It Is Time to do More Things

The white of the waves
The glow of the dock
The passing of time
As woodticks talk
The melting of rock
In a hot sea
Burned by dog flesh
Torn by fleas.

You Told Me to Die, Now I Can't Think Straight.

I am giving it all that it's worth
To crack through the bones of a child's birth
And wondering how the fish manage to sleep at night
With all that moving 'round it just don't seem right
Now I'm reflecting on those things that you said to me
I guess they weren't that bad, but they truly bled me
I don't think there's anything I can do about it...

Now you will find me up against a wall
Now you will find me crawling down the hall
Now you will find me on the tile floor
Now you will find me at the beach, wondering...

How the fish manage to sleep at night?
With all that moving 'round it just don't seem right
I watch the waves loving the shore
And wish that I knew how to love more
Now you're trying to take me home
And I would rather be left alone.
You'll drag me back, and I'll comply
As you lovingly tell me that this time things will go right
But I just want to walk into the waves and see
How the fish manage to sleep at night
Turned upside down, or softly floating upright?
I want to be a heavy ball that doesn't bob for air
And not your girl with blue eyes and long hair

I'll never stop thinking, wondering
How the fish sleep down there
Then I wake up, gasping for air.

How Strange to Think that My Thinking is Wrong.

I fit against you like the powder inside of light bulbs 

Like veins inside of heart pulp

Like rings underneath knuck-les.

Rita and George

     He kept alternating between his palms and the tops of his hands, looking them over, his heart rising and sinking... he had done so much. The things those hands that stood alien-like before him had done; acts of love, violence, survival, repetition, praying, grieving, wringing, writhing, caressing, torquing. And then his heart sank again... they looked so old and worn and tired. They looked like a couple of people who just wanted to lay down somewhere warm. He could see the blue underneath, the splotches of whiteness around the red and pink, the thin little winding scars. And over all of that, in patches here and there, the incandescent shimmering, the powder from his job at the light bulb plant. That was all that he could do for her anymore. Be dependent, be repetitive, be the same and do the same thing and bring home the same amount of money each week. He used to do so much more for her. But now that was all he could do.


     After looking at his hands for five more minutes, he shivered. He abruptly looked away from them and went to lay down in bed. Rita was shuffling around in the kitchen. He dreamt of walking through the field out back and seeing a girl in a blue ruffled checkered dress, her hair moving with the same timing as the waist-high grass. There was someone he could love; someone he could be different and new and unpredictable for. Someone who wouldn't know that he had skipped work just by looking at his hands, someone who wouldn't know that he had skipped lunch just by seeing his face, someone who wouldn't know anything about him at all but would want to learn. And he could redefine himself; he wouldn't have to tell her the routine that he lived. He could even lie.

A foot in the Grave.

1/25/11

 I've had a foot in a grave and a fish on a wire
 And when I pulled both out I was none the wiser
 My eyes are all sore and I've become quite the bore
 And my back and my spine are circlin'

 I'd drop everything to be a fish on your hook
 And to roll around in your early grave
 Because the look on your face is still the one you gave
 When we first met, and you were so shy

But my thoughts swing like they're on a string
And I always wonder what I might be missing
And my soul wanders off into wide blue fields
And it's hard to keep it tethered to you and your coffin

I live in a place all gray and green
The lifeless souls are like nothing I've seen
And the temptation to taste different types of lives 
Keeps me wandering further down a rabbit trail

Sometimes I think it'd be so nice to live a simple kind of life on a path that's beaten black and blue; I'd beat that path to death with you.

I want to be an old tree with you, when my mind is sad and soft I want to speak to you
 But sometimes I just want your lips to grow over with vines.

Coffee Table

    She held his face in her hands like it was the whole world. But he didn’t mean anything to her. The other girl was pouring a drink in his mouth while she cradled his head. They took care of him as if he were some vulnerable and sick king. They nursed him through his drunken night and left him alone and sleeping by morning. 

    She remembers going outside, crumpling by the white fence and just screaming out crying in heaving, soggy sobs. The white fence and the bright sun made her imagine that she must be in high contrast and that her face would be like a yawning space of flesh color with great black holes heaving and gasping in the sun, like an enraged and bleached tadpole of a person.

    Because, you put a plate down on your coffee table and then you light a candle so you don’t waste matches every time you take a hit and then it’s burning so long that a weak spot forms in the side and the dam breaks and the wax pours down onto the table and then you start playing with the wax while watching tv and you’ve thrown the burnt match and pieces of wax onto the plate and then the plate becomes just for wax and burnt ends of things and then you realize you live in a house with two plates and that later you’re going to be cradling a man’s head as if it were the whole world and you sink and you go outside and cry with a wide open mouth like a gasping tadpole in the sun.  

To a Dying Woman.

I thought it was when we were young
    That we had to hear the words...

 "Where does it hurt...
       Where does it hurt?"

Ocean Floor

And they told us…
that his footsteps went straight into the water
and no one followed after
except a ghost called lust

And we wanted to follow
we wanted to know his name
why was he ashamed?
What didn’t he want us to know

They saw his body floating belly-up
and we could tell by his eyes
that he had seen the ocean floor

And then we knew
he lusted after what he didn’t know
and what he didn’t know was that lust followed him
into the water

And it pushed him under
and it made his eyes bulge
and it made him go further
even though his insides did explode
his arms still propelled him
to see the beast beneath
the great amorphous behemoth
that encompassed the underneath
of every drop of water
every counted sin
his eyes saw the droplets
evaporate beneath its fins

As it moved the world with each breath
beneath its body lied the place of death

The fires eating the flesh

We wanted to go into the water
and see the breathing floor
see how it pushed and pulled
the waves across the shore

See how it coaxed and taunted
the dreams of all man
see how it deeply wanted
to crawl upon the land.


This poem was also featured on Randomly Accessed Poetics on 04/01/2012

A Street for the Dead

Grave News: Vagabond

I can't sleep with all this sound
And I can't eat with the birds around
When I see the water I want to go drown
When I'm up high I want to hit the ground

I've got a plan but it's full of holes
And I've got a soul that is growing old
I've got places I don't need to go
Patches for my clothes that I need to sew

I have scars scars scars
On my chest through to my heart
And I have words words words
They fly away with the birds
and are never ever heard
I have plans plans plans
But they have no legs to stand
And I have pain pain pain
And it is such a drain
To let it go again


The sun is setting on me


I have beds all over town

Splinters

I feel lack luster
And dusted
Dusty white plates busted
On the floor and spreading splinters
A porcelain powder dreary winter
Working its way into the grain of the wooden floor
And now we can't walk with bare feet anymore

Featured on SYWZine on April 11th. 

Paranoia for Dead People

What if it took off my hand
What if it took off my arm
It smells like antiseptic and I'm selfish
It's grating to go through the seasons
And it's tiring to walk to the end of the street
My stop is next and I'm glad
Because I'm gagging from the dentist office smell
Even the smallest sounds are ringing in my ear now.

...

The people who are the best at taking love are the worst at giving it back. The kind of person who is so easy to love and just absorbs everything you gush out like a sponge… they hide it away somewhere. Like a rodent, they have some secret pocket in their cheek where they stow all the love away and slowly eat it over time until they get sick of it and, without ever giving any of it back, they decide they have had their fill.

Paraplegic

Dust in my throat and no one knows
Spider webs winding up my toes
And in my ears faint whispers glow
My eyes leak and green plants grow

Am I a ghost?
I cannot feel
Am I a vapor?
I am not real
Nothing feels a part of me
I could be floating on the sea
Am I solid?
Or am I mist?
Not cold or hot
Or that or this

I could be nothing but a faint consciousness

I could be something, but I might not exist

And if I don't, I wouldn't know
There's no one here to tell me, so...