friction

it’s that certain brand of bitterness that
lingers in the back of your throat
and makes you want to spit. it’s that
deceptive quiet, that clever cloak behind which
hides the cloying aftertaste, cumulative
and unrelenting. everything else
takes a back seat as blackness drips down into
your bowels...

it’s a dull, pounding realization; it’s a wet rag
dragged across a stone slab; it’s everything
inevitable; it’s skin on hide, hide
on skin; it’s friction.

we are god's pornography.

nuclear holocaust and decimation,
nations pleading for survival:
a mother’s children sold as slaves,
the salves upon a sick society:
we are god’s pornography.
(back and forth, back and forth.)

let the rain come down,
let the snows wash away
our memories of every
in and out which our inventive,
demented minds have
come up with. let them starve
us out until we remember
nothing at all, and let us play
our part, cracked pieces on a dirty
chessboard in some hidden
hallway up in heaven. let us pray

that god’s mom
doesn’t catch him yanking
himself (or herself) off
to another world war, or
another botched
moon landing, an alien
invasion, a peace accord
in israel, or some other such
silly fiction.

reverse commute

i take my meals in truck stops
along the highway, after-hours when
almost everyone is gone, when i can nearly
hear the echoes of the movements my jaws make
as i ingest. my head is empty, and i wear dark,
inconspicuous clothes. who i am in these
spaces is no one, and what i am doing is
going from nowhere to noplace,
as far as anyone knows. i imagine assassins
feel the same way at times, almost
lonesome but too uninterested to truly feel it.

my domain is my car; i speed on highways,
breaking the law only enough to feel
that i am getting away with something. my
domain is in the air above: i will one day arise,
as smoke toward the sun. it is also in the ground,
which will entomb my ashes. my domain stretches
from shoulder to shoulder, right to left, and
between my ears. my domain is my armspan,
or the length of my cock. my domain stretches
into every crack and crevice, every inanimate object
and idea that my mind might ever make a difference
to, or which might ever enter into that arena. it is whatever
my heart will allow it to be, from one moment—

a poem about you (for every girl ever)

one day i will write a poem
about you. it will say stuff about
your hair, and your nose,
and your voice. it will have passages
that go something along the lines
of, "beauty resides in your eyes
like sirens" and go on to say how i'd like
to reside there too. it will say, "your
heroic heart pounds out seething
seastorms whose great waves slash
against the sides of my single, simple ship
and splash upon the deck." this will be
no simple lyric; it will be
an epic ballad to be sung by bards
in every barroom, and barked by beagles
in every barnyard. for, after all,
there is a beauty which resides in your eyes:
it's like sirens singing me in, ever deeper.
and i'm sure you've already heard how i feel
about your heart. i will write a poem about you
one day, but for now i'm just researching.

for our fathers

for our fathers, who start out being behind the count
by not being the ones
who bear us, having not had
the intricate internal intimacy of us.
our fathers, who must fight on two fronts,
against their own obsolete upbringing and against our
inborn childish obstinacy. for our fathers, who are strong
but must at times appear weak for our sake, who
are weak but at times must appear strong,
for our sake. this is for our fathers, who frequently fear
that they haven't finished their job, whose hearts
are often heavy, sometimes hard, but always full, and whose
heads are often half against the facts that they
engender. this one is for our fathers, this
is for our fathers. may we one day love them in turn
as much as they have loved us.

the grave robbers

everyone picks out their favorite corpse
and we all waltz around the room. angry Edward
has himself a drink of brackish swampwater and twirls
his late lover around three full spins, with his
arm extended. sad Frank sits in
a cold corner, complaining to his dead mother
of a mysterious woman he’d met, who’d kept him
up nights and never returned his phone calls.
an elderly gentleman holds a fragile, old-fashioned
granny in a grizzly death-grip, and it’s unsure
which is the one who is expired. and then
there’s Eleanor in her elegant dress,
Eleanor who I love, with a rip in her dirt-darkened
chest, a hole which partially exposes
her tender heart. and she’s always been a lady
who’d wait for you to open the door, with
an indulgent smile and a soft word of thanks,
and she waltzes so well.

and we don’t dance to forget, and we don’t dance
to remember. we simply dance to dance one last
time, as weak candles cast our strong shadows
against the cement walls and ceilings. we steal them back
for a single night, for the simple pleasure of extending
our hands one last time, in spite of
extenuating circumstances.

styrofoam electrons

trying to find the shortest way
to a house, flitting in between highways,
trying to get there in eleven minutes
or less. if able, attempting to keep
from running over anybody on the
way. worried but not overly
concerned. the atoms of the brain
are bigger than the dust which
fills the air, the atoms are something
you could eat, like cotton candy.
if you see a light, walk toward it, and keep
on going straight until one street becomes
another, then take the highway until
you're nearly there, and make sure
to get lost at least once per avenue,
or every time you see a yellow light. don't
slow down, you're almost there, you almost
have a home. you almost have a home.

darkest memory

in my dark, in my
most moist gelatinous membranes
i feel, what i feel for you, in the dark,
before a punch, before a drunken stupor,
even when we bleed. dark smiles,
shut eyes, dead minds, hearts, we feel.
we felt once, long ago, humans.
before the christ, before the fall
and the false redemption. in my,
in your death throes, the flailing, the
meaningless end of existence. moments
of pity and sympathy, felt outward-in,
upon every single surface a smudge.
left alone, a heart in the dark, smudged
with tiny pricks of life. simple patterns,
out of the darkness of pre-creation,
recreated randomly for the enjoyment
of all. each in blossom, in decay. the
flutter of lost souls creating a wind upon
the cheek as they softly leave the evening ether
into the unprotected darkness of the night.

shortest path between two points (a love poem)

my heart is locked
inside my chest, but if i could
i'd cut it out for you to see. it would be
a messy sort of maneuver, all blood
and bone and gristle. i might need
to take mental leave of the proceedings,
which would call for even more
hurried work of the hacksaw. but once
you're satisfied, once your fears are settled,
(or whenever it is that you feel that you are ready,)
you can stitch me back up, sew up the
holes, and together we'll try to sand
the stains from your hands.

if i am true

if i am true, will the universe
bend itself toward me? is life a fair
game? how are humans
any different from all the other
disgusting digestive systems which
simply happen to have sprouted legs?
where is the infinite you
located? is it anywhere near
the infinite i? do words make sense when
you shove them right up next to each other
like this? if i am true, do i get
a lollipop when i die? will you
make sure of that? if you are true
i will try to keep you
from collecting dust. and i
will try to hold you in my heart,
just so. if i am true, if you are true.
if the world is made of truth, if atoms
are trustworthy. if electrons, if ecstasy
and empathy and everything else. like a
stained glass window, if you could ever trust one.
what kind of a god
likes
stained glass windows? what kind of
god are you? or i? and yet
each time we sneeze, we create a million
billion universes. if i am true, maybe
they will be true too, and maybe
the entire spiral which is constructed
will not collapse
just yet.

straw that breaks

there are one too many
liars in this world. one too
many who have no true
face. and if i were one of
them, would you let me
know? of course not; this
society is a machine built
solely to hide truth. one
two three weeks ago i
was lied to, and now the
lie is shown for what it
is. a true face is not
something that you
glimpse in a night or
post on a bulletin
board. face: it’s
all i’ve ever
had and
no one
will
ever
take it
from me.

put a church key in your pocket

I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad
And cut the braces off your legs
-Tom Waits, "Kentucky Avenue"

the criminal kept on getting caught.
and every time, he'd lie and look
for all the world as if he thought
he was innocent.

he was a thief, but not
by any stretch of the imagination
a very good one. he had a wife,
and an only son who once looked at him
as if the world hinged on his words.

and he always kept a church key in his pocket.

it fit into the lock on the door of a chapel which no longer existed:
a fire had claimed it years ago, and by now
even the rubble had been removed to make way
for a strip mall parking lot.

he said that the key kept him safe.

he'd do his time in jail, and his son
would grow older while he was gone.
each time he came back, the son
was just a little less interested
in what he had to say.

the criminal was an innocent.
he committed crimes but deep down,
somewhere, he wanted to understand
the world and make his peace with it.

the son did not see this.
he did not see the searching glances
his father was unable to stop
himself from sending out toward
the unbroken, uninteresting midwestern horizon.

the son was a teenager when the man
got out the last time. when his dad came
home, he wasn't there. he was away
at a friend's place, listening to music.

the mother and the father ate, and fucked,
and went to bed. the son came home
at 3am, and stopped by the door
of his parents' room. he listened to his
father's breathing in the darkness, and then
he went to his bed and slept.

a few hours later, the father woke up
and got out of bed. he walked down the hall
and watched his son for a little while, from
the doorway, in the early morning light.
then he left to go out looking for a job.

the son soon formed a habit of looking up at the sky.

it was a freak accident, really. the criminal had
been working at the garage for just a few weeks,
and he was walking home late after
closing up shop one night. the driver didn't
see him, that was all.

at the funeral, if someone looked into
his pocket, they would have discovered
something surprising: the church key was gone.
and somewhere, someone's son
had a hand in his pocket, was humming
a tune, and looking at the sky, and
thinking of the father
he'd tried so hard to love.

lipstick translations

You on the balcony, my future wife
O who could have known, but no one
-Nick Cave, "Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere"

We were ourselves for supper tonight:
chewing a toothpick, I wore my favorite
straitjacket. She left her labial pencil
at home. I apologized for being slow.
Her lips opened and a short current of
words came out. She touched her stomach;
I saw her eyes shift, glanced away, saw
the valet, and dropped a set of keys from a set
of nerveless fingers. Her eyes were otherwise
occupied; I thought of the attorney, the doctor, the
possibilities. I had a sudden urge to cry:
our wine arrived and she sank into
her chair. Watching the bubbles break
from the sides and spill upwards towards
the surface: a doctor, a lawyer, a professor. A
short stream and then gone. Touching the stomach
once again: uneasy habit, nervous twitch just
recently. I thought of my parents, my
grandparents, and I held out a handkerchief,
for she had spilled
a single drop of wine.

human hands

she touches me with her
human hands
and i feel each contoured
corridor on the flesh of
her fingers. she starts to see me for
what i wish i
were. where we might
be led is another matter,
down the haunted hallways
of our human hearts,
hand in human hand,
soft and sensitive with
a lather of lotion. my one
and only heart next to hers.
human skin entwined in
parts. this is what keeps
me here, as we keep winding around
the same old sight-stunning sun.
human hungers for human,
human hands and human
hearts. she will hold me slowly,
sweetly breathe me. we
will seep into each other’s skin
and simply vanish. like a
lullaby, like a song sung
softly in the nighttime: i am
here today, here am i.

upon rejoining the ether

a moment to pause and reflect,
upon rejoining the ether. a single
electron hurtling through space
with no apparent destination suddenly
finds a positive force to attach itself to.
there is a group here, awaiting this one
little electron to make the construction
come close to completion. they form a sort
of shell, keeping to themselves. eventually
codependents are connected, and
the group becomes a gathering.

expanding outward, the molecule is transmogrified
into a single speck of dust.

dust clings to dust, and the dust
grows larger.

it grows feet, grows long,
floppy ears.

soon enough there is a soft
little puff of tail.

soon enough,
this itty bitty dust bunny
will be something to truly contend with.

new gruesome

a new kind of blue:
somewhat bitter, angry
and spinning out of orbit
on an axis i have never known
anything about. with things
like hair, and a face, and
stuff like that.

a new kind of beautiful:
somewhat set, almost moody
or maybe something else entirely.
ego or confidence or what’s-
the-what. she’s got
hair, and a face, and
stuff like that.

this is the new gruesome:
this is the new way to waste your
brainpower and think too much.
here is how you might learn better
to obsess. just try to find someone
as fucked up and lovely as yourself,
and you’ll be fine forevermore. someone
with hair, and a face, and
stuff like that.

high school yearbook

here is the map that will chart out the rest of your life.
half that life so far, shrunken down to no more
than a few inches in either direction.

here is the girl you sat behind in homeroom
because her last name was next to yours.
here is one of the ones you believed you were in love with,
that you thought you would die for.

here is a crackhead, and over here is his dealer.
this one's pregnant, and that one's married.
the boy in the plaid jacket lost 100 pounds.
your good friend lost something much more important, six years ago.

you don't know what you yourself have lost,
and don't think it's that important that you don't know.
you're not a crackhead though: there's always that.
and you're not pregnant and don't plan on becoming so.

here is everyone you think you've outgrown, and some
who think they've outgrown you.
here they are in flat little photographs, like
little plastic action figures neatly wrapped up
in cardboard boxes, always awaiting your arrival
so you can take them down off the shelf and play with them.

samantha

if i'd ever known her i would
have told her hello, just for you.
i would have shouted her name
from the rooftops, just to see
what you'd think.

You Are The Leader.

see the words flit on hidden wings
away from wrinkled mouths in faces
made of sand. you awake to
tender happiness, happening in quick
backward glances, captured in snapshots.
spoken syllables linger in the air,
exhaust from living matter,
tempting you further toward
a total truth. under deeply hooded eyes
is understanding; under the mountains
in the east, a single light shining brightly
against surrounding darkness; with a million
beating hearts, heroes await your call
to arms. you are the light, the leader;
you have awoken, broken away from
stolen time in disconcerting dreamscapes.
in someone close by or someone far away,
you'll find a tiny key that fits just right.
you are the leader, you are the light.

my surgical eye

my surgical eye can see right through you,
can shred your clothes off in a single glance.
my surgical eye can weigh you, measure you,
draw & quarter you, and have sweet, passionate
sex with you all in the time that it takes to blink. my
surgical eye can see you when you’re sleeping.
my surgical eye will bleed right through your nice
white dress. my surgical eye, left and right, only so i
can see so clearly. everyone in the operating room,
stat. everyone in stitches. ha-ha. my surgical eye
will have you in stitches. try not to cry.

Car Crash.

breakddddddddddddddddddddddd0wn.
highwaywreckage,route#9:left:side,upside-under.
medianSTRIPstrip(strip)tumbledover,flatTIRE.
grounded:out;two[wheels]ontheair,live(battery),
gasolineover$3risingRISINGspillingout—
checkEngineLight:flashflashPhotographersTaking
pickturespickingattheWRECKage,vultures
breakdown(brokedown)onthesideoftheroad.
engineExplosion—ExxonSunocoGetty—middle
East,stillSPILLINGouttheSIDE.passenger:side
DOORtwisted(open)smoke-pouring-out.humanity
ofitall.pickturesPickingTICKINGflickingOut—
tireTreads:see-them-by-the-side,“theWayThey
Swerve.”SunocoSunoco,Exxon,Sunoco:License(no)JN
284X.XX—like-Eyes-That-Are-Expired.Tumbled
StumbledOFFthe(road).mayDayJuneJULYor
[ides][of][march].beware(the)BRRRReeeaakKKK-
down.passengerSide[viewmirror]wheelstillSPINNNNnnn
-ing.allUnitsRespond,AllUnits.drunkDriverdrunk?service
+every+3,000+miles=failureToDoSo=(leadsToBreakdown.)
CLEARtheROAD,nothingToSee.necks-are-made-
of-rubber.medianStrip,flipped,tireSpinning:
breaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkkkkdown.

southern sunburn

each of us an artist, he said
as his hands fell to rest beneath
his head. he’s lying on a pillow
of purest gold, and we’re all told
that this will be his dying day. it’s
a priceless picture: it has no price,
it’s not for sale. someone spoke
of southern women, southern women
in the sun, and then his time was done. it
wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad, he’d
led a stunned but somewhat steady
life, and he’d always managed
to banish all his strife. an artist is each
of us: every way, on more days than
not, and the spots we fall into are all
that we’ve got: when life isn’t cold,
it’s much too hot. each and every artist
is one of us: long, tall, and blue, or short,
green, and square: each a flavor, each
an artist in the end. an artist makes a
wager (but never whatsoever a friend):
whether forever is ever an option.
never quite clever enough. sun-studded
toughs sometimes have their say, they’ll
play somewhat rough, and it’s the end
of your day. (oy vey.) each of us an
artist, like a lover, or a painter, or
a listener named louie, each of us
is, each a louie, or a lois, or a
loretta. everyone is someone,
sunburned or submerged in
liquid. scientific studies
are suggestive: they all
suggest it: each
(chacun) of us
(chow fun) is
an artist.

lotus eaters

i.
the rain is sliding down the windows.
only god can hear me now, only the movement
of the water outside in the canal responds
to my continued silence. it has been three weeks.
i walk my days among would-be martyrs with nothing
to hoist up a cross for. i walk among the dead and the
living with equal alacrity, equal familiarity. this is not
my city, which makes it even more an extension of
who i am right now. the world moves slowly about
me, like a rippling tidepool, like a mime. there is
no sound. even in the darkness at night, though,
there is movement: slow, deliberate, smooth. someday
the world will pick up again, but for now it is encased
in jelly. even the gods and the devils feel the effects
of the times: we are the lotus eaters. we are, we are,
we are the lotus eaters. and love has a place, but it’s
a quiet, comfortable place. it’s in our minds as much
as in our hearts, and it’s a slow dance, subdued
yet somehow sacred nonetheless. there will be things
that happen after this, but there is no great rush.

ii.
and i’m hungry, and i should probably
eat something, but that would be too much
of a presumption. and i don’t need it, anyway.
i want to drop another two or three pounds, even though
i’m already a bit on the skinny side. i never could
say no to dropping weight. insubstantial:
hide in the woodwork: be left alone. not a bad way
to be. eating, on the other hand; too much work, not worth
the effort half the time. and i think i might have cancer,
every other week, and maybe that’s just the way i
am, the way i gauge my life by. a fatalist, or
something or other. and my brain might not work
very quickly, but it works just fine, thanks. and
there are holes, and i’m well aware of the fact. i’ve
fallen into one or two, you know. it’s not as if
it’s any secret. how many secrets can anyone hope
to hold? and i don’t think we’re all going to heaven,
but i doubt the devil will see us anytime soon, either.
i think i have cancer today, and it’s been an alright life
so far. i can’t really complain.

still love

i still love him, you know.
he who sat on his deathbed
and spoke of stories he’d lived long ago.
he who would never give up on life,
who
kept on being happy when he should have
been crying, while his body was dying.
he, my grandfather, the man who i wish i was more
like. my grandfather was great, and i
wish you would have known him, every
one. if he was a moon, and i was a star,
well then you know how the story goes.
i wish my grandfather, i wish him, i wish him
all the happiness that the afterlife has
to offer.

kingdom for a crown

there are those in this world, dear,
who would not hear of love,
who would throw the masses to the dogs
to give their dog a meal, to put some more
food on the table. if you’re able
to see them for what they are, then count
yourself lucky, and if not
just never allow yourself to be counted
among their growingly greedy numbers.
for you are a kingdom, dearer than
the heavens, and you’re spinning this way
and that, with no idea where you’ll wind up.
there are those who would not see this, or
would not believe. but you are
a kingdom, dearest, and there are still
some of us who would never in our lives
make the sad mistake of trading
a kingdom for a crown.

user, part two (recovery)

she never sees the heavens when she looks up at
the stars, and she feels like a dog, chasing an
endless line of cars. the people, they all pass her by,
on their way to somewhere, living their own sets
of semi-transparent lies. but she isn’t one of them and can’t
begin to pretend, her fate’s her own and she prays
that someday soon she’ll start to mend. and sometimes they
call her, her old friends, but mostly they don’t as she tries to still
her shaking hands.

and they never told her it would be easy, they never
told her much. it’s just another car going down another
blistered road. she watches as the taillights disappear.

here she is, in hell at times, but mostly in between.
there’s nothing much she’d rather be, because
she wouldn’t know what difference it would
mean. so she lives her life like a line drawn by a careless
finger in the sand, and she’s getting better but
she doesn’t even know it anymore, she doesn’t
have a plan.

Original

this is

what are these letters?
what are these words, these images,
except a bunch of lies i’ve put together
to construct a wall around myself, or around
you? where are you, anyway? where do i
fit you into the large, blackened and charred
photo frame that insulates my world
and keeps it comfortable? in this
computerized age what are we when we are
away from the computers that keep us
separated? if it isn’t data what is its
worth? i don’t even truly know
what love is. and you can tell me
that you do, if that’s what you want.
you can try to tell me what this is, you can
tell me anything you want to,
and anything you need to.

here in the twilight

painted photographs of another lifetime,
in blue and green and yellow,
of a world where up is left and down
is “I don’t know.” somewhere
where you wouldn’t be afraid.
somewhere in the twilight.
imagine yourself with everyone
you ever loved, all at once, and all
of your essences blending together in some
kind of impossible existential orgy. everyone you ever
lost, all back where you can find them again.
as the sun is setting, imagine
what it looked like when you were born,
imagine what the sun looked like when it first
rose on the world, or what it will look like
when it sets tomorrow. imagine an endless procession
of sunrises and sunsets, stretching out from the dawn
of time to one day in the future, perhaps sooner perhaps
later, blurring together and then slowing down and spreading
apart.
          now imagine that other world, with its
blues and its greens and its yellows.
imagine it, because it won’t imagine
                                                       itself.
here we are in the twilight, and here is
the sunshine, and here is the rain, and
sometimes it’s hard to tell if the photo
is life or if life is just another photo,
but what you can do is
you can start with the sunrise and then
move on from there.

breakdown is a david

david is a breakdown a shakedown
a quakeout a suther asunder a cover
a dead redrover blackfall flown flown a
way a why is a, is a who said what who said he
said he rolled out of bed bumped his head-
case on the ceiling feeling empty feeling
shakey shake quake downout in onside
in a breakdown breakin brokeup given give a david is
david is he is a madmutt stop needs a stopcop
dropper downbreak upbroke taking stone, stones
to the casehead fallred a way a fly a flown a flew
a way a fly a flew a flown, is a, is a david.