SHAKILY

Gone for just a second and afraid. Move the table cloth – it sounds like seltzer, fresh, suspicious. There is nothing on the table but a plastic ring. Quick drain, goodbye,
it’s gone.

Not answering the story, there is no answer to the story,
just space and things and time. Running water for
what purpose.

Some filling for the after dinner dough.

Moving lips, the pretty spaced teeth between,
softness from anything
that young.

And one word laced throughout, spotted like
skinly textures you notice
the longer you know.

Would you rather it be private, a list of what you mean you meant?

One after another, like advent, the coming-of.

Or just the bottom lashes, silver carvings from a
tremendous town, asleep.

Clear for construct, shakily.

Somber water, somber somebody.
Log, paper, apple. Electric lights and
frigidaires.

She puts the whole chip in her mouth. Lonely tasks, Alaska.

Gold sting at the pitch. Serrated snow,
a steep descent.

I FORGET!

i want to see what it would be like to be a big whale and eat just millions of something all at once

i want human hair noodles or pixie stix and boiled celery with water sauce or a binge restaurant with 500 courses and a bucket to spit it all out into

she said 'i eat a burrito in dreams and you are licking the bathroom floor for salty germs'

furby blarg bork fuck fork bluk BLUG

we are both Elliott and we are both E.T. too, i am girl/boy and you are girl/woman and we are babies and aliens and cats and humans and selfs and the whole world is fucked up or whatever

profile

In one reduced to skin and bones

lacking significant cavity

the ecstatic pulse of fluids is tempered

tears slowed

and organs, neither skin nor bone,

enlarge, grow lazy.

As with the soul,

the sweet detritus remains to mark the man.

today, one of the army

busy, wiping away dust, organizing spices

preparing for death

saying it directly to cope

I am finally learning

things will never calm down

the chaos will continue until it doesn’t

death dates be damned

I will never have time to read all of my books

to keep the bathtub sparkling

to learn to change a tire

no amount of control

can remove the heaviness

at least the sun is out

at least we are an army

(hectic, nervous, reaching)

at least there have been these years

at least we’ve been here

A block of sand / pt 2

we counted 8
running 5ks in the snow
the last at 6'7"
counted twice

but the duo stuck to walkers
mimicry distilled into constants and variables
shoulders were always square
the art was all in the twist

Scooters, Vacation, Fall

Dark paths, beating wings, a thousand gallows

Snake back to - other things - and nightly swallows

Flip and play and, in dusk, the losing fire

Lights landscapes in the west that soon retire.

Obedience is soft in female quails.

They move the executioner's axe layers

Past the daunting dawn on and on again.

What stupid hoops are fit round every lens.

Take rot and leave it there then smell again

Its fervor on another day aligned

To this in futures small and lately climbed

That dwindle as ascending they become

The softest mezzanine of dirts, the softest scents.

And softly yet the past will now descend.

weird chess

i thought i just liked the patterns and shapes
but really i wanted to kill them
now i wonder, who, when i said
i really just wanted to kill them

i thought i was lonely, looking for love
but really i wanted a girlfriend
now i wonder, what, when i was like,
really just wanted a girlfriend

i thought i was okay, doing alright
but really i wanted to kiss them
okay, fuck you fuck this stupid shit fuck fuck
when really just wanted to kiss them

i thought i was winning, winning the fight
but really was losing against them
why did i think i was winning—against whom!?
ohh i just was losing against them

when i was just wanting, wanting to kiss them,
i really just wanted a girlfriend
i really just wanted, wanted to kill them,
but really, just losing against them

Love Poem

Your musk remnant on my pillow

Rouses me in the night

Roll over blind

Blanket mass

Eyesight fights

Radiator rattles competes with

Silence.

Makes my dreams incomplete.

***

In complete darkness

My heart thumping

My mattress a drum

Skipping beats.

***

In this state I find myself too often;

Restless body

I've become

Enshrouded in your essence

So I inhale

Savor the flavor

Grow dizzy on your fume

***

My bed

My small hell

***

Radiator laughs

Echoes through the empty room

Mocking me -

the lamenting poet

with his over-dramatized doom.

As I pen this poem

About how something so lovely

As Love

Can conquer and consume.

the openness when you don't know who you're talking to that gets lost when you think you know what's up.

My deep purple blanket sheds dots the size of a bug,

and I have decided for now that this is a good thing.

Okay babe, you really cannot panic when you wake up itchy

and find dark fuzzy things in your sheets.

I squeeze the spot on my neck where this stress has learned to land.

My housemate learned this week that emotional patterns are embedded in neurons.

(it's a question of bottom truth)

Remember that lump is actually feelings, and so it's real.

Mike at a mural of Woody Guthrie

It is the season of shaggy hair
and beards Mike stands like a cornstalk
in the shadow hands in pockets
head cocked the conqueror
made it out past the west coast

I am often bored on my island
But am finding things to do
crossed out on the back of the postcard

He looks like a rooster under the sorrow song
of his idol the setting sun climbs the wall

From Iowa later that year Mike wrote:
After walking through seven or eight large pens
I chose a cage which had 10 brown hens
and a white rooster. I didn't particularly want the rooster
but they were 2 bucks a piece so I decided to go for it.

A winter's travel away from that day
he's small against the mural Woody's eyes
are downcast and cool
the wrinkles in his denim shirt
more lasting than Mike's huffed up pose

I got the most bunk chickens an Iowan could ask for
Within one week three had died
and I buried them in the plum grove
but a grave robber came under cover of darkness
dug up the chicken carcasses and carried them away
leaving only a blasphemous hole and some raccoon poop

Woody's hands as large as Mike's torso
grip the neck of the guitar
and finger the strings
projecting song off the silent cement
where he is painted

the next day found feathers all over the garden
the two remaining chickens cowering in the greenhouse
something had jumped a fence four and a half feet tall
and scared out the chickens without disturbing fence or coop

At his heels the confident voice
that once whined of lost love
Ahead of him plump garlic bulbs
of marriage and unemployment

they are great swimmers so crossing a river
to get some chickens would be no problem
and only a cougar would be big enough
to kill and eat six in one fell swoop

The future a cougar the past a raccoon
Here, in an old photo, the sun is always setting
Mike's face a dancing flame behind wild hair and dark glasses
Woody keeps strumming a burnished ballad

Our one remaining chicken is very spry
and we let him run all over the yard.
I am prepared to give him away as a stewing hen.

i still wish i could hold her

opening for the world

just out of reach

we laugh when there is nothing to talk about

our love was meant to be

time won't break

how we were before

1,271 miles

my puppy, all battered in fur,

set out to conquer this world,

packed up his bones, his biscuits and leash,

and set out a walkin' through the busy streets,

without me, his loyal master by side,

his leash trailed limp, 'hind his scattered stride,

a day my puppy made it, he quadruped quite far,

but then quickly caught by his leash, a whizzing car,

this would be the end of my dear puppy,

but bless his heart he made it plenty,

for the car, that dragged his wet nose up to pup heaven,

was the car that dragged his furry frame down to

new haven

muskrat love

GOSSIP

sakes alive,

the whisker sisters:

denied a biscuit,

kissed a mister.

mhmm, Louise,
mhmm.

Though

Though smile wrinkles are better than
frown wrinkles or worry wrinkles, I'm
a little young to be getting any wrinkles,
don't you think?