The grotesqueries abound in Dolores
as the sweetfuck drunk in white sandals
speaks softly to himself, and louder
as people pass and no one hears or
if they hear they hear
an animal lowing

A stub-nosed mutt is dressed
In fineries licking around
The patent leather sinking mud
In placcid weather flaccid
mares grasping for their place in                        
an anchorless world

And who is the walrus now?
If perhaps we all deigned to
bury our faces in small bits
of nonsense now and then
What soft and lonesome artifacts
could we we unearth between our teeth

like dogs with so many bones
lizard brains pockmarked with listicles
an apocalypse of many gods
on with many islands
whose harbors all exact
a pound of heartflesh
for the siren's song of Answers

i was buried

by a minyan of

neckless men

with lavender

eyes that rolled

around in the cups

of their houndstooth

fedoras like pills

on the roulette wheel

pivoting round 

the centripetal force

of an absent god

gazing skyward

all the while

forgetting to finish 

I like the word fuck because of its implications

Fast, sweaty, hard

But also because of the release 

From my mouth and brain

Like a spoken orgasm

Fuck me

 

 

 

it pierces and vibrates
with a concupiscent staccato
it cuts two ways

a sword with no hilt
i overused it once
in callow exuberance

i hope my children
learn to curse fluently
in their mothers tongue

your pixelated breasts
the sweat on my pillow
my fantasy is

only to reach through
the screen to
grasp inside you

and the only word
that will do
is

fuck

as i peel cockles
off the wharf
someday too
the marrow will run dry

from your chalky bones
and pool around your
ankles as grey matter
leaks out your ears
in an encephalitic ooze

i decipher
the voluptuous braille
of your spine's topography
a dream
where i bathe in all
your scented parts



the ocean between us
 i won't


let


it




wash














me       clean

i rearrange my chemistry
like so many chairs

the patio furniture
roosts in my
living room
unheimlich

i've bathed lately
in your lingering scent
on my unwashed sheets

you smell like a woman
who's taken men
inside her and judged them
inadequate

my desire for you lies
somewhere at the center of
that judgement

the threshing
and winnowing
the yes
and the no
but recently the yes yes yesyesyes


so tomorrow
just fuck me into
that fertile oblivion
i seek where the chairs are all seats
the seats are all thrones

and all the flowers
blooming smell like a
woman who knows

i'm always returned
to bike rides on Rising Son
a stranger in my home town
leeching strength
from the dilapidated row houses
in my neighborhood
we get close to what
poisons us carressing it
not letting anything
permeate but aroused by
the sweet toxic proximity
of thanatic lust

you said that you're
okay if you stay away
from needles and
my god if in that moment
i didn't want to crawl up
the dropper's neck
and drown with you

but instead we wrapped
our arms around each other
and we drank the
expatriated autumn air

i need to work on this
but i won't
i'm weary to death
of this false transparency
glass walls
are just walls
and more terrible
is the flood that you
can see bubbling with anger
and shrieking behind the fracturing levy

Augury

this is not the side
of you you'd like me to
see you said but which side
do i show i am a
curator of addiction and
dissolution and the occasional
smatterings of bumbling
success the next girl
must always be the
best girl and she is
until your best girl
is a slight autumn breeze
and you are left stroking
yourself and gauging the
inbound and outbound
itineraries of certain birds
and making gods
of withered tea leaves
where is the naked love
of my youth if not
burrowed deep in your
cherokee eyes

Carnival in Louis Armstrong park

This feels like perhaps it

Should be significant or

Could be or

The jazz wheel in

The treme

Is something literary

God am I fucking

Inadequate

This maybe is what

It's like to lose one's mind

To speak in the royal we

Like you're a surrogate

Or a petri dish

I'm so terrified

Of the trappings of

Precision

I don't know if I'm

Laughing or crying or

Why I can't be the Cardinal

Why I can rent horses

On Macinac or why

It's so perturbing to be

Grandiose and all

My problems find their

Solution here with

Your head in my lap

Looking out across

The marbled bricks

Raindrops fall like

Dappled slugs I am

Reaching for excuses to use

The treme

A place on television

If someone found me

I hope they'd stage my death

As holding more intrigue

They'd hang me up

Like strange fruit

And pluck me

For some strange purpose

All I can think about is you

All I can think about is being

You

Dixieland.

black bottom spoon
and powder on the table
come too late
come too soon
bubbling black venom
on a black bottom spoon

on my 24th birthday
i find myself a miner
for small pleasures
an author of small
fictions a lover of
small women and
it's no small wonder
that the world seems
smaller today than
it ever has or ever will

the subatomic makeup
of a man's heartspace
years of study and all
it means is that we
get better and better
at parsing the signifiers
of those with the courage
to give and receive love
throwing caulk and spare
thumbs into the holes
we find in the rough hewn
and ponderous levees
of our dearest friends
whom we collect
like pondstones

it is true also that some men
dedicate their lives to the
taxonomy of certain rocks

ships in the night
who are we on the days when
the beauty does not flow from us
organically and the drugs wear off
and we are left with
our friends who stand in
for all the things we wish
we were and were not
encapsulated neatly like
benzodiazepines or
Russian dolls

i do sometimes wish we
were pumped full of blacke humour
like Galen supposed and life were
a hydraulic system of
leeching and letting
absorption and osmotic learning

and i love like madam
curie loved radium or
burroughs loved the needle
clawing for selective destruction
and stasis when freedom
curls up with a
soliciting purr beside
the fleshy thighs and
dimpled cheeks of
my covetous
neighbors

i remember when
being in love with
you was so important

when it didn't matter
if my cigarettes grew
soggy on my lips

i had fewer tattoos
and i was someone of
which my mother

may have approved
when life had a
design with you

at the center like
a fleschy peach
and i've learned

the solemn pleasure
of stern apogees
and residual flavor

why it seems vapid to
be widely read
i don't know why i made
that connection

oh my saccharine black
america i can never
be yours i must
die young i can't

imagine outlasting this one
immeasurable moment
would this small poem
mean more if i quoted

baudelaire i understand
the deep envy of sickness
24 hour sports networks
and the junkie sweetness

of suspended living but
i have always had a romance
with crowded marketplaces
and urban churchyards

i've yet to define an ideal



but how women lust for uncertainty

the problem with points
is that you can see them
miles away

and watching you stumble
like a clumsy child
to get there

makes me sick
why don't you just
set a balsa wood

merengue puppy dog
afire in the sierra nevadas
and they'd love you

because they couldn't
understand your goals
you always win

when no one else
knows how to play
but everyone wants to

J Mascis for President!
J Mascis for President!
What a strange dream at that

I just want to live inside a pop song

I finally have a little money ferretted away somewhere

I think I can move.



Come with me!

Let's feed the elephants

comewithmecomewithmecomewithme








Sincerely,
HONEST TO GOD
EMOTIONAL TRASHZ

someday i will
tell my children the story
of when i was cruel

omitting finer details
but recalling trips out
the R5 i never spoke about

it felt like cheating not
when i woke up with
her but when

i notched my finger carefully
into her lower spine
in the small secret place

i had only ever known
with you the soft
droning of my telephone

muted by the padding
of a discarded brassiere
which was not the right size

and how the ways in which
i can offer myself will
never be quite the same

i will talk instead
in vagueries about
mistakes and misspent youth

though truth be told
i always have spent it
exactly how i pleased

i will kiss them
goodnight go to
bed as a man

who seems a stranger
now and will be
moreso then

it's unbecoming to crave
so much wisdom at twenty-three
they called burroughs
a petri dish for the human experience

happiness in the resplendent
concupiscent now i don't
have anything to say until
i wake up with you

who can match me
joy for joy as
i unwind like
a wirebird

its taken me till now
to listen like schwitters
but now all i hear is flying spittle
wagging tongues and flapping lips

we will begin o-wer pre boarding process
at this time

the simple joy of stumbing

who pleasures you?

good evening ladies and gentlemen
welcome to delta flight 1160 - going to
"with service to atlanta,
we'd like to begin our pre-boarding process"
Noooo no no no non nooo

We'd like to board only the retards and gimps -

THERE'S NOBODY HERE

but it doesn't hurt to practice

we've talked about opening up a brothel
i'd treat them well
those ladies


aquarian
libran

initiator running ideas
through the meat grinder
of my sickness or
genius or
whatever you call it

APTITUDE APTITUDE
electric
stradling
capitol sqaure

don't cut your hair you balding fuck

we analogue to
what we touch the most
and i love to occupy
the spaces between
what we see and
how we say it
i do not try to
make sense of the
people that love me

lately i am thinking of
databases and spreadsheets
and the ocean of
our aboriginal unconscious
and how a single word can
touch everything and coat it
in oil like an offshore drill

and i remember not
giving a fuck about anything
but the thought of how
that cloud must have bloomed
in the gulf like a
carcinogenic rorschach test

and how beautiful that must have been

the unbalance of humours
blacke and cloying



it won't happen to me

what i would give
to see you
down by the mississippi
river like john berryman

everyone knows
i gt this story
2nd hand but in
our internet age and
still i have
no pictures of you

that night i sucked
brown honey
from the earth
kissed the man
with the roving billboard
moved to
a vagrant saxophone

my words maybe
make you dance
maybe just measure
your quaking like
a seismograph

how difficult for me
when you only
must stand and drip
as i solder on wings
tarred and feathered

to hear you shriek
to smell the cauterizing
of your alabaster skin
to see you
fly away

we who give permission
we who bring out the soul
in those who have it
and the fear
in those who don't