night rain

when in the tub, door shut, candles lit, outside the rain sloshing into the cement buckets the city made, water from side to side under the growls of tires, you sweat.

you might then reach your wrinkly feet or hands for the green blue tile that crawls up the wall like ivy, and feel the cold of its back, the hard ice blue of each tile's face.

and with the sound of water emancipated from its sky cage, running wild like liquid hives you are not sweating red footed in the tub, you are sitting on rotted wood in the steel door night, with the black sea and the windy paper rain roping through your curved hands.

quote, anne sexton

"I am something of a tin can--being opened up all the time."

snow-organ

i will scoop up this white water
like three eggs and lay them inside me
the inside would rain and turn black
and the valley of this angry bag
would cool, would hoot
like an owl in the night

i will lay this white lake
where this fire lives
and it will swallow the ash
feed the fish
and make things come alive

wolves bats river

we will heat up next to each other like wolves

a herd of bats drawn in the dark

we will be the tender wild river

livid and awake

rebel

Push the body until it frees the spirit 

Break the body, break the mind 

if you want freedom that is leathery

freedom that burns like toxic dump 

if you want this celebration that is brutal and rabid 

what are you perserving?

this is my life.

This is my life; and I must love all the minutes of it because it comes from me and through me and it's the only thing left to worship. It is the only thing that teaches these knees to know the crutch of the ground (the faithfulness of it) or these eyes to weep. There is nothing else to do but live. Nothing can get closer to me. Not even god.

two lemons

there is nothing closer to god than the two lemons on our table. two yellow lizard eyes holding in their bellies enough acid to burn through our doubts. i watch them from the chair, how the sun moves over them, the light catching parts of their turtle backs and reflecting a coin onto the wall. it's their citrus that whips open this day, cuts through the sloth of it like a saw small enough to fit into a tear.

blue truck

sky blue     texas dent     grizzly     little penny

fence

a wire fence grew from her toes

a wicked curly thing: could rip

gizzards and fowl

rose over the clouds

carnivores

she dreams that she borrowed

the teeth of her father

so she could tear through

the dead bird of time 

gruel

under the shark enamel sky
we are in chewed up little bones,
the gruel of history.

i am the most human underneathe where i cannot touch it.

murder by mfa

i am locked inside this body.
i am still teenager i'll never grow out of this fear.
i want to let out the music that is curdling inside these hands (what a waste)
i wonder what it will take to become an artist that is coveted. a dove.
i wonder what it will take more times than i check my phone.
the worst thing for ripping open a song, is to care if its good.

racing

I listen to a report on factories in china. I sit down with my dinner, close my eyes over the steam coming up from my bowl, and visualize in my mind the dystopia: the thousands of bodies--their joints eroding over the thin springs and microchips they handle for 12 hours a day. Their eyes bulging. I picture the thick nets that the gleaming factories have hanging off them like dead snake skin. These, to keep the workers 'safe' from suicide. I imagine the way the white nylon threads acquiesces from the force of the gray jacketed falling torso the way my soccer ball hit the back of the net during my younger soccer days. I can almost hear it. I say to myself, listen to their story, it's the least you can do. And I do,  I listen to the whole thing.

And then I bumble around the kitchen, thinking I'm going to to bake cookies, and I grab bowls too big and too small, I don't care to look at the recipe and decide that I'll just eyeball it, I put the plastic container holding the butter right on to the stovetop to warm it up ( I check constantly to see if their is a jellyfish of new wet melted plastic hanging over the metal). I'm whisking and whisking, and stirring and stirring. chocolate chips fly everywhere from the way I've opened the glossy bag.

ambition

to-do     hysteria     future     untrue

winter

raven      granite      cracked sky       pale sun

dreamhouse

dead lawn     chipped blue     sunset     hammock

waterglass

clearly        sparkle        glass jar        wet sun

nighttime

quiet     lamplight     thinking     bedroom  

breakfast

 coffee mug     yellow      bird chirp     window

fresh

laundry room     morning      new paint      lemons

our river snakes
a rope left carelessly on the dirt
flaccid and natural
grass sticks out of its granulated loafs
like the first chin hairs on a new man
grey blond and crisp


except for the blue matted
baskets we've made by sitting there


there is no religion like ours
which needs nothing but to watch
the earth's swill go from pink to aluminum
under the wrinkly sun