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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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'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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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 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?

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

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'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

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.

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.