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.

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

an awful poem is
someone that I see on the subway reading and I immediately understand
summer wind that doesn't need to be questioned
an item unboxed and used for exactly what it needed to do
walking directly from home to work and back
passing the fountain
not throwing a penny in
not seeing the child get it's shoelace caught on the railroad platform in Barcelona and getting hit by the train
putting a dog to sleep and leaving the room
crying

she talks about things she believes I wish I could do
I don't ask but she shows me her portfolio
casually sidelong I say between sips
"I am not running anyone over
But if you're in my way I will hit you"
and her expression changes from puzzlement to anger
I take another sip and flip her off

Sitting Seven for more than seven days.

I'll bathe. But no mirrors. It's better this way.

painted glass in the dark
black moon and now we've gone too far
I trace a path over your skin
and then feel the spaces where I'm thin

at night I have learned something raw. a new art. of closed eyes. sleep for me has become something pure. A substance without sin or dirtiness of being awake. or dozing in a red bed.

I could probably sleep on a park bench or a slab of stone. sleep with my head in a bucket all the same, undressed. I am just me on a slab of stone undressed. I am just me unchanged and unmoving.

when we moved into the new home
after the divorce, things were
still rocky, we had just
“left” them in the dark
still don’t address them, not a phone call,
not even
now, not after even a *******
deathinthefamily
they are like the side of a house
that never gets light
the side of the house against a cliff
and we live in the sunny sea side
windows open
they are threadbare ghosts
like an old wedding gown
used only once
moths also eat holes in my grandmother’s brain and she forgets things
but perhaps maybe she will start to remember
the reasons she loved my mother instead of hated her.
they live in apartments above beauty salons
and in oaky gentrified railroad towns
but I am a **** but I think
it’s justified that we cut
them off like a sore, well
it’s obvious. Because they
didn’t treat my mother
well at all
And that is
unforgivable.

Contains:
oranges

enriched macaroni product
(wheat flour, glyceryl, mono
stearate, niacin, ferrous sulfate
(iron),
thiamin mononitrate (vitamin b1)
riboflavin vitamin b2 folic acid)
cheese sauce mix (whey, malto
dextrin, corn syrup solids salt palm
oil modified food starch milk
fat milk protein concentrate con
tains less than 2% of tomatoes
milk mediumchaintriglycerides sodium
tripolyphosphatecream citricacidsodiumphosphatelacticacid naturalflavour* onions* tricalciumphosphatepartiallyhydrog
enatedsoybeanandcottonseedoil guargum monosodiumglutamate garlic**yellow5yellow6spicemalicacid enzymes disodiumguanylatedisodiuminosinate artificialflavour cheeseculturemodifiedfoodstarchmaltodextrinpotassiumchlorideacety­latedmonoglyceridessaltmediumchaintriglyceridesapocarotenal(colou­r)contains;
wheat
milk

forcing myself to say hello
forcing myself to say goodbye when you go

you keep saying the thing I am, I am something that won't will be, when we are something that will never not won't will be, and I agree, you see. However for the time it takes something I am, I am something to blossom, with all of the ways in which I can be, there is will for me to be. Whereas your will to not be won't let you will be.

when I get into my friend’s car
it’s hard
it’s too high above the road
and I’m not that good at stick, I’m told
I end up ******* it up
which is why I don’t do it

when I sit down and try to
write about my friend’s life
it’s too high above the road
and I’m not good at fibbing, I’m told
I end up ******* it up
For both me and them

which is why I don’t do it.

back then there were no
people sharing ideas
on personal monitors
people didn't like
talking about
certain things
but I know for a fact
yes there was desk writing
when my mother
was ***** several
times and her mother
didn't do anything
she didn't think
anyone would lis
ten so she cut
her hair and
tried her best
I know she did
no one discussed
things like that
no one called
the police and
the police were all
men who would
probably say
she was to blame
just because she looked it
the same men who
thought you could turn
offtheflowjust
likethat
the same men who
joke about handling
human beings
innocent, stupid
uneducated
"protecting"
I would not feel safe
even though
I am a man
I do not feel safe
yet now I am here
I am proof that
she picked herself
backtogetherallthelittlepieces
and walked on
she's stronger than
any *******
musclehead
policeman I know.

you left the window open during the rain
you left the shades open and now it's cold again
you won't open the door
I don't hear you cross my path anymore
I truly don't spite you
ok maybe I do
what is it that I like about you?

gifts that i have from people that aren't in my life anymore
remind me of dust in an empty jar
when we moved i planned to use it for something besides dust
but i never did
i was too busy living life
the jar is my grandmother
she still sends cards
well, they're in her name
dates for our birthdays (if she still remembers)
we visitted the cemetery and we found out aunt Coreen died
should i compare this to a gift from a past lover
a vessel for something dead
a pressed flower
potpourri
i don't want to think of the structure of absense of her memories
none of us do
that is why we treat her like a gift
of a past lover
locked away
but not thrown away

when I leave please do not follow
you may not know it when I go
but it will be the best to feel
I’m not here, I wasn’t real
I am the things that shine at dawn
I am my shadow in your lawn
I am the way the tree will grow
I am the way your friends will go
I am the way the town will breathe
I’ll stay with you, I won’t leave
I’ll drag you down, I’ll remind
that even now you are still mine
forget me then and let me die
I know it’s best for you and I

I am
I am given birth to
I sleep for seven years
I molt
I awaken
I breed for a single night,
It hurts
I have no mouthparts
I cannot eat
But it feels good
It feels very good
I am beautiful
I find love
I will give birth tonight
I give birth
Then everything closes up
My energy’s run out
I stop flying
But that’s ok
Let this vessel
Shut down
It’s long overdue
But that was
A fun night
Was it not?

I saw a thrush in the gallery
I don’t think it belonged there
It was haphazard and wrong
Although framed
And people addressed it in third person
While all it could do was
not flap

Well I thought it was beautiful

And reminded wistfully of sewn together promises
bandaged with more thread than cloth
It’s inevitable they will decay
It’s nature’s way

The way the thrush was nailed to that
piece of marble in the ostentatious
collection of other half-wit
dead things soaked
in the nighty marble
Frozen in time, limp
Placid like an
amber crystal like an
18th century lollipop
Like a dead grandpa
in an open-casket funeral
home in middle America

I saw a deer spine in the woods with
an intact head
She smiled at me
From the neck down
She was was picked clean; I was
reminded by mother:
Don’t worry, as I went to sleep
It’s nature’s way
The light was off but I stayed awake

I counted the stars and tried
to match them up with
all of the dead pets and people
in my life and they
matched
It was just about right

People leer at the dead thrush
Expecting it to do something
All it is is just is

People leer at the heart and
expect it to do something
All it is is just
Holding my bones together
Holding the wall together
Like a loop in the knit
Frick archives
Like a syllable
In the Tanakh
Like a stone
In a stream
Like a star
In the sky
It’s nature’s way.

I swirl and swell around
I should be doing work right about now
For my college course
"film colour", something
Google doesn't cough up
Paper crowds with conversation
Faces emerge after a very
Long hiatus
I am proud albeit
Self concious that in a week
I will return and see this
Curiously expressive crowd, I'll get perplexed
"What the hell was I thinking?" and
Retreat.

You're a bird
With a string
To me you
Sew the sky
together
With more
string than
stars
in the early
dawn
Unknowingly
When things
die
You put the
sun away
And became the moon

Everything is strange
I say as I
Stand alone in the
Backwater subway
People are strange
The way they behave
When they see
Open things
They shy away
Open like the broad day
And the snow somehow
Gets down through
Those vents
And piles up in
Here underground
And in the no-access
Places behind cages
People look at you funny
When you have something
To say
People are strange

What I am to you
New me, think of
A me that is
The doubt keeps me awake and makes
the nicks where I shaved my face
smart like
cirrus clouds
New me
I'll ignore you

What I am to you
Old me
Cough syrup
Heavy and pathalogical
Social

New me: think of
A fresh scalpel
Sterile and ready
To use to do
the ***** work
For the next you

i exist
i exist
i exist
i bleed blue blood in a bucket. i am a sleeping child for seven years. then i am a molting insect. pain. i have no mouthparts. i am beautiful. i only live for a single night to breed as an adult. i am a mother. i can taste the melancholy atmosphere. everything dies eventually.

It's sad to know I rely on a stupid thought
This itchy feeling of being asunder
Makes me wonder if I must be
Obsessed to dwell on you
You or the thought of you?
Your legs or your head?
And I hear your presence race
Over the incessant owl asking me
Who-who who-who
you make my face red and my heart pound
with the heater on and the curtains drawn I shun the sound, around
The room like a ghost, like a big
wooden beam on my chest
Or a heavy hide, a bath of heat
As I lie crucified in bed in the light of the moon
the thud-thump thud-thump like a crow
You make my fondness of you grow
To the point where you are indistinguishable from the thought of you
Who-who who-who
And that's something I don't want to do.

You told me I was wrong
I nodded and said "I am wrong"
And I am
But
You still have my uncle’s guitar
And my uncle doesn’t know
After telling me the story of how you found
A guitar in the house when you bought it
And sold it for a lot because it was rare
And my guitar might be rare
And you are gonna tell people
He never asked for it back when he left
Or what about the sweater-jacket thing I gave you
That probably still smells like me
Or maybe it just smells like you now
Or maybe it just smells like ****
Because maybe it’s in the swamp
With the guitar
I’m not going to ask for them back
And what about my virginity
I won’t ask for that back either
Nor will I ask for the months back
So, we're even (And if we're not please let me know)

I think I may have dreamed of her the night before last
I forgot to write it down, all I remember is that we might
have been in the house that belonged to her, it was wooden
and orange in the interior, great Japanese beams of ancient
blessed wood, and was on a hill above a lake, maybe, and al-
though I was not consciously thinking about it, but noticing
the details as if it were a friend's house, near my home, and
I was there for tea in the afternoon, when the shadows begin
to stretch before bed, and her face in the orange glow of the
setting summer sun, just as sweet as the coffee that I could
have had, when at work she asked me to join her a few months
back.

On nights when I'm not awake
And the times during the day when I fall to dream
I tear off my skin and play alive
and laugh with people I never knew
do things I don't normally do
and conspire daring pacts with
people that walk by, people I never really say hi to
when I'm awake and out in the gray midday
wishing the world was mine and mine only
(And in the morning while I lie awake
I think to myself, if that day I finally find someone sweet
I may ask them to bash in my brains to mincemeat)

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 wonderful sweet gray
The times I actually don’t stare lowly at my feet or the cracks
Slender gray cheeks of astronauts tilt and question the same sea that cradles me
And different shades, some warm, some cool
And 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 wonderful sweet gray

the concept of you fills the room like a cloud, like
hot air in all the rooms in the house, even the atti
c and through the eaves into the evening, you ma
ke me shake, you swell around, make the air quiv
er and glimmer like the phone lines, you can go u
p and touch them, but they don't speak, and now,
all i am is a draft while you were a candle that ha
s since been extinguished and gone out.

Morning words that taste so sweet;
But your anticipation hides a hiss that won’t leave
And my attention will dwindle, too, like last night's sky's suicide
For this morning’s indifferent wanness.
Yesterday’s problems precipitate on the porcelain sink,
and I think,
while it pours outside:
What you’re doing is eating at the pillars, perhaps your intent
Might very well be testing me like the Ocean tests a new continent;
Your questions propel with good intention, but miss
And I drift between my own strange questions
Looking for solid ground in marshes of dissonant longevity.
I watch you in your corner of our motel room as it stretches away from me;
Your fractal world crumbles into embers like the end of your "bad habit”
That’s now mine too, and ever since I’ve been washing the red out of my T-shirt
I’ve been blue.

Morning words that taste so sweet;
But your anticipation hides a hiss that won’t leave
And my attention will dwindle, too, like stars committing suicide
Problems precipitate on the porcelain sink and I think while it pours outside:
What you’re doing is eating at the pillars, your intent
Might very well be testing me like the Ocean tests a new continent
Your questions propel with good intention, but miss with bad-rap
And I drift between them aimlessly making no sense of the roadmap
And where my home is between fun and love and longevity
I watch you in the corner of the motel room as it stretches away from me
Your world crumbles like the end of your "bad habit”
That’s now mine too, and ever since I’ve been washing the red out of my T-shirt
I’ve been blue.

Sixteen songs have passed
And sixteen separate landscapes to wipe your hands with
And as I dream at night do I consider it
That a part of this doing is my half

Sixteen songs later
Sixteen quiet throats, yet I keep my mouth shut
And I shamelessly enjoy the gifts you give me
When we go to bed before I dream

Our love is in latin, it won’t last

Sixteen exhilarating chases, games, ever-expanding radii
Like irises on a road map, we flower through the countryside
We are an aneurism, we yell at walls, and we laugh
Sixteen family tree autographs

Sixteen sad songs, suicides, sixteen songs you keep on tape
Their last words bent into screams like pictures on TV
My dreams have become my trial
Seventeen’s my last

potpourri of stale disheveled grasses,
arcane and forbidden mouse holes, and masses

of leprous bristlecone pine, acid atmosphere, of venus.
sweltering, permeates gold, naked, anti-shade crevice;

torn from digested fence to digested fence.
a seething sneer in the canopy, turbid herb scents

(of spring, or morning, or rain, have since
been mumified to accompany summer’s rescindment).

and ground-dwellers, caterwauling, as this eutrophic sea
is the ulcerated stomach of a carnivorous beast.

lust drives the ferocious field,
scorching as automotive steel.

you gave us the sign when you
turned  off  the  porch  light  an
d we swam into that summer n
ight in Holland and we were gh
                           osts which I enjoyed because it
                                             was the closest thing to being
                                                 a person I was ever going
                                                                ­   to be.

his sentence, it was beautiful
for everyone to see him
locked away for years and years
hanging photos on the wall.
he perfected the art in prison,
nailing photos to the cell
and hoping nails were hurting
even though they weren’t.
his stupidity, it was majestic
thinking things he sought offensive
were jokingly forgotten.
Creative, Enticing, ****.
a pity it would seem.

a crow is just
a vice that holds the sky together.

A violent room
Feeling lonesome
A cadance, an essense
Gnashing leaves
Shh, be quiet
A cat shrieks
The bed creaks
A house slams
Silence

my house is a ship & it’s sinking.
there’s water in the cellar, it’s flooding
back into the bog where it came from,
back into the soil where t’was planted
and all the lovely things that happened inside
will soon be consumed, so join for the ride.
no one marks a house with a gravestone,
it’s just a bitterfield battlefield skeleton.
sh, you’re going to blow out our candles
with your coughing & your moaning.
and all the town came to watch us drowning
sputtering, blaspheming, and dying
on a place long ago they were divining
for bedrock by the hedgerows.
the photographers were solemn
beneath branches all but forgotten.

i’m laying down with a
book on my neck
and your ghastly temper shook sarah’s branches.
the way they shook was reminiscent of
a code or some secret recipe
lost in the universe
like the way shafts of light
roll across the dust on a table
or the way the hawk cuts
the sky in half over
the barn
incalculable, it would seem.
your anger, too, shall pass.
so i roll over in bed and wish i was buried.

an entertainer in the empty street.
ghosts fly through the attick, it’s all useless.
guitars play in the chasm of the street.
houses lean like matchsticks, there’s a difference.
you are a thing that never was and i,
i am just a something that won’t will be.
violent room, and i feel lonesome, i
want you to know i am campaigning thee.
a sad song, shut up, be quiet, no one
will hear violins on a sinking ship.
but, if the ship is sinking, sing sad songs.
well here, violins for a sinking ship.
but, the dog was seeing colours, all day.
and when you sleep, you dream, you feel okay.

don't be a poltergeist that goes bump in the night;
can't catch you on film if you put up a fight.
i know ghosts that can scare, but that's about it.
what are you gonna do? frighten me to death?
and quit disappearing. it's very annoying,
especially since you never tell me where you are going.
just stop haunting my head. please start haunting my bed.
or don't even bother haunting at all.

when the sun winks, and
you shut the door
tell the kids to come inside

slithering serpents, a fantastic show
flicker in the twilit sky
like the tongues of Hell

and
everything surges and fries
in the house, for a moment
like a haunted hospital
like in the movies

when the power's out, and in the road
passerby light their candelabras.

when the engines quit their mechanizations;
when the poles settle down for the
big
long
nap;

and the smallest calculated bearings
of your pocket compasses go awry
from that great fire on the sun

and 100 years is lost in 8 minutes.
you are what you left yourself ready for.

i guess it's true you're all the things that i
wish i could have been,
but never quite accomplished,
never quite become.
is it true we mend out clothes with
pieces of our past
and exchange them as gifts?
things made for lasting.
there's a little extra something to your smile,
something stunted in me for years
is now been awakened awhile.
i don't know what it is, but i've feared
i'm becoming something new,
something made of me and you
and what i fear
is fearing what comes near
will hurt me again
so
please don't do that, dear.

there was an interesting
night to roam; to be indoors, and
she knows she'll never be upright,
a nuisance;
i am actually a big difference
between what i have been
a great deal with.
so don't try to get me.
we're just imperfect
and you, a crippled horse.
and if i had the time to get a free
chance
it would not be worthit.
hogwash, like the vista cruiser
forgotten in the kudzu.
and in the brambles do you question?
what does it mean to matter?
if you're no better than what you envision?

i feel the same doom a bee in a jar
feels, an
idol in the path of ivy in the yard
and all
i could think of when you left
is when you entered my car,
and we smashed faces
and you couldn't contain yourself.
but maybe i've contained myself
too much now,
and so i guess i've set out my furrows,
counting the withered stalks
until january
and hoping (in vain?) to smash
faces again, when
you return.