you are but a fruit fly
born into a garbage can
it’s so hard to understand
there’s nothing to understand
every night you go to sleep
in order to wake up again
tell your family tell your friends
make your little stupid plans
get all fucking stressed out
eat and breathe and play pretend
there’s nothing to understand
it’s so hard to understand
my pulse beats
within my skull
day by day by
hour by minute
potential
more impossible
by the second
systems slowing
logarithmically
cells regenerating
less
and
less
while the sea ice
e v a p o r a t e s
to the North
of us
I Am Dying
just as the Earth
is Dying
And faster
from arrogance
And faster
from greed
Time does not heal
all wounds.
Time
is a wound
there is no stopping
the bleeding from
i dare not speak on
lake skaneateles
the silence
is for me
and the clean water
and
the birds chirping
are for me
i don’t want to
think about
the muscle men
of wichita
or the land lords
or the
hit-men
but i do make noise
and i do think of them
and i vomit and
vomit bile
the entire time
all over the
eagle’s nest
muddying the
blue water
all over ed and marie’s
pretty little cabin
as i become the soul of skinny atlas himself
straightening my spine
and readying
to shoulder this
globe forevermore
for those who toil
and think to build
onward, to the foot of niagara
where one shouldn’t go (but wants to)
a billion pounds of water crushing down
be it for the sharing of ideas
and these planks of wood
i am baptized by the gods of america
uncertain and raw, in my natural
state
AND I STILL SEE YOU SOMETIMES
DANCING EVEN THOUGH YOU DON’T MEAN TO
LAUGHING WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED
YOU REFUSE TO SMILE
Please don’t make excuses for me;
If I am to die in this sphere
let me die by rights,
I beg of you
i kept those letters you wrote to me
for twelve years in order to
read them today
when i finally cared to wonder
what you had to say
and i’m not sure why
i try not to cry as i hold
love letters written from my
fever dream-girl as i begin
to wake and wipe my eyes to
realize that you were real
all along
i bury disgust in my queasy stomach
my selfish, selfish queasy stomach
that i was born with such hunger
for the tender loving words
of a girl of maybe fifteen
i devoured you in waking dreams
but you were as real as me
and wrote love letters that shake
now in the hands of a man
and i’m not sure why
it is not enough, i know
there are lessons to learn, i know
in between the lines
of the young girls
who once loved me
and i will learn them
oh thank god for the twenty four seven
when you’re gone i can’t live with myself
the sunflowers i can’t even see on the horizon
i bet they’re not fucking real anyway
oh, renee
gonna write you a million lines just to
fill up the dead spaces i
didn’t even realize they were there
like a little boy left in the car
oh, renee
take me way o’er the rolling hills
i keep my heart beating for you
my fireworks travel across your nerves twixt your freckles like the constellations
our feet are in the reflection of the sky and dance cross the surface of the ar-kansas river
let’s get married. can we get married? i want to get married; to you.
you are a stretched out stock image in a powerpoint slide
your gait is the struggling of a worm on drying concrete
your breath is the rot of fish clogging a dam
your voice is a diesel engine whirring through the night
your smile is two particles colliding in the vacuum of space
your mind is made of ice yet dreams of being iron
your heart is the laws of the universe, unreasonable and pointless
die, make do
or get strong
lose or break your heart
every couple years.
take up the space that math
will let you
fight not to fall
due to gravity
i am a stupid fucking farmer
who will not check for toxic soil
or find a place with the right light and rain
to grow in
upright and happy
but just stare at and
scream directly into the sun
“what you will, will be!”
so that the plants grow crooked
and neurotic.
i dream that the morbid fields
come alive at once
grow vividly wicked
tangle me and choke me out
and let things go back
but even the most crooked stalks
don’t know that it might be
worse for them that way;
it is worse for them anyway
it is worse
o, god of numbers
and infinite variables
why have you forsaken us?
are we not your children
that live together
in this lonesome hatred?
with all your many arms
you do not cradle
but hold us down
we add and subtract raindrops
and guess at how long they fell
in the meantime
forgive me, the crooked and wingless
and small and unheard
that i am the poorest of your numbers
and i do not overstand
you make them clap or they will eat you
the white ones found on monkey island
i’ve no memory of being thrown overboard
but being washed ashore here
hear the incessant clapping and loud snores
make joke
get food
reach for banana
get scrap
i could kill all of them or none
and nothing would assuage my loneliness
pick your teeth with my sun-bleached bones.
loss of the things that define(d) me
and the lack of feelings about the loss
now define me
no that’s not true
i’m angry as fuck that that was me
for so long
who i am can change, but what I do
must
change or all those who love me are in for one hell of a shitshow
you would love today
and this song i just heard
oh, you’d never believe
the cubicle i live in
is it selfish or profound
for the unfairness to weigh on me?
that i can only share things
with a bastardized memory
of you?
oh my god,
the agony of
being excluded from
every day,
going forward (outside of my mind)
for you
are dead
i beg that it would save
a single tear
in the lonely moments before
you left
for you to know that
your friends will cry
during minutes that
you won’t see.
You told me there are rules
about how babies are born,
about how clothes are worn,
about gluttony and adultery
You spent every Sunday chatting
with your Brothers and Sisters
about how the rules apply
to everyone
There are no exceptions
Then your Husband wrote a letter
about getting out early.
He quoted Seneca, who said
that the wise man will live
as long as he ought
There are no exceptions
So do not talk about heaven
There are rules, after all,
and certain rules apply
when the wise man
cashes
out
but lowly blob what
if the acidity eats ‘way at
your cellular walls?
i am re-acclimating to a bigger pool
and death is the ante
with alien beings
oh my god
what infertile soil
could grow such twisted shocks?
and with such plain days as
this to grow!
i too grow, but confused
as i sit and think
it has poisoned its
own roots!
like an invasive weed
on a new island
tarry i, still
among the pathways
yet ingrained
in my fibers
i’d not tend to these abominations
by choice!
they say nothing
but a dead star
lies
round the horizon
they are wrong
though
cuz i can see
it shining
1.
it was unseasonably warm that day
and the day before, too,
and it was windy. I remember that much,
and the sun in my eyes
on the patio
through the plate glass
on the short drives
here to there and here to there
while our friends traveled through Germany
for the sixth or seventh time
there was nothing but time then
drinking black coffee in jackets
with the traffic hustling by
whispering about forever at 20
and I remember meaning what I said out there
and I remember the look in her eyes
2.
Time has a way of stopping sometimes
with a phone call for example
in a tacky Chinese restaurant
surrounded by our people
while the sun set just outside
and I told those people what I heard
after I pressed the End Call button
while our hearts all stopped beating
forever, I think,
for just a moment
3.
I drove to her in darkness
and she was all alone
when she let me in to her sitting room
There were no lights on
but she could see me
and she hated every word
I don’t know if I’d leave her now
but I left her then,
nine years ago
4.
We sat in a cafe
in silence
for what couldn’t have been
forever
and my tea got cold
as the weather had
that night
we talked about your boots
not in detail
but we did
5.
I remember you
Warmth in March
sun in the afternoon
I remember you
black coffee
downtown patio
friends in rooms
and cars
and futures
and cul-de-sacs
and I
still try to remember
to remember you
boots and all
