unfinished moon smells

I used to think the moon followed me and only me
our faces matched through the car window
softy vibrating on the way to thanksgiving dinner.
Scalloped potato medallions breathed up from my brother's lap,
the smell reached up & tickled the fog into a cheesy thickness.
I wasn't care about calories at the time.

We spaced our breath carefully
that moon & me.
I didn't want her to get tired
from chasing me along that yellow-tongued highway.

Turquoise tastes like chlorine
& I wonder if the waves in Florida taste like that
The only salt in my air rushes cold into the nose
&
if you can manage not to sneeze,
becomes a copper barnacle odor;
a crustacean with a pocketful of pennies.

I've seen the gulls
killing clams with gravity
& clams are no good
unless they surface golden from a buttery kitchen
my teeth wiggle with the grease.

Sunday's poem-ish

when you've got a splinter in your malediction
a flowerpot can freely grow
& thorns will prickle forth like freckles
on May's dying day.
Her breezes produce the most precious of death-rattles.

Her eyes are a pair of paintings painting nothing in particular.
Blood is round like peppercorns
& the lemons are falling from the sky like thunder rolling down.
Rumbles waterfall over mountains
the sound is a gray wash of heavy contempt
possessive & unencumbered
our electric tongues make the most of a stormy night.
The circuits come up short & must be repeated
The circuits come up short & must be repeated

Our mouths are getting tattooed with
a citrus needle
you are a ruby grapefruit in my palm
face reddening like the center of an Ahi steak
When I told you about the fruits
your face fell in like a house of cards
& my liver braced for impact.

I'd like to devour your feelings
—but first you must boil them from their exoskeletons
& use a nutcracker to expose their solidified bodies

Bet you never thought it would happen like this
after we dredged the red bodies from below.
Your dreams are a thing without the softness of an underbelly;
smiling with a misanthropic rind
the words become a backwards chain reaction.
I can't wait for May when our bodies are back in October
(coursing through every costume).
& my wisdom teeth are coming in like thunder,
I am hooked back from romantic time travel.
Here.
I am here
open to all the paintings (even those empty of thunder)
& I am here
poised for the forked strokes of sky cracking open.

4

Poetry is an undomesticated wisp of light
the kind that peers over the mountains,
with snow watering its dusky mouth.

Many moons
I am breaking promises
with more consistency than a pendulum's round & empty stride.
You are roller skates, surprised by a cobblestone alleyway
& a full moon coughing rainbows from its skin.

bar flirt
let's get down to our base carbons
let out tongues
tingle into pure chemistry.
I want to dig into your elements.

Gibberish
The voice boxes are scraping by
hush now, hush now, hush.
I've got a harpsichord in my piano plunking lungs.
The sounds drop like violent jokes
gravity hurling the keys past so many stories.
This children have gotten their knees into the finger paints
one more time
the furniture in crying rainbows
out of greasy upholstered skin
there is paisley on your tongue
a crimson flashing glyph.
the caps are breaking and the world is beginning to BURN
can you feel the heat turning, turning, turning.

Poor Poet Rag

My throat makes one more attempt
at swallowing its ballpoint Adam's apple
but the poems keep coming up
I soak the notebook
in milky acid syllables.
A body can't just digest itself,
you need the words for consumption.
Without a howling alphabet
your squares are slashed in half
& every meal falls into hungry triangles.


The rules are emptying my cupboards right now.
I am eating out of the kindness of my roommate's heart right now.
my wallet folds into a set of empty eyes right now
the blinking gasps asking: & then;
& then;
& then?

I have been holding back... (and I will edit later)

Valentine
But today,
small snippets of September
are filling my wet
mid-February chambers
the heart is a pumping slide show
of sharp ampersands & sunny apologies.

Iron lung poem
The words hit me full force
like the breath charging from a legion of iron lungs.
Replication of breath needs tension and pressure
& the sensibilities of a goddamn submarine.
our lungs are not simply coffins for re-animated words
this poem is not a resurrection.
However it is sometimes alright
to press our bodies into the iron lung;
feel the weight of and interaction pumped out.
Sometimes you must pull the gears from your pockets,
make your mouth and open slab
ready for the prompts
that breathe down the necks of strangers,
gray & rasping.

Skeletons and Freewrites
Your bones are not bones when they no longer hold you up
and when I am with you my skin becomes defective
I am not thinking about you tonight
and I refuse the hot red sky scrapings
it is nearing the winter's midnight
and February has gravel in its teeth
& I don't know what your face means.
This season has an eyesore locked in the broom closet
and together we are slashing words in half
gnarling each fingernail by clawing wholesale at a churning universe.
if you are not here then you deserve to fall into the absurd
keeping the company of pastel tongues and overweight scrap-bookers.
Did you know the sky has a mouth like a sailor
tattoos hurtling from a broken horizon
the oil needles in and makes the most of potholes
and I am searching for a way to graft my bicycle to my body
because my bones are sometimes not my bones anymore
and I need something moving to keep hold my body up
to keep me together as I hurtle across the cracked pavement.


Non-Euclidean Regrets
Too much dry confusion
icy nights cough up dust & dandruff
my skin is allergic to apologies
regrets are best scratched off,
like the scabs sharpening your elbows.

The novelty sharpens and drops repeatedly
like falling through a never ending staircase.
My geometry has no shapes for what's been done to me
a name can be the shape of heartache
and the memories are being converted into two-dimensional tumors.

Dreams
My dreams are becoming an amalgam of empty street cars and dust.
The light is bending too far
as time topples over
into a premature healing.
I am breaking the past into digestible pieces
and forging gears from the jagged edges
I can't stay here without you
I need the movements to keep me alive.
I've nestled the jewels in all the right sockets
& I've got the springs under control.
I'm passing you by
barely an inch from the whiskers
eating up the time without you
each tick takes me into the sweet distance.

seabirds

To me
You are the sunlight
bringing translucence to a seagull's wing.

the freeway helped me write this poem

In February the waterslides are a downturned expression
pressing their wet yellow feelings against the graying interstate.
The morning shakes off
with the banging of the bells,
as the sky slips easy into a precocious 5 o'clock shadow.

In the architecture of my mind
there is too much breathing in the bedchamber
& sweet turmoil between the sheets.

My language center is bleeding on the bathroom floor,
showing off its red arrhythmia.
Its flow breaks the paradigm of bleeding.
The syllables shatter red into being
hotter than the softness of a vein conceding
-the words too irregular to have come pulsing from an artery.
My language center is menstruating from the mouth,
lips giving way to red possibility.

I've got blueprints & road maps falling from my eyes
& this dancing nonchalance is killing us.
Let our motions crack open syntax
stick a finger of doubt into the idea of a nutshell,
pry the universe out
& let the stars stoke your laughing vulnerability.

Shhhhh

Soft Saturdays thaw over a misty peninsula,
I've slowed down my eyes
and am breathing deep the rhythms of listening.

they keep saying I've got a hole in my pocket

another phone call and
my checking account reaches its empty arm up
for one more notch on the bed post.
The past creeps up like water damage along the walls
like the small black ants that keep coming back.
The gas tank lurches
half-ready to swallow
and let me know my number's up.
Still the ants keep coming back
squished black abdomens don't pay the rent
and you've got to hold that down if you want it to stop wriggling.

an explosion of freewrites

Pre-interview rambling
I could write here,
hugged by the soft music
& soothing directionless light.
The knocks upstairs are mysterious enough to spark my circling imagination.
The cooped-up coffee machines have got silver eyes
& they scream their histories from inside glass cases.
The ceiling is showing off,
exposing the strutted beams
and creamy underbelly.
the photographs bend my window through history
& I feel the music smoldering in my heart.
The city yawned into a yellow pocket with goldenrod ambitions.
This lamplight is a cradle
& I don't even care that one of my buttons is coming unbuttoned.
A gold-faced clock stares me down
as it leaps from the wall
like a white rabbit
showing off its slow motion hands.
This room is a dusty August
with an open top;
a quiet wedding in summer's backyard.


For Poets and Coyotes in this Time of Economic Turmoil
Your words have got incredible currency
-deep fish-filled lungs tug at your river's underbelly.
Your words are a brush fire kept in a safety deposit box.
Your words are a rattle-snake's skin left to crisp along Hwy2

I remember that E-burg cop
who tried to impress us by rolling up his sleeves to say
"You know, this is the most dangerous stretch of road in all of Washington?"
Why do you think I am here?
These words won't rock me to sleep
& yes, thank you, while I do enjoy the blanket
of an unscheduled dream
That is not why I am here.
That is not the reason these syllables hit the pavement.

This road is not safe
this highway of sound uncontrollably hooking together is so dangerous
my teeth begin chattering away like 10,000 typewriters.
There are coyotes waiting in the wings
& the thick-edged fists of basalt lean forward like eavesdropping bouncers
who spit their broken teeth at passers by as their fight rumbles on.

This road is sunk between this threatening architecture
& a hard unforgiving sun
which bakes its history into you skin.
& I am here for the words goddammit,
the words that are hot & strong & dangerous,
the words that wedge me deeper between burnt rocks and howling hard places.
I am not here for network dreamscapes
I am here for the words that will never be comfortable in the mouth of the holster,
I am here for loaded pumps of possibility
& words that put bullet holes in my paradigms.
I am here for the un-crunching of numbers
for the miles to open their bodies into the journey position
I am waiting for my paycheck to waste away
I am here to watch its meaning whittled down to a stub.

Because your words honey em-
your words are dangerous & unbankable
& your words have got coyotes in their throats
Your words are a revolution running down your lips
& passed the last ATM days ago.
This highway is dangerous
but honey I am here
for all its curves & potholes.
I've got your penmarks scratched inside of my ribcage
and the back seat is stocked up with your deep and heavy-measured breaths.
We are moving forward with empty pockets and broken ball-points
but when the sun gets all eaten up
I know we'll have arrived
because baby
your words have got incredible currency.



Moving Mountains
You give me shivers of the skin
so small and numerous
I can feel the deadness crawling through each cell before it flakes.
The hanging-open heartbreak pops with blisters
& forgetting you is like dancing all night in my baby sister's shoes.
You've got to pop open their angry mouths before you sleep
we don't want a callous now do we?

I am tying myself in knots of gristle & whisper
Quickly- now is the time of guillotines & pendulums.
The clock sounds swirl and quiver into a waterfall of moments
I am not spending with you.

Another unfreckled fifteen minutes scrapes by.
And I notice the rotten-toothed horizon
that holds me
this sky yawns wider than the shriek of your name inside my ribcage.

I see you making volcanoes in the distance,
stop myself from eating the ash from your sky
& let the thickness settle.
Watching you ash over is harder than that he bedrock gone cold.
Only you can choose yourself out of the volcano.

& I am one more time keeping my mouth out of your sky
trying to feed my own hungry sunflowers.
But the mouth still moves in the shape of your skin
the gasps still punctuated by a smattering of overzealous freckles.
(and my God are your shoulders crowded)

I am on fire with ginger punctuation
there is a volcano in my chest
(and I can't tell who it belongs to anymore).
But now is the time of guillotines and pendulums;
a time a carefully calculated puffs of smoke,
To wait
To eat food that fills holes
but doesn't impact the soil content.

It's a lie to say I'm only here for you.
I'm here
to hook my dreams into the mouth of the volcano.
I want our mountainy mouths to breathe smoke-spirits into the cracked-open atmosphere
& when our smoky bodies would touch the sky
you'd put thunder in my mouth
& shoot lightning from the teeth
our skins shifting so hard and fast
the elements shiver at the sight of us.

But the mountains are making the most of their time
and I am only building my own avalanches anymore
cold white cascades making time between ruptures
(I love you. I love you. I love you)

& I do hope that springtime comes before the next explosion
or at least before the blistering snow
claims any more climbing souls.


One More Former Student Goes Unemployed
I am the great white hope,
full of literature and promises
my belly is tearing from the weighted hooks of student loans.
They told my I could be everything
so I took classes on Rimbaud and Bukowski.
Instead of computer science or grant writing
I learned the way of the Albatross.
My teeth got broken from a too-long hanging on
and now
I use the broken bits to scratch out cheerful cover letters
for jobs that hit me as wantless as their implied mouths mouthing
No.
This poem is a headline
about my body falling like an omen from the sky
shot down by one more capitalist captain.

fell sick again

& even through the sudgedly illness
my skin & stomach are filled with nervous ampersands,
their curves making a trampoline of my belly.

Is this awkward?
-what it is to feel caught?
I always thought it would be softer than this
(wholer than alone).

Every face blurs in and out of possible recognition.
Certainty has found the end of its extension cord
& my unknowing pulses out the door
-oozes violent from the windowcracks.

There is a torn-open sky
exploding possibilities.
I might know you,
find you
& fill your rubber boots with meaning.
Souls, black with coffee breath
break open my lungs and skull
filling me up so fast
(like an unforgiving run-on sentence)
& all I can do is sit stunned
& grab the squiggled end of every ampersand.