when god lets the gates of the earth close about me finally
how much time would i have spent here to know my worth
or would i be old enough to know what defines it
or what doesn’t

will I be touch starved, would i have filled that empty space
inside my heart
with the fiction of an angel’s stomach
or with fruit, would it be overripe?
and would heaven be preserved doves’ wings
hung made to like like it’s flying??

or just a very dark room
like my bedroom at night with the shades down
with violet air?
would I hear the world going on outside
would i hear trucks drive by
and would I hear my house being torn down
long after I died?

would heaven be petrified
like pictures in a book about gardens
and how they should be
when I know that what
the earth has to offer me is more beautiful?
am I a worm? Will I be a moth
in some two-sun solar system far away from here?
Was i alive before I was born?

when the earth comes about me like
the undertow, the ground drops away steep and cold
would I have been a good woman
or a bad man?

I too am touch-starved, my beloved
I saw your face on an angel’s stomach in my dreams
and when god let the gates of the earth close about me
, I saw you
wrapped in winter seaweed eyes and eels frozen
doves’ wings petrified mercilessly in the water
forsaken shards eye-shadowed like a two-sun solar system
marked like some amazonian trail tree, blazed with rice paper
wet paint, fresh and false and free, my beloved
c-shaped tunnel round about your eye in crimson, like
some caterpillared jesus bust
I retched your likeness into my lap,
, minty razor blades flying across my arms
glistening with human-scent to mimmick
god’s work with lucifer’s lust

I am within myself as each plant is within its fossil
In the calcified ****** that has both been life and when dead
Still given all it could, wearing the earth around it
in one big proud mouthful,
Someday I know I will similarly swallow dirt
And have it round about me like the
deep end of the swimming pool.
except I won’t see anything.
Like I see now, watching the summer taking place from far away
In my similarly chilled tomb making out only flashy bits of light and dark.
Flashy bits in all the horrendous people I meet, too.
Why do people of faith stay alive as long as possible? I ask myself.
I see myself as each plant sees its fossil
my night time yard stares at me like the bottom of a pool does
Vacant and yet enough eyes to make me shudder, so I turn away.
The world is continually assaulting me
And from what I can make of it, I can at least
Have the ability to dream.

As the rose garden is a thief to the day, I am a thief to it at night
I feel the earth, the soil still buzzing with the sun’s warmth
I feel the earth like a chest, the soil is the same temperature as the inside of my mouth, and I
understand I could be buried here and remain very much alive
I determine bees and insects are asleep (do they sleep?)
if insects sleep, is heaven paralyzed like this garden?
like maybe photos in a picture book.
and the bugs live for only a few days, science tells me,
and yet they beat their wings and know exactly what to do
if I had them would I know how just as they do?

I swear I can hear the clear sound of record static
Like snow falling loudly and quietly upon the mic puff
I can also hear the lights and electricity ringing
Like a group of lost hikers found dead in the snow in socks
The neighbors upstairs make knocking sounds at 3am from another dimension

sleep is a beautiful chore
awake is an attic fan lullaby
awake is cars passing by
awake is clothes hanging out to dry

when I go to sleep
I tell myself I’m digging in the cold sand
of that unfamiliar shore

never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers
never compare people to golden retrievers

1(Ilove dreaming.)2Why do you love dreaming?1because...1it helps      me.hah,decipher what to make of what god has given to me,.212Do you think god shortchanged you?1(laughter,sigh)1A little.2Are you dreaming?1I'd like to think not.

It is hard to get friction on the oil
It is hard to slit the leathery rind
The inside sees daylight for the first time
Like a mysterious jewel
And when the skin is gone you come apart so easily

it could be the end of the world. a cataclysm or catastrophe churns and the city could be a smokestack. with all the silence of a vacation cottage when it’s not vacation. even the people on the radio are gone. you enter the apartment and find one (1) four-legged entity. breathing slowly and wounded in the shower stall. she came in here looking for food but she didn’t eat any because she’s gonna die. she came in here to find a place to die. she chose your apartment. in the shadows, you wonder how (dogs? coyotes?) would get this far into the city streets at a time like this? a time like when? who did this to her? the clock is ticking, or was it the cross nailed to the wall staring you down? her ragged breathing disappears as if you calmed her down or let go of two smooth quartz stones and let them sink in cold water. you wake up.

feeling of a dunkin donuts parking lot
just after they closed on a sunday night
or feeling with my arms crossed
at the bottom of a pool

with all this heat
escaping
in all this cold
"it smells like something’s burning in here"
good

stiff is the flesh of rubbery, unripe watermelon,
strange and flexible as frozen laundry.
I dispose of it in the apartment garbage.

unnerving is the sleeping, sleepless city
eerie as an adult edition of I-Spy and equally unsweet
suspended indefinitely, creeping subtly in between
Christmas and New Year's Eve.

it was swell to think the city’s smell is less sickening
than the soulless scent of pressing forests of bristlecone pine
fertilized lawns now sterile with nature’s pesticide,
the crystalline flesh of some cold, lonely comet.
the forests silent and silicate as the moon’s lifeless surface
trees packed, cartooned and phobic, like salted fishes hanging
with no throb of night-dwelling insects to hasten dawn’s arrival
no sidewalk nor always-lit subway maw as a means of escape.
cause of death? no depressive episode could match such exposure;
the mood-numbing nocturne of the inaccessible semi-suburbs
marching off between the sentinel forests of the northeast.

twin gulls at the ready!
resting and fidgeting atop a rock outcropping
sister galactic spaceships from cowboy bebop
ancient cutters of the sky, cloud divers and dividers
efficiency is key, swiveling in crisp circumferences
feathered razorblade acrobats
mother nature’s surplus fish-killers
spend their days as lazy air athletes
never in the sea deeper than their beaks

from the cold road: houses visible (without wires)
entrenched in white snow: sherd forest archaeology.
car parked, bananas and bars packed, we hike.
a magnesium flame painting, freezing. a collage. a frenzy.
now, various floaters organized in armies playing war
or grazing, flamingo legs embalmed and crooked
and cooked, charred and glazed in a kiln, kin amid
the cold air, the ground is a movie screen.
the sun, sidelong, bruises our pilgrimage
and lays shadows in place to dissect and incise.
light like a plague, a pear flesh, a frozen swarm of locusts.
the forest opens, we reach aforementioned rural shantytown.
those houses when we parked and hiked to them
were not houses, they were barns, the windows, doors
all were painted in detail on pieces of plywood,
some big movie set gone missing (headline: found!
deceptive, chipping curtains hung out in the cold).

and why do those men build that fourth wall
shutting out the sky
bright blue ghosts chat in the moonlight tacked to
empty rooms, window holes, no heat
those repeated stem-cel rooms
a desk, a chair, a bed, who knows?
waiting in line for a purpose

from the cold road: houses visible (without wires)
entrenched in white snow: sherd forest archaeology.
a painting on fire, freezing. a collage a frenzy.
now, various floaters organized in armies playing war
or grazing, flamingo legs embalmed and crooked
& cooked, charred and glazed in a kiln, kin amid
the cold air, the ground is a movie screen,
the dancers become shadows when the sunset
made me want to go home, made my head hurt;
winter light weaving through the trees.
light like a plague, a pear flesh, a frozen swarm of locusts
or a woman walking in slowmotion, the day decomposed.
those houses when we parked and hiked to them
were not houses, they were barns, the windows, doors
all were painted in detail on pieces of plywood,
some big movie set gone missing (headline: found!
deceptive, chipping curtains out in the cold by the road).

from the cold road houses visible without wires
entrenched in white snow that made my vision dance
various floaters organized in armies playing war
out in the cold, the ground was a movie screen
the dancers became shadows when the sunset
made me want to go home, made my head hurt
winter light weaving through the trees
light like a plague, a frozen swarm of locusts
or a woman walking in slow motion, the day decomposed
those houses when we parked and walked to them
were not houses, they were barns, the windows, doors
all were painted in detail on pieces of plywood
deceptive chipping curtains out in the cold by the road

I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU. I REALLY LOVE ALL OF THE LEAVES AND BARK. YOU JUST GO ON FOR MILES. AND I CAN GET LOST, FOR REAL! I THINK IT'S ALL VERY PRETTY. BUT IN THE WINTER YOU MAKE ME REALLY SAD. BECAUSE YOU'RE QUIET AND SHUT. AND SHUT LIKE THE BANK ON SUNDAY. OR WHEN I'M ON HOLIDAY BY MYSELF. PLEASE STAY SUMMER FOR EVER. MAYBE THAT IS WHAT HEAVEN IS LIKE.

I’m slipping away
I am a warm rain of cold water
I am vindictive
I am passive
Push my face in the muck and move it around
I’m slipping away

Should I go, I’ll appoint you in charge of
Healing the hole in the ground where the tree
grew up for one hundred and fifty years

and I was dragged out of the ground
because the men in raincoats
and the beeping truck knew I was long gone
and I didn't

I lay down on my bed
curl up into a ball
I hear a door slam far away
No one is here but me
for the next few days I will have the flat all to myself
and a thought
of the sound of flies everywhere
A thought of the smell and the sound of flies days later

It’s a bright night out tonight
a bright light like the light of a dead sun
bright enough to read by, to write by
star-studded? five hundred years ago it was;
and now,
while the night breathes in moist magenta
entrapping apartments beneath a wall of
light
is it day or is it night?

it’s red or it’s blue and it comes
still shafts of color, placid and turbulent like the plague
like locusts through the windows, open
like a woman walking in slowmotion
as the night advances in decomposition
and recomposes itself when the clouds lighten slightly
and morning comes wan, not bright
is it day or is it night?

when I was too young to know the moon’s movements
and naive enough to think that the
moon could shine as bright as the sun
I was confused, on a full moon
if it were night or day
and slept in my parents’ bed in uncomfortable doubt
if it were day or night

and now I am in my own bed
and the moon is nowhere to be seen
it’s a wet night in the city
a greenhouse, a science experiment
of its own light, under the magenta clouds, illuminated bright
I know it’s night
but it feels
not that way
feels like neither
night nor day.

I know it’s wrong to feel
this way, the
fantasy of all of the
people in this world
who wronged me
all the people I could never trust
seeing them all
collected together all
the bad ones

Sitting still long enough for the
lights in the room shut
off on their own
and in the darkness
watch the carless streets
you’d think it were some holiday
I’d be dead too

I've stopped
putting my ear next to this conch
the city has grown just as quiet as the last
and I thought I’d find a cure here
I thought I wouldn’t get this way again.

I wish I could see my home being born
One of the stars I’ll choose when I’m
far enough away from here to see it

to think of people the weeks or months before they died
and what they were to you at that time
what they were to you
and then to think
what you are right now
at this moment
on a scale, how much you are trying for
you friends your family the stars the universe
who would be the one to think of how you were?

I have to remind myself things are changing around me
Even though I never leave this place
Even though these are the same walls always around me

The same riveters in the morning trying to close up the sky
With their rivet guns, their godly mission to blot out heaven
With blue tarps and steel
Building up the fourth wall around me and shutting up the sky

Today the air changed there was roofing material floating in the sky
pieces of apartment buildings flying around and leaves
The leaves, the trees were screaming,
It was like those home videos
of hurricanes

bone-colored clouds and the blurry static of rain like an old television
The rain passed quickly as it had come over me
Was it even there?
It was notable, I wrote a poem about it.

navy blue room
navy blue shadows creeping on the walls
and a navy blue shadow of a cross too
black chair in the corner
and an ok-looking sky
orange
outside the window
at this time of day
when the sun wastes
or night, while the moon waits
you could say
the white walls are just navy blue
“but they’re white”
you’d say
but I think they are
navy blue
the red rug too
and the brown chair
and the cross is something blue
you tell me all these colors exist
but I can't really
find them
that dress, is it gold or blue?
I just see it all
blue
for some reason
it is hard for you to see
It can be pretty too

I love rooms with natural light
And open windows
September mornings
When the air is cold and dense
And clean like running water
Running water fills the room
And washes it.
Above the town things
Start to stir
And cars, few, run on
The things that I love in life are few,
too.

I named her rayo
and in the mornings
carrying firewood
she walked beneath the trees
and never knew

I used to live near the train
It would come rattling in the darkness
like a wall, like a walking sledgehammer
like a guest knock knock knocking
with the slowness and inevitability of a flood
a steel flood
an iron ghost
flooding the room
shafts of light marching through the darkness
where to? who knows
always marching along
but you would never guess it was there
the grass by the tracks was somehow matted with dew
in the morning as if fairies had
come

it’s sunny as hell out
but it has that rainy day feeling
I wish it were cold out and I was warm
but it’s hot as hell out
and I’m cold

you can hear the cicadas
you can feel the sun
it's warm and it's cold
glasses set out on the table
make the light sparkle and distort
and you can hear him outside
building that wall and that ditch
he really has no care for the cats
he wouldn't care if they were hit
you see him reading with
his pile of newspapers
at night
falling asleep
he's been joking about life insurance
and dying
maybe that will save us
he says

the yellow air before a summer storm
the bright light behind the houses on the bridge in the morning
listen to the world work its jaws by your ear
do not hear. just listen

the empty rooms are stuffy and filled with dread
like a fruit sitting in the sun
and bright and dark all at the same time
like a fallen fruit swarming with ants
like the inside of a bomb
the doughtnut-shaped spaceship they found in A L I E N
or as simple as a reminder
a post-it note taped to the wall
with a dead friend’s phone number written on it

a house filled with light
an all-natural light sponge
a must odour
feel it on your back
smell the carpet
smell it like kindling

like a fruit sitting in the sun
heavy and full of dread
smell it, almost overripe
it may not taste good now, but
you have to eat it before it goes bad

sell that ******* house

a few
moths beat
quickly gently
against the
bright light
lost at the
end of the
dark street
end of the
world
goes out

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

for a minute it smelled like the sea
one thousand miles inland
it smelled like ozone
just for a minute in march in new york
remember when you used
to go to florida when they were alive

they want one of those little mirrors
that allow you to see inside yourself
the one dentists use
so they can check for cavities
and places where they're disappearing away

I can
not tell
who in
this room
swallowed
the music.

summer came and went quietly without a sound
and yet loud enough to drown in

and the news glows and grows dim
and glooms like matchsticks in the corner

I stare at the sky when it’s available

ruminating and things pile up
but why do I sleep so soundly still;
I wasn’t meant to

oh, it’s been so long
I like to fool myself but it really hasn’t
been long since we were in the same room
even if that room were outside; and leaves were falling
and cars were going by
but since then you’ve been
recent, and recent you will
always be

instead of surprise, people embrace in the light
love in the light, hug in the light
smile and look into it like it’s something beautiful like an eye
the sky is illuminated from below
everything is slowly illuminated and then quickly
plates shaking wonderfully inside the house
houses are plucked off the ground and shake into the sky
apartment buildings fall upward into the clouds
the electricity roars overwhelming
your hair stands up on end built on static
a last kiss before the end
learn to love the light, kid

I am the result of me for years
I am my own Sariel I erase myself
Like the soil like the sea
My brain forever marred by me
My mind forever stranger still
With every wipe more cracks and seams
The pain is gone but am I clean?
No;
And damage comes and goes
Conceived by illness as it grows

The night's liar heat outside my window
Do I dare ignore
The steam, clings on the outside
Avoiding this requires doing it once more

//I’ve rehearsed this countless times
well yeah I know shame alone
and each time feigns closer to something more
shame and pleasure all the same//

The steamy air is turbid exhale scary
And does not alleviate my sweat but I'm alright
I don't worry if my hands will slip
Satisfied I’ve done my job

//you’re spread right out all on the floor
strangely posed and spilling you’re calling me silent
now I'm alone and I want more
you’re my spilled drink and I want more//

I've rehearsed this countless times
And each a little closer and yet harder to clean up my mess
Before sunrise again again
Pretty soon they'll know

/again again pleasureshame
petty sunrise again again
each red time closer all the same
They are going to know./