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.

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

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.

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'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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

you never listen and i
i am just a nuisance
to you so nevermind
what i said yesterday
it's not important
anyway

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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./

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

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?

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.

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

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’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

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

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.

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’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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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

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

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.