Do you realize what you’ve done you have
conquered fear of the darkness so all there
is is bright light, you’ve drowned out all the
solemn hymns and prayers there is no need
to pray now, no need to weep or question or
wonder really, the monster under the bed is
gone, the house vacant, all the delusions are
cauterized and pacified and put away with the
summer, soft as a shadow, gone and put away
and canceled out and neutralized, there is no
need to call out to mother anymore, there is no
anchor, there is no question, all has been
answered and now not needed

after supper rent a box of matches and light them one by one on the stoop, catch the air on the edge of the corner of the paper the day was painted on, a glitch

catch the night on runways of pale red dots, embryos of magnesium that burn bright and hot and overwhelming beneath greasy live wires dipping dangerously low in the road

5 or so best days in a year and
this is number five; is it not
mundane you say you don’t
look both ways, I pretend not
to want to either to shed
the child’s hesitation

we cross the street and play
the chiaroscuro keyboard of
cobblestones and garbage in
the tomb of shy light beneath the
last great green of the year

I look back half expecting to
see myself on the
other side still palsied gazing
upwards a stillborn spectator
trying to catch a dying cloud

monday
the midday is about as filled with stars
as people that I think I might care about
but the brightest Venus
can still be seen if I try
coming up on the next episode: bet if I do

leave before I change my mind
leave complete; do not leave yourself behind
that's the worst thing you could do
and neither I nor you would forgive you

If I could get out of bed,
I would
If I could enjoy my meal
I would

I should, I tell myself
I should.

If I could write about things
that Other People talk about
I would
Things that win little red ribbons
and sit framed on walls in offices
Things that get into books on shelves
Things that make Other People
applaud
Things that no one is afraid of
Things that don’t make little kids cry
Hell, I wish I could

I really, really should

Instead I choose to hold myself
down and confess my
mediocre feelings that
don’t make much sense when read
but so much more when written;
weird india ink discharges
Ill thoughts
Shards of neurosis
And no one would care to enjoy it

But to confess one final word,
I’d always hoped that of course no one
would.

:this is the way you wanted it:
you wanted your power to end
you wanted to cry about it
you wanted things to fall away in burning
heaps like fat cooking
you wanted your children to die
you wanted it to be sad
you wanted it to be written down before it happened

you try to wash the red oil away,
you try to wash it off your hands
but it won’t come off
you won't let it evaporate.

I want something sweet;
although beneath that there lies
a labyrinth of desires.
A blizzard, a whiteout, through
which I squint and
cannot see the edges of what I truly need.
It is but a mass grave of mixed-together bones,
bones of rationale; mothers clutching children
pressed into the soil by Mother Earth's loving hands;
this week is the kind of weather that should bring forth cicadas.
Suspiciously they have yet to emerge; so the
city has bloomed,
and bloomed once more.
And yet,
remains quiet as before;
As quiet as winter was, the stillness lingers.
Sure there are birds and people, but no wind, no
thick honey summer storms.
(what were we expecting?)
The kind where you shut your windows
and my windows have yet to close.
They have remained open,
like the mouth of a baby bird,
waiting to receive:
To fulfill a
Want
or a Need.

turn off the ac
turn off the fan
open the windows
don’t hear,
do listen
turn off the light
turn off the lamp
turn off the music
close the book
lay down
close your eyes
notice things

deep ocean steel
challenger deep steel
abyssal
like a bulkhead
behind the temple like lapis lazuli
fleeing something
the closest thing to life that isn’t living
i’ll put you up against my flesh
and compare and contrast
fleeting images of cold rainstorms
and flashes of light
flashy blade
from far away, a signal
candid steel
lucid steel
halcyon
mute sensations in a cathode ray tube
except in exactitude unmatched
and louder than the loudest
vocal cord vibration
and silent too, not a breath
escapes the hostage
with steel against its trachea
unsolicited speed
home run
thrown into the wall stud
luxurious scentless tasteless
and so rich and tasteful and sensual
if I’m in love with you steel,
I must be a necrophiliac
or not

switchblade little cicada abdomens beat like any old heart a la mode
& all the more graceful
were they not there the air would falter and wander/wonder in lazy eddies shedding the loveliness of sound they provide, in the heat of the day
mini sydney opera houses, screaming, consolidate on a sultry afternoon in June.

there is that swimming hole we used to go to we don’t
go visit no more cause it reminded you of
the time years ago your uncle stepped on a
dead child sunk in the sand like a stone on
that bottom cold murky and dark that
swimming hole with the one dollar
ice cream sandwiches she had
possibly been down for
hours no one even
looked for her so
sweet and white
like a
quartz

the swimming hole we used to go to we don’t
go to anymore because it reminded you of
the time your uncle stepped on a
dead child in the sand there on the
bottom murky and dark at that
swimming hole with the
one dollar ice cream sandwiches
on the bottom that had drowned
hours before no one
had looked for it

do you ever look at me and
wonder if I’m really listening
or writing;

And while you cried and kept on saying
“I killed the owl”
or, the “Neighbor did it”
I regarded myself as something that
should care more than I did

And when you cried when
he came and lived
in every black volvo in town
called you when you weren’t home
Three times - “I love you”

I regarded myself as something
that should care more than I did

I was the one who found the dead owl in the shed
and now you think that you killed it
and it feels as though I did
even though I didn't

the greasy man with the beard and the ringo starr glasses pretends to talk about people pretending to like things because they pretend to understand them and I pretend to listen and I pretend to ignore him

I sit eating lunch alone. On TV there's that professor that died last year. You can see the liver spots on his head move. Still talking.

I chose this cinematic hell
However wide or narrow the day feels like being;
And all the while feigning leaving
Cause I know I’ll return very well
In the depths of June when the morning lurches
Into day, and all the wordlessness
Leaks through my fingertips
In quicksilver rivulets searching
The boiler of this house is no more than an attraction
And what does it do? Powers whimsy and pity
And what powers this house? Frigid electricity
Plain old, plain old, and nothing remotely passionate
It’s fake, dark, miserable, whimsical turbulence
And my jealousy stands in the way of anything
And everything done right is just so utterly wrong
Impatience lingers like a wildfire glow in the distance
The phone never rings. Do these hands belong to me?
But worst of all, why won’t they do…Do anything?

feel how fat and drunk the air is:
(it makes my head hurt real bad)
insects fall under the weight of the world in lazy spirals
the trees are doomed
eveybody's gone
you and I lie in wait beneath the blossoms in our car turned off and the air changes static, the rain is coming
the tree will explode and it is imminent
the deflowering
A flurry of shattered flowers
spring came and went too soon
I'm depressed and I don't want this

I woke up to slamming doors
There are too many people doing things today, parents and their kids out walking
And mouth breathing
They're in the way
Idiots
Someone threw away my driftwood
It's a cloudy day, but the light's too bright and everything's too loud
And slow
I want to sleep until it's night again

I lie thickly on top of my bed listening to the fan whirl waiting waiting waiting for you to call but we know you never will.

Today I broke into the subway and took it to say goodbye to you
Your headphones were awfully sharp when we hugged at the airport
The sun was really bright and before the train came I ruminated in an overly hot sweater
You said you hated this place and you were never coming back
Please come back

When I’m dead my allergies won’t bother me
I’m off, alone somewhere
Don’t come because I already left a while ago

Closing the shop at 5 it feels as though I’m turned off too
Listening to the machines turn off is disturbing
The cars running stationary and music blaring
I’m sorry if it seems this way, but I don’t quite love you anymore
I want to get to know myself. And I really wish for that to be ok
I hate spring, I hate hate hate it. I really do.
I see people enjoying themselves, I don’t get it.
You’re mocking me.

the unapologetic trains were where we took shape like flightless shadows baboons searching the narcissistic night

the orchards and yards dunes of shifting hulking shadows of cold riversteel slick with oil like blood on stone

we whetted and sharpened our hands and skills as craftsman of sharing things and knowledge with eyes reflections in the starlight

in the places where the shadows come and go and carry things in two directions right or left forward or backward like time itself

greedy hiding in wait beneath the shadows in valleys in the canyons of technology too tall to see over yet we used it to our advantage

and crisscrossed the orchards shifting like rivers shift the landscape with time with each passing dawn and dusk and everything in between

smoke gutted the places where we hid and slept stomachs bursting with nothing arteries flowing with everything wanting so so bad

like stories shared hopped between our backs like hot things handed to each other in the winter like our backs on the backs of the freight trains hopping the rails

I walk now in the valley of death of fear for the people I think I killed but I am not sure if I did or not or left them for dead and it's dark and I am scared

only my god can help me if my fate was involved in their comings or goings or love or anything that influenced them strongly

When the bright light happened
The clocks stopped and the power was out in the town was lit by rivers of candelabras
We knew it was getting bad when the water reached the elevated trains and we couldn’t leave the city
The empty platforms dead and nailed to the water like catacombs strewn with suitcases being eaten by the ever-ash
irrelevant photographs scattered like flower petals after a rainstorm covered in white
God, it was so beautiful
Like a dead child frozen in a snowstorm
The most beautiful thing I ever saw never meant to be seen, glory only saved for divine eyes now given to me as a gift
Iron split like matchsticks
Heads attached to corpses like burning torches
Then the sky was illuminated with the love
The wounded ground opened
The inferno would burn for three hundred years fed by rivers of lead and arsenic
We spent 17 days off track wandering deep in the sky canyons of doom
I held your hand before death reached it
Before the soft death could overwhelm you
And your eyes like the eyes of the sun gone dim in the stolid atmosphere
I held your rivercold hands and washed you in the ash in the firelight
I read to you and held you tight
I could not let you go but you did before I knew
I would never forgive you for dying

I want a cello bow for my bass.
it's 4:11, I can hear the rain whistling
in the grooves of everything
all that I can see is being rained on
I sighed to you and immediately regretted it and
didn't want you to notice me
the way the stones stay wet as if to sharpen a knife
but it's not scary
when I (wake) I know I will be tired
but it will be soft.

Between asleep and awake, dear:
what I write now is it's own lovely prose
When theologians lit candles and wrote in the darkness growing
Something hidden behind the day's normal light glowing
and edging its way in the drone of the elongated shadowfield tinted magenta by the summer light
Something important isn't right
I stay up longer and longer and my eyes grow wearier and darker
I sit silently or when I lie I toss and turn like the surface of the sea
And the things around me shimmer and crackle
And I hear them coming, coming for me.

it'd be nice to sleep so soundly
that nothing would make me stir
quiet like the quietest forest mushroom
i sit here anxious at night and watch the trees grow and touch eachother
the aspens sense one another
i look at the lofty world and watch it reel through my window clouds passing by
it's so peaceful the way fungi advance politely in the basement
i sit here in my bedroom watching trees grow
someday i'll
leave this thing behind
it will beautifully swarm with ants
it will be too late, i'll be in the stars

i am not home
(oh, I know You’re Me)
only the Best words come out when I am half asleep
but the best memories never seem to come back.

I love you for all the things you didn’t do.
And you blamed me for everything I took from you
But maybe you did, and maybe I didn’t too

And now all I see is someone else and feel my hands get all fuzzy
snow piles up in the subway
Tthe man stared at me, I don’t have anything to say

There is a line I cannot cross so I leave for a while
And I feel strange, I feel forgetful
and I feel uncomfortable.
i am not real

Double moons above the reservoir, a photograph inside my head
I think about it this morning before I go off to sleep
And rise again, and do not remember it
Until the early morning when it comes round again

Double moons above the trees in a low pressure green
A clear night that couldn’t be photographed once but twice
It was a drive-by shooting, a hit-and-run
I captured a hot ripe moon in stressful motion

The two conversations, young and hanging heavy
Limp sentences not bent by fog, only by motion
Two animals breathing and beating in the stolid window night
They mocked me and yet told me to feel at ease
That duality is unnatural, but okay.

What's the opposite of haunted?
I left work today and saw a ghost in the afternoon light in a vacant classroom
It filled the room like a soft voice in silence does
Like something was just born, or something was close to dying
It was strange not seeing a bed or a curtain in there;
Only the strange blinds, the reflective wood floors and drawing benches stacked like stones
The avenues and streets fileted out beyond the dusty windows like a sarcophagus in a museum
I wanted to enter but willingly decided not to
Because if I did I was afraid for that moment I spent breathing at the threshold
That I would never leave again.

I'll walk on Sunday and see all the faces;
And think of how strange it is to be having one
And pairs of eyes, and pairs of legs walking amongst each other, taking it for granted
I'll look down and watch their feet move like swinging boats by the sea
And dogs which move like thin cloth in the breeze, fur that isn't all there
And poles moving past me
It's too bright to not squint nor walk upright
Nor speak without stopping. So I don't bother.
I'll see pairs of eyes stare at each other and then take a kiss;
take it like it never existed before, and think this will never happen to me
And the rose for granted, red and tainted with a different species of dementia meant for dainty things
I will never experience that rose not on my own
But I'll pick them myself, I will harvest them on my own accord
And push my fingers into their stems
And taste them and wonder, if this is what love tastes like
If this is the crux, what it amounts to
And how normal it is, and how indifferent
I will walk by and pretend to be nonchalant
But my interest in red still lingers.

I am a broken toilet
Spouting crazy ideas in the basement of some brutalist mansion
My thoughts gone lurid, growing on the whitewashed cement into flowery moulds.
I am a scarlet stain on the ceiling and I am loud and furious and I reek of guilt and decay.
editting editting editting becoming becoming becoming
I am an alpha particle.
Writing writing writing down everything.
I am a ray of light.
I cannot tell if I am real so I feel my face.
I am superfluous, overdone, like a Christmas sweater, Rococo, overtilled to the point of erosion.
I am last night's espresso into this morning.
I am twenty strange projects
and I scrap them as if they were funhouse mirrors.
I am shaking like a leaf.
I am manic and I am happening all at once and I can't ******* stop.

I'll lie with these rhythmic flourescents hanging
pushing light on whitewashed walls poorly painted
And dully sunned palms outstretched and drooping
And steven spielberg sinks charcoal tainted
I watch everything from the 17th floor
The sky a lackluster pupil of a mare
The magenta air is a chest just before
taking a breath and the city is just a breath taken
And the world slowly just...happens
Like bees building structures for their children a wonderful catastrophe
Like a roll of film falling off a cliff and unwinding itself
Or rather dividing and dividing
Winding itself into new terrifying and **** beautiful things
And making and becoming

When it rains cold I let the rain in as a guest to the wood shop and let it in as if it were I was a ship underwater, breathing, soaking it in. I let the freezing air circulate around my body. I turn off the lights. I open all the windows wide. Turn off the fans. Listen to the cars swipe by like matchsticks. Like daydreams. I am a lucid daydream. Japanese joiners used to wet the joints before placing them together, so that they would dry and become inseperable. But when it rains houses don't fall apart. They settle.

runny summer ooze
unlock the watermelon
and night hits neatly.

I am one hundred thousand water droplets
Leaning fast on the oxygen like daylight over the cemetery.
I am that very light that forms parallelograms
In the sun dial of your bare white room in the rail town.
I am the child that falls and does not break anything;
I am the child that falls and gets hit by the train in Barcelona.
I was never yours.
I am your reflection in the back of a fish refracted beneath your lance
Ready to dart away. I am in the air of the prison vents
And in the vents of the court room just before that
And I precipitate within the dew on the monuments years later.
I am the parallelogram of light that falls
On the empty side of your bed after the war.
The same that forms infinite trapezoids of myself as the days wear on
And draws all over your walls in the evening and morning light,
The same that encapsulates the motes of dust that are not mine but yours.
Unfortunately you will have to understand that I am no more
And strangely so, I never was.

I'm alone and my eyes are on fire from the brightness of two on a sunday
I wonder what I look like, unshowered, abused by the wind that strangely doesn't affect the tree branches but sweeps up the tiny Chinese lady on Myrtle.
Presidential?
There were no mirrors for a while
People sat shiva until they figured out how to bathe and polish metal
Before the Greeks or Romans
I didn't look in the mirror this morning
But it's more than that
How often do I really smile?
You see, this is why I can't stand
hearing my recorded voice
Let alone see myself in a video
I'd never be able to do that
Without feeling equally ashamed and dissociated
But half of me eggs it on
The mordbidly curious half that likes seeing gory horror films
Come on, I want the cold hard facts.
I want to know the icy truth
Just like the Sunday afternoon wind.

We come out of the movie
Just the two of us
I don't love you
The sun is setting
But hasn't set
Trucks lean as they turn the corner
We are quiet
There's a park wrapped in shadow
"Let's swing"
You make me swing
I swing
how come you arent scared
I don't feel scared
I am scared

The sky’s a shade of lost gray and maybe lurid blue someday
Something sweet, so tell me what I want to hear
Leaving me to question whether I should stay or swim away
Or live life in this gleeful gray
The times I actually don’t stare lowly at my feet or gaze into the cracks
I look upwards, albeit sidelong at faces of this sea that houses me
And I’ll come by different shades, some warm, some cool
And find different ways of leaving and watching those who have left be dead
It's not quite appropriate to be living that way, in a sea that isn’t quite gray
The worst and greatest blessing is to never know
Something sweet, so tell me what I want to hear
Or leave me wondering if I should stay or swim away
Or live life in this gleeful gray

I am the wood shop air compressor’s pediatrician
I sit and wait in the pure darkness for it to stop
Grudgingly accepting this strange meditation

And in the street there is music on someone’s deck
Audible over the corner's relentless groan
And I can just barely make out voices

I’m a mountain climber in a hammock I made
hanging in a crevasse
And every time the sun is at that sweetspot
3:00
Just above the crack
it's a bit warmer so
I open up my bag and grab my pen and paper
And by the time I’m halfway through,
it’s gone and already afternoon.

The moon reveals herself effortlessly like a switchblade
And I’m at the bottom of this rose-coloured fishbowl city
That reeks of stale roses
I dodge the shadows and the light at the same time
And walk among them in the alley, my feet a compromise
I resist the temptation to be lured and then interrogated
By overhead bulbs
And out of the shadows, out of the Marianas Trench a cat calls
Ironically speaking an actual cat calls to me,
Desperate but cautious and controlled all the same
Hesitant like an oldish child asking for gifts from their “Santa”
The callous guttural sound draws me like a mockingbird draws birds of every kind
She’s stuck (but not lodged) in someone’s yard behind a chain link fence
Elevated on a wooden palette, a splinter sewing machine
So all I can do is kind of pat her head and stroke it with some fingers
And try to “pet” the lady
A woman with black and white spots and no tail, I’ve seen her before
She strides in under the magenta lamplight and enters the yard
I don’t
It’s the yard of some poor soul who thinks it belongs to them
They might yell at me if they see me
The frail one, she’s quiet now
But she won’t purr, we both know that
I, uh, say, “Look, your friend’s here,” or something, and point to the woman
And I turn around
She’s still quiet and peaceful as I leave the alley
I shut her up for the owner.

I'll trade this night's sleep for daydreams
And lay with all the lights on to keep me safe, terrified of
daydreaming. The earth intercepts contact with the sun. I'm dead like the apollo astronauts were dead when they slept
when they were behind the moon and lost radio contact
and if they didn't sleep they probably daydreamed
I'll daydream with the moon, she's much nicer to me
More lenient and a listener, not a talker
With a pillow over my head
daydream about terrifying things
like people's eyes
like the way I shuffle and move in real life
in the giant elongated body
with the hair and glasses that don't belong to me
I can do certain things deadpan
But I will stand in a party and tremble
then I go to the bathroom and
daydream of me sleeping forever

the intensity of the past month has been so fragile like the surface of something that I can't cross like plastic wrap like a bowling ball on a trampoline the niceness is unsatisfactory clouds passing by the air is cool and warm at the same time everything is happening to me is this what happiness is?

Let the kudzu blossom over everything in grandma's yard when she's in the hospital
Engorged on her dead husband's car
Fruits scattering seeds and dandelions and spores
There is a certain doom for the idol in the path of this mess
Plaster eyes gazing solemnly through the nettles
It's the same doom that
A bee lost in a room feels
Like me trapped in this stairwell
Quietly observing the stars

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