Macbeth Ditty

Macbeth fell in love with the wrong girl
A whole forest ran at him

Spooky homicidal love sonnets
Out, out brief candles

Cursed love, throwing away forests
Being laughed at by witches

Cursed forest, secrets hidden in bark
Murder only exists if someone else knows

In a cottage covered in rain

A river that lasts one hundred years
is filled with memories from children
Loud and quiet ones, caught and scaled

A bloodless Birch in skeleton costume
reaches for new reasons
It grins and grasps beautiful colored glass

Endless earth that speaks to no one
decides sometimes to sleep
Song reaches the greyest dreams

In a cottage covered in rain
there is an ancient peace
Sunlight and silence stay dry

And somewhere

And to lay at least once
in the arms of a beautiful woman

And Neruda’s Saddest lines
are the ladders to the root of every soul

And all hearts can connect in song
Lungs open, burnt by Sun

And diseased love stays inside cells
atrophied by memory

And sometimes time trips over itself
forcing fates to renegotiate

And then once in a while
there must be Fight

And somewhere, at least once a day
there is utter joy

Double-dutch

Sometimes I think about the Apocalypse
Knowing I’d want to get a hold of you
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to
It’s enough to drain all the air out
All the poetry I read now reminds me of
double-dutch
A Cyclical Generational Worry
sociologically speaking
We've always known the World was going to end

Love/War

Before love was written down for the first time
Was there war
Or was it all secret

No one lost in lovesick gazes
There are so many battles now
Memories, wicked shrapnel, permanent

Before love was asked to exist
Was there collateral damage
Or just quiet elements spilling over themselves

An ocean of loss and broken chances
Our own mythic follies
There are too many battles now

Before love sought to fix us all
Had anyone bothered to pause
Had anyone ever lied

All the wounds and grudges not kept
Sit inside the earth, stitched and amputated
Now we can gaze at one another

Now, after love
There are secrets
Even after there are no secrets

The reasons we don't want to be left with ourselves

Resigned confessions made in the witching hours
Or else
a typhoon of punched apologies

The heart breaks at the beginning
not at the end of a love
Sometimes all of poetry is wrong

From old regrets
new disappointments
glistening on beaches, broken stars

Memories of past truths
fight with present senses
forever

But Mostly Not

Once in a while
I am fit to be Queen
and rule justly in the jungle
where
I remember being born
I wish to be the cure for grief

You have no one to tell your murders to
How sad
Once in a while
I am fit to be Queen

but mostly not
Mostly it’s my posture

A Correspondence with Death: From

The day of death is
everyone’s
There is always someone’s lament
Every day
Even the horrifying can suffer

I do not trust you humans
in masks
made out of each other’s skin
It is always of no matter
if I find you smiling or not

I am your last kiss
I will remember it as all the others’
Every day I am someone’s
I am the reason you speak
to one another

Some Desert

Limbless, sucking on orange leaves
I am fractured in nine holy pieces
Careless bones swim in blood
pointed toward some desert,
some sanctuary
But not everything has worth

In the dark, even poets may smile
with only bones to tether to,
their phantom pains pacing
The dark is irreparable
I pray in the desert, laughing
Prosodic breaths

A Hex

My hex is made out of water
I will corrode you
so very gently
Freakish terror and lust
pour into your lungs
unnoticed
I am as large as all history
and freely present fear and love
interchanged, both in color
There is no such thing as control
I am of water
born in a long howl, and
I corrode you!
Throwing leaves in air
staining summer’s end
I addict you
to the sound of my voice,
gentle spells to steal sleep
kept in glass bottles
Are your lungs empty yet
As you lay dark
basking in the fears
I’ve convinced you are real

A Correspondence with Death: To

Sweet, awful Lover
Pay me attention, turn me into stone
with lyrical plagues and refused apologies
Stunning and sharp, we spar before the embrace
Your silent fondness always unannounced
and I kiss you, trembling
already at my own wake
Lover, darkened
Your mockeries are deemed as truth
You say finally, I am beautiful
as I falter, inspired by the notion of escape
But there is no real struggle in the end
and you live in marrow, plague ready
We embrace and its grief spreads in a puddle
Sweet lover, adoring no one
It is you who is gruesome
It is you who created solitude
Drink of my blood, hide in my hair
I was born to lay in your arms,
still bones in dreams
I choke on crumbs you bate with, and sleep
It is you who lives inside all fears
This is your bloodied, timeworn undertaking

Demons

But we all share the same demons
barbaric and gaudy, all the same color
They tear apart intestines
They do not respect that which is delicate
We offer up memories and fear
to hide the scent the famed heart gives off
Yet no way is there to outrun our fiends
Empathy is a snail’s sweaty trail
Solace leads them to yet more prey

Yes, I know, I feel it too
There is a hole in my side where my kidney was
They’ve stolen it and are joking
I didn’t even know how to be afraid
I hid in caves and behind trees
as if there is a way to turn from them
They tore out my teeth once,
a strange, seismic heat
If there was no love, they’d never find anyone

They live in the moment, these villains,
between compromise and manipulation
We share these brutes by smiling, and gazing
at one another, with song and in rhyme
They can smell our veins
And we are left breathless, our delicate smiles stolen
They hide between our hesitations
Our fears, abyssal, to them is great clear air to breathe
We sweat toward one another, daring them

Ugly Animals

Who are we then,
alone and monstrous
in broken fangs and
with cruel hearts

Ugly animals
inventing truth
If that could deter us
from devouring each other

We get cold
We cradle one another
We remember,
reciting sentences written for us

Weakened, bloodied monsters
fearful of solitude,
Holding one another
up to a dingy light

We want to know
what each other believe
Our truths cannot shock
even as we dismember

Mutation

through my vowels
You will always hear me
I repeat

Lyricism is fall-out,
now necessary
Nature has no foresight

There is no need to be gentle
We can’t
We have never

There will always be reaction
Everything is evolved always
until there is its memory

I use this mutation,
the one closest
to being sincere

Class Notes

Linguistic behavior
is not fossilized

Memories crack
and are laughed at

Traces leftover gossip past truths
without externalization

That impulse, unrestrainable,
to explain oneself

It is optimistic
to accept lack of permanence

The reasons for the first act
are past men’s secrets

Fossils can’t tell jokes
They have no metaphor

The lust for kinship
creates countless realities

Each instant is perceived
categorically

We are secret

We are secret
in your language
In ours

Six hundred year-old ghosts
covered in the blood of lying prophets,
unable to stop confessing

Why are you talking about that
Stonefaced and aloof
My skin always smirks

We celebrate sorrow justly,
mocking and teasing it
It is a rainbow

I will confess your sins for you
They are buried in the desert
They are secrets now

Gods of stone drinking blood
My heart
Our gift is the beauty of death

I am a corpse
in a linen dress
hugging you close at night

We are secrets
and we laugh at your tears
when we are dying

In the Morning At Night

In the morning
when it’s cool and still
I sometimes forget for a moment
I am stuck
I am surrounded by the inane
and broken doors
and familiar boredoms
I am disgusted with myself
Everyone else is disgusting
I forget for a moment
I want to wring out all my organs
Spill my memories into a pail,
Bury them under this city
Walk away from all of you
You all claim to love me
I am stuck
It might be all my fault
I thought too highly of myself
Progress isolated
is not a gain
I do not admire it
I do not admire isolation
At night I remember always
I am taunted by my own rage
It is lonely and paralyzing
Opportunity entices
but it is fleeting
It is taken away
I am left with more memories to wring
For all my movement
and patient readjusting,
I am stuck
Brief hope stings the most
In the morning
At night

The Original Heartbreak

How long did the original heartbreak last

Weaponless,
with no genetic memory to shield
against inexperience

Colossal, unfulfilled dreams
demand biological communication

It was Love, or Death, or Time

An unrequited gesture
Regret, perhaps
All heartbreak is the original

We learned to stagger words in space,
to force progress over defeat

Sorrow taught us syntax

Before it,
had anyone ever looked
at one another in the eye

For the first time, words
They were wretched and salty

We mutated, vulnerability the new code

Stone hearts created tools,
Lyric to describe the first lament
A new ability to share the internal

The original heartbreak gave voice
It was the end of silence

Once a Decade

I don’t need your blessing
to speak my sins

Multi-colored

I enjoy all of them

Once a decade
I dance with someone important to me

Some moments don’t cease

Even though I chose too early

I cry out loud
alluring self-preservations

Wasted dance is sin

I enjoy all of them

I try not to punish
based on how I feel

Atonement cannot infiltrate past tense

Moments too much to bless

Pulse

I demand you feel
the pulse of my blood

Envy is for those who are optimistic
I have no idea how deep your pain goes

Don’t expect me to be wicked

I have already cursed you forever
The moment is indelible

You are cursed and I feel you
feeling the pulse of my blood

It rests angrily between

Yes, that is fear in my voice

I am told my words are careless
Almost

I am seismic
and detached from you all

Yes, that is fear in my voice
I didn’t think you could hear it

I am glad they seem that way
It’s true

I don’t know the distance
between any two points in space

There is too much to control
I have fault lines

What I say is natural
Though in fact distance changes always

Seismic words attempt to predict
my magnitude

It is almost unnoticeable
They detach and resettle

They are almost careless
but you hear it in my voice

Refugee

Two thousand fall into the sea
This is not a romantic migration
This is fear, and last resorts

We bat our eyelids in confusion

You can see pictures of dead children
washed up on a foreign shore
scrolling on a waterproof phone

Our horrors turn into social trends

Words like geopolitical climate
are just as destructive as mortar shells
and ruthless faith shot out of machine guns

All gods have failed us always

Refugees do not have time for frivolous
existential debates on true love and art
over glamorous cocktails and sardonic laughs

They have dead children on foreign shores

Guilty words set to rhythm
are just as cheap
Empathy won't keep boats afloat

Even heartfelt guilt is a luxury

There is fury and misplaced judgment
There is fear and macabre endings
There is separation: us and them

Controlled divisions break eventually

G.L.K.

Thick black roped braids
singing operas to silk ribbons
I always glowed

Unsubtle, tacky pride
born in a town meant for mining
kept tears short and laughs long

You are a pilgrim, once free
now trapped, disgusted
There are still seeds in your pocket

Save that obsidian resolve,
You have always been adrift
Clumsy vowels cannot not carry you

Joviality, horror, magic
The demand for strength
has never ceased

We were happy then
despite bloody broken roots
restrung with plastic winter lights

Your sorrow smiled always
A gleaming skull laughing, skinned
plucking melody from memory

Thinking of you pierces my heart
I pinch myself not to weep
at your quiet decay

Your wrath is mine, I see it
Too many days have passed
I plait my own hair now

Your grief will burn bright
when your opera ends
You will be untethered

Insomnia

I’m going to die
from lack of sleep

Dreams hover just outside
not knowing if they should

They tell me things
I don’t wish to know

Without these frights
I am not real

I am destroyed by the grief
of being awake all the time

I want to have kind dreams
where there is no denoument

I want to sleep
waking up to someone’s kindness

I shift through time
between wrinkled sheets

I feel everything absolutely
at every moment

There is no pain
There is no relief

Strange Grammars

The constraints of thought
are drafted by strange grammars

We write love letters
trying to explain Past
flailing wildly in Present

I know how to create Love
without understanding its punctuation

We write down our dreams
We sing them for others
Courage exists

To think without using language
To love without presumption

The first poem was to appeal
to the ancient structure
that allowed it

Words are acts of love
toward human thought

We correct the grammar
and Present turns old
Love is written

Speak Plainly Now

I’m tired of metaphor
Speak plainly! Or else
get lost at sea
It may make no difference
but I have vanity and
cannot act insincere around it

I am lost at sea
clumsily using beautiful words
as a raft
I don’t want to sink
These words are chum though
and there are beasts ready

I’m lost and it’s cold
and the metaphors used
for warmth and safety
are not compass nor astrolabe
If I sink, my broken sincerity
will sink too

The words are heavy but buoyant
They need to glisten in sunlight
They are plain now,
as they all should have been
This raft is bare but may yet
stay afloat

Speak plainly now,
for we are here
each on small rafts
waiting for daybreak
or a wave, or a beast
We tire, we sink

Testing for Amblyobia

SELF
DISCIPLINE
IS BORING WHEN
THERE IS NO INCENTIVE
OTHER THAN TO SEX UP THE
EGO

Testing for Color Vision Deficiency

THE
SOUL OF THE
WORLD IS
BLACK AND BLUE
FROM ALL OUR
DREARY ENERGY

Testing for Astigmatism

WHY
CANT THERE
ALWAYS BE
THIS GORGEOUS
SILENCE
BETWEEN US

Testing for Migraine with Aura

THIS
POET WANTS
TO INSTILL FEAR
INTO THE HEARTS OF THOSE
WHO HAVE AT LEAST SOME SENSE OF
RHYTHM

Testing for Hyperopia

MY
LOVE IS
SCIENTIFIC
SO MAKE SURE
TO TAKE GOOD
NOTES

Testing for Myopia

IS
THERE
SPACE FOR
REGRET IN
SOLITUDE

Shut Up

Once I figure out what solves
the snare between language
and all of human existence,
I will never have to speak again

There is always science afoot
even when lovers love

I continue sleuthing religiously
I bathe in clues
to find the best way
for us all to just SHUT UP

My methods seem arbitrary,
though there is glorious silence with a few

The code can be cracked
if reduced to its pure form
Interaction and interpretation
too often miss the mark

All we do is shout
bruising lungs, pilfering harmony

Once I solve the puzzle,
we’ll all have peace
There will only be silence
as there was at the very start

A Poem Written Between Vacuuming and Child-Raising and Going to Class and Feeding the Cat and Insomnia and Reckless Heartache and Dish-Washing and Working and Sitting Calmly and Writing Other Poems

We throw bullets at one another
and cause impossible tempers
How are we capable of so much
There is something wrong

We fashion black round bombs
to celebrate selfish gods
They are laughing at us from distant stars
that have already died

We present each other with lies
wrapped in ugly money and plastic
We hide our wickedness behind smiles
and kill ourselves, attempting apology

We knife out joy and murder nature
claiming injustice and discovery
We have always diseased
We will always mutilate

We burn each others’ happiness
possessed by hoary egos
We spray clean blood on clean earth
There is something wrong

Skirt

I wear my new psychopathy
as a bright red skirt
You will never know
what you have lost
It is impossible to explain
Greed and selfish vices
blanket you in a confused tantrum
I’m just walking in my skirt
careful not to trip, uncaring
I want to be more beautiful,
if now depraved
Shout all you want
Cry
My breaths remain even and quiet
I feel unnatural, even sick,
but free
Rage is red and I wear it all day
I use it to decorate, not vex
Our childish exchanges have aged
I am graceful now
I no longer need to share
I no longer need to listen
When there is nothing left,
there can be freedom, without fear
More than ambivalence,
I have a simple peace
I walk in my bright red skirt
There is no need for amends

Annoying 12th Grade Anatomy Doodle

My legs are for walking
My voice is for singing
My arms are for hugging
My hips are for fucking
My waist is for dancing
My eyes are for knowing
My hands are for holding
My smile is for trying
My tears are for cleaning
My brain is for writing
My laugh is for speaking
My heart is for

Monster Vol. 3

How does one become devout
How does one remove filth from the soul
left there by others’ hearts
I was eaten in the desert
The monster told me cowards taste the best
Their loneliness is the sweet fruit from trees
I have never uttered a prayer before
When I met this monster, I felt useful
but we tricked each other into thieving time
I wanted to understand its attention
It asked to eat my heart
It said that was the only way
to give me anything
I taste bitter but am ripe
No one knows how to listen to my scripture
I gave in, and it ate in frenzy
I tried not to feel but the habit fits too well
Yet I still do not know how to waver
As the monster finished, it asked me to sing
laughing at both of our tears,
my blood stained on wooden teeth
I have no faith in commiserating
I kept quiet, the monster stared

Monster Vol. 2

I want to chew on your liver,
spit it out, and laugh gleefully
I want to play tricks on the young
and frighten them into empathy
Someone tricked me too
The unruly addiction to feel
now causes hunger for offal
Monsters are ancient and live inside volcanoes
Why does anyone ever try to be kind
Cruelty is elemental
It comes from inside caves and mountains
and the sea
The world gives birth to ghouls
who frighten themselves and each other
with broken teeth and fake smiles
Your organs taste like hot soil
They are delicious
and I want to have all of them
I want you to turn into a ghost
after I’ve snatched the blood inside your heart
I know it will cause my own haunting
All monsters were originally kind
but felt tricked
after swallowing unclear perceptions
of spiky truths
They thought they understood
So instead, they ate and terrorized
and did not blink ever again
I want to eat the past, throw it up,
and stare at it until it rots

4:47am, as Always

I took something to help me sleep
and dreamt I was yelled at in Chinese
because of a joke I tried to tell
The yelling was what woke me up
I woke and the whole street
was a soft blanket of white and grey moths
A man I've never met
confessed his love for me
in the dream
and I accepted his version of the truth
We sat next to each other, not speaking
That’s all I could stomach
It felt forced

When I woke, it was still night
The moths were not moving
and they wouldn't let the world breathe
I tried to go back to the dream
because I was hungry
and was just about to eat a meal
But dreams don’t let you do that
Dreams don't allow truancy or indecision
So I just stared at the moths
until they disappeared into the aurora
Sleep is cheap and brings no truth
Forced dreams and jokes and love
don't let anything breathe

Monster Vol. 1

All the headlines reek of murder
by ugly, piggish men with sour egos
It’s really quite disappointing
waking up to fear and bad habit
Strange injustices blanket the meek
a thousand miles away
while I sit on the grey stoop
embroidering words
There are monsters everywhere
and they are candid
And they chew gum
I want to be one
I want to be a monster
I want to reek of fear and breathe fire,
to understand destruction
I wake up to fear and silence
while piggish men try to fool the world

Dear, Sleep

Wild and painful suitor
I cling to your visits and uncompromising
indifference
You embarrass me!
I ache for your presence
Dark circles and fatigue are scars leftover
from your inconsistent acts
My wrath against you is laughable
You laugh and join me
at the witching hour
or at odd hours
when I have no time to be seduced
Dear, Sleep,
How many times will you disappoint?
Why must I continue to take your crumbs of attention?
I scream to surround myself with you
You laugh and leave according to your whims
Wild and painful, you seduce
without shame or care
Dear, Sleep,
You are brutal and I am weary

A Meandering Note on Love and Its Many Humors, Described Clumsily Through Excessive Metaphor

And what of Love
The sickness brought on suddenly
by electrons looking for valence
Salt-producing Love
lives on a musical scale
that waltzes through, a reckless host
of prayers and patience

All Love is true, if only momentary
Half moments shared on lawns
and in beds and between blinks
Great gasps of breath demanding
shared company, a salty gathering
of weight and atomic properties
All love is also untrue

The fever of Love is a great flower
sweating pollen onto the floor
Vomit odors hook into memory,
a nauseous bliss
Love’s greed is bacterial
Symptoms producing symphonies
no one has the stomach for

And what of Love
Its faces change shape endlessly
at all moments
Electron clouds exchanging time
The unkind rhythm shifts mid-song
The fever spikes
Truth and untruth have the same pitch

A Cornerless Room

I ache my heart in a cornerless room
I don’t care who sees me
Why ruin the view with harsh right angles
The room is silent and cornerless and bright
It smells like the desert

Poets assume the audience
wants to understand
They ache universally

Watch me crawl around the room
moaning at the moon,
stanzas strewn and ignored
Don’t build corners to sit down in
Don’t ruin my desert with your walls

Poets ache their hearts
They assume everyone can feel
as much as they do

If you like the view, stay
in the room, Stay as long as you want
The poet has no walls
I am boundless, like all the sand
in the quiet, cornerless desert

43:05:30

The mysterious dead are dead
I cut you out of me
before learning your name
or how your voice sounded when laughing
Now you are the bloodied ghost
of broken love
Mass graves inside minds, lost to time
When will we be free from ourselves
Will those trashed souls ever be found

Whomever they were, they are lost now
You are lost, because I said so
Baking in the sun, wasted

I was not courageous enough
Those with courage
are cut open, to spill water
They burned them and threw them in dirt
And laughed at their own clever depravity
But when given the choice to cut or to sow
I do the very same
Mysteries stay unsolved, veins split open
with machetes and unkindness
Clues are vacuumed out, miscarried

I will never be free from myself
Actions are machetes, splitting open souls
and They will never be found

Leftover

I sleep with my head pointed South
Upside down and inconsistent

I cannot speak my wishes aloud
Don’t complain
I don’t get to hear them either

No, I don’t need any sunscreen, thanks
I’m just exploring the depths of the human soul
Sunburns don’t bother me

I stared at the sun once during an eclipse
Most people lie and cover it with fear
and crepe paper
My eyes were fine and the sun didn’t care

Silence and inaction are murderers
If you face South, you’ll spill less blood
Of course I'm being serious

I only intend to speak aloud
if you keep the words in a treasure box
with all your treasures mixed in
so we forget whose is whose
and eventually throw the whole thing away

To Inka

My comet,
something to follow, in orbit
You are the author of my patience
We sing gently to one another, at night
We were born at the same time
Your breath reconfigured me
The past ended when I shook,
when you shook free
Our orbit is fearless
I can hear your heart inside my ears
while looking at the Moon
I have always heard it
I sing gently only to you, at night

Fever Haiku

Boiled blood beneath skin
Most contents under pressure
Hot reset button

A Poem about Luby’s, Written as Very Short Prose

I was going to start by writing about Chaucer,
but then realized I just wanted to use the name
Cafeterias are not about ego or myth
This was not an epic voyage
Luby’s was just for us, No Mother, No Mother Earth
She hated it and He loved it and so we’d
Go to LUBY’S! And I think the booths were maroon
Definitely they had those CHAIRS WITH WHEELS
on dark carpet, and our sweat from Texas would get cold
because of the a/c and the green jell-o we fought each other for
The food was all delicious and to expound upon this would
be a disgrace, a sweet cheapening trick to ruin a purity
Thick beige plastic and divisive migratory traditions
washed down by as much Sprite as possible
Pick your own poison! We were taught autonomy and
Eat all of it and Don’t play with it and Stop crying
Luby’s was the closest I have had to unsupervised gluttony
A hellpit and a sanctuary serving everything except regret

On a Log

They sit looking forward
on a log, side by side by side
feet dangling into river
They are effortlessly balanced
Water is cold
The forest breathes
They sit looking forward on a log
unable to get closer
unwilling to move apart

The river hums
Birds fidget
Days and nights take turns dancing
There is silent and bitter peace
They are resting with each other
by themselves
The log waits
Their feet dangle and they rest
side by side by side

feed insomniacs

Unfulfilled wishes
feed insomniacs
Piranhas, steel-faced and unkind
ruin perfectly good riverboat adventures
at night in the steamy sleepless dark
It is an unfulfilled wish
Remember?
Insomniac carnivores tear fragile wishes
that are shaped like cartoon yellow stars
Pillows falling from comets
in the steamy dark while they try to stay afloat
and not sink into nothing
It feels more than just wishful thinking
but when They bite in the dark,
those stars fall apart too fast to
Remember

Abyss

Enticed by great distances
and future myths memorized
alongside the beats of drum

Hearts beat
We were all once pilgrims
Violent migrants learning the world

Before color and time and sound
had to be accounted for
We set off, violating an abyss

Wood and stone set us across seas
Stars tied onto strings could tangle
We have always moved

We were once all stars
tied onto strings inside boats
sweating together at sea

Searching for unknown corners
that could rest weary beating hearts
Abyss demolished by discovery

Above the sea and under
we move to find our source
Learning the world as its stepped onto

I Dipped This Poem in Pollen

Too much butter upon
not enough bread
Fat and flour
I will be a disappearing act

Flowers have no fat
but make the air much fuller
The flowers in summer
disappear, eaten on bread

This poem smells like earwax
It is putrid
I felt lilies in the heavy air once
I’ve disappeared since then

The lilies smelled like butter
mixed with ancient perfume
I will not vanish, I will disappear
eating lilies

I dipped this poem in pollen
to see if its bees could still find it
They only smell the wax
Putrid disappearing acts

When it's Hot

When it’s hot, you sleep naked
The heart does not sleep
Heat has no room for apology
It is womb

Naked thoughts
liquid
fall from the face
unintentionally

Uncertainty is impossible
There is proof in every drop
When it’s hot, you sleep naked
and the heart does not sleep

The Bird

The bird walked along
not looking
stepping on dead worms
Beautiful and dark and
covered in old seashells

The bird sang quickly
The bird sang to each day
Without response
Without necessity
Each day had its love

The bird never learned to still
The bird sang and walked
All the other animals
would listen to the song of the day
smiling in another direction

The other animals knew
it would never stop walking
Even the dead worms
knew its weight would pass
And they smiled

The bird walked and flew
Its secrets, untranslated
Each day had its lover,
a song to describe each breath
The bird walked along

Drawers

And in night, the secrets left out
are shoved back into drawers
Bruises from caught fingers reminding
to take better care

The untidy secrets, themselves
nothing more than memories petrified
Leaving them out to be loved
is the true act, the true courage

Growing without space in drawers,
Secret truths made out of tree
sprout up with cramps and pain
They cautiously slow

The doors remain closed despite
a mutual need for air and warmth
There is whimpering
There is always understanding

The patience of life
requires drawers opened,
An untidy trust without hesitation
for crooked trees to grow

Lilypads

We haven’t always

Those old cups of coffee
Warming and cooling
lilypads

In our sanctuaries
pink, and green
Lilypads of old coffee

There is no effort

Mindless placement
of collective love
left to satiate later

The lilypads rest
They always grow,
adjusting

We will always

Our mindless love is safe
Green, and pink
Cold coffee

We are each other’s sanctuary
Warming and cooling
lilypads

Eating the Pickle at the End

I’m writing a poem
to help me sleep

I’ll write the title last
Like eating the pickle
at the very end

I can’t sleep
I never learned how

But the words always explain
the direction blood flows
and how fast

In there,
with that delicious pickled quiet

In there I feel kind
and never tired
The blood moves evenly

Poems can last whole days
as dreams cover mountains

I feel no worry
about the speed of my blood
in there

Maybe untitled is best
This only makes me stay awake

Wednesday is Trash Day

Who is to be given these things I wish to say
Why must they be said

My patience is not selfless
I feel grief

It is mine alone
Given to freely, you can ask

I can see each filter, not touching
I can see through them

Who wants this giving
Why must some want to give

It’s easy to stop
But for that selfish patience

Its warmth touches the filters
And they begin to touch, too

Storms are shared
And currents tested

Every memory is already sedate
There is only the Earth’s curve

Cold Summer

I miss you, Summer
I’m listening to Tosca
over and over

I miss you

It’s too cold out to sweat
I’ve barely started to sweat at all
I miss you, Summer

Are you going to be back
next year?
Did you get a new job?

Summer, I miss you

I miss the fan’s humming
and pain from the sunlight
bouncing off shiny things
and children beet-red, running
and fireflies
and sweat

Summer, I miss fireflies

I don’t know why it isn’t happening
this time around
But it seems
everyone’s in fog
because we miss you

I miss your comedy
and my reaction

I miss how you felt on me
I want to feel that

Summer,
I want melted popsicle breath

I miss you and I listen to Tosca
because I'm not sweaty
and there are no fireflies

In the Tent

Let’s rest
in the tent awhile

In space kept soft
we can rest

All fits inside
All can fit easily in

Yesterdays,
Tomorrows

The bare floor
on bare feet

The tent rests us,
gathering sun

Soft sounds mix
with slow sun

The tent holds all
without thought

We can rest staring,
standing still

In the tent
let’s rest awhile

Nothing is absent
in still, complete

Bag of Dicks

Face
Mine
No bags thrown

Did you throw a bag at me?

Did you just throw a bag
at me?

I felt the flop
Putrid, loose

dicks

I smelled the stain
days later
and wiped it clean
It was healthy

But the dicks lingered
They danced
I wiped again
and still their mutiny mocked me

Whipping, gelling, writhing
dicks

I refuse your leak
I reclaim my (face)
Pick up your bag of dicks

This is the triumph
This is the rebirth
As the scarab, so the phoenix
I soar above your bag
And leave you with this truth:

It’s not the harvest
It’s the sow

An Earth Open

Electric bags of flesh fall into Earth, afraid
They are worlds unto themselves
Each one
creating Death and Life
Blood and Bone

The Earth opens, not angry
She quakes her spine and gives great cyclone yawns
She thrashes her tsunami arms out to wake up
Blood and water are the same
She awakens and they fall in

Love and Music and Laughter and Shame
fall off the mountain into her
They are confused by it, and grieve
She has woken up, and buries the dead
Blankets of blood, pillows of bone

Tiny worlds continue walking the earth
Her indifference carries their morbid weight
They carry blood and water from zenith to desert
An Earth Open must readjust her posture, aloof,
to keep little worlds up as long as she can

Xiuhtecuhtli- Day 27

Bring us together
We rest in flames
hurtling through space

We rest beside you
though we will never embrace
You are the hearth of the world

You hear all our fables
and songs from our pasts
You melt secrets into the wood

We are brought together
hypnotized and violent
without any breaths left

And in the ashes you give us
we anoint ourselves
and mud is born, and life.

Your anger is resolute
Clean and mute
and you always keep all our secrets

Jorts- Day 26

Hips
like hula-hoops
Fire-headed female
dancing all alone

Grrrrrrl dos hips!
Luau punk rock hips
Let’s go to the hop
to dance

Wear those sweet shorts
and that sweet smile, Shewolf
Firelit and hungry
to howl and shimmy

Mexico- Day 21

Effortless lover
with balloons and rifles
I am seduced
Wet with blood
Sweating a smile
in the desert
I am your mirage

You, lover,
you revolt
without confidence
and you sing to me
sweetly
Accordions ache
outside sinking cathedrals

Will you love
like your Sun does?
Like the songs buried
under skulls that mute
all forgotten truths
Lover, in your Sun
we are all seduced

You are heavy and
so old
and I love you
We are all
covered in blood
spilt eons ago
that never dries

The Week before Finals- Day 19

Twas the week before Finals
and all through the week
The dishes and laundry
sat dirty and meek

The nights were all endless
the mornings a blur
The chain-smoking smells
masked by incense and Myrrh

No lives were at stake
nothing quite so severe
But possibly failing
was a palpable fear

The to-do list was mighty
friends and lovers ignored
The nightmare would end
All A’s the reward

She had to take breaks
every hour on the hour
Without them her head
would begin to get sour

And just when she thought
she would never survive
The essays were written
And her soul did revive

A Clumsy Poem about "One Hundred Years of Solitude": Day 18

Forgetting to remember
is sweet indeed
Untethered time
in a hammock
under an almond tree

Entire histories
swallowed whole by
their own forgotten truths
while butterflies and ants
eat ancient dust

The memories have no
capsule to sit in anymore
It’s always Monday and
the ants have always been there
salivating

Raven men get lost and
forget to return
The Seventeen are erased
Ashes wipe away their time
hidden away in mountains, far

Forgetting to remember
as the last train leaves with
all the books ever written
and all the stories ever told
Time finally has an end

When I Sing- Day 16

Whole note quite long
I want to sing until I stop breathing
I want to swallow splinters
So there is blood in my mouth
when I sing

So that everyone is spooked
and I look like consumption

I want to sing until no one is looking
and there is nothing between any person
and any other
I want to fill up the whole World
covered with splintered notes

Those Whole notes carry us all
There is nothing else but them

The Witches- Day 14

The witches come out
when the birds sing
back from the South

They dance in circles
The witches dance
atop a mountain, to Spring

The Spring eve casts spells
flowing from the mountain rains
as the witches dance

Every year it is the same
The witches retrace steps
for the birds to sing

They dance in the mountain rains
beating the earth
so it will grow

And after the dance
the mountain is bare
and the Witches are gone

The birds still call out
and the Spring moves
and the earth grows

A Letter in Poem Form Addressed to Spiderman- Day 13

Dear Peter
I mean,
sorry- I forgot.
Shhhhhhh
except for the fact
that everyone already knows!

Listen, Peter,
I’m sick and tired of you.
You’re not amazing.
I see you so much
and frankly,
it’s gotten dull.

I’m not that impressed
anymore.
And your responsibilities
and your power
don’t justify that suit.
I just find it odd now.

So please, Peter,
next time you feel
like swinging through,
I implore you to
Bug Off!
Sincerely yours.

Violets- Day 12

Can we not all be Rain?
Can we not wash each other
and dance so there is peace?

Bombs we stick to our ribs
blow all to pieces and
hearts remain beating, leftover.

The violets are purple.
They are shocking.
The Violets are purple bombs.

I will wash myself completely
if there is no way to detonate and
there is always the ability to dance.

they are full of blood- Day 11

And the blood stains
and I remember
that there is blood in me

And the monsters we are
bleed and laugh generously
assuming we have a place

There are children
They are full of blood
they are full of all blood

We sit on rocks
and look at air and the Sun
And the Sun bleeds too

We should be
all that we are not
We should be all of ourselves

The blood fills up spaces
between the rocks
And we watch it fade

That Haiku About Karaoke

I have no stage fright
Roy and doo-wop fixed all that
staring at light-bulbs

Tlaloc- Day 9

Wash us clean, o
great Rain!
Let the light pour
from your daggers
Blood from the cosmos
as we are born again
Every day

Make us green
to shake off the greys
Help life stretch
forward and upward
Kill death
with your death
Above us

Today we feast
on your violence
Covering space
in the constant sound
Washing in your
sacrifice, we rejoice
Tlaloc hears

Wash me clean, o
great Rain!
Let me soak in
your indifference
The cold cosmic blood
bonds with mine
We are one

Little Boy- Day 8

Inside your face
is my face
and his face

Inside your eyes
are your fears
and your discoveries

Inside your bones
is your future
and your past

Inside your voice
is your truth
and our correspondence

Inside your mouth
are your injustices
and your laughs

Inside your head
is your magic
and your dreams

Inside your heart
are your demons
and your loves

Heist- Day 7

Saccharine rubber disguises
cover with sweat,
clown-faced

The excitement glows
It is hidden in flower boxes
ready to threaten

Synchronizing time
in dull dusty suits
for the most perfect moment

Darkly-lit scenes present
players huddled with
blueprints for ambition

Some will fall short
Their disguises not slick enough
against the infection of fear

Thickened, sweaty plots
cover all possibilities
save the Fates

Old-fashioned egos
repeat the same tales
told to children at night

Them versus we
at the bank or horsetrack,
the plot is lost

The blonde fatale
Mucks up the trick
but they are all monsters

Irony fans out the score
and the egos are left sweaty
and the scene ends

No one is free
No disguise is sweet enough
The clown mask mocks

The Puddle- Day 6

And in that stillness
and in that light
there are countless worlds
of potential

Requirements are
specific to each world
but they puddle together
and rest there

And in that magic stillness
dreams are had
molecules bond
there are no words

The dark shifts forward
each world loses itself
all puddled together
resting in still

Cold Beach- Day 5

I dreamt of the beach
and Coronas we bought on the way there
warm from the car.
We drank salt from the sky

We were shouting about
the cooler and where everything went
and they all ran into the water
without helping

I dreamt of the cold beach
I didn’t want to go in
I wanted to build a castle
and drink warm beer

The Sun was a grey one
and it's always exotic
even when the Sun is grey
and the waves are cold

I dreamt of the beach
and then mostly it was quiet
and the beer was gone
and we stopped shouting

The Boat- Day 4

Winds face forward
and backward
and the night is young
and we are all
sailors on boats
lost at sea, aged

The Sun is different
every day
and the night is young
and we get dizzy
and sometimes dry
from all the light

The boat sways
forward and back
and it has space
and it has a tent
shared or deserted
the tent is there

Nighttime guards
against daydreams
and time stops
and dreams drop
and the tent
keeps the space

A Poem Describing Spring- Day 3

What’s your biggest fear

Everyone at the park today was fat
unable to run
The city is filled with trash and I

I want you to take me seriously

I realize that

The park had all this fat trash
from Winter
Sometimes people get scared

From knowing each other

Tugboat- Day 2

I don’t want to see
what your memories look like

We sat and sang
and those poems against the window

They sounded like an opera
The window on a tugboat we ate in

I sit and sing
and write down the poems

I sit and you sing
We end up singing against the window

Maybe, if I see yours
but I don’t want to

in Summer- Day 1

How many of her did you meet?
Organ music plays when she walks,
you know that right?

I think all the truly sad songs are about
meeting her.

How many of her can you love?
She spills out of herself,
laughing and wondering.

When you talk, it’s about summertime.

How many of her can you have?
And how would you have her?
You both laugh, in Summer.

Sometimes there are so many of her.

How many of her will you see?
She is perpendicular, and
at night, she glows.

At night, it’s easier to dance.

Crying Like an Idiot

Between them all
just an hour of rest
after twelve hours of drink
and all of life’s years.

Tradition starts to set in,
patterns overwhelm emotions
and memories are made
out of spilled water.

A green marble filled with
pink, folded souls caresses
dreary rain—
the souls see past, and future, and now.

A whole town is covered in tiny
shooting stars that attract joy,
repelling any attempt
at subtle Winter hues.

Songs are sung loudly, people punch.
They remember old lovers
as bottles are broken, blind
blonde strength dripping down.

The Queen of Cups
and the Princess of Wands
enamor a wayward cowboy,
poisons in all of their blood.

Families ache to express but
sit in silence, aiming to fill holes
left airing out to dry,
staring in space on a wall together.

The cards speak intentions
if the lovers can sit still long enough;
that dreary rain sends them back,
rumpled souls smoothed out.

Valid Love Affairs

Why not lick off my stains,
lost causes and socks
unsmoothing the skin.
Fissures.

Crayons melting like eggs
stuck in between bones
under the nails, mixed with
Lovers’ skin.

Expecting reciprocation
poisons valid love affairs.
The stains don’t do anyone harm.
Leave them.

Read the poem again!
it’s stuck between us and your breath
is under my nails and I can’t
remember now.

We searched for crabs once
with everything stained and stuck
not allowing us to look
calmly.

Cha Cha Cha

One, two
Cha Cha Cha

Sleaze and sweat
decorate brows

Everyone is as lovely
as everyone

Sit and spin
Cha Cha Cha

Without those steps,
no rhythm

Loose intentions
Loose hips

Three, four
Cha Cha Cha

Smoke and song
fill young lungs

That’s exactly where
I want you

Spin once more
Cha Cha Cha

Everyone is almost as lovely
as you