Flowers and Books, She never called

This guy grunts in
hallways,
he's a real monster
among the beige
walls that have no choice
but to look out at
one another perpetually,
each glob of paint is an
eyeball of the world,
is there many
or only one?

the building is
like a mobius strip,
lorded over by
men in trim dark
suits,

they feed the monster
it begs for food,
but eats too hungrily,
it's always hungry,

"that's what they say," said
that's what they say,  it was
what they were saying
down by the water cooler,
the monster doesn't go there
tho the walls do,

there's a book about it,
but it isn't published,
it would ruin the aesthetic,
so everyone agrees
and they scrapped it,

"that's what they say," there's
another book that includes the quotes
that know for sure, sadly that
one is all lies, it might even
be a hoax,

"the walls know," She says,
but she's a crazy one,

they took her away.

I didn't even cry,
mostly because I wasn't allowed
or can't recall how to be sad,

it's better that way,

we can avoid the monster
together,

"he was a man once," they said.

I heard that.

She said, "that's what they say."

But they still took her away.

Postulate

I cont-
inue t-
o cha-
se afte-
r things
that run
away,

blindly, I am
feeling and m-
easuring, groping
and assuring
myself of right
choices, wrong
roads,

I look back
and years have
gone--knowing
there is something
chasing me too--
grim and black--
seething--

I am gambling on it
never catching up,

I know I'll lose that bet,
but I've forgotten
how to stop running
forward--I've forgotten
which way my life's
supposed to lead--
so I just go

tethered to shadows
maybe, maybe to
a lingering dream,

as long as I don-
't stop to think about
it, I should be fine.

It remembers my password

Search:
                     Right
images:

I'm tagged in (1)

[is the face in the mirror
the one you're allowed to see?]

mine is smiling
without pretense

I hope (at least)
we haven't checked
our backlog yet
--in a while--

notifications waiting
piling up
kb/mb/gb/love

how many
waiting?

[have you ever stopped
and looked yourself in
the eye?]

for 30 years I thought
mine were brown (they're hazel)

Central heterochromia - is an eye condition that
does not interfere with a person's eyesight.

we are wrapped in
social media tears
you and I and all
of us we you and
me

faces recognized
locations checked-
in

I am signing on the
login screen I am
checking all the boxes
one x one
so
it remembers what
I've done.

Sci-Fi Pome

New/olD
transmissions
innerspace tech
ringing ear/
phones/
resemble/burnt
out hulls
ships scuttled
in the asteroid belt

this way out/
law/they're on to
bury you/out to
have your booted
feet swing

over the dead dreary/
evening heads of
watching crowds
saturn's system
titan bounding
standing/still

launch escape
ring around
the moon

bounce comlink
off business satellite
bridges covered in
commercials disguised
as grafitti splashed
in Venus tomato juice

it's about women

the adds/going off
like rocket space
sextapes--

ancienT/Young
bones/flesh/
outer space shells
fully evolved madness
link consciousness
send souls through
spatial recognition
camera spread seed
'cross time stream
multidimentional platform

it's how we make it
as a thought-species

ring through sustainable
dwarf stars--radio lies--

humble marisian vagrants
hitching/ rainbow ruins

stellar-aftermath

Future/pasT/
confuse all words
are one word something
like a quote from before

remember when there
were roads, little one?

Neither do I.

Spells

you take all
the pieces left out
re-arranged on my
skin, cut them into
semi-circles

I watch lights
from your window
mimic the moon
cast shadows
on ingrown walls

they writhe like
my mind like living

BEING

I crush it all in
my hands like leaves
like plants as wind
screams through trees
a million years away
in a forest a thousand
years long

you run your tongue
up my arm and magenta
slivers of space cloud
my vision

there is a puzzle spread
on the floor that once
was me

I am tasked with
putting it back together
each

NIGHT

the villagers believe
it to be a curse, they
keep away--I am
spelled they say under
unwashed breaths--

with new eyes
you see naked into
the stars pull bodies
from cosmic dust

I can only handle one
task at a time,
so I chip chip away
at the dull rocks
with dull axe

TIRED

you watch as I fall to shredded
images, semi-circle plates
you are cooked and molded
perfect

I am all tongues and saliva
and sweat

sinking
sulking
summoning
sleep.

24 Gun Salute

through
the caramel colored
eye

sun streaked

paint stain
pulled across my
floor

trailing light

an amber bolt
of lightning splits
rainbow skies

shaking color

gun shots at
steady intervals
echo mourning dove cries

engines roar

memory of
steel and carbine
hearts of wood

carving death

Girl in the Purple Dress

I find you in my bed
at night

dreaming

follow you
my arm tight
around
your
waist

maybe sometimes
words between
us are lost

you have eyes like
opaque pools
of super novas

depthless

your legs are silk
thoughts
cool rivers
edge

your body against
mine is
my body

when you're not
looking I reach out
to
you

there is more I want to
say
in my
hands pulling back

there are memories
beyond my
memories

foolish little words
that aren't enough

Standing

Three days ago
                          there were whispers

many boulders
                           fall through time

often you'll catch them
                                      as feathers

in the corners
                        of your eye.

two days ago
                       you disappeared

along with the rest
                               of the human race

sucked through galactic straws
                                                at the very edge of time.

Yesterday I stood alone
                                       reaching into the void

all that's left now
                           stardust and empty seashells

echos of voices
                          faint sense of seeing eyes.

today I am nothing
                               but thick dark sky

fading comets
                       dying embers of universe

the final learned things
                                     shattered stone.

Some thing New

cut the tape
at the inch line
5.3 it is
weary wet weary
muggy buggy
balmy outside
windows fogged
so's it's guessing
on summer betting
on same ol' same
ol' sleek metal horns
and blue ribbon
shells falling robins
streak into sky
muster roll call taps

sequential images:

blackness
now dotted gray
a hammer
on the floor
a hand reaching
one touch
man or god
man dragging hold
a house
zooming up
shingles grayed and fading
gray eyes
sad gray eyes
raising hammer
sound explosion words
SMASH

music creeping in
sad torrent sound
but something else
sadder or just is
in is-ness of is-ing
or be-ing
a
re-spoil re-cut
effortlessly
now old is new
roles reversed

SMASH
sound explosion words
hand lifting hammer
happy blue eyes
blue syes
shingles new and gleaming
child lagging behind
boy or father
gentle touch
a hand reaching
to the floor
a hammer
now rusted gray
colorless

somewhere new.

Rejection Edits

I'm a stampede
of constant edits
on sentence won't
hold for my wrath
more black smooth
words hit floor
become red
bleed and disappear
forever
I am a guilty
executioner,
I ignore my mother
family friends
left in the dust of
history with only
words and burning
paper around me

I am cloaked in
half-dead dreams

I gasp for
air

asking,

"What is left to give?"

Perhaps nobody is asking the right questions

this piece
of paper is
a tombstone
these words
are dead
slid onto screen
and pulsing
artificial light,

INTERSTELLER BROADCAST
INCOMING

no one reads it
printed in code
on old derelict
telegraph machines
at the end of time
bottomless ocean

REPEAT STOP REPEAT

Allow me to take you
                                  into the future

FREE FROM ALL THAT WIRING

--was a cryptic message--
how would we read into it?
              --END--

without borders
breaking margins

10x6
x11x8.5

THESE SYMBOLS
ARE SYMBOLS
NO LONGER MATTER
STOP

tapping on dead ears

what comes first?

teletype or telephone
telestrator tele-creator

so sure the images are sure
beaming off Jupiter
filmed on some Galactic stage

Allow me to take you
                                  into the past

wheel remains in static lock
you span universal time
life is set of dotted lines

FEED INTO THE MACHINE
STOP DO NOT REPEAT DO

last line of cable break
bronze age truth and taps

~the music plays~

power is a broken green
circle

you are the broken line

Starmaps

She's borne

                        of

                        starlight

come 

to 

fill in all

             the gaps

strange sounds

heard

                      out

                      windows

in 

the 

too

cool

summer

night

a growing 

problem in the strain

between emergent 

worlds

                     very soon

                     she'll ask a 

                     question

what 

will 

your 

answer 

be?

I am chosen silence

words

on

page

                    I hope

                    very much

                    to be included

                    in your next book

whenever/

whoever 

they/I may need

to be

caulk on 

concrete walls

thick gray smells

banshee wails

it's all in images

formed into words

it's all gods

dying at once

                   she goes--

                   and it sounds--

                   sometimes 

                   like--

No One Suspects

Each morning
I slip into myself,
down beneath the
fragile pink skin
where I find pulsing
blue veins warm
and sinewy, muccus
smells and musty
aching flesh, muscle
membrane, thick
oozing blood, stench
like iron and sweat,
each morning I
operate the periscope
eyes, hit ignition,
watch myself go,
I am disembodied
moving within,
sounds and voices
are muffled and funneled
through listening devices
positioned on the head,
I turn toward BANG
and CRASH and
SIZZLE I pass all
the time each morning
move about through
the air and water world
protected, offer the
standard response, wait
and repeat, I cover my
scratches in gold and
fabric, touch sensors
dilineate smooth and
rough and silk, legs
arch and bend and turn,
each morning I
pilot this hulking mass
falling into itself
crushing meat and bone,
consume the capsules
of other souls, shifting
eyes, I speak in code
seeking others like myself.

Heaven means

There is a secret
stair in my grandfather's
closet one tucked away
behind his clothes
I think maybe he didn't
even know about it,
mainly, because it seems
accessible only in dreams.

I walk up those
steps some nights, having
parted his slacks and
jackets, air getting thin,
sight diminishing,
brain suffocating,
but I never make it
to the top.

I believe it leads
to the roof, or
some other equally
magical place.

Worthwhile

You type
what comes first,
then you print
labels, pull those out
of printer smelling of
heated glue and paper,
smelling like newspapers
and running belts and wheels,
smelling like childhood memories
you can't quite recapture
with the smell gone so
suddenly leaving.
Afterwards you remove
labels, place on folders
and stamp times new roman
red letters once
for stampings sake.
Place the folder
in it's categorized,
alphabetized place
between other folders
placed in their
categorized,
alphabetized place.
Then you leave it
alone, knowing
that you may
never go back to it,
knowing, maybe,
it's possible that
no one else ever will,
knowing that this folder
will outlast you,
and your children,
and your children's children,
knowing that what is in
that folder is less than
worthless,
knowing that all of
your effort is meaningless,
knowing that eventually
everything but those
folders will die.