slumbering into chrysanthemum

dear j ,

well your horrible scope
told me you wouldn't call today
and voila, you dont.

what is it about wednesday?

the umbilical phone

you know i like to believe
you love me like i'll never be loved again.
and when i hold you or talk to you
i feel the same. but.




when you don't call?
i fall into the dial tone abyss.





*



happened suddenly

you know just like a drop
hit the pond. the ripples out
the smudging updraft. if i write
long enough i can rid the long longing.
habits and novelites. novelties.

novitiates in the art of it. the parting shit
the itchy bit. bitch that i am, a wandering spam
will spin me out and about you're a lout

i want someone to let me be crazy. i think i could
go there. but who the fuck wants to deal with a crazy?
would you take care of me then, my skin?
you stress at the slightest mess. maybe you're
sleeping and creeping into some new bed head.
you've cut your hair on a dare and now you're new
knew that newly mint, meant to be a delectable dint
a delerious stint and shuddery vent for my senses and stent.



my heart needs a valve. one i can control















here's a secret. i kept your thank you notes
the ones written i ws sposed to send. an ingartable gratitudeless
propagation on the nation that was spent to rent
like sappho and boffo the cycles contiune, endless
kindless and stillman and stenko.
















the scope said you'd slight a loved one.
said don't do it. but you did. eh, so what?
i love you anyway. stupidly. sothat when you do
your unthinkable
again
and i let you get away with hit
again
and i let you use me like i want to be wasted
on the nothing we can be
again
so that future immolates and hops beyond
this time i was not supposed ot live
i had myself thot dead years ago.

not suicidal. i figgered life would take care of death for me.
but it hasn't come. you always kill yourself too late.
i'm a coward. i'm not. i'm just still.. excited about what might happen.


like how deeply will i fall in love with you
and how badly will it hurt when you begin to love
another? we begin to treat each other with disdain
not reverence. that's when it needs to end. i revere
you. you revere me. now. now is all we have. future
is a construct. we are the animal
which promises. what am i hiding from myself ?



what the tarot sex. sez. sex huh? is this all
about sex? are you my boy toy? i think not.

and all you can say to me is
i love you. when you fall out of that
what will i be to you?

an old hag whom you will not understand how
you ever loved. you believe you cannot tell me
how you really feel. i say to you, please
tell me now. let's see what it is that flaws this iron skin.


dear justin cmb....
dear dear justin.
i have not written a love poem


so let me do the peace march



on the front lines in a fight
the power tshirt, anarchist hair, innocencia face
eyes i have longed to possess hey see
that dude there? holding the here's yr mandate sign
i fuck him periodically. you there in the purple now
shirt, you blonde and skinny right next
to that boy you smile at you know he's mine, right?
the way his face lights up and eyes
me sexy. he converts me to beauty and back
from the black. he likes to mmm and oo and then we go
and i love him. you know there are some
who can fuck around sex outside the thing but when we karmic
the tantra, tao the wow, it feels good we waited til now.




the very fact that i am ready to embrace us
when it's 100 miles away the very idea that i want
to wait 1000 hours away
and parse us out these scant hours at time
proves that what i want is
for my convienence. but you assure me
you want to call me. you adore coming
home to daddy's house every nite
being in that family home
which so mirrors ours that it's beginning to scare you.


what about her. that hot blonde that rubs against you
in the protest. exchanging looks with her girlfren.
you lookin at me? see they aren't all vapid. there's
even 21 yr olds you can love.



i'm so very tired all the time. you deserve more.
than this sagging skin, this ennuied point of view.
these gray hairs and colitis, the certainty of my demise.
you have so many years find someone who can give you love
undivided. lol, i keep forgetting that you can do all that
when you're in your own forties. i feel like
if i'm lucky, i'll have you till you're 30 / mine.
and if you're lucky you'll have me till i'm way past prime.

little black bag of pigeon tattoos

so the yuppie mom i almost was
got a star in the paper today
"mother/dauughter friendship must be earned"
don't wear sexy clothes and don't
fuck guys her boyfriend's age.



*


a woman who once said she loved my stuff
has won a grant. there's drive . i wish i had it.
but also i notice on her blogroll only 2
people who are not "famous" or maybe i only think
they're not famous b/c i know them? anyway
she had dorianne laux and carolyn forche, poets whom
i know she admires but one can't exactly say they
have a web presence and the links certainly were not
to blogs but to online pubs. what a fame whore.
she happily admits to it and it got me thinking
why not? if that's what works for you then why the fuck not?
mostly i believe it's envy that causes ppl to say
oh, sure who wants that? when someone succeeds. envy
can be a super killer. it even gets insidious
like, am i myself envious cuz ppl i once had online
contact with seem to be getting theirs
while i languish in this mommy belt with absolutely no
energy beyond the tippity tap itself?
editing and promoting are hard fucking work.
the days of sending it off and waiting multiplied
by a hundred avenues that, if not explored,
end up making you whack your head "doh!" y didn't i
think of that. which is prolly why i went with my gut
and didn't persue something which would roller coaster me
much to much. the slant rejection i got from theive's
was enough to cure my submission bug for umm, what is it
month's now? which is so stupid cuz he liked what i sent him
at the time. he might like something again.

unfortuneately what i've been writing
poet wise has been very fragmented, incoherent
and frankly too abstract for publication.
if i were a painter ii'd be the next big thing
but as a wwriter, where clairity is essential
even if it's abstract or

(i'm having more and more often these periods
of blankness, searching for a word i know
and coming up with void. close my eyes
and not even stars compete) surreal.
the image must stick in head or the story is lost.

the image is the thing.



















&&

dear scar,

i think we
i think it's good that you
it was sad when she did that
pushed me away and i think
she's right to do it
i can only have you if she dies
so i place my heart in the compost soil
young rich with promise. what will grow?


when you said that about me being "our golden girl"
what the fuck? st. lyzne of the lyze. mostly
to herself. ask stacsheah, she pegged it.
pretending is good. delusion is better.
it is perception which defines a tude.

you said so you die and then what were you
ever, just some wanna be pouring nothings
onto a page wasting all our times?

and i thought well yes
that's true what you said but
one chicked ducked for cover like
i should be non p\lussed by this
truth. it's l 38. what are you writing
for. well, because sometimes i can't
get to sleep without arms around me
missing the cleave. i'm tireder than
i've been in a while and my sinuses
promise a full winter. lungs unclear
spouting ride tide havens

i should learn to use punctuation again.
just to be different....

but why would you want to do that" he's ask
and i'll say as an experiment
how many times do you have to count the wheel?








time. time. this moment
when you are not with me but
from one room comes the television
some old favorite movie and from the other the hitchhikers
guide remix as he struggles himself
to sleep. it is enough to know
i can keep these two safe enough to be brave
enough to think. and try to live
in this moment without regrets reincarnting
what they want to be from the birth
that is each moment.












((

on the way to the therapist
whose door was locked
empty building , abandonned mop
bucket and standing dust pan
he ws on about time again
how every second is gone every pico pico
second only happens now
and then poof
vector lengthens. ripple expands
the traffic light is green
then it is red. never becoming
spring or winter circular cyclic
only a happening. only fisting
only handing only now.











(((




she loves hideous kinky
the irresponsible mother always so selfish
in her quest for enlightenment
oblivious to the needs of her children.
must be a projection of kind.
she the lucy. me the sufi wannabe.








(((


he is eleven. soon to be twelve.
there are men and women who come and go
in his life making promises
expecting him to make them better.
the mender. little child in a universe
not made for me. no boy, you must grow.
avoid abestos and shit just the same.
both are artifice. embrace them just
the same. a little dirt never hurt
anyone, unless laced with depleted
uranium.











***



i think sorting thru someone's letters posthumously
is a blinking tradgedy. burden of the editor.
what did she mean what did she mean.












((((




the drive from here to yon is wearying.
miles of concrete bridges and taillights.
i play the alphabet game alone. turn up the radio
head, wall of sound converges the sailboated bridge
freighter toy boatesque advancement
shifting channel and drunken pilot
flock of herons, your pterodactyl flight,greyhound
ghost busses, my daughter's phobia, your
samson hair unmarred beauty falling
like the absent rays of a hurricane drowned sun
as it sinks a bobber on top of the night.

when i imagine boxes they're naturally wet

your spore condemning you blankly
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
has come to my attention that
this half knowlege which got me
by is the cause of misery
unequalled in the side of the neck.
one day, i will not be able
to turn in a tourniquet of toadballast.
just plop the little squeaker down
and take off out of town.

my job only hurts my psyche
when i give it wholly me. lolly gagging
around the water cooler is my eucharist.
the symbol is and i become dilbert
in a turtleneck, on a weekend
sucking a henry miller pipe for effect
choke on vanilla
weed and offer it to an anaheim bagger.

listen. the fundraiser for katrina? missed it.
what did she do for my pain
this tense mandibular bone
overwhelming to the point
of disability payments. let's all
get some fema. oh sure compassion

i had some of it around here somewhere.
can you help me find it? i didn't pack
it up in my lover's box, the one i carted
a hundred miles to return
to a smile. the obsession remains.
far enough away to break one keloid
but then another bone spur forms.

only one cure. don't walk.
the old doctor joke too.
the one that plays in my head your head my head
stop with the third person when you now know
of whom you speak.

I visualize you who I will never know. We are constant strangers. I imagine you. i wanted
to understand a constancy of pain.
it has been afforded me now.
my face begins to pinch.

this is the height of disco duck.
saturday night floor covered with kicky polyester
boot sox, george stopping by with his latest
catch and his daddy's mudpit monster
truck. he's like, "wuh", and i go "so?"
he orders a coke, looks for scratches from
my cat,
razorknife. sublime blasts
from the speaker
of the hitchin car. i get a girlfriend
and we find out what bodies
can take. night on our necks.
grand canyon eyes. i always liked
animals because they didn't
have words but she translated anyway.
we spend a quarter moon
on the bay, under a gazebo
popping a blood colored corrosion
of what hasn't destroyed
us, just begun.



don't touch me when i'm raining
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
remove glasses & focus in your face
cicadas wind in streaks
buried under the oakenstaff
all my memes are co opted
transactional transfusions. been want

ing to distill lead into goldleaf
sublimate down set.
there is a pattern i can't break
without a tornado spin. popcorn
falling from the kansian sky. more

and more the places i haven't been fade
from memory. when were then
and then it wasn't.

i refuse to be shut up
in this box . do not think
you can define me- triptouch
obituary. gears rumble. meanwhile
these squeak through breezes
that have nothing to do
with you. if only there were some way
else
to ease this voice.

once again they caught me
in projection, splicing protection
for my inner psychosic bitch.


something about mist
opportunities ...from the sav-a-lot
we see the sword, two bags and a sawbuck.
the homeless dude got a bath
a clean and brushed beard, shiney pelt
for the winter, when he can begin
to burn this trash he picks up
from the road, holding this poem
cumpled and tossed from a banana tree.
monkey girl. transcribe it
onto a stone, dissapearing as you drop it.

MethMaker
beef jerky
Posts: 161
(9/20/05 8:16 pm)
Reply Re: don't touch me when i'm raining
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ending good again you end things very well--for things to come together, closed ropes. title is awesome too

trashpo
b-a-n-a-n-a!!!
Posts: 174
(9/20/05 8:23 pm)
Reply | Edit Re: don't touch me when i'm raining
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yes the title is awesome...
when i steal your lines
i get ...to cast out from my stasis

going to find another and write some more...


MethMaker
beef jerky
Posts: 162
(9/20/05 8:25 pm)
Reply Re: don't touch me when i'm raining
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I said that? it just looks like something I would like to say

trashpo
b-a-n-a-n-a!!!
Posts: 175
(9/20/05 8:53 pm)
Reply | Edit Re: don't touch me when i'm raining
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yes you said it.
on a drawing.
it's a great line....thanks.

here's another

beaded aftermath of rain

a drip coloidal with the sounds of the enemy camp
when he finally found the controller.

controlled by the strongest gravity
we never made. who put the giant balls
on top of the steeple? what
was the purpose of purple?

she calls me wondering how we got
nancy to take her meds. we didn't .
she never stabilized. just wandered
off to oklahoma with my number
and a backstreet smile. the ability
to say "collect". i offer emergency sounds.
commiserate in protospect. what is the word
for future? some germanic history
fulfilled by tangenality and luck.
vectors don't decide themselves i wonder
as if dioxyribose five minute epoxy hardened.
all we can do is vary the colors by degrees.

the reality is:
we sit at home, nightly.
cocoonedly. there is a giant crow
in the offing. you know where
the feed trough is and we're not
answering the dinner bell.
what the crows want
the crows can have
we'll make more.

still there is the rough beam
of light break. each one
a canticle with meaning
and wings. these are the rocks
i swing at stained glass backlit
by a century of candlestick makers
sans wax. i realize that ultimately
even i won't understand its meaning.
so i make my way into the cavernous
small spaces that lang po luges
just missing the lava barrier]
on a board 6 feet long
that begs only for the exhale of gravity.

then plop, it finished one way out of infinity
the inner core
of uselessness gathered & flushed
into another languid pool.

lick the windowsill
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
interstate bound south
storm ward, the ticklish traffic.
three lane narrows on two
then beyond that
something bright behind the haze
veiling this western coast
seven days. seven into seven more.

look it's the moon. it is. still
full, still slivering still
limning clouds. i can't watch
the end of the world
and drive, too.

workerb
Unregistered User
(9/19/05 11:28 am)
Reply we're looking for a j
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the miles roll by
i've two beside
me but they don't
count. we change
the rules. this is not
physics, it's calvin ball.

ok, you can use license
plates. i can use license
plates, but only the first
letter. we pass it
a j. he sees it first.
grabs it. then traffic
closes in. stuck in the right hand
lane behind a wavery trailer.
the same j passing.
i grab it. it counts
there's no argument
about it not being new.
it's the game that counts.
we skip q.

workerb
Unregistered User
(9/19/05 1:38 pm)
Reply sting of a vorpal sword
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(or- everytime the chili peppers come on the radio the work bell rings)

sometimes my right
shoulder aches
~quit your whining
begin a revolution~
t shirt props dripping oil.
commorant draped mausoleum.

five bellies leave
for lunch. spindley legged
thinickers. spare-a-dime
on the corner, setting pity maybe
newspapers. flags draped in fire.
give a handful

of pennies to the man
in the center of 22nd wednesday
nite smokin something
handrolled, it'd be ok
with him
if the kmart truck
air brakes suddenly
failed.


fingernails through smoke.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
these are my words:
scar, wish, tangible.
encircled with common
come on! it's time
for schools. the fading
away of it. the last
drupe dribbling from jacaranda.

this is how she passed thru me:
quickly, as a lover's profession,permanently
moving. the telephone
makes a better rock to bash
against. cathedrals i built
all faded now, kitsch, fashionable.

this is how the bells sound:
tangy, itchy, isometric.
we wind our way up a hill of fire.
weave the next gently in our fingers.
it smells of ginger and soy.
popped into my mouth
and out again. speed is the thing
i'm always trying to capture.










be long ing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i put my head
in your hands
aware you can break it

my heart i keep close
but you can peek
at the rupture

lying with you
was the best tale
i ever told

forgive me this
ruptured life


workerb
Unregistered User
(9/21/05 8:54 pm)
Reply afternnon email
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the list continues: i box and rebox
wondering how she's done it
over and over
and ove
r
everyday for over
for ever. at break she's talking
about men's oatmeal/women's oat
meal. smoke busts from my nose
they can market anything. tells
the story of her husband refusing
to eat it, he read the box.

in the back, near the front, we're all goofing
off. the sales weasels get ready
for the trade show, daisy leaves for vacation.
jeanie does her daily quit routine.
rubs her lotto tix for good luck.

there's another hurricane out in the gulf.
big ass storm heading for someone.
i leave the windows down and bathe
my seats. listen the revolution won't start
without you, i whisper to my daughter's back.
so i wouldn't count on it being here
when you need it. look at me. open the box
remove the fiber, test the fiber, pass/fail
robotix. tonight if things go my way
the spa will be empty. i'll sit with a wet dube
burning out the tension of keeping within the lines
watching the vortex spin at the verge
of two temperatures, the water i'm in
and the water which falls



rush of newborn air
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i wnted to complete the machine
on a bicycle , with an excess
supporting the tubes. i wrote the test
procedure from sleep.
the distance became a voice.
what we say
is misunderstood and what we mean
is not what we say
this is work. contigencies
for the email. senecured sonorious.

the hidden
meaning
with a rat's mouth.


the discourse is more
than definition.
it's transportation.

routine

happenings. get up
get the boy up
let the girl sleep
i don't even ask anymore
how can i, it starts
a fight. she pulls in guilt
i like what you said meth
about blame and fault.

but i need to step beyond that.
blame, fault. actions and reactions.
what to expect out of self
rather than others.

want to know why i'm hiding?
expect too much. want too
much. my prose was lost in an avalanche
i left it on the table and the fire ate it.
forgot to research the topic no wait
the topic was quarantined on the internet
no infor. mation. ation.
i always lie too little too late.
thanks dad. but at least i'm
honorable. lol. give me that honor
least. the world is a vampire.


isn't this how it is. flip flip
and the little tabs go up
rolodex me into the next decision.
which was wrong again.
















routine. this is how it is.
get up. get the boy up
let the girl sleep.
hope for a call from you.
look in the mirror
which there are so many now
in our house. watch the flab
getting flabbier. i wanna
lipo this age outta me.
my son says about death
maybe you'll die
but i'm not gonna. they said
genetic engineering will
have us all immortal within the century.

look, we're already using star trek coms.
and it's so retro they called em transponders.
blip bleep. beam me up. strikes chest
like a roman gladiator. dissolves into white
noise, beamed. so it's possible
i guess. immortality. the body but what
if in a few hundred years we get tired
of these cells. the warehouse needs
retrofitting. time to build em down,
tear up a new hostel for me to stay in.
when i can talk like that i still see myself
as an ego encapsulated bag oskin.
but in the same instance it would be like vr.
we each inhabiting other bodies
a transference into a simskin. ya know?
your free extra life written out
bit by byte by tera formation, it's a nation
built on someone's desire to be god.

eh, it's all good. fun. but there's always
the ghost that what you're creating
has its own life. the magic you put into motion
with thought , in time, could come to pass.
did i mention cell phones? i thought that i did.

body m ind spirit. a triumverate of you.
it is true that you can control
some very small things about yourself. mostly.
but there is the irredeemable rascal
that abides in us all that has its way.
call that god. the dice, rolling.

i think i should write nat.
i knew i wanted to write to someone.

ducks in trees

so you see this friend of mine
struggle with this misidentifiers
the ones which paste themselves
into the bedroom then cut
out a piece of her mind.

i'll begin with me.
flattery on a large scale.

sunbeams cut the verticle blinds
morning stripes on the floor.

last nite daddy said to me
i had a clone on tv. indulgent
indolent permissive this is why
he gets to say i told you so
and i don't mind really i mean
i was almost as fucked up
as my kids when i left home he
just didn't know it. the one difference
is that i earned my keep in different ways
not artist ways. thinking of rilke.
the ultimate seducer. thing about him
is he must have believed in it,
the image repetoire he concieved
and foisted on the world. ah
those were the days when men
were their masks....


the ducks expect bread and crackers
now. one will take it directly
from your hand, quillish bill
snaps a finger, stabs a palm.

their rounds include
a mini flight to this railing
peering into the sliding
window eye cocked questioning
where is my god?
then on to the next sucker.

daily ritual, saved, caved
carved in bas relief across
an oak's rolling river
nuance of bark and bite.

typos:
some serindiptously arise
most are poor training


some serin gas the pome...



there is a thought
eluding me . the one i go after
digging my sandy soil
for a stone. not that stone.
a stone. peck peck peck.











i would be an artist
that made you feel comfortable
with your own trappings.
an interior designer
for the soul''less. what have you
collected? let me jenga them
in a corner, let them look
almost fallen.





i take my daily meds.
if i don't i can't survive.
the person i become when
i don't take them
is a yuppie. i begin to buy
into their scruffy push presents
their butterfly gardens
their preservation of accepted beauty.
the city is the new nature.
so zen tells us.


maya loves the pre/echo
of the red eye landings. the way
light stabs the trees
makes them bleed in the dark
when they should be sleeping.
the corners of the pool
inka essenhightish. i should link
that but doesn't everyone
by now
know google? i am a lazy
pioneer or is that i
want you to read all of this
before you leave me?

imagine a rollover that would fade you
into the link, especially
if it were an image
so that you could go directly from
text, to image, then back
with no nasty side effects.
a slight mouse movement across the differently
colored letters , no time travel
trepanning blades just image flash
and gone. oh, they've done it
within embedded flash but i'm
saying a direct link to the webpage
then out again. a collage of mindmories.

then we all copyleft it. left brain
right brain. gauche brain droit brain.












i keep thinking one day
this mass psychosis
we call reality will wake up.
i can't believe the citizens
are happy. the most i can say
is we're persueing it. you know
how pursuit makes the thing flee.












i have a wall of possessions
from my past. well, mostly
grandma's things.she has so much-
pictures
of the long dead cover my walls.
my sisters and i as children
my own children. mom pregnant
little babes getting bathed
in various forms of fonts, baptismal
now you can find out what fun
water
has in store for you. nothing
not much from my 23 yr relation
ship with the sire of my children.
in fact. only the pictures
and the linen wedding dress, appropriate
for high tea, the most expensive piece
of cloth i ever acquired. daddy
bought it for me. it was the only thing
i asked him to purchase for
the weedy wedding.


other clothes from that era survive
also a guaze shirt with yellow
embroidery which my dead sister and i pooled
our money for when we were baby
sitters. we fought over that weekly
whose turn it was
who put in the most money
who didn't wash it last
i should have burnt it at her funeral
but she wasn't there. i keep cloth.
scraps of dna embedded despite
the cold water to remove stains
bleaches and non coformity....


ah my time has expired.
it's ten. i have
a self imposed schedule to keep
if i want to fly to my lover's arm
and i do, despite the bleeding.

check in

why do i always provide
the excuses? and btw i am sick
of waiting. let's just say
i won't anymore. let's just say
if i want to go out, i will.
let's just say, i don't care if
i go out, but i don't want you to
call evdryday again. you're free

of that burden. the waiting
and the dissastifaction.
the partiality paraded as paired.

i'm really glad you didn't cry
and beg me. i'm glad you saw
what i saw in the mirror there
at the microtel motel. the sad
fact of me, aging. the lovely you

waging. oh raging oh caging
what cannot be caught. i know i'm right.
dive fish. swim . there's a sloop
for you, an icechest with a long shelf life.

i can't do this anymore. and i'm tired
of sucking you dry. i know you give me
all the love you can. but i don't trust us.
must us. lust us. lust is waverly
and you swim braverly toward the sea fan.

there is bits you and spits you back
at me, i'm a berring sea, a maitre'd octopus
and wus at believing and seething
and breathing. you're too young and that's
the speezing.


bizzitching swizzit. condoit tiznit. i
so anti hip you feed the bottle nip.
strangel that angel, bitte and bascomb
there's no need for spinal
it's tiring and lastsome...

k

that's enough now.

i'm glad i told you
i \m letting you go
i think what you wanted
is starting to glow
like radioactive hellishly pink snow
where cunt gobbles brain
and a piece of the nose.

coolio. i don't wait for you
no more no more. and ifeel
the strains slippage.
it's so good to be free again.

yay. we're done.
on a hamburger bun
no more what's this you say
that justin has done?


yay we're thru. like a benzocaine zoo.
my emotions are slippage
my drainage is drippage
my mind is a patter of goo.
woo hoo.

lone

it's so difficult
believing you
but if you did the same
to me, i'd be pissed
how do you put up with this?

you have never given me reason
to disbelieve your love
even when


he's in the pool with head
buried between legs not mine
but i never believed you don't love me
it's just i can't take this
infidelity. the tarot sez
we're stagnated.
the horrorskope sez, dont' look
at your relationship right now.
what relationship?


i want to be infidelity.
i want to have your love
and eat some cake i want
to go out and flirt but not fuck
that is sick. help me with this















***



i should just say it's over
but that wouldn't work
you would go ballistic
i know it'll have to be
that you leave me.

i'm trapped and i can't stand it.
between you and her.
i want you both to be better.
i want to be better.
she takes a cigarette
then disappears.
it's still my fault she's not in skool
as if!









()()(




i know you come home every nite
and call me. i can't stand
not beingable to call you
waiting, waiting. i have a headache.


yr beautiful, that's for sure.
true, rare. fly away. soul, heart.
home. how can it be with you.
that would be too much for me to deserve.
even tually give you away.
scared. fall. through. nadir. bird.
i don't know. indeterminancy. i have to find
some way to feel bad. must be the booze.








***
]



how erudite the mews.
i watch the town fall away.
opiate on a half shot.
oxycotin withdrawal.
i live in a tent. what do we
want this to be? memories
and we;ll never be the same.
hobo in a body bag. katrina...
icy sand blows up. clouds curl
and vortex. this is the sound
of tomorrow. we'll never be different.








easy to fall


jamie's at the bar
but she's got tables to wait
it's not even her job. eyeliner
in a smooth stroke. hair is perfect.
the navel ring doesn't match
the nipple ring. have to change i feel
fat today, this top
doesn't do it for me and it's 6 hours
of a round of magaritas for the dykes
with the gray hair, two coronas and a rum
runner for the underage table, bring me
the artichoke dip, the all u can eat crab
legs no one wants
a mai tai and they made me train a week
on that drink
alone. the dreams
in which i'm flying
i find it hard to tell. mad world.
you don't get something
for nuthing. remember how to write.
how to be there, in the midst of gone.



what we had last time you left





after the celebration sushi
and sake he takes her home
to the tent. they are all over
the bed, sheets draped on a futon
lose the film, harder, sweet
collapse into skinless.



they wake to typing
a furious silence.
a jet rolls over. the cat
scratches,wanting to fight. less
of what they say, how can it feel
this right? the bus comes
at 830. snatches of almost there.
connexion growing watery
like new orleans after katrina
where the fingers of the dead
wave aloha to the mississippi.
how can it feel this wrong.

the incohate desire for all of it.










.....



the guitar slashes
like an underwater knife.
there's something inevitable
about drowning. we got a war
to fight. never find our way
regardless of what they say.
water pools along the boulevard
a posse with tha bling moment
invading the french quarter
with swirling celophane and cotton
camel filters, fiberglass insulation
pinking violent on the button
posters advertising mars volta
a burning man meme spreads
along the levee, gone in a day.
it was like a psychic slap
when the body bags arrived.

janis sings janus on the bayou.
she wears a red bandanna. cotton's high.
the holding fish plays guitar
the year is last century
can't believe she lives. still.
they promised her a turtle mound
and a place in the rock n roll hallofame.
instead she's playing this dive
where the vampire wannabes chatter over zima
an appetizer of coconut shrimp, skewered
served on pineapple sits on her piano.
she decides it's a good thing
she stopped playing. left justified.
takes to the sky. the frog's guitar follows.
don't you cry.



we drive from orlando to tampa
without windsheild wipers
his hair os red. his name is kenny
we've fucked but
he has a girlfriend. we're going to see
a poet about a lover. i want to be a groupie.


losing for so long.
in the crowd, i move up, he
stays back. i keep moving on.
we don't kiss . we don't fuck.
we don't see each other again
unless you count friday nites
when i work behind the counter
and he rolls too tall
on the skating rink floor.
he won't even get a coke to drink.

i take the change. sing a jackson
browne song. look for another way
to risk my reputation.

it just gets dimmer.
i want you beside me.
she's got the door locked
and isn't answering the phone.
that means she has someone in
side. what to do, what to do?
endure it. i can't kick her ass
anymore. nt the person for that.
i can't keep it up long enough.
sooo, she'll get along now
or not at all.

battlelost

today i stop fighting it
the hopelessness
of the situation.

fa real, deal.
your life and mine diverge
here and now.
can you feel me break
the threads of it?

oh it'll hurt a bit a first
but eventually we'll both
get over it.

i'm done waiting for you
i'm done. in. it does no good
for either of us to wait.

for what? old age to crepe me out
new age to fold you in

yes, i'll have my meds
and you can get yours
in yr daddy's liquor cabinet.

over and over you say
this was not meant to be.
that's what i've been saying.
if our words say the same thing
a referent is indifferent.

it happened b/c it was inevitable.
landslide on the overbuilt hill.
avalanche delicately built
for entombment, cold and final.

dig me up in ten thousand
years. my heart will be the only thing
rotted. and what did i need
that for anyway? a petri dish
will build me a new one.


oh diana you are one sly bitch.
the arrow bleeds, not the wound
wound round my delicate sound--
elephants could be more distancing.

so the recovery begins
in the aftermath of a funeral.
the five stages are mounted
the eightfold scenes as backdrop.


every thought
a whart of sensation, a wharf
of migration a movement
past our past. now there's no more
our. how quickly we forget
when we smoke the mean green.


i cannot let you go there again
inside what i hold most holy.
the zing zing chattering abatement.
the upanishad's last desire.

watch you enter me.
i cannot stop you either.
so the world stops
and we get off.














***

the other mind



greedy to suck
you in. purity
and claire. the light
in your eyes. if i say
it enough times
will it change into reality?

might as well love the wind.
and i do. i love it all
a vast well of next!

you drain me. a vortex of love.
i want to be caught there forever.
we know all about that fairy tale now
don't we? the optomist
sprays vaseline on the lenz.
the pissimist springs and leaves its scent
acrid as a cat's. my apt moulders
and my mind is clearly
not my own. time to take this ship
and beach it. wake the gris
and leech it. straddle the pass
and let you love me as long as you feel
you can. you told me about your weaknesses.

i think it's time you gave into them.
however, i'm not going to wait.
if love is meant, it will be.
if not, we cling to the shreds, bloody
decrepit and stupidly.
see it come apart in our words?

pond

doesn't help to know of resurrection
when you are bagged in this skin
this body which wishes to remain
immortal as change

my new place fronts a pond. there are ducksi think of you, and bread.

today my son and i walked to the last pond.
each of them and there are five
is spring fed mostly but drainage pipes
collect the run off from the concrete parking
lots, the invasive bermuda grass, mowed,
floats on top
green & trashy. at the last pond
is a duck and her lings. nine of them,
one with the down of the sun.
i forget to pay attention
to where i walk when suddenly she eyes me
on the path toward her children. i
recognise the fear there, avoid
her anger. in the second pond
there is a duck attacking
something. a piece of cardboard
or a loaf of bread. as we approach

we see he sits atop another duck
pushing her head underwater, over and over.


he calls me tonight. my lover who is lost.
i shout to the stars fuck this
i will not need
i will never care again
what does it matter if i do?
the system has him as firmly as the male
duck has her, and by extension me.
we exist in our surroundings. the outer
is the inner. the sages assure me and can i not
see this for myself? oh i understand

plenty. i understand it well. it's what i feel
that cannot be exculpated. dreams
tossed on a train bound
for treblinka. the reiteration of history
the reification of the dishwasher
on a night like every other night.

i yell at the universe which is fancy for a god
i refuse to acknowlege with anything
but fury. i won't care. you can't make me.
i've seen your signs. when you take this one
just leave me alone. i'll just join the other bricks
in the silence of this side of the wall. i'll be
the duck underneath.



but it isn't enough. there is no voodoo left.
the bowl is filled with water, bodies float
along the streets. my superstitions
and the signs i make to ward off hexes
have failed. from inside the sunken bourbon
bottle, a blues sax refuses tries to rise
in a little bubble to the surface
and finds that surfacing is a myth
its told itself since the flood.

waves of probablity converge on the future.
i'll collapse before the opening of the tomb.

dancing with the master

look
look at this this
petri dish. here are stem cells
replicated
as heart cells. look. the heart cells
are beating. the cells do not
know the difference. they think
they are hearts.

look at this
soap dish. soap lying in bubbles
left over from the last
time. no germicide here. soap is
as soap does. think of it
like this:
without germs who would need soap.

look at this road. a road that once
led to the town of rocky mount. see? here is how
the road ends now. in weeds. see this
interstate it thinks
it leads to greensboro and burlington but it ends
upside down two dead one critical.

look at this woman i love
concerned that
i will not love her body. see her courage.
see? here she has given me photos
of the body too.

look. see this painting of a roman aqueduct.
beneath one of the arches
a group of peasants are gathered to sing. they sing to their god,
who is not a roman at all
but a blond alien who will someday return
to take them home.

look at this movie
about how they made this movie.
here are scenes
they took out so they could put them in
the movie about the making
of this movie.

look at this woman
dying here. see the light in her
eyes. see an older woman
come in to stand by the bed. listen as she
sings amazing grace. here, watch
the light disappear.

look at this book of contemporary
poems. see how i flip through them searching.
for what? for the signs of heart
cells beating. stem cells do not replicate
into irony cells. irony cells
replicate themselves. endlessly.

look. here is the church here
are the people here
are pigeon shit deposits on the base
of the steeple
like a scrim haze between
the granite parapet
and the walls of heaven. see?

look here: this sunflower has caught
on in a gravel drive
and now cannot stand alone for it has no
nutrients to sustain it. see how
the flower does not mind. the flower blooms,
as the trunk bends over
to die.

look at this, my ancient body. see the scars. some
of the scars are gifts
from those i’ve known. some i got from strangers
who had
scars enough to loan.

see this heart trembling. touch the wall. feel how the
blood rushes through
the stent. put your ear up close. hear how
it sounds like a waterfall. listen
to the full voice
singing within of love, love, naught but love

--j lineberger.
sorry jim, for taking it but no one we know comes here
















*

















sigh

jesus, what is the matter with me?
spent the morning on lava. talking to all stripes
of men. waiting. waiting.

diversionary tactix.
i really want to see him so bad.
it surprises me this depth of need
for something i swore i would not let myself need.

here is it cropping up
crapping up
again.

and you know when in the midst of it
how exasperating
when in the mix of it
how even enervating.
slow estivation into dessication

he messes me up.
i want to let it ghost.
look to somewhere else
for filling. file it away
"tired, tried".

there is no cave. plato was wrong
the loving arms of the goddess
wrap you in guazy dreams
then strangle you awake icarus.
all the old platitudes come back
to comfort me. i spit on them.
it does no good. chemicals ,
courses, cirius clouds. this too
shall fucking pass. that's sposed to be
a comfort? i tapdance a morse code
on the grave she gave to katrina. blues
bayous and the living i'd trade
for me not to be a junkie today.
i 10 looks good to me now.
a kerchief filled with nothing on my back.

arc

sometimes we want to know/don't want
to know at all, what the future holds.
we're so certain as to the collapse.

i want to know if you'll be seeing me
after the courts tell you
so much bother
and trouble. due to what occurred
in my house. i'm scared mommmy
what will ill become of you?
















*







there are opposing forces
working on the ladle and pot of sour soup
why each foot must go ontological pathsize
into the very next step. logic and its axioms.
axe me sum questions and i'll spit em back
to you. i don't have voce in my words
oh but in my head, i need meds, i want
to find a place to crawl outside of these ants.

isn't it funny how you laughed at me?
but i'm breaking away from that ironic smirk now
you can fold it in nine dimensias
and stuff down your own psychosis.


yeah, i'm talking you oh blonde god
of the bubble ropes. the ones that fall
in front to the eyeless doors, open to gaza
rasa tabula you foola, you pale eyed
sniggering ghost. you just wish
you had this body to control


you whisper from the fan blades
in ac/s and ic coolant de
vice es

drowning out all i wanted to do
with your own annihealative planz

every thing is code. what if you push
the wrong button? reset!

that's what the machines r trying to tell u
me
that's what the meaning of it all is.
try it. med
i
tate on the chemicals that you need
v what you're getting. need v have.
need v want. want is essential.

what do you want?












you know they ask me how
i hold it together. rather
than going into myself and destructing
the aminum sussursation of animus
i throw a plate at the girl
bitch at the dog
give the boy a smoggy answer
to an eruditios question
or a guggling hug.

we each have our own insanities
to deal with. since when did the last
millenium cure that?


ok, hunger.
i have it. eye on the bagel
locks on the cream cheese. that wonderous
old saw beating down in the neighborly walk
past open windows where denizens
dissect their lives in parcels
marketed commodes
the detritus of a lasting impression.

all lit in yellow.


glowing.












()

the bells ring, a breeze must be had.
churchy reminders of the gong
god beat in the beginning
and never touched again. except
in the ocean waving
wavering. a back water of spurious sponges.


i'm deft about you. supersticious
to the max. if we talk we jinx it if we
kiss we jinx it if we say good or bad
we've opened the catbox and boy
does it stink in there.
i was talking to other men again.

what boredom. dom in the matrixing.
flesh ties and leather piercings.
or maybe they read your poetry. my poetry.
it said something they didnt understand.
i was only flirting with the idea
of collision. i want you. you the understated
undeveloped mystery. what exposure

can your sweet innocence take? how will
that cool, after the fire? the plutonian
influence of dharma. half life of gold.rads
beyond chernobil.



these are the snapshots lit
by the strobe, moving so fast
you think it's motion. later you think
back and traumatise it again.
how will you ever brake the bonds?










this stuff comes in my head
so i spit it out. my meds are simple.
a little weed, a little quiet.
a lotta writing. i don't quite
the lottery lolitas don't requite
sand blasted loverish. there is a
swimmer. his body is geese
reflected. always in flight.
that is ideal. the tangled cord

of a hawk scree. kited.
the meal upsidedown in the tree.
what good the blased hunt?
it only means another day.