Whiskered Nights

I stalk you.  You stalk me.
We're a cat furred family.
With a knickknack
pattywack
flay flesh from all the bones
and leave a special carcass
at our best friend's home. 

Jack

Shouting into the void,
pitched coins tumble down
and down to ricochet clink
along tar slick stone walls
and their gristled black lichen,
glimmering at water's slip.
Plink.
The pleasantry of candle light on
Friday.  A quarter that would
otherwise feed
a cigarette machine & jukebox
tumbles, a lighthouse lamp
too far and too night to warm.
Plink.
Listen and hear the algae
creep into the well stone's seams.
Eyes close and open
to the land of Neversleep.
Beyond the ripples
along the well's wet face.
Plink.
Come play with me.
Come play with me.
The Shelty, fourteen years deceased
tugs at fingertips and snuffles a palm.
He will understand in time.
Everything sleeps.
Plink.

Tooth

Fear of the evening darkness
slips aside as easily as my zipper
to tuck the pack into the jacket
underneath my coat.
Twelve seconds. Returned.
Smoking again.  Drags between
gnawed fingernails on the right hand,
my glove still wedged beneath
my left armpit. 
Dabbing out the cigarette's embers,
afraid of the dark.  The seams breathe.
Coughed spots of blood again.
Twenty-three seconds.  There is time.
We can make it.  If we leave now.
Sun will be up in eight and a half hours.
"Be afraid or fearless,"
the seams breathe and wrinkle
like waterlogged clotted scabs,
"the sun will set again
you pretty, lonely, thing.
Please do get your rest in the morning."
Get there.  We'll be fine.
Cigarette ember burns both knuckles.
If we leave now, we can make it.

August Scream

Some evenings the air feels uneasy.
There is no wind, no crickets.
The familiar embrace of starlight stiff.  Cold
as if it is speaking through cinder blocks
or not at all.
A warning that something is coming.
Something is tugging at the seams,
gnawing away a thread here,
a stitch there.  Something is trying to get in,
you must go home at once.
Street light bathed windows
follow you like the wide plastic eyes of
Betty Boop clock
thick with cobwebs and the tented legs of
dead spiders.
You must go home at once,
something is trying to get in.
Hide.  Hide.  Hide!

Through A Porthole

The size of bent edged metal lodged and twisting
inside her intestines is unknowable, to watch
me fall to one knee for the fifteenth time, blue
red, gold, and phosphorous white
licks of flame bursting from my suits seams.

Break glass, air driven out.  Still burn.  Chemical
blaze.  Extinguisher plumes filling containment.
Still burn.  Over radios screams and crackling tears.
I'm okay, I'm okay!
I can't help you!
Please, listen to me.  I'm okay.

Days that pass and months without incident.
When we arrive at the colony station
the stories we will tell.  Work continues. Monitors
blink and machines whir our songs.
Card games and reading her to sleep.
Nights up with me when I could not.

Check in, check out.  Cautious smiles.
Loose bodies and minds.  Guests, invitations.
Space walks and communiques.
Drops to planets and moons and back.
Stay aboard, take care of the ship while she's gone.
Let go.  Another job lost.  I don't understand
what happened.
I can do this.  Don't worry.  I can-
You have to try.
I can-

Alarms drown thoughts, seals clip into place.
Over radios urgent commands conflict.
Get inside.
This time is different.  The thump of
foot thick steel beams seat to their cylinders.
The whoosh of air gone.  Through smoke dimmed porthole,
her eyebrows broken and streaming,
a hand across her mouth.  This time is different.

Please, listen to me.  I'm okay.  Don't-
The lights turn off.  Extinguishers plume.
I cannot see through the fire light filled helmet, you.
Days pass.  The lights are gone and
the remains of myself charred and
heat grafted to what's left of the suit.

I can't help you.  I love you.
Crackles through
the radio link.
I know.  I love you.
Before it dies alongside the main lights and
the emergency system's too.

I forgive her the blast door ever fallen locked.

The ship abandoned for too many memories
trapped inside.  Too many smiles and footfalls logged.
Too many meals and doors and machine sounds we knew.
The pain of helplessness that must have tore through her
to see the blaze rise from being
without an answer
arrests me anew each year
removed from finding the outer seal lock
against containment, turning the hard key
and blowing myself into the depths of space.
Never again
to tap "I love you" in Morse on the blackened porthole window.

The empty ship still turns in space somewhere
full of memories and aches, scorches, and empty pods.
A keepsake floating in a drawer with drapes.
Perhaps a shoe and a few keys to nothing.
What system it's found
or salvage impound or
if it's fallen into the belly of a star,
no one knows.

Across the reaches, alone on my station, cobbled together
from other ships and wrecks I've come across,
through deaths and births I cannot say,
I still comb signals now and then and smile,
a bit of ash drifting from my cheek.

Once in a while the noise resolves and
I see a picture of her content and shining face.
Brush away the spark and adjust a sleeve's clasp.
We are loved.
We are home.

Ghosts

I want more.
I want more.
I want more.
Glitch.
Shedding shedding skins and
I want more.
I want more.
I want more.
Bastard by rite
abd-abf?
abz and aba.
Meet half way
thunder meet light
sound barrier meet fright.
Scars.
I want more.
I want more.
I want more.
Thirty two means nothing.
Lock & key.
Swallow it
to know
"...hello, goodbye..."
I'm late.
I'm late.
I'm late.

Projector

Recluse and correspondent,
force and fragment,
black body and iridescent disk.

Faster, faster!

I know you.

There!  There is the smile.
And there: the grin.
Go back.  Do not allow the tape
at speed to rip or slow enough
to melt against the lens,
gears, and skin.

Quickly enough
to project a human
from within the ends
of its worlds.  A harmonic
continuum curling against
itself to imprison a ghost.

The 4,551st attempt
a resounding, screaming,
eye gouging, success.

Shut it off.  Its singing
rises to my ears like
vertebrae at a spine's base
gripped in a hydraulic vise,
burst and crushed one at a time like snow globes
until the last ornament is reached
at the base of my skull.

Shut it off.

I know this song.  Ready the
plasma gulf apertures for test 4,552.
Reduce the cycles by 2%.

Call me when we're ready to resume trials.

Museum Afternoon

Thousands of ghosts
behind inch thick glass,
tastefully lit so they will not escape,
or open their plate
convincing the staff from outside.

Walking the beat
after everyone leaves,
jingle keys on my hip
to the windows and doors and the stairwell
to the roof overlooking the city.

Pass the janitor for this floor,
with his buffing machine
and headphones on
humming his music, tonight I like to believe,
just for me.

An empty case ahead.
The taxidermists are busy
in basement S3.
With thousand watt lights,
needles and magnifiers, gloves and masks.

Four floors up,
the central air groans through grates.
The food court has flies.
The Sperm whale blinks and a chair's foot squeaks
"everyone dies, some day."

Checking a watch and then a wall clock.
Nine more hours to go.
The elevator rings, opens, and remains.
No one mentioned
an exhibit cleaning.

There was a time
I could've swore
the cases would all

talk to me.

Check a watch and then a wall clock.
When we get home
we are never alone,
and more alone than we ever dreamed.
Once inside, take off our clothes.

Listening to you sleep while waiting for water to heat.
A lemon wedge in coffee on the fire escape.
Watching clouds flirt with the moon
while the star points and airplanes gleam.
Hairs stand on end

with the sun's morning yawn.
We have to go back
and place palm to glass.
We're never alone.
Tears clap to tile.

The janitor on this floor
nods and smiles
while we pretend to sneeze to wipe our nose.
Adjust the sleeves.
The elevator rings and closes.

Smoker 56

Odometer reads well.
Speedometer too.
Standard.
Gear shifts near perfect when
the asphalt speaks to the motor and transmission
road speed matches.  Golden.  Shift.

Without a thunk.  Whisper and an easy nod.

Old iron hide.  Broken knuckles and skin flakes.
Blood on the chassis and some burned to oil fumes
on the engine block.  Torn fingernail tips sitting
in the "I" and "C" beams that keep the machine
churning.  Flake of eyelash vaporized at 600F.

Silly function.  Park.  Get out.  Sit in the truck bed.

Spark.  Think.

Pilot a weapon every day or ride a refrigerator
to the third star on the right.
Stories have been told of an oasis
where sandwiches come already made
and where the made come to look at sandwiches
without buying.

Read the cloud like flipping coins
with chicken bones.
It is a shame no one believes in magic
with the same fervor.

Be sure to stop by the general store
to pick up more needles
and thread.  The ashtray is already prepared.

Blade Runner

Every time you walk the razor
you renew the lease
on this body.
One more nail to hang a picture.
One more mural committed to walls.
One more reason to see
the sun rise and bathe the evening slag
and die.
Every time you walk the razor
to renew the lease
on this body,
promise me the evening sky
when the chimney swifts are feeding
and the bats are beginning to take wing.
That silk spectrum sky between
diamond black heaving and
sunlight's bleeding.
Every time you walk the razor
and renew the lease
on this body,
show a glitter of teeth
to let the engine seething
breathe underneath.

Creature of the Night

Voicemail.  Voicemail.  Sneeze.  Rise. Yawn.
Stretch.  Head and tail lights turn as they should.
The lunch rush.  The get home.  The day shift
and graveyarders.  The drones and kid linked.
The zombies with too many chemicals inside.
The walkers and dog folk.  The joggers. The fit.
The teens and cutting classes and the crack
slippers.  The up to late and the never slept.
The sleepers and the ambitious.  The gray and
car pooled.  The stay at homes and the young
at heart and the "why am I here"'s.  The juke
boxers and fire drillers and the gamers too.
The nature watchers and the camera quest
head firsters.  The old song and dancers and the
ragers.  The kleptomaniacs and the negotiators.
Voicemail.  Voicemail.  Cough.  Rise.  Yawn.
Oh what a happy day.  The stars are almost up,
Sol not entirely gone.  Somewhere up there
I do believe
the moon is
doing its thang.
Plenty of time
to shower
and polish my teeth.
There is a big day ahead of us.
Have the decency
to smile with a little sunshine when you speak. 

Headphascanaut

Stop what you are doing.
Proceed to the nearest shelter.
This is not a drill.

Stop what you are doing.
Proceed to the nearest shelter.
This is not a drill.

Hallucinations are real.
They can hurt you.
Manifestations are imminent.

Stop what you are doing.
Proceed to the nearest shelter.
Frequencies are rising.

Hallucinations are real.
As real as you and I.
They can hurt you.

Manifestations are imminent.
Proceed to the nearest shelter.
This is not a drill.

Hallucinations are real.
If you cannot find a shelter
proceed to open and empty spaces.

If you cannot move
shelter in place
and do not speak.  They can hear you.

Stop what you are doing.
Proceed to the nearest shelter.
This is not a drill.

Operation Dusky Moon

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Phone Tag

I wanted not to tell of where I'd been and what I'd heard,
to tell of reptile scales so big they blotted out the sun,
of clouds and river breakers lapping at my toes,
of regret and washed up frames, rust blackened,
shelves of jars gone farther down stream while
the metal skeleton sat where my fishing rod was supposed to go
and crushed beer cans and months of fire pit stones stood.
I wanted to tell you that I missed you and our best days,
laughing shoulder to shoulder and eye contact too long, broken
by the magical words "do you have a lighter"
knowing yours was at home too.
The wind kicking up and the clouds threatening
miles in the distance and fingers splayed to crease sunlight
while we dragged the metal to the golf cart submerged
in the lagoon beside the metal drum the river gifted,
turned a'right to accept the garbage human traffic
left behind at our fishing spot beneath the bridge.
I called to ask you if you saw it too.  The world
through a window, small, in the furnace door
where men and women could look safely.
I called to ask if you saw it too
through the inch square thick glass and
to hear what you thought while you were blazing.
The seconds slip by and you sleep while I die and
I'll live while you breathe into your day dream.
Rise from the dead with the sun in your mouth
and I'll come to you, lips wet, to,
teeth open wide,
take it.

Hypersleep

after When I Was Done Dying 

If you could feel the crush and compress it to a now, in to something to use later, something that could smile-scowl.  Maybe it could be enjoyed waking up from long sleep, from a tired that went light years instead of some weeks.  Then you'd be on the trail of snakeoil's noise if you held up the bottle and rattled it near the ears.  The quietest of songs is what you would hear.

And if the emptiness of space could express its vast grace in two word songs that would make the leaves shake as though time took a joy ride through the afternoon sky in the two months that chase after the bully lightning stroked Julys we would all be able to sing in leaf showers every time the moon skated across the other side of the night's sky.  The thing is,

why do I have to know so much about where am I going, the breeze said as much, with one touch of grass blade with my shirt off I stayed on the ground to be closer to the nuclear core of all atoms shoved in and each wanting more than the wells could give and they burned themselves out to wait quietly for the sun to amount to something less than a beautiful none to instead

keep on churning in an interpretive dance for no one.  While laying in the yard and counting up the ways you have impacted me through my every numbered days, breathing out every hour and just only once, in a field of lightning bolts I don't care so much, tearing up and lips spread to show my timeless teeth, I felt the ground beneath me begin to heave.

I turn to my stomach to tell me the plan and as the ground gave way I made no designs to land, if the core and its bones and its million degree heat could eject me to the stars I will grip its seat and sink into the blades between the fingers of my hands until the sky turned dark and the air thinned to nothing, shot out like the spatter of rain before a gale in a storm.

The room is very quiet.  I started to stand and instead decided to sit and listen to one more song from my band.  The piece of glass I picked from the carpet last week is still on my desk, I am still in my seat.  What I wanted was a rainbow thick enough to not deny and what I force my eyes to makes me wish I could die.  Every single day ticks and tears at my "why"s.

So we get up and hate the routes about which we have been made.  We accept that we are and we keep through these ways.  The moon surely dawns and the sun is okay.  The clouds race along and the leaves do wind sway.  The ground remains warm and continues to drive.  It speaks but can't answer to why I'm still alive.  I reach the next door and I spit toward the floor, it lands on my foot and I shrug and I sigh.  One day physics will crack apart and on that day we might die.

Sometimes I wish I didn't know so much.  Too much of everything and never ever really enough.  From the stars to the sand, it's all a matter of math.  What I don't know I do know cannot nearly be the half.  The unseen world continues to breath as I slink off swiftly to snail crawling dream sleep.
Every secret I wish can be found.

Their edges, I don't see them. I, eyelids

fall steady,

I hear only their sound.

Null

A willingness to give up means
you know
the world.

I will lose a                                       You have never slept
finger before I                                   better than the first day
kill again.                                          you fixed an ultimatum.

How swell would it be                      What had happened was.
to lose a tooth to me.                         Allow me to clarify.
Can I borrow an earring?                  Can I eat your face?

As long as you're dead, the fuck's the difference.

Park in an empty lot and who are you
lining your wheels to asphalt paint for?

Heart beats sound amazing.               There is a fire,
The only thing more being                 small inside the wreck.
the click of the load of "heart."          Two hands to cup air & blow.

Spin the chamber giggle giggle          Savages, savages, ALL!
giggle fuss.  How long were you        Set coordinates.
breast fed?                                           Set fear aside.  Adjust clothing.

The stars are beautiful.  The moon keeps driving by our house real slow.

With both barrels, fade summer.
In the mean time, cherry tomaters greet when work ceases.

Brown grass becomes a mirror and naps prickly.
Windows close and shades during the day.

We gossip and chant and the sun
blushes.   Mars and I still
quipping about his heavy handed ways.

Today?  Sure.
A limb?  No.

A digit?  Yes.
To feel alive.  Less than that.  I am more than the sum of my parts.
How can I prove it to you?

The sun stares in;                                 The moon glimmer is undeniable.
glare and sharp and                              Stand up.  Please, sit down.
wet spectrum.                                       I brought cookies and they will
                                                              not soften themselves in cups.
                                                              Allow me to pour the tea
                                                                        wayfarer.

Hustle Bone

You,
You clearly,
You clearly,
You clearly do not know me yet.

Irate pirate.  You can be the alpha dog.
Can't give two shits to move it.
The boulder in our conversations.
Just - crew - it.

With one hundred hands
any mountain can be plucked.
Be more like Lex Luthor
and give no -

What I came here to say is that
some people will bring a bat,




arms, and cannon,

wings, and a radar,

ghost armies and phantoms

rag with glass shard,




Alpha dog.  Plotting your demise.
Ten feet from the fire,
licked teeth, in the underbrush
with the glitter eyes.

The Sandman's Mascara

The walls met
above the neon electronic dart board.
You were there.
A tendril of smoke leaking.

On second thought.

Your number on my receipt
when I closed my check
with a smiley face and
a flourish.

On second thought.

Leaving the bathroom door open
to sigh on its pneumatics
you turned the faucet on
winking and slipping a blue toothpick between your lips.

On second thought.

Juke box stacked
to the ribs.  Tipped cap and nine quarters spilled
from your pocket.  Glance down,
You left your jacket on the chair back.

On second thought.

Have you seen him?  That's his butt
in that plastic tray there.  That thing in the black tee!
Have you seen him? With the brown eyes!
"No one left or came in the last hour, brother."

On second thought.

Bird baths in public restrooms never go over well.
Was there this guy with eyes like lanterns?  Just here?
Yes, here!  The hell else would I be talking about?
No?  Freckles on the nose and a gray jean jacket?

On second thought.

I could've swore.  Are you sure?
Yes!  Okay, I am going crazy.  Sorry to bother you.
Sit and tent fingertips.  Squint at the televisions above.
Chair pulls away and elbows brush.

On second thought.

Eyes dash
to the floor.
Black on black sneakers.  Again.
Count sheep, count down, count up.  "Come here often?"

See

I have been
browsing long photos.
Suicide black and whites.
Spickkednrr.  Ig if had a sound.
Anger blossoms.
A loom.  How?
Every second
every minute
anpit upi/
about you
whether you enjoy it or
your glance
ties me in knots.
Houdini for a wink.
Inexplicable. Snatched breath.

KNDY XGIA XOXO

Spring shuts its filthy mouth.  Two ton Winter blows away.  In the heat of the sun, wishing for some glasses.  It radiates and I am searching for my sound.  The continents and ocean and working with a moon.  That enormous citrus rose rises.  Try to slip the heap of shoulder from the grill before it all tastes like murder.  The circle rises and legends are made. The snow beard jackals yawn on.

The hillsides are melting.  Icicles meters long are falling.  Down river the fish the mammals the mixes the hexes the rexes the river monsters and the math that convexes the surface of the waves to make me crave the idea that maybe the next thing my line might find is a thing that goes bump in the night.  Time falls later in the face of gaining an hour.  Tossed into a tiny lake of disputable depth.

Charges go off and the sea flexes and winks back.  When I was young we used to have this thing where I would jump off of the porch and whomever lands furthest wins.  Are silly.  Did it ever occur to you that God was depressed?  Dance in the moonlight and embrace a noogie.  Makesit, we have to revise and tear down the entire operation.  Sixty sixty will be a good day to die.  With.  Lulz

in the waves.  Did not come here to see you.  Walked out to a coast to see them.  Robots may win eventually.  The waves will come with less frequency.  Is a myth difficult to dispel.  Summer altogether.  A perfect world is voided Summer.  Makes peace with no one.  Solution could be a nuclear snow.  Is possibly the greatest thing I've ever

seen a ghost?