the ultimate impotence of "c"

Paint marker murder blood
and all that is beautiful I have stolen
and made myself
Of composite parts
To be gathered with persistence
even in the winter
and I lay down plates
of both vinyl and ceramic
and if you were a scale model
Which would be your material?

Mouth full of mandarin tongue
And breath laden with a citrus health
That yields not to cigarettes
Or copious amounts of pot
With the pulp in my mouth
To be spit out
At some later
More inappropriate moment
While I am wreaking of turpentine
Beside the table cloth
And intending to nuke

All silence and patchouli
I slink home again
While the crescent of the moment hangs on some incongruous
Eyelid
I note the fort-night’s passing
Without celebration
But with an excess of confetti
I see the evidence of my traversing
Room to room
Marked on the faces
Of those who play
“A game for young gentlemen”

I awake from another drunk to find I regret nothing
But the fact that I can’t find
The one hitter box
In my apartment
Made entirely of camouflage both winter
And forest- GREEN
There are handprints
I can sit on
For the next few hours that will relay to me
The sparkle and crack of memories
laid on an open fire
as I camp on diagonal slopes
Prepared to watch you take the fall of lifetimes
Thrice to roll

Twenty times to die

A sailor with your arms full of
“Time” magazine war-bride
All the clickety-clack of the 1920’s hides between
Your drugstore teeth
and in the pin curls of our hidden lusts
Straight up and down
I just want
To long-board backwards from what has cumulatively amounted
To madness
And the hands of Nigerians
Disembodied, bleeding rainbows
The birds of true love
yakking back
From the small trees in front of the rehab centre
(under construction)

I don’t kill tigers with my sling shot
Only maim them
And heavy fur and muscle
On the waifish flanks of mine
Is burden sweet enough
And I DRAG them
To my secluded game of house
Where coconut is thick in the air
And I linger with the eyes
Of a mournful child star
Just within the door frame
And pray to Jah…

With my face kissing the gray storey curves
Oh the anabaptized clouds
I forget the prairies
And all else that encumbers me
And with brutal hands I try and throw
The beast away
But I
Can
not.

Haiku on the Prairie School

I.
Wind rattling trees
hasn’t ever felt so warm
than now, here inside.

II.
For six weeks each year
Midwestern trees protest man’s
want of privacy.

III.
Spirit of today,
wrapped up like small wooden gifts,
opens without sound.

IV.
Does nature appear
more beautiful sitting down
behind a window?

V.
Hill Paradox: a
stare directly at one side
reveals the other.

VI.
Does nature appear
more beautiful sitting down
behind a window?


VII.
The beaver does not
think, it builds cyclopean
mounds with its mean mouth.

VIII.
This sea is endless:
gold waves with brown swells ask the
horizon “what now?”

On Brutalism: A Bedtime Story

A body sits, exposing the corner
of a bone colored mattress.
The outline of a man discards
a damp down comforter. Noting,
as it flops loosely to the floor,
how easily weight could be
hidden beneath its subtlety.

“I wasn’t always this
stern with the others.”

A thin cast iron bed frame projects
a careful shadow on a body
concealed in rose-pink sheets.
It shrugs a leg, revealing raw
scrapes from a safety razor blade.

“They listened….”

The shape of a girl clutches
a wet pillow to its chest. It
has been consuming the dolor
and cheap make up of a child
being taught to carry itself
like an adult.

“They didn’t talk back.”

The man stands, closes
in to kiss its forehead
then stops to watch his
shadow cast over it.
He notes the white of
its eyes slowly churn
the color of concrete
as his back lurches
a shiver toward the
door. He rubs his
hands on his pants
then on themselves.
His gorged lips
derail then
wrestle
a smile

“Don’t forget to
wash up before bed.”

Vingettes On Direction

I remember the night we met,
You just got back from Pittsburgh
You were a cosigner of the notorious agreement
That would bind us forever, in a pond full of discarded tire swings
Treading water, we broke the surface
Bashing like the best
Dirty mana all like liquid stained glass
In the sunset of that night
You told me you might see me again
In September’s numbered days
Bindi blazin’ like a mood ring
I went to catch a plane
In my butterfly net

You were worried about me
So you gave me sordid means to protect myself
A pink-transparent automatic rifle
Legal Weapon
In the age of Aquarius
I have it holstered to my every facet
In a leather antique strap
Count to eight and waiting
For the second round
Not enough arms for all the ammunition
But a heart full of storage space
Some wooden crates with your name
In my left ventricle

Portrait of Le Petit Prince
As a young adult
Regina is a tiny planet
You planted flowers on,
And I watch you draw all my secret desires
A trick you picked up from someone
When you were little
My body would encase every perfect little lamb
You made me desire you

I became your sidekick on a part-time basis
But sharp-shootin’ wrists hung limp
While I stood by mute
The silence of a ultra-violent admiration
You commanded everything
To back up
A velvet rope signifying arm’s length
For us to stand behind
Some inside jokes and Private Eyes
Playing on my little red turntable
Shot-glass with a matching fire-truck
And Minnesota vodka, healing aneurysm deaths
Pre-emptive sarsaparilla, for Butch Cassidy
And his Sundance Kid


The moon radiates united
With industrial park lights
And although we hide, our hearts are swelling
Ready to burst with night-passions
Adorned with the jewelry of the silver anodyne
Our lycanthropy is kept at socially acceptable volumes
And we still howl sometimes
But it is softly, and in each others ears
Our mutual cave of Echo
Conveniently located between our faces
I get lost in your beard,
And all it’s beautiful possibilities
While you try to imagine
Where all my silver hair will be

You are Cary Grant
In a Mexican wrestling mask,
And I am a gypsy in pleated pants
A little female vagabond succumb to the
Ebb and flow of magic and the lunar cycle
You stooped to see my possibility
And this was our Holy Almost

Memories left incomplete
A history in a shoe box, a shoe box sent to sea
Drift west young man,
And make a newspaper sailor hat
In my absence
And I will honor you with theft
My hand to caress
A voodoo doll you gave me
Of yourself
Each day I reverse it’s spell
And kiss it’s hands
And trace it’s tattoos with my finger-tips
I’ll see you again soon
The next eclipse.

Sleeping as a Series of Shapes

Woke up frequently together
with your brother you talked
about familial responsibility.
Two blue shirts from Alaska
creased underneath the weight
of a couple more hours
of sleep.

Drank blood for the first time.
It tasted like cola, it
dribbled down your cheek.
A French ship picked up a sailor
in sixteen-fifty-three.

Eight A.M
or something. Construction
work never ends apparently.
Goose flesh precedes the
the skinny dip taken. Cold
tonight, it’s late. A haze
seen from a distance an its
eventual sweep curtains
across the bay in heavy
breaths. Yard lights,
crickets, frog and
squirrel noises.

What will the future be like
fifty years from this moment?

Space tourism, satellite cafes, x-ray
glasses and crystal power harnessed.

Wonder if your sister has ever
thought about having kids?

Three altogether: two girls
and a boy for balance.

How did anyone ever settle and
inhabit what is known as the “Arctic?”

Men thought it a challenge,
no other reason was needed.

What do you know that is
not fantastical but true?

Time whistles
like a vacuum