it wears you down
smooth.
neat as the unfurrowed brow of its next victim.
mother holds our hands firmly as we cross-
baby takes a tumble in the road-
but baby, bae af, gets up.

violence loves, more explicit than we, in the pause occupied between our
breaths.
less noble but more real. love> embryonic, ****** goth (at last!)
baby drips forthright into pieces, ***-lunged in the afternoon sun from windowlings- useless. head-lolling and good
enough.

we
get up
go out. find new things to define us.

sugar-milk wants to. knows best. gets rest. spoon floating. doves drink.


don't pray.
society is disgusting.
self-preservation has always been vile.
i am filthy with less than these.

and now we are__

Normalcy is the new Punk.
destroy from the inside, baby.

get me somewhere.







/

[we live]
these
days
eyes, raw ringed: mauve.
dustcurtains. lung-still
and                 dry



cover gasping-
fingers sanded down, dusted away
to later be inlaid
with something
else.
grappling clever-
broken bird feet.
the gaping is wide enough down here
even
for you


wanting to be a victim of something good-
lapping up *** of(f) belly hair
entangled.

and

as every human speck
fights for selfpreservation- without clairvoyance or beauty.
as the mud pumps.
as carmen plays.
as we die again in less than convenient specificities.


we will be replaced.


like furniture.

and those who seek to optimize everything
right down the efficiency of shampoo in the shower-
will leave with nothing  
                           more than a clean head of hair


to fall from these, slowly
or quicker than that- depending on the mood of it. and things like
cancer.


and when the chemicals
find you
laying there alone. and sleepy
they will know to carry you outside into the yard. where the grass is
waiting
and the road is waiting
and the rain.
and the sound of cars.
and of   trees.

big-*******-trees.
roots gnarled meanly into the dark.rotty droppings of their boughs.
cold. mighty- dragging their bruisey knuckles against the
dirt
trees with ghosts
bigger than your thumbnails.
older than the grossest things in your
waste-basket.
tree-er than
tree.

and when the car swerves
and hits
i will be there.


sinking with you
into the the reservoir
doors closed.
belted.
and good


.but
i will be

and we
fall apart
don't speak
for days.


learn of the other too late.

they mightlike you but they don't understand
your

violence.they don't  get: you got to curate it a little.
i know- it's worth it in the end












































/

oh, to be young

she kissed me with the entirety of art contained within an unpopular pop-song
utterly graceless in the afternoon.
there was something.
it was not necessarily good

the radio that sits in your belly

fills you with ****.
uncomfortable,
in the yard



like the last information
taken from flesh burnt into the backs of
wallets and anything still stuck to the building itself
home at last.

i love you
egregiously.

i wonder where it is your ****** metaphors come from
when you say things like    "she tastes like strawberries."
i am disenchanted         miscarried
by what you are trying
to say, if anything.
this
social significance of a tangy fruit ripe for harvest- tiny for your convenience.   connotations of innocence   to sensuality, ***, lips

if it is literal. evoking a certain tube of tacky lipbalm that finds itself applied tastelessly and often-

a certain perplexing exclusivity of diet.
or at least a strong penchant for the thing, that.

or if virginal.
recalling imagery of children's clothing- characters and franchises similarly swimming in the same shared canon of bad symbolism.
if you try to push us
into displeasure. violence. or grunge.
to challenge the peacefulness or comfort of normalcy.
shock us.
bring me somewhere

that would be better poetry.

i've read you like: all of you-
a thousand times from anywhere. any time
some might say the universality is its highest honor-
sign of its perfection and
truth.
it is not.
lazy.never real
long bereft of impulse
it makes you feel good because you are told it makes you feel good,
brought up with it.
watered down by it
like many other things.

devoid of specificity or idiosyncrasy
and the imagery of the DD/lg goes wayside.

though fetishist art, at its norm, becomes insular and self pleasuring
(just as fresh strawberries)
it can still be used as a tool when used to break away from expectation
as long as you don't let it become itself.
for it is just as average as anything else:
falling into a bad creepy pasta.
reading the news on a phone app.
unjustly scolding a cashier.
telling a girl that her skirt is too short at her bestfriend's father's funeral.
parents driving offspring to suicide through religion and therapy.

they belong to you.

_                    trash.
like the   compost.   bin in the cafeteria of a school i don't go to
               recycling.

the best
is that which imagines to be seeping out of a cave.from some
deep. secret.
undisturbed
place. where things go on for eons that no one knows about.
like a green light that makes its way up but barely.
sick but
beautiful

like a picture of AIDS.
like morgoths and morlocks dissolving into fossil fuels down where you'll never get it. 
like quartz.

i'm falling asleep. here, at the wound of your eyes    
and if frailty were a promise: i would have you now- in actual bed of
flowers.
unburdened by metaphor
and symbolism.
on our own terms.
as the afternoon
tone rings
they chime on me.and bells slur their vowels as we
push around
the heavy air trembling behind our swollen tongues.speaking
out loud-                    in deliverables
you.breathing happily at me      as if that were
good enough-
for anyone

but remember
every hero is somebody else's scumbag
and if that were good enough. we'd be home
and yet
twisting me,
greedy-
bleeding like a baritone.

still,
beggars can't be choosers but killers can get you
if they want.

oh my god,
this group message from 2008
between my now girlfriend,
the other girl that was very interested me at the time (the first to wear my sweatshirts- the one i thought more likely at the time),
and many others i already begin to forget.
  
i know now,
more than ever
that i really am going to die
someday.

i don't want to be
sensitive
anymore- or cool
for that mater. art is better off left to the dying

(hence the beard and the ugly coat)

i don't know that i've ever said i love you to my father in my adult life just as he had told me once or twice a long time ago:
that he had not, to his father, until the literal death bed.
i hold no hatred
wasn't mistreated overmuch as a child or anything
my childhood was happy. though that might have proven the worst thing for me in how late i've been able to break from the ignorance and comfort of many things.

i know i was an arrogant little ****.
but i might have deserved some of the pride, certainly not all of it
much of it i have abandoned, perhaps, by becoming less like him.
he has always provided well
tried to support many endeavors as full as he could
even if he did not understand fully

often, maybe lived vicariously in things like the guitars that he probably wished he had been able to play.
i know the music he liked.
he is a leader.
in many ways.
my father always had a need for clear, masculine objectivity.
i've found it hard to communicate things of nuance to him.
there has always got to be a bad guy.

often we have really got along.
we've done things together many times.
helped each other.
share interests.
skills.
abilities.
stature (in some ways).

he often told me he loved me
dropping me off somewhere: school, even into college
i didn't know how to say it back.
i can tell that he was actively trying to correct a greatest regret of his life.
i knew that.
but still repeat it.
his father died about a year before i was born.
i never knew him.
when my grandmother was alive, she had often said i looked like him.
i crossed my long legs in the same way.
my father is a broader man
of stronger limb.
he provided
better
than his father.

he has a kindness in him.
he feels responsibilities for things
done what he could:
boy scout leader, (troop functionally disbanded soon after i left as far as i know )
mentor of highschool robotics team (still there even many years after i left. he might be holding on to something in the way of a need to be that kind of guiding force- and besides, my brother still goes and helps out there too)
there have been times i can almost trust in him.
but then he will do or say something
a joke about self-harm-
about a ******.
i get pulled back somewhere.

he is outgoing.
i am not by nature.
but the more outgoing i get, the less i am like him
except in the type of confidence that comes with deep voice and a large frame.

he is certainly not the worst from the type of politics he adheres to.
far from.
he recoils at much of the things that pollute or replace science in the minds of those that vote like him.
but yet there is something of the
specificity.
the patriotism.
the need to protect most, those and that which are similar-
above others.

life
is but a collection of things around a one.

i, eldest son of eldest son,
care little for precedent as a marker of worth.
and i think i can do more good
if i ever do anything at all.

i don't much care for religion and sports.

i'd like you best wrapped up under the axles of my truck
but i'd rather not have to pay your brother to clean it up.
get the **** out of my home town
your driving the real estate value down.

in other words:
go back where you came from.

we don't
need that liberal faggy ****
i'm a man.
i'm a man.
i'm a man.

but i love the way my baby looks in that white summer dress caught around the warm summer air,
with flowers tangled up in her hair.
and the amber sun looks good in her eyes
i'm a man.

**** a ******, stab a ***
make my granddaddy proud.
love my baby, she's WASP like me
we're gunna start a family.
i **** her good, god gave me seed
you know i sow it as i please.
ultimately-
i'm good.

got a gun, bring it to school
always with me. i know i'm cool-
in case i need to get those sunni-shiite *****;  
shoot my teacher if i fail a test.

it's okay.i'm cowboy.
i'm good.

jesus loves me, he told me so.
******* Hey-Zeus, he mows my lawn.
-be ****** if i let them use the good bathroom  
it's all right they'll be deported soon.
and it's good.  

back in the city, jesus-  girls' ******* drop.
filthy ***** and cherries to pop.
but blondie looks good.

follow her home. i'm a really nice guy.
don't understand what made her cry.
just keep
*******
her anyways.

feminazi ******* wanna blame me
there just mad that they're ugly
jealous of my success
there all just ***** anyway.
*******.

and all those ***** livin' off the government's dime
handout *******. all of them should just die.
time to rise up
time to be
family man.
i.

oh, i'm a
good ol' boy,
i'm good.
(you know i'd **** you if i knew i could.)

but i love the way
my baby looks in that white summer dress caught up in the ******* air,
with flowers -like a promise- all in her hair.

the smell of hemp rope
in a storage closet.
running around church basements- irreverent of upstairs.
small fires in the parking lot to prove we could.
small ****
behind card covers inside our heads.

thunder at the lake house (that never was)
and when you celebrate
self-harm
i throw-up.
but
i will ******* again tomorrow.

hair in the shower drain
lets the water sit
in a sick kind of peacefulness.
blissful
decay
scares us into dormancy,
just before spring

it will always be emma's room.
(no mater who moves in later)
and on we go.

i can't.
when trimming the calico hairs on skinly jaw.
like trip-hop leaching out of your pearly *******:
like magic-jesus.
with porcelain around her
animal seeds.
where i can find:
the swirling of Listerine flushing down the side of your throat.
like swabbing for cells from the floor of your tongue

like swapping girls.
or
(like) picnicking       deep inside
flower-bait.blue
trilling Gatorade apology/  
simulating love.

and even now. inside the folds of dead house plants  
i would be okay if you stained my teeth
with anything
you
had
to offer.
horse-whole in the water-
milky for you-
white as cuticles.

like the /**** me/ hum of the A/V cart
hooked up and left running:
nothing.
stuffy
in the boxed we built

i am more perfect than camouflage
like pipilotti rist screaming her lungs to pale ribbons.
as kimono as Kiki was real
she- as brave as anything

i found it out.
as fragrant as
the deepest rooted thing-
blissfull as the afternoon.
as
red
as good cadmium.
and that is ******* red

dismember me (here) in a crown of freckles. where the sunshine warms both of us. with all the world wanting more. falling down. lapping up tongue-lung.you were oozing back into my arms.       the hum was hot

and from your fingers.all the way down to your fingertips-
all was good

whereas bronze will evoke more of girls on the beach than the perfect luster of a Chinese horse in the museum hallway near the back of the wing.

chatachakhkhla.ahtth* came the air from the throat you stepped on
and.both of
you.stayed in that place eternally.

like dharma. like thrown lead.ransomed  .like a hostess with a gun to her head stone. carving metal casting dry mouth hair ropeand as you.            shrank
backwards into the sea.to taste the salt that i become. head around bone thumb entire histories of shoetiers into the innocent briars.like the hairs- scrubmust mosslust.under your fingers.each breath shoveled on
like.every single unregulated prayerdamaging us all. though i stabbed
away greedily-   verily, we could come back home, waiting for the
crash
that never comes.thrushly.tearing awaythe sick branches . tumbling down the
stairs unrequited
and

convulsing.
*if i'm the most interesting thing, than we have a problem.

i'm 7 1/2 inches  old. 8  by you.left. a film on me
like melatonin.leaking outside of it.vocaloid choaking. kawaii grunge in the  
waterlogged
meniscus.my genocide- your ears.ihate the way it ran
down the wall then.   better.if i crouch inside your cradleface18+ years
ago. like an inflammation.    you qualify for
recursion_  
like the newer- more appealing nightterrors.we escape      certain
allegories. by gutting them. filigree-
whipped outside.to punish the exhibitionist inside: your lanky breathing.i am tired of borrowing your guilt      i must be good.you
think.i break my wrist.
we.




anyways,.

fairies ****,
-you said, pulling off their wings
and *



dripping in self-amethyst
you laid out your plans for armistice.lapping up the pools of it that had collected on the floor
it was splendid.

somewhere in the distended belly
of
our longing:
you
were
scraping out the bowels. of
those that bound you here with.me

with each of your heads coming out.covered  
in
ugly slender mandorla:
floating atop like a flame of
mountains.slithering into the air, as ready to fight someone as to
forget it all
and
fall back into quiet loathing.

i am underwhelmed by the way you seek finality.
it really is an adolescent impulse.
and so is neither good nor bad
as some would have you believe.
but don't hold it up so ******* high

and when the silence is broken by your ugly smile

i am spilling out into
mouthy gauze-
a dawnless gurgling-
  and
a minnow's fate.

i could out you.
      in an instant
but.

.
.

they sent me an empty bag instead of the prayer beads i'd
ordered. and amidst my orange lightbulbs and safety glasses, and package-related things, i found the plastic envelope. wherein lay nothing but the label. and a split down the side to tell me what might have been in there once. i gave $20 to a homeless man on the red line because they say it went as low as -8 that night and much worse with the wind.he looked like family, and i was standing up. (on my way to you)but our feet, together in bed- touching through my socks
are like seed packets-dry envelopes that sit around on bureaus. after the garden is trampled with ice-inhospitable even to those **** rabbits whose tracks still pass that way.you say: you will plant them again next year.come spring. come the thawing of the ground. come, a different sort of loveliness. and
i just wanted that necklace because i liked the look of it-
the
yellow string against the unfucked-with
wood.

and that is an aesthetic worth crying over.

sitting here,
i know that look in your eyes
like culty mattress store fake zen music.
ambient as ****.
and you were waiting for the radiator to burst-
explode, **** everyone with
chunks of cast iron hurled through their heads
like nothing.
you,
listening to the hiss and whur - lazy and calm
like nothing was wrong.

there is something i knew once
but barely
and on my good days,
i spend the whole of my life trying to relive
or,
.
and in museums
and in thrift shops
in **** sites
in blogs-
strange charity exhales,
slender tendril figurines. come out licking the music about the edge of
your mouth.
so that it might be told
but barely

the fairies atop the streetlamps **** each other as the sun goes down
and the power lines jingle.
and we head for home
.
(while the bugs hum)
(while the mother lives)
(while the electric meter runs)
(while our fingers turn in unexpected ways.)
while
we lose faith in other things

whereas ****** and hate are more palatable than ***
and art.  

and the music of the world- you ****** up with your ****** voice:
you felt things hard but not well
and so were not worth
anything.

(and it was as
just
as it might have been.)

morbid is the mouth that tamed you to this loveliness
where it's cool to be sick.
and watch our arms wither back to the
lips bounded by vulgarities unspoken:
all the while they deserve far worse.
best
friends long since ****** over
scream out for eternal homes that fail to exist.
sick enough to the soft stomach. folds over the belt and hangs there just
enough to feel
shame. hair caught in the buckle and
pulling. 
fare free-er than the other ones:
the violence of the stock photo.
and of the clip art.
and of the godfearing people.
their curation was
like a goodmorning to the legs that carried you, homeless,
out of my caring.
like the salt, kicked around
by
boots that don't get taken off at the door.
like the trimming of a fingernail.
like the moisture of a breath.


but all this you embroidered into
the murmuring

to escape the fat sickle of the crop that hung lowly to the warm air
-out of the shower, ready to destroy us all

all the while wanting to be knotted
by any beast big enough to devour you

and combing through it all
i heard you crying

and i might have wept too
save for the bitterness still kept between my brows

your greatest gift all.

and by the
sores and the soles of my
encroachment,
we might build cities to that

and the grass was ******* green
and the land unfolded into an ancient
suicide pact
it thanked us.
like a kettle that spits hot when it pours-
like a ring finger that shrivels in the cold-
like plastic that splits open at the seams-
like a goblin's sabbath-
like blood where it belongs-
like rust-
like any sky seeking a wall to shine on.
inside of a room/
but what they don't understand is that i am
cool.
and under a strawberry duress-
honey-drop guns fell down to the earth
drinking me.
i
found you there
hiding under an old chair leg. in an indentation left in the rug-
long since the table gets thrown
away
and the world gets remade again,
and i took the old bodies and hid them.
and in the end again,
(you are choking)
i met you there
under all the promise of a yandere moon.
gleaming pale as your voice yet faltering into the
shadows grovelling at your feet.
wanting to peel off its ugly skin.
standing dumb
in the absence of news.
and
her
hands fluttered as he crumbled through the door
she smiled like a ballpoint scrawled down the spackle of the front
hall
the landing creaked as you crept.

we wanted to wade down the hairy stairs and outside-
see the the stars whipping out their **** down at us
from above
.
you touched your arm

i caught your
              glance
like soap between the toes
and the ugly hairs wrapt around them-
half-way
to the drain

we breathed a bit.
i thought that you looked a little better than from before

somewhere
out there the radio sits unthrown. and the window
unbroken.
we fall into complacency.
we wake up early
poems go unwritten.
heroes **** up
jackets lose buttons.the glass man goes out of business-

iloveyou.andgodisgoodandheavenisathing.allmydeadfriendsandfamilys­endmesignslikeflowersandbirds.andsoldiersarebraveandgood.weloveth­emtheymustallbegoodpeopleandimagoodpersonforsayingso.itssohardtod­otheressomeoneilove.andtheymademesadbutitsnotmyfaultatalloritsall­myfault.imaterriblepersonimagoodperson.imjustsosensitiveandmisund­erstoodandimsosmartandgood.andiwrotethisforyou.andiwrotethisinspi­teofyouiwrotethisforme.andimsogood.andtheresathingcalledinnocence­.childrenhaveitgodisgood.andthesun.andbirds.andloveisreal.fate.im­good.teacoffee.cigarettes.theocean.myfeelingsarebetterthanyours.w­eareallthesameeveryonedeservesachance.secondchancesnomoresecondch­ances.iloveyou.moonlightstardustwearethemilkyway.rhymescemesbutte­rfliesinmystomach.hishandonthecock.andgodisgood.andthereisanetern­alobjectivetruth.andsex.andshefeeltoearthwithahammerthroughherhea­dandhertitsoutpraisingnothingbutthesounditmade

for tom, ill in heaven.
not normal
hive life.
fin, lone mortal hive.
(*** fine lone mortal.)
if he love mortal inn,
non-mortal if he live.

even now,
in the city of your keeping. pillars are erected in the name of those rings that drag across the pads of your fragile fingertips
and in the valley places, we break your hands.
i carry you around in dark tepid forests
and in the wet parts of your lungs-
we dine.
and in the outer ocean
where the lovely bundles of sinew inside your calves curl around each other to keep warm-
we force out our cries.
we gunned down our best chances.
we built upwards towards the sky.

i came to the tower when they went to worship the origin of dead
laptop fans
we want the hum like planes going by ready to drop bombs on babies-
balm of the backs of your hands-
a short- sharp, shifting weight. like the memory of a mother's dress
a weeping, like others before.
and even now,
i dilate down to your size.
i find ways of getting through to you.
i strangle out the folds in my skin.
there, lost bodies convulse to freejazz as the ship fails to come back down.
and the little black dots behind your knuckles shimmer on your bones.

door  
$40 used on ebay
cleaned it up. made it good

(wore the **** out of that thing)
i found him there,

i fed him my paintings.
lured him out
with my bad poems. he
found friends in the array of ghosts i maintain under my fingernails,
and
in the old wool watchcap kept stuffed down at the bottom of my studio bag.

i fed him in the framingham night
and in the cold foreign springtime.
and we
made
peace-raids at the reservoir.
kept track
of the hours of "stargazing" spent there. while pale gods lay strewn  allover
the hillside
and in the rain
and the snow.
and the overcalculated days where it was too hot.

outside,
we sweated morphine
and ****** to tom waits,
luncheoned on the grass.
i
bore our banner and he reared his
black
buffalo head.
we slunk down into breakfast booths

i had soapy teeth.

he had a gut that burned slow like a trinket-drawer left
unopened for
years.
the ghost in my jacket, he shrinks down and curls up when he
should get big.
-reaches out to the tops of cabinets nobody can reach.
i remember him
my ghost thinks he's funny,
but
drawers get opened.
and ghosts get nervous
and coats get put away.

my
name
for you makes you real.
and breath puts your pieces together across the roof of my
mouth.
i could heave you
through another age of men if you were spent-
you fall apart where the tongue stops.

i can't.

so watch us through your bedroom windows,
cuff down the tops of your socks at the sound of our coming.
clamor to us.
weave
your wars.

25, feels like 16
[just as long as there ain't no wind.]
i could love you
but i'd need to. crush your head
it took my blood thumbs
it took my best smiles

left me home.

honestly, i would be there
                                  for you
                              if i
                 
,  miss you but my bad knee's
acting up again.
thought of you again,
saw you standing there.
daughters smoking on the front porch  
while mothers die of cancer. upstairs in their beds
breathy weeks went by,
saw your mother-
left a stone upon your grave.
it was 25. felt like 16
got my jacket

got my blood deep inside. my thumbs

fall-off-the-bone priestess
born under the pale grunge moon
offering up her (fingernails)
to the bitey flash of a laptop screen leaking into an unlit room
and the infinite bliss that is:
red electrical tape
over the blue indicator light at the tip of the power cord.
and she will **** us.
amen.

you, soidal
like a wave that comes creeping
under my cages.
covers.
and the hairs in your ear.  stand still enough so as not to get caught-
in empathy
under a reaming sleep.
i tricked you into going for a ride while the roads were still wet.
there, nothing left to do.
and i,
the lisping slit filled to a two fingered fist.
front feet dragging
across
the threads of a plastic
waterbottle mouth.
            the
bullet passed through.
wetpennies.numb-deep in the lungs
the slippery film of a chewable vitamin still clinging under molars.
socks slipping down into the toes
the air swept aside into a new season, lips flared
a weekday in the back seat

and when i sweat
i check the threat
of thunder storms on my weather app.
and it calls out to us:
                   have an awesome day and a fabulous weekend
have an awesome day and a fabulous weekend
don'tfuckwithourhearts
don't let me down
hold on to it.
don't go believing in better things

and in and around the ocean, i need a fake friend
now

repeat it back to me.
fix all my mistakes.
**** me at the right time.
kick me in the skin cells
keep me.
itching at the skin

abraham ****** his daughter
and everybody liked it
i must admit
                                          it was kind of okay.
they bashed in her teeth
all because she liked it
it looked like fun
i wish i was one.             of them


god gave us the earth
           and it was okay

we
touched the floor grieving no one
while girls pushed down on their skin.
we kept our heads hidden inside of
gloveboxes
in the dry.mouth-feel of the night
we scraped it out:
the sound of eggs at breakfast-  early in the pink-eye morning.
with tar behind our lashes, we watched the ropes **** each other as they were tied down around your heels.
but better breeds better
and

as bitter as the backs of your teeth
and as fitful as the lips that you rest them on


tired as laundry maker's love,
and the darling dogs gnashing around in the cool-cut yard.
early in the slime-shine morning

he said closing his eyes,
         i feel like a tree clutching the rocks on some high place,
        weary of wind and winter
        and grey of wood.
        my tired fingers in the tired ground.
        heavy of lid and brow,
        remembering too many passings and partings in the dim of
        mornings.  
        and you will think if foolish but for the shrubbery fading
        and the bees not returning in the summer

shrine-headed maidens      
rotting in the sun  
catchers of sediment on their parched lips.
sad like riverstones over beyond the bank,
where the roots tried too hard to forget their fingers
and the air found them.
and breathed into them, new voices
saying,
i begin and end where the names laid upon you grow.
i have burdens borne away.
we have lost you.
and the entwives parting, sighed

I killed you on a Tuesday.
under the least spectacular moonlight-

and in the instant you called to me,
I found the edges of my fingers at your cheek
and my wound above your hip.
I took hold of you now
searching for a way to fold you down to my size.
my head hits the ceiling when I turn down the stairs but

you muttered something-
I looked down,
“I feel smaller than a thumbnail”

I was wrong then. and now condemned to rewriting the same small repertoire.over and again
until they feel legitimized by their own histories-
I caught you off guard the other day. I told you about my dead ex-friend that I never hated as much as she wanted me to.
you told me it was fine.