nines

As the physicality of night/day
slips further away, a little now
a little more tomorrow, the air

its promise hungrily eats
knowing there are other ways
only to put on countless pounds of crushing weight

soft, heavy flaps wet on chests
as pressure-in upon the ears, as hair
knotted fingers, powdered teeth on the tongue

searches for then creates casualty.

Good

When poets don't have a thing to say
In the way of segue or ending
They talk to trees: Oak, Pine, Poplar, Spruce

Doesn't matter what they meant to say
Anything that shudders and drop seeds
Will attend, fetishizing Whitman

The metaphor gets contrived, conceited
& the direct rebellion against it, solipsism
Shoves the reader into first person's moth-eaten closet

A philosophical realist there will thrive
Where he can thrust his hips toward the lips
Of the unassuming eye of you know who.

Goodbye and Saturation

There was something I meant to say
About how my sexuality is like your sexuality
About the rusty, blood-warm nails pounded through
my sexuality, your sexuality

But I cannot remember precisely what I meant to say
Beside that bit about my violence, your violence.

A Terrible Life, A Wonderful Night

Clam his fat purple question
In the bag rainbow cereal flowers stale
Recently shaved and though he carries
A new bathroom mat, folded and tagged 

I doubt

He shaves in the privacy of his own bathroom
A menu and a paint pen, a cup of coffee
From somewhere else, black and olive drab
Match well, and does this concern you?

Have the implications of matching been considered?
Somewhere around the equaline nose explodes
Whispers and histories, fine

I'll leave

You all alone, allow your chewing & glancing
And unscrupulous, unfair, feeble flirting.

Be plucked, a gummy charm
on their fingertips and at least
someone will leave this
fragrant pine box smiling.

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Why mention bulbous croci
quadrisected from their fleeting escape?
In contrast they bob yet drag
on the Swiss-White serrated decline.
(

questions push sight back
but premature answers hurl us
from the perch
trained from this reduction:
substitution of image for shadow

)
The scope sways
in windy howl, in nerves, in memory knocking
over a child-sized column of blocks
scrollwork and English letters carved into each side.

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the sea walks in
an adjacent room

from the Southwest corner
to the couch from the

Southwest corner to
the couch, patient crashing

patterned like a Sufi tapestry
funerary gait, colors alive in the grave.

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I turn the page
He turns the page
She does not turn the page

I rip the page without harming the spine
He rips this page and the one before it
She would never rip out a page

I draw two bulging triangles on the book's cover
He a red circle on its final sheet
She traces the words with lip-stick pen-cil

I am no good in bed
He is no good in bed
She is disarmingly good in bed

In the morning I open the shades
He yawns and jumps from bed
She pulls the covers over her head.

'A Ocye Uby' (A Terrible Poem for a Terrible Time)

you want to focus all this
into one spot, all the light
cascades then pinpoint hot
through pressure and worries
about breath and good pulling
out good hair and good sitting
on your wooden chair, look
at nothing, hear nothing, eat
your ears and learn what heat
touches and where and where
you belong inside your where
and wear your wares so rare
(so rare so rare so rare so rare!)
around the neck under the hair
such long and losing hair there
under a starting stare, there.

Dancing Partner

he must protect
his essentials, it's sort of
essential; the hard coat
over his soft finger-parts
he reinforces each with lacquer
& the sun scratching
into his eyes     is
quickly sacked by iridescent shades
the shades of which lovingly swish
before being cut-in by lowbred red
in an expensive tux.

both examples fairly simple, but
essential: he is willing to
ignore laughter: he wobbles
in shade-chasing commitment, but
essential: he willfully courts
disaster on all non-essential fronts.

Sacrifice.

in his zig-zagging car
you could not frame to kill him
this he ensures essentially.

improv for the university of arizona

a leg up on th'open door 

s'afforded me certain 

opertunities past 

couple a years -- i fer one

can't stand lookin't th'sun beat street

not one bit -- eh doesn't huurt 

or nothing but all'uh little 

lil glasses starin'p atcha 

twinklin psychic tolls ta be paid is all 

and anyway i always know whats comin cause'ah that

i see what umm not supposed ta 

just bean afraid'a tha stuff under my feet.