do you date a lot?

define "a lot". once a month.
ack~ then yes, a lot. more than a lot.
maybe define date then. coffee or a pair
of chicken legs and a free blues concert
then off to make love without bodies
in the communion of the jam.
i'll take peanut butter with mine,
maybe it'll stick better. sometimes
i have to do them, cuz they're just
there so forgive and forget.

i date when i can actually
she said. found a man, got dumped,
got him back, dumped him, wondering
why i should think love comes wrapped
in aluminum foil like dove chocolates
and the fortunes inside of them.
raspberry delight. a mocha lot of.
i guess i could call the next town over
and see if there's any rumblings in the past life
department. serious hydroeclectic
bombardments and half price
take home pay. let's come into the twenty first
century, let's use polyetheline instead of latex
let's straddle the continents between us
and agree on the international waterways
we'll keep to. i spend my evening
making strokes on the plastic
translating to bits on the screen. well, bytes
piles atop bits, if you want to get literal
on my ass.bytes the way i wanted to be
corn on the cob for your teeth. the soft
sweet pop of kernels into your mouth
dripping butter and lightly salted.
i get sleepy as i type this. look over to my bed
the imprint you left, snuggles and trying

to convince me my love wasn't as good as yours, trying
i say, trying to tell me you know
what love is, but apparently i don't understand
the clean kind of non ghetto neighborhoods'
seams -pressed mornings. if i believe in love
and i think i do
then waiting for you to come back
is not a war, it's just time
wrinkling like my skin and the folds in my brain assuring me
eventually i'll file you missing, forget
you exist, love,except as belief in what
was once and thirty two spins away from once. i'm sad and sadder
mad and madder, we were all mad in those days
and me, most of all.

onward

there's no one home but me
the place needs a good bath
and i'm working on that,
dreaming of key west and dry
togas with airstream pockets.
i write to an orange symbol
some last ditch effort to communicate
on a certain wavelength. resonance
is so difficult to tune . phase locked
looped out of
or into.
or.
there's so many switches and dials
to adjust, i thought i'd lend you a hand.
help you find that exit sign we're looking for.
i didn't notice you'd already
gone outside. well, i did, but you left
this dragonfly body behind.





















*



so, i was always impatient tho it felt
like forever to get you to see.
tonite i talked to someone
and i didn't want to scream.
in fact i laughed. i remember laughter now.
it's not that you don't
just not with me anymore.
i guess we just wore on each other, rubberbands
in too much ultraviolet.
what we thought was resonance
was actually short wave broadcast
bleeding over due to sun spots. thought
we had the right station but time shifted
and when we went to readjust, nothing
but static. so, i go on. you go on.
leaving again.
wonder how many men i'll have to throw
against the wall to find that light again
and wonder
how the light could have been so misaligned.
and wonder if there ever was a light
in the first place. or was it a moon, a reflex,
an eye with an eye toward transform.
tomorrow you'll regret what you saw tonite.
close the window and leap back into bed
where pillows nestle soft as cactus flowers
to the eye. my house is washed, no thanks
to anyone but an aging woman and an eviction notice.
so, welcome to the clean. it's psirng. time to wash out
what winter killed, time to air the stale sheets
in a solution of cheerwine and sulpur. flick the lighter
say sweet goodbyes.

more of the same

i walk in and you're chattin
and complaining about one word
answers. after fifteen or so minutes
i have enough, say look, you called me
but if you're busy i'll just go now.

we talk about you and a book, your
new song .you say i wrote it for my sister
(just to be sure i don't read anything into it) but after i give
you grief anyway, remembering the things you said to me in love
and in fights. how they become the same moment,
like, now, and how darkness
eats at the moon's face with black gangrene. i still remember
how i fell in love with your gun poem and the way you put yourself
into every pome you read like "marry me rat" carved
into wet cement. how it could live
so many mayfly lifes. still remember your eyes
insisting that no, you don't believe
in love, whatever
that means and how many years
you have to live thru to gain that insight.

i wanted you
to let yourself wash
over each event, each line of writing
backwards and forwards but you just said
i can't believe you put me in the same pome as that fucker

so when you told me he wasn't capable of leaping
it's not like i didn't already know it
sorta, more like i wanted
my mind to control your matter/his/their/expansion
of the blood vessels between left and right
brain, chemical reduction and how you want to pretend
it's too simple. tired of crash helmets and roofies
when i masturbate you said
towers and things that fall from them, example
your ego / my messages. get a room. get a room.
"it's like, invisible love?
how do you cuddle with that?"
















&










i have a lipstick the color of dried merlot on white satin.
i stain my mouth then wipe it off
add some lower lip.
the end of the smoke dark with drapes
from oscar wilde's parlour tricks.
death doesn't interest me much i like
my answers kansas city style.
follow the nautilus to naught and it still reads
"poing". or point. depending on the insider
trading as it developes over luv street.
you want a cig but i'm not lending so you want
to quit smoking. you grab my pack and dump
them into your hand then break them all.
but you don't like it
when i go buy another pack and pack
your clothes in the dumpster like i did
when i was stronger and another person
not the one with these
memories that hang off wires
strung between unused phone
poles because satellite
communication is the in thing. we both eventually
succumbed to the hipness for one reason or another
and tumours line our future, just like everyone elses.
ah well, you remind me, wouldn't want to be the last two
people on earth anyway, not with way our tubes look.
funny how you only believe in some miracles.
pick and chose which ones resonate and which
can be safely dismissed.






















































*






dear reader,

are you jack at all? did we lie together
thru all those pages in the tropic of candles motel
clean sheets every day, cool, white, bottomless
barrel waiting to be filled with pregnant
pauses and red ink as defined by semiotic tyme?
in your ps you finally mention how you read
only the first two lines of anything and form your critique
from the outside in. you offer
to show me how you do it, but i'm caught
in the stream of cumulonimbus holding kettlefish at bay.
i understand the need for brevity. time eats us up. how does
nat do that thing where you make the metaphor be the phor?
maybe it's sposed to be the meta. maybe that's my prob.
you'd say the key but i like to pick locks. even tho kansas ideal.
tornado tearing at

a buffet of kittens, maturing in my bottom drawer. today the you
is me watching flailing front paw flowers in stripes of grey and orange.
prophet is the hungriest, finds mom again.
latches onto food, calls it home. i just want someone to mention
the reciepts and hey did you pay that water bill or what
could we have for dinner. finchy told my son she wants him to take
care of himself, you noticed my goneness, the absence of guidance
the way smoke curls up into itself before melting
into the slat of sun
as it escapes the venetian bland.
today and everyday the you is
what...
love falling like rain from the sky and your upturned eyes
with morphing colors inside a crow 's fancy
detailed purple sticky trip
or a leaf, you are, in some season, the one you grew into
before falling over the endless
way it curls the
wave.

band names

and song title.

lucky thirteen, apostle spin

botox woman.

strangled epiphanies

i throw the cards down,close
the window. not liking it. not
one bit. the razor of your sideburns
punk piercedless. cyclic, i'll call
that poetry, if you don't mind.

too much feasting on fast day.
strung and drum. the soft mew of newborn cats.
the keyboard struck twelve and pumpkinned
to the sky, moonish . conversation
whack. handlers and their downtimes.

the twelve ziggurats of zephyrhills.
no one's figuring you out, so give it up.
or hey, why not
give it up?








()+_)(






self folding marble matrices
like apples on a desktop when school
was your largest opponent. obscurity
in a mad mad hangover.
the antique atomic family. this hurts your head
but it's like watching pollock after a sixpack
so pony up boy. slap some watercolors onto
a roller coaster and bring on the big slide,mouse style.
if i told you i'm from orlando would that make
more sense? there's no arguing that cat piss
makes the best repellant but marketing's going
to be tough. be sure to have an antidote
on stand by. now, the regulars all have to run.
light and dark, you two close
the doors when you're done, k?

no interest in whisky

i'm glad you got to sit by jack
cuz he always steals my smokes.
the wind begins to rustle
spray wash of tire
blacktip crow whishin in the wind.

i'm an old fart, erascable but i got
a good heart. even tho i love no one
but myself ultimately. ultimately tho
self is just micocosm of a big bag
of potato chips. breaking imprints, pavlov dog-
ian snarl. giddy becoming god, missing the question
something influences, missed it
lilting off of the butterfly bones, cig smoke flying.
rococo music, purely ornamental riffs
omg, the zebra flying thru the air
my second breakdown i shaved my head
threw all my poetry in the closet
became rimbaud for a while, oh failure
exacerbated with the masturbated art i produced.
i had a chance to become pretentiously cured
with happy music, studying law, coasting
thru the ominous afterschool success. the sea
phoned me, reminded me of sex and love and romance
stanford genius of the waves derailing a life of work.

we just amuse ourselves to death
take the privilege of being
and ride the bycycle built for 2
down the mexican market, pick up a sixpack
show off my sixpack to the grrls on the porch
of the showhouse where every one's a criminal
in treehouses, politricking into gray hair, good hair.
maturity , excused in the old fogey advice. reptilian
brain, why do cats purr, why do birds sing.
why did you call me last night i'm sure
there's no words allowed between us because doors
are closed. validity in the narrow passages
of like me, like you.

the sap flows strong overnite, greens covering
wooden fingers, good and evil erupting into the sky
with lime. the sky is pewter scarf on auburn hair
sun delimned, limited by blankets of psychosis
the fade, an injection of whisky into art.


















*([

some are worker b's
gather the pollen, jelly starved.
cold husk, still, on the grass.
a small pincer evaporated into icon
of pin striped burials. time to eat.

bullshit meter to max

when someone calls
me a nice girl i see
cloverleaf exits and spoonfed
imprints. how much i can
reasonably get
proscribing need;
how much i can unreasonably get,
the hairshirt someone else wears
for their own divine purpose.







*

so walk on. just like bono wails
in that song you liked to pick
whenever we went for drinks and a rueben
sandwhich at the point after. remind me
over and over how your heart breaks
and your body aches. i'm just a pair of eyes
listening, nothing
for your life nothing in the big schematic
where my diode rectifies for muy big waves
but yours are in a completely different circuit.
the leap from here to there a consequence of too full
pockets on the billiards table. or a guinea pig
tested in the stanly cup. or whatever the fuck
cup they have for golf, the game you always compete in
only against yourself.

i had to get out of this town

so i went on a roadtrip to pensacola.
8 hours in the backseat of a monte carlo
trying to get twenty minute naps without
a pillow or blankie, but at least
while i was on the road, you were still
indeterminate. when i return
there you are, gone.




















*()_)(

we visited the zoo. a duck with a pale
neon green beak followed me thru the swamp.
cheetah, leopard, cougar in a round cage
waiting for something to give
them a reason to live. say, dinner?
all sorts of primates
watching primates watching them.
i don't really like zoos too much. i think
of myself, kidnapped by aliens , exhibited,
and planning escape. i think of suicide
and the inability to think of suicide
or how strong the wish to die might be
if i were a big cat with no mice to catch
just a fenced area, with barb wire at the top
and a tree with limbs that reach nowhere out.

every enclosure had a path worn around the border.
pacing turning clay into sand.
the immensity of the hunters;
danger, captured and caged.
i always want to let them out. they could
survive on the savannah carved out
for the antelope, zebra and ostrich
way at the back of the expansion where an electric
train carries yuppie kids and grandkids
and their keepers for three bux a pop.

i think of you, pacing, looking for a way out.
the pull of broken dreams, obligations. decide
if you don't call, you don't call. if you don't
answer, you don't answer. i'm on the outside
flexing my muscles for the leap away.

stupid tarot

gives me one card. the lovers.
















989079087987987906897












so then i say



am i wrong to feel this way? n she says, no
not really. not if you like the challenge. besides
this kind of thing really brings out the best.

oh sure, i go, like cutting brings out the blood?
this isn't eighteenth century medicine we're talking.

n she says are you sure?




















()(***)()


jam 19 is such a ghost fire
it burns into the subconscious
the time you finally let go of perfection
and felt chemical carbomb explosional
hangin tiiight with the gods of desire.









*)_(&)()

you think of me as strong. but i sit in my blonde
chair,left behind the first time you left.
i keep saying that as if it were true
but i think there was one other time
you just kind of faded , as rose, browned
and hung with a violet ribbon on the wall.
aurora in a sky i forgot i ever visited.

i am attached to the chair. without salvia.

we exchange emails. it's safe enough, writing:
my story uncut or cluttered by real time response
your story invested in the history of how you got here.
word association coming close to a fiberoptic candyman.

as you can tell, i'm listening to the past. avoiding the future.
soon i'll be taking you on the road, up to j n j's place, a
drive where you're in the trees, a certain
color of blue, green and brown peeping
from leaf dapple. apple of course, a day.
alkaline and amino acid ph. scales, holding still.


you can listen to the songs in reverse
and see the history of how we got here.





*


long gone days. hours and roadkill.
the night of driving safely, rain a luckless
answer. the room doesn't get any cleaner
this way. the wash of sins keeps pattering
a spray from tire flaps
my only mist.

where's my sunny daze now?
open a window, let in some air.
there's movement out there, maybe
it'll inspire me. you. whoever.







)(898

when you give up control.
i think that's when things begin to seem
better.
just a li'l cork's hair follicle.
but anyway, you like your porch, the plumbago
the kitchen in white, the vomit stains on the carpet.
you got enough demons in a vase for a colorful boquet.
daddy's yellin to clean up, you got company coming.
but you just want to write about all this fire inside.
remember money
can't buy it, all you need is. and the heroin strains
of a mad season crawl across your monitor.
marylin in her white face whips a tossing turn
across my tainted lips, like your cum over tits
that don't belong to you, that never wanted you.
a touch that teases, shred the lover's card
i think maybe i
need some different music on my itunes?










(*(*^





heh, company coming. really i need impetus to do the daily.
so this is primo. what's up? what's up? if i set my sites on you
and no one else will do/ is that love or desire? sometimes
i get the taste of you in my mouth , coconut and lemon grass,
mushroom slip and postulate. there i turned the music down
a volta or two. the door slams in the wind. chimes blow
the kittens inside my cat roll and stretch, becoming.
i have three hours of daylight left. a calming tide is coming.
i took the tour, loved the music but the memories
fall on me like stars in the daytime.

They play with their mirrors

feelings are never true. i like how
you said that as you lowered
yourself onto the barstool and ordered
a draft, not miller lite tho, something
foreign sounding, you know, like heidigger.

the bystander effect is in full bloom since last we spoke.
i watch love being pummelled in the basement. the hands
seem familiar. the scar on the forefinger looks remarkably
like the one i got washing dishes for you the first time.

she's dazed, she's holding her stomach, she was beautiful
before all this happened. crack junkie. endorphin whore.
might as well move on out of this hood, move along
little cur. little tail between little legs. little snarl.

nothing's little in my tears. big crocs of them, washing
into the weekend that wasn't, in advance. love's wondering
wtf? she reminds me "but you knew this ". i slap her again.
when did i get so violent? is osmosis that easy?


it's always me me me she says to me.
yes, i agree. it's all about what makes you.
happy? confounded? no lessons
in cross cut crinkle fries here, no heart shaped potato puffs,
baked, not fried. listen. do you hear

where the lip split, do you see where fistsful
of hair lie on the floor? here, let me gather that up
for a weave. we can tune in to dr. phil
for the talking to. one thing, i tell her.
at least we didn't have kids.

















































*(_)(*U



she thought it would be a second chance
at what should have worked the first time
but couldn't. no wills involved. many won'ts.
many many many men wish death on me.
you call me hoochie, so i bring out the mask.
picture this: nails of a prodigal son painted pink
with blue polka dots. lips to match. fairy wings.
pixie dust. escape without the black suit and pine.


]\\


all that means is you gonna try to take the rolls wit ya.




(*(87&


obscurity and the bargain basements that house it.
it's so big it has to rent itself out by the hour, in several
homes and villages in a theatre near you.

love and the way she wants to don her mask again. the inside
being you, the outside being me. then invert and the shirts on the other foot
where mixing metaphors just became a full time job.

none of it makes sense, really, until you understand
that love asked for it. otherwise, why would she
keep coming back, why not get a restraining order?
no sense, until you notice
that mirrors reflect because there are eyes looking in.