stuff and a run-on

the wrenching laughter
scrapes angry marks in the recycled air,
too heated,
our section of the stratosphere
presses gray & heavy with mediocrity.
This conversation is smog,
punctuated by bad cheese & flimsy chicken.
Anything you might say
would spray like febreeze over the heartbreak
& slightly improve the breath
pushing jagged from each pump.



Screw the moon
& its yellow belly
tonight I believe in the cynicism of midnight fog.
My body becomes a simple residue of solipsism & dust.
That swinging scam in the sky
(Too much. Too heavy. Too wrenching.)
All those moments just
aren't.



My body is already starting to rebuilding itself
after one more cycle
in a lifetime of gripping the in-between.
The rocks on the bottom refuse to smooth out
& this river represents sharpened distinction,
a live boundary carving the rules down to bedrock.

This poem came to life
at 65 miles per hour
& I am going to pieces faster than a waterfall.

Mind misted over
like somebody left the shower on
or made love too long

angry, the words shake & hurtle sideways,
the alphabet wets itself
after being forced through too many flaming hoops.
This pain is not a circus.
Although things do have a way of circling back
& I am living between the rings
collecting stale popcorn, gunpowder breath & wrinkled ticket stubs.

Time

I let the days read like a pendulum
drawing an endlessly open parenthesis
to hang on gravity's mouth.
She breathes in measured motions
a mediation of falling
and blazing forward on spring-loaded hope.
I let the days read like a pendulum
trusting the rounded measurements above my head.

Patience & Rhythmic Salt

I am waiting for the bricks to pull me in,
for the bass to ultimately shake the fantasies into action;
call forth an alternate universe:

An ocean of jitters
endlessly coming & going--
Making frothy footholds at the moon's expense.
Our minds have got jellyfish & driftwood for teeth;
Our poem coming up loose with mouthfuls of sand,
The thoughts crust over & dry out
like leftover starfish.

She drinks like a fish
who has a liver for every broken heartbeat.
Fish bones beguile the teeth
& finger the roof of your mouth like an insect

& I am waiting for the embrace of the jellyfish;
for the year of the sand-dollar
-a time when this series of crashes might buy you back.

I am waiting for the tide to wash up
empty of fish heads & needle bones,
Waiting for the salt to heal
for the jellyfish to untie their stings
(&move forward in the tempo of the lungs)

I am waiting for the moment I can reach up
and pry open tha short yawn of sunshine,
plant my hook in the yellow mouth of sky,
and drag her by the teeth into spring.

Lost (freewrite)

lost,
got there expecting things to
go easy,
be smooth.

The diagonals are all off
& I am parking parallel
2 blocks away.

Wait.
Why am I rewarding myself with a fucking pastry again?
The chocolate helps
to calm neuroses
grown in a state of procrastination & unpreparedness.

3 spasms in a series of failed frantics.

I think the bites are getting rounder
but the morning is tearing away much faster now--
as the excuses muscle in,
their buzzing bodies pollute my mindscape
like a horde of greedy bees.

Skin is shaking in a series of goosebumps & scribbles,
& I can't be late again
I'm only built for so many mistakes.

2 (seperate but untitled)

Time passes closely,
with footsteps small and hollow,
coupled laughter fills the moments
like yellow veins in a daffodil.
Small pops of quiet
make their slow release
over a smooth afternoon
of soft anecdotes and closed-eyed smiles.



I am what you pinch out from beneath your fingernails;
the empty feeling of a callous on your fingertip.
I am exactly what you say:
a wing-clipping villain
when I choose
between nothing
and pain.

leftovers for lunch

Freewrite:
Are you sure it doesn't matter?
Hot red holes yawn beneath the nails-
I am curling and burning like a blond witch at the stake.
In this heat
rolling down the window barely rustles the feathers.
There ain't no rain in sight
& the migraine rasps angry & yellow over the dusty wheel marks.
I've got footprints on my forehead,
these bootheels are not imaginary,
the path less traveled just happens to be through my frontal lobe
and these feelings are heavy with footfalls
& spurs a-spinnin'.

Small piece:
I'm a schadenfreude junkie
-gonna laugh at everyone's pain tonight.


Running Sounds:
The city puts rust in my lungs
and winter clings about the ankles
with wet and needy hands.
Feet stagger where the pavement has been broken.
There are train tracks and stories too grown over to revisit.
No matter how many strides I take
my heartbeats still sound like his name.
I run until my ears are burning with the cold
and there is a simmering beneath my skin
the rhythm speeds up, but never loses its trajectory.

two times

Stories
Miracles are too big for memory
the myths are chicken wire,
smoke rubbed forcefully into mirrors
the reflection degrades with every retelling.

Falling (edited freewrite)
I cured the moment by giving in to gravity
let the adrenaline tilt into my skin.
As midnight howled beneath my helmet
the world stood immovable beneath the doe-eyed whistling wheels.
I've got acid in my legs and acid in my backside
(Heartbreak is a chemical burn
that breathes out
reaches back through your capillaries as you try to leave).

My body is composed of collapsible organs:
A pumping origami heart
(she thinks she can tell the future)
intestines knotted into ampersands
& a liver that fits smooth into a shot glass.

I know the beer will make it come out
& the elephants are tearing through my architecture.
My body is made of sockets & rocking chair stories
& Goddammit
I'm not changing the sheets until he takes me back.

before the ruins

There's cracks in the ceiling
and cracks in the mirror
nervous smiles in the architectural exoskeleton.
Gravity multiplies
and the teeth turn to mercury.
The rebar slowy curls
and tense rivets empty their moans into the night.

build-up

1/12
I am a crime scene
my body tingles,
waiting to happen.
Patient for the red tape
and the catapulted light.
you can't stop the sounds pushed out
my teeth got cut on the empty sidewalk
of words made rabid by being unspoken.

1/13
A poem should be
Roomy.
Leave footprints
as the body drinks the margins
the spaces are harvested in your brain
Thickets of beatless linebreaks
the tall grasses ready to be romped into matted music.
A poem needs more than a backyard
and will always find holes in the best built of fences.


1/14
I miss the blue skies
and cinnamon freckles
scars between your smiles.
Your skin gives me the patience of the seasons.

Music Machine

On the page the paper breath cracks:
swooping glyphs open their black eyes
and yawn a linear series of numbered sounds.
The grid weaves away
a shaking topography of compressed breath and screaming strings.
Formulas shiver into listening
splitting twilight into sunrise.
Notes both sharp and long
punctuate and scale the blueprints
of a time machine looking to be made through the power of sound.


(a magpie poem)

January

In winter you hang springs and jewels from your listening.
The mechanism tightens
and the shivering sky takes a gulp of distinction.
The empty trees sharpen
like a woman's angry eye.
The air splits and spiders into cracks
and fluidity
(making the most of possible escapes)
rushes out of being.

/

An Eyelashing
The eyes are filled with endless needles
blackened rosemary clings to the inbetweenness of seeing.
A thin line of witnesses to the world coming in
no wonder they sometimes jump in.

Pulse
On her wrists the veins danced like light from a keyhole
through a sideways glance I am peering in,
fingering for the tumblers of a heartbeat unlocking.

A balanced meal
The moment laughs the scales out of swinging
and turns my world into a plate of naked fish;
life eating the balance out of living.

Dreamspine
Discomfort angled in
and convinced my back to pinch itself awake.
Too bad
my spine is not a dream.

Freewrite Inquiry
Could you open it?
make an incision on the page,
extract all the ingredients,
take the sounds from the words?
and the shapes from the text?
Could you
Remove form
like a surgeon removes the appendix?
Or would it all break down
collapse into a lack of synapses
neurons reversing evolution
curling back into themselves
each cell like burning paper,
shaking and introverting to ash.

Sriracha (edited freewrite)

I know I am supposed to go,
my fingers turn the key
& the engine sometimes backfires.
The engine is thin & bought on too many favors
whose trajectories pull tender & tenuous.

The bathwater is filling up my ears
& the sounds are only gulps now
as the engine slowly turns over.
There are roses in the basement
and a saffron song chiseled up top.
She's got fried rice in her heart
& the rooster crows too red in its spicy ribcage.

My tide goes out again
& it is never enough.
The dry rushes back
& my body is flooded with the cracked skin of
5,000 onions.
Our voices sautéed the winter air
& cries caramelize the ceiling:
"I can cook this down for you."

The bulbs grow hot in the rooster's mouth
his feet beating out a spurred song:
"are you awake yet?
are you awake yet?"
the words are indignant enough
& my control knows it's time to climb out
& freeze my fingers down the cracking hillside.

Cold sunshine teeth wash over cracked fingers
as the engine slowly turns over.
The tide puts salt in the eyes
& this is what it is to leave you.
You are heat & tail feathers
& ginger simmering away
–-fried rice that stings the lips alive
& and dances fire deep into the houses of my heart.

1/1
When you're gone
my body harvests the husks
your eyes left behind.

1/2
Some cradles break before the bough shakes
and precocious tones grow where the strong winds blow.

1/3
The vegetables slowed us down
and time compressed into a series of sunny embraces.
Sadly,
our mouths came up empty of sunset.

sour start

in the last 12 hours my skin has aged 900 miles
bristled 10,000 flashbacks being pushed back into place
brittle wishes can only be held back so long
the edges don't lie
but they certainly don't look you straight in the face.
The ground is slippery
and you can never avoid your own feet.
The freshness hits so hard
I am emptied of my eyes.

Poem for the 30th

Too few birds
in a sky too empty to end.
Sharp horizons don't hesitate.
Newness arrives despite the ice.