arduous
is my name
all is hard for me
and all can see
my pet heart inside this glass bowl

tasks become a living thing and task me
nothing sticks i forget i forget im sorry

i am not supposed to be here
i am not in the in
never have been

my home is the big rip
that everlasting nothing that
everything creeps toward

you should know
that

dark the mirror comes fist-tongued i cry and die
inside
a little or a lot
everyday

im a rolling pebble
kicked down  
the road's shoulder

the hurt
is alive
and my eyes
are opening

there is no such thing
as home anymore
i know
that much

sitting on the couch
with her legs tucked
under
at an angle
toward the door
 
that i
walk through

she is wearing her mint green bathrobe 

her fingers clutch
a wine bottle she jus got done killing

its contents dousing
some of the fire

we start
to argue

it spirals

i create
space and

go to the bedroom

her being now frames the doorway 
i notice and
recognize
her one foot on top of the other 
pivoting the toe in-out-in-out 
digging it
into her bottom toe
as if to
***** herself 
to her place

that im in 

it crushes me
to see this tic of hers
because it was always the small things she did
that made me want to curl up

inside her bones
and call it something like

home

her fingers grasp
the door frame 
i can see
the blood
leaving them

i feel
so much

the flowers are dead and dying and
i feel like i am
watching these ******* petals
ball themselves
into a wrecking fist
with time lapsing much too quickly

before i
am able to
be in it

i am yesterday right now too often it hurts it hurts
and its weird bc
the high-flung melodrama
of me
feels kitchen sink disposal real

her blue
blue iris
so beautiful
detained
by the stilled willful dark that
increases itself

abysmal circumference
pooling around
my feet
its teeth whirring dicing

us now lying down
on the bed
together
one last time

her fetal position curls into my

stiff
straight
body 

her fingers
lacing the fingers

of another 

next to
her 

indigo silhouettes
on top
of black

lack

sidelong wakesleep
her face halved
in periwinkle sheets

one sun stripe
zips down the room
partioning the dark

toes yawn
under the sheets
inadvertently scratching me

her breath
so much more (or less)
than i could ever poet

i went to the bar
last night. had a few drinks.
jukebox played. people danced.

my glass
spun around
in my hand,
like my head, and
it drank

me up
good.

i have
a hard time
a lot.

i know

the press the press
to be someone

so well; and, she knows me.

the trim of her pale green dress
whittles the beats that

keep me going.

wooden boy with a prop in his hand
and a flower for a face.

there is
so much
of

some
thing, rare

and (for ******* once)
actually worthwhile,

that never
gets out.

it plays intermittently
behind shuttered eye;
each new rerun cutting, polishing,

while we watch,
almost (it seems) completely passive  -
transfixed by the whatif.

it is ghost.
nothing more.

try to capture it, it
comes out rote
on lit walls tall; with
chairs chairs and
floors and stairs
and balconies and stage and

nobody is there.
none of them came out.

i hate myself
out loud,

and
make
things

awkward

er.

these long lines of me
have begun to curl
and split
along small vulnerable points
-separating-
till i stand blank as bone

.. but then you too peel away your palimpsest

new page
new tone
driven by us

a place where my alone is not read into
where your sidelong gaze allows for this core ruin of mine
to be unknown and unknowable

scribbled sick blue skies
gray clouds somersault and lick
eater of hue
it cannot be deleted it cannot be scried  

this is the waste we do not wait around for to be fixed
it is a space where margins are let in

as is

and i no longer feel written down

from the foam come
uncupboarded hoary-eyes wide,
once more, too

observe ----
it hangs
from one single thread --

which in turn
hangs
from a further thread --
itself dangling

from the worn pincers of an old fool
recluse inside his comfy house of laughs
inside a room
where four taciturn gods stand
mute inanimate still solemn blank --

one of which
tilts its wilted head --
and with eyes absent
up inside his thinking thoughts
he sheds warm pools of dark stills --
unspeakable pictures spilled --
onto a being stuck
inside an existence
that has become
fully acknowledged as such

threadbare despair
despairing still  
and still
it remains
the simple bloom tumult
that wills and will

Thin wafer of silicon
Placed on my outstretched tongue
Giver of life(lessness)

Finitude is beautiful though
****** digits splayed
One thumb grows from my tongue

images brim
inside my
lonely, worried head.

things.

all the
t h i  n g   s
need
to be done
all the time.

i know.

but i
petrify
like a tree slip;
now tipped over,
asked to lay down;
horizontal to this,

death's opened fist.

and then,

all those lightyears
spooled along the edge of the rush
come lit with a sound
so furiously felt

it -somehow- passions forth
a small being, breathing
from ways milky forever.

and i

place it,
upright,
in the palm of your
hurt hand,
semi-curled openshut, and
sorta tilted;
as if to say, idunnoifishould..

... but you do know.

and it will grow up
and down
and around,

where it will thrive till shone tumble and wilt.

i feel
like
space
given
shape,

a web
crawler
whose spinnerets
spit out
time,

leading toward
something
genuine and
whole and

present.

fear does not define me.
i am energy,
incarnating

now.

things can be silly.
i can allow myself
to feel

joyous

without stressing about
capturing the moment -
enjoying things as they come..

i am density
in hand with
fluidity.

i am
river rock
and rivulet -
i sit, center,
pool,
eddy

and
swim off

downstream.

and tomorrow is tomorrow and the marrow
of this bone's blood slips off
like a shoe worn
for too long

this is the first day that
my grandma
didn't
get to live
since a really long time ago

what can i possibly say?

i want to curl up inside my own fist right now
like one of your old matryoshka dolls
that i used to play with
and put you inside me so i can make it all better

i wanna recall all the thoughts
that once were yours
i want to know you why didn't i get to know you better

i stayed away im sorry im strange i get sad a lot but i loved you still

she had once
been
a person
but
now
she isn't and
i can't stop shouting these rips from my eyes

1.  return to cocoon
2.  cut wings
3.  fade into the blue black

there's this one sliver of space at the core of who i am.
i am drawn to it. it hurts me. and i like it when it hurts.
i used to ignore it but now it has grown on me. welcomed invader.
my silly attempts to squeeze it out make it go deeper.
i know that now.
i let it sink in.
i tilt my head left. slightly. pull my hair behind my ear.
and bare my neck. one eye eyeing it. full of intent.

it goes deep. i let it.

and the deep will breathe a space where no face
can be found.

it blooms a multitude.
and i stare into it. scarry-eyed.
even tears come near
but they only brim.

depression is like finding
a phillip morris pack
of cigs left behind the drywall
in an old burb splitlevel tract house
now being renovated.

you bust down a wall
to make room for
a new space only
to find old ways,
cute and smarmily nostalgic.

billboards of then,
marlboro men.

it's no michelangelo.

the not-too-far-back past
is a looseleaf ghost
binding you in three rings,
one of which won't snap
shut all the way, letting you
be here and there, drinking
your dumb boring blood
like a can of tab soda
from the cafeteria vending machine

replacing your numbered collarbone
with a googol of transfinite plateaus.

there is a humble road that slowly goes up, inching into feral skies, rising high with conscious, living intent.

it is sustained by a preternatural order, allowing for, yet shaping, flux.

you must -first- be utterly grounded, rooted in, in order to reach these airy heights.

ancient scraper of skies old, babel-proofed from power grabs, confounding our words to capture this coveted ascent - convey

my sore
feet
along.

arapnoia next
to me, and
three amaryllises of
bella. the pride

is pose juxty to
the cloud battybrained,
clearly. so

tax the syn and jus be

We unfriend so easily --
mice clicking

Memories --
Just a bunch of ******* memes --
Nicely, slickly

like our peanut butter?
then Like our Faceblah Page!

like our yams?
then Like our Faceugh Page!

like our chartreuse eggs-n-flam?
then Like our FaceNotYourFear Page!

shiny carbon lattice wilt

return
to ocher and
worm

you have wanted all there is
to want
-ever-
with your
looks
your hooks

petals fell

i
am
downstairs now
unstarred

crawlers mouthing
eat eat the shine

habit is at
my elbow, tho
crouching
scenes not small too
flank the left
ulna. hell,

w a flick
of the wrist
i could commission
a fistless head squawk bloom. but this

hag
viscous, if
lag of lead and
cadmium sapped, ack-

nowledges
a vision,
also. all

have a voice,
no matter how
crude or

elemental.
the hydra, for
instance, has a mouth-
ful of
membranous
know
how.

jet-void smaller daff-
odils milling and
mauling tall, i am beautiful
because i  
am here
amid it all
for such
a little bit

i am light. i am night. i am writefuckingwrite.
take my bones, ******. take this skin, ******. HERE, take my name, ******, i
still. am. i still
am.

i still write. i write i write.
my ribs are ledger. they hold up my awe.
but my thoughts s p i l l
into the gut, where they churn hard.
my accidents birth cosmoses.
my self-hate wills supernovas.

i am not yours. i breathe, alone, i am being. unseen strings
strung from my fingertips: i manipulate gods.
i fear no god of yours. your book is finite. my writs are
i n f i n i t e.

feel the inside of my femur there you will find my fire calligraphic
it is rune i am ancient babble stone megalith cut from monolith i am

sweet black bile
that sad smirk
hurt's so good

i'd eat entire moons for you
and sleep in till noon
spooning the day wasted

my binary atoms are
being smeared wet and mucosal
like holes flexing and swelling
like being queen of the all-all's
watching their heads roll into
tentacles that are serving me
dropping ontologically immanent grapes
into my mouth and fanning me
with hexagonal cleopatras glistening
and all the whorl is a place to feast

i'm bad luck. struck sad and oblate
weary, dedicated to the swearing ground.
chivalric pulp, my pages
don't bind like they used to.

rhyme me sad. adder fluent, sistines
vaunt these heads of mine. but wise
enough to feel these molecules murmer
and mouth the corvid in the wellwater.

annihilated profiles in my coming wake.
i am bad luck and prose. slipped
my shadow, i walk a bare life.
not broken anymore. not here all the way.

don't canter.
never could.
haven't loved. will

of a ghost. hell, i see ancestors
trailing behind me
in a mass of quadruped brutes
black as the day i was born
and sounding a great horn
made of gold and unprophecy,
babblings of a river older than talk.

old light. there's
mold on your
information.

your me
is flipped through
photo album. i am

somewhere between
the solar spasms,
deleted and spatial,
****** off. holding

no grudge, i
just can't care
that hard anymore. all

i want is
soaring silent synths
and eyes, mine, closed,
holding vacuums on the lids.

blank white page:
prompt that yoosh pomp thatchyoo do;
he'll stoop he'll stomp his frill till it's

shelved, docu'd
spelled out,
to the point of mellifluous flu.

his coy is beggining to cloy.
but it stirs still.

he wants the inside of his alonebones to atone
for the unimaginable thing he has to do.

hero that doesn't  
want to know
tragedy is real.

cut stone
lichen roam
over your
shut mouth

mineral lochs
run through
slowed vein

ex
tend

your hard hand

take my face
and wake the sleep
that petrifies me
sunk into this bed

ancient thing
ancestor to the mountain
what tales of brokenness
you must have

break them
over mine
widen this time
give me eyes farther

bow to your 
own crown 
made of

thrive and
struggle and 
stretch.

this is
yer jam. 

you got this.

at a cafe
people, like me,
in transit.

the inbetween
slivers

my
molecules,

opening the space to face
caught thoughts.

eye starly
cut thrumming
cherry ember dwindle shutter

speeded up
us lamplighted
and brief

i am spiraling.
i am not well.
an early exit is calling me.

these asshaberdashers
are hung on the wall
but can't win in the end

The few times I realize I am content, I just as soon feel like I'm cheating on my usual sadness; worse, that it is only the eye of the storm; and worst of all, I'd be duped into writing a happy poem - anything but that.

you don't hafta be fearful
you don't hafta be saved
just be braver
than you were
yesterday
today

i ride her grayed gyri,
slipping from crest to crest
as it undulates
into dank sulci; trough of her troubles
mirroring, i think, my own
interpretation of hers,
and of mine:
and this
entwine, it writhes
like lithe yeses
half-whispered, half-glossolalia secreting babbles
from faces wasted by pushpull cravings eaten.

close your eyes

right
now.

space
the **** out.

watch and

wait

for those
****** thoughts
to surface. and when they do,
describe them.

give them crazy long fangs.
give them a mane made of fury.
let them summon that buried hatchet.

let it
do its
worst.

then
watch that ****
dissipate
into the forest
of thinky thoughts.

it won't stop
the feelings of it'sallwrong
tumbling inside my gut

ocher yellow
oxidized
waves flake
sheets of
metal tides
rivets fixed to
crest and trough

i come
i go and
little nothing's
eat at my
sloughed bone

i am going to ****** this moon

i guess poetry can be used
to inspire optimism
and make people feel good,

but i'm looking for the kind of poetry that
eats the air
from my lungs and
sifts my holes
with a fistful of dead flowers.

i say *** out loud
like sixty times
a day, easy

poems write me
in my slumber
and then i forget them
later. sometimes they
are so good i feel like
this hell is something else

feeling slightly disturbed
about my bed sheet's low thread count
old *** shots destroy it