I really don't think much of
looking at people's faces
I don't think what they are saying
Is interesting, unless it is weighted
Condescending? maybe.
It has to matter
to me
for me
to be engaged. Otherwise
I don't really want to keep
on speaking so I lose steam
I run on fumes and ration my wit
You'll see me bored and pained
Pretty soon if you keep me talking
I would want to shoot you
the line between me and the air around me blurs phenomonally
it's hard to tell if I am in charge
I wish it were that way
It's painful

the ****** next door won't shut up
they're laughing they're just moving mouths
mouths ripe and undeserving
behind the door
they'll shun me
the air is heavy and swollen
I feel it coming on, the pressure
a big blood blister a larvae
slumbering in my room above me
lack of time, ominous, foreboding,
I'll name him,
ugly and garish as a mcdonalds toy
taking up all the space
wriggling above my head
I hate myself, I hate the way I
carry myself, I am ashamed
of being ashamed
I forsake what I want

Precarious crucible
A lip on the edge
A tumour, a node
Surface tension,
On thought’s filament
Spike of zest
Rippling and full of wonder
Do I dare poke a hole
And admire what’s under?
Do I dare incise?
A line, a compromise
A rift, a drypoint line,
The burr is the red sea
Above an intense reef
Of life and death and
Everything in between.
A scarlet paradise
the visceral eden of the
pediatrician’s wall chart
that haunts every child’s dream
calls out to me as a mortal adult
the terror of the dark
itches just as much
as the urge to pull
away the flap and
see what light has not
yet graced
Do I treat my own real estate
like someone else’s property
And follow noble orders?
Or do I cultivate it and
Dig for buried treasure?
Hunt the beach, search for
fossils? Dowse for water?
Cleanse the land?
Slash and burn?
Carve out terraces?
I take my knife
I plow and explore.

I am not going to focus, in retrospect, at the awe of the fragility of a memory
This one in particular made me feel weighty and extremely present
And locked in with the air like a cast in plaster
The air moved around me like the tide on top of wet, gray clay
Cars passed like matches striking sandpaper
The songbirds were hushed and distant
The telephone lines sagged with the weight of the world
I was absolutely sure that the earth was not spinning
So I stopped and counted
Surely I could feel my heart beating
I could hear the water dripping
I gazed at the edge of the thunderhead passing by like a galaxy, a swarm of bullets
And an owl cooed, only an ingredient to the silent sauce
Like thyme is added to cooking wine on the stove
I hear church bells
The sky purrs and lifts, there are some flashes behind the hills to the right
But here by the hoarse gravel everything has a separate momentum than where that storm is now.
The momentum of waking

Jesus ******* christ
I would not let anything get in the way of my work and now
A face round and plain and full of darkness
Is in my thoughts
Mousey like Carrie
You would think she was strange too.
And I had a calm conversation
About weather
And then chucky.
There was no use to feign.
and I let my guard down on her.
Yet she's still there,
Why.
and I don't know if I can
get rid of her face
her two sunken eyes
lined with what? charcoal?
Her face was carved from ashes
She's something the moon would say
if it could speak.
What the hell.

today a dark 
sky is
   wrapping
itself around
my town,
squeezing
    all that
surrounds
in its strong
muscular
   hands, one
solitary crow
    manages
to slip free,
flies over
highways,
      streets
& trees,
I watch it
enviously as
it disappears
thinking
what I
would do
      for a pair
    of wings

celebrating bad things is
just as bad as
moping about them
things no one talks about
and this is all equally as bad
as shoving my idea up your