Joy in Dark Places

what you've kept stuffed & tucked
away in that closet or in a desk
drawer or in some cardboard boxes
from your childhood, from

those years ago, that
moved with you into every
apartment, every flat, beneath the
staircase or in the attic

It's still there waiting,
and maybe it won't remind you
of the most splendid day
from the then, but it will

hand you something musty and dank,
that violin from middle school
orcestra or the action figure
from when you were in the hospital

that Ninja Turtle toy your mother
gave you during a painful shot,
so you stopped cry. A memory
where pain and cleanness trump

the sludgy hot mess waiting for the
adult-you. So take that photo from
the dance recital or the smurfhead
that was filled with icecream

and dip it in the bronze
of your mind. Make it into
something it's not, a warped
and metallic memory version

to keep it forever, transformed
but still to keep it; then
put it back away, in forgiveness
for keeping you.

Go Away

I don't know you,
but I know this.

I have left the door
to my house open and

you have let yourself
in, to rummage through

the kitchen; to take
the warm scones and tea

the cucumber salad or
the chex mix and to leave a note

"The door was open. Thanks
for the grub; I even liked

some of it. The other stuff
I didn't like, so I noted that too."

When you come back, I will bake
slugs and cigarettes into a pie

and I will leave it on the window-
sill, to ride the winter air.

Mythical Kings and Iguanas

your eighty year old bones
set in that rocking
chair atop your treehouse by
the seasalt lake in boston.

you've had a few strokes
with your paint brush in hand
and man what kind of art my
twenty year old heart can take

with your oversized glasses
and your enlarged bangs
those pangs of honey-desire spun
into wax; into a 1971 LP.

you shape-shifting hollowed out
gazebo of a singer who waits
for the atlantic breeze to brush
bringing British blusters and eddies

and current preserves across on a
teaparty ship sailing your white
washed seatop easel, your left-brain
left and your fertility storms forming

waterless clouds and, in response,
your ship of reason, your pain
paints and strokes along
the top of our concious world

ok, alright, ok alright
goddammit god
deal me in
send that puffy-cheeked wind

to end my song.

cheat code

just as he runs across
the screendoor and the words
are left behind and the sega sound
of coins chings one more time

dadada (quickly)

straight up downpour
when I straight left riteaid &
hit A Bee and start(ed)
my many levels
of existence
and my infinite lives

palm trees and those mechanical bees
springs and superspeed
it's got that hit on the head
that will set your inner-animal free
and knock off those layers of mechanical
robotic two-dimensional armour

a superspedup hedgehog hit
with two-bit music and broken tvs
at backflipped running speed
this spedup game is all we need
to set the animal in us free

Phosphorescent

you are the artist
fashion me as you will
your hands guide the clay
concentric circles like the mill

and the miller on the water's edge
and the snow atop the pines
the ice has closed his shop up
but it will thaw, it will turn in time

1891
with the loom owning his hands
between his finger's dance the thread
of tomorrow's head, of sleeping plans

and the artist on the ocean's edge
collects his clay near the sea
on the mouth where the river meet
that's where he fashioned me

Father let me taste the salt
and the sweet berries of the land
let me roll behind the comet's tail
and show you pearls made from sands
let me show you this world is still grand

and the father on the canyon's edge
will hold warn hands with his clay son
they will sing together and hear their song
the canyon's echo becoming one
it will die like the waining sun
or like the desert wind whispers
"the night has won."

Crooked Cobwebs

before breakfast,
before we show we are
civilized and of enlightened
ilk, we get up and wipe
the sleep away, we scratch
what itches, we stretch
like a cat or a silly putty
filled superhero doll. some of us
wash our faces, some take a shower,
some take out the curlers

we all (should) brush our teeth
and a few of us floss, those flossers
will be the ones who live longest, the
preservers; and
before that grape-
fruit gets sliced in half
or the kettle is put on,
long before the puppy gets walked
with the umbrella over his spotted head,
we each sing a song or
say a prayer or take a full
breath in the recognition
in the unconscious acknowledgement that
we are one day older and one
day more hopeless (helpless?), maybe one day
deader and colder.

at least that's how I am half the
time, and the other half
I remember to floss.

Having Dinner Alone

Having Dinner Alone
on a Friday night
when you have a thousand friends
on Facebook

might be like having
a hot coke in the middle
of the summer in the city
with a thousand icecubes
made of plastic, on a movieset

set, waiting, not to melt
so they can stay perfect for
the shot in the Manhattan heat
and as I eat, alone

my miso soup with slivers of
ice cubes and tofu and saline
broth, I cough and ask for
some green tea on the side

trying to hide what it's like
to be young and without wrinkles
and charming and smart and sparkly
eyed and alone on friday night, in LA.

(it's a shrug or a sigh and a chin
held high and I, I knew that's
what tonight would be like
like any other, phoneing my mother.

the clever drother of writing in
the dark, without legs, without eyes
without a heart. now, hm, that melty soup
tastes just right.)


NOTE: that's how I figured out I want sushi for dinner. fin.

On the (un)intentional misreading of Black Flag

is satire like a
hooker posing as your sister
or your love? Does she
creep up behind you to
scare you or to smell your
shoulders. or has she just
come quietly to steal the
cash from your wallet and
the intention from your
will. maybe the goodness
from your chest or your
breastpocket. the picture
hanging on the chain in
the heart around her neck,
is it of Jesus? or of a Sacagawea
dollar coin

flipped to show her bending
over to plant the corn kernel
down. the two-sided mother
playing as the fertile power
missed in your prison desert womb.
the land of many men. the land
of dying life and wetless loneliness
only half of what it takes to
make it.

or is the locket filled up
with a picture of me? my
heavy-handed cursing brow
kerneling down the blue-corn
seeds of my eyes. like white
corn dipped in blue dye; my
eyes from the side and she
likes me simple and washed clean
quiet. not drumming on the table
not navel-gazing. not knowing the
answer without knowing the question
just there, in the picture around her
sweet applejuice neck.

no. not them, not me, not even
the indian three. it's just the
picture of Charlie, the beagle.
on his way to the fence, she
says "look up Charlie!" and
he swings his head around for the
picture
tail in full wag. waiting for
her moment, then, to go chew on grass
or runaway or disobey or some-
thing else wonderful.

TV PARTY TONIGHT

it's 5:23
and I'm still
at the key
board of my
office computer
when i get
this message

WE'VE GOT NOTHIN' BETTER TO DO
THEN WATCH TV AND HAVE A COUPLE BREWS

and i know that means
we're gonna make some
pudding pie and watch
the office and 30 rock
and let the day melt
off us like wax on the
hood of your brown
candled-eyes. right
ontop of it all. heaps
of coolwhip and
nonfat sugarfree
jello in a pie crust
and beer. light
right nite beer. and
a couple of laughs.
oh 24 years old.
sing in loud and
sing in free, open
the windows and scream
the youth of love for me

the 42 blues are comin boy
so eat that puddin' pie
like it's your last taste
of a woman and smile every
little drop while you still
(drink it from the) can.

Smoke on my mind

jazz and fingers snap
tap a quick flinching
tip toed touch

hush that little baby
don't say it. not a word
girl, no wait say it
tip atop the tingling

fickle eardrummed
timpani dancer
prancer blitzing in
the pack of cards
cigarettes, scarves,
wolves, redtide,
hide or hid with
miles gone by
byebye to the niles
of winding mississsippi
quit the only job you knew
you could do on that street
walking tightrope talking
flit of a dance you ran
your hands down my
granddad's hand and
clapped a little
face, my mother's
head your shoulder's
spilled like a drank
drunk mess. I guess
we can start it over
and replace the needle
cuz this records gonna
skip any second now
pow here's the gun and
we've raced and we've
won done gone never begun.

Hearing an airplane over the sea

watching a video of
yourself on stage with
those warmed colored lights
on your face is to forget
what the blackness of being
on stage looks like, with two
feet planted, hitting their mark.

Those lights make you the puppet
and the master at once, they intentionally
make your body an object, a separate thing
from self/existence. you just pull the strings
onstage, enough where you have to watch
a homevideo of it to make sure you've fashioned
yourself right. it must be the opposite of a mirror

it's the mirror with no image, the bloody mary,
the horror or unspoken darkness of
simple strangers getting away with watching you.
they could be doing anything, because you can't
see them seeing you. Imagine getting naked in front
of those lights, and seeing that blackness dissect
and quarter your every cell. that's all it wants
to do. tear you apart.

Death on stage must be the way to go. You're
already stareing the darkness in the face and
your being judged and your smiling and
you are separated from yourself and your
naked and alone. It's like training wheels
for death - but hey, dying with two feet in the
grave and training wheels ain't a bad way to go.

I hope I can watch the video after.

Lights and Sirens

a hyper-sexualized
touch of a fore
arm against the knee
wrinkling the shirt at
the elbow, that spills

a bit of chemical
release of hot
chocolate heat from your
frontal lobe down into
your pink and white spine

dancing hairs like alfalfa
leave a taste of wanting
more on the lips of your
brain, and again we touch
we push that nagging need

for dopamine in and pull
back again; all of my feelings
are feeling and my brain's
mouth is filled with a cow's
tongue. purple and wet and still

waiting for that moment of
inspiration to lightening down
and knock over the trojan cup of
cocoa, flinging it onto the white
polar bear rug of realists.

And what, my dear, is your point?

I am writing this
poem to get some shit
off my back

I am writing this
here poem to get
published and get someone else to read it

I am writing this
sentence to prove
that I can infact write and that you are reading me

I am writing this
goddamn poem to get you
to change, to get you to listen, to get you to love. (me)

I am writing this
poem as an asset to my catalog
of poems; to my aesthetic portfolio, to someday be liquidated.

I am writing this
mother of a poem to be buried in
to have poured over me and to have flapped in my face like a bible verse to a gay man.

I am writing this
facade of a text as
the shell of a poem, as the headless mannequin with some denim atop its plastic hips.

I am writing this
this still-born poem as a labor
of fruitless love; the lover of dreams, the lover on-top of my dreaming subconscious.
trying so hard to make another.

Black Friday

What it it about
crass consumerism that
brings a family together?

is it the new shit smell or
the trampling lines of people
outside the Wal-mart or

is it the way the green
gold feels in the morning
flying like moths from a closet?

"today is the day, I'm freeeee"
the moth screams and then it goes
into it cocoon and turns into a

flat screen tv or a new laptop
or a gps system or something
else made overseas that makes

our complicated lives more
simple and easy and free
and patriotic and

tired and arguing and
empty and barren and
in a pit of debt.

dadada dunt da-dunt!

CHARGE

The International Space Station or ISS for short

The International Space
Station at last; we have
made it here honey atop
the trees and the mountains
that looks as flat as
text on the paper

the great wall of
china is a white vein
in the arm of the
landscape from above;
God must have had such
a funny sense of humor

making creatures to exist
making existence, maybe everyone
who was meant to be saved has already
died and so God had no other reason
to stick around, so he's out on
vacation in S45O7G Quandrant 6, sipping

tall and cool metaphysical martinis and
getting loaded, joking about his old
flame, Earth. He might say "oh yeah
she's doing fine without me, she knew
what she was doing all along and she's
better off, but those kids are gonna mess

her up one of these days. I mean she's been a
good mother, but I always knew that without
their Dad, they wouldn't be the same. I mean
I tried to tell her, but she just never responds.
She's just been so damn cold and quiet, almost dead
I hate it when she gets like that. But hey what am I

telling you all that for? You wanna nother round!"
There's my God. He exists, but he's not around.

Finding out what it takes to be a Man(atee)

A Man(atee)
should be
openly
physically
spiritually
emotionally
available
to his partner.

A Man should
avoid spending
too much time
away from home
because he might
get cut on the
back by the blade
of an oncoming
love affair with
alcohol

A Manatee should
prey on small
biblical fish
and grind them
up like surf-feed
seagrass or Maui-Wowi
and smoke it up like
a cow on the BBQ

A Man should
question when the
phone rings and there
is no one on the other
line for days, but when
his wife answers, she is
always scheduling time to
see her sister, an oncoming
blade and another finger of
alcohol becomes that much closer
that much more near

A Manatee should
find the cure to his
curved-back pain, the cure
to what ails him and should
eat all of the sweetest shoots
from the Florida roots of that
clear and whole water in
the gulf, in the shallows
where the light of heaven makes
little manatee freckles on his
plantation-lacerated back.

While I'm awake and you sleep

while I'm awake,
you are sleeping like a cat
at the foot of a hearth to
the stone fireplace of
God, happily bathing in his
flame-like warmth

while I'm awake,
you turn your head to oneside
and roll your shoulder to move
that yellow hair from your
hot morning mouth; asleep
among the cats with wings

while I'm awake,
you are gliding on the thermals
of a purple-hilled lavender coastline,
the spearmint painted waves push your
feathers and fur, they lift you to kiss
the sun and purr

While I'm awake,
you are dreaming of a better life
a life where I won't be around
and it is cold when your snore mocks
me; you know I am allergic to cats
and I still can't fly.

When pain comes across as cheezy

I try to write
these poems all
the time, where
I talk about the
wound inside,
the kind that
won't let go
and that we
can pour liquor
on and drizzle
in sex; that
bleeds a fountain
pen of invisible ink.

the kind where I can't
find the blacklight to
actual see where all that
pain has gone. Instead it
just vanishes as quickly
as the cuts from a lover
or the welt of your father's
disapproving glance. the
chance that I will try and
stop photographing this
feeling might be near,
it might end here.

clearly I've already lost
my invisible chance, the
faith that the ink might appear
if I stare long enough.

Bumbling Along

Imagine me
teaching an essay called
"Teaching the N-Word"

Imagine this
man standing up infront
of expandable eighteen-year-olds

Imagine me
saying "Nigger" like
a Mark Twain or a Jay-z

Imagine Jay
son mumbling those violent
thick molasses phrases into the

Imagined ears
of my students; it hurts
to hear like a fist twisting

Imagined tears
into those little ears.
And I made more than one of them cry

while I, I knew I was doing what was right.

Camp Pendleton

eightyfour miles
an hour, humming
south through Camp
Pendleton

Sunday Nite and those lights
coming north sit soft,
thousands in the marine layer
doubled in the marine air

and as we whip past them
those thousands of people
sitting and running their
little engines, talk radio

or K-Earth or Ciento Siete
Punto Cinco, it's hard not
to wonder how many are doctors.
Are really one in ten not working?

a third of those cars were abused
once in their life, and half divorced?
I mean like 40% of those cars siting
right there don't have health insurance, seriously?

I try to count every other car and think
you know that guy might be all those things
at once. maybe that prius was in the 5k
I ran last year. and I kinda recognize

that chevy, that one was my dentist or
maybe my pharmacist on dunn st.
he's probly out of work. oh look
there's who made my egg mcmuffin

last week tuesday, and there's
the extra for "Law and Order" from the other
night, right there in the Porsche. That
principal who lived across the street from my

mother's childhood home, the guy who sat in
front of me at church in the dodge, the person
who stepped in my gum at Sea world, a cabriolet,
my mentor at AA, the dude with the good hops on

the pick-up basketball team near holiday park, those
sisters from the magazine, the Forrester from sixth
grade camp who lectured about constellations, my aunt's
ex-husband's son, the fat kid from junior lifeguards,

a ford truck, an el camino, a lexus, a geo metro,
a toyota pick-up, a suburban with spinning wheels.
the thousands of soldiers waiting in line to get
to where they are going. I'll get to where I'm going, pretty soon.

Buddy Guy

While you
were going out
someone else
was comin in.
Ho Buddy you did
ever come in.

the smell of smoke
and walmart in that
elevated indian casino
in that small dance hall
after some wine. and there
you are, like on the stage of
a highschool fall play right in
front of us, my father and I, you
are just right there. When you throw
your pick it flys between our heads and
and when you speak away from that microphone
it's as if your speaking right to us, our ears;
and as you slip between the highs and lows, hills
and valleys of the Louisiana blues, we are there, in
your hands, in your eyes, in your throat, in your words
you've fucken got us, Buddy. you've got the ears and heart
and genitals of every patron in the room. you got hendrix that
way. you got grammys that way. you got millions of fans that way
and for what. a few thousand dollars from this indian casino? to still
be playing hard at 73? to drink until you have gout? no, I think it might
be because you've got a battle of the devil beating God in you, a battle that
started before you were born. that battle that the blues can only temporarily fix.

Mother's Day Gift

I'll cut your hair, just while you sleep
quite like spaghetti in the sink,
it clumps and breathes in dainty heaps,
I'll cut your hair, just while you sleep

scissors as spoons, mixing sauce deep
the blood from earlobes fay and pink,
I'll cut your hair, just while you sleep
quite like spaghetti in the sink.

Down To The Cellar

2122 longwood avenue
that flowing heat and calm
that comes from his
belt that sits
over the counter top

it's an ocean wave crashing
against a sunken volkswagen
its a large budweiser in a can
that you have to open with
a can opener

its those sixyearold afternoons
that made you cut the lawn
the longway and the shortway
and then it's the clippers to make
sure not a hair was left

so dance in the afterlife Henry
dance with that little sparrow in
your heart and let him out to
shit on the gates of heaven
(play it back again. again.) don't try.

Tonight, without the internet.

a little bit of freedom
from that chime or farmnoise
that shows you've got mail.

I'm switching my machine off
and down because I'm under the
california weather. the santa ana

weather, that winds change and
change my mind away from the hustle
and puss of the soupline

of meaning and nothing and
the hallow taste of knowledge.
It's information ala the internet is

like diet knowledge. It's sweet
but goes down fake, like aspartame or
surcalose. It's not really anything

but chemicals. well I feel like
gorging in heaping spoonfuls
of sugar tonight. the sugar of

books and antenna tv.
the sugar of national public radio.
that honey pot of the phonebook

or the molasses of the backpage of
the newspaper that shows the weather
forecast, that's at least a day off.

I want a day off. a day to get
well soon. a hot chocolate postcard
or a paperback mango smoothie

a day to get fat on the comforts
of consuming paper and ink.
a library buffet and a nap.

Language: I am done with you.

it may be a better fate
to die now forgiven
than to live with the knowledge
that my existence does more harm
in the world than any good.

I am the perpetrator of a corrupt
and destructive system. I am the home
buyer, the builder. the land-taker,
the bread-winner. this was never my land.
I need to treat this as a state of tranisition

a knockdown and dragged out fight between womb and
ground. a laughing god who answers no prayers.
god is not dead, he has gone mad and he just points
and laughs like a homeless jesus ready for a
simple fix. camo ice or four loco beer or mickeys.

we all have many deep and profound addictions.
especially to information. we need a constant IV
drip drip drip of image and sound that the world
can give us. and I am so fucking sick of it. I
never want to read another word again.

but oh boy. I will write. I will never read
but I will write. I will produce without any
where to keep my offspring. I will send them out
into the world like sea turtles or tweets.
like little mistakes left in a basket. bastards.

poems are bastards and they sit crying, waiting to be fed.
just never read again, and they will die. dead. In the crib.
In the manger. In the open canoe. they will fall asleep
and then they will turn to food for buzzards. carrion for crows.
bring the birds. bring the crows. eat it all up friends; just don't talk.

Oh Halloween

candy apple with
a razor blade inside.

the smell of
burning blonde hair.

a fishhook in
a dollar bill.

the gym teacher's
tattoo that glows in the dark.

a warm broken nose
from a plastic hockey stick.

shoelaces and sneakers,
high and lonesome sound.

rotten gnarly trees
filled with dead plump rats.

skinned grapes made to feel
like eye-balls or brains

hard heavy breathing of a man
into the receiver. think of his face.

standing up when your foot
is asleep, numb; and trying to run.

drowning. that act of trying to
inhale oxygen underwater. that mocking fish.

a city street filled with coyotes
that will only attack with eye-contact.

glass from a car-crash between
your foot and your sandal.

cigarettes, whiskey, snickers
condoms, coldair, large rocks

mascara

a graveyard or junkyard.
that abandoned drive-in turned
into a swap-meet in the desert.
and all the mono-speakers
that used to hang in
the car windows are feeding back,
just that shrill noise like
the principals microphone fell
off his desk. listen.

and you taste like cheap liquor
all I want is a dirty mattress in the woods
or a bigger rock that will break through
that useless graffitied white screen
to finally destroy it. to just have the sound.
and the night.

The Dog and the Pony

You may expect me to be
the dog and the pony at once
that driven and lonesome writer
who can shmooze.

we'll let's get something straight
shmoozing doesn't exist. Anyone
with that noun associated with that
action, will never successfully shmooze

Much like any author that writes about
the existence of schmoozing is that much
closer to the wastebasket. remove from type-
writer and place in toilet. wipe cerebellum with
toilet tissue.

so here we are, in Los Angeles, pretending to
listen to one another, and feel out that dipping
dancing foxtrot. those floundering fetal forceps.
that lightening in a recycled bottle
that skitters and twists atop an ear-lobbed ocean.

so listen up, a digital decay covers this mosaic
of a town with Dickensian soot. Take out that white
sheet of paper you have in your back pocket and wipe
some of it off your nose or from your ears or off the

windshield of your car after a fire, and let it gather for a few
days and form into carbon-ashed words. Then, come up hear and read them
because once those black-lunged words are heard, they will light this
room abaze and your smoldering minds will be spewing soot for weeks.

Trojan Reggae

One one Coco fill
up da basket. ya gotta
give a little to take
a romeo and juliet.
we are da pioneers. dem pioneers
dem be us. we be dem.

Django got a quit taken
liveation up for Jah.
Man, dis sound make my blood fever
like hot wada. anoda cruel bird
bring dat jamie brown single.
one mo time, all night longa.

hibeedibeejaylalocka

Under the Influence

What did you say!
a dramatic and tantric love affair
with hair on the stalls of the
public bathroom floor
oh what can't we do.
we are still so young
and we can't even let go of
what we know. ho!

this is an apparatus and
anthem of the fattest cat
an orange appreciation an
apple or banana atop the hand
of the. cover the bandanna.
the blood and the crux and
the stars and the cars and
the needles in the trees
and the moon and the harps
oh an orphan and an acre
and the till and the wheel
the vomit and the mentos
and the angels and the steel
reserve. the liquor store princess
undress but you stay gucci down to
the socks. tblack bras, your tops
filled with rocks
girls eat thee, they
love to greet me when they
see me. Navaho's creep me
in there TEEPEE. I run
a marathon with a blonde on
each arm. I play donkey kong
on my cellphone while getting
tattooed a lucky charm. eating
a chicken parm. with veal and
fettuccine on a plate. a t-bone steak
cheese eggs and Welch's grape.
conversating and I'm waiting for
resurrection and I'm fading but
this crossed-eyed concerto, ain't
nothing but the great. the greatest
snow among the show, we tape it
live and play it late. I hate the silly
banter of a sober-eyed suprise. the lillies
lie like cactus dry, the purple fruit
turns white with hate.
or aging, a dying dream
a silly tantrum and a scream
a jungle junkie, a vigilantly tantrum
a death wish, a saline solution
signing for anthem, blue cross
another ransom, tranquilize with
anesthesia. sleep, here's that
wish. a green-breathed hair-covered
agapanthus. an orchard of orange
county black panthers. a harvey
and non-fat milked dream. the utterance
squeezed from that lob of the subconscious.
the neck swirling and tightening
and you. you cow. moocow. you child.
chiding a smile from a tides' simple
choir. I'm tired
of this race and whether you hear me
or not. I am here. alive. staring you in the
face. crossing the finish line, I'm done.
a battle unsung. the one. that comment.
that one.

Pre-writing a letter of Recommendation for student regarding "Film and TV European Program"

value of studying abroad
amount of clarity from perspective
film and television as passion and communication
as a means to change the world through story

worldly possessions made of celluloid
flicks and embers of electric phantoms
laughter and Nazis and the sound
of music, the sound of silence

Mrs. Robinson and the ribbons
in a French haired cigarette
a blue-ribboned fruit tart
a flaky fork fucked crust

Athens and timelessness
Pompeii and Pink Floyd
persimmons in the icebox
a napkin, a picnic, and sugary-coated ants

pancake batter disguised as crepes
fluffy nutella and banana mess
dusk, spring, champange, nightair
but still cigarettes, and music

the stoop outside the loud bar
with oil-topped water, technicolor in the gutter
your sitting-legs make a bridge between the sidewalk
and the street, over this seine-water river

your nineteen year old legs pulled
like fourth of July taffy from
that black late-night dress
and we talk about "Je t'aime... moi non plus"

your cigarette dips when you smile
while mine waits clumsy and still.
and you giggle and scream something
to the tune of

"but Gainsbourg diiid get it right the first time!"

and then we stand up
and you thank me
and shake my hand
for getting you this far.

caught

an unquestioned answer
a fixed income
an apple computer screen
a crisp fish-skin scale crunch
an angry god with metaphysical booze
a fat cat atop a fence
an action-figure melting in a fire
a streetlight lighting the subway steam
an open-faced club sandwich with extra sprouts

a waterfall
an office
a loose tooth
an eight octave piano
a needle
an airplane
a fossil
an acorn

a silence. an ending. hush.

what ever happened to rain?

what ever happened to rain,
that precipitation from the clouds?
Did it dry-up in the sky
or get sucked up by the town?

what ever happened to the moon,
the light which the creature would howl
that smiler between the clouds and leaves
that sunrise applause with a willow's bough?

what ever happened to the evening?
to the air that makes a single sound
did it's tug-of-war between the evils
release right when Night feel down

what ever happened to the earth,
its autumn waves of ocean brown
it's seven days and seven wonders
those paw prints on the naked ground

what ever happened to your brother
did you take him where the lilies frown
beneath the boulders under cover
beneath the apron, his chest would pound

what ever happened to your mother
did you look beyond the amber waves
she's lost behind the mirror's island
wading between the coral caves

that technicolor coat of arms
met along those painted eyes
like sweeping leaves from the gutter
to coat-tales of the auburn brides

what ever happened to the notion
that everyone could be the same
a world where all and one
would call us by a similar name.

where love would dance on tongues
like a fire and consideration
would gaze gracefully. where
we could all have but one desire
to care for eachother openly.


no. we sit in our boxes. alone. and
send out messages for the world to never
read or watch or hear. we are all artists
with no audience. the players with no stage.
lost lovers in a convent.
blind astronauts.
black-lunged miners.
and we have our treasure
with nowhere to spend it.

the shops have closed up for the night
and so has the inn and the hay in the barn to sleep on,
it has frozen over. I try to light
a fire with my stacks of paper money
but it crinkles up into a flash of nothing,
embers in the infinite snow.
alone. still. and calm.
quiet. quiet.

Dylan

has every notch and open groove
been cemented closed yet?
have all of our youthful
summer days turned a shadow with
no fireflies, a hail-broken
window on the station-wagon?
that swimming hole turned
into a parking garage
and that rope-swing
into the courthouse.
have those clock-hands
I used to play patty-cake with
turned into fists?
or have they always been little
fists that I pretended were
embracing arms?
It seems like the world is
still what we make of it,
even when we must pretend
that our cave-light is the sun.

Those places in my mind that
seem like they are still attainable
those little memories, are like
hairplugs or a whig
in the mirror. just a
good looking fake. let's pretend
that we are still young for tonight

and that your face doesn't wrinkle
and my words come the same.
that, for once, bob dylan still
played acoustic and we could have love
for free. let's make love free again.
with hairplugs and viagra.

What can we build?

What can we build? I ask the dog.
He turns and says "anything you'd like, Jason"
Anything i'd like, Mr. Dog!
That's right. You get to have it your way!

But what if I don't want it my way? What if I want it your way!
Well then we will have to compromise.
What does compromise mean Mr Dog?
compromise is when we talk about what each of us wants and we find how we can both get it, without having to do anything else.
Well, what if I just decided I wanted everything your way, but that you weren't getting any of it. Does that make sense?
I think it does Jason.
I guess I could ask you what you want and then once we have it, I could take it from you just like the Indians did to Columbus or Women do to Men.
I can see that happening. But doesn't that mean you actually get what you want, and no one else does?
Yes, I guess it does. Well that's what you offered in the first place.
Why did we have to talk about it Jason?
So we could encapsulate that look for frustration and distrust of the people evesdroppin in on this here conversation.
Well I don't really care about them Jason. I care about you. I mean I am looking at the camera, but I'm making eye-contact with you. What am I supposed to do without you?
Mr.Dog; that's not my problem. In fact, your just a dog, so I'm (I pull out a shotgun) gonna shoot you on the spot.
Well I guess I got myself into this mess. At least let me turn around before you get out the shotgun!
I make the rules, just like you said.
I guess your right Jason. Enjoy your life without me.
I will try. It won't be the same without you, but you were really me all along. this just symbolizes that I won't hear you anymore.
Well fuck me sideways Jason, if you knew that then I guess you don't have to shoot me after all.
I guess not.
Good deal. Just put that gun down and we can keep talking.
Now wait just one second! I thought I was going to shoot you to make you disappear. That's what guns do. they make the bad people go away.
Well, I'm not bad and I'm not a person. I'm just something you talk to who listens. I am the great Id and the super-ego in one. I have the keys to the kingdom and if you kill me, those magical keys will die too. Those fake keys to that guilded door with vanish, just like your dreams at night.
Mr. Dog, If you keep talking to me that way, I'm gonna shoot you dead.
Jason, I'm telling you, if you shoot me, I'm not gonna die one bit, but you will and nothing, not no one will save you from that.
"Oh God!" Jason cried, "Oh God!"

Branda

I have never imagined a
low this low. what a rushing state of serenity
the void of godlessness. where the message of entrance to the
kingdom is near, but I have no ticket
I wait outside and I know I have made one too many mistakes to get in
why not just have died young. the worst sins in the heart of man
deeply moves the mountains of everything else. I am a sad shell. I daily functioning
spirit. an empty and open case of a man. A split diorama
in a mocking museum of unruly souls. I am the living man stuck in the natural history
section of the dead zoo. I am waiting to be stuff; the plaque has already been printed.
It says "Homo-Erectus: On humble loan from the JGJenkins foundation, from now until the end of time."

An there I stand, with a book in one hand, and my penis in the other. Looking upward toward the florescent light, pretending it's the light of God. The Curator gets the story, but I don't really. looking upward for approval in my ever-present state. "Are you there, watching?" the look asks. Those eyebrows were shaped just right to give the brief look of consular fear and cynicism all at once. That's where the problem lies. That new art director, fresh from college, re-read my work and said "THIS is his look."

He's wrong. He couldn't be more wrong. I am not concerned or even-looking up. I am hunched shouldered, infront of a computer. Ashamed and broken. Breathless and plastered on. so much soul and so little good left. Not even enough to look up or out. Just down and cold and tired. a stone in place of my heart. I can't even swallow.

the Morning.

Hello.
this little birth. these are
my first. this morning.
the sunrise is waiting
all across my door
I think to myself
I just can't take it
anymore.
It takes a woman
like you, to get thru
to the
man. oh please.
what a wonderful
feeling. just to know
that you are near.
it's sets my heart
a realing. from my
toes, up to my tears.

turns out that he doesn't want
to turn into some machine.
takes an ugly god, like your
kind. to find, that silly man
in me.
now I get on the assembly line.
I make all your phone calls
and do everything you please.
I won't ask forgiveness
cuz I won't wanna scuff my knees,
the pants you gave me, are way too nice
It's easier said than done, but I'd
rather pay the price.
It takes a father like you
to subdued the man in me.

and oh. what a wonderful feeling. . .

In my office, with no window, trying to remember the Sea

black, green and purple,
fat, cold clouds and sounds
white noise. the definition of white noise.

motion caught in amber waves
jagged cheeks drooling sleepy
eyes down onto the tared shore

unshaven cliffs with a flattop
of crooked grass that overlooks
the most endless image of life

and of nothing at once, a partial
unison of creation, those currents
that let us live and produce

such Neanderthalic sentences as these
but when you hear those seaguls and you
close your eyes. there is dover.

there is Nagaskai. There is the Sunset.
There is your home, in the middle of
a soup of all of life that, from above

really and truly looks like flat nothings

A Tongue Atop Teeth

On my way home
from a sunrise concert
at the cemetery
in Hollywood,

I stopped to get breakfast
after staying up all night.
I ordered the "Abuelita"
which came with salad
that had onions on it and,
a Cafe con Leche.

a Sunday Morning at the
Grand Casino on Main
in Culver City

so
while grading student's papers
in my sleepless state
I chip, not one but two, of my
front fucking teeth on my fork

can you believe that.
just stick to one thing at a
time Jason. just one thing
at a time.

For Emma, Forever Ago

Latest News, OCT. 2
Hi Everybody and Anyone,

It..s me and I am posting to just let all/some know what is and will be going on (with me). I have been planning to go west from Raleigh, NC for a small while. Plans have changed and re-changed, been modified, sanctified, pooped on, laughed at, etc. But I believe its all happening now.


At first I was waiting to finish a record I have been recording since late March, with a band named Nola, from here in Raleigh. I signed on to work on this project because I really fucking love this band. Their songwriting is what made the transition between home and North Carolina possible, in an emotional context, of course. We recorded 15 or 16 songs, I can..t remember now, and very long story short, we have ended up with 11 and over the last 3 or 4 weeks we have spent many, many full days mixing and making last minute changes. I am putting the last versions to disk today. I, we, are very proud. For about what Nola will be up to, check up with them, at myspace.com/nolaband. They don..t update their news as much as anybody should, but they will be busy trying to talk with labels and such over the next months. Watch out.


I was also working on an EP with a band named Gambling The Muse from Carborro, NC, next to Chapel Hill. This project was really fun and a really good chance to get to know complete strangers and turn them into friends. We finished up their stuff last Friday. Please check up them at myspace.com/gamblingthemuse.


So, the plan was to pack up a uhual trailer and head either to San Fransisco or Northern Wisconsin. Money made The Bay nothing but a impossibility, for now. Shit, I really wanted to see where the craigslist offices were. Anyways, perhaps and most certainly, the latter will prove to be more necessary and meaningful: 80 acres of forest in Dunn County, a cabin my father built in ..79, an outhouse, and another even smaller cabin my family, especially my Father, has been putting work into over 3 years. My dad had a great tumble working on this cabin this summer that put him in the Hospital for 21 days. My mom took him up there the day after he got home, just so he could scribble more plans on napkins and legal pads; plans to finish the fucker. The fucker that is my destination. My place of refuge, from nothing terrible, but refuge nonetheless.


Like I was saying the plan was... to leave around thursday last week. We had pretty much landed on the Gambling The Muse and Nola records and all my shit was packed up and me and my closest friends had worked our way through a few cases of High Life and had a good ..last-night-in-raleigh-for-a-while.. on my porch. But, I got a call from my friend Ivan, who plays guitar and sings in the Rosebuds, from Raleigh and Merge Records, asking if I wouldn..t come in and help out finishing recording their next album. I couldn..t say no, seeing how Ivan and Kelly play in one of the most polished and talented pop bands that I have ever heard. They are fucking great. So, over the next few days, we will be finishing the vocals and guitars on a record that I will feel very proud to have been a part of. My great friend Mark Paulsen (Ticonderoga) will be taking all the stuff and mixing it over the next month or two.


So, for me, I will be ..probably.. be heading out sometime this week. It has been a year in Raleigh that is been both very challenging, hard and even unpleasent for me at times; but the amount of growth, and experience, and positive gain... cannot begin to be measured. I am so thankful to the people that I have encountered, met, befriended, worked with, played with, lived with.


My trip... is not a move. It feels closer to a retreat. I do not plan on playing any shows for a while. I do not plan on having a plan, or second destination. I do not plan on doing much of anything but stomping around in freezing October mud for 6 weeks, or some amount of time. I don..t know what will happen after that. That is really, and truly the first time in my life that I can say that. No idea. I have been meaning to take this trip for a while.



I am sitting in the very coffee shop that Heather, Phil, Keil, Brad (these people, oh my god...so, so important to me ) and I visited in early 2005, prior to moving here, writing about leaving. I am listening to really old favorite of mine; a live Lyle Lovett record where Rickie Lee Jones comes to stage in the middle of the song, and crowd makes it..s proverbial cheer mid-line of Lyle..s. ..Well the boys of North Dakota, they drink Whiskey for thier fun... The cowboys down in Texas polish up their guns... they look across the border... to learn the ways of love...
A guy outside, who was walking pretty fast, slowed down behind a teenage kid with a mustache, who was taking up the whole sidewalk.



I..ll hear from you and you..ll hear from me, I..m sure.

so much love to all,

Justin

Cup O.. Joe, Monday October, 2nd, 2006, Raleigh, North Carolina.

Fairly Early

4 hours of sleep.
a class to teach in 19 minutes.
72 degrees.
60 students.
1375 hairs on the back of my left hand.
no time.
18 minutes left before class
10 minutes before I head to the room.
26 steps from my office to the class.
47 times I've blinked while writing this.
5 feedbags for the horse on Pershing ave, beside the
country store, with the large metal chicken on the roof,
across (well a few miles) from the church, in Tuscany,
Pennsylvania.
87 travelers waiting to take off there shoes
in Heathrows terminal 4, most on the way to Dubai
for Holiday, trying to catch the slippery tail of
a sunset summer.
9032 records in there sleeves and dust jackets,
sitting in a warehouse in Hollywood, without a
needle for miles.
5 golden rings
2 minutes before I stand up and turn off this dumbfounding
machine to teach private university students how to be
good, successful college students. Something they might know
better than I do.
1 single solitary voice that scratches like a weasel from
these electrically spaced pages. That man who is like the fourth
character in the Wizard of Oz. Courage, Heart, Brains and friends.
where were you today? why didn't you call?

Literally, the same number of people will read this. I chant in the dark.

From Dust to Digital or The High-Jump

that's a quick way to make
a poem smell. like a waddling
black and white skunk under
the deck while you duskly
sip your sweet tea.
sweet tea like you.
the reverse video image of
eating an over-rip peach
where the pieces of flesh
reattach from the corners
of your teeth. the brown
syrup strings back into
your lips and against the
feverish fruit skin. a kiss
released.

now, you, pick up
your hand and place two fingers
against your lips and slide
slide them down toward your chin.
feel the sweet dance of ridges on
your fingers against the lip's outer
rim. and close your eyes because life
life doesn't give you much more
than this.

On Letting Go

Letting go of a weekend day
like releasing the rope holding the treasure
chest into the sea. You can hear the wish
of those brown-braids slipping your grasp
and then a "KahPlush" that the precious
moment-filled chest makes, confirming its
descent.

sprint to the ship's side and watch
the flattened image of that heavy golden box
get more and more blue and darkened black
and shudder into that saline abyss.

How do you dive after a weekend day
and try to save it?
Do you try to do nothing and wait around
with the chest tied to the mast
or do you open it and let all the contents
out, spending all your time at once.

My chest of golden moments is being loosely
held with one hand and the other is jerking
the pen across the page trying to arouse
a little impotent moment before the lid
lifts open and it's priceless life/contents
pour into your sea and I am left with an
empty chest, a new week and this poem.

creamland

jinks
a tongue twisted talking talcum
licking lapped-up hub
a bathwater silt
time's itching inch
an alleycat answer awkwardly
scratching the pond-skimmer's
plankton. a toothed film
12mm of decay and film
of sludge. filth and sick.

janks
dead and dried hair
in seaweeded strands
pulled up the esophagus
slitting the whale's dangling
voice with insect ropes and
brown protein floss. surfing up
the pallet's walls to rub and
tickle like knives
or leaves of grass right
on the roof inside
that pink and purple mouth

(with no time at all,
you will find that jonks
and junks would come,
but that time has
sanded out and i've found
much more important things
to do. Like catch up with
old friends. Not new ones
like you. we will talk
again soon. cough cough.)

I'll Let That One Slide

When I see God
peering down from my eight-year old
vision of him. The golden constellation
that sunlight cumulus cloud. He sees me
in the dark with the spider-
man nightlite praying to him
to bring me a friend that
wouln't tease me. Who wouldn't
make fun of my wussy swing
at the plate. the kind that would
make a grappling hook out of
string and paperclips.
the kind that would sneak
into the older brother's
room to steal his playboys
and tuck them into my underwear
elastic to crawl army-style
back to the lamp-lit glow
of un-understood sex. The kind you
know you are supposed to like
but you honestly don't really care. not yet.
I want the kind of friend who will never care,
the kind who will look at me
like I was supposed to look at those 80s-haired
magazines. The kind of friend who I will hug
and won't hug me back because
of gnawing; too afraid and too new.
The kind that would ask
"If you had to kiss a boy, like actually
really had to, or else... would you kiss me?"
The kind who would play-fight with me
at the top of the ferriswheel over looking
the pacific. The kind who would tackle me
on the playground and lick
my face if I got caught. the kind I would dare
to kiss me while underwater in
my grandparent's pool, blue-bottomed.
The kind, in junior high, would be the first
to yell "faggot" at the theaterkids in gymclass.
The kind I could dance with and laugh with and love and
not be afraid. for once, I wouldn't need the nightlite. The
kind who could stay over with me and we would talk about pretend
girls, but really be talking about eachother.
The kind that would get to the top of the roop
and look down at me and wink. at me. just at me.

God. Let my eight-year-old self have that. then maybe,
just maybe, I could be myself.

Glass

"I am a man traveling down a road
leading to nowhere.
A man lost in a cold and stupid
dream and still I dream openly."

is it escape or is it liberation? an escape to become sane?
which is the escape. I don't know.

applause. cheers. laughter. taking a bow.

and he steps onto the stage for a standing ovation.



the sea for the shore of nova scotia. his pant leg like a flag.

roll credits.

-

4 wives! operas! 4 children! continents! Ravi Shankar! A documentary!

Philip! WAKE UP. wake up Philip.

those poor sleepless nights
that your son Zach has thinking about you
and how you won't call him
or anyone.

Your office is still a mess and your music
your pounds and pounds of sheetmusic
for woody allen, even.

don't mean shit if you don't
call your son. and listen.
let him talk and actually
i mean really get into the
grit or listening. be
joyful for your son and
show him you care by asking
him about his life. Your
grandkids for godsake.
where the fuck have you
been. and whatever dream
you need to live, imagine
a way to die. you've created
your whole world from listening
ask it. HOW DO I DIE?

Happiness Is

an apple with caramel and chips of peanuts
in a disposable plastic case near the front of
the supermarket.

wrapped in a deep embrace, his chin on
your forehead, without your
dove deodorant; that laughter after.

a painless and weightless front-flip
from the high-dive on
the first-try with no splash, or the biggest (choose one).

a wooden dancefloor wedding
song with white candles/cake/napkins
and the Macareina, (loud and stomping).

the sound of sea turtles in shady
Hawaiian cliffed coves; glaciers
and their documented exhale.

the memory of a Wonka dream when
love was easy and chocolates
were every color.

a song recorded with the sole
time-capsuled purpose of being forgotten,
and then rediscovery, the amber shattered.

accepting the jittery mosquito during
meditation, and sharing his smooth and blood-
filled drink of me.

creaky Scottish pluming, lavender
jet-lag, heavy down pillows,
windows opened near the fire; sunrise.

a rice-paddy with just enough
water where the dikes and the
pools are level and still.

learning how to read and
knowing that you can
read aloud with feeling

holding a gloved and snug seven-year-old
hand on her way to Dorsey Elementary
on 53rd St. and her little squeeze back.

Ironing while watching baseball
and noticing that during a commercial break
the shirts have been done for innings.

the liminal age where it still feels
just as great to give and receive
Christmas gifts.

the moment your tongue flings
that peanut kernel from the embrace
of your bicuspid, in release.

It's Pathetic to use material from elsewhere, but this is my DOJO. LET'S DO IT!

IF you are reading this now, you have done something very unique and interesting. This account is private and I update it once a year, on my birthday. That picture to the left is from my 24th birthday. I only have pictures up from the past 4 birthday's in the profile section. That's it. By reading this, you have done something marvelous because you were my friend before I stopped visiting myspace regularly and (and!) for some strange reason, now, you have decided to visit this (very close to dead) page. I haven't been active on here, really, until today, since 2006. This means you are special. You and I used to know each other and you want to get to know me more now; at least you are curious. Fair enough. so thank you for your time. Here is what you need to know: I have lived alone for 3 years in the prime of my youth. Why? because I'm bad with roommates. This has turned me into a good cook, a better laundry do-er and a very hopeless socialite. I watch more movies and read more books than most. I send too much time online reading reviews and information about Los Angeles and facebook. If my computer were faster, I would have tons more time everyday. We might even be in touch in person. But no, instead we spend our free-time staring at a screen. Oh and I like to travel. alot. I also really enjoy water sport.

Black Crosses in The Sunn O))

I have no plans to age well.
I have a love/hate relationship
with my longhair.
I set dates where I will cut
it. Then the date comes and I get
sad, so it just stays greasy and long.
I hope someday someone will cut it in
my sleep and get rid of all the hair
and I will wake up a new man, like a palm
burnt to bear more fruit.

That sinking space between waves

some call it a lull
or a trough
a little depression

you might call it
writer's block
or

as spiders walk
through the unattended
bashed window screen

down over and up
the cherry olympic ring
mugged desk onto

these black and white
tinkling keys, I see
you sitting on the toilet

in the half-mooned outhouse, 1936
looking down to see
a web beneath your seven

year old bottom with
the red hourglass
and coal thorax

peering back up.
with a giggle, you see
your little tinkle

glistening and mocking
death, and she (death)
gladly bellylaughes back

shaking the whole web clean.

that viper-black spider
made her way into the keys
and onto my fingers, but I

don't get to giggle, I just
get to sit and wait and
thinking about warm water and

Niagra Falls or a dalmatian
near a fire hydrant, a firehose,
an open ocean and a longboard.

straddling the wooden
toilet, I look down and my joke,
my urine, just won't come

and Death, she is just as forgiving
as ever. she looks up and laughs
and eats my head clean off.

and you, you blonde shorty, 1936
you skip along with your pet rooster
to the drafty single-room home on the

railroad track. a gateway to
life outside of Pasco, away from
school and death and durt.

toward hollywood and cigarettes
toward San Diego and Mexico
toward a longboarded life; a Pacific filled

Two-headed Eyes OR my Father's are Geminis

A blinking cursor twanting my
every wish. yeah jason
try to open that door

talk about both of those
twofaced double sided
heros and villians
in one poem

do it, give it shot

well oh well
this couch isn't big enough for the both of us a
and I think the the smile that you have won't be
lasting all that long. the sewn up stiches that
keeps those lips up high will fall and flap
back down like a bean-bag without stuffing

you fake coward. you can't perform this
you can't send this in. you can't even
share it friends. you can't let anyone in.
and those who you do let in, don't care.
not about this stuff. they don't know
how to. I mean why not. do I listen to them.
nope.
Have I ever. not really. I don't have
practice and if you don't learn by 25
you never not-ever will.

in this course of this little exercise it
went from yesterday to tomorrow. now
tomorrow is today. and this, I promise you,
is, infact, a poem.

take my word for it. take it.

Grownup

The noise that causes
the heart to beat
like a dropping bottle
on the legs of wooden
pegs and shifting cement
floors. The kind that use
to be covered with linoleum
but have since been relieved
to give that high-end sound,
that troubling terrible treble
of those
bits and coin-sized embers of
green glass. rolling rock glass.
the pre-sea
glass. foaming white and gritty-sand brown
on rolling rocks and cement
and legs, just touching
those wooden legs, a
tidal movement of fermented
and sea-foam greened stuff
changing shapes that flash-flash-flash
morphing even. evenly morphine.

stop that. freeze it.

High heels up, and cameras down.
let's catch this.

an amber bullseye
like fresh blood from
a vampire's fang
in the instant it
dances on the stark
hospital sheen-tile.

take that color and
make it beer. put it
on concrete. (use the
command key to change
layers and bring all to
front.) now zoom out
a little. There is all that
stained-glass green fireworking
and those
hundreds of browned dracula-drops
making a Hollister-signed
Fibonacci explosion
an inverted pyramid of
chaos and non-euclidean theory
sphereing in earth-like
fermented beads almost
in measurable qualmish
right above the astral
mosaic of stone and grit
in the unpolished
the cracked
concrete.

Note: when I thought I was a poet,
I never dreampt it would
be taken away. but now,
now I set aside time to
live that silly dream
and you, you reader,
if you have gotten this far
and you haven't begun sweeping
up that broken glass and those
soggy napkins so that the customers
can keep watching the Jets and the
Colts, then you have some growing up
to do.

I do too. I have no room to tell
you off. You'll learn.
I have.

Audiofiled: The Ram

A quietly opened door
a little opening
a small
handled
purple and blue visage
a place squared off
black and frilled
agenda

a ram
a lone buck-horned sheep
standing. proud
the sun behind
and a black shadow cast down the crag
a broken unadulterated mountainside

that twitching
that twitching little eye
around the black door
around
the velvet purple
brown
around

I've found what I've
been looking for
I was looking for that
ram

and there he stands
a bald-headed man
above
right above
the treeline

the treeline frames
his ever-crowning brain
his opened top-head and
his royalty

his integrity, his honor
that ram
that man
he stands

high
above the trees
right where the snow
would touch down
right on the ground

the red rocks
engulfed
in the water
in the
water
in the everything

now/as I close
and pull tight
this velvet door
this tiny little opening

the ram
who stood so tall
that two and a half foot tall ram
seems like a wooden carving
that sits on the
dining room floor
on the living room
floor
of your grandparent's shag carpet

like a little buck-horned sheep
like a
little ewe
a small doe

waiting. to move
someday he'll be
a real boy

Audiofiled: The SISTER CITY SERIAL KILLER

The SISTER CITY SERIAL KILLER

that kind of a man
dressing around
the The SISTER CITY SERIAL KILLER
goes between the towns

he finds them sisters
in those cities
look um up and
down

and turns a smile to a frown
as quick as he's found

that SISTER CITY SERIAL KILLER

my reason for bringing up this man
is that he. he travels in a van.
from different sister cities

and when I say sister cities
I don't mean them cities
sittin sitter next to eachothers

I mean the cities that are
sister cities across the world

and this vanned old man
in his green and yellow and white
he'll take the girl
drive through the day and drop her off in the night
somewhere around the desert

out there where there is nothin left

nothin for her, nothing for him
nothin for the vultures

that's what The SISTER CITY SERIAL KILLER
does
he leaves nothing
except
for a van

and now that van is a museum piece
it's a piece of work that we
academics
can stand up against, step back on
lean our hats on

274 women were killed in that van
at least in his imagination.

In fact only one was
and that SISTER CITY SERIAL KILLER
never made it to another city

there were no sisters involved.

Audiofiled: The Hawk

a hawk on the light pole
hey hawk we are driving underneath you
aren't you disturbed?

isn't your brutal and
attentive gaze
going to shoot and kill all of us
all of us beneath you
hey hawk
haven't you jumped and
flown and eaten
and destroyed more than any of us combined
aren't you larger than any of us can be?

Hey Hawk
aren't you the winged creature
that has no conscience and just knows what needs
to be done

a fancy flame in a fickle fire an
open door
letting out the fear , the ire

alone

among others alone

we all mimic
a hawk dance

but we are hawks without wings that
once flew

and now

sit and wait and watch

with our intense gaze our
unrelenting gaze and without
the ability to fly

BEGGARS

Look. I know what's been said, but I need
to confess. I've been a ring-bearing
weight-wearing man. a full grown man
but now the devil has taken me over.

Done. I've seen too many wrongs to make
a writing. a righting that will
let me let go but. but no, I have
no excuse for this little dance.

This little dance alone.

I took something that I used to
have, the first moment, the first
time and I changed it and screwed
it into a crack faced sculpture

and, in my subconcious, when I
listen, I will always hear that
broken promise with this songs
with my ring on the desk, betrayed.

HEADACHE

Oh, you great destroyer.
You big wholup dollup of cancer cream
dripping down my nose and into
my tearing eyes. up and down
my eyes. I can't even look up at the screen.
you clocked ticker, you ant kicker
you awful truth inspiring astringent.

a rockinghorse of
contentment and continents
of daylit consonance
backlit to giggle.
and a fancy dance
on prancer and
dawner and vixen.
an august clip
an awful decagon
an apple upon
the head arrowed
sweetly in halves that
fall into your
open hands.

like sign language
gesture of reading
a silent gestation
a vacant wave
that crushing typhoon
an earful of brains
collected in a spoon
and slurped right
back up a gain

a re membering like
a mallet striking the
harmonious chime of
the glockenspiel
of our mind and
a rewind of the
casette tape
a reset of time
and again
a chime

I'm giving up
on this backlit
world of dancing
and romancing
and clapping/slapping
spinning. I'm looking
for the inside of
eyelids and a wordless
wonderless world

like the closeing together
of your signing hands
to show the story's over
this destroying is done

A few moments without you

Wihle I hear the shower water
breathing with your body and
you blow your nose into your
wet hand. I get a few little moments
without you to diddle this little poem.

A poem that sits like amber
the ocean diamond in a current
of memory. The ocean floor seems
different than the shore and I
send out this sap from the plant
of my fingers; this orangic little
trade into the ocean, into the sea

to be found many years later
like a children's faire tales
discovered again as an adult
rereading it to make sure that
it's ok for his child.

I really
can't believe that
children would read
that parents would read to
children about a woman
who was born at sea and
returns to sea to die
loveless, away from home
alone and dead.

"are you awake"
she calls from the
shower as she towels off
only to discover her little
boyfriend clicking away
rapidly from this little
poem.

the Irish Ringer

Death, you silly little falcon,
you, drifting on the heat from the canyon floor,
the little themals of my subconcious, you get to come and scare me
whenever you damn well please
well please leave me alone for just this once,
this one little moment.

a callused short breathing life isn't a life is it
death?
the black maltese stone-face glance
that is unshakable and unbreakable
lets me face-out the innards of the
carrion that is respect and dignity
and whatever shred of lifeness you
once knew you had. that things is
gone. Just think about it. NOw
we only get this one moment this
little dance and snapping of the
clapper with the snip. a little
reading and writing and poof

right in the kisser. gone.
Unimportant and destroyed.
a salty after-taste in the
ocean or topic of dinner
conversation or a memory
that doesn't last. a name
the is no longer known.
a fragment.

I will have no visitors
to this apartment in
los angeles. I have
no Otto to re-tell my
story. I won't die soon
from the greatness
but more like a
spider down a
water spout
but the sun
won't come
out for
this
rain
not
now
oh
no
dr
op
pe
d
d
o
w
n
a
g
a
in

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me

I was walking out there
a stranger on the sea
above the peaks and crests dear
those sirens wait for me

a song I couldn't quench
like a desert thirsty
soaring 'bove my head with
wings spread openly


like the arms of the proud
parents holding the newborn
like the shadow of a black cloud
waiting it's silver turn

They cover my ears with
the warmth of honey
the beauty of their voice girl
a toothed whimsy plea

They dance in the moonlight
like needles from a pine tree
spinning with nature's wings
opened gracefully

like the arms of a child
around her parent's neck
like the shadow the trees smile
that the morning sea reflects

my feet skim the surface
like a tongue atop teeth
the fish see my soles
i feel the bubbles from beneath

the lord comes down
in the form of a winged queen
whose eyes are like amber
stones veiled in the sea

the arms of lord consuming
my heart
the wings of the angels
tearing it apart.

like the arms of a child
around her parent's neck
like the shadow the trees smile
that the morning sea reflects

Flames will arise and Devour me

I have such a new and dark
unsettled FEAR that my new
life, with this new job
and this new hair cut
and slacks and fat gut
will turn me into you.

you the drinker
you the cheater
you the snitch
the unconnected eyes
the joker in serious times
the destroyer, the plastic
injected culture, the waste

you are the waste, and I
I am the one who must look
for newness in something
broken, deprecipt
a tainted world of signs
with no signfier
of religious men
peldaling pornography
4 for $20

and I get right in on it
buy 3 get 1 free
you could fit those SKUs
in that slot there,
move out the Vitamin Water
and that juice is getting
pulled

my brain quakes and melts
with uncontrollable pain
when I say these
when I repeat these
words. I am already there.
the extra large ale is waiting
and the tv embers.

I didn't think I could hate
this world anymore. than I do.
now I can't. anymore. I have.
I have said that "No means No"
but you relent and push and
hit me until I scream that
I love you.

I love you.
I love you.

8 Days in Mexico

The best is yet to come. An open window for the closed doors above and below. A home to fall from the sky and the flies will come in a pack. Hordes. The question of right and wrong will seem trite once we haven’t had decisions for years. Generations. Let’s destroy the greatest nation in our history. You and I. calling all zombies. All burnouts. All wastes. Calling all self-righteous thinkers who are “a#1.” King of the hill. We have a chance to destroy and rebuild. A chance to change the world. A chance to look out over the landscape and say “I burnt that” “I killed that dream” “I am the king of regress”

Oh oh the king is dead. Adios Del Rey.

Answer me this question: are the questions worth asking? Because once we know that we don’t know, what else is there: tolerance? Acceptance? Understanding? Or patience? Endurance?

Waiting buoyantly in the shallows, we all know that we must swim out into deep water. The bottom will drop from beneath and we must know how to swim. We must. Our eyes and our ears and everything, will be enveloped. This waiting and wadding. This act of attempted stability. Is just a little game, an ongoing joke between the all-knowing and the ignorant. A lost coin toss. A jack of all trades played as a spade, but its really a heart. The big trick of our world is that our voice and our thoughts and our views and our eyes. Our whole fucking identity dis. A. pears. Is no longer. Once we are no longer. We get to keep nothing. NOTHING.

So what is the deal with everything, when nothing is so important. Why do we make everything so important. It’s nothing that’s important. Lets focus on that. The absence. The darkness. The without. The tar that clings to the bottom of your foot at the beach. The pupil in the eye of a killer. The elevator shaft on a New York skyscraper. The space between your legs. The heartless spade that sits at the bus stop and acts as if he will live forever. We will never live forever. I will live for never. I am not alive. Not now. Not while you read this. I have become a gooseegg, an emptyset, ashes. I have heard a voice of the dead before. In fact, that voice is pulling on my chest and I have been told that I once remembered a God, but when you are prepared for nothing and you get nothing, it’s not that bad. But I am not prepared. No one will ever be. Not for the absence of existence. Not for death. Not a 23 year old kid. He’s not ready. Not anyone younger or older. They are fools to dance when death’s on its way, but hey. That’s all we got. A little dancing. A little breathing, a little loving, a little something, it’s so much more than nothing. And that’s that.

On the condition of Human Tiredness

A spinning ceiling fan making dangerous
Halos above the toothless infant
And I rest, back to the carpet
mesmerized by the
Click clak ting tong of the chain
Against the wood. The pull string on
Hi cooling that napping wonder
In her nappy
This hypnotic bladed clock
Keeps time and spins backward
Like the wheels of a car
In a movie. My frames per second
Aren’t what they used to be
cuz
this little gem, in her elmo
footy-PJs may never believe
that I brought her here
to this august afternoon room
this little home on the hill
to replace
her father
and her mother and
all their little adult problem
with about a decade of joy
a decade of worry
a decade of pride
a decade or two
of grandkids
and then we’ll call
it a night


My Last Year of Growth.

In a weeks time, I will complete my
Twenty fourth revolutions
around the sun on
This watery hunk of carbon.
This means, thanks to all the billions before
That I only get to grow and build bone
And learn new things that I will retain forever
For a few hundred more days. After that I have the
Privilege of a slow and steady decline into
Shitting my pants and forgetting my address.
Keats didn’t have to do it. Neither did
Those kids in the bus near Minneapolis
Who skidded into the ice. Those fictional
Characters that may never appears in
A mugshot or on the street or in Iraq or
Near that one corner store on his cellphone
Talking to the lawyer about his divorce.
At the bakesale, spending the extra five
Bucks on homemade turtle brownies
So the sixth graders can go to DC.
Wiping the wheels of the car so
The salt from the snowed-down road
Doesn’t ruin the rims. Not in the back
Of your daughter’s college photos
with his face painted at
the football game. Not on the radio
In a helicopter during a traffic jam.
Not handing out water during the
NYC Half-marathon. Not even flipping
Your wafer-thin burgers or curing cancer or
a cut with a band aid. Not cleaning your
Teeth or typing the court report for
the malpractice lawsuit. Not even in the
Damn jury box. They can’t even check a box.
They aren’t a census figure. They were.
They aren’t moms and dads or tias y tios
None of it. I get to die way more than they do.
I get to die twice and live through the first time.
James Dean. You had it right, man. You had it
Right.

(OK DEPRESSING POETRY OVER!)

The best is here.

Laying down in bed with the laptop on my
Knees. It’s hard not to feel like I’m still
Out in the bay, on the two –hulded sun
Cooked drunken snorkel adventure
That the locals seem to hold as
Every punchline. Well I drank
That punch and got in line and
Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to
Relive this day. At least in this little
Poem. This is not a winter poem.

A horse’s knockkneed tropical
Mud stepped pathway and I
afraid and mystified
can only tell that it’s raining
from the drops on the near by
waterfall. The water is as warm
as the air is humid and the sound
of the boom of the rainwater’s
descent in the form of
a river of life cuts knives
into your little airport
apartment. This little
trick candle of an image
lets you sing and have your
cake and eat on every un-
birthday. I may be mad
as a hatter, but oh today
today. Today with the
chicken mole and the
pelican’s fearless dive
the shameless dancing
the dual-world of arching
sky and reef and eels and
language and feeling
and friendship and family.
A day to keep like a
Groundhog day in
Heaven. Puerto Vallarta.

The Winter Poet’s Slumber

When filmmaker’s talk about
the process that they call
“my hobby that I get paid for”
Or “the magichour” and
“you can never get used to this
kind of day in hollywood,” you can
See the myth seep into the camera
And onto your livingroom rug.
A sand-dripped gum drop
On an Indiana suburban floor.
A relic of dazzling glitz that
Is only comprised of its appearance
So outta place here, next to the
Clap-on-lamp, the decoupage and
The bronzed bowling shoes that
It can only be a joke. Well

Today, I might believe that
Hollywood lie. I sway with
the sails and the inner-
Ear of tapioca. I dance
A waltz of pacific
A memoryless burst of pride
An explosion so
Radiant that, though it comes
From the deck of a fake pirate ship
It expands, glistening
A broken agapanthus encrusted
In rain water
Atop the coal syrup
Beside the white and red
And blue ashes.


A Poem for Esperanza

The sky that’s begging for
Love in your brown shoes
Is the sky that kisses the mango
Street with a whisper poem.

A poem that you wrote for
Your dead aunt; a thousand
Violins in the cielo trumpeting
An answer to my questions

Sandy, you are my age, you
Dance in the mirror with
Your skinny swimmer
Legs and you plunger

Brown shoes. You write
A Chicago dream that
Tastes like metal and
Tropical sunscreen

Your sky forces the windows
Of my eyes and my soul to
Let down their hair and let
In all of it. A simple worded

Wonder, you are. Alone on
The rio and on the range, you are
so Why?
Why did you let me in?

Am I the sleeper in the attic
Or the visitor asking
If that poet is a rat?
The Mirror

Hello one eyebrow higher than to other, one eyed a little wider, one ear a little lower and one shoulder a little tighter, your neck flinches as you reach for the next key and you right arm over but your left stays the same your mouth. a little the eyes again, you hair is pulled back. Swallows. An almost frown. A droll look on the lipped twenty something unshaven man. With his hair pulled back and oh wait he turned to the side to look and face the window for a moment and the eye brows raise and those blues eye catch the light I haven’t seen them before. Those blues eyes twitch the long eye lashes and the heavy brow. Don’t look that way. You are ok. Your eyebrows are two fraternal twined mammals; a seal and an orca. The seal rests on the shore while the orca comes in to feed wading for the right moment to strike and use the waves to eat the lazy brown seal. Come close together with distrust but never touch, you two mortal changed creatures. Come near in confusion, each resting above a world, a whole world of ocean. of galactic blue, a sleepy blue world that reaches deep. Deep into time, and ends with a subtle blink.

Death of a Person(ality)

We have a funny term in English
Personality,
It seems to blame like the wrong
Answer on a boardgame. “what’s
Your personality?” almost to ask
About a favorite color.
Light Green! Seventeen! A Schnauzer! Bingo!

But personality, that word
Has a semantic issue that needs contending.
We give things “personality” and make identifiable
Marks on things we really shouldn’t. And
The thing we miss about people when they die is
The way they put together words or the sound
Of their breathing, the things they know you like
And you know they like.
A foot rub. Playing cards.
Daiquiri ice from thirty one flavors.
The sound of the dishes in a certain
Tonal order with the radio on.

The nurse doesn’t turn on the radio
And she doesn’t even look like you or
Smell like you. She isn’t why I worked
In the post office for 37 years or loved for
53 and six months. Or forever. I didn’t
Retire to spend my nights with a woman
I don’t know. who went to night school
Wit the hopes to
Put her kid through college as a nurse.
She once had a dream of dancing in New York
On broadway. If she knew that I had to leave
The real broadway dancer for the dreamer, she
Would be just as mad at death as I am.

She would be mad at “personality” too
Because that party joke that fits into the same
Words as “where would we go on our first date?”
Or “If I were an ice-cream, what kind of topping would you be?”
Disgusts the years, the lifetime of love. An endless
Pouring of love that doesn’t fit into a half-hour segment
With Clorox ads and Ed Macman’s giveaways.

That dancer is dead, and I have to forget her with
That joke. That box of light. The jestered irony
Catching his white glove in my face.
You newly-weds who met online
And think you know the world, a love that’s caught
In youth’s black and rain-covered web. The
Widowed death will come, with her red
Hourglass. She will take your insides and
Liquidate them and suck them out and
You will be forgotten, like a game
Show question.

Departures

The airport signifies something more than travel
A place where new worlds come faster than concepts of them
They signify a change; a change to extrapolate the difference between spaces
A cattle call of reflection. A Brain Eno soundtrack that opens doors
To subtle opportunity. This week I will have that change. I must embrace
This moment before the world a fakes, phonies. Of disgust brings me
To it. With a crowd. A shouldered onlook of passers by thinking and wondering
Questioning the diffidence, an open book, a fast typing long haired
Kid that leans and dances in his chair, waiting to

Ok they have left. He stands at the window with his hands in his pockets, overlooking the
Fueling of planes. The movement of gates. The dance of covered-eared and yellow vested locals. A little answer. A little something. Just a taste. A taste of today and that tomorrow, won’t actually be that bad, when you have a poem like this. I have had the best, and it is yet to come.

How to Become a Prostitue in 28 hours. Or my new life as a SALESMAN

Step 1: take off your clothes
Step 2: fly to Colorado
Step 3: get picked up by some weird dude in a van
Step 4: drive around different Liquer stores and Gas stations in the ghettos of that god-forsaken state
Step 5: after midnight, check into the suite of a Hilton in south Denver
Step 6: get fucked.
Step 7: wash. rinse. repeat.
Step 8: Cry, Drink, Quit, have serious psychological damage. laugh it off. and do it all again.

Jencks v. United States

Hunter Gray in Silver City
you clap along in a black and
white photo. you are red
they are black.

you say "I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands."

your father is the salt of the earth.
your mother, the friend.
and as I descend into your lair
hunter thompson's notoriety and acclaim
would look nice on you. his look
looks nice on you.

you say "Our basic cultural perspective is Iroquoian and Wabanaki -- strongly influenced by Navajo and Laguna."

you called dr. king and he came
you were a bloody torn shirt kid
and he came to the
funeral in Jackson. whites with
shotguns outside, but singing
oh lord
singing inside.

what a life you led
this american drempt
myth of awe. but behind that
emerald curtain, you are larger than
the great OZ. You are larger
than all of us. and no one sees it.
not even me. we don't really care
anymore. not for John R. Salter or
the Salt of the Earth or Dr. King
it's over. that peak has passed
and the valley, as we get passing
tumbling and dizzied glimpses
seems steep and black and wide

so paint that war drum, Hunter
let that sweat of life dry on
the underside of the keys
on your typewriter
and dance a little stranger
speak a little louder
play with the bobcat
for all of us

In Solidarity -

Take 3

take three of those apples if you plan
on taking one, because, you know, three
is a magic number

and three magic apples
with a white center
will grow, just like you
did kid

so take as many as you like
because these magic fucking apples
won't last forever or at all
not with your sharp teeth
and your hunger for this flesh

take it all because the more
you consume the more you grow
and you know that that is better
for everyone. all of us need to you
big, and i will happily die for that
kid

I mean what the hell do you think the
forefather wanted, for me to whisper or yell
at you, as you steal from my store. I don't care
if you pay or not, just get big. massive. towering.
overbearing. unmoved. you little runt you.
cuz you run the show, if you haven't noticed.
we give you all the power, and our lives and our children's
all of it. take it. all of it.

Clapping Confused as Gunfire

I move in my bed thinking
about the shots I heard
earlier and the glacier
of blood thawing in my
nerves. the cool. the need
for calm. the frosted clouds
that spit behind the squal.

But after the fourth thundering
clap. I realized it's just your
hand - calling your dog. It's
almost 2 am and that mutts gotta
pee. and you are pissed he's running
away into the street. Not because of the
traffic at this hour. But because of the
loss of control. Come here boy.

You've got me under control at this
hour. I whip up and peer as hard as a person can
peer through that peephole. and you dance after
that hairy old thing with you blue plastic bag.
even good dogs seem bad at this hour.

Isn't that what your thinking, waiting up
for your husband to come home from the bar
with his friends. He will change the baby if
he's not too fucked up. He'll get new friends
when he gets a better job or even a job.

but what you don't know (not yet anyway) is that those
claps
that wake me up, with my summer windows wide
were (pause) about to double your work sister.
cuz that man's deal went bad and that good dog
is dead. out on my street. as I sleep afraid
of dogowner's applause.

Confused

Gun shots outside my window
and I'm watching a documentary
on the silliness of gun
violence.

Finishing your cheese pizza
and garlic knots after
eating a nice chicken
Caesar salad and
soup.

Having more books than
bookshelves and not having
read a single one from
cover to shining
cover.

Having welfare for those
who need it and having
the rich decide who
don't. Like a skinny person
telling the fat how to eat.

the straight and the white
and the religous and the
wealthy and the healthy
and the sane and the proud decide for
everyone else.

You are everyone else.
I am sane.
You are them.
I am master.

HIStory

Yeah,

I kind of thought about doing that, but I realized then it would be madness.

I was surprised there were no large gatherings last night. I went to the "other" mj star, that's not outside the Chinese Theatre, at about 1am and there were 5 people there. 2 photographers, a couple and a homeless dude asleep on his bike. You could tell there were people at one time because of the candles and flowers and police line. I hung around for like 10 minutes, people left, maybe 8 people came. I then walked the 4 blocks back to the club where my friend was working on picking up a girl. Oh yeah, walking on sunset and cahuenga, alone, at almost 2 in the morning, is not recommended, even when you're jason-size.

I know going to the star is kind of pathetic, but so is being ditched at a club.

Also, I read my first autobiography in 3rd grade. It was like 400 pages. Moonwalk by Michael Jackson. I left it in my self for so long because I wanted to keep it that I had like a 20 dollar fine.

ok this got long and typo-y.

enjoy your time off.

The Stranger

Hello. Hello. goodmorning. Hello
I've cut out the feeling that I used to have.
I used to know. I have cut them right out.
Because its time to grow up. Those
silly little thoughts about community
and "if everyone would just play the drums"
have been beat down for centuries.
the ego of the men without love for
themselves beats me down. I stand and
frown in the cryogenic chamber. I killed
all the hopes that you had. I bought them
and sold them and made a little profit.
I took the whole world from us. It's gone
and destroyed. I broke it all for my own
little game. I'm on top of the world
if we can call it that. this black rock
that breaks us into nothings. the light
between an eternity of darkness is
no longer light. its all becoming an
eternity of darkness. I am not depressed
I am realistic. I am the gunholding
trashtalking womanfucking childbreaking
worldshaking oilspitting man who built the
railroad. I am the coal in your stocking.
I am the blackness in the tunnel of love.
the fight on your birthday. I am a man.
the silly little Y chromosome that
taunts evolution with its ego. I am that
ego.

and when you apporach me with
your hands out asking for something I have.
I will fucking kill you. I have no sympathy for
the devil. GOD GAVE HIM WINGS. I am the money
maker and you are the money taker. You welfare
grubbing medicare needing waste. You aren't even an
american.

Delta Spirit

My Father and I
stand outside on the balcony
of this gym near his home at
the country club.

A woman from the pool below, in her one-piece, yells
"SOMEBODYGETALIFEGUARD"
we look down and see a man in a collard shirt pull
a young boy out of the pool. he is limp on the concrete. CPR.

tons of people are in the pool, it is one of those
nice cloudless southern california
firetrucks aren't coming yet and my father and I
run inside. He yells "DIAL911"

I run with him. and stand around as he
barks words into the phone. orders.
I mean he barks orders.
the radio is playing a song I know.

Its of that band that I met 3 years ago.
I bought a keyboard from the guy.
I knew the bass player, Jon Jameson.
They are going to make it big.

I mean they are on the radio, so they
kind of already have.
The boy breathes but isn't really
going to be the same. and neither am I.

The DADGAD Encycolpedia

You are my little
drug. my little something
special. my $27.06 fix
of newness. a little gift
for putting up and keeping
up with these days off
for all the mistakes
for all the little breaths
and the high shouldered mornings
and the slupped-over evenings
the posturing, the positioning
the uncomfort and the figiting,
the little jumbled missing
answer that highbrowed and eyed
little cancer that must get
sni-pah-ed and cut right away
snick snick
that's it a little
tucking. shucking.
mothers touching
oh you aren't going to die
no no not you
not ever.

this is not that. none of it.

this is an open chord.
a smiling hand
a long and happy
whisper
a joyful vibration
a feather in
reverse slo-motion
forma, slomotion
oh

and i sit up straight
and my shoulders melt
and i sway like stevie
in the current of pliés
and bows and curtsies

your blonde head in the sky
your shoulders near the horizon
your breasts upon the sea
and your skirt pulled to the side
right near the shore.

your knees in the high grass
and you ankles disappear
your little smile and that dress
wrists in the waves.

Friday, December 29, 2006, 7:43:09

Poems for Lindsey

What’s Young in Us will Never Die.

The nose of a plane peaks
Forward and backward
In the London fog.
It smells of London
Faces of another world
Not tanned, or straight teethed
Or blue eyed
But bald and white and grey fog
The Christmas lights are still flashing
On boxing day; and I am still
Swaying with the pacific
Breeze in my hair
That reeks of other
On this planet
And turns this fog to
Black

Satellites

I scoop my hands
Into a bag full of stars
And roll them on the table
Like dice
Until
They make the preferred
Constellation.
I run them through my fingers
And throw them on the table
Repeatedly
And take my chances; rolling
While the table has no storm
And the sky is clear
And the stars wait
For my fashioning.




Crossing the Tigress

Slouching among the postured
A lioness looks across the Tigress
Over the lightning in the water
To the blue-coated shore
The shadow of her silhouette
Cracks against the sand
But she stands through the veins of rain
And looks for her man
Who appears and disappears
As violently and cold as
Her own image
Against the icy waves
in the heart
Of the Tigress



Half an Hour

It’s 503am where you are sleeping
And in some time
I will be in the air again
And the skips and skitters of your heart
Like the clips and wains
Of a cockroach
Oversized in your mind
Will calm with your oceanic breathing of sleep
You have no idea where I am
In your world of slumber
I am in Tokyo singing Karaoke with Shawn
I am drumming to an empty club
I am showering in my apartment with you
I am sitting alone on a dirty airport lounge seat from the 70’s
That held tens of thousands of asses
And I have waited until the last person has gotten on the plane before I close this up.

Bob Marley is skipping in my headphones
Much like the cockroach of a heart you have
Who’s sleeping now
Moving his feelers without a care


December 27, 2006

Black socks, rolled down from the calf
To the ankle
Cris-cross apple-sauce
I sit on the bed in my boxers
And my clean shirt
And my backpressed to one side
I won’t stop for spelling errors
I won’t stop for anyone-- -- -- -
This time I won’t
Stop

Clearminded fine wineded

Fuck what you heard
About fingers and nonsense
You’ve got nothing but codfish
Waiting on the back fence
Crimson with envy
And green with their blood
fish bleed purple and thick like mud
Itching the cracked soar
Behind your eyes
Feeds goblins and pillows
That lives in your thighs
For I will never sing like a bird
I screech like a whale so
Fuck what you heard

Polyrhythm Car-alarm

1886; a picture in print that I picture in my picture
The beds made of feathers so I can’t breathe
it may be even alone- needing gray
singing fogwater kisses
fluffing young rabbits
hopping banks and rivers
ripping eyes; claws
stooping smoke stringency
linear cube forensic
cognitive transition
free cognition
slanting and sticking and ranting and whaling and sailing
with words among pages and lateen flailing,
the jib might be loose
on the skirt, watch for goose
and my hand on your noose
a fox willing to pull the choking
now

December 28, 2006
It’s morning and I’m not yet mourning
But I miss the old guy
My grandma and I are so pragmatic
And reasonable
We just get it right all the time
But I know when I watch the service tonight
In her big flat screen
And she cries
And I am like stone
The world will be beating me down
More than any hands can.

Writing this one for you

In glancing around an empty white guest room
With pink wool blanket and evenly spaced
Bric-a-brac, looking for inspiration, and I start to understand
That I’m writing this one for you.
You will soon sleep but before that I will call you
And we will talk about everythings and nothings
About your day and about mine yesterday
About the cloak of time travel that dances in between us,
About my plan for January, and my slacking nature,
And how I always feel you look down on my intentions.
Wait, I love you. Wait, I do.
I won’t play those tapes. I will talk to you about how excited I am about going to palm springs and about your sisters and about my grandma, not about my plans.
Not yet.
Because I’m not writing this one for me….



Goodnight Grandma

I’ve done it and I cried and I smell like I have
Been crying. I’m pushing back my impulses to say
Or do or be something else. I agonized over everythings
And nothings. I felt quite and loud and harmless.
My eyes ripped an open corset of delicacy into my mind.
All the while my grandma looked as I looked
And did nothing and cried nothing.
Her tear-ducts have been closed for some time.
Capped off.



Photo.

I have found photos in my grandfather study
Of Jessie Ansari in a Batman costume
On Halloween at Age 5.
I could remember everyone’s name from my kindergarten.
In the Kitchen was a photo of Jon Jameson,
The bass player who recognized me from
My favorite band, standing in pre-school,
In a sequin top with jazzhands.
In the masterbedroom is a picture
Of Gabe and I in our cribs together playing side-by-side.
Our mother’s look so young.
In the guestroom, next to the bed,
You and I lay together, in the hospital,
Newborn, cold, alone, together, in the picture.

December 29, 2006

Goodbye, Grandma

I have said goodbye for what might be the last time
The world has little bearing
And is filled with wd-40
This life has gone by so fast
I can’t handle losing people in this way.
I can’t cry in an airport in the morning
With my Coke Zero and my designer clothes
Any my laptop and my Dad’s jacket
And my pink retainers and my family guy
I can’t. I won’t.
I am delirious with what ifs.
I have taken pictures and tried my best
And that’s all that can be asked
The only thing that makes this a poem
Is the fact
That I break up the lines
Every so often
Other than that
I have nothing

No Sleep

I haven’t slept in 20 hours and I was exhausted then
I loss my balance every so often
And I can’t seem to hold anything down
I have to lift my eyebrows extra high
To keep my eyes open
I haven’t called
My grandma kep the phone hostage
In her bag
In her walker
In her room
And she makes calls at every hour
Ahhhhhhhhh
Hh
I can’t take this
I’m in Scotland
I am in freaking Scotland
Its raining and have no idea whats going on
I just need to get on the plane and get home
I need to get home
Need to get me home
No sleeping

Quality Deterioration

I have lost all sense of quality in poems
I ramble
I’m not creative
I start every sentence with I
I am sleepy
I am Sad
I am Jason
I am Sitting
I sit
I cry
I scream
I am tears
I am wind
I am 80 mph
I am hell
I am cold
I am zoning the fuck out

Heathrow with no deodorant

I smell. Diarrhea. I have medicine but I haven’t taken it yet
I feel like im going to do die.
The children around are tapping and crying and dancing
In Spanish. Everyone is boarding my plane but I wait.
I am writing. I am waiting. I am churning. Stinking