before i knew not
to love you
winter was our
season

not by design

it just seemed to
amplify
every
situation

so now when winter
rolls around
it reminds me most
of just down the street

ps2 and coffee
and the gentle tugging
on my shirt
every time
i took a corner
too fast
in
the
snow

none of this was by design

but this year i wont
be searching for drugs in my own car
or biking to work
in the cold of mount pleasant
michigan
finding out the car just
won’t start
i don’t think i will feel
lost
or like i need to take a walk

and that’s why i
am glad i learned not
to love you

or, you could say
thankful.

(i just wrote a thanksgiving day poem)

23 years of
feeding pigs
other pigs
and lost
the rhythm

ears ringing,
and somewhere
a metronome
devi
ated

stickman falls
to the
stretching
of a new back
illusioned still

sometimes

nothing says

more than

anything.

the land where nothing sucks

down in the valley of
the land where nothing sucks
there is naught but a
forest of carnivorous weeds

it is the norm of the valley
for there to be no sun
and it is their way of life
to love darkness and eating

so not being one to judge
i avoid the valley
as often as humanly possible
and stay downwind

—

the butterfly in the valley

and once
a butterfly
i saw did
haplessly
flutter
into the
valley

and the weeds did salivate
as it was their norm
and who am i to judge?
looking away as
they devoured her
wholly

mountains
impress me
the united states’ highway
system
impresses me

how millions of men over
a hundred years built
concrete and steel structured
planes across the expanse
of the entire united states
moving
daily
an unfathomable amount of things

that impresses me

your
bottom drawer wit
and parlour tricks
do not.

i gathered up rocks on a beach
i put them in order and began
the inquiry

which of you will kill me?

these rocks being people, though
after the inquisition i
ran up a hill

lost my foothold and fell

passing through the void
i knew i knew i knew i’d
been right

but i could never know which

and this is how it always goes

the greatest speech i ever wrote
was told in front of the hangman’s noose
for a moments time the nearly departed did think
“why maybe this aint’ so bad”
and the greatest moment in my career
was communicated through the still, dead feet

no twitching

a relaxed hanging, i thought
is a good one

i felt most human then.

it’s the grey cloud
that will be all there
is to write down that
you were here.
frustration is not
quite the word for
what it feels like
screaming into this
thing wondering
what it will write
if it writes
anything at all.

tiny diamonds in fire
you could never grab them,
though
and hang them ’round your neck
no
they disappear too quickly
to keep and show your friends.

“the violently shaking house”
“the undoer”
“corn syrup baby”
“i wish i could eat different food”

when i read through, i remember
the police laughing
“this house doesn’t shake so bad”
they said
he must’ve not had the spirit for it

everyone thought

when i read through, i remember
how he kept repeating
“i wish i could write different stuff”
“everybody wants to read different stuff
but this is all i feel”

and i wonder what happened
to the corn syrup baby
growing in a stagnant puddle in his shower
i wonder what came from that cesspool
if it killed him or if he killed it
if so he didn’t say so
in his journals.

i am getting better sleep than you
and i will tell you why
because man has split the atom
but you can’t wake up on time.

a gazelle in a shopping mall
eventually, ragged from stress
finds a common state where
the mad feels ordinary
before it’s eyes glaze over
and it gets washed away in a river
of people.

what parts of him left strewn
accross the ground
looked like spares
and that put together
they felt unique and
part of a whole and
where significance was
placed there was no
longer
you could see
naught but
extra

but spare

skin,
arms,
period.

there was a chill in the air
sweeping in from the cities
where all of the breathing
organs felt best
and prime
but could’ve had just numbers
and definitions attatched like one
and two or lung or liver
but they had names
and had for moments the light
of interest shined upon them
and they all swelled and
burst and felt significant
and unique

for they had not yet felt
the chill come sweeping in
from the cities,
and the worms crawl around
them and the totality
of being a spare
or an extra
or skin
period.

a man’s heart is such a worthless thing
that the gutters would give them back
so lowly i feel to your porcelain skin
so lowly that my heart swims with the rest

pity goes, however
to those still encased
in grinning ribcages
gaps from bone to bone
all naive and waiting to
tumble down and go for that
long, cold swim

a man’s heart is such a worthless thing
it has no corporate support
and the porcelain displays reflect
light onto the gutters in the daytime

in your locked bedroom closet
where scientists can’t study
old cans of coca-cola
high fructose corn syrup
giving life to what undoes you

when you’re not quite finished
but ready to give up
crack the door, another can
more soldiers for the civil war
the looming corn syrup rebellion

when they found your body
green organic mass about
closet door cracked slightly
scientists baffled over your lifelessness
and your terrible smelling closet

and i could say what ate you
what the scientists don’t know
what the neighborhood watch don’t know
what sugary greenness was growing
if words could move you now.

He was teaching you to walk
and you got up to run
away you went
looking and walking anew
seeing with untrained eyes
touching with shallow
translucent
skin

then you tried to speak to me
and though i understood your sounds
and their order
i felt the shortness of breath
behind every syllable
and i realized
that you can’t even breathe right

and here you are trying to talk to me.