soft landing

way before she knew about it
way before the last water covered
the ashes of her life way before that
time began and ended on a sour note.
a girl with a curl in her forehead.






















( begin again





after fucking as they cuddle
image droplets gather, ladled
with dusty sunset neons
 beckoning from sleep's warm grip.
so many good poems burgeoing
beg to be realised
 but his arms

and she promised herself
if she ever saw
the light again

right on cue, a cough releases them.
he turns over,murmurs i love you.
she grabs the keyboard gets hit
with a blank white page
and a vague desire to recreate diamonds
from miniature white christmas lights
and the insides of chandeliers.




















()()()(



it's past time, she whispered
for the format to change.
how many times into the ptsd corral
will you go. it's like that song 
you all wished you wrote
untl you realised it comes with some
pretty potent gunslinging.

^^^^^






then we got stuck with the underlying clauses
the everything-bytes-today 
the insurannce that didn't
and suddenly being a doctor or being a tech
didn't matter, it was clear who owned who.










**













so the right keys got punched
and i found myself in this position
nude, on the floor wiping up water
from a broken glass knocked over
by you left there by me FUCK you scream
and this place is such a mess i gotta go
because somehow if i cleaned it up
it's like it didn't happen like the red candle
i put on the speaker  didn't run in gore
patterns down the white
 wall it was  mounted on, christmas
dinner with the family, in our new house
kids all red velvet shiny, dog in her house
white tile spotless but that was so long
ago and you are a different man, taller
with blue eyes, a different
woman threw plates at you, turned bitter
in the soil of love some different kinda
crazy makes you crave flight
but say go. say go and mean nothing is worth
the staying and if you don't mean
leaving me, still it would be leaving me.
and it feels like that time
under the stars with the ocean murmuring
don't ever leave me. and i didn't.
we can call it an exorcism or karma
 how quickly
nothing brought you back.

sin eater

i draw a blank white sheet
over the corpse
final garrison on the river styx.
where it flows only the dead know
and that's you now my friend
here is a grain of salt for each sin
venal and deadly that was yours.
a loaf of bread to wash it down. and ale!
let us have ale! listen i know you
 wont hang a new taste on my tongue
 but a shilling will fill me for a week
till the next one gets called home
you're on your way to mystery
and im just fanning the flames you left behind.

slenderize

 one of two Wisconsin girls accused of stabbing a classmate and friend to please a fictional character named Slenderman was not responsible for her actions during the attack because she was mental ill.


they're saying you're a fiction but
i've heard your voice in my room 
when no one's there. some nights
you slip through my eyelids


he's been talking to me a lot lately
tells me he's so hungry and he must be
he's so skinny. slender he likes to say. 

i offer him doritos and popcorn
with extra butter. chicken soup ramen.
.always a no
and i'm so hungry. then he
whistles the answer

souls he says. i eat souls. in fact i want
to eat your brother, your mother 
your dog, cat,  and your
friend coco. but i don't want
your dad's. his is rotten.

and see, how would he know that
unless he's exactly what he claims?
he can teleport. i've seen him do it.
he can read my mind. so i asked him,
 what can i do so you'll let them go
and he says bring me a soul.
and he tells me how. and he tells me who.

it's not you . he knows we're friends. he says
you can be with me and you can feed me
if you do this one little thing 
i'll take care of you you can be like me

and i think he does care i mean he's always
around, ya know like when
 mom and dad aren't and like
he always answers on chat and stuff ad you know
  no one cares if we eat or go to bed even unless it 
interferes with their new lives and really
can you keep a secret becuz i

i think he might 
like me like me 
and i know he likes you
i mean he does want to eat your soul
just think of we all can be together
like for EVER if we just do 
this one little thing...

pressure sensitive

sirens wail out on 19

down mc mullen booth and sunset point.

someone's a cardiac arrest, the wind's 

picking up enough to shudder trees behind me.

cat five would rip this porch roof off, carry

the walls of netting into the bay,

nail a power pole to the front door maybe

go thru kitchen window. the scheflerra

weaves through our electric umbilical

 feed to this shelter where inside

the tv runs non stop adult swim. 

  in the carribean just a few days ago

someone else witnessed clouds

 recirculating ominously

through  rain's veil, upper cloud movement 

churning a canopy of camphors and palms

 watched the pappya crowns flutter, 

the still green

but good for cooking if you know

the recipes, barely moves someone

thought about harvesting 

but decided to wait for the storm to pass

there's a lull now, the rain hits with small 

pellets, little b.b.s. i keep wanting to escape

through writing but in a few hours there

may not be any power left

to make the cookies

that will sustain us through any

 survival that may come. 

white of her eye

i put all the spices in large container,
pack that into a small cubby in the prius
cargo area. underneath is full: cans of beans
and tuna, one bag of beef jerky,salsa verde,
 things to make canned palatable
though if the storm's half of what's been
promised  we shall prolly be grateful for anything
at the end of long hard day. lots of tortillas. not
for nothing we live in town and cuba. you
are already spazzing out, it's almost time
for me to knock you upside the head. look,
we only have 1 1/2 bags of charcoal
and some of that should be saved to filter water
which we still haven't got enough of for five now-since
the addition of neighborhood stoner and his cat-
people and five cats holing up in a non evac one bedroom
off sunset point road. it's on the smaller spine of pinellas
and made of concrete brick. we can go in the bedroom
closet if tornadoes arise, duck and cover.
it's not forecast to flood unless noah resurrects.
but it might be high tide when the winds roll in.

the national weather service has finally issued a warning
all emergency urgent tho the eye's only in cuba,
 still a day and a half out but oh
she's coming. i grab the carved tahitian box
grampa brought back from ww2, with a necklace of shells
crafted on some pacific island nestled inside. the rose painted
vase of gramma's. toothpaste and pictures a bottle of chanel.
we only have 12 miles to drive and it's the wrong way.
ok, 15 if the upper bay bridge's out. we can get there by land. none of it
over water. beware the sailor and cross.i make a prayer
with the broom in the kitchen, sweeping out the day's dirt
sweeping to the west all this mess, sweep it out
but not to be rude, don't mention her name.

if we come through this, i may sell the carton of smokes
one cigarette at time to the true addicts.
or i may keep smoking. it's hard to say .
i may not be able to sell anything since i don't have a gun.
won't get one either. there are ways, my friends, that
don't involve munitions. i hope .

there is a box of christmas toys i purchased on sale
a month ago for lili. it's quite large but there are spaces
between the boxes where i stuff all of my sandals. some
toiletries for later. i live in a cracker jack box. the storm
is category five. i just read up on charley, remember him?
fast and furious, cat 4, tore up aracadia and towns all along
the peace river. we were stuck on the first floor.

you took my son out at 3 am for a walk. i don't know
where my head was at those days.  the girls snuck out
 after midnight on day 2. no electricity so we evacked
to amanda's mom's then went for a walk on the golf course
where there was another hole in one on the ninth tee.
we didn't worry about water, it was just the electric
and just in some hoods. it was headed for tampa
but you swore you were the god of water and turned it inland
where it could devastate your dad's town instead of ours.


there were times i believe you still. and you called twice tonight.
maybe i need you to turn this storm away and maybe you're still
crazy enough to do it. go ahead, try. we're all still here, in the middle
of global warming. all of those you loved and lived with until
you had to move on and fall in love with someone new.

i still have room in my backseat for several baskets and all my portable boxes.
i fully expect to come back to nothing. you fully expect it to be standing.
tell me, scorpio, how many times do you have be stung to quit
sitting on your pincers? move, dammit. the storm waits for no one.



























*




paper towels, cloth towels, sponges, shovel, rake, broom, garbage bags,bleach cleaning supplies, all the things the relief center says they don't have enough of, toothpaste, soap, washcloths, toilet paper if you find a working one, don't flush for yellow but if it's brown ...i don't know the etiquette of post hurricane devastation i mean is it polite to approach someone for a NO. DO NOT APPROACH ANYONE . if you do, hold your hand out and let them sniff it first. then politely ask for what you need. be ready to barter. if you have nothing else, sex is a good substitute. of course, you want to make sure there are no guns. i keep thinking about guns. we are not an open carry state, but we sure do want to let you stand your ground.



***

so far i've picked 2 journals, the trouble with being born and the dispossessed. i want to take poetry but the outlaw bible is too big. as is the chinaski i have. no question though, lineberger gets a seat under the front seat. the secret life of water might be a good un. also anne. watts.. oh and that one book of my mothers, tattered tho it may be. i hope to see lili again. she's off with mom who's way out in wesley chapel, as is r ight. we put her lego dolls, dollhouse and car in a plastic gallon bag.she  also took the last of the rice and gravy, 2 chicken legs and the cookies we made earlier.

the wind is picking up. if you weren't here i'd open the windows for the hurricane to air out the house. if i didn't live in the first little piggy's place i'd fill the tub and the washer and be ready to watch the curtains fly. instead i'm chosing which memories to keep. there are printouts of old work, some mine, some yours. i don't want to drag them along. maybe this is the time to let that be. the letters i've moved since the seventies are still in my closet in a burlap bag. do they stay or do they go? the thank you for pot smoking pin and the anarchy symbol pencil sketch given to us by a street artist, the Tommy pin i got from the theatre i worked in as a senior in high school-none of these are big and they pretty much define where i came from but have little to do with who i am today. well, ok, the thank you button is still valid. the anthology with my print poem? the small bottle i got from a vancouver bookstore? jorie graham? none of these books will be replaced if lost. how to chose? pretty sure that's one of the reasons you just lay in bed all day, smoking one after another. too many things to save. the way you rebuilt even just a little bit and the way it can all be wiped out in a single day it will still be here, you insist. you insist that you are psychic. and i'll buy that. barely, but i've seen proof. only, you don't know that you're psychic, can't really prove if scientifically so it's just something you say as a knockoff around coincidences that happen just a bit too often. still, i'm not having an affair so put that in your crystal ball and decode it.



.