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

Wind.

they've left the world

         all of them

listen

         they haven't made a sound

there used to be a continued hum

      recurrent in the background

now I am alone

       they've taken the voice with them

absence

      comforts like a window pane

tho it is only glass

      I can also break

like a sheet protects the body

     from phantom chill

I was alone

       where they had gone

listen

      we'll never know

they can't tell us what they've heard

dreamt

always these same number of eyes
      this same old progression of time
this linear push to the edge;
      unlike how I dreamt
last night I was walking
back to the start
      and witnessed for myself
my own shadow
      start back opposite
from leaving my room
I had yet to enter
      yet to conceive of a reason
to be going
      so that when I awoke
a wiped the sweat from body
      I was unsure whether
I had just left
or recently returned;
      always it's as meaningless
as the first line
      words read in the dark
dilated pupils
      beginning to end

To Watch

fumbling for the switch, your nimble fingers
in the cold look so different, changed, rearranged,
tiny charred pitchforks in the monster hunting night,
can't grasp the tongue soaked metal of an afterthought,

some say it isn't right for the winter come,
and darkness is the right frame of mind to take,

I've no opinion either way,
outside a disinterested observation,
or so this narration says

and a rhyme.

the darkness is on time, to go or who to when next
we meet, with the ilights on, I don't know.

in the summer perhaps,
when you can flick the switch.

I'm not sure why I can't help you
in this task,

is it because I'm standing here, one legged?
lost.
maybe.

there's one thing to be sure;

You'll have to stretch out and shut the door
or the light will escape, and all your work in the cold
will be for nothing

once again, just my simple, ascetic observation.

Tom Fischer and the I Ching

take his body parts,
times 64,
remove the clogged arteries,
the writers block
in a cycle every 2,000 years,

cleaning schedule
is synced into his
bathroom break time
8x2 is 16x2 is 32
divided by 2 is
16 round trips
in an 8 hour day,

speaking in the
3rd person gets you
nowhere with a girl
and like that
the polestar rotates
in eliptical orbits
of generational
change,

he wonders at times,
reading the solar squares
on the calender sky,
what it's like to
live in the true North,

not very much different
the divinations say--

'look to 6 dashes of
morse code, he has a
penchant to say morris
code, number of days in the
lunar year of 13 months
doesn't impact the
necessity of daylight
savings: the interest
is back up to 384.1%;

sift his thought process
down to the 6th degree,
free dimensional state
where nothing is
vibrationally attentive
to the demands of the state
and clockwork is an
absurdity dream device'

--white bones fall on
hexagonal frames, whte chalk
marks on ancient wood, right
meter of begone time,
rite thought in the wrong
name, understood.

fat fish fry

fat rat fish fry illuminati
watch this vine
here
[copy paste]
this link is broken
fresh oil fries best
without the burnt
taste
of secret society
fear, as in old food
left to rot,

there're bacterium
in my brain,
I am partial to cats,
paranoid

there are at least 15 places
to get baked ziti in orlando
(even tho the city is imaginary
fantasy)
a cursory incorrectly
directed internet search;

I searched my own name.

seems they know I'm Italian
on to the silent e,

this poem is a google search result,
spiders crawl inside

sizing my bandwidth up

don't worry I've just about lost myself
you're not alone

follow the prompts the directional boxes
take a bow

stuff your face
it's basically nothing
and nothing can be done

there's always time for another lie

I'll set the pace.

Grief

seminal line

               dropped dripped streak

on thought paper spread

               crumbling fluid analysis

barbaric nomad

               emphasis on phallic features

sparing dreams 

               felt fallen erected

on sparse landscapes

               mind body endorsed 

enriched condolences 

               pouring white souls

grieving

The Revelation

Harrington left
the number for
Doctor Modesto
on my orange desk
left his digits by the
front door,

car headlights
rotate like lighthouse
light on cul-de-sac streets,
(any you can think of)

this house needs work
off the alleyway score,
scene is incidental,
irrational, broken at its core,

pamphlet costs us 99¢
to print, $1.50 to
incinerate,

that sticky tar in your lungs?
that old rotten tooth taste?

that's paper 50 years past due
marked by expiration dates,
Shit, it's cancer causing, too?

"just a bonus, school children"
says the blue suited, green-eyed
headmaster, "a super-sized plan,"

our end that's the beginning,
one sickly charles atlas crusade,
(we care about mother earth going forward)
but must be repaid!

and he ate the whole thing
in less than 10 pages.

*choke*

Experimenta

keyboard training me
toignorespaces
get to the point to point
if i miss one tap well
just keepgoing
I'm not sure what's the case
this is going out there uneditied
and justmade myfirstmistake
misspelling, I can't be heldaccountable
for making this hard to read
it's an experiment, I'vetyped
1,500 of these exactly the same same
words [redacted: wasn't supposed to 
type same twice] with the only variable
being me,my mind,me my body,
now time to finalize the numbers
time to check on my hypothesis
makes sure everything fits neatly
into the check book, can't have my
benefactors getting antsy, chalkit up
to nightmares, my caffeince [sic: caffeine]
addled brain to findger connection
whogivesa fuck thart last combination
was done on purpose--but maybe like
all of this was done as planned--then
maybeI've been lying this whole time,
how would you even know>?

Snowy Alley

back-to-back
snowy forgotten alley
pungent street smells

lead with a haiku
not your face

lead with uh haiku
uh haiku, not your
snow storm hatter
sprinkled in remote
location swing, dance
recognize text read O-
C-R optical character
recognition (ABBREVIATED)
do a word search why don't ch--

not gone to back now we are
(anananagram)

what's it saymean probablynothing

so forget it all the meaning
say
all the meaning is in uh
ferse line

it's in the first line, see.

(it) Kills

so long
you spoke a
word
goodbye and it
was spell,

I told you walking
forward

was a lie

you insist on finding cracks in
rock face, picking scabs off
my poor arms, poor legs,

I am exposed but you
turn away,

why? I don't know why
you've come,

will you take my fantasy?
will you strip me?

Is this end,

I have planned for all occasions
all outcomes,

I refused to write them down

they are forgotten, but I'll rummage
when time is near, when bell rings
for dinner on the buffalo's plains,
writ in sky, writ in holy high,

so long you speak the word
and I have followed,
walk in desert, no food, clothes
eyelids dry together, drinking sand
sad sand, all coughing,

I had hoped to lead myself,
master myself, but there are no
open spaces left, there aren't even
spaces, just names on tags
on shirts on souls on faces on dreams,

there's pavement and cars and bills
and whatever else,

the children force a mask on me,
it burns like ice, it warps, it spells

little sister sky little sister mud

it kills.

whirlpool

just enough time to

get from one box to another

quick cat litter rain

on the intellectual parade

for a nominal fee the underlings

carry the promenade floats

will suck you off behind

the orange glowing street light

on 19th and I,

passers-by will take the time to

shouting in the general direction

of their understanding

gurgling choking sounds

everyone is glazed eyes happy

getting up and down

trading in the day

sunshine who needs it

I've got florescent light patterns

and fake social interactions--

take it to the boss

and get it stamped

it'll roll nicely and cram up your ass

over the boarder smuggle

still wondering what the 

usb drive is for? It hooks onto the

gas tank, downloads the shit

eat shit die shit take shit

the driver doesn't give it--

he's got medic-aid backed up

to the 14th kid on the next 

block there's a johnny rockets

pump to handle the caloric intake 

required for decision making

two heads in front

but the rifle can be placed straight across

shame you can't pay someone to pull the

trigger

killing yourself is against the law

and courts will get that subpoena to 

heaven by God! or without him

they don't give a fuck

as long as the control app is still iphone 

downloadable reusable

100% combustible--like our love

bombs over desert carpets

fuck this fuck that fuck ass come on

tranny america come on limp dick king

work 8 hours sleep 8 hours

you're in charge

cast that vote cocksucker

take the load

they know we'll swallow 

every time 

Indigestion

pick up my words on the internet
on the digital sound corner
html stained to resonate
w/ the meme soul

I sold all my ink
to make a living
melted it down for junk,
I mean, take in this battery heat
death is the fiber optic dynamo
running under our feet,

monitor brain needs city sunset
skylines to blow--

a fixed metaphor sub-space context,
the consensual state orgasm-mechanism
rolls down martial law suburban
streets at dusk, warnings on milk cartons,
milk carton joy, words downloaded
by the great Bodhisattva TOR
the mainframe diabetic
shrunken head search engine;

no gods! No gods!

I'm wired for the future,
all veins and hatred,
isolated,
gurgling singing laughing
mistakenly, giggling
on upset space-time collapse

our god is a cloud
a cloud is massed information
is untouchable reality
is subjective truth.

My Cereal and the fortune teller

my cereal speaks in
linear bursts of thought on
rims of Styrofoam bowls
sparks interest from your
falling stars--from you falling stars--

from your
helpless knives making
ladies on Jupiter's final moon
along the Milky Way dance
along they dance--my mind takes
me there in time--I don't operate on the
militarized march,
the doctors got there first
and gone was my frontal lobe
through the eye socket with
an ice pick to the lazy cell
so I wobble slowly on cellophane streets

calling on the assembly line,
because, hell,
who knows better than
the plastic manufacture
how the pesticides made it on--
how the ingredients list was cheated
on,
how much time
there's left, but the
timeless--? Who knows

Who's got it all figured out
in the fallout shells
in south american greenlands
labeled entropy, iceland, glue
on the dotted maps
with the incorrect measurements
and the lettered ocean pollution
that never stays the same,

why do we care for the lost little babes
when the mirror's all fucked up,
cracked barcodes and it
used to be 99 cents--huh?

My cereal hasn't got that answer
yet on it's TI-88
but it plugs away, it jetisons the load
it ignites the crematory pyre
It drowns itself in milk
for my benefit.

The Collarbone Clock

Handle is a blindfold
farce synced up with hashtag
radio waves poured from the
ancient central telephone cable
a wired rig sinking into
our subconscious regret--
search again-without the
frozen oil spill this time--

it's found poetry
a payment for the injured
aircraft losing altitude in
the spring night sky
of the not so deep south
reflected in the garden patches

2d darkness
wood panel horror stares from
windows across the way
neither exist
neither existing

butcher the sentence
in the aftermath haze
dine on the dewy remains
slick with morning light

smell the sun up

feel the pulsing click and turn.

Class

Flip your hair to the wind
off-white dress
distorting sun's rays
in front of that Ethiopian place
on 23rd
Nobody cares to see but me, honey
& I only care so's to write it down
Don't worry
we're all failures in that way baby,
all lame ducks,
only I'm able to die quicker
than the last sucker
to steal my seat--
I'll remember you
like a phantom of a poem
stretching back
until the next dress demands
my foolish attentions
replaces your existence
darkens the world

almost a sentence

In the rain tonight I
beat my feet on the ground,
the orange light and my head
forgetting to look up, at the sky,
I was blind...what it was...
in the rain, cold winter rain, with black dots
along my iris, and...
in the night sky over DuPont circle
there was nothing there, only...
where did the rain come from?
in the glow and time after all, looking...
up.
               ***
sirens scream past my window,
a body on the hood of a car,
in terror, what's happening? truth
is often times so absurd we ignore it
and lose ourselves...
               ***    
put these sunglasses on and look at my
shirt, get it?

or you could always just die.
It's just a thought

Quick Sentence Dance

Your dreams are word dreams blotted shimmer red in this pharmaceutical lolli-pop civilized complexity word-weepingly terrific nothing
                              in which of course anyway
we all have death to await us in reclining chairs traveling at same speed neverending love
                             -ing lazily

one, two, three you're awake!

The temperature
is off-kilter-strange,
glowing this way and that,
illuminating tiny spots on the floor
at random,
blinking in-out-in-out
all the way out and even,
even with the flow,
so it's felt through it,
against my body or
or its body-
in the gleam
between things-and understanding,
understanding forever things
and coated slowly
by brushes spinning
thick and made of of-time,
request time/denied time
the same,
dodging those flickering lights
sporadic and visionary
through
the forever after.