The babe

The lost lay beads of smoking tears

a gift they grant is the suffering of life
their smile swell

Waking up to take care of crying babe

I'm on stairs leaning against the wall holding him, teetering

unsure how I got here

not on the stair

I am a father.

Waking in bed paralyzed

to next coming twenty years

a black shroud
shaped as sinister as newborn
skull

head hung on limp rooted neck
stands at the doorway

as an arch
lurched

leaning slightly like to burp

his future falling toward
me

I could not move to escape.

the unreliable forge/ an easy bake oven

the cake is finished when electrified. wine toasts
over inky coals
                          from which is used to write names.
were they to find the remnants of the book
rats would drown in the crumbs. eat gray pages.
make the clouds look like sky starting at the last
edges.
            burnt to gradient images left
in church phases. the cross of stainless
steel. stained glass partitions.
the cake is edible when digested as is
the masses. the physical equation of
remorse. ending in remittance. the seven foot
thick ocean of icing.
                                  the terror of sand
as the waves of sugar hit the shore. the deafening
bluster of wind chimes.     the binding washing
out the ill heated oven. heaving
heaving retching. rewarding the starved and
the sated.

the perfect me

know that
                 there's a mannequin in my chair

those waxy kind of thoughts
those waxy kind of cheeks

involuntarily replacing me

the shrouded cathedral
                                     draped over melting plastic
resembles my rib cage

the cracked marble
the discolored ivory

the pearl pretending eyes
                                         i no longer have to
eat

he's cultivated all the refuse
                                             hidden it away

inside of me
i can be opened by magic

a can opener
is magic

something soft stabbed into my
intestines
                while I watch for vanished lines

without knees I will walk into
forever places
                       hung with hallowed lights

they will preach florescent

the meals will be of sawdust stars
the wall dreary old cement

I will paint them with the graffiti equivalent
to the years of my life
                                    I will be of plastic casings

a body to sell

until we are washed out
until we are formed into shiny islands
in a retching, gelatinous, blue sea

made up of stuff

in this carton
     all the same everythings
always     right      side           up

even the dead things. are left
standing
                laughing     crying

stuff & worried about. their
internal processes

especially their bowels. they were
in focus
              like the growing face of mold
rotted and dotting the exterior limits

similarly afflicted with life. heavily
magnified by
                        our continued
and numerous     failures

chewed upon by the already
gnarled cardboard of their

existence. at all corners the sun fell
like sunday morning drunks. pretending

the terror of monday's work. the terror
of the battle shaking the last infinitesimal
chill from the air
                            from out this carton. the cool
glass breaks. the long unintelligible

road.

Accident

(they) were playing
(they were) not for what will
   be
(they were shattered)
they were red blood
they were before the (stop)
(they were) could not be were they
   to slow down
(they) were broken into living
   pieces
they were (not to) make it out
   alive
(they) were to be spun from the
   wheel
they were to be (removed)
   forever
they were to be not even
   (remembered)
the were to be not even
   (mourned)
they crossed back as ever
   into grinding machine
(they were torn apart)
   by flattening engines
they were never to (be)
   again
(they were a mere moment
   from death's crushing weight)
they were never to grasp
   that (feeling)
they were made meaningless
   by time's threads

rain drips

*
each blur drops from sky
reflected in its obscurity
the last day
*

*
a puddle to the past
threatens to boils over its edge
memories like sandbags
struggle defiantly in its wake
*

*
a trail turns off the rocky peak
taking with it the lives
seeking to challenge its fragile
immortality
*

old memory

i might have left it

where i am go
ing it's like a deep
static tv green

you don't see those much
anymore

that purple wake
in green static

where i might have left it

but i am unsure how to turn the
dial

you don't see that much anymore
apart from the zenith repair shop
on bishop avenue

where the old static dies

and where it was left
when i was gone

all green and purple outlined
in yellow on that tv screen

Lake Effect

forward     the image groan
die above 400 feet of valley
they flooded it 100 years ago
buried in 39 seconds

your     blueish skin
resembles sun painting the sky
against the gray waves
the cliff side is empty
it sends your blank face back
the rocks are a mirror
reflecting the other side

death     is aluminum
a toy above severed trees
their stumps are green graves
that become eyes as you pass
the lake an open mouth of god
meant to swallow choke and moan

I love your gray cat what-s-his-name

what's the name without his legs
living in a tree stump in kesselwood forest

there are no badgers on the east coast

they haven't emigrated
                                     but enough about
me and what in the hell is it like to climb
below the cavern walls

probably in 1983

first time I noticed you by the tin can water fountain
banging on the corrugated sides

what's that material
                                if he's talking about plastic

I wonder why?  there wasn't fuck to give
to dead things because you'd have to bury the whole fucking thing

poor quality static makes everything
stage-like played through tape on a VHS

what's gotta give name on the fanzine
to cancelled children's programming

this place is not the gig it's the aforementioned before

chain-link prequel to the fence bitten through

what's it like to chew on the thing
to swallow the broken tubes

fuck if I know about any of this
of any of this fuck if i know

Super group; or semi-colon

can;t drink on the j;ob

fuck in buttered rice

it doesn;t exist; this character is like

the end of the world

the instruction booklet
is a training regime; sucking up the nail

gu;n

fuck the laugh track in the live show
the audience is a bullet in the cock; farming

is a fictitious waste
spilling out the humanoid power plant

stumble upon it; put the nee;dle on it

play the spinning flat ass earth

you can fuck with the midd;le; you can die

great text messages

Drawn lines; or drainage ditch

your pencil runs down the page
marking the journal for removal

a wide angle X

but drawn like a seat belt strap
pulled over the eyes

there were none

they go

there were none
                          without two lanes

not a car drives by
built like a trash truck
to pick up the razors
left rusty in
drainage gutters
cemented into street

not a hand turns
in any aspect ratio

not a mouth mimes
where'd it go

Maggot; or one coat of paint

They tell me

Paint these walls white
when I'm done

But
when I do I see maggots

writhing in rough spaces

When you wipe your finger over them
leaving trails of caulk and smooth

You smother me in their bodies
I watch them replace my teeth

Biting into the walls
despite of myself

I plant them deep

a shirt we could not afford

we didn't read our fortunes
     because the tiles were supernaturally
clean
we pressed the cookie against our teeth
     waiting for a phone to
dry
we soaked the paper with our pen
     forwarding the bones to the mortgage
lender
we rested the morsels against our tongues
     hoping they would dry before the first
bite
we would not hear about the future
     in which we would come to
live
we wrapped the blood from the feast
     in the shirts we could not
afford
we did not believe in words
     we questioned what they would mean to
us

two chapters

two chapters on an open page working their way away from each other

diverging into two threads the story goes in its own directions

from this point the sun looks back and forth over the word
                                                             fading imperceptibly the pages

          the future is left out to disappear

          the past is left over to vanish

from a distance the chapters unfurl as a single long page

the letters make thin unbroken lines like marching ants
                                                             their hills covered by overturned covers

the mystery unresolved is the title read backwards in gold

Green; a film

Quick flash

Cut to:

the spinach field gnashed between my toes     the blood flowing

green in the lithe vapors      

                                         that from above feature the characteristic

of a soggy river's delta

Fade to:

outstretched arms for balance     ambiguous arms

follow the perfect horizon of elbow rising to forearm gently downhill
to hands     green haze of the sun   
                                                      hallucinatory illusion of brushed
fingernails     fleshy like stewed greens

Rehash

Zoom out:

the imbalanced chemicals that circulate through the brain

plastic wrapped in flesh     armored by the skull

dripping green tints of sweat

                                               hazel reflections of

post-induction of tears     transform the sky into a green void

muffle the soft steps     paint the arms like a forest growth

reaching across toward the break     darker greener     darker

The End.