4

O ye now

This is thirsty work this here

tract of words is 

A damn cheat as if 

Yod ever fight for head pats

Ifn you'd fight for meat

Well damn on revolve it all

I love mine damn brothers

Hell yeah nothing

Death nah part

Rah

Frankly my dear I
Don't give a damn andd
don't a damn give as
I f rankly damn I

1.

Burn bright, campfire

Burn bright o star

These people in your warmth 

Sustained so. sustained all 

Near and far are well important.

And you are a brave, I say.

Through entropy, every

Influence you had to give you gave 

Your all, an untouchable neuroenergetic balance 

You lost, and I watched as

Your mind dried in a moment

And your saline shock reset switch

An enclosed system is opened

Suddenly, utterly, rent wide,

& then, black blank eyes as

I'm unrecognized.

"Oh he did fall suddenly

And now is basic somehow

His song cut out

In a brief sad howl,

His eyes did static and reset

As I looked on breathless"

Or so I said and
Did maintain.

And he slow regained 

Only a shadowed Grove

Of maple and elm from a root within

His former forest and

Regained it brave and man: damned

If he didn't just hold his scrap

Of self that's left up

High and wide and let

The water collect

On it

And feed slowly once more

His soul

For his self now

As he was

once for

Us all

2.

Oh no!  sing a toast to the rubber-legged: toast now the getaway car which sinks in eternity

And forever, for that runner was a clever man afore those few wild stumbled moments we witnessed.

Clever, before his rubber leg was installed, before his lunge at the car, installed by the hand of the law and I who saw only and even in such brevity of touch he says loud how in inspired moments far before he pushed all of us forward, he, he pushed paperwork toward an invention essential to some, but lost his momentum and belief, his lover and his keys, and several other things, he severed them, and lost these things by severance and wandered lost, now without information, now exclusively able to run through the results and lo! he is here, delayed by me for one instant only, my fault, he falls, woe is he so, all: grant him a moment of reprieve, let him watch a getaway car sink in the bog, blurry, only twenty two steps off, he doesn't understand, his femoral artery. Grant him reprieve, now, for a moment and watch him with me, with love, the getaway car sinks under the black sand, its movements defy him and he doesn't understand, but as we still stand, we still can

3. 

Obey my teeth, they chatter

A Frankenstein's monster its

Verbal with click semaphore.

Undertoned is Morse code as 

My lips do breathy pops also

I want to speak to you

So you broke a few more mirrors
Then kick and push through puddles till you fall
Dead center in your selfish sea and scream
Or was that allegedly me?

& so you let loose from you a few more friends forever
And lose all their breath just to move a risky piece
All across the town one eyed
And lay through screams in suicide?

Sunday is here in your monster
Here in my mirror
Here is my coda

The codex is simple
For hiding these easily hidden things
That one cares to know

Oh, so we are such
Simple creatures

Oh, we send important things
With ghosts for deliverance

LWISAGD

over time and in an out of reach place
some fucking mistik legend or other
past life heroic fantasy land make
heroin stand kill father fuck mother
be fireman be businessman never explorer
do not ask to be legend jolly red button
extinction level exists history goes over head
lamp out lightbulb explode sleep never come
synthesis love story some old sperm and egg
meet and fall in love in fever fuse blown
say nothing rattle tickets in brain stem
like an aloe plant severed bleed love suddenly

she makes heavenly slovenly me
she makes the breach and it grows upon me
love while i scoff and grow dedicated

your hand is two hands, your hat is two hats

your hand is two hands, your hat is two hats,
everyone socializes to a pagan rhythm:
we must place the flammable here,
and choose someone to drop the torch.

you may well someday place the rhythm in order,
place the order in rhythm, put the rhythm to chaos,
bring chaos to order, but in these walls

(the house rocks like a drunk, is present like
a shiny object in the street to the walking poor)

in these walls your welcome swells, slows, and stops.

you have lived here too much, placed an extra fist in the plaster,
and left the question's answer beyond doubt--

whenever you are too present,
you will forever be thrown out.
all this in the time a torch takes to fall.

the liquid shudders into flame,
tiny tidal swells erupt angrily.
this will burn a long time.
nothing can burn for eternity.

jarred human parts

you're gorgeous-
you're like a fist in the neck.
you're like how a foot in the ass crack
goes along with a gun on the back of the head-

you're killing hot, i'm dead-
and I don't know you yet.
you're all that I grasp and
the steam that's hissing from
every pore hole in my boiling
skin, and all that

is curing my ape habits.
so fix both my thumbs:
cut them off. save my
hands and cure them. save them
from being human.

I know you can do it:
you're gorgeous.
it all goes wrong, and i'll grab it hard
and hold on-

too much heat and my skin does blister-
but infallible by fire is my fetish for
the very loveliest of creatures

tambores de la muerte

goddamn dream deferred
is culling me

motherfucking dude
a city is ruined

so, in no remorse,
you exist.

getting yours to enjoy while
I'm in doom

alienating the
each and every

and mine mind and days
all but ground away

in funding the
life of gentry

and drowning bad
in a vacuum of kiss

dead mans float in all the bad senses
generated by this

nutmeg

owe me nothing
and still I am owed
by you. so many folks
owe me an ouch or
any impact.
some daft gesture,
some small crater, is all i ask.
just a bit of permanence,
all across the river
between our bodies.

so if I gave you a hundred friends
and all I ask is kindness,
well, deliver;
elsewise I will eat your strangulation,
you know who is first, now,
and if not I'll say so: I can throw stones,
then turn around and meet them.
that is who I am.

not knowing, as you do not,
the size and shape of the cork in this
bottle, can I blame you?
yes, I blame you all.
yes, I can hate you.
O, I can hate you well.

my my my
my my my
O my

it's expected i'm gone

even though some styles have guile
you're still so sickening in repose.
maybe the story's so boring,
pedestrian as you suppose.


though you might one day see the truth
I leave detroit entirely to you
since I seem to hate your new friends
since a trajectory has no end


the world is like a tree
a tree is like a person
the people act like insects
their world quivers as a leaf


packt of kool with the hoop holes only
ripped up on the road underfoot
noticing cameltoes in a michigan desert
is a mind of tar and soot

solve for ex

because the urge to get inside his head
and make everything seem perfect is so strong
the lad feels pressure to keep us from sad

the suffix -ness, he does not know it yet-
it's just our struggle
isn't rotten fruit all the time

and time solves everything.
solves it all. here where there
is salt vapor and saline

ocean, solvents too;
so solve it all, every mystery
hopelessly dissolved.

i will at least
dissipate while
still honest

is a life
preserver
of mine

we
are
4

tinker's cart

misery and company, tin can clatter.
o scummy rumbuddy, the tinker can't matter-
he's just another soul, here, but not hereafter--

all that's good i gave you then.
my blood and tears and voice and pen.
and i am left behind from them;
the man you took away from them.

sensing sweet relief,
i take 100 steps away from me.
99 and 1/8, i am to the tide line,
still and walking,
decrying signs.

glass streets

the words are in a crowd and
their faces are falling off.

the words are nondescript and
fuck each other without creating context.

the words no longer breed and
are no longer ideas' bastard seed.

the words are like murdered,
like murdered, um, baby birds.

can I have a new language. this one is herd.

collector

and so,
a hole.

that you dig
to get your prescription filled.

might as well
build a tower longside,

with the dirt
and the stones that you mined.

Absentminded

There was a system in place in my elementary school designed to reward and punish behavior among the younger kids. It seemed so well established to all of us that we never really questioned it; in fact I don't recall that it was ever made fodder for jokes, even after we had all developed our sense of irony. It was simple: gold slips for good behavior, pink for bad. Get enough pink slips and you were officially in trouble. Gold slips could be exchanged on Fridays in between classes for the kind of stuff you'd get for losing at the state fair or for putting a quarter in a red metal vending machine. There wasn't much variety in either the prizes or the kids who would show up in line every week. These were the kids who would grinningly wait for Down Syndrome Robin's wandering playground path to coincide with the Absentminded Recess Monitor's strict rectangle, knowing all the while that a gold ticket was certain to be generated. The ticket system was entirely based on the faculty and staff's subjective judgments of our behavior, and all of them were wise to this scam except for the Absentminded one, who either didn't care or didn't remember, and so would generate dozens more gold tickets than the rest. Down Syndrome Robin was a perfect mark because he was always tipping over in the sand or getting upset. Some of these kids, having figured out how this worked, did it for years, seemingly unable to get bored of the pencils, erasers, and pencil accessories that were available each Friday. There was nothing good that you had to save up for.

Pink slips didn't add up to much either. I suspect that they were more of a red herring than anything else. Maybe they were just there so that the faculty could adopt the blameless manner of the parking officer instead of constantly being forced into the role of ombudsman. Most of us avoided them at all cost anyway- there was something about being jotted down by name along side a date and a phrase like "stuck gum on wall" that seemed dangerous. I wasn't much for obvious disciplinary problems at this age, so I never found out what happened. Anyway, all it took to keep me within the guidelines of acceptable behavior was the shadow of parental involvement, and I assumed that the pink slips would eventually coincide with my parents. I only ever got them for one reason, until the powers that were took away super bouncy balls as a gold slip prize. I suspect this managerial decision was to correct the only behavior problem on my otherwise sterling record. They were just so damn bouncy. It was impossible to resist winging them down the halls or at the corners of the classroom. The little spheres of dense rubber were why I started sitting in the back corners of class, too: whenever the teacher turned their back or was at an angle where the activity was undetectable, I'd have a couple of clandestine bounces. Eventually, though, I'd feel the pressure build and I'd have to let loose, cracking my hand like a whip to give the ball a wild and unpredictable spin. Even though this action was tantamount to getting myself in trouble and handing my toy over to the teacher forever, I couldn't resist the couple precious seconds of pandemonium offered by the ball. Soon each teacher's contraband drawer was littered with them, and no one would give me gold slips except for the Absentminded Recess Monitor.

My friend Travis and I came up with a lazy little scheme that we would play out twice a week for her to keep us supplied with free bouncy balls. It involved a swan dive off of the playground balance beam, a painful landing, and an extremely helpful passerby. We'd trade off roles, and actually, we had a lot of fun with it, experimenting with different and always more impressive prat falls off of a variety of playground equipment. We were good; it was a sure thing.
The week that I went in as usual to trade in my gold slips for bouncy balls and bouncy balls had inexplicably disappeared from the table of prizes must have been tragic in some small way. I don't remember. It was a small school; there must have been something else dominating my limited attentions that week. Nevertheless, they were gone, and so was my discipline problem. I don't know how long the pink and gold slip system lasted either; it was only for the first, second, and third graders. I can imagine some parents in our relatively liberal district thinking the system a bit too overt an example of conditioning.

Fourth graders were not rewarded, unless you count non-punishment as a reward. An even simpler system was put in place, which we called the Wall. Acting up would earn you a recess-long sentence with your back to it. Acting up again would turn you one hundred eighty degrees. This punishment had no risk of parental involvement, but it was boring. Again, Absentminded was a great help. She'd forget where on the wall she had sentenced you to stand. This prompted wary wind sprints along the wall whenever she turned her back. Eventually this turned into a more violent mode of racing with whoever was in the lead occasionally diving to the sand to trip any close followers and send them flying. With the brick wall inches to one's left, and the constant risk of Absentminded turning her attention back to her detainees, the game was dangerous and fun when played properly. Travis and I played it all that year before his parents' divorce moved him to a different school district and we both survived the activity with only minor scratches.

One of the times I became a little less boy and a little more man was when I was told by a friend of my father's that Absentminded Recess Lady had been in a motorcycle accident when she was younger and it had damaged her brain in some subtle way. The accident had killed her husband and it was generally looked upon as a piece of good samaritanship that she had been given the job at the school. It took me a moment to process this, but then I had to laugh like hell, because I knew about all the fun that she was worth, and how we all ricochet around at angles so weird they seem random.

another fine way to be bitten by spiders

Keith's head seemed to be swelling, rapidly and painfully. Then it popped and he woke up and his head still seemed to be swelling, not rapidly but with a more certain pain. He was on his back and he was looking a few inches to the left of the sun. The dream he had been having had already trickled away. He tried to remember by closing his eyes, but the pain coming from his head and face had replaced it all, except for a blurring woman's face. And a thicket of some kind. And a small animal of some kind, maybe a bird. And a conical object. An ice cream cone? he thought. No, a torch. Yeah, a wooden torch. God damn I want an ice cream cone, he thought. And so it was that the last strands of the dream faded and were replaced by the information of the morning.

It wasn't the amnesia or the headache that was bothering him. He was used to the amnesia and the headache because he drank a lot. He thought of the amount of alcohol he drank as "a lot". A bystander would probably marvel at how skilled Keith had become at walking the thin line between drunk and dead, but Keith had developed this skill without noticing. He didn't realize that if he somehow managed to stretch his blackout across the rim of one more pint of beer or shot of whiskey one night, his liver would give up trying to purify him and he would piss blood in his sleep until his blood was all gone. His subconcious managed to pull the switch and shut him off and save him every night. But conciously he just thought of it as "a lot".

Keith's right hand was on something hard and rough and he thought that he was in the gutter for a moment until he realized that it was warm, too, and then he recognized the feeling of stubble on a woman's calf. He reached his other hand up toward his temples with the thought of maybe rubbing away enough of the pain to sit up and examine his conquest but before it got there it was blocked by a pile of something sticky. He brushed it aside and it plopped off the side of the mattress. Since Keith took vomit as a fact of life, he didn't think anything like "great, another bar floozy threw up on me in her sleep". But he might have; it wasn't a unique occurence.

In fact nothing about this morning was unique until Keith had rubbed his eyes and temples a little bit and sat up and groaned out a dry 'wuuuuhh'. In doing so, his hand automatically moved toward his left jean pocket where he kept his cigarettes and patted his thigh there. The resulting jolt of pain was enough to make his eyes fly open and send his sodden brain into adrenalin overdrive, which for Keith was a mode of functioning roughly equivalent to normal. He quickly ascertained the situation in this order: 1) there is a giant and extremely painful swelling on my naked left thigh. 2) I am losing a lot of blood from a twin hole in its center. 3) My left hand is covered with tiny spiders and several hundred are crawling in all directions from the softball-sized egg-sac-thing that I thought was vomit. His brain took in all of this and considered it while his mouth opened and quivered and he made small gasping sounds and held his hand up in front of him. Then, like an egg timer, his brain had a course of action worked out for him and he let out a shriek.

This was enough to get the woman next to him to turn over, sit up, and look at him. She blinked twice and shrieked, too. By the time the next moment was over she had turned perpendicular to Keith and pedaled her feet, pushing the bedding away from her and sliding up to a standing position against the wall in one frantic motion. This motion was enough to send the sitting Keith slowly tipping back and over and off the mattress. He had stiffened and was stuck in the sitting position with his hand a foot in front of his face. As his left shoulder headed toward the ground, his eyes changed to a deeper focus and he considered the naked thighs, torso, and finally face of his guest before his vision moved quickly across the torn-open ceiling and finally landed on the pulpy, red egg sac and a view across the wooden floor of the room.

By this time, Linda had already rocketed over him and across the bedroom of the squat. She had a single thought on her mind and it was of shoes: finding some, putting them on, being safe from the seemingly endless flow of spiders that was spreading like a blanket over Keith's head. None of the spiders had made it across the bed to her, she saw. In four seconds, she was mostly dressed and sprinting down the stairs and outside. In five seconds she had quit drinking. She wasn't the kind of girl that went to roofless squats with guys like Keith. It had been a rough night.

Keith had a single thought on his mind, too: he was happy, because it seemed he had fucked Linda. Linda would occasionally appear at one of his regular places and though he hadn't spoken to her before last night, he had wanted to fuck her for a long time.

four hours and eight months (indian giver)

what address or identity has washed
away the man-moth has eroded, too, been
re-written, the gift of his pain, the
spirit of his attempt to spread empathy, all
over-written by a fact or face perhaps,
all over-written until this moment in which
I see him again, the back of his head
is moving up the street, legs locked in
a path, northward from the center, the city
is denver, his hand
on a handle on a case, black, which fits
both his hand and a trumpet, two silver
buckles to close it, leather to bind it,
and I begin to follow him, locked step,
eyes forward, towards the red rock, time
is then being lost, this is a long walk,
and he is moving with all the stability in
the world while I follow furtively, eyes
forward toward the eyes which are forward
toward the destination which is more
forward still, and turns out to be in the
old city, the plainer city, behind a sheet
of plywood, through a hole in a fence of
knit wires, sharpened at the top, into
the dark, and I forget myself until his
blade flashes dimly and reached out to
open my forearm, and a small damp pain emerges,
to which my knee raises, to which my foot
is driven diagonally down, a noise emerges
from the hinge in his leg, and just the same
way as my foot knew where to look for his knee,
my hand, but not my eye, knows his face,
and in the only language of the dark the two
wetly and repeatedly communicate.

forty five minutes and four months (gift)

the man is unremarkable, except for his
left hand, in the path of a flame, kept
alive by wax around a wick, an old
technology, but effective, his lips
part and his tongue and teeth say
'feel this, this is a gift.' My eyes
impassive, this is an impasse, I
am no empath, still an impulse exists,
this is no exit, this is a gift, a gift
of pain and a tube of wax and a wick.

some pulp

lord orange in a carton,
lord orange in a can,
is lord orange saying "fuck you",
saying " so learn what you can".

so you think long to find a still-ripe slice
and you peel the skin away at night &
suck the pulp from the cells and let the seeds disappear
as they crawl moistly through the dark into the hollow of your ear.

then they help you to live a life always hotter
until the water in your body is gone-
they tell you to never, ever,
calm down for anyone.

even if you see a body spit out a seed,
and then your body catch a body all in and by the teeth;
well, shit, the wasted seed has made your heart and knuckles bleed,
but the whisper in the hollow keeps just like the spread of heat.

you have to look at the sun
with a telescope, when you are young-
and O how the male and female fire mate-
but you can only see it once.

after then it is just the color orange,
the color orange and the round shape.

1/10 of a day

in the afternoon, you too
change gears and refuel.

but bad bad blood
badly transfused
mixed with your metaphor
makes a regret-driven engine
out of you, supposed fool:

the bad bag of blood
seats you in the back
and belts you in
begins to take you up
and make dull threats
toward the landing gear

if you start to stand up
it's "don't you fucking dare"
but there is a way to get away
whilst tied to a chair
but you have to give away
1/10 of a day

it's not bad once
but it adds up, it adds up:

2 tenths, a fifth,
measure the time away,
a heaping spoonful
in a place with no name
it all corroborates
til' you can't stay awake;

this is but one way.

it takes only a first grain
to make a beach of frivolous waste
squeezed by the world
into the pearl of shame

because you suffered lust for
the tongues of the clam;
how they closed, dark and wet
all around your head and neck

this is just a note that says:
when you lose time that time is dead

I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes

try to stay still.

this thing is a process,

it is supposed to go-

you don't know anyone needs saving.
you can save everyone.
you can't save them all.
you can only save one.
you can't save anyone.
you don't know anyone needs saving.

don't jump around steps and quit holden on.

stay still and grow old. circles are closed.

day to day is not the way to play this game.

you can kill your soul, trying to save the moé.

this thing is a process- it is supposed to go.

therefore we think it best to let things die on their own.

the Seize City serial murders: ender's virtues

set stage: man with horn
set stage: man with violin
set stage: man with drum
run.

the rain like citrus fruit crushed
on the colander sky. This car is a lander;
its landing, a finger; the contact point
is not wheels on pavement;
it is a finger, white gloved;
in a long stroke on the moon;
condesention and tough love.

source: woman, eyes wide
source: man, bayonet hand
source: signature visible, corner of Wayland and Grand
source: waltz and march, game and watch, sleep and hunt
run.

the sky be witness; soak it up;
the ground be witness; soak it up;
this place withheld; soak it up; with this:
color a place; circle works-
square unstable, line unviable;
dark as one can but one has been trained;
trained to meet this demand;
make the void-ovum, put head and hands
and body inside, put head and hands and
body aside; still when one is soaked through
by the blackerthanblack; in the stillness
of this place which means calmness;
still, in this respite from guilt and madness;
where she cannot; here she is, to the left,
and backlit, backlit; a candle impossible,
her mouth moves where all is static;
in this vacuum of thought is this mind;
where all is silent sound comes out;
with no air to carry her voice;
with no body to carry her spine;
in this vacuum of thought is this mind;
speaking of to these crimes of mine;
speaking of choices; to live or to die;
run pogrom: "decide"

Yes son

I am in the garage finding my
good vice grip pliers.
After work, there is always
a bathroom fixture or appliance to mend.

the days, they have become years.
I am held by this routine.
today is thursday and
GODmurder, my son's band
plays fits and starts and seizures:
"with a gun on your back
you will make a pact
you will sell what you are
to who you can
nothing to no one
nothing to no one
nothing to no one"
most of their songs are about
weapons and suicide
though my son claims
they are about consumerism

I had to ask him for the lyrics
because of the way he screams

it reminds me of when he was a child
before we found his rotten first tooth

madrid

when we are in tunnels, in concrete tubes which hover under the city rediculously, we want to be still. we are in the familiar foundations of our very life's work, and we are used to these things being static, interrupted only steadily be the low rumbling of the train.

when we come to visit these places, our eyes roam hungrily over the concrete, stainless steel, posters, and plaster. these echo chambers say something incisive and succinct about this place, and we cannot make it out over the droning tides of people. we begin spending nights here listening for the message. perhaps it is only the arrival of a train.

when the station tells us nothing we look to the people, dissecting the covers of human books, looking for souvenirs of style or grace or arousal. we are truly tourists, then, looking for any kernel of truth to take home.

miles of corridors and train tunnels later, we have sharpened our non-belonging into something acute. we stay silent, obeying signs. we believe we are invisible, local, unnamed cells in the bloodstreams of a tightly coiled snake. we sleep here where the motion warms us and even begin to bathe in the spit and change of the affected.

when the city is frozen and the snake in torpor, the cold ceiling of our home is shaken apart. the spell of all these months broken. a thick screen of dust begins to encroach from above. it is cold and we have chased warmth all the way into the belly of the beast-machine. we cough and climb and are blocked by debris and circumvent. perhaps we can carry the poison away.

we exit the underbelly, feeling our way up greasy ladders. under emergency light the concrete tube has been paved with flesh. if it makes noise we lift it onto our shoulders and carry it over the rubble and dead into the cold wind and sun. laying down the groaning and oozing cells on the pavement, our hands and feet are slick with snake blood. "be you angel?" "no, only antibody." we are tired now and the bellows of our lungs pump a red spray coughingly on the sidewalk and we must lay among the wounded. through the very street we feel the snake spasm twice more and then lay silent as if it is dead.

lord orange

lord orange in an eyedropper
is citric ice-nine.
a twenty-minute orbit future to an ion;
both eternal and over.

lord orange is an idea eaten
in sections-
and it may be a life's work to find a slice.
it coheres once ingested, delicious and crass,
even past death the taste lasts.

lord orange was born
with his own idea intact.
his ropy strands of memory
connect everything nontraditionally.

lord orange the connector
joined the sky and earth with a hinge.
join me in supplication and when it all is open
he will let both of us in.

watermeter

you bring a dull grey
to a boil and spice it
on weekends, dump
a horde of red creatures
on a table in the suburbs,
and tearing them apart,
pulling their single intestine
out and flicking away
the tube of dirt, is tradition. a hound
is deaf, though, and
the local color is red
with veins of yellow.

the watermeter caps
the sewer and is thread
binding the roads
to our houses.

the tunnel connects
our kitchens, needles
of chlorine which
wash our bodies,
and runoff from
the flat and barren
miniature plains of
the dead.

bury me in snakeskin
shoes if I stand pat,
newspaper and twine
if I am debt collected,
I guess.

Refrigerators grow
out of a field, hanging
open, and ugly people
come here to be
beautiful. The horn
players had a tryst
but were washed to
Houston. Life is merry
and ominous, all smiles
and storms, in sinking cities.

organ donor

we was clapping our feet
all through the through way

way too willing to break
fire and live peacefully

spotted a beatnik squatting
under the over pass, we shot

not exactly at him he flipped
us off and as we sorta gasped

holmes had a foot on the break
and the gas and all fast

we flipped the car over
now we all organ donor

THE EYES ON TOMORROW

THE EYES ON TOMORROW
SEE THE MOUTHS OF TOMORROW
ARE HUNGRY.

SEARCHING LIKE BABY BIRDLINGS
FOR LIFE AFTER GOD
AND ELECTRICITY.

I AM A POET,
I WILL PUT OUT THE SUN.

THE EYES ON TOMORROW
SEE HINGES GO BY, TODAY,
ROOMS OPEN HOLLOW,

SEE A MAN WITH A PRYBAR
WALK PAST THE COAL CHUTE OF GRACEFUL ESCAPE
AND PAST THE SEWER GRATE THAT LEADS OUT.

ALAS, THEY ARE EYES, NOT MOUTHS.

love while i scoff and grow dedicated

over time & in an out of reach place
some fucking miztic lejjend or other
past life heroic fantasy stand make
heroin stand kill father fuck mother
be fireman be biznessman never
explorer do not ask to be legend
jolly red button extinction lever
exists history goes over head
lamp out lightbulb explode sleep never come
synthesis love story some ol sperm & egg
meet and fall in love in fever fuse blown
say nothing rattle tickets in brain stem
but like broken aloe plant bleed love sudden
so she makes heavenly slovenly me gradually
& i love while i scoff & grow dedicated

where my towel is

they scanned my head and chest
and found nothing wrong.
how odd, I thought, that this heart and mind
are fine.

three days ago I swore to my closest friends
that I would kill myself in three days.
I am so often the last one awake
with a working memory.

Hurt is not destroyed, I was saying.
but bridging this gap is like weaving a masterpiece.
then I asked my chemist friend about how a towel dries
as we walked around a sleeping town at five.

is it true, I asked, that the change is valence?
an electron lost and gained by heat in a chain in the breeze
all across a stream of moving air? one loses another gains?
the rubbed charge picks the molecule apart? breaks it up?

will someday dioxide tempt the hydrogen again? across what scar?
I have no polarity, carry no valence, I said, and so I lost my charge.
If I was Shinto I'd cut out my guts right now,
but they had mastered timing and I am just a white liar.

Yesterday I shit out a spark the size of a starfruit.
the lights flickered and went dead.
Morrissey, you fucking liar. Every filament has an end.
How odd it is to be alright in the heart and head.

to muscle grow a stone

the hands are rough and nicked up
the back and legs veined with the lift.

this is an abandoned city street,
the smell of burning garbage and industrial solvents
is light on the air. the half finished buildings,
cinderblock affairs, look down and live softly
shifting with lost or stolen pets or people.

how the boulder came to be in the street
I could not guess. The prometheus does not see me.

I squash the urge to help him for I do not understand
his mission, and, turning, I light a cigarette, his grunts deep and heavy, the voice of muscle tearing.
later it hits me: is that the center of the city?
a hammer of doubt at my back stops and I wrest it out of thought,
now I am going back to smash the rock.

she keeps pace

she keeps pace
with all that I say.
as we match our scars
they disappear for a day.

Angeline, I can only
keep you this way.

each trauma agreed upon
in a pissing contest
new yarns spawned
and we agree again.

what I meant was,
find me someday by
accident, under a truck.

take a pen knife and straw
and open my airway up.

this push you have
toward perfection
-close enough to touch-

is fucking sharp as hell but
doesn't mean enough.

all edge and bluff and cliff
and middle fingers up and
shouting 'so what'?

I came to light your face
not take away your tough.

Angeline, I can only
keep you this way.

I swear to god
on my death bed or his
I'll come back to recieve
your hatred.

I will act as if I was gentle,
surprised to find that change
has penetrated the glass case,
surprised to be cut by a clean break.

With my old eyes and
hands raised, giving you power,
trying to explain, I will say

'Angeline, I could only ever
keep you, this way.

the market was broken your
love was no good there
I had no where to put it-
nowhere'

rainscape touchbase

I am not the basest, but I know him well.
out of my own chest
came a demon: a sort of apocalyptic slum lord
and we waited together. I had a croissant.

Abnormally open, speaking in mono
there is a thing like a tongue that hangs
and is good for nothing. At times in dreams
he tells me why it is so.

A method and question and message
we spoke writerly and said with this thing between legs
there is no such thing as success and too much motherfucking
symbolism surrounding this damned world's edge.

creature feature

someone's always saying
how there's something
about her

a generality becoming to the
whole of your desires O are we not
easy creatures

then you find yourself bridling
when she names her favorite
feature

& evidenced by all the times
you do not call or write but
reach her

& all the times you do not call or write- but reach her

Al-Zawahri the terrorist

“My second message is to the American people,
who are drowning in illusions.
I tell you that Bush and his gang are shedding your blood
and wasting your money in frustrated adventures.”

if this is not wrong it is anti-american.
if this is true you are a bomb and a leftist.
mohammed and christ have left the building,
there is a sky beyond the ceiling which is also falling

as our two languages are dipped in glue and glass.

too damn white to have the blues, too damn poor for punk tattoos

STAGE

a white space exists with no face only defacement. a throne exists where the grey race sits.

ACT 2003:

if yr

attitude be leased

can you make th' monthly payment?

by credit card and cell fone

from yr throne on
the slave ship?

feed the dead to the sea or bury them in your basement-- feel guilty for dancing cool or doing a hand jive

ACT 2005:

throw us a rhyme at 100 beats a minute we's sit around and smoke and pretend y' didn't take it. because that's what being white is. anti identification. may be a father keepin' a slave ship in the basement, or a mother who hated her old neighborhood or a neighbor that burns crosses on your lawn a cop brother, a rich sister, a big anger--

whenever it touched you first it hurt and when you look at it this way there never were ever any good old days nothing has changed cept' now we're all sposed to be the happy maroon and we are all the slaves and the war is class but there's money to be made

the names on the bank accounts have changed but the launderers, the hidden executioners, the pockets,
these are all the same.

get militant, escape to nowhere, or be despondent--
fight and die trying or wind up chopped & processed.

this is just a short play at a coffeehouse no one cares much about. it's dragging on for decades and the audience and play are full of short-tempered children acting increasingly depraved. the curtain seems to be a germ some will call jesus. and all because of the whiteness we found from a false throne upon the slave ships.

ACT 2006:

"what happened to your concience?"

"they dragged it out of the car and beat it to death. four or five, knees and clubs, wasn't much left."

rubber bullet broadcast: presidential diarrhea

he says "..."

somehow. he can speak ellipses.

a small croak comes out of his mouth.

never heard Ché say that,
even between teleprompters full of bullshit.
its a slow leak in the basement
not a gunstock to the brain stem-
a hood over the head not a bomb.

the shock troops are tubes
for order out of chaos,
weapons who are many,
hardly knowing, as they harm-

this is how things are taken,
how small wonders become gone.

I spit. He stutters saying "freedom".

an after-advertisement ultimatum:
"with us or against us".

WE DO NOT HAVE TO CHOOSE: WE ARE THE MANY AND YOU ARE OF THE FEW.

at non effugies mios iambos, at non effugies mios TRUTH

jason shirts

jason's shirts
are everywhere,
partied off outcast yardsale style outside the
sleeveless dance party.

beer cased,
that brand new form of
self immoliating, being drawn
to the scene of the most

intensely available debauchery then
curled up like a child and sleeping
while we say hi to him
anyway.

we break bottles
and piss on each other, pretend
our piss is a weapon and tomorrow
never comes and later wonder why

jason is well rested and we
grew up dumb

chorus animus

you are standing in a field of cats' tails. they do not wave in the wind; instead the tails cut the wind and communicate to you; they seem to remember, prehensile and tendon, flesh and cartilage, the tails are soft and curve out of the earth; seemingly the same, dark and striped; "look closer", "we are different, but one" in a great silent chorus-- like an earthly anemone, you think. and at first it is droll they are soft and novel but here paralysis settles with a great and slow weight the sting starts seeming like only feeling home the surrealism circuit breaker blows and so your eyes try to open yet this is not a dream unless dreams are real you are still standing in a field of cats' tails-- "and the scythe-man will be on down the trail when comes up the bloodshot sun." "save us".

true stories of remembering dynamic instability

a certain true man exists who
must look at his arms
to know they are there
must look at his legs
to know they are there--
a glance is not enough:

he says he has to reason it all
out before his limbs appear
& before he can use them;
and when he sleeps he as
a whole, he as a total
is completely gone fully &

he does not dream

as we do.

his mortal coil
shuffled off slowly
because of a birth
defect.

at night he is unborn,
dead.

in fits and starts his
body

left

as if on a train &

he at the station

does not dream.

paid from the wrist

one thing one moment
or whatever this is
a koan for the wordsmith
who paid from the wrist.

his money was no good:
he had none.
"I open up my wallet
and it is full of blood."

in everything he made and said
he made circuits and paid;
loyally paid from his pen, wrist
eventually; begin again.

the price of sin, he said,
is on the collector's last friend. and so
then he died in their eyes
for them. and each and every

walk in the veins of the city
made it easier to put
the metal in, which he did
only for him. begin again.

rubber bullet broadcast: live live live

they found him
on television,

pulling down the tape,
trying to break
the film, jerking the
image out of the square,
reaching out
and screaming about
v-hold, trying to move
the camera, after the
shot was made, and pressed,
he snuck into the programming
in protest.

his rehabilitation
was long and trying.
the contracts, signed in secret.
the cameras, hidden, surgically,
for the safety of the subject.

and spiderlike
across the
fat of the land,
the broadcast.

eyes on tomorrow koan

some of us are possessed and something says
"go for the rest" to me; so we sing "admit defeat".

the feeling is stuck, but I got friends to tow me
if they can handle the weight.

sometimes, we can snap chains and kill winches
at times even I admit I lock the transmisson.

it is after all hard to tell the difference
between a cliff and a ditch
until one hits.

bottom: "some of us are possessed". go for the rest-
I here speak of a button who brought life to death.

blind

there is a place to go
when time is running.

away from the metaphors
of sand in hands and hourglasses.

where not a drop gets away
from your awareness.

each second held up,
held up to the sun and higher.

held up to the sun, and
more to the center.

a place to point telescopes
to burn out our weaknesses.

we will consider them together
where there is time.

snakebite

with my head down
on a desk,
the snake came
and delivered.

the size of
a subway train,
jointless lithe
and weird.

I didn't see it
until it was
upon me, its spikes
in my brain
stem, changing
how I think,
down to the
most basic
instincts, even
my acceptance
of distance,
my heart's one
rhythm.

no super powerd hero's
story, this; only
exegesis, no savior,
just a loss pure and tailored.

the sudden failure
of a mirror, a fading place,
I and I was there,
still innocent, but darkly different.

he must have
been full; I wonder
at the great meal
he must have
swallowed, and how
I could encroach upon
the territory of
the great snake;
a being head down,
motionless,
the last few breaths
of human blood,
mixing in my chest.

all i know

she loves her grandmother
because she is supposed to

the smell she tells
her girlfriends
is sickening

a love that is optional
is not unconditional

meanings are pinned
down and opened
at the chest

she loves me like rest

poor choices made moment

bootleg scriptures and spiritual snake oil,
belief boiled down and bottled to take home.
books burn in the background as the poor get warm,
eating ash and ink with a christ in the slum.

all over the world was one real time:
poor choices made moment.
two large in years later
we still cannot compare the prophets.

copied down by hand,
a conversation piece:
mistranslated,
good to eat.

shark fighting band vs. street fighting man

these men have a channel
one channel.
one room one night only
one one hundred square foot box energy.

these men travel. these men
have a channel.
more than a tune, a ritual
more than a noise, a rite.

the rest of us have unison.
the insecure are gone
but the rest of us cannot
touch the fire.

these men travel. these men
have a channel. more
than a tune, a ritual. more
than a noise, a rite.

admiration of focus
turns to lens and burns us
jealous. we exit pointless.
clutching sweaty setlist.

we walk, not travel. we
do not have a channel. we
do, but it is brutal disunion. it
is to draw back the fist and knife.

octaroon shoes: $109

always two sharp edges on everything
working like some stunted greasy mirror works
poetry picks shit apart and infests it:
kids burning maggot wood in a squat.

open your eye at the walls in there
try to be surprised that they aren't your ideas
two sharp edges on every damn thing, it seems
sure is expensive to be conscientious.

the kids are saying how it costs
money to be conscious, seems the asleep
would agree, outside. the worms in the wood
pop and steam.

bend your eyehole back to back the marionette transom fret

behind bent lines
curtain calls couldn't catch or everfalter the applause
when I was.

all war lines
falter blur and pause when I whistle walk along
I was

& girl if you ever put your self
in another one of my songs
well espionage
and be gone.

so waiting for exit
tapping a finger on the bill jogger girl joke killer grey air & grog
as I throw up the sign (dodge)
after every god damned meal.

behind, bend me a line
curtain calls could never halt catch or put a perceptible pause
on what I was