Monday 27 February 2017

moonlit

I'm moonlighting bourbon into
the dirty plastic cup i keep locked
in the closet until such time
as it is warm enough for the roof.
cold enough tonight.
it tastes of the limestone i let
it run down like the abs i will
sneak into the dust to create.

what are we being punished for?
the caress of memory blurring
the metal structure of myself
to steam. shirts with funny phrases
used to line the dresser.

what have we chosen?
the life down to the tired
wire. and now taking time off,
i see it more. they are
raiding the cemeteries.
They are strapping bombs to
imagination, trying to take
bodies.

Above the street, i flex
and the boards flex, and i count
to 100. not good enough.

the bicycle frame is good enough.
old and bent, yes, but usable.
it hurtles down the streets with no bike lane,
wind skipping beats, the earth curving
down.

i am a thing they cannot take.
you are a thing they cannot take.
we will pierce and pull and paint
ourselves because, though survival
is not war, this kind of love certainly is and
i want my body to stand against
when the time comes.
I have learned to hold--


I had a dream they came for you
in the night and in a struggle
down to the ground i bit their throat,
and then bit down still further. my face
was warm with it.

In the morning,
i am slow to come
to, i am still taking my leave,
taking my pieces
back, gathering my
pieces.

I have shored my fragments
against this desert wind. closing my eyes
during commercials. laying
down to speak quietly after the sun
begins to sleep. we are
in this together, created things--
a decision-- hand on forearm on
forearm. send them right over.

I am learning to love again in the white walls
with desert plants living on the air
that seems to be strangling the world.
They strike ancient designs in wire and shadow.

I am in the car stretching
a hand on your thigh, finding it
difficult to say.

Can we get a clear picture of where we've come from?
The camera, built on itself,
swiveling on a now muscular neck.
I am not the pipsqueak or the nerd any longer.
A face to meet the faces you will meet.
The mirror too.
There are things i have become,
(and we all have)
that i no longer see,
Pieces I have chosen
that i cannot recall.

Friday 24 February 2017

reaction to the naming room

When the room filled with mathematicians and programmers
And the great hole of the universe began to loom so close
Above our heads that we could touch it, that it rained
I threw my jacket against theirs in the wind
And tried my hand in the great game
Of making a skeleton of all there is to know.
But when it hung perfectly against the silent rack
And all applauded my great head, I knew
The only thing I wanted to do was
Take a beer or two into the narrow hallway
Before the sterile bathroom of this great hall
And ask them to sit
And open the beer with my lighter
And take a sip and pass it over,
Reveling in the strange sharp incongruity
Of their eyebrows and their eyes
And focus for a moment,
Take all the wonder and fear
and all the things I do not know
And let them all out, if only in my eyes, and ask them,

“what is it like for you, to be alive?”

Thursday 23 February 2017

12/30/2015

A voice from another room
speaks of taking leadership
And over the bar a thousand fresh-cut
hairs stick down like resin
down a bee-ridden tree
Following on these stories, yet another
open-beaked hunger rides fluorescent
highways into a security gated palisade
Where two men fight each other to kiss.

1000 cd’s start to feel old when he is sad,
and though he cant have troubled himself with everything,
theres only one pen left with ink
and it lies where someone who wants to suck him off
sleeps. He crawls over shards
to get away from everything.
Tells every secret to his friends
in order to keep lying to himself.

Hold that terrible hangover in your arms
another hour, at least.

Nothing good to say,
Modest mouse’s rhythm lost
to scratching in the pile of recycling which grows
as large as the kitchen. Down boy.
This is a week for Christmas.
Tell your family to listen.
And when they tell you to get a therapist
Crave more dysfunction to prove you are alive.


CONSUME
You spent 34 hours working the past two days consume
to make it worth it. Oh you do not even know
what it is you poor soul. And when
you finally have free time, you sit in bewilderment
fatly and unhappily with your tired dick in your hands

Avoid the terrible dryer you walk past on the way
To work every morning
It always seems ready to speak.

Like opening your eyes to different scenes
You will make sense of these words
If you love me
Or if not, then if you love yourself enough
To believe anything you consume has meaning,
Then you will.

And when I say you
I mean the subjectless form that it is assumed
May approximate what is closest to truth telling
Here on the plateau in the desert on the plain beneath the translucent laminate space of the ocean

Some shifting octopus of necessary non-personhood
Some hide of tender nothingness

Will a Buddhist boss tell of the things Nietzsche would say when he was so frustrated from trying to sleep that he would bleed them into the steel ball of his typewriter?

Will a cannonball of a moment streak past the security of the ego
To glance with a smile at the girl at peet’s coffee who is called lisa after her twin who died when they were 6.
Someone should smile at that prettiness.

Tear down the social wall, Mr. chubby jeff,
Unrecognize the tragedy of an unclicked internet tab.
Your anxiety at watching sweet porn is never something love will find endearing and therefore spare.
Your horseshoe hairline will become a necktie before your sins are forgiven by a compassionate God.
Grasp your own fingers in your own hands.
Tell the stories of the pits, creases, scars, freckles, scabs, hairs, stains, smoothnesses
And then cry.
That is a salvation that can actually win the hearts of many,

 almost You.

Wednesday 22 February 2017

Derailleur

Greased to the shoulder
And pulling ¼ inch steel,
I am flexing masculinity in a helmet of sky,
Space monkeying my way out of tramautic
Groundswells at the baseball diamond, colored
by dropped snowcones red and blue,
the Baltimore orioles’ coach with a thick mustache
staring me down hours after his son had told me
I was going to hell, with a smile.

This is a form of prayer,
Breathing over a glass of high alcohol,
Shirt stripped, shoulders pumping
Against a machine I do not understand
With knees in the creek straining
 its way across the living room.

I have tenitis.
And the house is changing, room by room,
Floorboards giving way. aching as they have been
I thought I would be the first to go
Out of this improvised temple.

Gorgeously sad, this world
Has smoke pouring out of paul’s lungs
Who said he would never smoke again,
Graying the competitively rainbowed photographs
Along the walls to the dismal shading his former lover
And my former lover and nearly all who desire a shortcut
To power without power these days create of their
Politics of heresy and restraint.

The fork is bent, but has been for years.
Pitched me off into the concrete on
Some foreign street at a drunken 2am closing.
My chest throbbed for weeks then,
Every other day under the weight of a breakup
From years past, under weight of the bar.
But god, what pain! Thank you again.

My skin sloughs and folds,
Is wet and rots, frizzles, is thumbed away.
The chain that held the spiral is broken.
No longer suspended, I am
Thinking about the future with joy and hope
For the first time in years, I am
Bursting with life to create and weapons
Against smallness.

This is a form of prayer,
The nervous tearing between my toes
On the nights when sleep has decided to be a dream.
The knowledge of the gap between what is good
And what combats the feeling, the pictures acid morphing
Along the walls breathing large and twisting against
The ever imaginative night. Staying here, not running,
Being this too muchness, is a form of prayer.

In the first spring of cloud castle
I spread myself along the roof, though it was
Still wet with rain, and danced Eileen myles and
The new york poet fireplace into my new house
Through the open window. I imagined what it would
Mean to grow lovely again like a zebra tomato
Rather than revolutionary against everything.
Jung cries of mechanical stages like
The stink of old laundry, inevitable and shared.
He is right I think, though we are larger --
Much like the suggestion in the shape of a mug.
Not everything set is a setting sun.


Codex playing as we drive over the hill, the parents who will later turn theological, continuing the sarcasm of the generation they raised, who will later run for the high swamps of the Europeanized everglades always taking the L, codex is playing incessantly the hum and explosion of the pistons in the engine caught before being sent into space like some ship with highly human persons running from some things exploring others trusting in themselves to deal with whatever comes and I remember this sitting in bed with a ghost of my arm around her weight leaning into me as we drive by the metal structures of consumption lining the path between our homes and begin to cry as we sing songs whose words we cannot know whose words we cannot unknow and everything is happening too quickly the story wrapping artfully about itself like a sunning snake written about in some poem flowering and flopping and lifting gradually at a run off of the runway, the air of everything holding it up as if on promise, the promise of the huge world the great opening of soul and still reconnecting with and connecting with and living into the cavern of ocean. I am going to hell for this sex and poetry, for the men I have gotten fired and all of the worlds I have made without saving for their higher education. I am going to hell on a high speed rail for the lies I have told and all the people I have never been and the way through all of this rain I have loved it all and cherish its scars.

Friday 17 February 2017

trying 2

Amongst the curling smoke mountains,
Cosied into the dimpled chin,
Your unfurnished apartment
With a ginseng and lavender candle burning.

The sun is out today,
Snow melts in the shape of black ice,
A few hours ago, my car hood is stuck up on its hind legs,
Trying to get a light, or at least a drag
By the side of the highway. I smile
At the pieces of us the other does not know.

Because in the steam, faces wet
With something from the inside
Mixing indistinguishably with something
From the outside, inches apart, no space apart,
Quietly touching,
Warm hand, cold water, hot water,
Breast, knee, neck, cheek,
Dragging along the dew like dawn,
Blowing cool and refreshing across your body
Like rain, we are held, and seen, and known.
My eyes are dark rotating pools,
I feel them unspooling out towards you—
Filling the vacuum between us until
When I breathe, you must breathe,
And when you move,
I must move.

You are saying you see me working
The world over, processing and reprocessing
Like some old giant apple computer,
Like some black box math equation.
I am saying I feel my power through you,
Like the call to worship you feel in your bones,
Like the memories of trees that make up your trunk.

Oh the snow unmelted on the shadow side of roofs
Like your fathers narrow mouth. You say he is cruel.
Oh the narrow streets and big trucks of this town
Nestled in the valley, like your mother’s quiet listening
Eyes darting like hills and then touching clouds,
Cracking, rolling, unearthing everything around her.
Oh to know you like the thousand colored roofs of this town

Sprawling into the mountains. But you are not Scranton.
It is a shallow metaphor. And yet this light is you
These houses and hills, the history of electricity mines and railroads
The cold walk between the hotel and the only thai restaurant in the city,
The smiles we see, the plated windows of melted sand, pebbles, rubble,
Mud, steel of grates, the giant spruce in the courtyard.
Everything is you, fades into the sailing blue of you.
The glow and darkness of your skin making a barrier
When I touch it. I don't know how you are possible.
It feels like your skin encloses the whole world. I will always

Be pawing at that border between us, waiting to come in.

Thursday 16 February 2017

trying

There is a wind
Bending through the riverbed,
Picking up smooth stones,
Turning the shadow-side over.

And once it was great waters
Holding their breath
And rushing down the mountains.

And before that it was cold rock,
Aching as it grew,
Growing as it poured over.

You are the deep of the deep,
The inside of everything.
On my back is there is nothing
That is not him. But inside everything
There you are. Water of water,
Light of light.

Before me, there you were
Hot and cold, sharp and still,
Pursing your lips as you fiddled with an earring.
Speaking shortly. Your skin humming
Mystical sun. your heart collider
Making universes within the insulated tubing of your system.

Before me, I have no illusions, curving your back,
Notches lining up to the horizon line,
Opening that mouth that prays
Opening those eyes that dive.

You could’ve broken every heart in the world.
You could’ve had them by the throat and against the ropes
And glowing like dull embers beneath a flood of dirt.

There is a softness inside my animal heart--
It’s fur is raised now, but it purrs.

I’ve seen the look you get before you change the world,
The set of your shoulders, your loosened brow
And tightened butt. I’ve heard the deep breath in
And the quiet putting away of everything you need to
Put away. You wanted to hold the moon and shape the world,
You wanted to flow with the river and wend your way across it.
And you did not want to pay the ferryman.
I see you doing it, with eyes closed.

Tonight, you are mine,
Gravity-less, held,
Yielding the field to rain.
I am reaping the bounty of your rich soil tonight
Tasting the dark salt. We are living because
Of what you have killed to live.
We are laughing because of your crop
watered with tears. And we are futureless,
unbounded as the space beyond a horizon line.
We are angle-less like a child’s face.
We are swimming each other’s waters.

You make me come tonight,
Over the mountains to you.
I bear two stones that weigh a lifetime.


I race my fingers across your shoulders
“There is a home in my wandering—“
I am pulling you apart. You are pulling me apart
“It is you now. ”
Something between us is rocking with the pace of the earth.

and “it is you now.”

Monday 6 February 2017

obstructed state

Let’s read the moon digest:
History of human feces held in an animal mouth
Decapitated by the day after day.

There are pains in the feet and gut akin
Only to their source, carbohydrates milled
Under the intense pressure of a single entity.
The wealth of suffering is tapped,
And only a belief in its sanctity
Keeps me from swallowing the key
That can shut the door.

Willful and strong she blows,
Riding atop with my dick in her hands.
She licks her fingers and bows.

The thing carrying our shit yawns
Like the ocean.
Have you ever looked out to only blue?
That is where I find myself these days.

If it is single bolt action you want,
Paint it over with blood. You can take a few days
Off without worrying if you can afford the revolution.

Spring grows inside the season we are in.
It is like the future blooming inside the quiet past.
Like the flower in the tree trunk,
Like the churning eddies of flesh gasping and grabbing each other
And finally coming together 10 feet off the road
By the maintenance station for the gas lines.

These days the sky goes grey early
And if the warmth touches our skin,
We find ourselves inside, at work, with too much to do.
These days the nights rise late,
A dull hum barely making it out of the smog of evening.
These days I am grabbing at my back, pulling the ink,
Stretching the maple where my heart grows,
But it is not my hand at all, but yours,
And I am suddenly aware you are looking at me,
I mean really looking.

The sides of my charger are burnt plastic
From where I fell asleep on the electicity.
My thermal sheets are old and tearing,
And they were not enough, anyway.
Any hope of distraction is two hours away
And tomorrow I must tell my therapist I spent another
Week drinking and not an hour meditating.
Here we go with eugene oneil on the Sabbath.
I am sitting with lube that terrifies me in my hands,
Staring at an empty jar of peanuts and a set of dirty whiskey glasses
In front of a dirty wine glass in front of a dirty beer glass in front of a picture
Of my grandparents at 25 that hides the dying jade.
After my shift ends, my shift begins.
I am not getting off alone.

I do not need it to be clean.
We haven’t a clue where we begin.
Let’s hang our shit out to dry—all the politics
And non-politic. All the great poetry of us, damp
In the wind, cold. Let’s stand inside looking at it,
Nude next to each other, strong in the limbs,

Breathing too heavy to be silent, hands touching.

Reading after

This town is walking amidst fraying
Telephone poles and new
Hondas, toeing its careful line, hiding
Its red face. There is a hand reaching
Deep, rooting around its cemeteries
And office parks. How does google feel
About that? About its disappearing ink?
Where is the anger over tiarimisu?
Every root is striving here for the deep.
I have been inside her all the way.
Neither of us has a way to forget that.
When I want more
And she wants more,
We are quiet with the world,
And then we cry. There is a crumbling
Happening and the world must change.
We are home, but it is no longer here
To be taken and pumped. Every year
A little less in the tank. I love her

And this world must change for that.