The rodents sleep deep
and underground, while
the dogs and deer and things
roam and wander overland,
looking up now and then
at the great birds flying.

But the mood is the important thing,
and I can hardly lift it
when those curtains are shut.
no, I can hardly make
anything better
inside.

lawless dark brown hair
matching her face
with metal pertruding
through her lower-left lip

she was lost, her figure
filling out a mold made
from fantasties grown stale
and muddied by years
of dissilusionment
and cold

and in the middle of
directing her to muskegon,
after my eyes had travelled the
breadth of her voluptious
body, i told her about it
i told her about her beauty,
i said “you’re gorgeous…
by the way”

and she paused
smiling
with one foot out the door
and didn’t say thanks

she left me for muskegon
with something hidden
inside of a smile and
a pause
perfect like a picture

this is it
it reminds me of you
take another drag
close eyes

hide

No, I do not grind my bones.
But Surely, you can hear them crack

Freighted with bitter,
Crimsoned with sweet,
We skitter around potholes to our bright potential;
Their cunning edges,
Their filthy centers,
We never shall know. And the bicycle as it goes
Navigates away,
Each one is overcome
Each beyond the turning spokes.
We alone pedal
While time journeys on,
The pedals churn wheels, though the memories remain.

From cabin we clink beverages,
Jangling prisms refracting in the light.
Drinking down and never knowing until we go down.
Gazing between bars and goggles, our self-imposed captivity
Descends.

Down, the water swarming our feet.
Down, the green hues grow darker.
Down, the shattered light suffocating.
Down, the fading briny hull forename—Bliss.
And we are swallowed.

There are no more intermittent fins to marvel at.
No glimpses of accusation to position our supple fingers.
Consumed by teeth of an insatiable, blood lusting hunger.
Surrounded by sharks, swirling in a spectacle of slaughter.
Engulfed in a liquid grave, should we have stayed any longer.

And upon reemerging—gasping not for air,
But release from this elevator into a living hell.
‘They is monsters down there’ we say,
But it’s different this time.
‘Almost got me, almost plunged.’
Fins carve the waterline like serrated knives.
‘Them poor souls. You’d never know they was like that.’

Odds are I will not hear them
anyway, what with
the winds always blowing
and the constant breath
of my lungs moving
trying to keep up
with the beating
of the sun.

The footprints, though,
the give you right away.

city-smoke billowing out of his mouth

his heart pumps ice-water
his feet keep the time
his apathy is magnetic

and the sky will fall while
the king of stuff is still standing

of that you can be sure.

then legs emerge from the potatoes and before
i would allow myself to distinguish a head
i bite
and sans-chew i spit you out.
the rest of my meal untarnished is to be
now consumed because
dang it.
there was no water for my tea.

on my ride home from work
i watched a jogger’s ass as i
passed
by
and thought all these sweet things
that grew stale in the air

and then there was all that decay
around me and
then
i knew its rate

Hardly canI fathom these things
though, by definition,
these things are simple.
Give me something
complicated to think on.

i recall its spring blossom
the four milky petals pierced at each end
holding at their center
a cluster of marigold pistols begging to burst

but now: green leaves
wilt from heat and no rain
arcuate veins lead to branches
that lead to nodes that hold
knots of seeds seasonally shifting to red

i take a handful
pocket them like the thief that i am
and make plans to plant them in my house

image that
a tree in my house