can I condition myself
with a white hot wire
and a pocket of m&ms
to not fuck up

does that sound like a good
strategy
to you

I think I might position
a needle above my
eyelid and feel
the cumulative numbness
of the hours I have been awake
in a way
that makes my teeth
clench together
it would be a good way to learn
about pressure

it would just be so much easier
if my hands would burn when
I fuck up again
and touch something soft

no actually my parents didn't want to watch a movie with me
I was just tired of hearing about your family on the phone
I hate my family
I hate families
I hate feeling like I can't get off the phone
worst feeling

what if I burned down my university
my house
your house
all of your fucking houses
and all of the coffee shops I loved
wouldn't it be great
we could lie around outside
and eat gruyere
and inhale deeply

reading aloud angelic orgasm reading quietly saying aloud "autistic 8-year-old" repeating silently "autistic 8-year-old".

anxiety

if an icicle falls from its perch
and stabs my body on the stoop
it won't be too soon
because there is a wave of flaming icicles
on the soccer field and an east wind in my hair
and you know what that means
it means I will be on fire
my smell will carry through the hallways,
and freezing
my body will shatter, limbs will pop bike tires
and stabbed
my juices will stain the concrete
and that would hurt, I think
a little more than just one
sharp and cold
icicle to the soft and warm brain,
right?
It will just be like a pinprick, probably.

gi joe

the world is more boring when
you aren't warming my pocket
everything moves at the proper speed
eyes roll more lids are heavier
you are from metzger's
I might be from metzger's too
you have been to many cities
we were together every day
you are so discreet
it's why I like you
you know
you are cold and in my pocket
I am cold and moving slowly
because the world is boring
because I am boring

prior 100
refers exclusively to time
whereas
previous 100
to any ordering

adverbs call my attention
and I drool at the sound of
a beep and my conditioning
is far from complete

one pill for each day that is not glorious
the previous and prior
backwards, then forwards again

you can't touch if you can't feel
that should be a law
you can't touch
if you
can't
be
a
human.

do you have any prior convictions?

there isn't anything strange
about waking up as happy
as I was last night
despite my fears that I wouldn't

there is something strange
about the way we fit together

this is something

college poem

there are only two steps
and the twelve of you
on cellphones, or with cellphones
stuck in your throats
without warning
cause me to split the two steps
in half with my mind
and I jump off the steps
and forget my cellphone
and none of you have even noticed
the giant fissure
and none of you have even noticed
that you don't know me
because I am drunk and stoned
because I only like you when I am fucked up
because I am as smart as you are sober
when I am fucked up
and I am fucked up
and I want to break your cellphones in my fists and make you all cry.

edit:

I am so articulate
that I can actively
convince myself
my behavior is
completely normal
totally acceptable
...
yeah, dude
everything's cool

(I am listening to Patti Smith's 'Gloria')

and you were on the verge of laughing

zack.kenyon: and you were on the verge of laughing

throughout both interviews

small though they were

you also have good camera presence

2:28 PM and your piercing looks really good

2:29 PM and your hair looks

exactly like mine again

college poem

'you are afraid to try
and actually fail
so you just don't do
anything and fail
and convince yourself
it's funnier that way'
and it is
and it stings to realize
your bed, 5 feet off the ground
holds no good will
but functions only
as a location to sleep off last night
or a location to safely feel emotions
and it is not funny
when you realize
you don't care about any
of these people and you
don't care about falling in love
anymore and you don't care
if your clothes are clean or if
your hair is washed and you
stand facing the window
hating yourself so furiously
for not cleaning the sink
hating your mother so furiously
for letting you do this
to yourself again
you are a drug addict
you have failed again
because it's really funny and clever
to say 'everything will probably not be ok'
until you're lying in your bed screaming
'everything will probably not be ok'
and you know it's true

coronado creeper

you are standing with your hand
on my striped knee
at 4:06AM
'hey--what the fuck'
is what I scream
and in Katie's room you said
'they told me to come here'
and in Rachel and Sarah's room
you stood in only gray boxer briefs
twisting her breast, perched on their windowsill
and I spoke in a quiet confident voice to
G. Guevara and I remembered every
single episode of Law and Order:SVU
I watched when I was alone for 6 months
and I remember feeling alone for 6 months
and I understand why you broke into
15 girls' rooms last night
to touch them while they slept, sir

college poem 5 of x

again with this hallway
and these echoes
gray is pushed to my ears
I stop at a water fountain
drink and push my weight
against the key in the
girl's bathroom door
and
vomit
water
for the next ten minutes
while looking intently
at the floor tiles
I have found nothing in them
and I have returned
empty handed with you as well
so for now
I will push my face
into this communal toilet
and spew blankness
for as long as it's still coming up, I guess.

fuck this poem

will you look in my
hateful killer whale eyes
with a concerned expression
when I scream
look what you made me do

will you listen to
each word coming out
of my full pink chapped lips
with your eyes growing
wet wiping them angrily
on the stained corner
of your shirt sleeve

tequila had been rendered
ineffective when mixed
with 10mg adderall
1g of sour diesel
coated my lungs
and I hacked and
it felt like I was going
to destroy the small
galaxy of the coronado
smoker's area

I am slowly destroying
several galaxies
in textedit documents
in the passive glow
of phosphorescent laptop light
this is how the aliens do it

you are in a very cultured
music video looking
sophisticated for 8 seconds
I watch those 8 seconds
37 times and think
briefly
look at what you make me do

negative sim interaction points

in mrs. peachtree and the eighth avenue cat
a stray tabby follows mrs. peachtree around
she gives him food and calls him names
one day the cat makes a mess and she is mean to him
the cat goes away
for like 10 pages she misses the cat
and hates herself for being mean to it
in the end, the cat comes back
because he loves mrs. peachtree
and she loves him

I fell into a black hole
where the only thing I scream
is
'you were supposed to love me at the end'
'you were supposed to love me at the end'
'you were supposed to love me at the end'
'you were supposed to love me at the end'
but nobody can even
hear that
in a black hole

more of a status update, really

I have not enjoyed reading for what seems like forever. I used to read a book a night. I have taken two weeks to read half of one book and when I pick it up I am unable to understand it, like it's in Japanese or something and all of the letters look like pound signs.

In school yesterday I cried for a good part of the day, but when people asked me why my face looked like a funeral I wouldn't tell them. I couldn't tell them. I am absolutely obligated to never say anything about her bird-bones or I will lose her. I have already lost so many things. I am watching my childhood wilt, petal by petal.

When I see her, I want to shove food into her fucking face and down her fucking throat until she is so stuffed she will not move, ever again. I want to push her, hit her, kick her, kill her, make her bleed, make her eat. I want her to look at me and know that I have not tasted anything in the past month. I want her to look at me and know that I have not written anything in the past month. I want her to look at me and know that I have not loved anything in the past month. I want to do all of these things, and yet, the thing I want least is to break her.

I hold a porcelain doll so close to my heart that the two have become intertwinably fragile. I am wilting into a thousand pieces of porcelain.

preface

I am going to go do
something that scares me

my knees are shaky
and I keep whispering to myself
'alaska said I could do it'
and maybe eleanor roosevelt

the world makes me nervous
and my world is 15 buildings
and the pavement that leads
to winning coffee

my bones are shaking
I should go pee

summary

she told me to be like the Centurion
and pray:
'help me in my unbelief'

I don't believe I can look you in the eyes
and that is the truth

will you put your fingertips
over my eyelids when the
room gets dark
and we eat popcorn
will you do it softly

this is called extreme temperance
watch me do it with this needle
or this very soft blanket
on John Lennon's birthday

<:& is the emoticon that defines me, I feel.

I went to the smoking area 15 times today
to see if you were there
one time you were

no, sometimes it does hurt to ask.

Today I was struck soundly by a medical student trying to save a dying moth. It was seizing and he kept saying: "if I were smart enough, I could save it."

a medium to large sized pile of woodshaving stands where the bike rack was yesterday and I think only of the greatness of this hangover

I am having a nervous breakdown lately
pretty sure about that
it is very quiet and secret
but I know everything in my head
and I am so self-aware that it physically
hurts and I am trying to recover
but really pushing myself further
in and it is hard so I use drugs
recreationally and for salvation purposes
I need human heat
and it is so obvious, guys
and there are happy Mexican people everywhere
I feel like the only sad person here
can you tell that I am
the ducks are even running away now
with the cold wind of the afternoons
and I am alone, again

I prayed in the grass last night for 20 minutes and then thought repeatedly: "I don't even believe in God."

'these dorms look the most like prisons
it was voted on somewhere
it has official merit that your word does not
you fucking fuck'

I just hit my plastic shark against an open drawer
with such sad rage, like a satanic latin american film
with ghosts
then I hit myself on the head briefly

I am obsessed with ghosts because I am
writing a book about ghosts
I am self absorbed to the max, yo
I cried in front of my mirror last night

you are only allowed to do that once a year
I put my hand to the mirror and cried
and hated myself and it was resonating
in the dormitory hallway that looks like

prison.

a paragraph from 'ok, ghost', some other things

They leave and the nurse gives me my clothes and throws a vomit-stained gown into a biohazard bag and I cannot help my grin. There’s a giant mirror and I convince myself the cop is watching me. Staring at the mirror intently, like a small bird, I rotate my head from side to side then go out of the room. I am missing a sock. In the pocket of these three-weeks-unwashed jeans that hang from my hips there are four wrinkled bills and with them I get a styrofoam cup filled with blackish, burnt water. There is a fake leather chair and I sit in for 7-8 minutes and look up when the cop person makes sound walking down the hall. He looks at me. His name tag says: Lt. Kendall Martinez. I look at his eyes and they are a boring color. This man has nothing to offer.


today I got a bad grade on a 10 page film analysis in a film class. I got a 1.5/5 and kind of feel like dropping out of college and possibly working in a gas station for maybe a few months and then possibly moving somewhere like Canada.

I listened to Led Zeppelin earlier for a long time and thought of my childhood and then listened to Tracy Chapman and thought of my father telling me about the world when my hair was so long that it repeatedly whipped the small of my back when I ran on the soccer field.

I will not drop out of college for another year at least.

I am making a playlist about my ex-girlfriend because I made contact with her when I was on drugs and feeling lonely and now she is something that again drifts into my head.

All of the songs are acoustic.

I feel like each emotion I am feeling is pulling my heart to a different area of my body and that my heart has the consistency of gum that has been chewed for thirty minutes and will snap soon.
But my heart will not snap.

I feel apologetic for using the internet to talk about myself in a format that is not a poem. Why do I feel that way. The internet is a black hole we are all screaming our names and feelings into and we cannot even hold anyone's hand while our fingers type.

Dale wanted to hold me today and I felt a familiar feeling of shame about my sexuality.

swift critical judgement, howland winds

suddenly compelled to mark my existence
with a pile of cigarette butts
over 30,000 intellectual sun ripened individuals
are harrowing self-effacing
I have taken down the mirrors
so as to further progress my novel
further delay any personal development
for the sake of art, I claim
and I have lost all sense of self, selves on shelves
alphabetically listed and directoried
I search for your middle name
and for 15 articles regarding cinema novo
and further my understanding of what is new
through novels in arctic winds that pass
when you sweep through this hallway
with impenetrable, syntactically ambiguous eye contact
a study in sexual vagueness
a university of near misses
has educated me on the theories relevant to impersonal loss
and I have turned my life into a really simply syndicated feed
of influences so as to better ignore my own ideas
and become a reflection
of what I aim to become through self-destruction
suddenly compelled to fall

I am relearning to walk

a little

last night,

I took joy

damn, it feels good to be a disenfranchised, drug-addled little white girl
a real fucked-up, drunk bitch never sleeps
a real sad, quiet girl plays guitar
'cause a real fucked-up thing feels too much to sleep
and fucking college kids always telling stories
crying in a fast-food chain
but a real depressed white bitch don't sob
cause a real sad poet know she got pain
and it's all pointless in the mind of this bitch
'cause intellectual motherfuckers read books
awake again on a linoleum floor
'cause a real punk-ass dropout don't sleep

And I'll speak to your all your white-ass, downturned faces
never been, have been, never will be, bitch-ass MFAs
'cause when the bomb in my pocket drops what the fuck you gonna do
damn, it feels good to be a disenfranchised, drug addled little white girl

weathermen

my alienation
isolation
sadness
despair
has barred me
from caring
about things
much greater
than myself
and I am
through
feeling nothing
about everything
so I am going
to fling myself
into antagonistic
violent
overthrow
of something
more caustic
than myself
to atone
and more
importantly
to change
this

I would know it by the smell

the five flight walk
is ingrained
into my heart rate
along with the
sounds of
my internal dialogue
which has degenerated
into phrases I scream
at myself and at you

and when I get into
a 12 by 12 room
with 8 additional
people smelling
of sweat
I smell you
and freak out
so viscerally
that everyone
left

I'm a winner
for the day
and I pack another
and smile sickly
with your poison
scent in my nose

my brain is raining again.

Therefore true revolution can take place only when you, the individual, become aware in your relationship to another. Surely what you are in relationship to another, to your wife, your child, your boss, is society. Society by itself is non-existent. Society is what you and I, in our relationship, have created; it is the outward projection of all our own inward psychological states. So if you and I do not understand ourselves, merely transforming the outer, which is the projection of the inner, has no significance whatsoever; that is there can be no significant alteration or modification in society so long as I do not understand myself in relationship to you. Being confused in my relationship, I create a society which is the replica, the outward expression of what I am.

— Krishnamurti

question

should I start taking my medication again?
I don't know.

ok here is what is going on in my head ok, I don't have a philosophy book, I have no money, I am also having some kind of quarter life crisis (because I will die by 60) and coping with that by never being sober and I think I have destroyed my relationships with about everyone I know, and I have to write an essay tonight, and all I want to do is fall into the smallest warm place and sleep and sleep and sleep and wake up and make breakfast and coffee and read the newspaper then smoke a cigarette and waste the day away with a book for my entire life, ok

someone just unplug me already.

exploded into herself or coffee and gi-joes

in this giant fucking black truck
I flick cigarette ash out the window
while listening to fucking stupid music
with my drug dealer
in his giant fucking black truck

and I feel so divinely
not
sexy

--one new message:
in the art museum feeling
so lonely listening to the postal
service--7:26AM

in my room
in a rainstorm
'lucie zhang is famous on tumblr for her smallville quotes, YES, hahaha.'
makes me laugh
for 4 to 7 seconds

and all of a sudden
I miss everyone

the grass smelled like green

we made quality eye contact

with nature

today

today

I shed little flakes of happiness

from my clothing

and we lay in a tangle of

arms

today

today

we spent time

in dollars and cents

I felt that I had a limited amount

of time and happiness

and that the two were correlated

rock me mama

If you wake up in a stranger house with stranger friends, you inevitably awake within yourself as a stranger person.
If you've ever felt anything, you'll understand why I haven't been sober in 4 weeks. Because, friends, you'll have to sit me on a bed of nails before you keep me here.

can't post this, can't post this, can't post this. I will post this anyway.

what I wanted
so you know
was to sit with you
and to touch you in a way that made you
feel like you were understood
and talk ourselves into silence
and feel misunderstood and beautiful
what I wanted
was to show you that kind of thing
even if it touched your neck sometimes
I wanted you to not pull away
when my lips brushed the curve where
your head meets your shoulders
where your collarbones illuminate
me when I cannot sleep or
you when our gaze grazes
on the inevitability
of my slow dissent into
the democracy of tragedy of
bile and bile and bile
and the quietness
of slow acceptance
of being alone
for the foreseeable future
I have taken on the role
of a phantom
ok, ghost
ok, ghost

___
japandroid-'I quit girls'

"she wears white
six days a week
she was just
one of those girls
and if you're lucky
on the seventh day
she'll wear nothing

she was just
one of those girls

after her
I quit girls"

arthakearquake

my mouth is habitually ajar
like I have seen things
I can't unsee

and I have

if I slip my headphones on my ears
and set the volume to kill you
I can stop

feeling things

Bob Barker and the mysterious ticking Noise

I am dying slowly

I will win prizes if I die more slowly
than other people

an unexplainable anger at technology
a fear of change
and a musty home
there will be dentures for the runner-up

I don't know what is behind door number 2

self-absorbing sponge

I feel so much guilt
at the fact
that on this day of
remembrance
all I can
think of
is flying into a very tall tower.

I feel so much guilt
at the fact
that on this day of
remembrance
all I can
think of
is flying into a very tall tower.

self-absorbed jet plane

I feel so much guilt
at the fact
that on this day of
remembrance
all I can
think of
is flying into a very tall tower.

because eating with your fingertips is dirty when there is barbecue sauce

when I grow up I would like to be
silverware
and sedate myself with the heat
of other spoons



tools are happy
despite the popular misconception
that being used for a specific purpose
is not
free will


my mother will be disappointed
I will say to her


I'm gleaming and polished like a hospital room, Ma
The salary isn't much, but I live in a small comfortable drawer and make ends meet, Ma
It's what I always wanted, Ma
Don't you want me to be happy, Ma


when I grow up I want to be
silverware
and make mouths meet

rhyme

if I hadn't spent all my money
on drugs, coffee, and macabre
brands of cigarettes
today
I'd get a car
and we'd go
away
to think of things
that make us feel
this way

I have a plan

to bomb the internet.
imagine the new life we could live if I do.

I have a plan

to bomb the internet.
imagine the new life we could live if I do.

whenever I am anywhere I feel like a tourist
someone somewhere someplace for the first time
taking in my surroundings
looking at people intently
taking pictures
I must keep this place in my memory
because I will never be back here
I think
at a coffee shop I visit every day.

our connection is real and unreal
we have met to speak or sit
on an unreal plane of existence
so we can't sleep
this won't be here tomorrow

I gave my fake ulcer a name today

his name is socrates.
drew on a leaf today

click for big

excrement of waste matter gray matter; none of it matters

laughter is canned and full of
preservatives
when it fills up my ears

fire alarms would be most welcome
instead

I want an excuse to ooze out of my mouth
and into the wet pavement

a premature evacuation

where I will undergo some sort of
change

and learn a moral lesson

the studio audience will make noises
appropriate to my situation

they will applaud for me
they will cry and buy my book
on Amazon

later,
Oprah will put it on her book-list
people will discover it is all made up
NPR will call it

An egregious lie
Numbered pages full
of excrement

I will smile

in a public place somewhere
my brain will fall out of my mouth

the pavement will be waiting

laughter sounds canned and full of

preservatives

a Dole Fruit Cocktail of cherries

and detachment

before I leave for school in the morning

I make sure to coat my face

in emotion

maybe today

someone can read my mind

I am full

romantic dramedy broadcast (college poem 5 of x)

THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS
THESE VAST EXPANSES OF DEADLANDS

how to drain blood from your body

on the frontier
inside of an ice cube
I ask you if we can go to nantucket
can we go to the beach
I write 'patriot' on one shoe
'loyalist' on the other
and a man walks by
and flicks ash on my
metal and plastic
security blanket
and I wonder
'what is the name of this scorpion'

DJ set for smoking ghetto 9/5/09

animal-miike snow
dead wrong (ratatat remix)-notorious b.i.g
oslo in the summertime-of montreal
I don't care-atomic hooligan
don't get high (off your own supply)-reid speed
a pillar of salt-the thermals
bizarre love triangle-new order
vanished-crystal castles
back in your head (stop! die! remix)-tegan & sara
homecoming-the teenagers
dragula-rob zombie
grip like a vice-the go! team
death to los campesinos! (napoleon iii remix)-los campesinos!
freak show-louis logic

'a sensitive western-facing direction' or 'I accidentally 'chugged ice coffee' and felt despair'

you call me sobbing
and I feel so
much compassion
in a northern-facing
direction
that I laugh
and think about
how I wish
I could be in
love with you
in a normal-facing
direction
and hold your hand
on a bench
waiting for a bus
headed towards
a sensitive western-facing
direction
with an eastern-facing
mind set
in a calm house
with ice cream
and every season
of the office
inside us

string theory

all of my relationships
are dangling by strings;

it follows that scissors
are my worst nightmare

an asphyxiated poem hanging from the rafters

I am comforted by
the translucent floaty things living
on the surface of my eyeballs

they wave hello with floaty fingers

I am surprised into friendship

(but at sleepovers,
nobody ever goes to sleep)

sleep is a small spot in my lower thigh
I didn't know unconsciousness
was always
pins
and
needles

everything will probably not be ok

'I feel like Little Bill going to bed'

'or, like, a sad elmo
who didn't shower or care
about things'

I stare into my palm
and say

'goodnight, friend'

outside igloo

is that golf cart staring at me

can 'My Name Is' by Eminem
play every time I meet someone

does someone relate to me


__________
thought about life with clever bot:

Cleverbot: What did you have in mind?
User: Whirring fans.
Cleverbot: Happiness is a warm gun.
User: Suicide ice cream, unplug yourself!
Cleverbot: Alright, nevermind. Can we just start over and try to be friends?
User: No friends antelope.
Cleverbot: I do have friends.
User: Sad friends.
Cleverbot: Sure.

brought to you by the letter paranoia

I dreamt in red last week

there was a dog

he was full of nails

that must be why the neighbor

hit him

with a hammer

until his dog head was a mess

of bloody toilet paper

on the ground

I dreamt in whimpers last week

you told me

Everyone feels worthless

and I couldn't go to sleep

I felt nothing last night

except for awake

there were other people's words

speaking inside of my head

I was awake

but I was

dreaming

I am afraid I am my grandmother

pins slip from her hair

she checks reality

like

testing, testing 1, 2, 3

I look in the mirror and tell myself

Everything you see is backwards

line graph nose dive

I am making a spreadsheet of my existence
I have numerically rated all of my experiences
on a 10 point scale
I have factored in income
also cigarette intake

my current happiness level
is around 4.18 on a 10 point scale
existence is currently rated
-14.28

I fell asleep in the laundromat
someone stole my load of underwear
socks, and pillow cases
and my fabric softener
that smelled like 'mountain breeze'
the washing machine just broke
the sound barrier

I rate this experience as 7.40
I learned a life lesson

college poem 4 of x

I think about this song in terms of the last 4 years
I think about working at the movie theater
attaching one reel to the next, focusing
I have a question
can my life be a progression
of melodramatic take offs
for the rest of my life?
a repeating youtube video
of running away
with this song playing
once in awhile
I'm going to take off now.

cheery you

I am going to fling my body into as many heavy objects as possible
for the next three hours.
I will call it 'art'.
I will mail you my blood.

college poem 3 of x about 3 of x people in my life

if you will pull me out
we could go for a walk
I could sing you this song
it's okay.
but I am still drowning
in a pool of beer or sadness
I can't tell the difference
is there one?
all math teachers look the same
from a left-handed desk.

I am rendered resolute
with solder and squalor
and a bitten ankle
to ignore you
for the rest of my rust life.

no matter how many times I listen to your album, it's never about me
she isn't even pretty or kind
I didn't see you on campus today
I am not pretty or kind
I am disappointed
ephemerally or eternally?

the kittens on motivational posters have
been dead
for a long, long time
I hate Mondays
said the cat
Go back to bed
said my head
someone should make animal cruelty illegal or something

think outside the bag of small, delicious nuts

there is a bag
of
Raw Whole Cashews
sitting on my floor

I wish I was raw
I wish I was whole
I wish I was a cashew

life seems much simpler
gift-wrapped in cellophane

today, he asked me if I was happy

a. sometimes the plastic bag
pulled over my head
interferes with the news
and I can suffocate
quietly on current
prevents

b. if time-travel existed
I would go back to the dinosaurs
and make best friends
with a Stegosaurus
both of our brains would atrophy
to the size of walnuts

c. I don't want to live here anymore
unless someone will cover me in Saran Wrap
make pretend that I am a shower curtain
and wash my sadness into a drain
every
single
day

d. the trees were transparent today
I only see in shades of plastic
black and white are for squares

these are all the answers I could have given him
but instead I said

e. To all whom it may concern:
I am happy and I have a smile on my face
If I could choose
paper or plastic
I would of course choose the environmentally
friendly
option

mano-y-mano Manopoly

Monopoly is made for three players
I am more used to Solitaire

I sit across the board from
my cat

I have mortgaged all my properties
at this point
but I am a team player
so in the spirit of the game
I lend myself about 500 dollars

as some sort of handicap for people who cheat
it now costs 200 to pass go
they don't have a soup kitchen
for people who don't win

being a thimble is hard work
especially when you are miniature

noise complaints

I thought my self-conscious had
packed his bags for Africa
or maybe
moved to Europe

and yet
and yet
yesternight
he banged on my door for what felt like
the entire Cretaceous period

I tried to tell him
Sir, your apartment is no longer available
I've given it to another tenant
but he wouldn't let me ignore him
kept going on about

Mouths to feed
and
A wife and three kids

word of the day is
Pushover

he pushed me over
and then he left footprints on top
of
my face
when he walked all over me

now he and his wife
and three children
are living happily
in apartment 3B

unfortunately, all of my
happiness
has been evicted

college poem 2 of x

you can flex your fingers slowly and together
to the beat of those bugs in the trees
at 3 in the morning
and you can photocopy every poem
like 300 times
at 4 in the morning
but you cannot look at yourself
in the mirror
you cannot photocopy your face
and you cannot meet
anyone's eyes this week (weak)

____
here is what I see when I close my eyes at 5pm outside:

college poem 1 of x

There is carpet on this balcony
metal music is ok
maybe a little boring
you were in my psych class, right?
we smoked one time before class
and then waxed on Bandera and Chomsky
An inuit roommate
is certainly interesting
even if she is equivalent to buttered pasta
in terms of personality
or texture

will I ever stop being sad
sad and wrapped in the blanket
a friend bought me
but now without moz cat
frankly mr. shankly
I've stopped caring

quiet does not equal peacetime; call out the reserves

I can't put my tongue in my cheek
without tasting
like I have lost something
important

perhaps my head was not safely pinned
to my neck
when I broke down
in the desert

my mittens dangled from their
safety pins
my mother said
Don't forget...
but I don't remember the rest of the
sentence

zippers are lucky
they can tear everything
apart
and sew it back up
with only
a small
small noise

1. 5 months
2. 3 months
3. endless
4. feelings
5. of
6. incalculable
7. despair
8. 4 years
9. what now
10. 
    

when I was very small
I had plastic sticks that
hooked together
in my room I would build myself
into a cage
to sit in for awhile

then break out
yelling shrill, kid like:
'explode'
and then cry
at the mess
I had made

so when you saw
what a mess
I am
you should have known
that I do this to myself
like clockwork

Something Grimm Tales something something, pt. 3

Also, said the elephant. Stop writing. Because your words are probably useless.
then he shat a 97, 347 pound shit all over my keyboard
and I put my words in it
and he patted my back while
I
mourned
for
all
pronouns

tales by Hans Grimm and the Brothers Andersen, pt. 2

said I to the elephant,
How does something as heavy
as you fit inside my head?

tales by Hans Grimm and the Brothers Andersen, pt. 1

said the 4,129, 063 pound elephant in the room,
I think you are depressed.

a nationalist friendship bracelet-- to Karen, with friend

Karen
I'm so sorry for everything,
I'm so sorry for everything

Karen
it's probably not a phase
but I love you anyway
Karen
I am so sorry
for everything

Karen
you are my spoon
made out of skin

born with a silver foot
in your mouth

I'm so sorry

for everything

Karen
all I see is black and white and read
I am bad at being friends

I am
so sorry
for
everything

symmetry is difficult
to measure
except for in our lifelines
our palms are so
unfortunate

Karen
I don't know how
to make soles choose different
ways

(if I could keep you in my silverware
drawer for just a little longer)

I've lost my sense of direction
maybe it's just a phase

you are a very good friend
and I am so sorry
for
every
thing.

crying
in the garden
there is a millipede
tearing my hair by the roots
i throw handfuls of rocks
and then dirt
screaming
go away millipede
go the fuck away millipede

my face is covered in salty dirt

you were telling me in a series of text messages about how you watched So You Think You Can Dance for four hours and gave your cat cornrows and felt as if you were a usb cable with a venereal disease caught in a public restroom

and I was in guadalajara with a boy in a straw hat who I met in a city I moved to because I am cooler than nuclear weapons and your father's degree in something with several latin prefixes

I only learned latin suffixes in a school with an empty parking lot for a playground

I do not get reception in guadalajara, antarctica, or the top of any hill ever I emailed you

you sent a viral carrier pygmy jerboa with a message that was encrypted and I could only decode it with my fake glasses

the jerboa had a hangover so I made it some orange juice from mexican concentrate and gave it some money for a greyhound bus with a deep sense that it would never really find itself

my fake glasses had a clever status message indicating they were away from every kind of keyboard and taking yoga classes for the remainder of my high school education

I messaged them the encrypted note you had sent and they felt their cellphones vibrate but were entranced in downward facing dog

I sensed you understood in the library and watched you for the rest of my life

“enough” said the straw hatted boy from the top of a thatched roof you built on a christian mission trip when you were 14

“You are making the light go out of your eyes, pretending you are alone in the world. I know your secrets—you took a summer course in eyeball electronics. I graded your final when the professor was masturbating with the microsoft word paperclip. You aren’t as deep or fascinating as that thing we found on the beach or as cool as a foamy drainpipe. You think hanging a hammer on a nail in the wall is funny. I am humoring you so I can collect material for a series of derisive one-page poems, wrought with postmodern quotation marks and heavy use of hooded-sweatshirt-colloquialisms.”

he said this in a soft voice that conveyed his concern for my diet and exercise and shot record

I wrote fifteen poems on my laptop and told everyone from my hometown about my unfinished novel so their father’s degree would not look down upon every dropout.

you were telling me in a series of text messages about how you watched So You Think You Can Dance for four hours and gave your cat cornrows and felt as if you were a usb cable with a venereal disease caught in a public restroom

and I was in guadalajara with a boy in a straw hat who I met in a city I moved to because I am cooler than nuclear weapons and your father's degree in something with several latin prefixes

I only learned latin suffixes in a school with an empty parking lot for a playground

I do not get reception in guadalajara, antarctica, or the top of any hill ever I emailed you

you sent a viral carrier pygmy jerboa with a message that was encrypted and I could only decode it with my fake glasses

the jerboa had a hangover so I made it some orange juice from mexican concentrate and gave it some money for a greyhound bus with a deep sense that it would never really find itself

my fake glasses had a clever status message indicating they were away from every kind of keyboard and taking yoga classes for the remainder of my high school education

I messaged them the encrypted note you had sent and they felt their cellphones vibrate but were entranced in downward facing dog

I sensed you understood in the library and watched you for the rest of my life

“enough” said the straw hatted boy from the top of a thatched roof you built on a christian mission trip when you were 14

“You are making the light go out of your eyes, pretending you are alone in the world. I know your secrets—you took a summer course in eyeball electronics. I graded your final when the professor was masturbating with the microsoft word paperclip. You aren’t deep or fascinating as that thing we found on the beach or as cool a foamy drainpipe. You think hanging a hammer on a nail in the wall is funny. I am humoring you so I can collect material for a series of derisive one-page poems, wrought with postmodern quotation marks and heavy use of hooded-sweatshirt-colloquialisms.”

he said this in a soft voice that conveyed his concern for my diet and exercise and shot record

I wrote fifteen poems on my laptop and told everyone from my hometown about my unfinished novel so their father’s degree would not look down upon every dropout.

tampax are a more efficient way of dying

cotton

sketchbook moths

and i went to this one place
and i felt alone.
and i felt ok.

haiku

my walkman's skipping,
does it have muscle control?
please skip this poem.

No comment, said the spokesperson

Once, I asked myself
How did you rain so heavily on some parades?
all I got was the message machine
myself told I
Please leave your message after the beep.

abandonment sounds like rubber bands, but not like Poke balls

I sort of like you
not as much as I like my Bulbasaur
but all the same
you would make a fine addition to my Poketeam

if I could keep everyone
in small plastic balls
around my waist
I would

each of you would be a notch in my belt

and none of my friends would
leave
me

to kill a mockingbird

you knot yourself into bows around my fingers
reminders that
we are all growing up
all of us

sometimes when I look at you
you are transparent
I can see the anxious hiding
in your nervous system
your spine bruises your skin

like your hips stab through your
surface tension

shoulderblades knife your back open
you are only a little afraid
of dying from exposure

your bones are hollowed places

because you peck at your plate
like a sparrow,
you probably will be
remembered as some sort of bird saint

your bones are hallowed places

you chirp
mock-happy
in the text glow between my fingers

happy is a game of make-believe now
like when we were kids in the canyon
behind your house
and suddenly we were no longer children
but birds
with flightless shoulders and skinned knees

you are the rubber band
wrapped small around my wrist
reminders that we are all growing up
all of us

harry potter and the futility of perseverance

I said to myself again today
"why am I not a wizard"
I put a cup of soda into a trashbag
wonder about a strange spell
wonder what you are thinking about
I think about your hand in mine
for maybe 5 or 6 seconds
eat a piece of popcorn
while watching a co-worker
read Anthony Kiedis' memoirs
he was apparently a twisted motherfucker
and I think, briefly, "so are you"
while I watch credits that are scratched
flick by
and say out loud
Harry Potter and the Futility of Perseverance

on a driveway
at around midnight
feeling as lonely as I ever have
more lonely than in every other possible scenario
taking place here and I say out loud
Harry Potter and The Void

in the back of a pickup truck
chewing my nails
I say out loud
Harry Potter and The Infinite Sadness

qward anger.

this is a parking lot
why are mt. princeton hot springs
really just warm swimming pools
where is the dirt
why is this a parking lot
why is that woman flicking her
hair around like in a 1970's movie
in an air conditioned theater
but in a parking lot
why I am here now
in a motherfucking parking lot

there is a scooter in my driveway and people were talking about sex at work and I think of my past as over 12 green apples

was listening to 'twinkle echo' and in the middle
some guy said "would you like to make 5000 dollars a week just for posting a link on google"
I said yes
but he kept talking about how easy it was
and I changed my mind
and thought about
a. synthesizers
b. ringtones
c. girl
d. I bit my tongue in the arc of conversation, I don't know why
e. all of the above
all at once, for real
the answer is e, ok
what is the champagne of beers, it is not even this stuff in my hand


____

have we drunken ourselves into a stupor again?
sharks don't get hammered, snakes don't get stupid
but you're skin, bones, blood, and fear, and fucked up

there is a small army
hitting the area
directly behind my left temple
repeatedly
with their hammers
normally I would say
strength in unity is bullshit
but instead I say
ow.

secondhand smoking gun

can you hold very still
while I cover your face with saran wrap
and just not breath for a little bit, ok
you can be done soon
your face is glossed now
and your left eyelid is ajar
oh, look at you
with my pen in my hand
I draw you a soul-patch
and linger my lips in front
of yours, fogging your face
smelling plastic and sex
I also draw circles under your eyes
and then fall asleep on your chest
almost like an accident
the phone rang all night
my neighbor said in the morning
oh
oh that
why did I do that
why did I do that

behind the scenes of stranger endangering.

are strangers frightening
because they rhyme
with
danger?

haikus for aliens

I can tell a joke:
cats and dogs are known to rain
I am bad at this

Sorry is also a
bored game, like Monopoly
I'm board of playing

Wheels on the bus go round
and round and round; we squares have
to stick together

On my period
There is no punctuation
in sight filthy lies told

knock knock, Who is there?
oranges are bananas
You suck. Play "Free Bird"!

your facebook flickr-ed all over myspace and twittered:

whenever I am outside my parent's house and looking up and smoking a cigarette and there is a spider, I feel like a speck.

why do "all those poets who are either tao lin or poets who write books that appear on the 'customers who bought this item also bought' segment when you search tao lin's book on amazon.com" put "everything fucking thing" in "postmodern quotation marks"? Does it make them feel "safer"? I think it is "mostly futile"

if I play dead I will live forever
will I
and if I close my eyes, nobody will see me
and if I sit in the rolling chair that is broken in the candy storage at My Movie Theater Job, I will isolate everyone
and maybe put a sticker on my forehead while feeling divine and proud

this isn't even a poem
why do I even post on this blog
should I have my own blog
you don't even post on here
these days
I am embarrassed at how many times a day I think to text message you
and despite the numerous times I don't
you probably get so many text messages from me

my hair looks so bad

everyone from my town will open small businesses that don't break even
will they

who even cares about the nobel prize

every shy person in the world

you were writing something
in a very small notebook
and I said 'I have to go'
and I punched myself in the face
on the bus
like 14 times
the driver named 'Mike'
said 'stop that'
I put my headphones on
and never took them off again


--seems like since I stopped taking my medication my poetry is lamer.

"ignore"

Sport stood at a door
and said to Harriet
"you can't be my friend if you're not my friend"
and closed the door.

I sat at a table
and texted Betsy
"you can't be my friend if you're not my friend"
and slid my phone shut.

except the book is over now.

This feels like a livejournal entry.
I am rolling with it.
against intuition
and the vibration
against my left thigh.

white Noise

there is no color for emotional poverty inside the 96 crayon box
privileged children have no room for sympathy
inside black and white areas

burnt sienna built my houses of wax
my sun burned goldenrod
I gave him black sunglasses so he could look at his
reflection
without melting his eyes
onto lemon green landscapes

I prayed to God with cadet blue
scribbled pale words onto postcards and sent them
to the post office
I wonder if they reached him
wonder if he appreciated the color scheme

there is no color for miscommunication inside the 96 crayon box
I imagine it would be called white noise
for the sound of hearts bursting into seashells
pretending themselves to be oceans

I asked you
how do I tell someone I’ve made a mistake

but all I heard was static

this poem is a product of anxiety as a result

you believe in garbage heaps
sinking into sinuses from
bus windows, transfer at 7

you believe in your mother
calling your back, tights
and corduroy skirt
to the car just to tell you
not to slam the door
when she sees the people
with cigarettes you don't
want to talk to but will talk
to anyway

this is your town, and you
don't understand it anymore
even the weather is playing
gin rummy and kicking your
ass, sopping wet tennis shoes
squelch on the patina floor

you work at a movie theater
and you feel a sense of
impending doom as this
summer's animated hero
stares into the floor adjacent
to the torn left curtain
while you sweep kernels
under the chairs
and ignore the hollister models
you work with

there is a boy whose sister
was hit by a train in Arizona
you think he maybe quit school
justifiably unlike you
and feel like you maybe
have held his hand at some
point but can't even remember
anymore

you only believe in girls
you will never talk to
anymore

and when you don't take your
stupid fucking pills
you feel stupid but fucking free
on the fourth of fucking july

the coffee is awful though and how can we rationalize THAT

There are the people on a Sunday midmorning
not at church
and I feel a sense of belonging here
I put on my glasses
take out a cigarette
and a book
the sense of belonging disappears
but I welcome it; will interpret stares
as grief of those who have not
given their life or spare change to nihilists
in an offering plate
passed round on friday night
with a lopsided grin

Who is even awake on a Sunday midmorning
not our part time rockstars, part time preschool teachers
preschoolers themselves except for cuervo
stares multiplied with oxford collars
of those who pried open the mouth
of a gift horse, and affixed braces
because freedom was not acceptable
if it had the crooked teeth
of a homeless man on west burnside
Who has ripped the sleeves off his
oxford shirt and spilled vodka sunkist
down the front as artistic license
which is my justification to these people
because I will always need to rationalize
my freedom to horses or children
with braces

A cigarette is 2.8 times better on a Sunday midmorning
it is life-affirming
god grant me the will to maintain homeostasis

Father's Day

My fondest memory is when I put
a metal bowl in the microwave
and you called me a dumb fuck
Rearranged, those letters meant
"You scared
the vocabulary out of me"
so I forgave you the second you said it.

onomatopoeias for walking choruses are replaceable

I am dragging your small body
you are like semiconscious
in a place just below the sidewalk
and above what is actually below the sidewalk
the white of our eyes are the only light
and bugs fly into them
I touch your skin and feel your ribs
and we peer through a storm drain
and you scream 'gutter gutter gutter'
at the not-listening feet.

today I noticed that I have never had to struggle against anything aside from myself.
if the man has held me down, I am unaware.
No one seriously abused me as a child
My parents are not addicted to meth
They are alive and kind, even
My country is not war torn
I have so much water available to me.

And yet and yet and yet and yet
I consistently behave in a manner
identical to someone with
post traumatic stress disorder
in social situations.

Seems like I'll have to burn all my notebooks soon

borrowed a cell phone
(similar to the one
I lost in the woods;
girls in the woods
dancing naked are
the devil)
talking to you--
made you cry
the first time ever--
sitting on my
skateboard
telling you about
how you didn't care.
didn't sleep well

morning.
on his shit computer
your twitter update
told me you still don't.

I've got alchemist fingers
flesh turned to lead
I don't think I'll write today.

lord byron mentioned you all

occasionally the bat strikes the smallest kitten head of mine
--they are all so young
In park grass I watch their skin crawl, silent eyes 'look on'
they seem to search for their high definition colors
and have discovered only 3200 grain

I watch pretty faces plummet off table edges
pennies or dominoes or your favorite pencil
into shot glasses, bic lighter soon to come
just like the ones kindly grandparents set up
for them when they were 5

sophomoric suffragettes waving banners
their pale palms stuck to acned foreheads
Gilligan, the Skipper too, the Millionaire and his Wife,
the Movie Star, the Professor and Mary Ann
touch those foreheads to bathroom mirrors
tears in their red eyes.

chapstick and sidewalks

I walk on the borders of pavement
patrolling immigrant thoughts
with my footsteps
if my mind wanders too close
to the edge of reality
I’ll shoot
tar shoulders unravel to paint ribbons
beneath my Converse

I’m seeking God inside
yellow lines
side-street road signs
the speed limit is 25 miles per hour here
I’ll drive my thoughts recklessly
anyhow
then flash my poetic license at
the thought police
when I hear
metaphor sirens behind me

deities seep through damp socks
to my skin
where they sigh sticky currents
to my toes
I wait for heavy clouds to flash
bright enlightenment on my twilight

perhaps God spoke words to shape oceans
on precision’s eardrum shores
He translated waves into sound waves
and sound waves into alphabet surf
an A B sea
language wrote ocean movement
out of God's mouth
precision replied to his deep blue words with brain waves, told God
sometimes words are better off silent

I lick my lips
they’re a little chapped
asphalt tongue brings tender to my surface
like rain brings slick to the cement
I can smell my contemplation
meditations are worms inching out of my lips
before they can be pressed into sidewalk cracks

perhaps God painted thumbs
on our hands
in an answer to perfection
he said
this is escalation
I see your sightballs and raise you
starfish palms with uneven edges
perfection responded to him with collarbones
shot hollow blanks beneath June skin and left them there, told God
empty space is more filling sometimes

I guess I understand
perfection and precision
but I have never seen anything more beautiful
than stars spattered against a velvet sky
zodiac splashed
onto a Jackson Pollock
backdrop

I have never seen anything
more beautiful
than
the scatter of wet on a tin roof
in twilight rain

I have never
seen anything
more beautiful
than
grass dripping through
cracks in the sidewalk

because
perfection
and
precision
have nothing to do
with

beauty.

I feel I always have the same conversation

a collection of mid-nineties sofas
cushions our collective ass
we pretend to pass time
I can hear a timer behind your ear
mussing your hair, I must
control the inevitable roll
of my boring colored eyes
home has a hole in the knee

on this couch, holding a pair of blue scissors
I reach over and feel resistance when I cut
someone's hair
I make the scissors walk on the coffee table
scratched it
I think about cutting off my 'piano' fingers

-Pathic Tendencies.

I think I like plays a little too much.
I like dialogue
I look up to dialogue.
This is how you're supposed to interact
with other people
This is what it's like
when you're not a sociopath
or a psychopath
or on the wrong path
(which is essentially what all those other
-paths mean)
And Tennessee Williams keeps trying to tell me
that maybe I should stay on my -path,
but I ignore him.
All of his characters end up alone
and God knows that all lonely people
are unhappy
even if maybe they don't like other people
and all they want to do
is live in a cabin
by themselves
and read dialogue
and pretend like they remember how to speak.

I lie a lot, I guess.

I don't like to tell the truth

because sometimes lies are more

true

than what actually happened

and I can remember them better

so I tell them

and they become my memories

"You must be the girl I'm going to know in two months"

and I was confused and a little

t

i

p

s

y

from reading so much, so I nodded

and smiled politely

because in a bookstore anything is possible

and I was reading Tennessee Williams

and he nodded

We both were nodding

I nodded off

Watering Plastic Grass.

"Please don't yell"
so I shouted in her face
and then
I slammed the door as a preemptive measure
(before I was asked to leave)

and then
I realized that there is no such thing
as a proportionate response
so then
I lay in the fake grass at Sonic
and
I let my face leak without plugging up the
holes

because then
the grass was poking into my back
and I was aching
and my head was aching
and my face felt like it could use a drain anyway
and the people who worked there were desperately
in need of entertainment

so I lay in the WonderTurf
(or whatever the hell they call plastic pretending
to be grass these days)

and cried.

simon was not your name

you said something I forgot
I had an anxiety attack or something
and I had a fistful of keys
a spider on my left arm
a cerulean blue bull that was soon
to be grandmother to my orange
translucent bottles of anti-depressants
and anxiety online
the panic of not noticing a curve
attempting to control it
now I am in a dusty arroyo
I am upside down with glass
where the spider had been
electronica still playing
'evil has never loved you
evil has never loved you
nobody has ever loved you'
in the hospital
I am yelling at the doctor
trying to give me a cat scan
telling him I don't have a cat
and pulling the IV out of my arm
and walking outside squinting
into a parade.

wrists rotating invisible motorcycle

thinking about you sometimes
that you will accidentally fall
in love or on top of a pile of leaves
with caterpillars in the leaves
which is worse

thinking about your cell phone
kind of want to touch it softly
and sit next to a gentleman
whisper this poem into his ear
while text messaging you

thinking about boy with wolf prints
on his chest, two of them
in computer art class he took my
picture it was awful
at cowboy place he played drums fast

I was going to write some things tonight.
But I ate ice cream tonight that I let sit on the counter overnight several weeks ago and then refroze.
And my stomach really hurts.
And my mind is elsewhere.

bless me, motherfucker

Walk a little
Stop and stare over the edge of my childhood, upturned cereal bowl
Push some gravel over the edge
My foot flies behind my back and I watch cadmium red, cigarette butts and volcanic shit soar over an Ansel Adams landscape
I bury my hands it in it, pitching soccer balls, beer bottles, rocks
Shitty soft-spoken voice reverberating 5th grade profanities, dime store tape recorder noise
Mach 5 pulls up
A cactus is stuck in my hand
There's a bottle in yours
I puke in the shoes I've been wearing since the day I wasn't invited
I fling them over the edge as well

Behind Glass Walls.

My eyes are sore for sight.
I want to ditch these contact lenses
and remember real color,
the world as it was before a corrective bent
to abnormalities in my cornea.
I want to go back to being nearsighted.
The future is so far in the distance
all I want is to ditch 20/20 foresight
and pick up impulsive shapes in my
conjunctiva.

Of Camping Trips and Illicit Endeavors.

I wanted our lips to mingle.
I wanted to
taste your words
I wanted to
taste your breath
I wanted to
fuck.
Your hair curled softly into my margins of thought
as my body curled into yours.
Smoke curled out of our caverns
intertwined bodies twisted languid
your smell with mine
your limbs with mine.
Our palms upturned,
I couldn't meet your glaze.
I wanted to
fuck
I wanted to
but it was four in the morning
and all I could do was knot my thoughts Gordion-style
around your heavy eyelids.

You Were Never Lenny.

Lois, I know you're in here
I hear your laugh before I sleep sometimes
I remember it's hotel alarm clock radio joy
Her kindergarten teacher did her hair in the morning
You locked her out of the house sometimes
I stood on filthy basement tile
painting dye in her hair
watched her face in the mirror
watched her face in a hospital room
spooning blue slushie into your mouth
I couldn't look at your eyes
I took you to the edge of town
in a small red cardboard box
the death of you
lit you on fire
we inhaled, exhaled
I looked in a grimy rented mirror
saw her on the edge of her bed
she saw it in me
saw our eyes
exhaled
watched him in an easy chair
holding his new gambling wife's crinkle fry fingers
saw the regret
he saw it in me
hasn't looked at me in the eye for 8 years
because they're yours.

Cans

I'm standing on this bridge for the 7th time in 7 days
the trains never move while I'm standing here
when I get home, I hear the whistle
and I grin, sort of

I'm feeling this way for the rest of my life
alone in alleys, apartments, mountains
pleading for validation
from you

I'm making self-destructive decisions for 2 years straight
taking anything, everything, and anyone
that will take me
somewhere

need you to validate me
following forms accepted:
laughter
phone call
facebook notifications
sex
inbox (1)

5:25 Morning Escapades

Outside at 5:25 this morning to find my poetry notebook
The garden stank of flowers, shit, and other putrefying sweets
I hate sweet things,
I hate flowers
I hate sunshine
I hate cake
At a birthday party once, an older girl coated my face with cake when she promised she wouldn't
I hate girls.
I always did hate getting dirty.
I hate everything except the sterile tang of hospital rooms
I blame my father.

cannot play in the sands motel; transcript

Do you feel paralyzed by anxiety
What is it like to be paralyzed
I can kind of forget I have legs if I concentrate
Why are you here
I am broken
What do you mean by broken
Currently non-functional
What is that like on a day-to-day basis
Quiet
So you don't talk to people, that's why you aren't "currently functional"
No
Let me demonstrate.
Pressing the small flaps of ear over your earhole
Breathing on the back of your neck
And my lips almost touch your neck
And I scream.

I see
Kind of like that
Please leave

of synagogues and fruit stands, silent in K, CD players and indian-style airplane flights

There is no Safe way
There is no Safe way ever
to approach radical anarchists
There are no words
in any Safe way
I was 14,15
in a country that understood
how to hate
you taught me to have hate
I have been working on this wheel for years, grandmother
molding my hate into a shape that will make it Safe
I need a Safe way to breathe surrounded
hats bike vegetables from dumpsters
you spoke to me no great philosophy
but you took any Bry Son and slide yourself into him
showing a way out of wheels, spoke patterns
marvel hero marvel at this nothing
in any Safe way
a cart
a face
a heart
you hate

Saw you in the Safeway
My sweater, that hat I remember
Organic produce
I watch you tear down Hawthorne on your bike
Loneliness is just a manifestation of our moments
in that rainforest
barefoot in circles
screaming at the masses
preaching with our hands

Pecking Order

Propagating propaganda,
I prop my thoughts against an empty building in Southeast Asia.
I imagine that girl's bruised mango face rotted
underneath fallen walls in Mumbai, India.

Napalm asphalt assaults her clavicles;
her face short-circuits as it caves in.
For a minute, I am with her, beneath her table
as bombs bite at our eardrums and the pull of the Earth sends us into a spin.

The horizon never looked so frozen on a summer day.

Tourists snap photos of her exotic fruit,
her eggplant eyes collecting fluid.
"What a pity," they cluck
for the benefit of their own ears.

I'd like to believe that maybe she could have been
an astronaut
or a physician
or maybe a lawyer.

But probably she'd be stealing our blue-collar jobs
and answering frantic American questions about computers
as the tourists breathe a sigh of relief
at the sight of a torn kurta and a spine severed beyond repair.

Pte. Adams, J. You're gone.

I think of our Protestant Easter eggs and the verses you carefully painted on each of your delicately dyed eggs with your foot touching mine.
Rough hands against my then-small hips in the empty sunday school room, your poverty and alcoholism on my lips rumored to be stolen.
Fite, fight, cease the stutter, tell me your thoughts on lama sabachthani. Tell me why just one more time. My bruised inner elbows aren't to blame--it's Luke 2:19.
I fucked in your church.

I must apologize for my loose grip.
On reality and on your cyberhand.

I must apologize for my loose grip.

On reality and on your cyberhand.