Ventriloquize Those Lies

ventriloquize the guise
that sits beneath your eyes
and let me sit here for a while
while i discern your sense of style
not looking at your eyes
but unraveling your mind,
not looking at your lips
but touching your small hips.

ventriloquize the guise
that i see between your eyes,
and i will too move lips for mine
and we will watch ourselves get high.
ventriloquize those lies,
with your voice hid from my eyes,
let me see your pile of sin,
i'd like to know if i'd fit in.

Indifference Is Eating

how do you extend the syllables?
make them longer with so few words?










i can see my name written
all over the air.

Get lost, get found.

ears so warm,
mind so numb,
ears so filled with sound,
mind so filled with dread.

how long
will you
stay so dead?

listening to sounds,
silence in the head,

how does
someone
get so dead?

stand up straight,
pants fall dead,
I'll tell you something
I've never said,

I would rather
be dead.

Back Again.

Skinny legs, don't be so dead,
you look so pale,
so wet,
so red.

Let me see your arm, baby,
your skin has lost its glow;
Let me see your skin baby
it has lost its coloured know.
Your legs are still so skinny,
Your head still held so high,
You move so slow and steady,
Where'd you go?

Why are you so skinny?
Where did you think you'd go?

Sometimes we think it will be different
if we find ourselves in some place
our eyes have never seen
but I know where you have been.

bored, numb.

i am so drunk everywhere,
all the time, it's always there.

Tilting Eyes

Sometimes there are people in the places
We expect to see.

Yesterday,
there were places.
The day before,
there were places.
But now places,
they are stairwells,
and there is no one.

There is left place for you to be,
Not enough space for me to see.

Burn the words,
All captured in capsules,
Make it easier for me
To not know
Or not care.

Let me think about the world
With no real meaning.

Write it for me,
what the is world
without paper
and letters.

Burn the hearts encapsulated in boxes,
Perforated cardboard,
98% recycled materials,
Small coffees, large teas,
Burn the books all gleaming on shelves.

Press the heart against the wall
Lay your words against the heart
And make it bleed.

Leaving

the music is the honest sound
it picks up all vibrations in the air and on the ground,
when it is fall and the leaves lead brightened lives,
listen to the music as it swishes with the times.

rusty smells of dampen rot falling from the trees,
turning peach and brown as it crinkles with the other leaves,
it leaves,
the music leaves,
it helps me leave.

Listen, leave.

He said,
she said,
look at all the leaves,
look at all the trees,
mustard fields turned upside down,
hanging in the sky,
floating on skeletons.

He said,
she said,
look at all the ground,
look around, it is brown,
there is blood on the leaves
that make up the trees,
burgundy, red and brown.

She asks nicely and he leaves.

I want to write a poem about you,
want to squeeze out your breath
while I see you in the air,
want to smoke you,
watch you rise.

I want to hear you sing so quiet
the truth leaves you
without paper,
without ink,
without duels,
hear blunt silence when you speak
feel unequal value of vibrations
in the notes in the air.

You have cultivated your land, I can see.

it gets late as we drive.
old unpaved roads throwing dust on us,
front seat and back.
the wheels still rolling smoothly.

i stare out the window and avoid noting the crops:
what grows
how many cows
how many crows.

when you get older you told me,
you will teach your kids to sow
raspberry and strawberry plants.

next dust storm you told me,
you will teach me how to drive,
how to shoot arrows.

there is probably
so much dust on the road
during these storms
that there forms a secret opponent
thirty feet away
and your arrow lands completely between your own eyes.

outside the dust storm
the sky bleeds red and your memory
becomes scratched with pieces of it.

running through fields.
rolling in the mud.
the air between the hay bales
is changing to coral.
rolling in the mud,
shooting arrows from the road.
for no good reason except the clean that will come.

U-Pick Berries! like U-turn, turn around!

people who were sitting indoors moved to the front porch when the crash sounded so they could enjoy the noise.

neighbours gossiped for miles,
bikers, runners, those who had just come from the detour.
policemen stood smiling, redirecting traffice.
an old bus sat dismantled at the side of the road in front of a blue truck that had crashed.
dreamcatchers hung from the dashboards of passing vehicles.
old men carried canes, wore sunhats.
old ladies took the drivers seat, stretched their arms around the chair,
shifted their weight so their triceps stretched.
my hair escaped in curls. my sister sat beside me unbathed, running her hands over her acne. you know,

if you ate something other than chocolate you might feel a little better.
a little less
crash and burn.

He watched her die.

I would rather be a tree!

He took her to the road.
She wanted more than cement, she wanted more than headaches.

I am become like a tree
because noone knows how to keep me.
I am become like a tree
My legs have been whittled, my knees and elbows
look like knobs

Count the lines on my face,
watch my hair grow wild in the summer like leaves.
Hear our words turn into leaves, clapping together.
Harder when we argue, softer when we do not say a word.

Sometimes it is softening to yell. It sounds like storms.
Sometimes when it storms the leaves clap together and it reminds
me of you after we have made angry.
It reminds me of toes tapping against tiles.
It reminds me of being cold.
It reminds me of seeing you in public.

I saw you the other day, I found a twenty on the street, thought I would come in.
You do not get angry now. Now you just get tired. The cement is making it difficult to breathe.

Every day for the last year we have seen each other. You get tired, and I come home with leaves. I wear them on my breasts, on my upper legs.

The woman gets lost in the trees often because it is easier than witnessing his legs, too weak to move. Once you planted a small tree in the backyard, supported by a hockey stick. The tree grows large and full now but there is not as much hope for you.

Broke the Rules

I had a date with your brother,
you told me to stay far away
but I couldn't contain myself.

Every so often thoughts of your brother
and then he is on the street. What will you
have me do?
He smiles like you do
and dances like you do
and he is short like you are.
Your brother is not as old
as he claims,
his heart is broken but it still moves.

Will you then mind if I break the rules and try to keep you?

if your knees break,
if you can't walk,
if you can't bear the thought to run,
if you can't talk without slurring,
if you can't write,
if you can't read,
if your skin leaves your bones
will you then mind if i contain you?

what will you become then?
scratches in the air,
scratches in the back of the mind,
something as mere as memory,
or a reflection of how you survived,
squeeze you into the vile,
put you on my skin.

if on the bone up my left wrist
be who you are,
if on the heel inside of my left foot,
be where you are,
if on the back of my neck,
breathe,
if on the palm of my right hand,
concentrate.

I'd heal you up

you are so young boy -
much smaller, whiter, softer than I.
my skin would burn you.
you are such a young boy,
far too young for me

yet look at those wounds,
so large, so red, so open,
I could dig my hands in if you
want me to?

I'd heal you up but you're so young.

I am so much bigger, darker, harder
than you but you get scary sometimes,
talking about sex, talking about
sleeping with girls, talking negatively
about everything

because if you're pessimistic
it seems much easier -
yet

your skin does not show signs
of being too old, you still seem young.
I'd heal you up, I don't mind blood,
but you are still so young.

Tangled Carpet (Tangled Brain)

all these secrets in the carpet
in the rips in the carpet
in this lofty apartment where it gets hot
and then it gets cold
without anyone telling us how to control it -
when it gets to twenty eight degrees
let the man know and he will turn it down.
so it gets cold but then i wake up hot, so hot,
and it gets cold but then i walk around and i get hot.

but there are secrets in the carpet,
there are secrets in the walls.
if you trace your fingers between the stones you find
secrets in the walls.
you stick tacks in the wood and find more secrets.
don't think anything too loud because someone
you weren't expecting will answer.
there are secrets in the carpet -
where it is ripped into squares and other shapes.

i don't know the secrets and i don't know the answers
to the secrets i have found but i know when you get
up in the morning after too many drinks i hear
you from all ends of my room when you occupy
the front end of the apartment.
i know your lock doesn't work anymore
but that's another kind of secret.
the carpet it curls up in such interesting places
but stays flat in most places

but then it curls up and i think about the grains,
the strands of colour and i think of someone with
their hand - i think about someone with their hand
taking the strands one by one - the colours don't matter -
and i think about them running their hands over each piece of thread
and then weaving it one strand at a time, filling it
with their lies and their secrets or their lies or
their secrets and touching each strand really hard
until they weave one entire little section.

and then i guess they continue until the
entire loft is filled with enough carpet or secrets
or lies.

Ain't Talkin

little girl i heard about you
and i heard you're not ok.
don't go away.
*
he didn't mean it,
i know when he means it
and he didn't mean it.

it gets hard as we get older
to know why his brain gets so hard,
why it presses so much on his shoulders
on his fist.

he didn't mean it,
i remember sitting on the sidewalk,
refusing to go inside
until he stopped meaning it
and started to think.

he didn't mean it
not with you
*
wish i knew what to tell you
wish i knew what to say
but i mean it,
don't go away, stay.

a product of your generation.

...dying is the most fantastic experience in life. It's a hip, chic, vogue thing to do. It's the most elegant thing you can do. Even if you've lived your life like a complete slob, you can die with terrific style. I can't wait for this moment.

- Timothy Leary

Starting to Work

finally things are starting to work. the air conditioning works.
i work. the lights work.
we don't pay for utilities but i turn off all the lights whenever i leave
the room. people are starting to work.
with the heat gone i can get out of bed at 6 am and not sleep
uncharacteristically until 12:40 pm.
the internet works.
the air works. these buildings are no longer just tall and filled with pressure that makes it hard to breathe but they are filled with air that works.
the books are starting to work.
the looks
are starting also, to work.
i am never good at beginnings (they are always the same) and i am never good
with endings (maybe i said something wrong, wrote something wrong, maybe you think
i meant something else when i didn't. maybe you think i like sex, do drugs, drink too much when i don't).
those are also starting to work.
a lot of people i can see will cease to work.
but not jesus. not the little boy.
not anna,
not robert,
not the four. maybe there will be one or two more.
the thought of dying is starting to work.
the interviews make sense.
the references work.
my limbs are starting to work.
my breasts are starting to work.
my posture works.
you stay in bed and don't go to your job
and that works.

* Nothing wrong with illusions as long as they work...
and continue to work...
(C.B.)

the lights work. sometimes i turn them off and sit in the dark.
sometimes someone else turns them off.

Lose Your Millions and Call Me

if only you
had been a poor man,
i could have stood to have you
see my books
as pieces of material,
i wouldn't have minded when your dirty
hands touched the page
and made it unreadable for the ticking
it now made when i try to concentrate on the words,
but you traded my brain
for bank bills.

i want to bring
you back to the store and return you
for a new edition
with new pages
so there can be room for new stains.

if only you had been a poor man
we could have clung to each other
for what we didn't have -
me to you for your thick skin
and way of seeing the world for roads
and maps and laws.
if only you had been a poor man,
i could have tolerated your love of old cars
and your need to spend
(maybe you would have travelled
further then,
maybe i would have called then).

instead we suffered through improper pronounciation,
use of semi-colans,
commas, parleying about greek gods,
your roomate interjecting where you
couldn't finish your sentences.
if only you had been poor man,
we could have clung to each other,
become ripe,
not known the page was stained
because the juices from our mouths
would have made it look new again.

Savage Bed

I don't want to know
about your mind kid,
your skin is fine with me.

you bought long tailed crustaceans
and let your skin bake -
you called yourself tanned
but you look slightly red to me.
skin red like lips
even close to burgundy.

your skin is heating up
are you sick or are you fine?
it isn't too late
your brain is still ripe
if you use water
and vitamine and put the paper
away, put your hot skin away -
rest away.

you got sick in the sun,
I could have rubbed your skin
hard to make it disappear
between my hands and the sand,
could have made it soft
but I didn't want to know
about your mind - just your skin
would have been fine.

Sugar Eyes

stupid strands of sugar
all over the sill,
sad silences do still the air
where once you fell in
sheets -

sugar is melting all over,
sad, sad, sad silence.
there is sugar all over the air
and somehow it eliminates the
spaces -

between where you are
and where you are not,
but it is melting,

slowly disolving into clumps
and then into nothing,
all over the air where i stick
my tongue to see if you
are still here

but you are not.

Drunk Love, Sing

you always knew how to party,
you know that, they know that.
drunk and pretty love you have come so far
in so long, in so much time since we have been
writing next to one another.
stop picking at your hands and play a song,
you always knew, you always knew
(for the record i didn't always know -
drunk love you always did know how).

baby, pretty baby i am drawing you but
you are coming out darker than before,
in all the dark, can you be seen in lights?
can you be seen in the light in a chair
with my love on your lap, hands soft in your hair.
no more drunk love, no more drunk love,
i will have no more of that drunk love for
my body cannot handle all of that
drunk, drunk love.

you always knew how to party,
they will give you that at least,
let you in and give you tools for things that
you don't know how to do (that alley was dark,
that alley was dark, these alleys are filled with
beer and drunk and love - you're going somewhere
and i'm going nowhere, nowhere).
sing a song, sing a song.

Stop Pulling On Lashes

look at the tip of my finger real close
now real close, yeah

but babe!
stop pulling out your eyelashes please,
stop pulling out your eyelashes,
if you ruin your face, you'll be no good.

(you know i don't mean it,
babe),
how goes your pigeon toes,
how goes your husky lips,
how goes your pa,
your ma?

i know what you did babe,
i know what you did and its no good.
your teeth are not so good now,
now that they have that space
on the bottom right
(i have it too babe -
but i know what you did and
its still no good).

opens wounds wounds wounds,
open wounds
(holes in your lids where the
lashes once were).
i know what you did,
STOP PULLING OUT YOUR EYELASHES PLEASE.
yes i know mine are not as long as yours
but that doesn't mean i don't know how
to do it like you do
(stop wishing on me).

STOP PULLING OUT YOUR EYELASHES
its not fair
that you do it like you do - STOP.
pigeon toes, husky lips and eyes
that are no good
without those lashes of yours
(stop pulling them).

All over the town and all around

all the sand all on the ground
in the town,
all the sand in the air,
it's just not fair.

you're making it REAL hard.
do you know my papa's dying?
that his limbs are slowly cramping
and yet i can't be here
because all your man amounts to sand

and it is all over the ground,
all around my eyes, my fingers,
my toes, my brain -
all over there is sand
and now the sand is your face
in its place
and i can't stand.

you're making it REAL hard.
do you know my papa's getting slower,
getting older much more faster
than your man
is getting old,
i'm going home,
i'm being told
i cannot breathe with all the sand.

all in my eyes,
it gets real dry,
i cannot see,
i cannot stand.

Alcohol Makes Pretty Girls Ugly

A play I am going to write soon:

Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you? - Walt Whitman

Clement: Money doesn't buy happiness.

Florence: I know.

Clement: Now don't go thinking I'm not happy. But I've learned a lot and I know, money doesn't make you happy.

Florence: It won't buy you happiness but it will help you get a lot of places that will help you be happy.

Clement: Sometimes I think I'm greedy.

Florence: Why?

Clement: If I keep doing this as I have been, I'll have a million by next year.

Florence: (Holy fuck. A million dollars? How much money do you have boy? A million dollars could help out with a lot of things) That's interesting.

Clement: Do you think I'm greedy for that?

Florence: No, not at all (You do everything you need to reach that goal).

Broken Body Baby (Never the Same)

you've got some love for your ma,
since she nursed you back to health,
you were so pale and thin and broken.

your body ain't so right
since you broke every bone in it babe.
three seizures the other night
but you still won't tell your ma,
still won't stop drinking,
still won't stop breaking up the love
in your fingers and then rolling it.

that's what i miss about you babe,
waking up to love, and rolling it,
and nothing being right until nothing more
was said and we were in bed
and quiet.

the lady at the lingerie shop told me
i don't want a man with bad health anyway.

hope your body's alright babe,
take care,
do not drink, pop, snort, or smoke it please,
take care -
your skin has already been sold
for too much money.

Silent highway drives

1. long silent drives down the highway,
your hand on my knee,
my eye on your mouth,
your eyes on the electronic road map
you paid so much for,
the silences driving me angry, cold.

long silences in the air grow slowly into
sand, then turn slowly into mud
wrapped around your hands.

every stop on this sequence,
one that has been planned,
on your electronic roadmap,
how long could i stand it?

this silence is heavier
than sidewalk sun tans,
rocks ingrained in the skin,
in the pavement,
in the cold air covered with frost,
and our eyes,
and our lies -
we could not want to be here,
any longer.

2. today i took the road without you
and it was long and it was cold
and it was lonely,
though i know i couldn't stand
your hands,
your man,
your lack of sunscreen tan
(babe),
i sure do miss you.

though we knew it wouldn't work,
it gets so cold and lonely
and the road is so long
without you
behind the wheel,
costs more money,
takes more time,
makes me much more sad and mad
and lonely.

(if anything i told you i could stand you
because your hands were so much poetry)
so much screaming,
so many loud silences screaming,
so many long hours on the pavement.

Dear, Dead Love

you are nowhere to be found
dear love,
dead lover.
so far away you have become
yet still i feel that i do want you
do need to have you
dear, dead love.
you have been gone
for some time now.

don't want to call,
don't want to come,
don't want to not want you
to not be here,
anymore dear love,
dear deadness.
do you feel dead now?

have your bones begun to break,
has your head yet lost its heal?
has your body shook and shaken
as of lately?

thought it was the boy you killed,
the boy you killed for,
but he is gone
and you are still dead,
dear love, you need to be here,
dear love, you need to see here,
dear love you cannot die here,
what can be done?

you are dead and
gone and nowhere
to be found,
you're not around.

l.ove.

today i noticed you weren't here.
your eyes were so emerald in the picture
but where are you, not in pages, tried
to have you down in pen but you found me out,
dear its alright, i know i ripped the page
around you.

dear, today i noticed you weren't here. must be
nice with laundry in the house and time on the
road in your hands, but you don't drive anywhere
anymore, even though you bought that pretty new
corvette, you don't go nowhere i know it is true,
it must be.

today i noticed you were not here, and i wonder
where you keep me, not in wood under the dresser
i should hope; not in bags, where i left me i
should hope; not in the laundry where my sock is, i
would hope because you might get confused then.

the page is ripping, ripping, the page is blank
because you ripped yourself right out and glued
yourself down on the road, dear. ruby lips, you
sure do have, diamond dentals, saphire eyes or
emerald eyelids. today, i noticed you weren't here.

Strange Fat Lip

you didnt leave marks on my neck
like you said you would,

my skin is still soft like you said it was,
my hair is still thin like you said it was,
my eyes are still the same
as they always were

but for some reason

you didn't leave bruises on my legs,
like you said you would.


we spent all night in the kitchen,
you kicking my legs, your height
giving you an advantage over my low knees,

but still there were no bruises
when i woke beside you,

strange because usually i can bruise
by putting one knee on top of the other
and just sleeping,

and sadly you said
you're going home
and you closed your eyes.

strange fat lip,
i woke up with this morning.

It's Not Really Working (I wonder if you know that)

Because I'm restless
and impatient.

Did you ever,
(when you were younger),
did you ever
go with your friends
to the back of the play
ground and let them
bury you in the snow?

Starting with your toes,
creating a wall around your
body,
moving up
to your shoulders
and then around your head,
and finally,
over your head,
so it felt
like you were dead?

It gets dark
in the snow,
it gets warm
in the snow,
it gets calm
inside
the snow bank.

I get restless,
I get impatient,
and yet,
under the snow
it is calm,
and it is warm,
and it is dark,
and it is quiet,
and it is so lonely
under here

but nice,
it is.

You get so restless.
You get so restless but never close
to I under the snow.
You get impatient
but never so impatient
as I.

Nice Legs You Stupid Drunk

i.
I get drunk
off the food these days,
I get drunk.

I eat food and I get wasted OR
I have become wasted.

my body doesn't like the food,
my heart doesn't like the body
(it races and races).

I eat the food and I can't stand up,
I get so drunk.

ii.
all I want to do is eat - no.
all I want to do is eat - no.
I want to not get wasted

(not be wasted,
not get wasted)

off my food,
no more, no more.

iii.
you're losing your mind (you know it),
you're losing your body (you know it),
you have to be careful of your heart,
it doesn't beat right (you know this too),

your heart beats like this (swish, swish),
you heart beats like fists.

your body beats down to the ground
when you get so drunk off the love,
the food.

iv.
before when I ate,
my body used to feel the food,

now it doesn't need it.

My Skin Is So Transparent

how the sun turned into you this morning, love.
turned your skin a colour like the insides of apples browning,
left you warm and sweating slowly.

between the night and the morning,
i find you semi-precious between sheets,
your jagged eyes,
your blood-tipped nose,
your wolves lips,
the scars all over your body
(some disrupting the pattern of
haystack hair so precious,
rolled from bales in all directions,
others on your face creating tracks,
down across your back, the largest one,
deep rooted cuts lined with staple marks -
i can see how you were butchered).

i take for granted how many times a night
you wake to find me sleeping,
and let the moon illuminate my hallowed skin
(your hands all drenched in water,
more proof of your semi-preciousness).

they say love shines in the light like a diamond
so bright the sun makes patterns on the wall.
(your skin is the colour of sun on the walls,
shining through diamonds).

Your Vocal Chords Taste Just Like Sugar

a tarp of green covers the air that we have made
our own, when we are inside we stare at the mud
and sticks and we turn our backs and smile, still
staring.

it doesn't matter where our eyes grace, whether it
is the brown above us or the stark grey air, cool
like fog and so thick that we have leave to hang
our new presumptions upon it - so far we have not
hung anything but i know in both your pocket
and in mine there are things to be hung.

there is sugar all over the air and somehow it
eliminates the space between the places we must be -
you have sugar all over your skin and i feared that
in the heat you might feel inclined to go the water
and then to melt away but still i can feel it when
i place my tongue in the air - the small pieces
of sugar like sand.

this sad stillness in the air has become plain again,
it is not my way but if it was i would feel
lucky that you should act like it is yours - there is
so much sugar in the air that i feel it may melt
into dirt again, so much sugar in the air that i am
calm again under this tarp of dirt and green.

sugar twisting around branches, around air wrapped
around bodies, limbs, faces, around air that is
waiting to be hung with new grains, large impositions.

Sad Day Before Sunday

like sugar between flour,
what are we here for?

(distressed, deranged,
dismembered -
shredded).

sad silences sing softly,
hanging in the air,

the sun has cut your hallowed skin,
the sun has kept mine cold;
the sun has heated all your skin,
the sun has kept mine cold;
the sun has kept my skin stark white,
the sun has kept you cold.

sad silences sing secrets onto fingers,
sad silences sing whispers
onto tabletops.

You and Your Back Roads

you love the arrows at the bottom of the page - fool.
shooting arrows down country roads and watching them fly,
watching them skim your face.
pull back, prepare, release.
you have country roads across your lips
and I can see them wind all over -
you drink beer while driving on country roads,
you speed you car on dirt on country roads,
you let me drive down country roads
and tell me I am terrible.

lean back in your chair love
for soon I will leave you and soon
I will be back again.

feel the dirt fly up in tires,
see the cows,
stack the hay,
don't stop at corners.
large generalizations love -
your lips,
your roads,
your eyes again.
let's roll in the dirt and lie in country fields.

I will be home when the first snow falls,
my country, country love.