Too Drunk To Down Curb (for Zach)

I was turnt, barging into railings toe stubbed and thirsty. We saw this big bird stride and waddle, mallard red cloak, black tights goose down slick, golden buckle on her ostrich hips.

Behind her a brown fox. Pockmarked cheeks and fine black hair shimmering in grease, stumbling around the birds tail feathers in a drunken figure eight.

Crouched over hand cut spuds drizzled in chipotle ola listening to Zach discuss the merits of truffle sauce and white fish batter I said.

"Tell me your name"

"Lark" she replied

I half cocked my smile and pointed at the fox.

She slow spun her eyes and spat introductions. Knots twisted my diaphragm as he reached out grasping; I mirrored his moves. I wanted to pull him in,inhale his clothes and brush his chin with my finger tips.

We high fived instead.

The beautiful creatures forgot us and stalked on toward the doe legged monsters in referee stripes spilling out of our towns most arsenic heavy watering hole.

We sat up stream and watched the refuse pour, filled up on meat, too drunk to down curb.

Always a Beacon (for Amy)

Jogging in place

naked

trying to regain the feeling in my earlobes, my cock, my nipples.

A snowflake pushed on a stainless steel breeze flutters towards my iris.

I plant my feet to watch it flux in and out of focus

ignoring the push mower shutter

winding up in my diaphragm.

The snowflake was a tiring beauty

Terribly similar

Cold.

Always a beacon of cold.

My joints quake like mantle

and spread  like divergent plates,

chemical heat splitting their natural boundaries like magma whipped and frothing

The thin cloud from my breath appears again.

Always a beacon of life

I feel  an icy burn like my body forgot it's senses. I squint, expecting to taste the black sky.

Running  in place tiered, naked,  trying to regain the warmth in my arms, my lungs, my heart.

A flurry, pushed on a gust like an ice hook, rushes towards my panting tongue.

Always cold

Always a beacon of warmth.

Treadmill (for you)

I didn’t think of you when I wrote this, but it’s got your musk, your scent devoted to it. The kind that makes some flash points of synapse your image in my flesh, my mind, that thing we can’t grasp like shaking our own hands.  You’ve got enough colour to finger paint your breaths in counter shades and micron lengths but complement each gasp

And you,

are a cold mountain breeze, you’re the A.C. in early spring on my wet back after bad dreams. You shook me up, running tread-eyes and milling my side eyes for quips. Now my bloated bodies beat, hard, bruised, hemorrhaging. All puse and olfactory felonies . Small vains off-world-blue and arteries rising to the crust, quaking my basalt surface; building gullies where fat stretches

And me,

I want your warmth, I want the radiator burns on my cheeks from your canvas frame shoulders. And I’m not water bound but ask me, I will be your loon. And I ain’t tryna simp but speak and I’ll eat myself through till my dentin grinds on bone and air hums past my wounds. I want your mark. My trace on your cloak, or never do but write it in a poem, in a song, in a joke cause,

We are ideas, bit map stacks on harddrives, and you may never know that this

is from me. And if you never were again this message would outlive me, from my fingers tips to your eyes and somewhere in a server farm until the servers die.

Pacifica part 1 (for Ania Jany)

Vellus hairs lay flat, matted fields are sparse and bowed away.

Foundation caked like tears.

and almost a flood.

The moment that you almost cry, the anti-podal moon spins into the near horizon

and pulls in saline tides.

“You know, the waves are storms off shore, not gravity”’

But yeah, you did, and I recant this daydream-memory where every strand flutters

and I, hold your waist.

“It’s just a phantom, the sun set,

made by curvatures in the air stream.

And your futures not in the ending it’s in the rise; it’s to the east.” I think you said.

We random walked these sands and never met, just gazed,

out west

to sea,

but only caught shore and scuttled waves tugged at your feet

my soles.

I watched the rheum

build up in the corner and glitter back with each half saunter.

“We’re trapped” I said

“In cyclones, and sometimes sail tandem”

“and sometimes sail past, pushed by torrents out at churning water”

and sometimes bays are tidal pools from bowsprit cliffs

I stayed and watched the jet black ocean melt into the sea.

You saved a life

you were an anchor threading back

mending lost and washed up creatures, just like me.

LIfe till Then (for Andrea Washington)

Behind the house where I was raised there’s a concrete bunker sprinkled in an industrial mosaic of tacky 1970’s living room gravel furnishing.

I watched my brothers on the roof jumping spigots and water mains with invisible alien dressage horses until Erick turned on the forcefield causing Kandy to trip and fall. We were up in arms and armed ourselves with lava bombs and light sabers. Erick couldn’t breath, we ran and cried and tears led grown ups galloping down the hill to save him.

A quarter mile west of the street where I was raised there’s an open field (dry grass in may,mud in january) nudged between the ox-bow of an inner city creek and a grove of oily eucalyptus trees.

We did cartwheels through the grass clippings while the children prayed. At lunch our knees were dirty but theres were godly and I stared at the mud stains in there tan uniform khakis and wondered what god saw in the chloroplast smears that stained their legs that he didn’t see in mine.

Two towns east of the place where I was born there’s a corner store across the street from a liquor store though they both sell cigarettes and lotto tickets, and liquor.

My dream car fumed and paced black circles into the AME asphalt. Inward acceleration stressed the hinges (made in Japan, assembled in Fremont) and our dark locks flowed through roils of white smoke. Someone on that block, behind drawn curtains and prison bars, phoned for help but no one came.

Two days south of the state where I was made there’s five brick rooms with sunken pine floors and palmetto skeletons piled under the boards.

Quiches of Kush (for Maggie Grimason)

When I was small my mama took me up  the river bank where the old drunks hooted salty words at peanut farmers coming from the countryside. She gave me a fishing line and told me to wrap it round my shoulder up to my wrist, placed an old rust stained treble hook in my hand and said "tie that hook on boy and if you tug it just right, and you right with god, there's a quiche in there ".

Mama used to tell us about the quiche, about the oil dipped crust golden as an autumn cottonwood, about the egg whites so fluffy you just as much wanna lay on it as eat it. But it was always the spinach that got me “so green it’s black” she said.

Mama said spinach gives you strong teeth and long hair but it gives you back that myrtle too. She said we used to be green. That we was so rich with the life of the forest, the plains, the mountains, the sea that we was green like midnight; but they was color blind and to them the deep forest hue of our skin was black, so that’s what they called us. And she told us how they took all the black folks and squeezed us out to make money, and that's why money looks like ferns and evergreens.

When I was tall I’d battled some rainbow trout, wrestled some blue tailed lobster, and even tangoed with a portuguese man o’ war (and not the jellyfish). Now I’m small but that quiche never bubbled up outta that brine and never blessed me with that warm stringy cheese. And on those thick nights when I lie between the splinters, on these old docks, I can smell ‘em bakin’ in those deep coal ovens. And if god is good, when i lay down, there’s a quiche in it.

Future Earths ( for Lauren Kostelnick)

Oceans empty, in a billion years as the sun swells and boils every drop into the clouds the seas will drain in

My inner ear sways till I’m upside down, tumbling to the ceiling; late at night, when our thoughts congeal and trap us, twisted.

Summits wilt, sheared by air like warm breath flows over ice each grain will dance in splendid chaos, building islands from aborted earth

A million threads kink to their root and swirl from my scalp. They feed from memory, stack themselves in towers, and push out ,spinning.

Life stops, long from here but still too soon, the dying gasp of bloated stars expels our skin and rains in hell from everywhere above

They have edges, these people, they have nails and barbs and splinters and little jagged parts that hide in the face of smooth surface.  I’ve been cut so much, so bruised, beaten, humiliated.

Slow crush, glaciers roll out troughs and creatures swim through desert rocks, recede and leave a tangled swamp.

There is a time when these jagged edges dull. and we’ve all died to see it.

Born into teeth (for Lee Ann )

Keep edge on those incisors with the flap of your tongue,

the fresh meals coming.

You're a carnivore, loose from your pack;

red stained matte,

calves hydraulic, jute high

on the hunt.

Regrets an herbivore, grazing the lichen (dried up) on our backs.

Twisted drift wood horns wrap jaws and you’re low

but she's privy and monsters blink.

I don’t need to tell you, but I do,

“drag limbs, hide your smoke, let it convulse” cause,

I’m a carnivore, sucking you thin

lips pricked on talons, claws recede.

My sick need to injure as much as be hurt.

Instinct.

Dig paws through my jugular,

press reverse.

Am I a cannibal, shucking my skin

Letting you masticate the edges of my cardioid.

We’re a carnivore, joined at the hip;

Rushing with envy muscles creep through our joints and tighten our lungs.

We see omnivores carrying kin.

But were heavy with flesh from the dying

and too late dive in.

Conflagration (for Cee-Mo)

Hell’s Angels soared down my block. As the train poured out and the bars filled up they pirouetted the asphalt and made figure eights from the run-off.  I was gone the day our holy oak trusses soaked up cooking oil like tampons and flashed into charcoal in a velvet tornado, but I bet those angels danced.

I bet they cut the rug until it burned instead of boiled and their wings repelled the pulse of blackened air. I bet they twirled.

I came home to the skeleton and mourned a hundred little gardens made from windows seen through ancient bones that outlived quakes and riots. And as I dropped my exiled life their chorus bulldozed through my chest.  In mufflers and backfires; I heard the Angels sing.

I bet they made an altar at the Dogpatch out of glasses. And their motors joined the engines in a turbine screech of savior and redemption and I bet the Angels sang.

I saw them sway and stumble from my untouched bayview window meeting eyes and nodding slowly at what the T-line would bring. The gentry marched in store fronts,  blocks, then streets and I was gone before the Angels. But I stumbled down that block for old times sake and saw their treads; and I bet those angels danced.

the likeness of being (for Stephanie Wilson)

There's is a marsh ,25 miles from where I was born. It hugs the inlet coast and anchors out into the bay with boardwalks like veins and sand bars like capillaries. When I was small we took car trips with Big Daddy to the look out point, it felt so alien landing in that dirt lot in his high-yellow Buick (15 years later I pushed it through the desert).

I climbed the wooden rail, thick as my chest, and saw dinosaurs tall as the crows nest bury their heads for leaves and krill. Chris asked the ranger what we could see. She said there were birds, fat and thin and small and long from all over the world and they came to nest. 

I moved to a warehouse in the city. We sat on the docks and watched hood temples, drip, of the broken sea wall. We'd  drive through the marsh to raves under the lookout and watch it rain sweat form the sign that said no fishing if you plan to consume. The birds can't read, so they contined to eat,  but I saw no dinasoaurs. 

Infinitesimal (for Lauren Kostelnick)

Frantic for longevity we crossed the last bridge, found our origin and ran back screaming. Nothing was real, but it had never been, so we buried the truth to let it rot.

Sprinting till we soared we frayed the threads between the suns and let our cradles fester.  We knew that madness was a fiction, but felt the psychic pressure of a million trillion flailing creatures, through the voids, burning.

Desperate for serenity we built a galaxy of barricades, combed reality for paradox and fell weeping. Nothing was here, though it had always been, so we coffined our minds and let them die.

Spawning from the cesspool we awoke and woke up gleaming, and searched the mangled ruins for history. Our destiny was closure but we opted for the figment, the corroded reset switch, and set the clock to zero.

Frantic for longevity we crossed the first gate, found our origins and saw nothing.

Forever-War (for Billy Bellmont)

My aspirations were displaced in an ocean of disease and

Every wave was an endless struggle beating back at me

If I’m sand logged, washed up, dried out, and clinging to a reef

Please know you missed the battles and the fleeting victories

My dark and glaring blunder was that I ever fought the sea

Cause every femto of my life it's calling back for me.

As the jagged mudstone digs into my soles

I taste the salt of San Francisco from so very long ago

And horizon slices lengthwise on the void where stars are few

I’m compelled to walk until the tides are doppler screeching through

My dark and glaring blunder was that I ever fought the sea

Cause every drop of vapor is still calling back to me

Discontinuity (for Melisa Garcia)

No one can take this from us

no one

Nunca

Tu mama y my moms luchaban todas sus vidas so I suppose.

I suppose that means we should be grateful but … I'm committed to my truth.

Truth that good people teach lessons with piggyback rides to libraries and

tender lectures on heritage and hope, and with the

backs of their hands and "your a worthless piece of shit".

But feel lucky,

That backhand could have been a fist and those words a green switch and

We could have been raised in our native lands, where

you can count a child’s age by the radius of her callouses and

where a pedicab is a steady job and the queens english is a wormed out peach

I suppose that means I should be thankful. But I’m committed to our truth

That hood schools had classrooms with no teachers and teachers with no books and

15 buys Newports, 16 buys you blunts , 17 buys 18-Dummy,  and 18

trades that diploma for makin’ sure pops don’t choke in his sleep.

But I’m privileged,

I could have been hatched in ignorance that finds hope in shadows and see’s

dreams on distant shores and

those slaps and kicks and pangs and teeth … gnashing … taught that

their love hurts more than their god loves, and

I search for love that don’t bruise even though, everyday, I come back with welts.

Tu mama y my moms luchaban todas sus vidas so we never will,

but we do

and no one can take that from us

Nadie

never

Share this Concrete Perch (for Tiffany Brazil)

Through a void of quantum flux

they came, the waves,

feeding grit in thin cold breaths.

We would be washed in luster without the great exhale and yet they cross the void

and cross the leaves

and cast a hound’s-tooth shadow.

Lie just on your lacerations

let my saliva soak in.

Lay on shards of trees and slice the joints,

five points waiting .

Down your aspirations and lie wasted, with me, sloppy, on me

Close your scabs with fire, water cleansing but.

We can’t hold these river banks, they constrain us, teach us how to climb

this pumice ledge and mark the early dive bomb, car bomb, liquor dropped and bitter.

All that wonder? All that failed hope and jaw dropped anticipation, let the monsoon take it.

All that heat, from burning hardwood? Keep it, cool it; just leave my trestle desk on all fours bent and ready to receive.

Let my midday rot like wrenched out wisdom and have the thunder spray it down

And when it’s down, spruce my evening books,

stacked on face ,

on edge,

magenta

to cyan

to peach, floors scorched clean.

But OK is just a state of “wish for something better and regret the next day” and why hold your aggravation. Because it keeps you warm in winter dawns.

But god, these mountains rise, and pillows sit on every crest, but never come to bring fresh air and wet when midday flesh clings to your breast.  

You know these points traversed the great expanse to reach us. And these fractal shadows represent a choice, forced by circumstance.

But those 8 minutes … were a life time … of gorgeous hesitation.

Dating in 12 Easy Steps (for Jasper)

1.     ) Randomly text the object of your affection in the Walmart parking lot where you work as a independent windshield hygienist. Be sure that your text messages uses as assertive a tone as possible without actually sounding in anyway assertive.

2.     ) Weep tears of joy when she text you back. Hug the cashier at the liquor store where you had planned to drown your sorrows.

3.     ) Proceed to buy that tub of low-end vodka anyways because, holy shit she texted you back!

4.     ) Call a friend, then another friend, then 10 more friends and ignore all of the advice they gave you. This kind of thing needs to be hashed out by your deeply embedded neuroses and crippling self doubt.

5.     ) Open up the phone book and hire the most pedantic actuary you can find. Have him or her draw up a 100 point date itinerary complete with a master schedule and pre-written “spontaneous” quips.

6.  ) This date will be fancy (is there any other kind?) so ask your least antisocial Kmart clerk to explain the difference between cherry apples and apple cherries because only one goes well with Cabernet Sauvignon and you’re totally fucked if you don’t guess which.

7.  ) Dig around your closet for your nicest outfit. Since you are most likely a fury it may be challenging to find a dry cleaners that can spot wash a human sized felt pink squirrel suit on such short notice. Instead rub dirt and leaves on any obvious stains;  she’ll appreciate the rugged and sexy look.

8.     ) Remove the backlog of Korean-Animated-Fetish quarterlies from your glove box and install several conifer shaped air fresheners (pick colors that match her eyes!)

9.     ) Things are looking up! This is the perfect time to send correspondence to your arranged bride with a cashier’s check returning the hefty dowry you’ve received from her parents. Include an extra large Ted Nugent belly shirt so she always has a little bit of America to remember you by.  

10.     ) Almost date time. Stay out late the night before and get as phone numbers as you can. Burning the digits of lesser women in your ceremonial kiln will be a classy way to end a romantic night.

11.     ) Date time! But you have no idea where to meet her. You probably should have texted your date in the last 10 days to re-confirm but hope is not lost. Compensate by sending a weeks worth of text messages in 5 minutes. Works every time. OK, so maybe it didn't work this time so instead...

12. ) Go to the pub and have a friend date! They’ll appreciate the free booze and who knows, maybe some attractive women will notice your sophistication and you’ll be in relationship bliss in no time!(you won’t).