Burning Down the House

Stitched together with two inch pipe.

Scaffolds welded with skin.

A tooth here, a loose finger there.

Steerage pressure fit

with glimmering coils of hair.

Saliva to grease the switch panel's buttons.

Depress, spring up, with a snap, the familiar 

clap of the shatterproof caps, protect

the finger nail toggles touched closed.

The grates and walls pitted and torn and replaced.

A prize toe trophy for a pressure failed hole,

to keep the air in, taped in place with a 

carved and aged sole.  Remember

the boarding party from five years ago?

The pirates and bounty hunter's muzzle glows?

The interdictors, the uniformed, the cloned,

and metal mated?  What memories.  What loves.

Alive with their blood.

Adrift, it is time to depart.  The outer rim home

to ice worlds and its blinking quiet eye,

a tear in time, a channel glitched tone, 

it is time to depart for the further reaches yards

and make everlasting alloys 

from what has grown.

You Are More Than a Map

"...they don't love you like I love you........."

and

vomit.  Violently.  Projectile it into
an upturned hat.

You are old.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

Stop it from happening again.  Do you see.

Vomit violently again.  Spill
is that a tooth sized piece of carrot

over the side.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

Stop it from happening again.  Do you see.

Vengeance.  Vengeance!  You were small.  You grew.
Vomit and do not miss the mitt.

Down the left pectoral.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

Bang.  Head against ceramic.  That cannot possibly
work.  Where is my hat?  Where is my hat!

Slick hands and magic tricks.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

Reverberations.  Time.  Space.  Vomit
like your vertebrae depend on it.

These are not your friends.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

EVACUATE!  EVACUATE!
PLEASE!

You've seen what they're doing to their kids.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO FOR THEM!
THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO FOR THEM!

Erase her.  Erasing her will.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job. 

I'll see you soon.  It is happening again.  Nine years
from now.  It will happen again to the person I love.

Kill her.

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

I will be suspect and examined.  There is no way and
THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO FOR THE KIDS!

I will. 

It is happening again.  You

had

one

job.

Leave her?  Leave me!  There is a way.
Create.  Show the way.

She will die.  As will her friends.

It is happening again.  You

have

one

job.

Focus.

Once a Day

Easy does it
easy go.

"Easy goes."

///One each day.

"Easy floes."

They told me that the creative writing program
at Carnegie Mellon University was not designed
to accommodate science fiction and was designed
to accommodate short form and long form real life
even though they flunked me through several classes
for having real life problems.

You've been warned.

Three absences and you have nothing to add

to the world.

You've been warned, I guess.  No one warned me
about the entire sci-fi thing,
but you would think
they would have a course
in short form fiction
taught by someone
who could think
through the gobbly gook
of technology and see the imagination
instead of being hung up on the difference between
millimeters and the design atop a
gourmet cup of coffee that is gooky in itself.

Anways.

Sixty thousand dollars latter.  I still dream about
interstellar cafes and heart break with nowhere to place it.
Wreckages of heartbreak and stories to tell and nowhere.
Professors that left me and trying to connect with them
and nowhere.
Linkages to the past and development and nowhere.
Growth and people I should be able to connect with
and nowhere.
Right where I started.  As if it never existed.  And Nowhere.

Adrift in space in the place where I left it.

Except.

If I wanted, I could track them down and kill them.

I have worked very hard on my skills.

I learned something while I was denied audience.

I worked very hard on my lethality.  Conflating time and
space.  If you refuse to speak to me, I will make time for
an audience.  I grew.  I grew in the vacuum of space to
become something of a nothing.  A shadow.  A worry.

You do not know me yet.  I cannot tell you how many
times.  Well, accepting a double ew was a black spot,
wasn't it?  A something to do.  I still would like to see
a jar with your teeth and the odor of the lounge stale coffee
still on them when the lid is unscrewed.

You have no idea what you did to me
to prove a point and preserve some sort of purity
in that class.  What was the worst you thought would happen?

You have no idea.  You have not the slightest inkling.






That is what makes me laugh to this day

Carnegie Mellon....  Carnegie....

I can find your names....  "he won't"  ....  a bad student....
pathetic....... automatic fail..... we can't........ the standard....

Every day I think about it, I am sickened.  To light fire
to the entire wing
would be a

joy.

Smoker 66

Hands touch shoulders and weight leans in
and he moved.
Hands touch shoulders and weight leans in
and I moved.
Nose to nose
glasses reflected in my eyes.
Nose to nose
eyes reflected in his glasses.
Ready to kill
if it is now
if today is the day
if this is how the movie ends
if this is the final show down.

Friends.  Shake.  Apologize for

I can't remember what I said

or why I attacked him
with sledgehammer words
he deflected.

The sword artist of verbal combat, swinging drunk.

Shame, tapped out a breath at a time,
regretting touching a man I've insisted on hugging because
handshakes are cheap and touching breast bones
and allowing someone to come so near
to force threat down their throat
like a rolled up magazine
is not the way
to approach
conflict.

Tapping time out
a breath a time
from the end of a
cigarette.  Wondering
what our next conversation will be (if there is one),
remembering the death threats
through eyes different and
the same,
the ashtray

has nothing for me
beyond the passage
of time and its
silly healing.
Apologies, genuine
have more legs.
Sobriety too.  Email
sent.  Wait for a reply
that may or may not
ping.

The Warrior's Code

My contract is my word and 

my word is a contract. 

Bonded and seamed. 

Money and ilk

 is nothing to me. 

My word is my bond and 

my bond is my word. 

As far as it goes, I go. 

As far as I go, it goes. 

The only currency.

A Pity Party

The nickle
didn't weigh much,
chipped from thumb.
It didn't make a sound against the wishing well walls
on its way to the pool
and silhouette expectant.
Ripples and a splunk.
Unlucky forever.
I know I could
make a
sound.

Detox

Watching a Japanese firebrand
whip up a dish and spit lyrically
sonorous of luck and hard work
while customers guffaw, I feel
handcuffed.  How do I not speak
fluently in.  Tapestries of fragments.
Yep.  800 words for yes in my
vernacular.  1100 words and
phrases for no.  Counting
inflections, of course.
Talking you down in the bathroom mirror: "I believe in"
panting heavy.
Other lives.
Other time.
A galaxy
far, far,
away.

Oh Quitter

Easy to sound
away tolls of loss,
flesh and soul,
to causes dear
with comforts all around
the storm battered
bluffs below the
jagged cliff's edge
scaled to a clap on the back
and a smile;
no more, no less.

Easy to shout
into sea frothed winds
the sacrifices
willing to blow
to reach the shores
across that deep
green black hungry chasm
with a friend beside
who knows
you cannot swim.

Easy to cry
until eyes bleed and teeth
crack clenched
over joining hells in which
so many have died
when your address
is not and
never was
on the invitation list.

Where was the passion,
the fly or fall dead trying,
the bluster and belly fire
when the time came to pass
to make up your mind
and you wilted and turned away?
Will it be there,
this bloodied sword struck to lightning charged air,
when the time comes to choose again?
Will this violent defense of life
vanish overnight or, easier, remain
silent and blind
until its moment, its chance, evaporates?

Lover's Spree

Sniffles.
Sniffles.
Addicts, we.
Six years older.
"So that's okay?"
I'm pretty sure it is.
The constructs be as they
Heart torn out and shown to me.
Cadence and glory and don't you dare
tell me what I needs.  "Can I be with you?"
A fresh razor is always fresh.  Tucked penis.
Remember the day I picked up a body
while it cried on a stoop five blocks
away from where it was supposed
to be and I shouted into a phone?
Circle the block and gasoline.
Fury and smoke and petty.
A show for the students
going to school in the
afternoon in Spring.
Wanting is flaw.
I love your's.
Do you
love my
own?

Patricide

A funny way
to think about
how water in the air
catching and bending light
when the sun rises over the hills,
500 miles and more away,
some light spilling
across the Allegheny's ripples,
is that it is one more day
and
one more day forgiven.

Winter Blind

By lamp, skin prickling in the air that cannot be warmer than 45 degrees, blow cupped palms warm.  Rub the oiled rag against the scratches in the helmet's visor gripped between knees where the holograms fold and scatter unreadable starburst.  This Summer, replace the whole damn thing.  Scratches fill and smooth, no cracks.  

Stand.  Joints protest.  Double over and stretch for cramps have no place in a day's work.  Nerves strain to return anything more than sub-zero tongues of flame along body side and vertebrae.  Caffeine pills and a cigarette lights, turning over twenty pound batteries wrapped and wrapped again in sun scorched black & orange insulation tape.  A main and a spare.

Torn and patched gloves, steel sewn caps on their knuckles, pocks and divots glint winked time.  Cuffs and seals, rubber beginning to harden and give, teeth of zippers blunt and hitch like they never did when they were arctic white, not gray.  Lights pass tests and relays too.  Switch checks and boards.  Screws and panels fix tight.

Drink breakfast slowly.  Vitals webbing harness.  Sleeved underwear and pressure suit.  Heat harness unplugged and donned.  65 degrees is the tropics this time of year.  The commercial featured a talking tree frog.  Radio check produces the necessary channels.  The volume sequencer functions just.  Rub eyelids still heavy, still cold, still not ready.  The recycled air headaches inside the suit await beyond the airlock in Winter's hard light, teeth pop as they grate: "let's go."

Valentines Day

After Elastica's "Miami Nice"

I want to make you run.
I am.
Powered by a sun,
a system,
cased in ice.
Caged for reason.  Caught in perpetual collision.
Run run run.
Run run run.
Run run run.

Tracers 5

Once you hear
you can't unsee.
For the thrill;
willing to peek
around a corner.

Polyhedron

As a child
Grading papers
You are bad
You are good
There are rules.

Why aren't doors larger?
Why aren't appliances smaller?
Why is the standard so?

Average human.
Average hands.
Average height.
Average weight.
Average machines?

///disconnect.

You are good.
You are not bad.
Grading papers.
As a child.
There are rules

Why are there doors?
Why aren't appliances a little smaller?
The standard is so.

I won't go back.
I can't go back.
I will not go back!
I cannot go back.

Walk Like an Angel (junkyard mix)

I'm still getting used.
The hammers fall
and heels kllonk.

Onward to the sun.
The powder mixed wrong.
Stepped on again; Gods damned it.

Films slide by
the way skins peel off of lips.
My glasses.  My glasses!  My glasses!
Have you ever been stranded
two miles offshore
to swim for your life if you want to?

A horse and a slay
to carry the day.
Grandma was senile when she died.

Something so beautacious
so silly gorgeous and sporting
so fresh, you ragamuffin!
"Yeah" is not "Yes".

Or was that Marie.
Or was that Harvey.
Envy the extended families and
burn them to death that
you may collect their bones
if you deign to take the time to know.

Tea, with a dash of
concentrated pet milk from a can and
two cubes, decaf of course.
A walk to the salon and a
car ride that stinks
of the carpets tread plastic shoes.

Plants grow, windows shut, insects
stuck to the laundry tree.
G.I. Joes and laughter and matchbox cars
and tiny apples and fear
hanging in the corner of every room.
Grandfather clock chime.
Twitching blue nailed toes.
Why didn't the nerve sever.
56 books beneath the coffee table.
Mirror wall for space for what.
Dead dog statue.
What was its name.
Why are the plants not outside.
The garage is packed.
What is that smell
inside of my backpack?
I don't want to sleep on the floor again.
Is she going to die?
The clocks are unfit.
Where are the encyclopedias.
The chairs are many.
The jokes are thin.
Be a man.
Bury your secrets.

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.

Smoker 58

The moon is an ember
  wrapped in rolled blankets of dust
          between the stars.


          Lightyears.
              Colonies.
                               Flags.






                   Coats of arms
                   and armor
                    against the planets weather.


















                   We will survive.

                       A new colony.



Ankle high grass.  Camera lens whirring.
Battery Power!
Listening to the sound of double doors
behind me
watching the moon set
wishing there was a wolf like me
somewhere on Europa.
The moon,
wrapped in coal clouds and simmering,
surging,
emulating a sun.  I would swallow you.
I can.

                     Teeth gnash.

               Lashes blink.


 

















Wewillbehomeinfortywinks.

By The River

Fog.

Fog.  Summer is going to hurt you.

At the pier we.  Ghost weather. Street

light.   Lamppost?  The scent of leave's

aspiration that only comes when the day is

turning.   The dark forest.  The blue pines.

Ghost weather.  Legends of witch and bed time
s

stories come true.  Candles between boughs

to set light to air

is all you need to be safe

they said.

Thick air.  FOG.  Wet air.  FOG! Please

stay with me.  Birds chirp as usual

do not be fooled

in the pines and woods there is only trouble.

In the dark and the fog, blue tint,

mist enveloping everything

outside of the range of whatever torch you make,

don't go!

It is foggy outside and when you can smell

the shores of the Allegheny from here

carried across senses,

its weight in every breath,

don't go.

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.

Tooth and Nail

On pain of death
the line you cross
with ease.

In all seriousness;  you will die.

I have no misgivings about cutting
the head from a bear.

I have been trained, schooled, and practiced.

It is
nothing
to me.

Keep your yards.

Your camp.

Your one million and one jokes.

Your one million and two.

And your stories of the battles and
reckless bits you performed
when you were my age.

I will have your teeth.

Dreamed reasons.

Thank you for flying
tiger airlines,

mind the plastic,

we will be landing shortly.