From crimson crests it crept
Under crescent moon and waves

From cragged depths it clicked
And left behind a veil of flames

A thousand tendrils billowed
From its mouth glowing grey

And once upon the earth, it stared
And quietly went away

        Like a table of glass, the ocean was still

        It hooked its claws in the base of the world
     
        Inhaled a thousand aquatic souls

        And drifted back into the cold


-2008

Fucking like Bears in a Cave

You don't have to do anything, you know. 

Caves are for bears but it seems really romantic to live in one with someone else, just one person. Things might get tense, all that sleeping on the ground and difficulty with food preparation, but just like with anything else it takes getting used to. 

Would you eat brain? Not like, a person, but if you caught something and ate it and let's say you've been living in a cave for a while now, long enough to be kind of forgetting words and the stuff that you used to do, and you caught something and were going to eat it, every part, as much as you could, do you think you might get to a point eventually where you eat brain? Cooked or uncooked? 

No I couldn't do that, I don't think, ever. I think about it and I can almost sense the texture, in my hand and then on my lips and then between my teeth and then on my tongue, and that's about where I can feel my throat closing up, gagging, I don't think it will let it pass. I can't stop thinking that a brain would taste electric, in a way; tinny, metallic, pulsing no matter how long it has been dead. All of those intangible things are floating in a brain, you know, emotions and feelings and memories and longing and hurt. I think a brain would taste metallic, electric. Even though it's soft. 

 Then what would you do with the brains, from all of the things that you catch and eat? Leave them in their skulls? Because skulls are good for decoration or bowls or to top a walking stick or other things, but you would have to take the brain out first. 

I think I would bury them, maybe even make up some sort of ritual, because it seems that important. Something that big should be in the ground. 

That big? 

It's small, yeah, but like I said, it's pulsating, it's brimming over with little floating orbs that you can't see or feel or know or talk to, there's so much in it, it should go in the ground. To help it stop, wind it down, ground it. 

So you would find your own things to do. 

Yeah, because you don't have to do anything. You could go live in a cave, it would work. Or something else. That's only one idea, and there's probably at least an infinity. 

Would you live in a cave with me? 

Why wouldn't I? 

Because you don't know me.

But I don't have to, I don't have to do anything. 'Knowing' is just another one of those untouchable orbs, it's not even something that you can pick up and eat. 

Then let's go live in a cave. 

Alright. I'm not doing anything else today. 

47300 Vine st. There's a lattice arch in front of my house, nothing's growing on it, and my house is blue. 

    He stood outside of her house and suddenly couldn't remember a second of his thirty minute walk there. Was he going to actually knock on her door? He already was and she was already opening it and her face was flush and her hair was dusty and long and curled up here and there in little wisps. She looked bored and her eyes were wide open and the pupils were kind of lost. 

    "Why did you trust me to come over here?" 

    She barely lifted one shoulder in a shrug "you said you wouldn't eat brain and you had a lot of good reasons for it, it made you seem un-dangerous." 

    He didn't feel the way that she described him, he felt like he was someone that people should stay away from, but he felt that from a place of pity for himself. He was tall in a too-tall way and overweight and had his hair grown long in a way that made it obvious that he spent too much time alone. 

    "I made some sandwiches," the girl turned abruptly with the words still hanging from her mouth and she trotted into the kitchen, leaving the front door open. He knew that he should go in, that she was expecting him to but was too awkward or undersocialized to actually extend an invitation, and that if he didn't come in it would probably make her feel weird or like she had been inconsiderate. But he couldn't so he sat down on the cement step and just stared inside her home through the open door. There was a rug on the floor that was white and red and just looked like a giant doily, the whole thing had been knit by hand and was kind of like a circle-star with lots of small points. It was spread out on the floor in front of a rocking chair, the rocking chair had a tool box sitting in it. She came back and sat down in front of him, on the inside of the door frame, with two plates and handed him one while staring straight at him. "You look like my ex," she said suddenly, and stared at him harder. "I do?" he said carefully. "Yeah, it's weird because you have the same name as him too and so I was already thinking about it, and then you got here and you look like him and it made me wonder, did I make you look like that by thinking about it so much? I mean, you didn't exist to me, visually, until you got here, so maybe I somehow formed what you looked like as you came into existence, my existence." She forcefully shoved half of her sandwich into her mouth, pushing down the corners with her index fingers as she held the sides, and tore it by moving her head to the left, without using her teeth. Before chewing, she looked at him again and whispered through the bread "I'm sorry I said that you look like my ex..." but he was already crying, unable to choke it back. 

    He had found her on the forum for that fantasy book that they both read, just like his older brother had told him about before. And he knew that she liked to have vague and macabre conversations with anyone who would start one with her and he knew that she had met his brother because they started talking on there and she asked him over to her place the same day even though he was joking about being a necrophiliac. He just saw it as something easy, something that he had insider information on and why shouldn't he use it... he wanted to fuck her and he didn't care that his brother was dead, or maybe he wanted to because his brother was dead. But she was just a strange girl, not a pornography and not a way to be closer, in betrayal, to his brother or to anger him out of the ground. He wiped off his face with his sleeve and awkwardly hurried his large frame to its feet. "Thanks," and he started staggering away through the front yard, to the black street lit up with the whiteness of the sun. She got up, managing to kick up both of their plates as she did. He turned around to the crashing sound of ceramic against wood and she was running at him, in front of him, she stopped hard and looked own at her feet and tugged on his sleeve. "I'm lonely." 

    Her bed was like an old woman's... a bed ruffle and a cheap, over-embroidered, faded peach-colored comforter with the stuffing inside all in knots and lumps. Everything matched. It looked barely lived in. Everything about her was like dust. Even the way she acted, the way her face contorted, the way she didn't sweat even though it was hot out, even though he was shaking her body. His large frame felt perfect against her smallness and he fucked her with rage, with sadness, with self pity; he fucked her so that she wouldn't feel so alone, every arched movement felt like he was filling something within both of them at once, some sort of warmness was running through the blood that wasn't there just before he threw her down on that old woman's bed and she curled and cooed like a pile of disturbed dust. All of her clothes had slipped softly off, even with fistfuls of her hair he could barely feel any of it, her skin was dry and cold and he was filled with an overwhelming need to make her warm and wet so he pushed his palm sternly against her chest, pinning her down, his lips drew together and eyebrows lurched and teeth pressed hard as he pushed into her. 

    He left with an understanding that he should come back the next day, though he couldn't say why. She didn't say that... but it felt like that and he wanted to assume. He went to knock on her door and the impact of his fist pushed it open. He paused, unsure, then wrapped his hand around the wood and pushed it further, edging his eyes over, looking in. She wasn't there, the toolbox on the rocking chair was gone. He stepped inside, placing his feet carefully, making no noise. He stopped at the empty book shelf that sat against the wall opposite the rocking chair and ran his finger along the top of it, collecting a small pile of grainy, smokey dust. He stared at it, longingly, then took both of his hands and placed them palm down on top of the bookshelf, at opposite ends, then drew them towards each other, pushing together a growing pile of dust. He closed his eyes and thought... "she couldn't live in a cave with me. The water would destroy her." He absently played with the dust, flipping over his hands and coating them, like coating meat in a pile of flour. They could stick together, easily, but they couldn't live in a cave, or near the ocean, or even have a pond in their backyard. That's when he remembered that his brother had drowned, and he suddenly saw the bond between his brother and her. And he realized that he could be less afraid of death with her; at least he'd be safe from dying like his brother. 

    He stood there for an hour with his palms leaning against the short book shelf. He sat down in the corner opposite the front door, which was still slightly ajar, and watched it shakily grow dark outside. There was suddenly a scent, familiar and sharp, wet concrete, soggy dirt. He heard rain steadily splattering on the leaves of the shrubs just outside the door. It was dark enough that he couldn't see at all, but he could hear. Hear the world growing warm and wet, hear himself breathing alone, the sound of one person in a dark place, huddled in the corner of a cave. 

stream of consciousness before the sunrise

Goven the hoves
fleem pockeled filled gloves
grafted to crushed crums
slalled in deep coriander crust
enough for every returned gone giver
to given lost locks
lost metal locks
lost and rusted and shattered and cold
clocks that are
slotted
knotted and tree like
cornered and frusted
turse nunch
coral callouses formed
from fists made too harsh
from digging into them own
from nails cruising through skin and curling
cloasting out
through raw knockles
cunderned and between bone and out
murky and foggy raw
straw piles to sleep in
don't know home
cloy poudered prush
frush
crush me under it all
reduce me to dust

Portrait Stream of Consciousness 2006

I just sucked so much
helium that I think my brains turned dry
it's cracking into powder and
coating fish for fry
Smoothing down the creases and cracking at the seams
But I know too much to have known what it's like to dream
my words are just a scream
my eyes are just a beam
They reach out into darkness hoping to find something
that is what it seems

My hands are just claws
my tEEth always Gnaw
My heart is looking frantically
for something to clench in its jaws

dead ocean air

stream of consciousness for the dead

cavernous caves
of coreander copper
coalescing carefully
to coal filled decanters

Climbing a quill for all of time
trying to drip out the perfect line
quietly quivering, quickly shivering
laying still in the ink, while I think

You're not beautiful
You are two lines in the sand
An old, shaking hand
Precisionless piles of dust
Unnerved unevenness
And when it's hot outside your face melts into everything
And when it's dark outside, I can see every hard pocked line
That has ever refused to smile
But you got old anyways.

What it was

Before it was sexual frustration and tension, it was a need to play outside. To run around at night and throw yourself against the world and defy the oncoming dark before being called in. To feel the temperature change on the surface of your skin, to skin your knees, to make your muscles hurt.

Before it was a need to compulsively touch and lean in and breathe heavy, it was a drive to dig in the earth and wipe off rocks and tear up pieces of grass.

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.