last poem

the moon crisp like paper,

cold puts her lips against my neck

voices of this sad night

sing the end is near

yellow eyes following like headlights

as the city slips past me

pray until these bones

will break

until these roads will turn North

and lead me home

back to something that was

years of soft breathing

and the gentle creak of muscles,

flexing and stretching together

as the sun rose

the ideal lover

when I am hungry
you
feed me

when I am snoring
you
silence me

when my butt itches
you
scratch it

short lived as a moment is
is it not empty, profane love?

that word - profane love
to it I pay my debts
every line is stamped

a moment exists
breathes, likes us, 
goes on. 
to it we must comply. 

for some reason music

does not sound the same to me

as it once did

lyrics don't seem to

punch me in the gut the

way they used to

the connection is flickering

I haven't really put my hands on the piano in

a year almost

the spark has turned external it seems

realizing that

the things I write poetry and music about

that happen within me

don't grasp me

I don't find myself an interesting topic

the way I used to

that sometimes I can sob about my insecurities while my

brainface goes completely blank

expressionless

art has been leaking out of me

I cannot grasp it

the creation in me I

felt it a few days ago for the first time

did depression kill it

did I kill it

is it being reborn can I ever

play the piano

have I been killed

which lover killed me

or is it that

I am not of interest anymore so

I no longer take interest in myself

imagine if you woke up
and had grown antlers
a crown of bone
surrounding your head

High heels announce
        a concrete presence
Short skirt, short jacket
Out past 11, steaming mug
Cafe, beastbeast, sketchpad

Crash with me, sharp corner
Unbuckle your seatbelt
Unlock your ankles, spread
Yourself onto the seat
Fiddle with the stereo

I am driving 145 an hour
In my fantasy, the one with
You, a Honda, a skirt, and me

Love/Friendship/Barthes/Alcohol/Childhood Photo

On this, the wedding day,

of my oldest friend

joy, full to bursting, resolves in his gestures

this woman, his Wife

straight and curved as a flute

of champagne

On this day I am reminded

of a semiotician who once

drunkenly observed, of love,

“the other one never waits”

You who are such an authority

on loves, their hollowing,
the fullness and collapse of them,

Will you call me tomorrow after work

and ask me to come be near you?

Will we swap swigs from a bottle of red

and laugh at our stained tongues?

We scatter into pieces, so completely

intermingled

they can only resemble some Unity

quite as immune to loneliness

as the girl from the picture

who tumbles barefoot through the grass

after the ceremony

who, weightless,

never waits

time travel

the thought of

reaching out my hand and touching

yours has become so

distant

to me

to think we used to see each other everyday

the feeling of my fingertip on your

knuckle

one I'll never take for

granted again

Of ours

The fence is broken here and there

barbed wire dragged down by roots and grass

I thought it pliable, unafraid, stepped over.

The earth squelched and the sun 

was the dust off an old book snapped shut 

but bright enough to bleed my eyes 

of bad blood, so my hand I raised

to shield me. 

I heard birds and jungle-beasts

in that canyon, 

lost to the wild, groping. 

These little violets in a tin cup,

struggle to root, spurt and

flower. 

winter

thick pine smoke and

milky white moonlight settle

over the flat roofs

and empty lots

chapped lips, wind, 24 degrees outside

the neon lighthouse beams of

the oatmeal factory

string me home

I alight on sidewalks

let my footsteps flutter like moth wings

and carry me to the closest light

light here, light there

the streetlamps along

the sidewalks:

bread crumbs someone

has left for me, all promise

but no warmth

just put me in an
oven already

he cannot pretend
that he doesn't notice the way
his own eyes drift over
his body, his arms, his legs
the way his face changes
a subconscious effort

he wonders why god has
decided that infuriatingly
stupid boys can become
the bane of every existence
set as seals upon one's heart
upon one's arm

something you can't scrub away
        when you're in the shower

the empty spaces in a bed

can wear a person down

to a hard shell of a thing

a profound haiku

placing my heels down

on cold morning linoleum

what a boner-kill

Afterburner

In your voice you

capture what evades the page

           a phrase 

               raised again and again

                      the pitch rising 

                 the stress of your diaphragm 

      gives physicality

I cannot.

I am confined to this leaf

for to write a feeling 

is to contain it,

and to sing it, 

shines iridescent 

makes it seem

worth something more

than an off-hand scribble, 

crumpled paper, folded twice. 

Shall I put it in your pocket, or throw it out

forever lost?

I cry, so hard, but to you it’s all pretend. 

unpopular opinions

a black flower of resentment

blooms in my chest when you yell

across the plaza

"that score is a piece of shit"

and i must restrain fists

curled tight

nails carving pink moons in my palms

because i can't respect you

if you hate

trent reznor

New Englad, you

close up the sky to me

I want to stand on mesas and see

the history of myself

reflected in that view

Pedro Killface errata

Saw Chance in a grocery store, it was Smiths. he was bent low with pale green circles in his ears
We were in Socorro, his dad, my mom and thought
Jesus fuck Christ thank fucking God you're alive, bro.

He cut off all his long beautiful hair.

Iowa boy

six feet tall in your construction vest,

with teeth in Aryan white and

hair a color straight out of

a cornfield a little west of

here, Iowa all-American boy,

how did you get to be working

at this airport in this shitty job

with no benefits

you keep your own high-school yearbook

picture framed above your bed

someday you will talk about your "glory days"

for now you will sweat as you take out the trash

it's a longshot
he says
and circles all the right numbers
in dark ink pens

sometimes you simply
run with it
let the odds
work out of your favor

Cigarette Haiku

Sell yr clothes
100mph, 5 hours long
Cry twice, Smoke 10

foolish

i am existing on

potato chips

coffee

and the belief

that i'm going somewhere.

i haven't left the state in months

the country in years

and dreams only take me

two hours north;

standing in the doorway of your room.

sometimes people gather

just to remind the individual

that they are loved

when I had seen only four
summers, my aunt got out the
fingernail clippers, held my small
nubby hands in hers, said

--these are growing so long!

she clipped my nails short and
close to the finger
I didn’t bleed but I didn’t like

how easily I shed pieces of myself,
no fuss, no mess
and maybe that’s why I cried

the thing is that I'm not good with directions
I take them well, give me a task, I'll do it
probably

put me in a city, I'll find something great
probably
but I certainly won't find what I'm looking for

the thing is that I know where I belong
there is a circle bound to my wrist
full of the foggy faces of youths

you could
probably
call them

i bagged clothes

--these for donation, those for rags

and when i returned

they were folded

mixed and un-sorted

everything is being re-arranged behind me

here in spirit, but really

you're

gone

Krokodil

we walk around and watch tv
and do nothing else
smiling, slightly

our blue eyes
the pupil unmasked
dilated eyes of the dead
stare straight ahead

today i found a handful of things
i couldn't carry back when i was
a much younger version of myself

armful of books and empty liquor bottles
that my mother left behind for all of us
to share and fight over

trying to decide how to confront
a family of problems
slamming cabinet doors

i banged my nose and tinny blood
was all i had to remember
my father by

1998

i see an airplane

burst into flames

high in the atmosphere

plummet and burn away.

dad in the driver's seat

tells me it's a shooting star.

i am six years old

on the 805 in san diego

and this

memory

feels real

but I cannot remember

if it is.

we can sit with our feet on the counter

arms around our knees and a filthy spoon

dangling precariously from one hand

the oven is still hot, open to warm the room

and you separate the blinds to see who just drove by

on cold tiptoes peeking out of too-long jeans

your phone will vibrate itself off the table

and CRACK into three pieces on the tile

put it back together and check its vitals, okay

we are fifteen, sporting hoodies and cameras

poorly dressed for the snow, in converse

let's walk to the park tonight to meet your friend

leaving on a jet plane

come into my bed
and let me walk
my feet up your shins

slowly, like a glacier, until you squirm,
push me off, say, “cut it out, you little shit”

will you answer to “space heater” for me

the hair on our heads will
knife out in awkward angles
like clock hands

we’ll try not to
notice how lamplight
blurs into jetstreams
if you move your head too quickly,
or how the roaring of a heater

sounds like turbines in
the midnight hours

...but the light likes tricks, and time will prove that it wasn't tricking you, it was you all along, a fool, that wanted to be tricked, that could only be tricked, that could only relax, and let go a breath, when everything was exactly as you wanted it, when you understood it, you thought, finally.

A trick to think you could make someone else understand, but no one ever will because no one can. You have to speak so slow, focus all you know, and tell them:

"Let the light show you, there is nothing to know, everything has already been, everything is traveling on a light beam, everything is getting somewhere, and taking you too, the end is far, and our beginning so near."

Say it slow.

i'm twenty one
the days taste like bark paper
i wish i could take you inside
and show you these
bark paper days
or my hands, feeling the clay
or my broken mug, or my dreams,
why i don't scream, violent as they are
but always feel a floating feeling
the same feeling you get
when you get an A on your algebra test

dollhood

when I spoke out I was too loud

when I was quiet I was being

trampled under foot

I shoved all my creations under

the rug

I quieted them

they called to me I told them

I must forget you

these perceived ashamed looks

that forced my fingers to

solidify together

that forced my voice

to quiet

that made me feel that

the thing I was best at

was sitting still

like a doll in the attic

past its prime

features so indistinct

insides hallow

and eyes sad

algebra plagues us

and geometry too
our love is a tetrahedron
god is the peak, insurmountable

at REI we bought ice picks, backpacks, freeze-dried biscuits
but remain woefully unprepared for the realities of "The Real Word: Part 33"
our cell phone bills past due, toss them in dumpsters, macbooks too
the beyonds are innumerable, but infinity is passe, we spend our days counting

the mathematics aren't complex; 1+1+1 does indeed equal a triangular pyramid
or the prism we haggled for, the new age Pearl Street lady who clenched her teeth
she wished us well, I think, or maybe she said 'hell', but we'd like to visit there too
we hung it gleaming from our rear view mirror, hoping for health, praying to mapquest

breaks are few, just pee in the bottle, eat a McDouble with a McChicken in between
feel our insides gurgle along to a scanning FM tuner, fill our selfs with fuzz and fat
at the rest stop, disavow all rules, break into a janitor's closet, steal the bleach
use it to clean ourselves, naked, rinse ourselves in the sea, sleep on the beach

when we reach our destination they will give us two pieces of valuable paper
and we will cry and envelop each other, arms grasping at arms, choking on tears
then god will come down from the mountain, he will not wear robes but a hoodie
and then, despite all of our grand expectations, he will simply bop us on the heads

algebra, god, and geometry too
are nothing more
than tricks of the light

myself

water's flavor
is my arm searching up my sleeve
for cooler skin to grasp
the blankness, filling

few things ever trump

arrested development

and carbohydrates

not really
hungry
the way I once was

to be back under the night skies

of New Mexico

roads lit by headlights

not much else

happy thanksgiving

eat until you feel guilty

and whatever else

happy thanks giving
i hope all my celebrity crushes
are not eating alone
with their dogs today

there exists chocolate beer

empty glass

speaks quiet, 96kbps

the skyrim silent, beep

x-ing boxes, hunting foxes

in every direction, my eyes close

with the knowledge that tomorrow

my curse will be replaced with blessings

I mean, food.

lately

i have been walking through

places i knew before,

soft and silent

hidden with sheets

and doors with peeling paint

aerial views of cities

below, lights—

distant and yet
so close I can almost feel
the breath of the people
who put them there

today is not a poem day
today is a start shit in a Big Lots day
and listen to Roads on repeat day
and laugh a lot day
and check his twitter day
and today is not a poem day

Something small

Rest among the yellowed leaves,

close your silent, powdered wings.

Footfalls soften you to dust, 

are you forgotten, lost?

Why didn't I come to see you die?

I couldn't hear your whispered cry.

A little body I lift up

and feeling nothing, let it drop. 

A bramble-wood of sticks,

emotions spent, but my action is this:

I bend down and tend a grave. 

Your unseen flutter, I see,

and live through thee. 

home is waking up suffocated by a cat

headphone cord noosed around the throat

cold and pulling thin sheets tighter

realizing your bedroom has become a storage space

the scent
of the
cologne
at the
base of
your throat
hollows me

you
are
enough
to make
me ache

Things, Thoughts

an unpleasant thing

someone scratching at their leg hair 

the red marks make me itch 

an unpleasant thing

the new tv at the front of the bus

shows the road receding 

while I look forward, moving 

a pleasant thing

I read a line in a poem 

that I find so agreeable 

nothing touches me

for the rest of the day

to this night

look through the hole in your head,

see the clouds there.

do you wonder what a thunderstorm feels like

--to be tossed about in

the electric tumult.

walk home

singing

too-loo-rye-aye

come on eileen

too-loo-rye-aye.

I am wrapped up in chords

my chargers wrapped around my arms

my eyes bloodshot staring at a screen

completely

at the mercy

of these machines

that might show your name

how do i say anything
at this juncture
the crux of our lives
doesn't hinge on this
cage the elephant
can say it for me
'thank you
happy birthday'

rtge poem ws edlkbow

bhaopp;y
thedn szad

whatever, hormones
today I will feel the least feminine/
the most attractive
for the whole month combined
regardless of anything biological and
cut sleeves off t-shirts and wear
baggy jeans and eyeliner and this
asexual haircut
which makes me feel
so alien--
androgynous and confusing
to everyone
but itself

this is what attempting to write papers on the Bible at 1:00 in the morning looks like

phillipians

philipppians

phillippians

philipoiosanass

help me Jesus

the TV eats your soul

it makes your own bed smell like someone else's skin

How marvelous that

green grass grows in winter, 

and the herds that wander 

in the prairie, 

and the clear air—I can see all the way to 

purple, hazy Monterey.  

Natural happiness and true, 

no one can take that away, but you.

Individual, yet bound, 

each the lighthouse on the rocks

and each the ship, the scream of the hull, broken upon them.

Relent my body, every open pore 

a heavy smog—desires, fears and wants 

Show me someone incapable of hypocrisy

I’ll drop down and kiss the ground they’ve walked,

Repent for every breath I’ve spent struggling to discern

what is right and what is wrong

and nothing more of me 

next time i’ll hide the light better

in some vague melancholy verse

about a fading flower 

or a shattered bier

if ryan gosling would have made the cover
only if
then we wouldn't be fighting the communist chinese
if ryan gosling would have made the cover
then red dawn wouldn't be happening right now
jesus chirst if i had known bradly cooper was the catalyst
if i had only known
i would have killed them both
when i had the chance

this is couch time

sort of stupid how in the absence of orders
I make my own, carry them out, beat the rug
dream of a positive balance

sing myself to sleep, fling the cat off the bed
he returns, to the place between my legs
purrs, dreams of catnip, turkey eyeballs

the toilet broke, a running theme
jesus, cat, and me, we all pooped
free in the desert

sometimes i can't tell which is worse:

a week or three months

contextually speaking,

i am more looking forward to

ordering the coffee

than drinking it

----------

going home means sitting in a different room

roughly the same size as this,

perhaps slightly larger, but entirely mine

walls scarred with old tape and torn photos

i will able to wrap myself in flannel sheets

with headphones and tea

with new books, still unread

and the dread of leaving the next morning

mine, entirely

will power

i am doing a thing i cannot stop

i move closer to your little face

and lean down

and sniff

i am walking out 

i stare back 

i feel nothing, i wonder if they know, i feel a little more

a little more like i am missing

something 

that they all have

and they can see the hole 

or slight slope 

like a ditch 

i don’t want to go home

i ask to be driven home 

but I want to be driven out into a field 

and left in the dark  

to find my own way back

i walk for a long time 

without seeing anything but the stars 

and patches of streaking light

that have followed me around

ever since I did that one thing

i get back, eventually 

everything moved without me

or

everything is happening

in relation to me

and i am not doing 

what you want me to be doing 

i am not doing

enough to make you happy

what makes me happy is 

thinking about you tucked in bed

safe and warm 

without me 

because i’m out 

finding the angle at which 

the sun moved 

in relation to me 

and left me in the dark 

where no one can see

the missing part 

song of longing

how strange to walk

through suburban neighborhoods

at night, to see glimpses

of people's lives through

the lacy eyelashes of curtains

walking past an open window:

inside, a bed filled with

mussed hair and sleep,

white sheets socked

around two bodies

breathing and beating

in tandem

two pairs of feet,

tangled at the ankles

I asked my brain to write and this is the crap that came out

i've got cigarettes;

but no way to light them.

demons;

but no way to fight them.

posterity

war is

an insecurity men

fight to

get laid

Canada is for

pussies pizza

is a vegetable

think of all the broken

condom babies

that will drink the

Atlantic's oil

through a straw

and pick tomato paste

straight from the vine

michigan

we could

break bottles and stand

on pavement, frozen

wiping pink noses

exhaling frost

and pulling our collars higher

but we are

warm and

nursing bottles

lying in beds

with headphones and

1,574 miles apart instead

Some Much-Needed Perspective

don't be fooled
the Pacific is tiny
and sky above it?
hardly a fraction of that

yet how vast, beyond measure,
the space contained
in a single
half-remembered
bedroom

in summer when your hair was long
we picked our way over rocks and tide-pools
a long walk, without speaking
while Stock Seagull Noise #37
played on repeat

The girl is investigating the contents of her life 1/x

The girl woke up with no memory
A twin bed, a milkcrate supporting a lamp, a small electronic device with a brilliant screen, a thin silver rectangular electronic box connected to a white umbilical cord connected to a special place in the wall
The walls are a dark shade of brown
The place behind her eyes aches.

She is naked and standing, trying to think.
Trying to think of her name.

doll face

below a billboard with Jesus

spreading his hands wide,

a woman stands with her legs spread

her skull is achingly

delicate, pushing through

loose skin the way strangers

push through crowds

“you wanna fuck” she

asks no one in particular

it’s a tired refrain

the choir’s out to lunch

this afternoon

below the billboard that

reads “JESUS IS WATCHING YOU”

she smokes a cigarette,

her face all lines and sag

and loose stuffing

“what the fuck are you

looking at,” she asks the sky.

well you can

dismantle all these things

break them down to

schematics and isometrics

you can pretend they tell you something

stare at them professionally

straighten your collar and

try to feel comfortable

you can go home

hang your tie on the doorknob

submerge yourself in darkness

and listen to songs in e minor

in the end

hypotheticals still crawl under your skin

and the sun sets

at 5 p.m.

i'm losing days
forgetting the way a calender functions
i wander into the living room
eyes wide
and let my grandparents stare at me
until i say
'oh, oh, oh
i forgot what i came here for'

memory loss

They say it can never leave you
but I forgot which key is the bike key
and stood staring at my silver key ring
surfboard attached
it's the black one

having difficulty informing jesus
that the amount of gaga he listens to
is problematic

eyelashes that fall out will

never grow back

parts of me always

gone

swimming in these words and

scanned pages of

inky text that tattoos my fingertips

crudely cut sheets slice skin

but fifty four-by-six pages hold

more poignancy than any

published work i've read

and actually paid for

michael stipe, my muse - part II

kurt cobain

listened to automatic for the people

as he carefully loaded a shotgun

in the greenhouse above the garage.

i'd like to think the last song he heard

was nightswimming--

it deserves a quiet night.

i hope that for him

in that moment,

it was a quiet night;

the moon hanging low

over the seattle sea.

my dying wish is

to be buried in warm laundry

things disappear all the time, like:
Richey Edwards or the USS Cyclops
these casualties of mystery
have finally put stones
in their pockets and
allowed the earth
to pull them in, saying
'here,  let me show you
what mysteries
you've yet to leave behind'

Then old age and experience, hand in hand, lead him to death, and make him understand, after a search so painful and so long, that all his life he has been in the wrong

the world is not golden or grey
it is a white-ish cast-off clay

Eliza to Clea

we spilt cranberry vodka drink
now I sit here and think
I love you because
    you'll excuse my cliche
    (the hardest thing we ever did)

was not to cry
oh why

the days i'll miss most were with people

i will never meet again

with elbows in ribs and feet planted so canvas

and rubber could crack the concrete as

bodies urged forward

i would stretch my neck in the hope of

cool air and the chance of meeting

eyes with one of them

i screamed every word

even if i had no breath left

hey, milan kundera, didn't you write a book on this once

I dream sometimes of falling into
the sky, scrabbling my nails furiously
into the dirt as grains of sand
fall up with me and gravity forgets

itself. below me the seagulls circle and
scream, growing distant as balloons
against blue skies.

sometimes I do not know where
I am headed. I look in the mirror
and ask myself if I am important yet,
if I have become a woman of substance.

what was it my father told me
about wings and wax—
how flight melts when you examine

it with a magnifying glass?

a break from angst (for liz)

this poem is for

the other side of life

--chocolate covered almonds,

drinking gin until your stomach is warm,

the smell of old books, and the

sound of rivers in the moonlight;

things that will never fade or change,

never disappear in a fog.

life is still lush on the other side.

I promise you,

I'll get there soon.

sometimes my Urban Outfitters hip pants

don't seem so relevant

walking through streets that are

boarded up say

NO TRESPASSING

with grizzly men and women carrying their

shopping bags

I have gone back in time

much of the world's time

Bloodlust

if life begins death
we lose nothing
in the red carnival

let my hands wrap
around the stiffness of a weapon
let the shrapnel of the enemy
find a home in my willing body

when the Revolution comes
i am first to the barricades
when the Terror follows
i am first against the wall

put my marines in dark navy
something that ocean waves can carry
men springing fully formed from foam
saluting angry skies and terrifying seas

jesus
i've never seen so many men
with swords
outside a renaissance fair

black eyes

Skinny skeleton, prancing down eye mall
percussive bony ass shakes to lil wayne
you got two black eyes and a mouthful
of broken teeth

Two black eyes, blacker than the blackest girls on the lawn, squatting in chairs

They see the stoned skeleton, holler at her
bitch you think you so fly? You vermin, you a janky bug

She rotates quick, shades off, fingernails drawn. Screams a word this observer can't type

The darkest word
The word of oppression
A word that hurts more than two black eyes ever could

I watch the white girl suffering
While deciding
How violence
Fixed her mind
Hating forever

there will be blood

sometimes I imagine what a war
between female sanitary products
might be like—

tampons whip their flagella
furiously in the wind

and
the maxi-pad flaps
its wings low to the ground,
a manta-ray shadow skimming
the surface of the earth

the napkin lows like a bull
as a tampon spears it
with a plastic applicator
it sinks to its padded knees
from it pours the red badge
of courage
and so bravely in the face of death
does the pad moo,

that even the tampon raises
one cottony-fingered salute

taps plays in the distance

--damn, a girl says to herself
later, her pants around her ankles
--where the fuck did all this blood come
from

Growth

birthright and swan-song
of the self-replicators:
shimmery pulses of naked biology

the heart is a goose-stepping fascist
and this Reich will survive for a thousand years

poem for the moon

two small white strings hang from your ears

the tinny voice of gordon gano
—they'll hurt me bad—they do it all the time—
yeah yeah—
trickles out behind your quiet white neck and
you don't notice my gaze, which is to say
my nose—yeah yeah—I'm inhaling you
you've got me drunk in class, again, lady

one small white string hanging between your legs

shitty

is it worth it

to wake up this way every morning?

wanting to let go,

unable to let go.

health and wealth and whatever else

i love young people
their unblemished moonlike
soft smiling faces
and energy, ambition, and their
                      careless
                           cruelty
                                 and how they destroy themselves
                                 just to feel anything at all
but you said you were 29
and you were furrowed, lined
and kind
you could softly laugh and
know antagonism and smiling large
and laughing were the same
and to the same end

when we said goodbye it did not
sting like mother leaving child
                     though it meant forever
we were old and knew some things of life
its disappointments
that we couldn't have it all
and every time we were split
smaller and smaller
that was how we would
come together
in soil
richer

every single one of us
will be able to say
where we were the day
the internet died

he said

you are my sister

we share the same

raven sleek hair

this blonde girl she must be a

pop star

--

he said I am sympathetic to Israel

I'm half Jewish

although I believe she is unjust

I am sympathetic

I'm half Jewish

--

and will I

never be able to sympathize

throwing my life into this into the earth for everyone

will I never

be able to sympathize with torture and dying and the

want for a homeland

because I was born white can I not be

a sister a real human because I study

the history of how the world came to be so unjust and

I on top by so many small actions born into

wealth

if I tore apart the system cursed the fucks

who fucked it up this way although it benefited me

would people continue to say

someone who looked like me suffered injustice once

--

I am sorry I do not understand

but fuck

we all suffer

do not deny me that

where the railroad cuts through nowhere

a pair of shoes dangle
from shoelaces worn thin,
skinny broken necks wrapped
twice around a telephone wire

the shoes hang against a watery
sky like the feet

of a criminal,
a little lynching that
marks the beginnings
of railroad tracks

how many feet run bare
through the cornfields?

somewhere, sometime
those shoes belonged
to someone

haunted

on the edge of sleep

things can become real;

doors can swing

nails can drag down the walls

the covers can shift next to you.

you will wake up

believing in ghosts

haunted.

too incoherent to write anything worthwhile

head is pounding against the curb of central

desert sun burns my eyes and my nose is rubbed raw

i don't want to stand barefoot on the bathroom floor

was there something i was supposed to do

think i have to give a presentation tomorrow

okay

helen

two hawks circling
and the opal ocean

when the wings fold
your mysterious
      womanhood
is formed

so they can smell a rose
and write a verse
      and bring you roses
upon roses

but can they see
your slick body
bare-chested and every breath
      free

free to leave me

Thing with Feathers

22 years old
shivering in your underwear
on the pier last night:

remember the starlit intersection
that ends the truck route
santa fe or white rock

remember the warm violin shape
of the girl in her bedroom
who invites you in

finally vault the railing
which confined you to the world
(and taught you to fear the void)
become, for a moment,
winged

passion in robots

I sometimes forget to consider

that we are human

that when we lay in bed I

melt into the sheets and that when you

say "let's discuss eco-feminism"

I can only imagine the countless discussions

we will have that will tear up the inside of my

lips with frustration that always end in the words

I love you

Thank you for teaching me something today

Thank you for letting me treat you like a robot

pushing your buttons

until short-circuiting do us part

wrong body wrong parts

i don't know what it means to feel

truly different

and a documentary can only go

so far

like the poster on this wall

i can fix it with as much tape as i like

but in the end

it will always

fall

to have
good to have been
held in the parking garage
in the rain


. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

a weird poem for albuquerque crosswalks

buses pass inches

from pretty girls standing at

the edge of the street

drawing wisps of hair dancing

i stand further back

unable to feel the sort of confidence they must

that the world values their beauty too much

for a city bus to spoil

love that mcdonalds shit (this is not a poem pt. 2)

humanity has evolved through

so many generations so that

I can sit in a hard plastic booth

built to resemble another booth

somewhere and I can hold a burger

stacked in the image of another

burger somewhere else

everything has a duplicate

in this strange and futuristic

world--across from me a man

spills over his chair

hello, soulmate, let me buy you

some calories

I will never feel

loneliness again

come here
place your belongings on the floor
undress

sit down
enter a trance of ambivalence if you have the capacity
if not, just sit there

stop singing
this is not a time for merriment
yeah, stfu, kid

to go home and lay

in the comfort of David Bowie records

and dance with jugs in our hands

li de li de li ohhh

I am interested in nothing more than the familiar

when I go on marching home

Poem for Jenna

Some days i think--*
About Emily Fucking Dickinson

And what it might mean to sit in
Your house and produce

Masterpieces.

walked a lot when young
in the dark
I was scared

now I walk alone
I'm not frightened of the dark
why, I'm growing up

I'm not looking for magic
I'm not looking for anything at all

I hope this peaceful night was shared

you don't come anymore
and I don't wait anymore

peaceful shared night

the summer was deep and green

sleepy and silent,

morning sunlight like fireworks

at the window.

it all ended at once.

it was warm,

that much I remember

moments that followed

became diluted and painful

a hollow memory in my mind

that echoes each time we speak.

missed a day, two short poems in compensation

pink-brown clouds

like dryer lint

blot out the sunrise--

a violent orange

so easily defeated

----------

there are so many things i could have said

but your eyes distract from even the most

imperative thoughts

it's dark by six and with the sun,

you're gone

an open letter to Paul from Tarsus

why don't you relax a little bit,

drop the pen and forget the letters.

oh, Paul, haven't you ever

seen a woman with her hair down,

arching her back like a sleepy cat?

it makes circumcision feel so

unimportant--all this angry ink bled

over a third eyelid when you could

be over another body, inking your

fingernails into some parchment skin.

Paul, I know you read the Song of

Solomon sometimes, let your fingers

walk down to that strange appendage

that dangles from your body like

an extra set of rosary beads, Paul,

I think you stifle your lonely

come-song into a set of scrolls,

inscribe your loneliness with a

couple drops of white ink spilled on

an empty page, still warm with your

body but colder than an obituary

dammit honey

shower till
the hot water's gone

you cant wash off that old
Time
and
Space
history congeals
on your body
gets under your fingernails
in your hair, your ass

go get dressed and grab your
Penguin Classics

you wont have a better chance
to be

cutest girl
at the coffee shop

Missed a poem

It is ok to fail?
It is ok to cry?
It is ok to dance to The Cranberries.

I guess I'll flip my phone
Fish for replies
Ex-something x33

There exists a list of people I made cry
Sing it to the tune of 'super bass'
Break my face against the coffee table

It's not ok to hurt others,
But Foucault says I got biopower, baby
I'll take that over soul power any day

you ran away wasted into the woods
so I followed
you said "leave me alone" "go away"
I sat down on the pavement
you circled around and came back
you said

what are you doing?

I was so confused
I stood up and loved you too

ghosts of george pearl hall

this place is full of

slick concrete

grey and vast

echoes and whispers

from behind doors always locked

I have lost control of my fingers I

wish on a keyboard but no they

do not behave they way they should my

pinky dances up and down without me telling it to

pinky, why can't you stay still

I will slap it with a ruler it doesn't

help where is the nun am I a schoolchild why

won't the shaking go away

little gravestones

I don't want anyone carving

my epitaph until I have picked

enough fights just for the small

happiness of slamming one million

doors-- don't write my eulogy until

I've broken the bindings of enough

books, felt my feet grow cold

with the knowledge of enough

Novembers--and don't lower

me into the hard dirt, not until

I've watched enough people pick out

fruit at the grocery store, eyes fluttering

shut like thin pieces of paper,

stealing grapes away in their wet

mouths when they think

no one is looking

Westcliff

as in that moment
after the thump
before the spray

you have this way of suspending me
in the spaces between your footsteps

internal monologue in the presence of joey richter

"hi,
holy fuck you're a real person
you're even paler and scrawnier and weirder-looking
than youtube suggests
you aren't just a parody
you're real and you're flattered
that i came all the way here to see you
as you run from the tour bus to a
public restroom"

cop out haiku

the smell of coffee

coming in from the brisk air

read alone quietly

square

keep yourself fluid, unfixed
your body bent over

your skull and spine shouldn't align

but solidify
your poor shitty neurons

3 minutes is nothing, it only happens
15-45 times a day

if you have any focus left to lose
then ditch that shit, it's so over

you don't need crutches made of paper

the idea of love

was for me a watch secured

tightly to my wrist

now time has no measure

just a blur next to me

in the hour of the Dixie cup

ash from a cigarette
suspended in night air,
cigarette tip shards falling
back to earth like
adolescent cherry blossoms

the evenings when you stand on
this wooden deck are all the same
somewhere, dogs are barking

look up:
past the watertower
past streetlamps

the moon hangs heavy and white
through the smoke--
winter's exposed skin

in the thrall of a lighter,
your thoughts burn
the way
loose ends
always

do

on a scrap of paper dug out from a box written last winter

Last night:

The rakes of empty branches
power lines hang globes of light
empty for adventure
darkness as a traveling coat
sameness
every shrub the same, regular
just a regular shrub
comforted only by this.

I know these shapes
should I dress them or leave this path
and I am saddened as I go
I let words go, alone as I am made
So how can I be sure the search made me happy
Alone, a heavy word, the words themselves stand
and let them stand

Helmet

Darling darling oh darling please,
(does that word never grow old?
Oh have it your way!)
Darling darling darling oh darling please,
be careful with that head of yours!
It's precious.
More precious than you believe.

Wonder wonder wonder

Ocean Rose Tell Me,
does that horrible man still make you feel ugly,
and does he still never touch you?
Tired and assey, coming home from, from, from whatever, to spend himself
with the clicking lights of his real wife, that bitch in the corner.
Does the dream land of the early hours still make you feel better?

I've been in dream land since the early years, and no matter how many dreams pass,
I believe that I'll never get used to you as a blonde.

I am drinking a vodka tonic in an old jam jar through a straw I made from the barrel of a ballpoint pen and it is 32°F for the first time this fall and also there is a full moon

car doors open and
hip kids still slice thumb holes
in their brand new hoodies

car doors also close.

this hollow belly groans,
not concave but approaching so

it feels my spine has gained
another ten degrees
of rotation
and if I stretch enough,
a ribcage's shadow
emerges beneath
luminescent skin

maybe these clavicles
and cheekbones are more than an illusion

this mirror is skinny
and I am not

Can't write a poem

I'm not gonna lie I feel pretty F-ed right now on Klonopin and I want to go to a party and talk to people as a different person. Should I take Eliza out into the world? What is she like there?

That's all I want to do. Something tells me that will be the most memorable, the most conducive to a union with the Earth and those upon in.

A memory sticks clear as if I am in it, acting it over and over (note...acting...it can never be the real thing). I see your face looking up and the slow smile spreading upon my return. I see it over and over. It's a muse. A demon that crawls into bed with me and whispers it into my ear. All the words I have to write and will write. But I correct them. My hand draws control. Its fingers push against vague instances of uncertainty.

That I can't ever tell you the truth on a page. That bothers me too.

funerals

I keep hate so sharp in my mouth

that my teeth won't file down,

edges rough like mountain ranges

or maybe mountain lions

when people kiss me

they taste an acid stronger than

black coffee or divorce paperwork

even on the day they lower me into

the ground I'll be snarling

in my Sunday best, a beast

beating strong inside my matchstick

chest, and I'll be chanting threats like prayers

"I'll kill you I'll

kill you I'll kill

you"

blue skies

mom tells me that

grandma sounds old.

it scares me that time is moving

thinning her bones,

'till they are delicate

like the stems of marigolds;

lovely red and yellow things

she placed on my grandfather's casket.

I wish I could fix this

remove the thoughts from your head

smooth your hair and see the

brilliance that lies there

make home home for you

as you did for me for ten years

your eyes a way to see my own reflection

your words and my thoughts interchangeable

and for the first time I must say

I cannot know how you feel but

I will try to understand

and here in this experience we did not share

please don't feel alone

let me

remove the thoughts from your head

smooth your hair and see the

brilliance that lies there

enfrentemos este juntos

a es dee eff jay kay el semicolon

stop hitting (ur head on low ceilings)
stop buying (shit u dont need)
stop drinking (2 sleep)
stop thinking (just)
stop it just
stop

Trees

There is this creature which feeds on fire.

and stores it up.

Once a year it explodes and everyone comes to watch.

No one can stay away for long,

because aspen are bigger than redwoods.

if you guys think you have what it takes to make some skrill off yr shitty little poems
send ravenna some <3 http://www.ravennapress.com/books/cathlamet_prize.php

A strange, different world. A bizarre pain.

I won't lie down and beg for you
beauty has afforded me
a bitter pride that lowers me
in others eyes.
I'd rather sit alone and free
to think, than dull your heated star (by thought of me)
in my night sky. The only light I see.
The drifting of the Earth
would scarce judge me,
     so why is your pride
     worth more to me?

Yours is a widened road to cross.
Mine is a knowledge of my loss.
Victim to the same inconstance.

Is there no hopeful ending?

When I die,
might you come
to close my eyes?
When you look at me,
       stiff and white,
what will you see?
A (white-skinned) birch that drops its (dark) leaves.
A stream will join them in our cloudless sea.

here we go with the haikus again

dead leaves and sunlight
scattered on the redwood path --
webs brush our faces

the liberal arts

quote

I enjoy your nervous tick

what medications have you been on

I suffer from an anxiety disorder

I cried during the Hangover

because it was so offensive

I can't sit still

I don't like parties

I don't shave my legs

my life is a monologue

end quote

most of the time i just feel frustrated that there is another living breathing human in the same room as me and i am conscious that this is counterproductive to the process of "making friends" but i would prefer to remain in this mindset for as long as possible and in order to do so i require some music that was released in 2003 and all the angst i can muster

now if you'll excuse me

this isn't even a poem what is this

how 'bout instead of teaching children

Everybody Poops

with a book

parents everywhere lock their children

in a college dorm for a month

what horrors

the children will see--

pretty painted toenails

on the dirtiest bathroom floors

it's the quickest most efficient way

to learn that Everybody Poops

because the poopers are NEVER

THE PEOPLE YOU EXPECT--

always the daintiest of toenails

always the most lotiony of legs

---------------------------------------------

she lay panting on his velvety couch,

out of breath

after her ladylike discourse

on the proper method of raising children

her nostrils flared like a skirt

in a tampon commercial

Freud found

himself hopelessly,

hopelessly

in

love

with

her

THE END

strike it with flint
ignite the branch
wave it over your head
illuminate pitch blackness

neatly fold your clothes and leave them in the dirt
make sacrifices in dark ones names. start by:
cupping your hands about the shell of your ears
whistling into the dark and waiting for a returning note

the life of an architecture major

nothing says

quesadillas for dinner every night forever

like sixty bucks worth of concrete

in the trunk of my car

tried and failed

Today Barack Obama took me out to lunch
We went to Panera Bread. I forgot to put on deodorant,
dark gray armpit patches formed and dried, formed and dried

Barack Obama said you've looked better
I said yeah you too

We smiled, sipped sodas
Munched our $9 sandwiches
In an almost contented silence

He was polite, asked me questions
about school, church, home:

"School is challenging, I'm working hard and getting good grades"
"I go to church every Sunday, it helps me to help others"
"I'm so excited to go home for Christmas"

Barack Obama didn't call me out, he just smiled again, almost sadly
The man understands the necessity of lies

Formed and dried, formed and dried
Layers of uncertainty

King of the Surf Guitar

when you come to the end of the desert
there will be a great city on the shoreline
assembled from gasoline and light

this is the Idea of California
it can sterilize oceans
run aquifers to dust

find an all-night diner
order some apple pie and coffee
get comfortable

no more frontiers --
just this last chance
to watch the sun go down

almost went to bed early w/out a poem

Look, novice ember
No vices? I've got a laundry list...
You've watched me
Drink
Smoke
Fuck
Fight
Myself into oblivion
I started this fucking shit
As a way to get my mind
Off the ways of the world
And you all are wonderful
Reminders of its pain

But thank you.

Nietzsche's got a hold on me

a simple kind of man he

walked into my classroom told us he

majored in business for lack of

alternative ideas gets to

go to work in jeans and a t-shirt

the ground covered in masculine sweat that

smells of the oil he trades in some made up online

universe

he works from home now

so tranquil

says his alma mater's sports aren't quite as

good as they were in his prime 80's days

this Christian nihilism this

tranquility to watch the earth be

sucked dry in order to be able to

go to work in jeans and a t-shirt

today I wrote myself a note

"listen to the killers until you feel better"

today I did not follow my advice

people told me

I wasn't my usual self

and so I went to the bathroom

stared at myself in the mirror

concluded that

whatever was in the mirror

was a warped human of a thing

exercising demons, pt. 3-- night terrors

In the museum basement there is a glass
case with a handwritten note
“Please keep fingers off the glass, Management”
a smiling face
dots the end of it

in the room with the mummies
and shriveled lips, pickled fetuses in jars,

inside this case is where they keep her--

they say she has slept since birth

her eyeballs toss back and forth,
back and forth, under thin-skin sheets:
eyelids the only movement in a still room

her hair has grown to the floor

above eyelids that flicker like
faulty connections,
the wood-grain smudge of her fingerprints
thicken the glass from the inside

sometimes she must wake up and want out

the guard rubs his bald head

when I ask,

tells me, “at night, you
should hear it—how weeping
fills an empty hallway”

living lamps
float on a silent sea
my jellyfish and me

dear light,
how will you reach me?
they are all gone into another world
and I'm left floating on an empty sea

every morning
she falls down six
flights of stairs
in her size nine shoes
and avoids every
look she gets and

every morning
she counts six
steps to the next
landing and three
more out the front
door

every morning
she takes six
pages of notes
and the stars she
doodles, she inverts
every one them

learning every shade of blue

on a spectrum isn't strange 

it's a convincing argument

for sanity and wellness

ocean aquamarine

is beautiful this close to the edge

you can pull the curtain shut

listen to the tide on either side of us

start lining up decorative shells

in neat little lines 

like world weary soldiers

soaked in foreign salts

(Monday's poem) 20 Echos

New lodgings acquired!
This will allow you to keep three cards in your hand,
and to see Robin and Ellie as often as you like.
You have gained 1x Confident Smile!

Splendid.

(Sunday's poem) Libation

You're supposed to pass it round, aren't you? My mother asked.
So the it - the last bottle of malt whiskey he ever bought, goes around and around us all, and
"Cheers Dave," is drowned out by excited "Dad, Dad, what's that?" and
"Dad, Dad I can 'ave some?" and
you know there would have been more tears when we were burying the box, if not for, "Dad, Dad, can I have a go? I want to do one, I'll be really careful!" And eleven year old hands struggle to maintain the shovel.
Yeah there'd have been a lot more tears all around.
"Thought the tree was gonna be well big?" Well give it a year or two child.

"Lush."

(Saturday's poem) Sabbat-urday

Yes I'd turn my back on them, on you, for him. No question? As that's the way we do things, or did no-one tell you that -
Bishop?
But I didn't 'cos I coudn't, 'cos while my friends were getting to work,
claws rending flesh and the wicked sicking venom and the obfuscating smoke, I was on a darkie - the kind of op where you fly in at night so as journos can't see.
There's no shame in any of this, just shame in hiding it. So much shame in hiding it.

Think of Irish, waiting for you last time, blush of life in her cheeks,
I'm holding together but I'd sooner be holding
you - not my best line, but it worked,
my gun moll.

the shortest distance between two points is

I want to live in an atlas

I could walk
all those straight-edged
western borders
between here and home
like three-inch tightropes,
feet pointed
at gravity in accusations
sized 7

let the wind run fingers through
my pages instead of my hair

shit balls

this room is crushin

my spirit

the sparsely decorated

cave prison with my striped

blanket--its a cell I created

go through photo

after photo

only five hours of daylight come through I

forgot where the library was

these New England trees

shit these spike balls

I stepped on that shit and

it didn't get on my shoe

this place isn't so bad

every night at dinner

the salt shaker stands stupid and proud

as my only company

I ask him what the news is

--he knows nothing, but

this is what I know

I carry a knife

for the same reason

I cannot find sleep--

because I am alone

Campus Cadence

there is a symphony outside
a boy,
freshman no doubt,
revs his engine excessively
roommate talks to her mother
train whistle sounds
car alarm
all in a rhythm

rev
speak
whistle
beep

Charlie Dawes
is trying to sleep.

i have had dreams that
far enough down the light
is filtered lazy amaranth
bruised across my skin

in my ears the voices
are lacunal
things i cannot pinpoint
without opening my mouth

satellite

i journey to the same place over and over

and over again to retrieve some kind of comfort

in the form of $2.09 less on my card but

then there is the fact that it leaves me rather

disoriented and tired instead of caffeinated

gotta go back when he's working 'cause he

charges me less than the other employees

nothing

Back to grey, line of demarcation,
if: you cannot feel
then: you lose humanity
if: feeling is human
then: you cease to be human

How do you erase feeling?
Do what I do.

Smoke medical
Listen to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwy-b8AzVk8
On repeat
For hours
On hours

dereferences

lacking the dignity of Thing-ness
we are often caught pointing at nothing

bleary-eyed and riddled with segfaults
kneeling before the Machine god:
just this once, no exceptions
forgive this user his error
compile his corrupt mortal code
sola fide

references

for how many
alternian solar sweeps

will i be here

this sunday is dedicated to

comics

and coffee

and dreaming of

a new zealand summer

as the native wind bites my cheeks

you can spend
the vast majority of your time
translating the unspeakable
trying to fit those pearly whites
around a mouthful of broken syllables
until your gums get all torn up

at the end of the world i'd just
absolutely love to lick it clean
and let your smoking gun maw
scream bang bang bang inside me

I wanted to stay a little bit longer but you made me leave, why?

all the fruits in the grocery store

want to fuck 

the melon, for instance 

with my hands propping it

against my stomach 

it hates me 

no, i flatter myself

this melon doesn’t give a shit about me 

or what i want from it

i got a shrine for it and all 

i got it propped up 

against my stomach  

my mind is going through an

industrial revolution

CONSUME CONSUME THOUGHTS

and

throw them away as quickly as

humanly possible

except no now

an enlightenment!

mix the two together sociology appears

and metacognition and what emerges

an hour of analysis for one small

tiny chuckle

The Famine

when the famine comes and feral orphans
slouch a hoarfrost wasteland
digging for small rancid onions
which they eat uncooked on the spot
or steal from one another shrieks
in what bestial pidgins remain
of the mother languages
huddling distended bellies around
the bonfires they've made
of the books and manuscripts now
as illegible as the civilization
they once illuminated,

you'll be glad you opted
for the kindle
with the extended battery life

exercising demons, pt. 2-- the patron saint of Route 5B

Nettie and her cataracts
ride the bus all day

she wraps herself in
blankets, weaves necklaces out
of broken bottles smashed and
then forgotten, clutches like a security
blanket the pen left behind on the bus
because a businessman was late
for a meeting--
Nettie finds lost things

she does not have a home, so
she makes homes for herself
in the things that she
finds:

just last week there was a bird clasped
so fragile, fragile as Nettie’s own
papery hands, to the pavement
its little eyelids frozen shut
Nettie untied knots in her throat
as she discovered that even
the swallows have eyelashes

Nettie keeps it now in her pocket
and makes wishes on each eyelash
she holds in her coat everything and
everyone that needs finding

all saints day

You can have friends on the other side of death
Said the man in a white robe.
I wrote my grandmother's name on a piece of paper.
In my long, lovely handwriting
'Lois Bibeau';

put her in my pocket.

I hope the man in the white robe was telling the truth.
A friend is hard to find.

limbo

my head is centered

between the two little men on my shoulders

both of them demons,

whispering

love

hate

love

hate

love

hate

I AM NOT A DIRTY GOD I DON'T HAVE A DIRTY BODY our world is not 4 dimensional however we may cling to time's revolutions we resist revelations, ignored are the Marys in their stead their Johns pissers, shitters, crappers, gotta puke gotta drain the lizard ignore the cunt, it'll come later in the tent, despite my whiskey breath, despite, again, in spite of the feminists, I must again re affirm my heart, it's in the shape of an hourglass I can't stop fucking kicking or screaming at women I fling my coffee cups at them in public places, have breakdowns, currently writing a poem in one specific feminine bed breaking down over a 4GLTE connection; maybe in my next... world; love peace and harmony very nice, very nice, very nice MAYBE IN THE NEXT WORLD