Auralport

Put It Back to Pieces

In this halfway weather

and bad company, mapped out

with aluminum cans like push pins

left as equal parts warning

signs and forensic chalk,

it's easy to mislay

the markers where

tiny ambitions wait

to die and wheeze still like

rats ankle deep in glue and cardboard,

but tuning an imagined acoustic guitar

and halfway tucked with

pen and paper lurking like

stop signs on a downhill blind sweep

along the head first

uphill road to sleep,

there is a quiet

to the air wrestling through the space heater

and a pleasure to the unrealized

cramps and rages of

navigating so many

parts and pieces

with hands already whipped

and fumbling and labor sore

and any single one

a crystalline choking hazard

waiting for the touch of tongue and gum

to come painfully undone.

I'm Sorry You're Gone

I'm sorry you're gone and

I'm sorry I can't pay you a decent tribute

without sounding

selfish and small and

misguided.

You were better than that

as far as I know

as far as I've been able to see

from the center of my self destroying radius

through the distance I've kept up toward most

out of necessity

and unaware that you were probably made

out of tougher, lighter, stuff

that wouldn't mind a perpetual meltdown's heat.

I'm sorry you're gone and

I'm sorry I can't pay you a decent tribute

without sounding

selfish and small and

misguided.

I am selfish and small and

bent and the times we didn't have are

screaming in my ears and

I hate you

for leaving so soon and

I hate me

for not knowing

if I should have come closer or

if I was, to your nearest friends, more than close enough

I Guess

All this time I have been looking for
something Shel said I would find
if I kept on rolling
but really I just want
someone who will go out
at the stupidest hours
to see if the lump in the street
I spied two minutes ago
is a dead raccoon
or a dead possum

and then poke it with a stick.

Furnace (I Loved You)

...and somewhere inside
behind the tongue and cheek
beneath the eyes caked and staring
above the wretch and tumble rough
between the bars and aluminum cladding
amongst the hells and palisades
before the glass and animals caged
hung from star points and butcher nails
floating the chum on oar and skin sail
fuller than an honest birth's hips and
torn in more twos than the same
apart from the ash and the iron poker
separate from the destroying ember and
more than the flame
beyond the guile and less than the rage
toward the hymn and
under the quiet water
inside the blood wet threads pulled tight
divorced from the passage of
time into night
riding the whorls and ruing the day and
touching the edges of blue and yellow fire
the blade resting ready
in the tented pyre.

There is beating the heart
of a mother.

Stew Bones and Paperclip and Wax Card

There was a moment in the hallway
walking from the podium of the bathroom mirror
to the safety relative of the bed
when if an eye could look with speed
the darkness lit partial by the badness of moon
light could be seen singing as it bled.

The 3:15 Mary could be if
through broken baby veins in eyeball murk
a vision can be swatched and tesseled
seen to dance in empty glory
like a nine winged bird attempting flight
in telephoto silence or the span of hair legged spider
falling down a frictionless tube
toward a torture splayed windpipe.

There was a moment in the hallway
when fingers closed on a cold door knob
when if an eye could look with speed
the door jam wretched and gut checked
and swallowed back disgust.

The space between the floor and corner
coughed up a sound of phlegm
that landed on the tip of brows and dripped
sullen around sockets to ear lobes end
before closing tight and resuming watch
like a man too old to be
pretending to sleep.

The television is idle
when eyes are there to watch.
The radio calls quietly,
but does not do well with names.
Away through windows moisture builds
and plays it's barrel noted games.
Electricity flows and charges not a thing
and the pulse to eardrums is
not the blood in veins.

Twelve hours before
daylight shone and quieted so many things.
It's not the dead that rise by night
or the fingers of quantum error
and rubber stamped souls
that grip the skin of necks.
It's not the forgettable lives that want
or the unfed and toothed that come to seek.

The kept empty and filled liter bottles of
brown specked urine and pots of
chewed beef bones. The drawer of
greased paper shreds and single bloodied paper clip.
The pot of dried water and shred of onion skin.
The bits of thread picked
from the underside of a tongue and
the sheet of butcher paper still balled and stowed
in the mitt of a favored cap.

There was a moment in the hallway
when the floor board skittered like a pair of
raven mice through a slit in the street lit paint.
A moment where the eyes could feel
the gap where reason can never reach
and in that field of points and long stemmed flowers
sprouted from mass graves
a knowing can descend and age
and seal the parts of a body's nerve
and teach it ever to speak.

Question Marks 2

Dear Dr. B.,

I've been forcing myself
to go outside
despite the fact that the riflemen
across the alley wait daily to
turn my head into a kicked in October squash and
I've decided that suicide is not worth it
because it could lead to me
becoming a vegetable and
leave me in the hands of
Christian psychopaths
who will undoubtedly
take my songs and
rewrite them with the love of Jesus and
the help of a search and replace macro and
I haven't cut myself lately either
because I don't want to get an infection and
grow a fungus like last time and
I can't answer telephones and
greet strangers
with bandages rooted to my face and
cotton blossoms in my mouth.
I'm making progress, I think but
can you please pencil me in for the weekend.
I really need to talk to you
about my developing plant matter phobia.

Mr. D.

Friends Don't Let Friends