she is the flat inspection failure notice
she’s in the red paper that you threw away again
she is the dripping air conditioner
she is the honeycomb
the salt of the sea
the smell of it in the heartland

she is the car that won’t start
and the ******* idiot keeps trying to start it
and it stinks and smells like monoxide
she’s the other idiot driving his bike
up the wrong side of the road

she is the overgrown rat hit by the subway
filthy and pitiful

she calls to you when you sleep
she stares at you in your dreams
in the life in that weird little universe
she knows you
she is your friend

you wake up and you hear
the world working its jaws
right by your ear
it’s her
it’s her, in the sky before the ****** storm
wet like a paper bag filled with water
oozing down walls
and up them, too
like kudzu
crowding out the other plants
even the bamboo
it’s her on the news
it’s her in all the mindless crap
you ignore and can’t live without

without the air conditioner
the warmth seeps into your
flat like blood
the cold air bleeds out and you
feel again
you taste the bitter sweat
you reach over
and turn it back on again
you go to sleep with it on
like sleeping next to an ice cube
ozti the ice man

she's shades of brown
mud near the lake
festering with geese
a scanner that will never scan ever again
a caffenated beverage
she's the wind that makes the doors shake
in the apartment at night
and you swore it was the way
she moved
and you swore it was your psychosis returning
**** not again
she's the grating sound of the indentured laborers doing their thing
at 7 am
she's the smell of your hands before and after you wash them repeatedly and needlessly
she lives in the paper that curls when burned
and in the skin too
she smells like cat litter
and ozone
and she tastes like 9 volt batteries
that may or may not be useable.

Let the lichen form on our backs
Sleeping like stones
Like the ill homeless
Like the trees
I don't want to forget how to speak
And fear I will if I don't for quite a while
And if I forget how will I
remember to stop forgetting

There is thoughtful space
Laid out between
The electric architecture borne
Of this inky evening
In the rain.
Same space I wish were born between
Me and something that speaks.
I want to regret. But I have nothing.
Thoughtful space is reflective;
A muted ocean. She's
On the television
A pounding hurricane
Of an especially thick
Window pane.
Frosted with warm water
Steaming with decay.
Rest assured I will be
Agitated for you and you alone
A destructive gift of mine
Tonight's the metamorphic day.

at night when you turn in bed with the lights on, it is
not exactly a garden, never a garden in the electric towers and canyons
the city never sleeps nor ceases to be, but never quite is.
it will do. for now
and at night, when things dim in low specific heat
everything begs you to do and you cannot do
a rest stop, a pause, you locked yourself out
and the fans whirr and stars turn and dim sidelong
you’re not paying rent here.
and stars whimper and beg beneath your shroud of night life
and that place, so far away outside the city, walls red with blood
and love and if you could say it that way, all the same,
you used to call it home, calling each time your mother speaks
counted each hole in the wall, remembered the rooms laid
bare and forgiven and relieved when you left,
you locked yourself out to be clean
and cast yourself into liminality

I went for a walk on a clammy november day yet hellishly warm for november

The sky was a mystery off Rockaway

The fish had all been dead all down the
tracks in the sand leading to the drunk fishermen less drunk than the sky

the town is dry and you can
look in the bins where the residue
lies, lies to you about
where the water was and isn't
and you still see the line where it was
and wonder that maybe it's still
in them, clear, like air, you
touch the cracked surface
of the plaster where it rained
and it's dry but your memory is
cold and wet and dreary