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

itchy smiles
scratched
seldom satisfy the urge

Sunlight breathes heavy sometimes
and shakes the windows
and threatens a mudslide
and we cower in our outhouses
grasping at straws
for some kind of salvation

and the White Man upstairs
doesn’t mind us one way
or the other, and his PA speaker
is blown and muffled and
when he talks we listen
but we don’t understand

so we drive to the nearest
freshwater supply and
we pitch our tents and
play our songs and
pray and pray and pray
but there’s still terror to be had:
As much fun as we’re having
the ends don’t meet

So the White Man’s thugs,
they come to us with
billy clubs and megaphones
and we’re fully at a loss
but for every guy that gets away
there’s ten that don’t start running

But boy, if they catch me they’ll
flail me something good and
shout and say ‘didn’t we tell you
to stay put, sir?’ and I’ll be honest
when I say ‘I don’t know’ but
they won’t hear it:
if their megaphones are broken
then their hearing aids are
off alltogether

we feign self sacrifice
laying down our humility
in pursuit of pride,
a great name,
power.

the fire comes and burns away the chaff revealing our work, our building materials, our poor skills at plumbing.
judgment comes.

and you used PVC where you should have used metal piping. and there’s crap everywhere.

power, pride, wisdom, when and where i say.
and bad plumbing

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.

She clutched her fifteen quarters
for dear life and
if she let go she knew
there was nothing else to cling to
But she was not sad.

The coins played a one-note song
as they hit the counter
and she paid her dues
at the county clerk’s office
before walking across the street
to the liquor store.

Seventeen, fourty-five, eleven, nine
One box, one straight,
and an easypick for measure
and there’s the three bills
from her back pocket.

And just because she’s never won yet
doesn’t mean she’ll never win
at least that’s what she tells herself
when she walks seven miles
because she can’t afford a bus ride
home.

There is a gentleman
complaining of sore legs
and sweating from the stresses
of standing

And it is a wonder
that his back is not broken
and I heard the distress
when he was told he
would get no help from me.

And I saw the relief
when another gentleman,
aged, yet spry as ever,
offered instead to do
the business that the first
ought have done.

Yet his sweat runs like a river
though he did no thing,
and his legs, he assures me
are killing him, and I

am left wondering why
he ever bothered standing
in the first place

a perfect pitch makes your name known
leaving room for us to step aside
Glory. Kingdom. Salvation. Redemption.
Transformation

Hope.

I hope we pitched it well.

i overheard and turned to see thankfully a moment too late but the sound will stay with me forever
as the bone broke under the weight
of the bus
the roll of head under body
and what was left of the muffled scream

i aways knew i’d grow old and find
this food i was not so secretly ingesting
was the key to superhuman strength

alas human-made green goo emboldens not,
strengthens not, and just generally does’nt do much
for me besides aid me in attention grabbing.

yea, im the guy who holds my finger away from
my face between picking and consuming to first
judge the succulence and then later partake

The solid-gold pavement
has been scrapped in for
full market value,
leaving us with your
garden-variety,
run-of-the-mill,
tarmac-style blacktop,
but that’s alright, because
it walks, bikes and rides
just the same, and
it only burns the soles
of your feet a little bit
as long as you learn to
walk fast.

At last, as though two long-lost sisters, they have found eachother. Two meteorites colliding, making a BANG, and take over the gaseous nothing which surrounds them. They combine their forces as the great Dynamic Duo that has finaly realized their strength together. What can they do now? O what possibility! they have as a double-force of ignorant weight-throwing, refusing to back down. They hate themselves, eachother, and everything around their pocket of nothingness. They are drawn together, somehow, against nature, by their negative poles, though Nature herself deemed it so to happen! Fuckin’ finally! Two chicks to cluck about neither hide nor hair, together, thinking their askew’d thought The Word.

Headache sitting on my head like a succubus
He says, she says
Sink back in the warm womb of covers, child
This is my Sabbath
Eel skin sibilance soaks slippery in the sheets

Could have resuscitated from a charcoal coma
In time to see overweight ladies in circus hats shaped like beehives and hula-hoops
Come drooling out from between the two red teeth of God’s mouth

But the course faltered as discolored toenails acquainted rug fibers

Watching a face pockmarked by acne and adolescence
Proceed with grated jaw, high cheekbones,
A bruise swelled to a yellow and russet rotting apple

His sticky eyes distinguish
Hands transforming the topography of his shoulders’ canvas
As shuttered eyes and burdened heads bow
To celebrated the boy who said yes

And a voice from the seats whispers to me,
This is the most beautiful example of love I’ve ever known

It is on the wind and
will arrive first thing
tomorrow afternoon.

Last night I swallowed
my French heritage.
It was everything It could be-
soft murmurs incomprehended;
foreign.
Breathing into me, knowing
I understand.
A dream unbelievable
Hours of my wildest imagination
right before me
at
last.

I have not yet woken up.

i place my words carefully
each in order
so as to construct
my mind.
and i’m finding
she ain’t purdy.

among the purple
blossoms: one
ringed with white.

i’ve a system for filing my brilliance.

as a phrase, paragraph, poem, or book idea passes by my brain
i think “brillaint”
and then forget it.
filed away into my mental box labelled “invisible”.

this way it’s accessable any time i open my “invisible” box.
which is to say — never.
it’s a very difficult box to find.

but once my brilliant idea concerns finding invisible boxes (or boxes merely labelled invisible), and I’m wise enough to not file it away into the same….
well, i’m certain like a salinger people will pour out their guts to see every last word i’ve written.

The dusk soon vanished in to a chill, dark night
which our elderly sedan cut through expertly,
it’s headlamps discovering new trees with
each sweeping turn that we mad around each
smooth country curve.

there were no stars that we could see.
They were there, though, Mr. Hugo assured me,
despite our lack of visual proofs.
I could not deny his theory any more
than he could prove it, however, and
just as well, for then it began to rain.

The droplets came slowly at first, only
bubbling on the surface of our windshield.
Then, all at once, the shower became a downpour
and it was easily classified as torrential.

Mr. Hugo suggested that we retire from the road,
but I insisted that we keep on. After all, I said,
We had no campgear, there were no clearings,
and it was only rain, after all. He shrugged,
as was his way. Alright was all he said.

The downpour soon doubled it’s efforts, and
despite their fervor, our windshield wipers could
hardly take the blur away.
The world became
a wash of looming trees and yellow light,
which I compared off-hand to the reports
of a near-death experience.

Then, the road began to jag.
The road had slicked from the sudden wash,
and though my foot came up so slightly from the throttle,
it was not up quite enough,
and the very next zig had us spinning.

Goddamnit, I heard Mr. Hugo say
and though I fought the wheel there was no use
as we flew from the road and in to a stand of
strong, unyielding Spruce trees, and to what would be,
unfortunately,
Our final digression

today i’ll celebrate like a six year old girl on her way to an ear-piercing, princess-dress-up, Justin Bieber birthday party
because hey
i never was a six year old girl
and there are some things
you just cant afford to miss