I really don't think much of
looking at people's faces
I don't think what they are saying
Is interesting, unless it is weighted
Condescending? maybe.
It has to matter
to me
for me
to be engaged. Otherwise
I don't really want to keep
on speaking so I lose steam
I run on fumes and ration my wit
You'll see me bored and pained
Pretty soon if you keep me talking
I would want to shoot you
the line between me and the air around me blurs phenomonally
it's hard to tell if I am in charge
I wish it were that way
It's painful

I swear I can hear the clear sound of record static
Like snow falling loudly and quietly upon the mic puff
I can also hear the lights and electricity ringing
Like a group of lost hikers found dead in the snow in socks
The neighbors upstairs make knocking sounds at 3am from another dimension

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.

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?

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?

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

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

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

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

you can hear the cicadas
you can feel the sun
it's warm and it's cold
glasses set out on the table
make the light sparkle and distort
and you can hear him outside
building that wall and that ditch
he really has no care for the cats
he wouldn't care if they were hit
you see him reading with
his pile of newspapers
at night
falling asleep
he's been joking about life insurance
and dying
maybe that will save us
he says

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

I have to remind myself things are changing around me
Even though I never leave this place
Even though these are the same walls always around me

The same riveters in the morning trying to close up the sky
With their rivet guns, their godly mission to blot out heaven
With blue tarps and steel
Building up the fourth wall around me and shutting up the sky

Today the air changed there was roofing material floating in the sky
pieces of apartment buildings flying around and leaves
The leaves, the trees were screaming,
It was like those home videos
of hurricanes

bone-colored clouds and the blurry static of rain like an old television
The rain passed quickly as it had come over me
Was it even there?
It was notable, I wrote a poem about it.

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.

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

I am 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

the 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.

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.

oh, it’s been so long
I like to fool myself but it really hasn’t
been long since we were in the same room
even if that room were outside; and leaves were falling
and cars were going by
but since then you’ve been
recent, and recent you will
always be

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to think of people the weeks or months before they died
and what they were to you at that time
what they were to you
and then to think
what you are right now
at this moment
on a scale, how much you are trying for
you friends your family the stars the universe
who would be the one to think of how you were?

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.

stiff is the flesh of rubbery, unripe watermelon,
strange and flexible as frozen laundry.
I dispose of it in the apartment garbage.

unnerving is the sleeping, sleepless city
eerie as an adult edition of I-Spy and equally unsweet
suspended indefinitely, creeping subtly in between
Christmas and New Year's Eve.

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

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

instead of surprise, people embrace in the light
love in the light, hug in the light
smile and look into it like it’s something beautiful like an eye
the sky is illuminated from below
everything is slowly illuminated and then quickly
plates shaking wonderfully inside the house
houses are plucked off the ground and shake into the sky
apartment buildings fall upward into the clouds
the electricity roars overwhelming
your hair stands up on end built on static
a last kiss before the end
learn to love the light, kid

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

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

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.

I named her rayo
and in the mornings
carrying firewood
she walked beneath the trees
and never knew

summer came and went quietly without a sound
and yet loud enough to drown in

and the news glows and grows dim
and glooms like matchsticks in the corner

I stare at the sky when it’s available

ruminating and things pile up
but why do I sleep so soundly still;
I wasn’t meant to

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

I can
not tell
who in
this room
swallowed
the music.

runny summer ooze
unlock the watermelon
and night hits neatly.

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

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

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.