soldier

If it were smoke, and not a sound, again the remembering would be a choke. A cold cough from camp stoves and coalfire. A coat length away from blasting caps with no wires. Blasted captains wiring home to no wives. Seated soldiers bleeding alone to no lives, If it were smoke and not a sight, again, The remembering would be a blinking, hot knives undoing steady hands, wrinkled fever-dreaming youths in foreign lands.

Over-there was never here, a location changing as the news, prepared for smeared, re-arranging faces in the few, the proud, the blind, the waging war, the staging for a larger house, the moving up, the ranks, the banks of rivers bulging, planting bombs and bulbs in virgin earth. If only I could be interred. 

If it were smoke and not a word, again, the remembering would be a blessing, blurred, a ghost, a spirit, at most, I’d hear it in the night, not dream it, right? But no, I dream it, a dream, it blots out the night sky, inside, the world behind my right eye, the left sees out. What’s left eases doubt, down my neck like hearing my own name. 

What is it? I know I would recognize it. Say it once, I will write it down in the dirt. And when the wind removes me, the name will go as it proves weak to the touch, a wreck of sighs, it stands above me, a standard, above me, in the wind, away it flies, my name, what is it? I watched it go. I remember that alone. At a moment, I was strong and held a flame, in the next, I stepped in the dark and lost a name.

 *****         

Men walking, again. Standing and walking. Could they be talking towards coming for me, Would they be talking, even be trying, Through the fields of the dying, to discover me. To recover things left, lost to the battle, amongst the death rattle-ing chorus of saints, if heroes could gather me, send a boat after me, down the river, I’d row without water, a foe with out father, out feeling, out fear, Men seen walking, stepping and walking, could they be enemies, coming for me? 

Am I the last, beyond the edge of a boom? A blast, beyond the doors of a room? could my ears ringing be men, calling for me? Calling “amen!” Calling “we’ve killed them, again, each one, done is our work, except for the last, beyond the edge of the blast, the one we can’t see, or care to, he’s free by omission, if he dares to reveal his position, we end him!” Am I safer here? Will I come to savor ‘here?’ My savior here, but they come to sever ‘here’ from ‘here?’ Obsessed, again, Several ‘heres’ for a man, a plant that no one hears, affixed without a plan. 

 *****         

A new kind of anger. From a new place, in the past. The last time I saw my pa, my ma, my rifle, my letters. The first mirror, the nearer I look at him, I fear it. did I know him? If I had legs, they would look like his legs. My feet, his feet. Socks, wraps, boots, and the legs. Did I know him before, again, a friend, the end of memory, before, again, as ends go, it was the worst kind. Refusing superlative, the first time, commemorative photograph, releasing control of a legacy, looking down to my leg and see the terminus, the germ is dust, the endless sand of understanding, 

la arena sin fin, me llamó desde lejos, 
lejos de casa, cualquier casa, 
donde mis padres, esperando, respirando, 
miran hacia el este, antes de que termine el sol, 
cualquier sol, alcanzando sin brazos, 
susurrando,“nuestro hijo perdido.” 

But again, not a son, a picture belonging not to anyone. If I had his luck, unstuck from the ground, Able and free, in the air, til I’m drowned in time and soil, the sands of my toil, if I knew him should I shudder, should I gasp, vomit on myself and sob till I can’t? Before, perhaps, I would have known how to act. 

 ***** 

And so it comes, to me, to this. And if there were a chance, if bliss were not romance, but fact, and fact were not romance, but truth. And truth, if my body were a house, a skin of bricks, thick and growing out. Only the sick of head would approach and beat the knock with mouths instead. Fools standing and greeting stones. Alone but not exposed, autonomous, composed of life, liberty, and the holy ghost, and wholly chosen by my birth, from earth I grow to my end, no friends to witness my slow descent. Begin, my bones, as before, defend me from one last lost war. 



 * 



I remember at times, a time before. Reading or seeing, looking more into books. Or magazines, if those are things, The words come back, obscured, but back, and not my heart, but my skin, a part of me is hurting, and the stars shine the brighter for it. Reaching down for it. I opened, a flower to the sun, but cannot help but feel the turning, done for now, but opening again, as before. 

O before. Where was it? I was looking out, with eyes, with everything. There was a light, and a brighter light, And dark before, and after there was more, and night had fallen, or I had fell, to here, or to here, was I surrounded, or who is to tell? I could have felt their hands that caught me, caught and kept me, was I stuck, or stuck before? I had a smile, and I felt the smile end. But they said to fix it “smile, yet, smile again.”

world wool shrunk 6/12/11

A little bit of warm water keeps the memories turning. They all slink into my head after a long song day. It gets crowded. No one wants this in their way, in their back fenced forest, when sleep is a simple sigh and a tickle of relaxing muscles away. Days are like books. Weeks are like volumes. Months and years, anthologies and libraries. So each moment, movement, memory from the minute before is a word sweating out of your lips. Whether it's breath or melody, we never cease the telling. Since we have reason sunk in our helpless heads, humans think out of instinct. We dissect, organize, and decide the value of the dust on our tables.

"I think that I will be alive,

purse-lipped and starving,

every day I am given, each

a treasure, until I cannot,

or will not, reach into my 

head and pull out a gift.

The reaching is the crisis."

After a long day of rain, the sun shrinks the earth down to a colorful dirtcake. On these days, one can walk the entire breadth of grass waves and wind caves in an afternoon. The earth will be painted differently this day, when the ground feels less like distance, and a whole lot more like a magazine. It's all the colors we choose. 

**

On days of whimsy, the world is dancing light and deserts of restless dragon backs. On these days, noses snort and wiggle and you catch people making grand gestures and it's all, in the faraway clouds of radio jeering and lines at the DMV, set to music. You feel a dancing rhythm in your ankles, and the chattering, corduroy fleets of vibrating delivery trucks massage your temples to a languid, after-meal stare. A mysterious smile warms through your lips at unexpected moments, leaves an earth-acknowledging air to your conversations, and lands you safely back in your chair to pay your check.

When angry, even the slowly listing, silent moonlight leaves chasms in the sky. Gentle, distant dripping from the faucet is a japanese drum played by german industrialists. Scratching with rusty farm equipment at the chalkboard gates to your eyedrums, the day stretches on like the sweating, stammering traitor on the rack. I WANTED A NAP!! Bunny love is met with hatred: nazi-youth with strangled, rag-doll puppies. Every pedestrian a mine victim, limping, useless and taking up space. Every driver a lunatic, geeking out and drooling, humping the steering wheel as they bury the gas and brake simultaneously. I would end myself for a popsicle and a room with a view.

it's not like it's all that serious

is time truly short like they write about it?
hormones suggest otherwise.

I tend to tend rather than choose
these days

and I definitely choose
over acting
and especially
over-acting

I love
but I don't know why

I am addicted to reading articles about how my myers-briggs
personality type will effect my life.

[you] Just bite my lip.
I will know whether or not I will like it.

can I get my feelings back for christmas?

I'm not proud

I mostly fear reading the next chapter.

Of myself.

If I were a book, and not a boy,
I would make sure I was hid
at the unreachable corner,
under the dusty, over-thumbed tabloids,
in a cumbersome looking shelf.

Not worth the effort of rummaging
and squinting to rediscover where I left off.

••

Let's leave it at the pronouncement.
too formal.
Let's leave it at the sound of
the song we both know.
We love the words we constantly
forget.
We smile, even though we
never really understood their significance.
Maybe I reach out my ashy wrist to
call attention to our surprising, inevitable
silence.
"ooh, would you listen to that!"

I'm never surprised by you.
I hold my breath re-reading
the heaviest paragraphs for mistakes.
trans-emotional typos
that inspire you for a day or two.

A wheezing, moth-et bellows
roars at a lace jib, waiting for a punchline.

waiting for the image to stick.

yep

when juliet stabs

her tender, white belly

loses her breath

and hot cranberry jelly

it's the snuffing

of ash

in a puddle of

dew -

not the gush

of a vein

or hollywood

spew

the magic in death,

is knowing the story,

though the end can be grim,

the scenario gory

blah, blah, blah

I like shakespeare.

angk-shuz

You better stay away

you got me angk-shuz

knuckles like battleships

at the ends of my armadas

firing squad fingus

blazin badabadabada!

laying you flat like

newsprint for tilapia

leave you out for days,

you both smell like shit

I smell you from here

"REALLY DOWN TO EARTH"

game, you know I know your game.

game.

'I like you, too! But yeah, gotta go, don't follow!"

shit's like high school locker room dramatics,

but your life is fluid, tugs from all directions.

gotta jet, gotta meet, gotta eat my collection

dainty daisies ripe, ripe, so you pluck,

'cept the swift lily white of my good luck

PLEASE don't think this is about you.

that would make me so HAPPY punk.

SMILES with less teeth look unimpressive.

Like an GLEEFUL apology from a drunk.

shut up.

Honestly

It's not about your eyes.

It's not about your beauty. Your kiss. Your anything beyond your heart. I know those parts very well. They are the book that I have read alone, to study it deep. Deep like low notes. To study it within the slow tones. The rumbling dischordancers of a slow techno. You are too alike to my kind of safety keeping. To hold them at a certain wonderful, terrible distance. Far enough for whispers to fall silent. Whispers of illumination. Whispers of lovelihood. Close enough for kisses to fly clear across my cross-eyes forehead and touch down like a moon lander out of focus. Who is this? Who are this? How lucky and wrong am I?

BUT BELIEVE ME! I understand. My heart is one of those tinier ships, with the captain at roost with a lazy ankle guiding the tiller with one hand holding a book of verse and a hand on my thin-as-shit neck hoping that one of the pages makes the pulse quicken and causes me to move. make we want. makes he stand and run. and not be done. to shade the sun from everyone. My heart, too, moves like dust on fancy shoes. Riding the invisible tide of secrets to hide.

And obviously, that's not a happy place to be. No. But it is A place to be, and I will never complain from a lack of location. Because being in pursuit of a larger love is always considered "A" place to be.

So sink your teeth into my DANGEROUS inequality. I am largely unwritten. Largely unbitten. Still eyeing the yarn, like a ferocious knitting club. caste. Still eyeing the yarn, still imagining the slightly larger than life perspective of things.

Keeping me softly.

So that's what I have for now.

polyanna

sprinting the stairs of a rustic ruin-

quick around the crumbling stones-

ankles burning with the magnitude-

ascending on and streaming cheeks-

hands solid, I grip an agéd flagpole-

bearing words to beckon you back-

it is a simple phrase that all know-

alike to seeds, simple words grow-

I scream with delight to reach top-

my eyes scanning the horizon scar-

each breath tears for how you are-

distance breaks, builds, then dies-

but reconnects your shimmer eyes-

it's sticks, swift, like windy spears-

deep into my hidden, melting guts-

holding my arms back like cassius-

betraying my hunger for your yes-

I wave the flag to the sun and sky-

to warn the wind of my raging cry-

Tremble, clouds, I'd call you down-

the moment I saw you hiding her-

Nature crimes in the azure climbs-

whisking winks and simpler time-

I stamp and shout against my kind-

the ones that go, the ones outside-

banner raised against the sounds-

of a barefoot heel against ground-

I call again, my voice shreds calm-

my thunder, still, is a cannon song.

clamor dancer

for the love of god,

let's take this mountain.

let's take a breath and release a fire blazing cloud of whispers.

whispers of our future.

immediate. killing the past.

the world to be will fear our dreams.

like a lamb, fearing a wolf, or a lynx, or a goat with knivessss

we are creatures. animals. herds. we survive like animals.

we die like computers. we die like pictures.

we die like the swarthy fats legs of deadly promises.

FOR ONCE LET'S LIVE LIKE CLAMOR DANCERS!

let's rip off these powdered wigs

let's teach ourselves a new cave to paint.

LISTEN TO ME! I'M A CREATURE, I PROMISE YOU I WILL BITE!!!

we all will bite once we see how sweet the fruit shall be.

SHALL

WILL

we all will bite once we see how sweet the fruit shall be.

for the love of god,

let's take this mountain.

let's take a breath and release a fire blazing cloud of ancestry.

you and I. let's breed.

our thoughts combine and seed.

Our thoughts combine and proceed.

thought mothers.

thought fathers.

there's no stopping them.

rabbits.

kudzu.

the uneducated third world.

or is it DISD...

who knows?

BUT OUR THOUGHTS! IF THEY GREW LIKE THESE!!

but be careful. someone will strike you down. soon. for your radical freedom.

the american revolution will not be televised. or on facebook. or on tumblr. or tweeted between bullet rounds whizz past your liberated ears. the revolution will happen in your homes. community centers. churches. temples. mosques. afterschool programs. the revolution will occur in the resurfacing desire for a wholeness. a unity. people will discover their loneliness. and their loveliness. people will realize their need for you. your need for them. this is all just hypothetical, but when the dusty wigs are gone and we peer past the product to the oily roots of our human heads, we will see the skin that hides the skull that hides the brain that stores the love of our lost, broken hearts. Please meet me on the mountain. please don't kill yourself for your childhood.

"Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past" - Buddy Wakefield.

FOR ONCE LET'S LIVE LIKE CLAMOR DANCERS!

let's rip off these powdered wigs

let's teach ourselves to dance is to breath.

spin in a circle and get high on your gravity.

whoa stomach!

instant transmission
to be sent out immediately.

I have a journey to take.

I will be there for a while.

hopefully, I will make it through.

that is all.

sick

i've been ruined.

from too much reading.

from too much reflecting.

refracting.

reacting.

Process-based art work is a cunning adversary.

It will haunt your quiet - make you unquiet.

It will stunt your peace - make you violent.

I could have had different aspirations. People do that - have different aspirations than I.

And I get it. I own that. I am sick.

I have a disorder. A wrong order. My brain and soul are mal-organized. I have failed to see the picture that someone built the world with.

I see a completely different one. I keep reading about it in the dreams of others. Olders. Over-therers. Over-sharers. It's-not-fairers. I'm-not-scareders. Be-prepareders. I read about the world that we both live in. They arrived much before I did, but probably around the same season of their life. It's the struggle to discover which parts of my dreams are actually my dreams now, and what I can change about all of our dreams gone-by. Its a struggle to match my shopping list with anything I can possibly find around. I'd like to become the hometown hero for planet earth. Hike to the top of the great human mountain and proclaim to the wooded avoidance of gasping space: "I figured out why everyone is afraid of you! I know now why you leave everyone out of your plans! I've come to make it right!" And after that, the stars and planets would tiptoe cautiously in curious circles around a game of pick up sticks between the universe and I.

My neck hurts.

a new title every day

descend. quickened vines.

choke. a pause.

aromatic suffocation of bliss.

begin again.

arrive.

here.

you know. but you don't.

neither of us will ever.

jagged.

beware.

be warned.

be warm.

be one.

dumb

this is how it feels when I lie

with my hands.

with what I do.

with all my time.

to you.

I don't deal in

time machines.

or projecting smiles

on movie screens.

this is how it looks when I suck.

but just as icebergs,

and bruises,

and arguments,

and the little thread that lazily asks to be pulled from your sweater,

I know there's more involved than a symptom.

this is how it sounds when you sigh.

you can pull down the curtains,

and save the dusty lights,

you can forget the shows and matinees,

if we aren't feeling right.

I could care less about figuring out how to plan my day.

truly.

If I could find your head's address in that shimmering

jiminy cricket phone book, I would track down your

braindoors and leave a stack of my thoughts.

mostly about you. don't tell anyone.

well, shit, if you did, they would tell you the same message from the notes.

i've got you...

(and I hold you closer)

under my skin.

thank you.

I'm getting there.

I really should take more vitamins

shiverss

scrapeng

lethargek

I have a bone to pick with my lover, art,

I have a won't to kick from my cover. Start

a process of foundation for my heart

to sing and bring me water to dissolve all'f

my fears and steer me from a bigger question.

I suppose the mistress that is, in reality,

a pigment

in a stroke

from the field

of a painting

says a dream:

will remain elusivvv.

ART! YOU SAID YOU WOULD WAIT FOR ME!

No, not surprised. I'm apparently just as flakey.

(change of thought)

But it's because there's always something more to learn.

is that why I don't call? yup.

Because there's always something more to learn. Out there! From the OTHER PEOPLE!

I'm currently 24,

working on a year of strident starvation; trading hours of sleep for hand-me-downs from

scattered artistic fathers and mothers.

I like it. I get it. Kinda.

BUT JUST THAT. I KINDA GET IT! I BARELY GET THIS! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO GET WHAT YOU'RE GOING THROUGH EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY!?

is this because I don't tell you everything? because I haven't filled out a questionnaire on my own life and left it indiscreetly on the ledge of your nose?

DOESN'T CHANGE my LOVE FOR YOU. JUST MEANS THAT YOU NEED TO FIND your LOVE SOMEWHERE!

and I suppose that's the point.

Just as food,

or movies,

or sport,

or music,

or poems,

or afternoons,

or jobs:

Friendship is a distinctly different color in the back of each person's eyes.

we can barely agree on anything. why should friendship be any different?

doesn't mean I can't love you.

doesn't mean I can't care.

just means we should talk more. out loud.

(back to art)

:) i like the way you feel in my hands.

when I am learning or teaching, art, you

seem a little dangerous.

keep it up.

give me those tingles.

My skrix

like a knife in a neck, I got skrix thas a fakk.

Im the clue to a puzzer, chompin dohz in a muzzer

I felf a little iffy when I sef the world on fearz

turn the tv on quikk wi'needle noze plearz!

the clip in the reel that got cut from the show,

my only owned skrix pleasure tied in a bow.

I got ten toze tearin trakks, teashin tykes to tremble,

divin down dem dykes dousin daylight in a thimble!

keep out! keep out! I gossummfin in my fenguz,

clop clopin on pave stonz dream of karaoke senguz.

done.

In the clutches

I want to try all of it.

To waste away with a mark on every list.

Claiming every station as my home.

But I'll never grow better at anything.

I need to find a passion.

That burns like a screaming arrow.

Straight up, into my brain.

Something I can't let loose.

Then I will tear away and drown in it,

like a scrupulous toddler in a picture book,

diving and quaking in my revelations.

I will be defined.

Eventually, all I will be good at will be withering,

taking the scenic route to a wall with no story.

Waiting for someone to turn my chair towards a window.

It's dark with the shades drawn.

But now I can't seem to rest;

I attempt every second second

at each dangerous trinket of a skill.

Something to write home about.

Something to write about alone about.

Waiting for the rights to tell every passerby:

I DID THIS, I DID, I SWEAR, I CAN PROVE IT!

It's a little prideful.

Selfish coin set aspinnin',

and every glance you take,

I'm a different glint of arrogant.

But I'm pretty enough for neutrality.

I share my thoughts much too freely.

Like a barrage of letters

from the same no. 1 fan!

You're already swamped reading the first word.

But I mean well, I mean what I mean;

no malice, no argument, I don't care enough to hate.

But I don't know if I care enough to really give.

Which brings us back to doe.

I need to fire myself from speaking,

a gag, a bandana, a mask, and a lock.

So I will listen for once.

Truly, to listen and dutifully so.

high ho! Onwards towards september!

hungry

insatiable.

eat and eat,

sinkin' teeth.

forks and fortnights.

hooks and harmony.

I want to see you.

for a spell.

I want to become a taxable poet.

That's a poet that the government can take money from.

'Cause their poems are gangster.

ugly

your gums are showing,

your eyes collapse

like an embrace,

like a curtain.

you turn,

you have to turn.

none of us can stare victory in the face.

cards shown,

battle plans spread out,

the piggy bank just broke over your head.

who would want you now?

seeing your ugly smile?

no picture, no painting,

no, not even your own mirror

will witness your blister.

gasp at your giddy.

you where meant to be that animal.

the feverish pearlescent shadow of your fitface.

do you think I'm a fool? Because I AM a fool.

I'm also smiling in secret.

scratching and wincing. I can't get rid of

my sick sick smile

who could know?

so quick to the tool chest,

yellow plastic shovels,

quick to the ground-

quick to the clearing,

brushing back the leaves and clutter

you toss your head back in sky-

bending, straining in the

packed mud, get down there,

all the way, six feet, six days,

six winks deep in the dirt.

rip and shred, the smile weakly peels

off your cheap cheeks and spills,

like chalk dust trails into the ditch.

your ugly smile

makes you a babe.

a super babe.

have you seen yourself?

it's up there. all of it.

disaster ready.

be warned.

I might try to carve your face into shape.

I just might press and press,

until laugh lines become laugh streets.

laugh borders to cheek kingdoms.

I will hold them there to remind you

after I disappear

when you stare briefly at yourself in

a car window or the lake water at your feet-

I was there. in your eyes. for a moment.

long enough to ruin your cool.

deep enough to see your eyes shine.

and real enough for the light to blow back

and tear through mine. thank you.

a step

crunched cases,

packed faces,

sipping elbows-

-to the races!

eating time,

feeding mine,

every other

minute I'm

taking steps,

oh, please let's

fill the cup

to the next.

it's the rush:

men and girls,

women'n'boys

in order fills.

crinkled plasts

and flavor blasts

a winking sleeping

bruise bleeds past.

The race for sunlight

turtle stance,

vomit trail,

and druggéd glance.

I keep the hearts

of my beats down,

to a slower, please,

to a sense of ease...

chatter sticks,

flips, flats and lips,

lists, lids and lashes,

pathetic starch ships.

in the row, cursing

birth, the search

morning past it's

own shanty dirt.

It's a damn fine

morning, here

on the road. It's

looking clear.

Keeping time

with the purses and

creased sleeves

of wanderers:

I am as false

as the good

morning - breathing,

an ornament.

So the task.

the plan. blueprints.

plans for further

stacks and stabs.

I have a silent moment.

duck my head under

the waters edge-

whoooof!

A crystal beam,

sounds drown

to a golden brown.

(exhale)

so tired. again. staple my eyelids up and keep hustlin.

shooof, shooof, shooof,

blinking for bravery. birds in the branches keep my shoulders rustlin.

kshh, kshh, kshh

(inhale)

get. that. for my mouth.