What did you say? We have been walking for hours
beneath downtown lights
pockets empty
a second night in a row and I should
have your name by now. I don't.
Was it good for you? My head is still
while the orange and florescent office whites
lighting office blocks
slide by, head craned, thoughts hung
dead behind my glass eyes,
tongue lolled and thick in my mouth.
What did you say? I know
I should know, but the sky is so close,
starless, I can smell the ocean
up there threatening to come down and
I would be afraid of getting wet
if I wasn't already still.
Was it good for you? Your arm around my shoulders
feels brand new and if I wasn't so encased
in this damn cotton tee I could
fall into you all over again the way
sail fish do when the waves are high and
chopping.
Somewhere up there
radio towers are blinking
warnings to the street's rise and fall,
buoys along our shipping lane. Do you want to spend
the night? My body twitches at the end of it's rope.
There is laughter coming
out from where your mouth ends and
my ear lobe begins. Can you taste it, I think it's going to rain.
The glass in my head blows apart
connected in an instant to every tube and bulb
overhead and rains starshine on the concrete
and I am thirsty as hell
all over again. Cracked and spilling.
We have been walking for hours and
the sky is fallen.
Come with me, I know a place
where we can swim.
original works of parts
Rejoinder
Separation anxiety is
step one.
Step two is
howling at the sun.
Step three is not listed, but
step four is understanding
what you are. And really
really really
I just wish I knew.
More than that,
more than all of it,
step five is the tricky part
the part beyond understanding that
toes the ocean and tests the temperature
and says "fuck it, let's go"
in the gap where you knew
you already knew
and were
killing time.
Step five
is
the burner. Fire, walk with me
the you inside that lives at all points
West and the Hollywood is beautiful
enough when you know
you live on the corner of Mulholland
and Velvet. Really though,
step five
is
bliss. The tooth shining
knife wiping nonsense
of being's justification
in little little tiny fucking words
in the thin hours of day break.
Vapors. And paper bags. And the shakes
that let you know you are still animal. And sometimes
human.
step one.
Step two is
howling at the sun.
Step three is not listed, but
step four is understanding
what you are. And really
really really
I just wish I knew.
More than that,
more than all of it,
step five is the tricky part
the part beyond understanding that
toes the ocean and tests the temperature
and says "fuck it, let's go"
in the gap where you knew
you already knew
and were
killing time.
Step five
is
the burner. Fire, walk with me
the you inside that lives at all points
West and the Hollywood is beautiful
enough when you know
you live on the corner of Mulholland
and Velvet. Really though,
step five
is
bliss. The tooth shining
knife wiping nonsense
of being's justification
in little little tiny fucking words
in the thin hours of day break.
Vapors. And paper bags. And the shakes
that let you know you are still animal. And sometimes
human.
Joineder
Some day I am going to dissociate
sex and violence and I will wake up
without new scars and be able to love
my own skin, but til then
being with you
will still be
defcon 1
sex and violence and I will wake up
without new scars and be able to love
my own skin, but til then
being with you
will still be
defcon 1
Storm's Coming
I have been at the rail and biting it
with my hands
wanting to be on that water like
Tom Sawyer and nigger Jim,
both of them,
wrapped into one human being.
That aside, the sky is burning
in flickers of lightning. There's a joy
to the ferocity of it all.
Some kind of dare. Some kind of dream
that begs an end to a story upended
and unended. Watching the clouds
gather strength above
where I know downtown starts
and the rest of Pittsburgh proper
begins. It's beautiful.
I wish I had my
rod and reel and tackle,
but I don't so I try
to suck it all in and paint myself
back stories they will believe in
when I get back to the bar.
with my hands
wanting to be on that water like
Tom Sawyer and nigger Jim,
both of them,
wrapped into one human being.
That aside, the sky is burning
in flickers of lightning. There's a joy
to the ferocity of it all.
Some kind of dare. Some kind of dream
that begs an end to a story upended
and unended. Watching the clouds
gather strength above
where I know downtown starts
and the rest of Pittsburgh proper
begins. It's beautiful.
I wish I had my
rod and reel and tackle,
but I don't so I try
to suck it all in and paint myself
back stories they will believe in
when I get back to the bar.
There Is Music in You
There is music in you
that I have not heard
because I was too busy
watching the stars
cross hatch the river
and it bled,
the watching,
in the spaces between
your punctuation. My fault,
but blame her too,
the river, and the dreams
of swimming like a rock
in fresh water night.
that I have not heard
because I was too busy
watching the stars
cross hatch the river
and it bled,
the watching,
in the spaces between
your punctuation. My fault,
but blame her too,
the river, and the dreams
of swimming like a rock
in fresh water night.
Points of Origin
I spent some days
considering my origins:
regards to communication.
Thinking back to speech
impediments fixed with effort and
sliding when I am tired
enough to lose self consciousness or
maybe caring
more about their ears or
maybe caring
more about my image
face to face, but
I imagine it this way, and wish
I could spend a month,
constructing the fourteen foot wide mural:
When I started
it was all crayon blocks that grew
into bricks that realized they were better
all one color, and neat, with well timed mortar,
that knew walls of all one color make
well received and understood buildings that make
neighborhoods easy to navigate that hide
meaning in their streets
if you raise them from the foundations just right.
From there, things grew
more complex, but ordered, and solutions came
that were unorthodox, but visibly
easy to see that A needs B and without C
there is no need for D, but A and D
are joined beautifully through the bridge and
the beam iron and braided cables,
the letters in between.
How extravagant could it, would it go?
An engineer has to know. I built and I built,
and not for methods sake, but to grid,
web, and prick sky with unbelievable,
physically defiant, and somehow ear sound,
distance crossing and tremulous shapes
that gave way in time to a year of boredom and
a slip to elliptical wormholing scapes. A graduation
from land and matter to space and time,
in the scale of my life, a blink of an eye.
The challenge of mimicry of natures complex
fading in the rearview of the suggestion of space.
From the empty gaps begged and impressionistic
bless the elliptical view collapsed and compressed,
but the bricks and mortar and steel works
that held it all together before it fell
into the sky was never replaced and my eye
remained disconnected from the stuff
that connected it to the parts
inside that put it all to words.
Slash and grab, burn and go,
spectacle for spectacles show.
Years ahead, years behind.
Trapped and burned. Everything fragment.
No one ever tells you that whimsy
is flammable as skin. And then my words turned
to the span of stars within when
I could not touch my surface
without feeling it finger fuck
other hells and then
the slash and grab slowed
while my head burned down and
like tires we smoldered and killed
everything that breathed
within arms reach and then
as things dimmed and the moon came high again
the words became deliberate and
precipitate and then
the klaxon still rings across the struck down bricks,
footsteps still run, not long, across fire slagged pits,
the elaborate still grows through winter snow branches,
still moves and freezes like spilled liquid glass,
the missing still run, and the found still abandon,
the main stage still rocks, and the characters
still with their stand ins, the seasons still amaze
and the sex still crazes, the drugs still haze,
summer morning fogs still rooftop grazing,
the learning continuing
now, but none of it in phases.
considering my origins:
regards to communication.
Thinking back to speech
impediments fixed with effort and
sliding when I am tired
enough to lose self consciousness or
maybe caring
more about their ears or
maybe caring
more about my image
face to face, but
I imagine it this way, and wish
I could spend a month,
constructing the fourteen foot wide mural:
When I started
it was all crayon blocks that grew
into bricks that realized they were better
all one color, and neat, with well timed mortar,
that knew walls of all one color make
well received and understood buildings that make
neighborhoods easy to navigate that hide
meaning in their streets
if you raise them from the foundations just right.
From there, things grew
more complex, but ordered, and solutions came
that were unorthodox, but visibly
easy to see that A needs B and without C
there is no need for D, but A and D
are joined beautifully through the bridge and
the beam iron and braided cables,
the letters in between.
How extravagant could it, would it go?
An engineer has to know. I built and I built,
and not for methods sake, but to grid,
web, and prick sky with unbelievable,
physically defiant, and somehow ear sound,
distance crossing and tremulous shapes
that gave way in time to a year of boredom and
a slip to elliptical wormholing scapes. A graduation
from land and matter to space and time,
in the scale of my life, a blink of an eye.
The challenge of mimicry of natures complex
fading in the rearview of the suggestion of space.
From the empty gaps begged and impressionistic
bless the elliptical view collapsed and compressed,
but the bricks and mortar and steel works
that held it all together before it fell
into the sky was never replaced and my eye
remained disconnected from the stuff
that connected it to the parts
inside that put it all to words.
Slash and grab, burn and go,
spectacle for spectacles show.
Years ahead, years behind.
Trapped and burned. Everything fragment.
No one ever tells you that whimsy
is flammable as skin. And then my words turned
to the span of stars within when
I could not touch my surface
without feeling it finger fuck
other hells and then
the slash and grab slowed
while my head burned down and
like tires we smoldered and killed
everything that breathed
within arms reach and then
as things dimmed and the moon came high again
the words became deliberate and
precipitate and then
the klaxon still rings across the struck down bricks,
footsteps still run, not long, across fire slagged pits,
the elaborate still grows through winter snow branches,
still moves and freezes like spilled liquid glass,
the missing still run, and the found still abandon,
the main stage still rocks, and the characters
still with their stand ins, the seasons still amaze
and the sex still crazes, the drugs still haze,
summer morning fogs still rooftop grazing,
the learning continuing
now, but none of it in phases.
Summer Fritz
The days are fast approaching,
we both know,
where the only thing you can do well
is lie in bed
with your hand on your penis
and wonder why your clothes are
and if,
if they were straight
during winter,
your pubic hair would be as summer swelter frizzed
as the hairs on your head.
we both know,
where the only thing you can do well
is lie in bed
with your hand on your penis
and wonder why your clothes are
and if,
if they were straight
during winter,
your pubic hair would be as summer swelter frizzed
as the hairs on your head.
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