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.

Growing Up

 The bottles for unborn art projects

and night inspiration and dust collectors

and pages of rolling papers and gifts

to no ones and holidays and craft

festivals.  What was that?  The wind.

Still schizophrenic.  Still insomnia?

Still, somehow, drinking.

The thick

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. 

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.

Outside My Window

Pulling the curtain aside before checking the weather report 
to see white whorls of wind, crystalline tap, by the wide angle pane. 

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d to Summer's wistful post cards.

Pulling the curtain aside before checking the weather report 
to see knots of lightning and hear the miles high rap of hail
as the gutters collect ice and leaves whimper underneath night's blanket.

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d to Summer's wistful post cards.

Pulling the curtain aside before checking the weather report
to see the deep orange shine of afternoon sun, reflected from the passerby
along highway lanes close enough to whisper wet tired cement.

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d to Summer's wistful post cards.

Pulling the curtain aside before checking the weather report
to see black winged blots of birds above each chimney across the street.

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d to Summer's wistful post cards.

Pulling the curtain aside before checking the weather report
to see skins evening aspiration crystallized along the wide angle's edges,
pain pricking my forced heat chapped and smiling lips.

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d to Summer's wistful post cards.

Pulling the curtain aside before checking the weather report
to see formations of geese crossing amber lit contrails
frozen in a sky clear and weighty, an entire day's fistful, bubble chambered.

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d to Summer's wistful post cards.

Crisp and shining gloss printed with trees as green as the river

water, glistening easy wave caps, a rod and reel and bicycle.  

"Wish you were here!"

Winter has finally R.S.V.P.d.

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.

Daylight and Large Weapons

Bombing through the Highland Park bridge at speeds
inappropriate for braking while rain dimples the river
darkening below and allowing the belch of exhaust
to sing a death for me

Brake.

Windshield wipers clap quietly while music wrestles
with the burble and shake.  Old truck bluer blues than
river water.  Garbled tail lights wink, bumper smooches
greetings and forgotten names

Go.

Sunset obscured by clouds racing northeast  The east,
the east, the east!  Marry Poppin's magic bag is about
the size of a full truck bed, at least.  Maybe more
maybe less.  They do both fly

Brake.

Turning slowly, turning faster, lazy lazy lazy.  A hop,
skip, and a few turns away.  Home.  Work.  Home.  Work.
Off to see the hillfolk to organize their lives.  Home to
see the kinfolk to reprioritize.

Mary Poppins

drove a truck;

her umbrella flight

was lies.