started outright and familiar
drew neon buildings out of thin air
danced like godzilla danced
and flew over bridges – under
i crawled backwards invisible
stoic like ox on plains
i stopped time to make notes for future dreams
opened doors without keys but eyes
my aura like water
kept everything cool
as cats
like spider man and kerouac
ready for the world
(2008)
in dostoyevsky titled postcards
and shuffled like stingrays
my bucketful of inkblots
into tired notebooks the same
i tried to hang myself with
the umbilical cord
that grew out of the
spark from your eyelashes
in the rain
that night i kissed you
i was on top of the eiffel fucking tower
singing a song
in my daydreams
with my magicians cape
and my
red paisley
handkerchief harmonica
when you called
i swam like pan
into that immense and
fading blue
climbed like
spider man
on a mission
stood as sturdy as
fallen trees
bent backwards
i studied like an acorn
how winter changes
i sat in the waterfall
and caught
enough internal heat
to step out of
tattooed shoes
guilt’d eyelids
i tried to broadcast our love
onto buildings
and billboards
at rush hour
i carved your aura
out of silent static
and butterfly wings
and danced like
gatsby’s guests
across night’s
brilliant ballroom
(2008)
have all come back to haunt me
from now on
i’ll write my words
in sand
i’ll start early
in the mornings
clean the cob from the webs
the raft from the rafter
between my safety pills
and my hurricane stride
i’m pretty god-damned sure
you’ll notice
i’ve been walking on eggshells
(2008)
fake it
fuck it
follow the sun
(2008)
now caramelized on sunsets
sends knobby hands to closed journals
they dare peek those ancient words
now bloodied by time
i remember how those new mornings
drove us through our adolescence
through our doom days
we wore our hatred in spools of razor wire
on wrists as sore as eyelids
like radio hymns and cactusland brushings
we hiked our sisyphus shades
like a spider’s crawl into darker pipes
we visited our euphoria
in making the road trip longer
by visiting the parks
where our love
colored the flags a hue your eyebrows withheld
as i swam your pale-blue-eyed-sad-bird-on-a-stick eulogy
into weavings of screaming nerve endings
and as we swung those swing sets through
tire swing ropes and into the abyss
we waited for love to destroy us
and as everything was in its right and proper place
we danced like pan
and glided from dusk
slowly
into thin air
(2008)
i dare not wipe
off mirrors
love is the shampoo
gets in my eyes
like emptied bath tubs
closed eyes
how to step out
is stepping in
when to get wet
is what’s important
(2008)
i swear to god
when you fell off
the trampoline
my heart leaned
into
something
(2008)
forget the sharps
write from the stomach
empasize the g’s
re-nullify the silent f’s
write in packages sent
little’r words
what’s heard
not verbs
(2008)
get caught up
in some kind of webbing
it’s only recently i’ve been
changing my rainbow structure
completely
(2008)
from your peerless vermeer
as if lights were purely
a mirror
of this earthly sphere
i’d
teer
towards your teeter-totter
clearness
(for andy, the swan lord)
(2008)
my warm hands are
wrought with black tar
and sweet sweat
there is an infinite stair case
in the basement
where the fortune tellers
have been seeping
through the walls
all the envelopes
in the house
are empty and waiting
even my nightmares
have begun to glow
their faded-paper-yellows
and hickory-hash-blacks
illuminated
(2008)
were taking leagues
to furnish
so i howled like a coyote
and danced
to the sound water makes
i pushed my arms
so far into the
reclining air
that i forgot to count
my dizzy spells
i forgot to let
the avalanche
cover me
(2008)
or harder
or faster
or freer
than
the bird i’m
pretending not to notice
and my shoelaces
are grimace
and the concrete is hot
it’s as if my own cross-eyed version
of love and war
are nothing but
goggles
i don’t own
and the glaring sun
(2008)
i wake up to it daily
i have it on repeat
i made copies
black and whites
i blew up the negatives
i started making a journal
and then i started giving up
on the specifics
i started twirling anything i held
started whistling songs
i hadn’t writ
started making plans
for the future
(2008)
on it’s legs
on it’s own
these days
(2008)
i somehow managed to convince myself
love was the answer
to the question
i dared not ask
i convinced myself
treason was to
my own guilted resolve
as mutiny is to
learned hurt
i did not know at the time
how much effort it takes
to ward off danger
i did not know
the planks i’ve walked
in dreams
i dare not visit
stand sturdy still
(2008)
gotta stand in the middle of the room
gotta pretend that no one notices
the color of your skin
you gotta pretend
that the photograph
isn’t as important
as the abstraction
(2008)
says nothing
of my new glass inferno
no
my old world accomplice
is eons but eons away
my offbeat arpeggios
sing secret whale songs
they
sing new birth
and old birth
the same
they sing like lost diamonds
have family
like darkness
(2008)
had nothing on my acrobatic slumber
that their worried numbs found callous in
the emptiest of shells
i dreamt i kept your wishes safe
chanted their silent songs
your direction for days
when my early-water clippings dissolved
i crossed out my muddied days
for the chance to jaunt about town with you
and we flew kites and it was good
funny how photographs
tell such a different story
(2008)
drunk on walking cows
huddle our daydreams in a row
like pretty pots and pans
we try our damndest
to get the point across
without failure
our arrows shoot the moon
without warrant
our poems backfire
our plum drunk love stories
wait like chopped wood
and our fire hides
and our journals wait
and like clouds
and photographs
and string
we’re out there somewhere
(2008)
folded
i nurse rhymes to the beat of boots
i stare diagonal coffee shrugs over
a melancholy we once hemmed at
i make-believe whatever it was
was worth it
i creep out from under wings
sold you to the notion that
youth might not separate
us from then
us from now
either way
discussing the sadness is sad
and not that i should only call when you’re depressed
it’s just
no one listens to morrissey anymore
at least
not without reserve
and not without late nights
that almost always
have an ending
(2008)
to draw your face
the color stethoscopes
see life
the sound orbits make
when you’re close to me
(2008)
the particles are like
how filtered sun
beams in on
whatever it was
shone shiny
in the light
(2008)
i painted them with silver string and with silver
i got on my knees and stretched the fucking canvas
as far as i could reach
II.
in the years ahead
i began drawing on clouds
i’d dip my invisible brush into invisible lakes
i’d let it sit for a couple of lifetimes
just so’s
in the future i could have a reference
as to what those
blank pages
were all about
(2008)
i was so nervous at your wedding
i think i cried in my pants
at the ceremony
when all of us stood there
for the photographs
all of us jumping around
bottles and suits
smiles and all
we painted ourselves in pastels
drew limericks in the air of the ocean mist
we smelled something crisp
on the horizon
we tied a ribbon
to the string of the belles
that chimed in the distance
(2008)
i am not poetry
i am waiting to resolve this
i write to resolve this
i sink sad ships
i set sail often
i sing the seagull song
i know it well
(2008)
seriously
i’ve been taking sleeping pills
for years
if you can summon elvis
then we’ve got something to talk about
(2008)
