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)

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.

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

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

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

I'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 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.

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

at night when you turn in bed with the lights on, it is
not exactly a garden, never a garden in the electric towers and canyons
the city never sleeps nor ceases to be, but never quite is.
it will do. for now
and at night, when things dim in low specific heat
everything begs you to do and you cannot do
a rest stop, a pause, you locked yourself out
and the fans whirr and stars turn and dim sidelong
you’re not paying rent here.
and stars whimper and beg beneath your shroud of night life
and that place, so far away outside the city, walls red with blood
and love and if you could say it that way, all the same,
you used to call it home, calling each time your mother speaks
counted each hole in the wall, remembered the rooms laid
bare and forgiven and relieved when you left,
you locked yourself out to be clean
and cast yourself into liminality

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

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./

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

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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

Contains:
oranges

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.

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.

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

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

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

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’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.

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

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.

There is thoughtful space
Laid out between
The electric architecture borne
Of this inky evening
In the rain.
Same space I wish were born between
Me and something that speaks.
I want to regret. But I have nothing.
Thoughtful space is reflective;
A muted ocean. She's
On the television
A pounding hurricane
Of an especially thick
Window pane.
Frosted with warm water
Steaming with decay.
Rest assured I will be
Agitated for you and you alone
A destructive gift of mine
Tonight's the metamorphic day.

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.

Sitting Seven for more than seven days.

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

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

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