcohol: a drizzle in a rainstorm, i can’t contain myself, exploding inside a glass bottle. a defective windshield wiper, reprocessing my words: “ethyl and coke tastes like cough syrup”, I say. either or, neither will help me.   ethyl as fuel is not safe to drink
ethyl as alcohol is not safe either. swirled away in a plastic whirl.

Pentyl- discovered in a collision of ultra violet light with argon, noble gas. overdose symptoms include convulsions (check), drowsiness (check), headache (check), difficulty breathing (check), vision problems, (check). But not for the reasons, or for the causes, I’ve listed.

Amino- building blocks to a withered corn husk of my body. 9 essential amino acids. Find them in your grocery store: egg whites, lysine in sunfish, cod, dolphinfish but please, no mercury. Maybe I have 1 left, maybe 2, after each labored breath entrapped by porcelain walls, cool on my forehead, warm on my hands, dampened dew on fingertips with pressure on my skin, sewer raindrops on my nose, now i’m so good (to you) I can upheave my 7 other amino acids on demand. No more dew on this fluorescent skin, I've always been too artificial to be compared to nature

Quinolyl- you are created by the removal of one hydrogen atom. I am created by the induction of two. This is how we are similar: exposed to light, we change. Your ancestry proceeds you, impurity in a chemical science, derivative of quinoline, which is a derivative of coal tar. you are an dye, a resin, parasites feed on your smell. I lust on your parts, **** out your solubility, desecrate your elements. I own you, don’t think you own me.

4- one milligram less than what disintegrates on the tongue's bitter perception, each night

Chloro- back stroke, breast stroke, my favorite is dead man’s float. inflamed skin, cracked elbows, an allergy

7- years since you’ve been with me, although I own you, you do not own me.

4- exponent of the previous, the total sum of pop art pills by night’s end. sometimes I forget.

2**- the number of techno-colored candies in the morning

A body is made up of chemicals

I am a mosquito on your holy-massive windshield.
You knock the air from my lungs and surround me in enough of it to crush my body.
It's all bigger than me,
all bigger than my eyes can see,
or my hands can hold.
All bigger than John mayor's body gives him credit for.

I explode my **** mixing with the blood of millions from which i drank, and you see it like a rorschach test and the results are in, you're the holy mary ******* what killed by brother, and all my brothers, and our souls are in your brain screaming ****** and pain

All bigger than all I know the universe to be, you are lightyears ahead of my understanding,
but nonetheless I strive to get passed your windshield.
I see what you have inside there and I want it.
I want to be with you there. Crushing the souls of bugs like me.
Wiping them from the glass, and not thinking twice.
But since I can't, I'll make sure to bleed for you,
so much that I leave a good smear that will take your wiper blades at least four swipes to get me off.
I'll make sure you remember me.

is that Vera Hall on your stereo, singing out from beyond the grave, singing Death Have Mercy? Vera Hall from beyond the grave hatin' on John Mayer. Vera Hall the old sooth sayer. Vera Hall with one last prayer,
Oh Death, have mercy.
Vera Hall, in a dream but lucid.
Oh Death, you're out of wiper fluid.

I’m sorry I shut you out and blamed you for my own undoing,

You see I have this cloud that hangs above my head and I had begun

To call it home.

My thoughts and feelings got lost somewhere in the condensation phase,

And I trapped them there, only allowing occasional acknowledgment of the pain

I was in, doing as much as I could so as not to show if or how I had been affected by it,

For I am my own prisoner of sorts.

I let you in my cell to feed me water and gruel, but when you asked to spend the night

I immediately pushed you out and handcuffed myself to

The illusion of accomplishment, for lo and behold, I was there supposedly

Protecting myself, abandoning you before you could abandon me.

Over time, my pride turned to boredom which turned to anger which turned

To loneliness, and I had to place the blame upon someone’s shoulders.

There were no mirrors in my cell, so I chose to blame you

For I had forgotten that I even existed.

Your kindness cut into the unripe parts of me, the parts that were not ready

To be handled so gently, where breathing is slow,

Where each time you blink is like having a windshield wiper wash away the rain

From a car so clarity can enter your veins and visceral rearview mirrors.

I unraveled while you were away, I cried over my million losses while I counted

Your continual successes, I was envious of you,

Gradually falling silent to the truth of everything that had once surrounded me.

I was afraid you no longer loved me, for I no longer wished to be loved

Nor did I feel deserving of it.

That wish was strong and I fell down a long and narrow well

Where you were not waiting for me when I finally reached the bottom.

I stayed there awhile, beneath my cloud, locked in my cell,

With the murky water and unforgiving gruel.

You called down to me from the top, your voice

Your voice

Your voice

Oh but how could I possibly forget?

That voice.

It never left,

It never lied.

I can’t promise you I won’t fall down here again,

For my heart is stubborn and I still haven’t learned

The art of removing that which has been engraved

On this selfish mind.

But for now,

I wish to stay.

The City lights blinked out forever--literally overnight--with a sudden finality that caught even the most nuclear-winter-prepared/Guns N Ammo reading/Campbell's canned soup and distilled-water stocked/backyard-fallout-shelter-owning-survivalists completely off guard. Armageddon had always been there, sleeping just beyond the horizon line of our periphery, but it awoke fully clothed and ready to go to work that day.
It was an ordinary Thursday, just like any other. The MUNI lines were choked as always with angry elderly women clutching plastic shopping bags full of pungent vegetables, poultry, and recyclables as if their lives depended upon the contents of those bags (maybe they did) and the usual gaggle of gibberish-mumbling crazies talking to themselves with cellphones plugged into their brains, some without. 
That day, baristas were 5 minutes, 23 seconds late for work on a city-wide average. Bartenders were making their rent in tips as rowdy soccer fans converged in their local Sunset, Richmond, Mission and SOMA district faux-Irish pubs to watch the latest big championship match between Ireland and...some other country.
By Saturday, less than two days later, the desperate siren-blare of emergency vehicles, the insect hum of DPT tri-bikes carrying cutthroat ninja-sneaky meter maids ready to make their weekly quotas by slipping bogus $55 parking tickets under the windshield-wiper of your best friend's beat-up, barely-working mid-90s Mazda you were borrowing just for the night, and the cloud-cutting rotary-whine of channel 5 news traffic-report helicopters chopping through the sky had been silenced forever.  
As if sensing the absence of gardeners, street sweepers and garbage men, weeds grew out of the cracks of the streets and sidewalks with the newfound urgency of a wildfire. Leaves swirled through glass and concrete skyscraper canyons, settled, and slowly began forming mounds as if attempting to fill the spaces that angry elderly women with plastic shopping bags, cellphone schizophrenics, and drunken soccer fanatics had once occupied.
Speculation about how the End of the World would actually occur had always been a theological reference point for religious zealots hell-bent on giving the Book of Revelations some validity, but had taken on a tone of comical absurdity in the hands of post-Y2K pop culture and disaster movies. A horde of zombies rising from their graves and feeding on the flesh of small bands of living human survivors was one of the more popular, albeit fantastic, apocalyptic theories. Some predicted that robots would enslave us, some thought aliens would invade us, while still others--baring signs reading "THE END DRAWTH NIGH," arms stretched meaninglessly up towards the hollow heavens in the sky above--believed biological or nuclear warfare to be the most likely form of humanity's demise.
But by the following Thursday, speculation had become a moot point; none of it had mattered at all in the end as the power-grid of the City, and then human civilization altogether, had been suddenly switched off for the last time by an alcoholic rent-a-god, leaving the face of the globe devoid of any trace of the spiderweb-night-glow of terrestrial city-lights. 
Only the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea were spared to fill the blank pages of history that were to follow human(kind's) fading footprints.

*

Aeons later...
When those birds learned to read, they would see cryptic symbols inside a crooked heart jaggedly carved into a tree trunk surrounded by a mote of fallen leaves and ragged newspaper pages blowing through the streets like tumbleweeds.
Aeons later...
Those tree-scratched symbols would form the sacred commandments of a secret new religion built upon the ashen, worm-eaten remains of two skeletons holding hands and a ****** trail of broken hearts trailing from their ribcages into the worm-mouths of babes.

My house is surrounded by
Illuminati operatives.
Lizards!  Everywhere i look...

green ones in the grass like
slithery snakes with feet,
brown ones on my porch
running counter-intelligence
on my kitties, tan little
enforcers with an ochre-red
streak of war paint along
their spines.

i know what you are thinking...
but i stopped wearing a
tinfoil hat.  It wasn't
keeping the N.S.A. out of my
emails anyway.

Just yesterday, one of the
lizards' double zero
agents followed me to McDonalds.
i saw him through the windshield,
gripping the wiper blade
with all his might, tail
whipping in the wind like a
whip antenna, broadcasting my
subversive Big Mac purchase.
i don't use Geico insurance,
therefore it was clearly an
Illuminati spy, without question.

Nowhere is safe.
My days are numbered.
They fear what i could expose,
that i would tell others
what i remember about
freedom.

Have you ever noticed
that tail lights reflect
off tire-worn roads
when sun and all
have gone asleep?
A pair of red glow
just seems to float
through space
like a reverse halo
behind and below vehicle
on its 2am way elsewhere.
And how about the fact
that windshield wiper and turn signal
never truly-precisely-
exactly-rhythmically sync?
One clicks and blinks,
the other dryly whaps,
on that first swipe,
of course,
just when light mist
begins to stick
and the exit approaches
at a slick
sixty-five-miles-an-hour.
Turn down the volume now,
it's time to pay attention.

Candle wax doesn't always
melt directly inward.
Sometimes it does dome
perfectly,
which makes it
all the more fun
to push further.
Other times it just bows out,
as if to say,
"There'll be no addition
to the amount of light
I'll be giving you tonight.
You'll just have to bend me in
and pray for a split-less base,"
as hours, seeming like minutes,
in minutiae,
are spent burning our tobacco
and circling our teacups
and laughing effortlessly,
indenting pillows and rugs
and us keeping so, so quiet
as not to awaken ourselves.

Waxing is always
a chance worth risking
because, worst case,
we can inflame another dancer
while we chat
and hope that,
just this once,
God help us,
we realize
our stars align.

Took one step into his lonesome world.

The clouds there were peculiarly pixelated in a forgettable shade of #999999
Digitally coded water vapor condensing into dense bubbles of thought
They resembled puzzle pieces childishly misplaced
Naivety was finger-painted along the lining and edges
While other bits played a quiet game that seemed to find them wanting

I did wonder where he hid them
Or if it was someone else who ran away
Who stole the stars in his sky?
Who stole the light in his pocket?

Took another step into his lonesome world.

The wind there had a dance of it's own that seemed to trace a pattern
Oscillating at a rate of 15Hz was a low frequency partner-less sway
Similar to eyelids confused and batting their lashes
Or wiper blades clearing tears off cars during a storm
Occurring without much thought was the drizzle with each wave

I did wonder why he danced alone
Or was it someone else who simply walked off
Who turned his sky on?
Who turned his lights off?

Took a breath standing in the center of his lonesome world.

I looked up and to my surprise found the eye of his mind
Staring back at me from those ***** clouds
It was the reason to all being and the wind was it's doing
Rising high up from an endless undisturbed nap

It was;

Brighter than the Sun itself
  Bursting citrus with each blink
Bleeding pulp over my skin
  Burning like acid on my own wounds
Delightful heat dripping off my tongue
   Psychedelic spirals twisting my limbs

    And
       i danced and spun
    And
       i lost and won

Please find me somewhere in those broken memories of yours

That's it I've had it
Tired of being ignored with a wink on the side
I'm tired of being told what old men should do
Going to start taking life on the flea..or is that the fly

I'm going to hit the streets of the city
And be known as that cool guy that raps
After I add a tad bit more Poligrip
So my dentures can get down with that

I'll get me a ball cap and turn it sideways
My pants already hang down past my crack
I'll even learn the latest catch phrase
Like, Hey dude..what's up wit dat?!

Think I'll even rhinestone my walker
For that little extra bling, bling
They'll say check out that crazy rapper daddy-o
Man that cat can really swing

I'll keep the lyrics clean like I do my diaper
That's why I bring my nursie with me
After all she's a wonderful wiper
Don't worry I pay the extra wiping fee

I'll also get her to hold up the cue cards
Since my memory over the years has waned
No longer to be known as that old white *******
Beating JZ at his own game

I'll get jiggy with it every chance I get
As I fizizzile my way to the top
I'll be bigger than that guy with the candy name
That young whipper snapper will melt in the hands of this rapping GrandPop

it’s as if you were in an endless (and beginning-less) traffic jam. The road is cramped and narrow; there are tanker trucks slowly pouring black smoke into your car’s vents, you can’t hear your radio or car stereo because of the low RPM rumbling of cars and trucks and semis all around you; any act of kindness you commit, such as leaving space for some dented, banged-up machinething trying to merge, is immediately ruined by someone else, scampering into the space you had left, foreclosing the chance you had of feeling you were being kind? noble? anyway, no; you are both starving and nauseated at the same time, and your stomach hurts from both; there are no exits where you can get off escape this, even temporarily, even shabbily; there are just jersey barriers and grey vehicles covered with grime, it’s drizzling now, and your windshield wipers don’t really work, they scratch and smear the grime across your windshield with a piercing, repetitive shriek, and when you try to look to your left or your right to see something besides damp, gritty, gray, fumy highway, the most you can see are the oblique outlines of institutions that could be factories covered in graffiti and litter and ragged advertisements for products not even sold any more, but you do realize that the space between you and the car in front of you seems a little greater, now, how? and you look in your rearview mirror and see that the car behind you is no longer looming, but instead is a spacing back, is not filling the view of the mirror, and as you cautiously press down on the accelerator, glancing to the left and right, afraid of what you might see, the cars move faster and are now farther apart; you press the WASH button and you’re going fast enough that the blue fluid sprays delightfully across the windshield, and the wiper blades automatically activate and clear it all, smooth and clean and fast, and is that sun? you now see greater distances, you see before you a world full of light and shadow, the sedan purring smoothly at the right speed. Things flash delightfully by, the car thrums, you can feel, in the center of you, that moving-forward feeling of progress, progress, progress. How could it be that just moments ago you were in a trench of grime and shuffling? Those trucks that were so sinister are now shinybright and obligingly staying to the right, their engines working better too, the sun glinting off their carefully custom-machined grilles; there are some curves and dips in the road that you follow with precision; there are grass and trees and the possibility of exits; even the paint on the road is whiter, and the road itself is blacker, and as you fly along you remember why you took this trip in the first place.

That's what it's like :')

Sometimes I wonder if I am a raindrop
Lightly dancing on your windshield.
The forecast didn't call for rain
Yet here I am, and so you yield.

Sometimes I wonder if my fall to the ground
Keeps you awake at night.
I know that my bolts of lightning
Are said to be far too bright.

Sometimes I wonder if I can take it any longer;
My atmospheric pressure is about to burst.
No one can explain it to me, however.
The ground I walk on must be cursed.

Sometimes I wonder if you can feel the plates
Moving deep within my bones.
Do you ever mistake thunder
For my body's angry creaks and groans?

Sometimes I wonder if you think of me at all;
The maelstrom you couldn't tame.
Perhaps the wiper on your car
Can rid you of my shame.

the day you left me in the cold was the day i knew you loved me .
love isn't a dish served hot ,
but a flower that is frozen in an ice cube and put in a cup so that it may slightly touch your lips
every once in a while .
i told you that i thought icicles were magic ,
and the next day you brought me an icicle from the neighbor's roof ,
so sharp i could stab a hole in my heart ,
and placed it in my freezer .

i kept that magic in my freezer for 4 months , until i broke my finger and needed something to reduce the swelling .

love is like that ,
not always magic ..... sometimes it's just
melting .
sometimes it's black and blue .
sometimes it hurts the most .
last night i saw your ghost
peddling a bicycle with a basket past a moon as full as my heavy head
and i wanted nothing more than to be sitting in that basket
like E.T.
with my glowing heart beating out of my chest
and my glowing finger tips point toward our home .

you built me a time capsule full of juicy fruit and promised never to burst my bubble .
i want our first date to be at the batting cages ,
where i'll miss every hit , but you'll still look at me with your starry eyes like i'm a home run in the ninth inning of the world series .
now every time i think of love , i think
going , going ......

the first week you were gone to college
i kept seeing your hand wave goodbye like a windsheild wiper in a flooding car
in the last real moment i thought the hurricane would let me out alive .

yesterday , i carved your name into an ice cube and held it against my heart until it melted
into my aching pores
today , i cried so hard that the neighbors knocked on my door and asked if i wanted to borrow some
sugar ...
i told them i had left my sweet tooth in your mouth .

love isn't always magic ,
but i offered my life to a magician ; i told him to cut me in half just so i could come back to you
whole
and ask for you back , would you listen ?

i wrote too many poems in a language i did not yet know how to speak ,
but i know now
it doesn't matter how well i say grace if i am sitting at a table where i am offering no bread to eat .
so this is my wheat field ,
you can have every acre , love ..
this is my garden song
this is my fist fight with that bitter frost .

tonight , i begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath
the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek
as i sang maybe i need you
off key ,
but in tune ....
maybe i need you the way that big moon needs that open sea
maybe i didn't even know i was here til i saw you holding me
give me one room to come home to
give me the palm of your hand , every strand of my hair is a kite string ,
and i have been blue in the face with your sky , crying a flood over iowa so you mother will wake to venice .

lover , i smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest ..
now my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bible ;
it is the one verse you can trust .
so i'm putting all of my words in the collection plate ,
i am setting the table with bread and grace .
my knees are bent , like the corner of a page ;
i am saving your place .

The Viper

I have an idea for a new invention,
I'm sure it will get a lot of attention.
The name is the The Viper,
and its an automatic *** wiper.
Never again will you have to wipe your own ***,
you just install the snake head,
with its tongue made of sea bass.
All you do is push the button on the latrine,
out comes the tongue to wipe your *** clean.
I'm sure this will become a big hit,
people will rush to their bathroom,
just to take a ****.
Never again will you need toilet paper.
and if you call now,
I will throw in the automatic *** scraper.
Never again will you have to worry about ****** berries,
And don't forget to order the scented tongues,
if you want your ***, to smell like cherries.
There is a limited supply,
please call now,
operators are standing by.

The winded willow wailed,
and the wild flowers hung on every sigh of the tree’s weathered leaves.
The shed door yawned each time he raised the axe;
blade-on-bark gave him a fractional sense of ‘being there’,
and a wry smile — thin, like dawn’s frost-moustache on the Chevy’s windshield —
shaped his lips into worn wiper blades,
which stifled the sound of his teeth chipping away at winter’s breath.

The years have not been very kind to you. You look older than your 26 years, haggard, cracked. Your hair is close cut, but you're nearly bald now. You once said it was from stress, but I remembered the genes carry from a mother's father, and I almost ask, then remember you never knew your mother. The only grandfather you can remember was cruel and drunk, and poured whiskey on a beetle while your uncles laughed. Your eyes are still those of a frightened child, a well-like soul, lit with some insane fire. You're thinner than I remember, but still not thin enough to fit into your dress blues. Where are they now, I wonder? Probably in the house that never felt like home, sheathed in plastic, smelling of cigarette and marijuana smoke. You're smoking again. I watched you leaning against your old truck, talking to someone, flicking the **** into the grass. I entertain the idea of stopping to speak to you, some primal urge of a broken heart. The broken heart that isn't sure if it still loves you, or your memory, split and driven by the reminder that some things simply aren't meant to be, no matter what the books say.
My heart leaps to race again, like a frightened rabbit, unsure where to go, or what to do. Going back was never an option. I turn away.
At work I glance in the bathroom mirror, I am very pale. You don't frighten me, but there is some storm which has blow up, confused, convoluted with time and the gilding of memory. I remember you fondly, if that is any consolation.
I told someone how I loved you, and he asked, half mocking, if I would go and find you. It stung. He was jealous, maybe. He'd already given me flowers, though with promises of friendship, unlikely more. He and I don't speak much now, and it hurts. You and I, another story. We spoke once a year, twice maybe. Always ending with the same scabs tearing off, the same regrets, the same pleading from you, and the same apologies from me as to why it is so impossible for us to relight the drowned kindling that once kept us warm.
We walked such different paths. Life is unfair, that way. You surmounted Everest, Death Valley, the Grand Canyon, only to arrive in a barren, muddy place, without the terrible desolate beauty they sometimes possess. You said I once calmed the storms in your soul. I've never forgotten that. It was always the wrong time, the stormy time, with you. Abandoning a ship you know will never truly make it to harbor, though it may bob and sink and drift for years before running aground, sails tattered, anchor lost.
If I did stop to speak to you, I don't know what I'd say. If it were a film I wouldn't need to say anything, I might run up and throw my arms around you before you could think, and kiss you, long and sweet. You would taste like smoke and coffee and rain. I would draw away, and say something about how I never go to kiss you goodbye. Which is true, I never really did. The last time I saw you, our hands didn't even touch. But this isn't a film. If I did stop, I wouldn't know what to say. You might not either. If I tried to kiss you, suddenly, I might scare you, set off the combat-tested reflex of self-defense, paranoia, panic. You would taste like coffee and tobacco, maybe ***. The pungent smell would be noticeable on your clothes as you pushed me away from you, cursing me, reminding me you told me never to speak to you again, unless it was to say I found some impossible way to return your dogged love. Your hands would be rough, dwarfing my small arms, your tall body dwarfing my small frame. I felt beautiful when I realized how small I was next to you. I still remember that night when you put me on your shoulders like a child, and carried me back to the car, as I bent down every so often to kiss you, wearing your hat. You'd cut your hand badly at work, but still insisted on holding mine.
I don't know what you'd do now. I don't know what I would do now. What should be done? I know I do not want to rekindle the drenched flame, but care is still lingering. I think of leaving a ten under your windshield wiper, hoping you'd buy yourself a meal. I consider writing the title of the song I wrote about you in the bill's margin. I wonder what you'd think now if you heard it. I can't remember if I ever sang for you. Probably not. We never got drunk together, and I've only ever sung in front of others slightly intoxicated.
But I'm drunk now. Drunk on rainy-day memory and what if's, and I realize I will never sing for you.

"Make as many mistakes as you can as fast as possible"
-Doc

Some kids found their rooms:
Math room pizza parties for those held in place by statistics,
four mirrored walls where the strong bodied press iron into muscle,
a tiny box for the "Special" broken off, hidden from the general population.
Those who went to the art room followed the music:
Stacks of scratched mix cds labelled with magic marker,
curated directly from fresh teenage hearts
hearts learning to become sound and paint in Doc's Art II class,
They sketch, carve, snack and chat.
The only room where students are allowed
to talk all period and pencils work to produce souls
instead of information.
There, the ineffable takes shape, in papier-mache,
macaroni or glitter.

Here are the kids who know how
to make mistakes. Perched on stools,
napping on the couch in the back,
the duds, the nerds, building things, hanging out,
shaving sculptures into their scalps. Their minds escaping
in paint-smear, light and earth, generating amorphous blobs,
new species of globule bacteria squirming across a slide of canvas,
things laid under the microscope, not for interrogation,
but for companionship. Not for scrutiny,
but for curiosity.
They reach no understanding with the world through movement
or the way the colors talk
to each other, they only reanimate the confusion into something
they can be friendly with.
Visions surface from the blank stare
of a white page.
They know how to get rid of that white;
just start getting it *****.
Eventually it begins to look like something
clean.

Nate starts new genres every class
though he plays no instrument: oi-punk, ska-core, pinhead blues.
Corban and Chip engineer robots
from their dad's junked wiper blades and orphaned gadgetry.
Quiet Jennifer looks
into the peeled aperture of her camera.
Golden Nick sketches always,
scoring every conversation with his etching.
Eyes cast aloof
from what everyone else is trained to see,
they stare into the discouraged hallucinations.
Unable to convince themselves the visions aren't there,
they exorcise them through messes of paint, wavering clay,
kilns burning mud into permanent shape. Splotched
mistakes arch gracefully into unforeseen purposes, the erroneous made integral.
What is discarded or shamed in other rooms is here followed with curiosity,
rescued and incorporated into a perfectly rendered mess
of liquid. The rejected is what is, what becomes.
Here, kids let their hearts out, casually, without explanation,
like red paint from a shiny new tube.
My heart, can't everybody see it? It's up there on the wall, collaged out of glue-stick
and diced magazine scrap.
It doesn't have to be clarified in the desperate pomp
of a poem or the insipid glitz of jazz hands. Put on the run by the logical requests
of Spanish teachers, they can relax here,
and so they are real, and so they are different.

As adults, they still use what they learned there. I watch them. They are my friends;
bartenders or line cooks or nurses or clerks, their basements cluttered
with bric-a-brac, creative purchases, bought not out of necessity,
but because they explode the room into life:
A creek painting amended with a rhinestone deer cutout,
the orange booth of a defunct bowling alley,
Happy Meal mascots leftover from obsolete Saturday mornings.
Their dens are hung with 4th grade prize-winners, Governor's Show picks,
a woodcarving of an eagle so ugly only a Mom could keep it hung
on her bathroom wall for thirty years.
Exacto knives and staedtler erasers point
from Warhol coffee cups on drafting tables,
T-Squares and light boxes are dragged through a gamut of low-rent apartments.

Maybe in the cupboard, maybe out in the garage,
a box lies closed
but not empty,
filled with crinkled tubes
of hardened oil, a palette stained
with a multifarious rash of colors,
a forest of stiffened brushes growing
from a ceramic ashtray.
Every now and then they put a record on,
pull this box out, open it
and again, with a little insistence,
the colors come flowing.

The squeeky wiper wakes me
the windscreens already dry
No lights in sight for miles
and I've come down from my high

Noisy nonsense in my head
frustrates me to death
the crazyness of it all
cannot be told in one breath

The capital S ruins me
but, the man finally stands
Because since he did it
he no longer holds the world in his hands

Shoulders can grow stronger
and skin so much thicker
but no one can weave through your thoughts
from the place you call your wicker.

The capital S ruins me
and I dwindle away
there is nothing left to do
nothing meaningful to say

Pictured this so different
but it blew up in my face
not leaving would leave a gap in me
but staying, just a little space

You mirrored me as I plead my case
It was a rational knee **** reaction
but right then me without you
was the only right subtraction

The Capital S dominates me
It has inherited my hateful soul
for once I was broken
now I am an empty barren hole.

>

Another rainy morning spent staring through
a wiper smeared windshield
hoping to beat the next light, no such luck
When that song, our song or what used to be our song
sneaks in through these worn out speakers…again
and I listen…like a fool…again
  
The emptiness returns full force and I feel sick
It happens every time and every time I sound like a broken record
“Turn the **** thing off”, my mind shouts at me,
but still I am unable to hear over the singing sadness
and the sound of my heart breaking all over again,
God I’m pathetic

So here I am heading to the station earlier than usual
at least the traffic isn’t so bad, I guess because roosters can’t drive
Who schedules meetings this early in the morning?
Obviously someone unaware of the benefits of a good night’s sleep
Well look there, maybe my luck is changing, a parking spot right up front
But still, I have a feeling this is going to be a bad day

Ducking from the rain I pause at an advertisement for the rail line,
“Where the hell is the sunshine and blue skies that poster is showing?”
I think as I enter the car and find a seat, which wasn’t hard,
there are only three people on here at this hour,
two old ladies dressed for church or the doctor
and a kid with headphones, sleeping, now why didn’t I think of that?

I pull out my notebook when I see her hurrying for the already closing doors.
I jump up and hold them open so she can enter.
She is soaking wet, but ****, she is drop dead gorgeous,
dark hair and beautiful light brown eyes, she looks up and says “thank you”
with a smile that melts me right where I stand
“My pleasure” I answer as she takes the seat across from mine

She opens her ipad, I pretend to look at mine, but can’t take my eyes off of her
Now engrossed in whatever she's reading, swiping a finger across the screen  
and then that smile appears again, I can barely breathe as my
heart tries to beat its way out of my chest. Dressed in a black skirt and top,
she looks like she’s just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine…
“Oh crap, she just caught me staring”

I quickly glance down to her ipad then back up to her gorgeous eyes.  
I feel like an idiot, or worse. When she giggles and says, “Poetry.”  
“Poetry?” I ask in a voice stuttering from embarrassment
Waving her device she replies, "I’m reading poetry, do you like poetry?”
“Umm, yes, I, uh, do like poetry.”  She pats the seat next to her and says,
“Come, sit here. Let me read you one.”

Maybe this day won’t be so bad after all…

I left my hand print
On a glass door this morning
And thought nothing of it

Just like your mom smoked crack
Like nothing of it
Or your dad walked out
To avoid the fiscal cliff
Of raising you

I left a hand print
Thinking nothing of Jared
The window wiper
Who makes half as much as I do
With twice as much
To lose

My existence to him
Is the effort he takes to hunch
And clean up my disrespect

Jared is seventy two
And has back problems
From "The War"
His wife is dying of cancer
And he stays late
To wipe away
My inconvenience

Jared will never know my name
I will never know Jared's name

Jared will never understand
Why some people
Can't just use the **** handle

I will never understand
How my daily actions effect everyone
Thinking nothing of it

Jared will work late
I will leave hand prints

But someday

I will wear shoes
Similar to Jared's

01:39 on a Wednesday and I realised no, it's not like the way water effortlessly flows down the window shield just to get swept away by the wiper

my love isn't elegant, and there's no point in me pretending to reshape it; think a hurricane, a tsunami, a natural disaster; think beds collapsed under the weight of too much love, think lips so raw blistex wouldn't stand a chance to heal them, think new memories being made everyday so that eventually you stop living in the past because your brain tells you this is it - this is what it was and what it will be [even if just for an hour]

put into context a shade of red somewhere between maroon and magenta and then throw it on a white canvas, see how beautiful it becomes only when it encompasses everything, when it becomes one with that paper holding it up; do not fear my love, please; let me spread around and let me be the one to give you colour, let the bleak melt away

don't let your mind wander to tape because i won't tape any holes I see or scars I run across; I'm not a doctor and never learned to be one

BUT, I will help: I'll be there with your favourite beer, there with neosporin in handy just because I've learned a little sting in the beginning is worth a lifetime of infection, standing there in your favourite shirt and purposefully letting you see that height is just a number and bruises are just colours of memories once lived

01:40 and I think I realised that somewhere in between being a hopeless romantic and being numb I've lost myself, bits scattered in blankets and sheets long laundered after me; I've realised that I don't know what I can and can't give, and I've realised neither does he

here it is: think. think the earth and the moon. think gravitational pull and how the moon is pulled back to the earth if for nothing else because there's some kind of connection it can't control. now think us, and tell me: is it not we're the Galaxy?

all the scenery was grey
cheeks and pink noses
carrying the color of the day
windshield wiper rhythms
passing dark bare branches
"you are my chicago"
not sure what that means
a friend that one day leaves
or the boy of my dreams...

Almost blue
like some stained-glass Christ
that never felt the saving sun burn
his caulked stigmata soft like
cinnamon toothpaste in the creek
bed.
Were his robes Robin's Egg, or Giotto
like the clergy wanted?
And when their fake pearl bracelets
rattled, fishing out cheap change
from brass-clasp purses,
did Christ stoop to gather
the sixty-something-year-old pennies
from in-between the arm rests
while they sifted through
the silver?

Almost blue
like a southern / western overcast
that never calls New York in advance
to schedule time to sweep up
the sky, standing on cold water flats.
Buys a Southwestern ticket straight thru,
walks past Madison marketing
her ***** underwear to anyone—everyone—,
buzzes in, third floor, apartment B-6,
but the door's locked, and the canary
curtains dance out the window like a house
fire.

Almost blue
like the Dawn dish soap
glass I neglect to rinse well.
But more like a lazy oil stream in a gas station
parking lot beneath the perforated banners
yakking in the still-cold March midday
about $12 sheet pizzas or unlimited
free coffee for $1.19 a refill.

Money better spent on a pack of Marlboro
Blues saxophone squeal by the plastic-
wrapped firewood by the almost-
blue wiper fluid and the antifreeze peaches.

I forgot how much you like to drive
You always said that driving gave you a sense of freedom
It made you feel better
Blasting your music and singing
The smell of burning rubber coming off the tires
The wind on your face when the window is down
And the wiper blades squeaking as they wipe off the rushing Seattle rain

Driving fast helps you breathe
Calms you down, helps you focus
Just continue talking to me
And drive back to me when you’re no longer sad

Today I went to a bookstore
A grief observed by C. S. Lewis.
Into a ziplock bag went this book, and
A quote from C Raymand Beran
--what is a friend?
I will tell you.
I drove the forty minutes along the dull highway
Lamposts like hovering, ghostly figures,
And slipped this package under the windshield wiper of your car.
Why is it that my own words can't express
What I'm feeling, so well as others do?
A-
For the tenth
-a friend
Those were my only words.
Your mother died eight months
Ago tomorrow, and here I
Sit. Selfishly hoping you'll speak
To me again.

You were as blurry
As the windshield
Of that passenger vehicle
I rode on just this noon
When I’m coming home
And I've waited for your text message
And I kept on looking at the screen
Hoping your name might appear
With you saying
You missed me so much
But it didn't happen
And it rained so heavy
The wiper’s dysfunctional
Causing the driver a hard time
Tracing down
The slippery road.

Nothing more than wiper slap -
smear light on a ***** windshield,
starbusting streetlamps through
pitted glass sliding
greasy on the bridge:

Every billboard passed,
every sign every whine,
every slumped leaning
off ramp neighborhood,
a blurred jagged vision
of what it is, what it was,
what it might be,
gone.

Though some hazy refracted,
gray on gray beam,
from out there, back there,
through the pupil to the retina,
focused occipital,
turned again into a shape
that wasn't hers to begin with.

But there she is,
behind a salt-crust window,
half-eaten by the blinding slats,
a perfect, distorted slouch
in a booth of vinyl bygones
off exit eighty nine,
with a bucket of fries
on her hands,
while I spit by
on a wet highway
to who the hell knows where.

the windshield wiper kiss
broke my wings

slammed on a sidewalk
in the fall

on the ground like this
I fade to ash grey chalk