where are the dragons? i used to see the
sky full of shadows.
i used to instigate my own throws,
fits of upright charms and of angst against the things i thought we all fought.
that we all secretly hated.
ornery devil, monkey with money
i have a purse, and a country you are going to love,
make a life, here is your family
i cut out the segments of your grapefuit,
and folded your morning paper for you
so no one takes away your serentity.

fourty thousand dollars can
take you around the world in 40 days
i could live in a haze or maze or milk crates
all to reach up at rain/what had
caught your attention, you mentioned
how cars all blurred together under
the wipers.. you wanted to realign her,
remind her, your woman in the heated leather
seat that you too make heat.
blood. sweat.

cold cuts. rolls.
we are dining in the sun after the drive
and i have no secrets to a picnicking life.
red blanket, leaves, tree flowers falling,
birds calling, ants crawling and a set of repetitions, clouds always crowding,
a cotton caroselle of butchered meats and flowers and
a hive of this respected old one note,
be, be, be, be.

Dear Barista: part of the leaking heart club,
I always have to believe – it’s my fate to believe –
That we are moving around, doing the bidding of a greater thing.
Sometimes I slump against it, like I’m running
From dogs and it is the brick wall.
Sometimes I dream things that I remember as
A part of my life…until I can remember
It was a dream through some rationalization…
And sometimes my fake awakes are cracks…
Just like her smile, and how she knows the
Hole and owns the hole and didn’t mend
It but it doesn’t unravel more.

they took the basic
language of our soul,
the arts, our imaginations,
our lips, our vocal chords,
our hands our eyes our
senses, our impulses to love,
and used them agasint us
to sell us shirts and
soda and sandwiches.

4.

i guess it all has to happen
it has to snow in the winter
we had to fall.

most people who die
climbing mountains
make the summit
and err while descending.

it’s the time of night
where you’ve already watched
J Lenno and now you’re watching
reruns of Coach. Soon you’ll
fall asleep as someone on HSN
is selling an off-brand hand bag.

I wish you’d got your hands bloody about it
instead of putting flowers in guns . . .
but the zapatistas haven’t won
and we haven’t won.
at least the zapatistas know there are
no wars without weapons.
At least they know they have a fight,
At least they have pride,
They are walking around in mud.

temptation, what is it?
it’s not tempting
to fuck around when you are not
a glaring ego.

so, hush, baby, you are not
going to do all the wrong things.
why not just pick up stones
and arrange them. you know the
right ones for the job.

it was enchanting to know her
so well after these nights and these
talks and these years together.
it was enchanting to imagine
scenarios together
and have some food
and be exhausted in her company.

the lighting was a red, like a
fading train, and our conversation
was an afghan.

10.

i walked home
and smoked to
not think
about what i
was going to
write when i
got home.

here i am writing
about smoking
to not think about
writing.

on my walk
home i remembered
taking pictures
of night trees
on my disposable camera

and i remembered
my friend had
taken a picture
of me peeing
in a bush at night
in a public park.
like, a year past.

and, speaking of pee,
and love and devotion,

i peed in your back yard
(out of disrespect)
the night i went to your
house at 3 am to try to get
laid after you made it quite
clear i was going to get laid
and then you didn’t answer the door.
and while i was peeing, the kitchen lights
came on and i pulled up my pants without
drip drying.
the next weekend you drunkenly peed
in the corner of my room on a box of my books after
i made out with someone in front of you
but you were so drunk that you fell asleep
in my bed anyway. and i realized
i wanted to be sleeping next to you
so much. and i maybe had made a mistake.

but some mistakes are like bad riddles,
even when someone tells you the answer
you are not sure you understand how
it solved the riddle. and. . .
i mean, the sensation. not the exact
analogy, i mean the sensation of
not knowing if you really made a mistake
because the person you are wondering if you
mistaked against, is a halloween corn maze,
where the best way to get through
is with spells and intuition
and sometimes disrespect goes a long way
in keeping someone interested
and getting what you want.

just keep the underlying message clear,
i wanted you.

5.

this snide little 10 year old kid
was like, “what if you are just
average guy? and you are so average
you realize you don’t have anything
to do with yourself except average
the average.”

and i said, “well, i’m 25 and really having
to deal with that question. you are
kind of pushing some red buttons here and
maybe your silly kid joke is a little
too real for me, kid.”

but
the joke’s on him, because i know
he still has yet to really begin
coming to terms with his mediocrity
and absurdity and it’s only going to
get worse and worse. hahaha
hahaha.

repeat. no dental insurance.
of course children think they
are always going to have clean
teeth.

marker drawings rarely make it into galleries
the women of 2000 are sitting on top of
huge piles of bones and polishing them clean
one at a time. coated in blood when they leave.

sore spots in the earth are like
cancer, shingles of disaster, i wanted
to be a dancer but i learned to walk
instead and breathe underwater.

sole daughter, white snowy field
blinded you eyes are red, nod and nod
to the beating, your head, all choked
by dope and beer and go to bed.

tenitus means you are closer to deaf,
a red woman, a red room, a sauna of blood
rich in
iron, a sauna for pregnancy,
desire, genetics and incest.
how many rock and roll shows do you have
left.

2.

so’maing, stargazing, car theft
beaches seen from swinging beds
corridores of lucious hedges a
quick cut to serindipitous
meeting and then a splice
to regret.

moribund teenage storyline banished,
egypt lays like a cold stone
radiating power out of my imagination
deserts. turquoise and millions of slaves
baking, building caves, building sphynxes.
defending the pyramids. i’m a magic carpet who
think’s it is made of flesh and bone.

if the ocean folds us in
and the deserts are sea scapes,
it’s going to be ancient egypt
where i journey to live my underwater life..

3.

sea party, lets have a sea party!
bring the salt and plastic lining
for the walls, practice
holding your breath and all
your underwater ettiquite.
turn on the bathtub and lets get wet.

i sanded every floor with salt,
i walk through the house
as the water levels raise, dancing on salt
with my bare feet to help it
encorperate into the warm bathwater
as my watertight record player plays.
don’t open the doors for a few hours.
set the table with empty cups and astronaut food,
dehydrated meals are the best at
sea parties, becaue the food will get wet,
put on flippers, not heels,
put on your bikini not your coctail dress.

4.

a minimum
of courtesy
is required for

getting by; in
beauiful crowds
rudeness is king.

5.

passivity might
kill us all. sunlight
was the only way
pictures were lighted–

we’ll sketch by candle
when we lose our power.

6.

demonstration of wood
carving, a shrouded head
real as a burlap sack
from a distance until
one walked right up to it
and saw it had wood grain.

7.

nuiance in the folds of cold
antique air. fluctuating
electricution of the
air renders some fantasies
of ghosts maybe real. the icy
breath of spiritual mold:
excited old presences.

8.

the artists who paint the occult
are in pain as they fight the sane
impulses of painting old love.
old love is lace and not cocaine.
or the worship of poison snakes
or the worship of acid rain.

9.

i’m going to write a poem called, ‘this is life’
it’s about life.
get it?

oh. and ofcourse death. and of course
shadows on pillows at 4 ockock and coo coo clocks
and ku klux clans.

laaaaate last night, in la casa de el hombre, the house of man,
listening to music and smoking a joint in a blue room,
across the hall, a roommate was boning
and this guy i sat next to fist pumped and yelled ,’yaaaaaaa1!!’

‘this is life’
it’s really happening.
even if it’s all a drug dream.

10.

poet prophet, i called you my bible
after i stopped believing in real god.
each era is told first by some man who is
blind and who put his ear to the train tracks.
like dog’s whine when a tornado is near
before we see the clouds start to gather.

Dark maroon booth, bar,
Night, aftermidnight, bustle,
Man (seated at the bar) sticking hand into
Crack of woman ass who’s skirt
He pulled up (bare ass on stool), she wears a collar
With leash,
The backs of their heads, framed by
The liquor cabinet, a thousand
Bottles across, illuminated like fiesta lights
for year-round forgiveness
And forgetfulness.

Four girls at a table, north south east and west,
Girlfriend, Christian, Irreverent, and me, more or less quiet.
As we lean in and out, faces catching more and less light, words cascading and mixing out over the table between us–everyone wanted to be heard and no one wanted to hear each other’s advice and beliefs about men and boyfriends–I sit, eyes moving like the eyes of a bejeweled cat clock, ticking the time, saying,
I don’t know what’s right,
(Left now) I don’t know what’s right.
It all seemed too hard and too easy and I had nothing to add.

Mute like the time the big dad came into the cupcake shop I worked and asked,
‘Why don’t they make the vanilla frosting a different color than pink on these
cupcakes so boys can eat them too?’
And my gay coworker turned to me after the man left and said, “Oh yeah, that’s what happened to me, I ate a pink cupcake.” And I laughed and said, “ I really couldn’t think of anything to say to that man.” And I couldn’t, I just stood and watched dad talk to my coworker, my mind ca-ching-ing but the drawer not opening.

Same at that bar,
I kept thinking, Girlfriend, Don’t waste your time,
And don’t waste you time not wasting your time.

thank you breathing night
for secret spaces for realizations
of how the pain i’ve felt
fits like an informative tracing
or a phantom
agains the pains of my family
and friends.

dialated pupils, absorbing
how i am product of satiation vs. starvation.
and complicated by
wars and subjugation,
complicated by gender and wealth
country of birth, education.
then like roots so fine
when you get to the problem of
why i choose to do anything at all.
and when i choose to do something,
can i look back from the hair-like root-tips
of choice and see my huge and
statuesque trunk spreading leaf roofs
forming an inbetween space for animals,
ticking and creeping at night in
our jungles along the soddy floors
of mulch, padding on our wasted leaves.

the hissing of wind through trees
or the howling of wind through a
pass like the thundering of a train
at night with the stars to steady you.
i don’t even know, friends, what
it feels like to know something
certainly. but the nights i wake up
with my breath caught in a web
of new thoughts, and the desire to
build more and continue onwards…
i am vast, deep, a jungle of a heart,
or the palouse during a forest fire
when the sky and the fields are
both gold and all they do together
is roll.

but the intuitive earth will never note it.

every poem written in the form
nature w/o man
feels it’s inadequacy. and maybe that’s
the point. Wendell Berry.
We fucked up and we are.
We think our viral thoughts all cyclical
to hope if we think over ourselves,
like an existential bear walking in circles,
dragging behind him a heavy branch
at the end of the circle he’s erased and forgave
himself but his footseps are always
in the snow where he’s walking.
The trough of the branch gets deeper.

i fear missing the point. so i
listened to your point.
but it pointed at my self and prodded it.
in an unkind way.

i thought maybe good
to see a new light
now i miss my old light.