Dust From the Tracks

I chose you
because of your long arms,
the first time they wrapped
around the full width of me
I knew I desperately
wanted you more
than the others did,

you
because of all your books:
fantasy,
politics,
business,
biographies,
stacking taller and taller
on your bedside table,

you
because you were quiet
and I grew up in a loud home,
you showed restraint,
you studied stoicism,
and I always felt
too full of fire,
too forthcoming,
I knew you would quiet me,

but I left because
I didn’t like being
the only one
in the room
when I smelled the dust
from the tracks
through the open window,

when I felt the train shaking
the walls before I heard it
beating along,
wondering how long it was,
where it was going,
where it was coming from,
the things it was carrying,

trying to catch a glimpse of
some history or graffiti,

I left because
we were always
smelling the dust,
listening to the train,
feeling it vibrate through us
from separate floors.

Extraction

I can feel you here
as I breathe out and sink in
to this place
you helped me build
so you
could
leave.

photographs of your grandfather
when he was your age
with your same shining eyes
flash
softly
sometimes.

I squint at all the
shapes we made
to fit
each other
in

and I see that they
are empty
now.

now that

you

have
finally
left here.

we made a promise
and we broke it.

I see you
turn down the highway

in the opposite
direction

in your brand new pick up truck
with your emerald eyes skimming
past me.

and I wonder what to do
with what is left of you,
of this life I built
so you'd fit in.

Purple Grey

the purple asters sway
against the sky flat gray,
tread water through summer
and now I'm fading with the light,
a little more each day.

northwestern wind blows,
but we have a place we can go,
a turtle carcass slows or speeds
our hunt for rarities among rocks,
here at the mouth of the bay.

we skim and scan for lightness,
but we find things dead or broken,
glass still unremarkable
from bottles recently smashed,
we throw it back and skim again.

soon we will forget the feeling
of sand under our feet,
will yearn for what we lost
when summer turned to fall,
when we watched ourselves fading,

but the asters still sway,
against the sky smoky grey.

It Was Nice to See You

I thought I’d never see you again
But here you are
Forming in the air
Along dusty roads

You part your lips
To speak pure poetry
You'll need a lot of tools
To cultivate the land

Did you know
You’re a poem to me?

Your sapphire eyes sparkle,
Your scarlet lips smile

You’re forming here like dust
Or sugar in the air

I see sugar all over the air again,
Over skin, pale and tanned,
Dust flying all over the air again
On country roads

LoverMuse

I am a poet,
and he is my lovermuse.

his limbs fall into lines,
his fingers roll words to rhythm,
he drinks down history,
he tells me policy,
he sips my beers.

his brain is deep,
he talks and talks,
his eyes gaze,
his arms ripple and curve,
he says he takes it easy on the drugs now,
he has things to lose now.

he heats up next to me,
sleeps like white noise next to me,
his heart is beating
like lustlove to me,
he sees right into me,
knows how to lay his hands
right onto me.

I am a poet,
and he is the poem.

Acorn Falling

acceptance she thought she
saw/felt/heard
as an acorn fell into her lap
from the oak tree

later drinking/talking/crying
watching videos on her phone
she revealed her regret
at not coming home sooner

Drenched/Drowning

I wake up
to rain drops
fallingbeating
on the tin roof,

the sky is an even grey,
on the path
brown pine needles
create a new bed,

acorns dropping
sound like gunshots,
the moss on the rocks
will be slippery later

I turn to look at the sky
out my window, raindrops
one after the other,
like drops in a can

when the rain stops
we'll step on acorns,
soak in the forest as
the damp soaks into our skin

each drop of rain
drenchesdrowns me,
but I am on my way,
will be renewed

you'd like this morning
(the sounds on our tin roof)

Subsist

the pandemic
broke me.

hardly surviving by summer,
I subsisted on
books,
weed,
writeread,
island peace,
oak leaves,
wind on water,

the soft sound
of canopies above me,

swaying
twinkling
leaning
snacking
drinking
sparkling water,

light dancing
on the ripples of waves,

the wind,
and the vastness
of the sky,

clouds swaying by
altocumulus

Nobody's Perfect

there is sugar
all over
the air again,
sapphire eyes,
scarlet lips,
and golden skin,
your laugh echoing

Across the Acres

she is fleeting,
she is healed and whole,
she is looking for a love
as bright as the cotton candy sky,
she is looking for someone with a soul
as pink as the clouds tonight,
someone to watch the world with
as the sunset fades into midnight.

she is whole,
can be seen
just as she is,
she knows
he is not enough,
but she still wants him.

she is already organizing him
into the parts she will want
and the parts that won't work,
but you cannot have
half a person.

he is looking to be his whole self,
just for him,
he will not be kept,
he will not be categorized,
he will walk the land,
he will stop to stare
at the sky.

In the Heat of July

sugar baby pie,
I'd still live in all your lies,
falling into sparking eyes,
can't see through all this haze,
your eyes are grey just like the bay,
lingering in all my days,
I see them shining through the waves,

and you're my quartz below the sky,
I'd build a cottage in your lies,
staring to familiar eyes,
I'd take up all your days,
kiss your skin in all the ways,
learn to navigate this maze.

baby you've got me,
looking up at you,
wondering if this lust is true,
this sugary sweet daze,
killing me in all the ways,
in these slow and sparkling days.

my caramel baby pie,
I want you safe between my thighs,
we'll both be breathing in the sighs,
I'm wishing for your salty taste,
your fingers wrapped around my waist,
through your grey and sparkling eyes,
forgetting all these earthly lines.

your eyes are shining in the sky,
midnight lies between my thighs,
the bay glistening sparkling wet,
since the first day that we met.

Eyes Like the Bay

pretty guys with pretty lies,
reflections of oak leaves in their eyes,

your caramel skin,
that twinkling sin.

the more I try,
the more I find
so many traces
of familiar lines,

and you’re still
selling me,
your pretty lies,
and eyes,
and lines.

the bay is twinkling in time
with the rhythm of these lies,
the sun is shining high
making deeper all the lines,
and making pretty
all these times.

that sparkling sin
reflecting in
clouds whisking by,
across the sky,

within your grey-blue eyes
you sell the prettiest of lies.

Waning Moon

My heart is a cottage,
waves wish washing,
trees rustling,
loons calling in the night

My heart is an island,
gazing at stars,
fires crackling,
sand even in the bed sheets

My heart is a cottage,
moss-covered rocks,
oak leave silhouettes,
gardner snakes slithering

My heart is an island,
the waning moon shining,
midnight rhythm of the bay,
painted turtles bobbing heads

Goodbye City Lover

Our hearts are empty rooms,
You didn’t notice a single clue,
Sat alone to watch the city sunset,
Sky warm and ombre

You’ve been cabbage growing,
Ivy browning in the sun,
You’ve been shining in the blue light,
I hardly thought you were the one.

I asked for diamonds love,
But they weren’t enough,
I asked you to stop with the names,
But it took too long,

I asked for family,
But mine was broken:
A mean mother,
Ranting sister,
Dead father,
Wandered brother,
Selfish stepmother,
Pushover stepfather,
It won’t be you, love,
It won’t be you.

I may have been broken
But I’m healing now,
This apartment was our home,
but it’s empty rooms now.

Perfect limbs
In the golden light
Of the late afternoon,
Curled up head to toe,
It wasn’t enough
To save you.

Escaped, Got Away

The bay glitters in front of me,
The wind is calm, but cold.

Little successes:
An email sent
A half hour doing yoga

And little failures:
90+ messages, texts, and emails from you,
Mocking female empowerment,
Telling me I’m not strong,

Saying you want money for the earrings,
And the Netflix subscription.

You don’t matter as much
As the sound of the waves,
Calm and constant,
The moving of the trees and clouds
By the September wind.
It shuffles and shakes the leaves
All around me.

You still have your spot
Under the skin of my chest,
But the bay glitters in front of me,
The sand warms my calloused feet,
And on this island,
I am safe from you.

I finally left you,
while back home,
the bay glistened.

Do It, Don't

here i am tripping all over my feet again -
stop, you will stop, you will stop me.
here i am tripping all over my words again.
stop, you will stop me.

the life of a student is a sad one,
the life of a poet is a sad one,
the life of a lover is a sad one.

(you have taught me to want write to again,
i thought i'd never want
to write again).
she says, do it.
i say, no, i don't want to.

Extinguish the Sun

There was that one summer
When I tried to extinguish the sun
Was so determined
I could leave you,

But you only stayed burning.
You and me, hot red cheeks
Sweltering in the heat
Of a golden afternoon

That summer we tried
To extinguish the sun,
We thought we'd watch it,
As it turned right to ash

We tried to stop its bright burn,
But we are still waiting
For billions of years to pass -
And you warm me still.

The sun is golden this morning
As I scan the shoreline
And feel the heat of you,
Shield my eyes from your glow

How to write a poem

You have to start with where it hurts the most. And if it doesn't hurt you have to wait.

brain hurting mad.

What would you like me to be?
I’m trying real hard to be myself
And you don’t like it.
Lest I should forget that all my words
Too hard to swallow
Are the only things that tell me in all the lost of
North or South or West or East,
That I still am
And still am somewhere
That I don’t mind being at all.
What is the difference if you like it or not?
I picked a life to become
And you said you wanted me but now you’re making me
Chili-tied, wide-eyed, brain hurting mad.
I don’t want a single thing
that’s so brain hurting mad.
And especially why
Would I twist and try
To be less of what I only know
of who I simply am
For a simple man
with an embarrassing shortage
of a half simple plan.

Poor Dog

finally, at some point you're sitting in a room
with a bolstered, crass old man and he says to you,
"you're so fucking lost, it's a joke,
you'll never escape and if you're not careful,
you'll let them eat you.
they will continue to laugh at your stink
if don't start sneering more at them, or join them.
there are pictures of gods dancing on your fucking walls,
and you can't dance. there are stone rubbings in your bathroom
but they, fool, are not stone rubbings
because, as they'll tell you, that became illegal before you were born.
there are pictures of people on your walls that you consider to be key fragments
of your tired and nearly broken-down soul, and they don't even like you.
look -
here is a picture of your young-skinned, yellow-toothed mom,
here is a picture of your drunkenness,
here is a picture of the cigarettes,
here is a picture of your poorness,
here is a picture of your slobishness,
here is a picture of a man living gleefully between four very weak walls.
here is a scar from when you ran into a cement wall.
that's the only thing that isn't real. the only thing unsmellable.
here is a picture of the lust that didn't help,
and there is a picture of the love that will not save."

or maybe he'll say, after spitting out his whiskey on the ground,
"fuck, kid. there was a second there I thought I liked you."

A Portrait of the Young Woman Going Mad

The portraits we have of this artist, are photographs.
These photographs were taken (somewhere)
and were developed by the artist
herself. Only photographs.
Modern attempts to capture young woman's
nature are weighed down with
truth-like details (realities - insanity is a different type
of reality). The inability to sketch out what is not (important).
Portraits, only some of the time are apt at capturing madness.

The photographs you will see are infiltrated with descriptions
of the artist losing her mind. Some may attribute this madness
to lack of nutrition. Some may attribute it to an affliction
(intoxicated, starved, starving, desperate pain in her limbs
caused by a block of blood flow to her brain). If you look closely,
you can see. If you were to meet her (somewhere), you'd never ask.
You'd just look back at the photograph.

This artist's madness was in her hair. Her portrait was kept in a room
with precious treasures from land of the Orient.
If I were to take her portrait I'd do it in oils (given there existed money,
skill, time) Only a camera was available at this time.
A good artist steals (has been stolen, is stolen -
sometimes by reality, sometimes by the realities)
A good portrait of a woman or a woman going mad steals
(what you see is not truth, it is madness). Steal from her
that which was at one time and is at once.
Kill the moments that stole from her the right to be
so mind boggling insane. Her insanity is so.

She is not mad in all of these photographs. As you will see,
she is only mad in some. Losing the mind is a gradual process.
You will find that some of these portraits are slightly ambiguous.
You will have to decide for yourself when her mind goes.

Cock-heavy underneath things ---

You stumble into the room cow-heavy. I'm sure if this were a different time, I'd stick my head in the oven for you while you continued hanging your cock out of towels.
I hang out of my nightgown. That's my towel. I try to think past dizzy, night-screams.

Girls love getting fucked.
Stop talking to me, I'm randy.
Fuck you, you fucking cunt.
I can't think straight.
You could sit straight.
No.

I smoked a cigarette earlier. I know you can smell it. The heat, it doesn't let these smells escape us. Forty degree plus, in the second week of June. I know what it does to the stink, I've been down the street on garbage day, watching old ladies sort trash. I've been to your room.

Get closer; look me in the teeth,
vinatab-stained and crooked.

I'm reading and trying to write and I can see your cock rising. You're a strange breed, hopefully a poet.

Maybe when you're back from the gym,
I'll have found the reason I want you.
Maybe I'll be cleaner then;
Maybe I won't inadvertently say something abrupt, or suggestive, or awkward;
Maybe I won't guiltily think of that small cock I accidentally latched onto during my holiday from your drunken, dick-mouthed, slim-panted bed;
Maybe I won't barge into your room when you're sleeping next to that tree trunk of a baroness;

Won't breathe in the heat
of your dirty-underweared new bedroom.

You are a strange Scottish man with bug eyes and muscly arms. I think you're a beauty even though your beauty is all covered in grime. You're fucking twisted, looking up derogatory terms for every minority on the continents you've traveled but when we came up to lesbian, all you could think of was slut.

You can do better than that.
I'm going to break this fucking jar and eat your pickles.
Enjoy the glass as it cuts your throat.

I'd like to sit with you for hours, chugging back shots of the black label
you encouraged me to take more litres of.

Don't even think about drinking my whisky while I'm gone.
I need it to loosen me up so I can slander the world,
and then tell you that I'm absolutely partial to trees
and would never let you catch me near a fucking oven,
even if this country offered them to daily filth like you and I.

Coffee with Condensed Milk and Cigarettes

there's a sparrow in my head
somewhere
telling me
come home.

wouldn't that life be as brown
as his feathers?

exhaust fume headache,
she sighs.

she has three big pins in her head
and she is wondering about all of them.

one sits tightly behind her left ear,
digging into her neck.
one sits parallel to the downward cringe
of her right eyebrow,
just near her her hairline.
the last, between her eyes.

she does not know
how they got there,
but she is stacking the clues:

the empty field;
the men in matching clothes;
the imposed regime of rice.

(she makes weapons out of things now,
she once used as tools).

she takes each tiny
piece of rice

and glues it
carefully -
carefully,

over the scar
she got from straw.

I have an answer for your question and its to get the fuck out of here.

Dear Buk,
where have I left you?

I have turned life
into crudeness
because
I have need of you.

Dear Buk,
why have you left me?

my pages are made of rice
and I have need of you.

I'm no more your mother than the wind.

I'm no more your mother than the cloud that distils a mirror - Sylvia Plath, Morning Song

I watch you across the pond. You sit cross-legged peering at leaves as they fall, feeling the wind tearing pieces off you. You are coloured just like them - yellow, orange, and red. You're crumbling just like them but you'll live and they'll be dead.

You'll want me to glue leaves to you, yellow, orange, and red but don't forget they'll brown, and crinkle to the ground, and you'll be naked.

I'd like to move but you may hear me, and I don't want to see the boulder where you're sitting without you. You sit cross-legged counting leaves. I'm at forty three. I could fill you with leaves, I could watch you for days, and then I could cross the pond and wash you with its water, if you think you'd like it.

You don't know it but there are fish there, fluttering underneath the crust of leaves, swimming just below the surface. I bought them from the pet store, thirty four in all, just for you. Goldfish. I think you'd look beautiful in skin like theirs. They'll die soon, they do not belong here. Not like you. I could remove the scales one by one and paste them to your epidermis. Your skin would shine like the sun.

The ground is damp and if you let me, I could roll mud across your body. I'd leave only your eyes free, so I could watch them move, counting leaves. You imagine they are torn by the wind but it is their time to fall.

I imagine how you feel with the boulder underneath you, cracking against your bum bones each time you exhale. You are so thin now. The boulder will be sand soon, and then it will be soft, but not like you. You'll stay hard as you stare, wishing the colour, to stay in its time to go.

When you are gone, I'll move rocks, the largest I can carry. Rearrange them in the creek, watching always the boulder where you'll perch when you return. When you come back here, the tree will be naked, and you'll blink your eyes and sigh. I'll crumple browned leaves and glue the pieces one by one to your body, starting with your back so you can stare straight as one or two last leaves fall to the ground. You'll crinkle your eyes, not sure if you feel. I'll fill you back with crumpled leaves. It will take patience for both of us. You'll sigh about lost colour, upset that there wasn't more time.

I'll watch you as you go, find the place you've chosen to nestle. I'll gather dandelions, rip each petal (so delicate a word for weeds, I know, but I'll save them). I'll colour your body as you sleep. Paste tiny petals to your skin, starting with your toes, up your legs and depending how long you nap, right up to your nose. Then, when you wake you'll see colour. I'll watch you from my spot in the trees, so glad to see your eyes crinkle. It will be glee but you won't know it.

You'll go back to the pond and stare at the tree, shocked there is no colour. But you'll be the one with the colour in the forest. You don't know how to cry but the pond will be your tears, and you'll shudder as it ripples. By then the goldfish will be on the surface, and you'll exhale so strong, watching their bodies float upright, willing yourself to be more like them or the leaves.

I peer at you across the pond. You sit cross-legged watching scarlet leaves float across the sky before they rest on the ground. Sometimes one flutters from sight and you think, freedom, but I see them touch down. You can't imagine they would ever brown. They are red like food-things, those tiny miscellaneous bulbs you rest your fingers on when you walk, sometimes, through the forest. I don't know who eats them but something does. Delicious things you've never tried. Of course, they are red like blood but they are too dry to run through your veins. They belong to the trees.

Freedom, you think, freedom. The leaves may be dying but they have more freedom than you do. The trees thin and so do you. I'll watch your body as it moves. I'll gather turkey leaves. You'll not have eaten the meat but you'll find comfort in their feathers.

Nameless Man with his Hands on Her Legs

mangos
melons

maggots.

motos
moto drivers
moto driver

wrap your hands around my waist
no she will not

your picnic is dirt
maggots

no picnic with you
won't smoke your

cigarettes

so lost
(we should really go out)

i am losing.
there are no trees
no leaves,
and the city
cannot read my soul.

and the concrete space
that i have for a patio,
is so small.

and the air
that i want,
is so far from this place.

i am here because my heart was rested,
my body restless

remember me as the leaves change
imagine me
so i exist where you are.

Relapse

They say that relapses for alcoholics occur every
for marijuana users every
for hallucinogine users every
for prescription medication users every

for poets every
and for lovers

There are many ways to write poems
and there are many reasons as well,
sometimes it is to perserve memories,
to add to them to make them better,
other times it is to make fantasies into some version of reality,
even if it is sick or twisted or sad

One way
to write poems

is to sit quiet and breathe in the rage
that is brewing inside you
and let it escape even though
it might humiliate you


There are many things that make me miss you
There are many things that make me remember you existed
even though I push the image of you
as far
into
my
throat
and as deep
into
my
stomach
as
you
will
go,
And sometimes I notice the rage of you -

Coffee reheated
Tea bags in cool water
Fake tans, heat rashes,
Burns that pull your face taut
You singing in the car,
Cans of Carling and the way you taught me
to twist and crush them

every minute, the spectacle of the world astonishes me; it is so comic that I cannot understand how literature would expect to cope with it.

- Czeslaw Milosz

Stunning Gray

After all this,
still there is an issue
to confront.

Still an issue
that seeps
into who I am.

I want sustenance
and suddenly
you come from air.

After all this
there are times
that sticks form walls
in front of eyes.

Legs so thin
mine quiver.

dear love dream in a stolen scene,
do you impart all you once hoped for her to me
including long journies across countries,
impressions of hunched shoulders straightening?
do you ever wonder if this young sun will burn
out before your heart has a chance to heal?
or do your new dreams include the mere
intoxication of your body?

the bay moving to the right with trees

now that i'm young
i've come to believe
in the islands and the trees
and the breaking sound of knees,

and recently that love
isn't always
such a tease
though that might be
what it seems.

now that i'm young,
and the sky is full of glee,
the tickling sound of wind
feels like my outward seams.

now that i'm younger
and my luck feels almost done,
i believe in seams, and the seems,
and the islands and the trees,
and how the bay feels like my knees.

the inside of my mouth
has become a ball gown

Keep it if you catch it

The poet dies.

Buk suggests killing the fish,
by first removing it's eyes,
and then it's fins
(for precaution, in case
it should attempt to swim).
Dear Buk,
the fish was dead when I removed it
from the water.
I would prefer one by one then,
to kill it's soul by removing it's scales,
but wouldn't that take long,
aren't there too many pieces?
A fish cannot have less than
three thousand scales.
Oh, but kill it, Buk said.
What if I prefer to let it free
without any record of ever having
held it in my hands?

How many eyes does your heart have?

He asks her:
How many eyes does your heart have?

She answers: One.
But what she really means is:
My heart has as many eyes
as the oldest birch
in the forest.

And sometimes, when other trees
get tangled at my roots and grow
against my heart's life,
My heart grows many more eyes.

He asks her:
How many eyes does your heart have?

She answers: One.

He, on her poetry decides

she,

on poetry decides
birch - tree - fires

(her pages don't look
quite like birch
enough).


she,

on poetry decides
peel - back - bark

(her skin doesn't feel
quite like birch
enough).


she,

on poetry decides
skin - white - eyed

(her skin doesn't feel
quite like paper).

Maybe we should start with what we're afraid to write...

- Sandra McPherson

Crush

Give me back my ornament, she says.
He picks at her like straw hearts and black stones
And she eyes him like he’s a studio shoot for Valentine’s Day.
He doesn’t know she wrote the script.
He scribbles out the word love,
The word that is the loudest,
And hands it to her and tells her to read:
Red wheels, cock bone.
Her eye skirts around the blacked out word.
She trades him wallets for tickets to her sold out show.
He tells her she looks like an arrow that’s been shot
Down a cement highway and has skidded into the ground.
He tells her she’ll have less luck learning to sing,
Than finding any pink in the corn field.
She watches as her heart turns into a beetle,
First he picks the black stones and rearranges them to be the beetle’s eyes
And all of its arms,
And then he takes the straw and rolls it into a circle
To be the beetle’s body. She says,
How dare you take my parts off here?
He blushes slightly, his knees quiver, he waivers as though there is a strong wind,
And then he sings a song:
Red wheels, cock bone.
She feels the bricks underneath her collide as she stumbles home,
Whispering good night to the orange moon and purple sky,
Listening to the crushed as it whispers, goodbye.

Quiet

Dear quiet,
you are so soon come,
not long ago were you filled
with pockets of heartbeats
and cheekbones.
Dear stillness,
I see peacocks and pants,
and patterns,
in the sky you offer me.
I do not question why you are here,
I am thankful for thee.

Dear birdcry,
Dear Nature's battles, how you
frighten me,
return me to my convinced thoughts
that your battles
are from an outside world you
cannot conquer.
Dear skycry,
you move me to think that the
quiet is not alone,
that still there is a buzz of
noise and feeling
and that quiet is not so still.

A Piece of Pure Sugar

wind flies through coloured paper
and I take this world
and make it real.
so, the colours float on book covers,
on small lumps of sugar and sand
from my eyes to the air.
you've built a mountain where you're sitting
but only if the red brick rolls.
this is wrong because he would say
you were fucking the dog.
the wind fucks the eyes,
the heart, the mind.
dogs never smelt like sugar, candy
wind-licks before.
we don't own a dog, my heart cries.
the wild flowers pamper themselves
with small pursings,
the wind blows their scent over
to the deck
where the coloured books and patterns,
paper, thoughts, and
crayons full of sugar, wait
to unleash back into the sky.

Twinkle-tear

other than my addictions,
I'm elated.
she sees it,
tells me it.
she always said I had to give them up
and hit my all-time lows,
or I would never reach my high.
I'm on a high.
she sees it, she knows it,
she is grateful for it,
this small piece of the outside world,
this one last anchor.
right now I'm smoking king-size,
b&h
and my eyes sparkle.
she knows it, and it makes her smile,
even though she cannot connect
me to our chain of ancestors
anymore
than the other four hundred and fifty days before.

Don't Look for the Sky

i want a pen, that's all i want
something to scratch onto paper,
besides my skin,
in place for my brain
since it cannot be removed
from my head.

there are things to be said
that i want to be read
but my hand is just dead
with no pen.

Fowl

For The Mews

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by yearning
Thin over-greedy self-conscious
Strutting through campus streets at dawn showing off
The proof of their opportunity
Status symbol-minded posers burning for green eyes
Wasting space in the jog of their minds
Who targeted and embellished and dumb eyed and bored spend time
Sedating creativity with intoxicated waters and flashes
Wasting desire on imitating idols
Who without any capacity to know why they buy or
On any plain night why the world cries is full of lies
What their ignorance and greed press further away
Who pass through their libraries and parks filled with trees
Without any true sense of what the world needs or the potential
Their glory may feed

Involuntarily Injected

Yesterday you told her
that she had every right
to fight for control of her body.
Yesterday you told her
that she would not be silenced
when she told you of the violation
that society and the people inside
it imposed.

Ecstacy Eyes and Adolescent-Hearted Lies

Gets your skull a-rolling,
Gets your thighs a-rolling,
Gets your hips a-rolling,
Gets your heart a-rolling,
Gets your brain a-rolling,
Gets your thoughts a-rolling from the ground,
From somewhere sound.
Puts you behind windows,
Makes you look through windows,
Makes you think your eyes are windows,
Makes you close the windows when the air conditioning is on,
Makes you stand in front of windows,
Makes you contort your bod in front of windows,
Makes you follow people around houses with windows
Turning off the lights
(At night – in the day the windows give light
And you can’t turn off windows).
Makes you feel hot when the sun reaches through those windows
Into that hall where you’ve been locked behind those windows,
Makes you reach your mind through those windows,
Your eyes through those windows,
And reach your hands through those windows.
Makes you forget who lives outside those windows
Which have become your eyes,
Which have become your lies,
Makes you forget who brought you those windows,
Makes you forget who made you those windows.
Makes you forget what you see out of those windows,
Makes you see nothing out of those windows,
Makes you forget that everything is outside those windows.
Makes you see that glass cannot be penetrated with the bare eye,
Or the bare mind,
Or the bare hand,
Or the bare time (the bare time,
The bare time),
You barely had the time (of the sky,
of your mind, or of your tall glass climbs).

what do you have to do these days,
to get a poem off the ground?

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.

Seasons Greetings

Hello dear.

I've been thinking about you. I had a family Christmas party the other evening and the love of your life showed up. You remember him, don't you? He wanted to start a business that sold the skin of the chicken on its own and then he wanted to start his own television show. He asked about you. I told him you were doing fine. We made out in my hot tub for two hours after the party died down.

I really love you dear. I do. This isn't just the alcohol speaking at all - I've been thinking about you.

The Trees, The Trees

someone stole your table!

i know, i tried to stop them but i couldn't -
i was two floors down, you know.

someone asked me why i like you -
why do i like you:

your hair is wrought dry like hair held too
long in fists and never brushed.
i can imagine what it would be like to grab your
hair in my fist and few by few twist until
it was too dry,
and if you tried to do the same to me,
i would demand you desist.

the lines in your face by your mouth which
i touch and draw squares from.
i can imagine what it would be like to take your
head in my hands and one by one kiss until
it was too dark,
and if you wasted my pale skin like that,
i would attempt to resist.

i know!
i spoke, i know.
do you remember when i spoke?
it was the last straw and you were about to fall -
i know, i know.

you left,
i know!

your eyes are like mine in these flourescent
times and i'd like to keep tall
and not staring at all search to find the resemblance
and try some until we got over the ground
and not caring
if you tried with your eyes to resist
i would attempt to insist.

you looked,
i saw!
i know!

and the trees, the trees -
do you know you're such a tease,
what is it about those god damn trees.

Pigeon Kill

just so you know the reason that i
hate you is because when i see the
glint of your skin i already
know what you will taste like.

even though my legs are tall and my foot
is strong to stomp you,
i know you could kill me -
you have a beak and i am scared of your skin.

your skin glints different colours depending
on the light and every time i discover a new colour
i hate you more.
your feathers don't even look like feathers anymore,
they look like pieces of paper painted with gloss
and metallic shimmers.
you have a beak and i know it could take my eyes out.

just so you know i hate you because i can already see
the path of your skin,
i know where you will end and still i can't control you -
when you come crossing near to me i turn and run.

even though i know you will be served on a plate when you die
i will not eat you but i will take your meat and throw it
against the wall, and even though i fear it
if i had the chance i'd take your claws and one by one
i would break the bones and one by one i would pull
the feathers from your wing and leave them on the ground.

i found you the other day, freshly shot and dead on the sidewalk
and i could not run. i saw you the other day with a puddle
of blood more red than your claws pooling around your head and
i did run -

the very thought of you dead
makes me want to revive you and kill you again,
makes me wish i was responsible for the kill.

i could have lifted you and put you
right into my mouth, i already know
how badly your skin would have tasted.

Heavy Mind

the daft one smokes her joint,
and so do i too feel the need,
the allowance for this deal -
sacrifice the mind for want of nothing,
sacrifice the thought for want of nothing -
the word means other things,
the lack of sound, lack of pounding equals sane.

i used to care for clothing but now i bear it,
wanting only the look of some trees
while i sedate my mind with the passing of the bark
into paper.

can the earth be rolled and understood,
can the matters of the earth prevail?
and if not where am i found -
you probably wondered why i am so quiet,
you probably wondered why i have nothing to say;
when we talked i wasn't right until i smoked it.

we undress and i am shocked by your bones,
i would never want to lie between your bones,
just so you know,
but still i am shocked by your breast and your chest with my legs,
and my chest and my breast with your legs,
one is perfect, and one is not -
what do the words mean?

what does it mean to care for the earth
when your foe thinks just of paper?
what does it mean to know for the earth
when you still have need of paper -
when shall we be measured and who by?

this intuition of trees, this intuition
of paper does not exist if we still try.

i'd like to take your baggage and compare
your want to mine -
did you grow up in the trees?
i will take your baggage and roll it next to mine
until the leaves become the measure of the word
and paper dies.

Characteristics of a Gifted Child

when I was twelve
my brain
was too good
so i drank
because at least
with the drunks
I could talk about something -
with the books i got bored,
eventually;
with the drunks I never
did because they gave me
something to write about.

Murder (Sorry Mother)

when I was twelve
my reflection time resulted
in a paper full of the
word H A T E
in bright red
from one corner to the other,
from the top end to the bottom,
and the entire time I wrote it
I thought of my mother.

Midland Town Docks

i know where you keep your boat,
someone told me,
someone told me you keep your boat at a dock
near my house where i live -
your boat is kept in a place near where i live
and you come here twice a year to use it.

i come from a town attracting tourists from the city
who come here to be on water that is clean
because all of the water in the city has been used;
the water has become dirty in your home
so you come to where i live twice a year
and use my water.

sort of like the way you use
my body twice a week while we
dwell not far from each other
in this cold, city town.

in the tourist town where i grew up
people seperate depending on the time of year -
in the summer people come into the streets
and work their trades,
in the winter they hide in their homes
leaving the streets to freeze over -
every so often some members come out and not
seeing the coldness of the street
fall down despite them.

i heard you don't dock your boat in Midland anymore;
it reminds me of the feeling i got when i left your place
the last second time of the week we met - we haven't spoken
since because we traded goods and now we have no reason
to keep each other at all.

Stop Calling Me

Do you know what pigeon feels like
when it is between your teeth?
Rubber.

Do you know what pigeon looks like when
it has been shot dead?
Like a sidewalk full of language barriers.

No, I never said I wanted to kill all of the pigeons.
Why did you kill all of the pigeons!

Like: When Can We Meet Us Again? You Will Call Me
Tommorrow? We Can Meet Us At Noon?
No.

Like: just eat the fricken food because you're in a nice place
with nice people and even though the bird tastes like rubber,
everyone else is eating it.
Tastes fine.

Like: good morning skatter, guess what I did this morning,
I killed a pigeon because I know you hate them. Come outside
and see.

Rage ie. Pop Culture

no. you fuck,
i don't have time for you.
i was in the city
with some people
to get away from
the likes of you.

my father orders rocks,
orders tractors to be moved
to calm his shaking limbs,
to loosen stiffed up limbs,
to make his mind off of
the legs he has not gotten -
my father is my friend.

i think you're a fuck sometimes,
you know that.

i met a person and i went
on a date, a date where leather
pants were accepted and patterned
tights were worn and where I
ran and I tripped and I fell
and did a face plant.

you're a real fuck.
take a look at my knee you fuck,
there was a cut there and now it is
scabbed over. i had a friend
who slept with a boy i loved and she taught me
to destroy the likes of you.

fuck. i'd like to shut you up.

i came to the city to get away from
the likes of you.
the city is a place where people like you
dwell - I'll fuck you up girl.

Come Not Often

I slammed a boulder through the window.
I did, I got a crane and I learned how to use it
and I picked up a rock and I dropped it into the
window and I smashed it.
Twice I have been witness to the repositioning
of large rocks, both moved by men whose opinion
I liked and both times I have been shocked
by the desire to move such largeness into unnatural,
man-made forms.

The glass was perfectly clear and had been washed
with windex by a man in white who had been
sitting in my head.
I ate an apple and then I smashed the
window and I stood at a safe distance
so when the grass cracked, not a single piece
would scrape my skin.

Just So You Know

it was good to see
your bones.

do not look in my direction.
i may lose my mind and then i may
lose my head and then i may lose
my neck and then i may lose my bones.

Usurp

i'd like to hear your side of the story,
i saw you and you are still too skinny.
i want to know, is it cocaine, is it sadness,
is it madness, is it craving, failing, liking the dark,
needing the light, needing the bones to
be seen, tell me, i'd like to hear your side
of the story, do you think you'll be alright,

friend, i'd like to hear that you are okay
because if you are not i'd like to lend my pencil
and draw you skinny and help you find your way.
skinny friend, i do despise nights, the way they ended
the way your side of the story came out empty, skinny
friend, i do despise mornings, and i do despise

how skinny you have become since
you changed my favourite syllables, dear friend,
you are far too skinny, is it cocaine, sadness, madness,
tell me friend, i am mad as well, i am sad as well, i have been
wanting some cocaine, dear friend. skinny we are, have become
and i am sad that your skinny legs are skinnier than mine
and that you are too sad to sit still and speak, you are so sad.

Skinny Legs, I Saw You

your skinny highway jeans drew lines across my legs,
your skinny highway legs left lines across my eyes,
your highway cock killed me three times and i wanted to die.
four hundred skinny legs tumbled together like kindling,
the windows got shut to prevent the cars from driving through
and i wanted to creamate you there between my lines.
your skinny highway lines drew eyes across my ties and you
told me that skinny highway lines come often.
(but i want you)

your skinny highway planks of wood left lines across my legs
in broken skin and your skinny highway planks of cock left
me silent in your skinny highway lines of springs and following
skinny lines of stepping i watched you do in skinny sight
lines and you told me that skinny fucking love was hungry for
some hungry fucking love and lines across your skin are not
meant for leaving along lines
(but i want you)

your skinny highway legs left imprints on my brains speckled
and purpled like bruises that come from evenings when too many
drinks have been had and too many people have gone home alone
leaving lines in the road (but i want you) and your skinny
highway jeans leave too many lines at the bottom of my nose
too many lines at the top of the ceiling, your skinny highway
of rails and lines goldened like the sky above the treeline
(and i want you)

skinny highway love goldened hard against the reflection of the sky
against the skin covered keys on the sidewalk, i want you and skinny
highway jeans and love and lines and four hundred skinny arms tumbled
together in piles like fire wood, clanking and bruising skinny highway
lines into lines we were never meant to be and skinny highway sightlines
do still the air so skinny highway jeans are meant to be here in places
where your highway cock and skinny jeans leave lines across my eyes
(and i want you).

Here are a List of Reasons/New Muses

Here is a list of the things
my muse embodies:

Wheat grass.

My muse embodies breast plates decorated
with jade and amber and fluorescent pink
stones that belong at the bottom of
a pool of water coloured aqua (the jade

and the
amber are found in small
markets;

the water is
coloured by the
floor on which
it
finds itself
floating close
above -

sometimes it is dark
because the bottom cannot be seen).

My breast plate has become an arena
for bones

and for jewelry.
My breast plate has become an arena
for

decoration.
My breast has been wiped
of the seeds of the earth and
hungry as a breastplate I
have become clean.

I have become gaunted and blackened
and darkened at the eyes;
my skin has lost its rosy glow

but it stands still across my bones -

before we can create for the muse
we must become

the muse
(watch muses
through glass, through mirrors,
through windows);

my muse stands still, knowing watching,
knowing less the reprimand he has

upon my planting of new weeds,
upon the planting of my skin behind glass windows.

Apartments Behind Alleys Onto pages

can you see across the stream,
the angle of my pen,
the way it squews the letters into
shapes that have gone sour;
can you see the scratch of pen,
the scratch of language,
scratch of the mode this text implies,
momentum this implies.
i once smoked a tube packed with
need and i felt clean -
that is i felt beside myself -
like ecstasy obscuring curtains
and keys and pages of books
into things i can identify with stories
out of our cynical tripping to
scratch hands, make bands;
can you feel the scratching of this suede
against my toes, braided vinyl pushing
leather to the side where i found you
on the sidewall scratching hands,
stealing steez between the rings that make
imprints on your skin.