A drifting

Had this dream I was climbing down escalators from some raised up perch on the floor D5 which was like a high school tho a college and I had to walk down steps to the bottom floor to get there originally and some girl was bugging me and asking me where I was from and I was looking for a classroom, something to do with science, that after  sitting in bed and thinking about I realize had to be from another dream dreamt years and years ago it was so strange and otherworldly and I back tracked but couldn't find it, or figure out where I had thought of it and I was left coldly wondering in the darkness whether I was forgetting my own life, but I was not alone with Whit sleeping on my pillow against my face and biting my hands, so that the bites retained my sanity or what was left of it

but this feeling of deja vu is eating away at my memory and I can't place the colors or the desks or the life, just the swinging on the rubber rails of the escalator and wondering why the workmen hadn't sealed the steps off if there were no steps tho I made it down easily, they weren't even mad that I risked my life swinging down 5 stories trying to find the second floor which wasn't there

Now I feel a kind of emptiness like life leeched from my bones and some lost speck of love is burnt to nothingness in me and I'll never be able to find it and bring it back, there's so many pieces missing

I see through my glasses only what the world will be

Ark I, mass extinction

The Chandelier was a black mass
on bronze circle, the participants
glowering globes circled around a
hollowed center & dripping
the human worldly abyss
a golden globe chained to the
wood finished heavens--
metal & cardboard containers
imprisoned on small second floor
ceiling, sit in darkness in
the old 1800s room of old clocks
& slow modernity,  and the
people sift through the Revolution
& the Civil War,
white ceiling mass descending
small desk lights, gold chain
pulled, the east wing high level
of first days-- the 6 months
to come

I'm a White Horse Dylan Thomas

Graffiti Kerouac Go Home

Bryzgalov and the Merry band of Flyers

How bad does a team gotta
be to make you write a poem about them?
as bad as the Flyers are playing right now
is enough, and fans scream kill Bryzy! Trade
Bryzy! The team doesn't trust him! But,
you ever play hockey before? and you
realize the goalie has to trust a team,
I wouldn't they don't back check,
they give up space, get taken in the d zone,
they're terrible and it was building slowly, idiots
just don't see it, can't see it now, yeah sure
he could make some saves, but when
he doesn't know where they're coming
from or how, it's not that easy, just like
it isn't being the gum Laviolette chews while
he can't figure out what the hell is going on out
there on the ice

Round 3

Finished edits today,
baked chicken with potatoes
on 400 degrees and the whole
place smelled like rosemary, it's
70 outside and sunny, tomorrow
I'll be in the archives reading
Revolutionary War pension files,
it'll be raining like it always does,
I'm in DC again, scrawling in red and green
ink, I've got all these sketches tucked
away in my journal, part of me wants to
post them here, but I can't bring myself--
I watch the cleaning crew outside my window
5 stories below...they're speaking Spanish
and I don't get it, I don't get
much--

All I'm able to do now is Dream

I find out that my mom was outside
with Stonewall (my cat) & someone pushed a tree
on him, I cannot figure out where, why,
that could be, it's right outside on the front
lawn, Everyone is sad, mourning
my mom doesn't believe he could have made it,
survived, the tree is sunken down into it's
stump, fallen over & we go about lifting it,
it's light, underneath is a deep hole lined with
metal, like the entrance to a shuttle, steel ribs
flashing lights & I drop down to find him,
there is a bunch of strange
animals walking around, sliding around a
circular tunnel, I realize
Stonewall must have been placed inside
this brown turtle that appears to be just like
a miniature wooden figure that my sister has,
I can't pick him up
but push him toward the door,
the tunnel starts to shrink & the other
creatures begin to close in on us
I manage to push him against the door
but it closes trapping us, the turtle grabs the
handle tho & pushes open the door, I
push him out, then pick him up and rush
to the top of the tunnel outside,
***
I wake up, toss, remember the details
fall back to sleep
***
I run toward the house
& everyone is with me, I push the turtles head in & it opens,
or becomes something, spits out something, I open that &
some sort of gas mask/airplane oxygen mask is
inside, I'm confused & run back, my relatives are
peering down into the tunnel, I tell everyone Mike & me
are going back down to get him, there is
fear growing, I feel it like the air becomes
clogged in the dream, I believe he's down there okay
So we drop down again and there is a kind
of society where everyone looks like a fire fighter,
or policeman, I run frantically at first, watching the
eyes on us, there's chaos, suddenly the ceiling
is 50 feet above us, I realize
what is going on & stop, I begin to yell,
it's dawning on me, "Reptilians! Reptilians! I know
what this is! I know!" No one is listening but one
who turns sick lizard hateful eyes on us, he is dressed
like a cop, Ray Liotta, I yell louder & he uses
a psychic blast to silence
the crowd, walking like the body snatched in trolley lines.
I challenge their champion to a duel
in return for Stonewall, who I believe has now been
kidnapped, Mike agrees, the first man that listened
forces a crate 40 feet above us to
fall but I move out of the way & it falls harmlessly
crashing, he shatters glass and holds it in the air,
"You are blind," he says & fires the shards at me, I
close my eyes (watching this outside myself) & it harmlessly
passes, "I can close my eyes," I tell him, he is
angry, We walk on, "I want your champion,"
I tell him, he controls two high heeled shoes but
I grab them and hook them onto his clothes
that are now torn in two long slashes & he pulls himself
to the ground, growling, howling hissing lizard, I've
become impatient & the underground world is shrinking,
"I just want my cat," I scream, "You can keep ruling
the world, I don't give a shit, we couldn't rule ourselves
anyway, just give me back my fucking cat!"
My opponent casts cold green irises and struggles with the shoes.

I dreamed dreamed dreams ago

Just came out of a 4-5 layer dream
partially terrified, laid on bed on my
stomach watching transparent beings crawl
along the wall in the dark with window light
illuminating, was really on my stomach with
no light. This was not the start but the end
of dream.
Was watching Phillies 2 on 2 out
was on field but field in house some long
winding tortuous house thing, couldn't run
& was caught, stabbed at him--
woke up & bed deflates I roll
over on my side rooms like 1780. cool
Joe comes in and says I should use a couch
I think it simultaneously--
I wake, Tif rushes in moving furniture
that shouldn't be there, Joe says "She's
really into moving shit," I tell her it's okay
rolling my mattress, it's still deflating, it's
pitch dark night tho with blazing colors--
I wake up--sun spilling in like
it did at Nana's and Pop's, it's beautiful
out, I feel safe but something is not right, I finally
made it home, get up, rooms seems strange/different a
at this height, now that I'm standing, goes off in four
long directions, I wonder where Joe
is, I walk through the house
reach a bedroom & man, pale white, turns
his head toward me,
I hold my breath/ realize I'm still
deep in dream--
I wake up outside on train/bus--the
sensation of coming to--taken accidentally to
wrong house, I'm confused, I get up slowly
--same scene--roll around, walk downstairs as people enter
room downstairs--I hear them--see animals in cages, notice
lizards standing on each others backs, old
lady at desk & packed in I walk out through
doors & it's like I'm on tracks carried
toward big animals, lizards, they screech, I put hand over eyes--
wake up at start of poem, inhale
hear Joe or something in the hall, in his room,
I reach for a pen to write this all
down before it's gone--
it's gone long, Joe coughs
I hope I'm here to stay,
I fall asleep--

Post Title

There's paint slapped onto
my sky, thick like an impression
on my aching--scratch ink into
leather bound sketch journal
one long poem out of love, want to
take road poem and turn that into
novella that's effortlessly sad but beautiful and bring
back those days roaring through
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois--breakfast,
sausage gravy--bat factory--beer--
Dave and Joe up front and me studying maps
in the back, shouting directions--no GPS
bullshit, horseshit--doing it ourselves,
it's been three months--three million years,
the crops are shriveled junk melted down
and shot into our arms, the city is torn down
about my knees--I've nothing left but
survival and words

Attention

Whit took his time cleaning himself

on my keyboard, focused on his left 

ear, his (there's something off about them)

orange eyes focused on a thing

I couldn't see, the light

from my window wasn't enough--

I was wrapped in a blanket and flannel and

plaid patterned pajama pants, I wanted to

continue my edits--Whit kept cleaning,

left leg scratching his face, tapping keys

underneath his feet--now he wants

in the closet, now he's out and mewing 

and mewing and meowing and rawling

and laying down and jumping and typing himself,

I rest my forehead on his and he snorts,

bites at the wires on my desk, I push him off

I bite his ear, his stomach puffs and he opens 

my door

Right afterward

If we would have known
I'd be writing none stop for the
finish, the EMP-bop
ice on angels wings and it's dark
over Philly and cool and sunny
some place else. You've got
your jackets on anyway tho & It just shows up
my eyes are red waiting
awaiting
a sign
at 4--letters from around the world
from around--where the sunlight
bends away, ah
I can't help watching the
sky, from my window it
looks so small--I see
blinking lights, bleak walls,
maroon walls crumbling--I saw a plane today
only one, the clouds were purple sad
puffs of smoke and disappeared into
the night--I looked away and typed

Cellulose

Vitaly nodded like Ginsberg on
blow--
          wrecking the car, the beers
were cheap but the place shit
fishtown old spot to hear music
but now the 90s dance throb was
bleeding--my ears, and the girls--
    sorry this isn't for you, tho you looked
nice I guess, I was drunk & Vitaly had the
Christian Bale going, where it
was going--to the corner, the lights,
the trolley line--
   
     wheels were blue 'cause gawd couldn't
double park

for shit.

The smell was mold and lights
when I pissed in the alley
at 3am
forgetting the names.

Mill Shoals and Walt Whitman

You're blue darkness in the
Illinois night, a collection of trailers
and white silos, there's not one
picture of you but what I have
from the back seat of a car without gas,
I can't even hear the sleeping cows or
the time changing. The sun dips
quickly along the fault lines,
time lines, man made constructions,
.4 miles from the highway, too bad we
only found dirt roads on the way to
St. Louis or back-- I tell Whit
it's an hour shying away
it's what America looks like at dusk, but
he only wants to rub against my
face--he's been lost before under the stars

Postage

Spanish in background--the northern lights
are burnt into CME sky tonight--somewhere
--where--it's not very cold--I'm
waiting, the sunset was cold embers
and cola burning, bright--it's getting
on to be--scary--or dark or--
and there's a quiet that drifts west
a quiet they're taking away--a--
I can't write about it or I'll be on those
FEMA trains--concentration trains--
cattle trains--Agenda 21, the future,
the road, the wilderness, the mountains
without beginning--the rivers dried up
but flowing beyond our sight--the ghost--
razor wire--demons--my angel reeling
a cold song bleeding--naked and
staring at gas chamber walls, shower
head, chilling floor--we are
at an--end--we deny it

Considering

I'd consider myself a poet
if it
killed me,
if I died drunken on my own
words in the gray street
without help,
I'd consider myself a poet
if not one single person
read
a word I've ever wrote

Pickett's

In view of the copse of trees
I study your poetry and make my mind
to charge and scream and yell and die
on the field
out off my glittery big tired
american eyes, tired legs
and arms seated in grave
chariot rolling across the golden
wheat fields that aren't wheat anymore
but some demon creature conjured in our
dreams that is hard to digest and only
two feet tall, what the fuck?
I want a poetry collection with my name on it
and nothing else, no color just black inky
nothing nothing nothing
nothing
nothing

okay?

mhmm.