11:41 am

the sun broke through the clouds like a convict through a liquor store. all the liquor stores around here have a low fence to tell you not even to try it. you have to ask the lady in the sequined hat to grab it for you and she rings you out.
from here you have limited options- to drink or not to drink- the latter not really much of a choice at this point so you buy a bag of ice and peanuts- salty over sweet while youre off the wagon is best. after a couple of days when your pours dont smell of cheap beer, the sugar cravings return, but that doesnt happen all too often latly.
so you grab your booze and nuts and make your way to the kitchen and find a jar thats not too dirty and you pour it strong. half a half or better to start- the pours are sure to get heavier by the time you need to lean on the wall for support, but by then you wont remember anyway, other than the taste on your tongue when you wake up.
Humans sense differences: like how you cant smell something youve been in the same room with until you leave the room. if the taste on your tongue is the same you can never tell. this becomes terribly convenient when remembering your forgetting becomes troublesome.
so you make your way to the lady with the sequined hat and think about peanuts and feeling less

White Power

Today I’m hard up for cash
So, what?
Take a look at my calligraphic
“FUCK YOU”
Written with my own personal supply
Of Canopus 13
See above,
In the sky blue sky
Just adjacent to your slice
Of key-lime aspiration


Please RSVP
If I casually invite you
To analyze my handwriting style
And I’ll take you up
With the power of my single manifold
But there is no rush
Thanks to the advent of the dot-matrix fashion
Which I have enthusiastically adopted
As my preferred method
For getting my point across


I just want you to know
What I mean
By this message I’m sending
An impermanent and extravagant
Demonstration of what I’m talking about
When I say
We’re both selfish
+
We’re both liars
Co-dependants
Symbiotic parasites
Compulsive thieves
And all around good people


Sometimes I’m hard to understand
And
I intensely desire your appreciation
For this valiant attempt at clarity
Consider this an out-right demand
That you say “Thanks”


I can be your best friend
And spring with you, eternal
Please just never love me
Deny your feelings of attraction
In small claims court,
Along with your parking tickets
These and other things
Are nothing more than un-paid side-effects
Experienced as a result
Of getting where you need to go


I too am a believer
In the dubious hassle of the bisexual
Platonic relationship
And I fail to comprehend
Why my brothers, all around me
Can’t see through my effeminate costumes
And nearly drown me
In the magnificent Kanagawa
Of our fraternity

Regardless of whether or not I’m
Little Sister
I do believe
That my grit is self-evident
As obvious as the brilliant luster
Of my silver spurs

Like it or not
You must learn to accept my lineage as fact
Born of the Norwegian Gods
I have consummated my young adulthood
As a merciless warrior
With an intent to nuke
A handsome Valkyrie
With a heart
Like a red, red fortress
And breath like floral cigarettes
Heaving steel plated breasts
While dreaming all-consuming dreams
Of strength and domination


This is flirtation
This is a warning
Sir,
You cannot hope to contain
Or embrace
A ravenous flame.
My lust for destruction
And re-creation
Steadier
Than my impulse to breath.


For your own safety
I have placed these tender walls between us
And you begin to bruise them
Wounding my patience
With your unrelenting advance
On what is burning
Just beside you
So close
But yet so far.

YBIYBI

I saw you try to act a threatening way
I heard you whisper violently as if
Your silver teeth and tongue
Were giving birth to grievous meaning
Distracted, and waiting for something you say
To land a some fluke-ish blow
The blunt weapon of your scorn
Your aimless lecture
Directing your extra special selfish rage
Vaguely in my direction
I look at you with stony awe
As you explain to me why
I should not have intervened
In your personal life
When you stole a large sum of money
(“(Perhaps Temporarily)”)
From a friend of “ours”
Without making one thin second
Of fortifying eye-contact
With me


I have smelled the shit of you
Despite the impediment of smoking tons of cigarettes
The forceful wreak of garbage colored syllables
Tearful lamentations – dramatic suicide attempts
Announced, with manic ardency
Repeatedly
Again and again and again and again
The most ridiculous wall-paper sampler
Of mismatched perjuries
Braggery, the most ugly boasts
About your latest atrocities
The raw nature of your grocery list
Including adultery, rabid substance abuse, serious violence, petty through felony level thievery
and tax evasion
You are proud
I am lead to believe this
Because you list these accomplishments daily
Like some splendid general
Somehow I do believe
You’re heart is truly purple

I mean that in the worst of ways

Tell us about all that
All that
All that hot sex with members of sociopath set
Sweet blonde cocaine orgies
Oh, that swinging lifestyle!
Sometimes you’ll need a break!
Might I casually suggest drinking through your daytimes –
Everytime!
It really helps a man loosen up
After a tense day at the office
Which we share
The crass logic of drug-addicts
The triumphantly unending fabulous
LIES
And
EXCUSES
Each one more sound and elaborate
Than the last,
With witnesses to testify,
And alibis, and lullabies
Spitting them at me,
As if your sighs,
Your sniffling
Your dry, dry mouth
Were not as loud as a thunderstorm
As if I didn’t notice your agitated movements
Like a bull
Crushing all that china down,
To fine white powder
Lead all to the slaughter
By a ring in your nose

All this tragedy,
Your children, and a woman
You drove to madness
What large pieces of smaller lives
You’ve so carelessly destroyed
Disassembled, with a daily blow
With the sledgehammer of your
Sickness, your psychopathic tool-kit
Your pores dripping
With falsity, my distrust
Of you so strong, that I can barely force myself
To look at your face
Lest it attack me, attempt to manipulate me
With the most sincere of expressions
Attached to the hook-line and sinker
Of your poisonous influence
The countenance of your physical body
Lying in three fleshy dimensions
YOU
YOU
YOU
Not eligible to repent
Even on your death bed:
My final caution;

You break it, you bought it.

The Winter Can't Keep Anything Straight

I don’t remember getting potty trained but
I know the winter’s haven’t gotten any
better since. It is a terrible season
to risk romantic relationships, a time
spent wanting warmth without confusion: a build
up then release: to hold onto something that
doesn’t make me feel ashamed. I’ve spent winters
with women so I don’t have to sleep alone
and been with ones who have used me for the same

There is this isopod that eats the tongues of
fish. It begin with the outer lips, tears them
off then burrows its body inside the mouth,
using its teeth to make room for itself.
The isopods grows there, in the roof of the mouth;
the fish doesn’t notice, swimming all the while.

I kissed a boy once just to prove it could be
done. His chin is what I touched the most so we
made out a couple more times until I could
taste the oaks in his hometown and tell if he
was an only child (he wasn’t). Someday I’d
like to climb to the bottom of a well and
see what is so important that even shadows
try to keep its existence hidden. Maybe
it’s not tangible. Maybe it’s the quote there,

hanging, about how the recipient of
a poem is unable to appreciate
what the poet meant to write so, when I slept
with that ex it was because I did not want
to be left behind. Everybody is some-
body’s former body, the circumstance is
not what matters: it’s about discovering
the potential in the worst possible lay.

The Highway from Heliopolis

It rose in the distance like a
stillbirth —or at least the color of one—
as the amphetamines drove me
from the town I grew old in.

My father bought a jeep
when I was young. It was the
sky after a storm blew through
Eastern Colorado, without the
stink of shit and evangelists:
sapphire.

Well that, and the Firebird
(his real baby, sexless as it was
with black leather interior that
still smells of the first time
I fucked) rode like wild
roans. He’d advise me not
to wear seat belts in either.
The stares were longer,
he told me the women liked
it better that way.

We’d go to car shows
and look at the engines
like they were porno
magazines and when we’d
pull into the garage, he’d
show me how to polish
the Firebird’s seats.
Absent mindedly,
I’d finger the pouch
of weathered leaves
—the one with some Indian
name— he’d forget in the glove
box and wonder why he’d keep
them hidden from mom under
a stack of crumbling eight
tracks. I had an imagination
then: I’d show friends
the baton that rested
idly on the driver’s side.
My dad’s a cop I’d say
an he beats robbers to
keep them from stealing.
Then they’d talk about
being adults —growing
old, a girl on their arm,
having children— and
get driven home by one
to be put to bed.

I pull off the interstate
—an exit with some Indian
name— to do a rail off
the portable tape player:
these cars from the late
seventies were built well
enough but an eight track
only lasts for a couple
decades. I wonder if it
is as late as it seems
then pull back onto
the highway to see
it there, setting. It
dangles —as if
connected to a
cosmic thread—
waiting for Time’s
nurse to sever its
weight and
throw it
away.

Discharge

Discharge

Here, the buildings are splayed like jack-o‘-lanterns:
the big grin of windows separated by stone
and metal, illuminated by a lamp that may
be overhead or may be in another room.
Orange, yeah. They’re orange inside the
eyes, the mouth, the nose. The outside is
black against gray overcast. It could rain.
It has been and it could again. I do not
watch the sunrise when it has yet to happen.

The first time it started we were both eighteen:
I promised you would start to feel everything.
I want to fuck the trees so you went west
to Washington whose evergreens I have seen.
I was drawn to a pile of leaves last week and
your hair was in it, whispering –like the
filament of a light bulb that is about to go out.

Incendiary Balloons are dangerous.
The Japanese sent them over the Pacific.
They landed in some remote areas of
Oregon and California. They killed a
few children who tampered with their
release mechanisms. The Americans,
at that time, were developing another
kind of weapon that they would also
send over the pacific in a different kind
of balloon. That too would explode.
It took me a twenty-five hundred mile
plane ride and thirteen hours on a train
to learn that the Japanese attacked
America on four separate occasions
between December 7th 1941 and July
11th 1945. I was not surprised: some-
times knowledge takes time.

The moon held a twilight sad. Is that
a line from another poet because the
moon held with it a twilight sad, an
arrow and bowl of tulips. It sighed
What use are things to a form in
orbit? Circles in squares –a massing
of objects– on top of another.
– a body on top of another– in orbit;
Love? Letters. Asparagus. Today
I will take out a life insurance policy.

A friend tells me I should settle down
with a nice woman who is ignorant to
things that keep me preoccupied. What?
Am I supposed to talk to keep her mind
at ease at night? I don’t say this. I lie.
I agree. I listen to her breathe. I want
to be loved like the pediment of a temple
front: ordered around and sat on like a
stylobate. This is a mouth that is much
prettier when clenched tight, kept quiet.

It is nice to be ignorant of language:
in not understanding one is left to listen.

The Walk Home

“The streets were dark with something more than night.”
-Raymond Chandler

High tops sprang toward the base of a fire escape.
It is true, it has been snowing: the iron gives a
gorgonic hiss as residue clumps into a
mess of what looks like bellybutton lint. No, not
enough time, shouldn’t have considered this, three more
floors until the buildings will shade what tracks exist.

The cistern: city beneath another city.
It is calling, the rooftops are unsafe. Below
there are lean byways without traffic lights. Stop signs
made up of canals, the discarded memories
of our bodies all at once, mixing into rags,
Styrofoam cups, half-eaten food squeezed through
tight passages like subway trains. I am afraid.

“Live life accordingly” reads a poster for a
suicide hotline. I dangle a foot in front
of it and drop, stunning a pile of cold muck with
both high tops. For just a second, I’m a compass:
I shudder for direction, support myself and
pivot, responding to the darkness like one half
of a magnet. The city is an attitude

it keeps like a secret, confusing stars with dim
lantern filaments, deeming them unimportant.
I’ve seen myself sweat at sunrise and thought about
loss. I’ve slept in the cistern and walked on rooftops.
If one thinks too much they’ll drive themselves unusual
which can be a good thing if one enjoys funerals.

The Centenarian

Wind swept skirt, there are melodies hidden
in the ankles that drive you forward. Circles
in squares -a massing of limbs- a garden
of delicacy shivering in certain
morning rains. Compose to manipulate;
the face smiles first. Then the bodily curl
of a stomach yawning inward retakes
control as the perianth drools and unfurls.

· · ·

A remembered kiss of excitement. Hand
on hip, then the hiss of metal searing bone
as though a leaf pile devoured a firebrand.
Eschatology warned me of dark cyclones,
hurricanes, earthquakes and torrential rain
but this was not as planned: we met death from all
around. Tools too sick with fits of wolfsbane
saturated wounds and left my men mauled.

· · ·

Tulip, there was a war and I was told
to erase it. I built over the craters
-salt soaked and warm- until there was pavement
in all directions. Unaware of its grim
impact, I used resources like salt in
an ice storm. Sulfur Dioxide? Acid
Aerosols? When the sunset grew more vibrant,
I was told my work was to blame for it.

Prophecies be damned, the world was always ending.
That I survived a few wars means nothing. I know
now there are things worse than the wrath of a planet:
when it decides to not take you along with it.