the sieve and the sand

at least i’m in wichita
and one of
maryann’s cousins can’t just
towe my car

at least i’m wichita
making over 50 thousand a year
and my mom can’t
yell at me

i’m not back home
smoking mids
behind a gas station
with some kids i went to
school with

rob’s dead
a lot of shitty things have happened
(and continue to)
but it’s fine
it’s fine

what takes me out better be
something
not like falling in the
shower
i’m too self important
for that

i want to say thanks
for the cold air
and thanks for the
moon

You are a white-hot point in space
searing through my retinas as I
stare and I
am clinging to this moment
trying
so
desperately
to
hang
on

but I know how this ends
even as you burn as hot as ever
I know how this ends
because it’s the same
every time

and it will be no surprise
as my fingers tire
my grip slips
and I am flung through nothing
and I am incinerated in your
holy light but I
am clinging to this moment
trying
so
desperately
to
hang
on

but my clothes
are already
burning

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

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