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.