Issuu

Altar to Alter I to Eye

Chalk Circle Compass

The way your hand is a halo

Place my horns there

Why place my horns

To kiss them.

why

to kiss them

You place my horns

Kiss them

Who am I but in all directions all at once with all directions to go. Lost? Find the center everywhere. At work, I am panicking. Swirling walls. My dwindling focus whirls; is a beast tearing into all pages of books; Is a beast in all the boxes…

Is a bottle of booze whispering through my breath. No, take all of my severed names, Fragmented selves;

Exercise myself by drawing around my body

A chalk circle compass

On grey cold concrete ﬂoor. I am here. You found me!

You’re Safe Now (Doll in a trash bin), 2022

Content

North

East West South

1. When Wings Become Wicks

2. My Apartment Ghost 9-16 *

3. The Story of School 17

4. Bi-Polar 18 - 19

5. Flight of Owl, Dove, Heron, & Me 20

6. Baptism 21

7. Capabilities

8. A Spider On A White Picket Picket Fence In An Unremarkable Life

9. Worship

10. Where I’m From

12.

13.

18.

28. (Pizza!)

29. Love Letter Without A Recipient

30. What Is A Word For?

31. Horseﬂy

32. Slow Burn

Tourniquet 68-92

33.My Dad Has COPD, You Know

37. Gravity Speaks

38.During the 2020 Election 74 - 75

40.Glass In Honey 77

41.A Walk In Seattle 78-79

42.I Practice Goodbye Without Saying It 80-81

43. Sweet Fly, I Leave Ashamed 82-83

44.Swig 84 *

44. Confession 85 - 92 *

Thank You, Truly (______________)

When my ghost of bipolar me, a spider in worship, where chemistry is polytheism, in the global construction as a boy for your glowing half-empty atheists’ God, the bad woodworker; love without a word for goodbye without sweet ashamed confession.

Transformation

(Inheritance, 2022)

Wings Become Wicks

What does a moth do when its wings become wicks?

no more will I be a moth beating myself against a lightbulb. A calm reserved brilliance.

Always, I stumble thinking of how I could feel so little, while smoldering in the smoke of the rest of Our world ablaze.

my own hands are both lover and jury:

I just think of cycling in the summer through flowering fields, whiskey the color of solstice light; of sanctuary. But, always, Moth beats the drum, and always, Our world is on fire...

and who am I to not also catch in its ﬂame...

What does a moth do when its wings become wicks?

When you light the candle and it burns out... all that remains is a thread stem, or wax stump. Always, the temptation, tease, failure To just ask:

Do You like to stargaze? A summer night accompanied

by bats ﬂittering across a speckled pitch-black sky and moths ﬂickering our lantern.

My rage against the world glazed with patience mellowed by fantasies: the sun glazing earth in color.

There is my shadow...

Which do You like better?

What does a moth do when its wings become wicks?

When You pinch the ﬂame out between Your ﬁngertips is that the same as a kiss?

(You’re Not Allowed to Take Photos At Work, 2022)

My Apartment Ghost

I believed in you as the brief time—so unlike myself—I believed in my apartment ghost. Suspending disbelief; sharing with it meals I cooked for myself; little steaming morsels off my plate and spoon, my lifted hand toasting the air holding a hand-tooled leather wrapped Mexican shot glass. A toast (my grimaced angling lips un-meeting): “It’s peach whiskey. I prefer apple, but this is good too. It’s Bird Dog”. The next morning, in it; coffee. Black.

Come night, steaming (usually well-seasoned) mash (I wondered if for which I would be judged), in the gold wide mouth of a white-faded rimmed pastel orange and blue thrift store tea cup. Upon it, white geese fly through a deep orange sunset. From its round crescent handle hangs a gifted dream catcher— “One for me” above my bed, palm sized “and one for you”— fit of my finger to outstretched thumb

done so after a night of tension and nightmarish frustration fusion of indeterminate happenings indiscernible beings; bright, bloody, blurred bulbous reds and darkness. This hungry cup—yet only eighth full— beside a stained glass rose glowing within its wooden candle box— just for eerie air— and tall transparent deep ultramarine glass candlestick whereupon (painted in matte) sits a cross-kneeling, white-clothed yellow-sandaled ﬁgure whose face hides, donning a yellow sombrero, beside white-needled emerald cacti— little dots as red blossoms— placed because I dreamt a year or so earlier it was haunted; looming dread, paralysis as something

seized my spine gripping the muscles of my back until pushing against my lungs. And across from me, on my dresser; the candle holder—clearest of all—surrounded, imbued with fury.

Then the next morning, I hung around it a gifted blessing by my cousin’s Nana & Chinnah; a shell necklace.

The candlestick bears a bouquet of a gifted native den-den drum, skeleton of a thorny teasel plant, a thin stalk of dry grass. Crowded beside; a crescent-curled brass shark, antique painted tin wind-up bird, brown wax candle ﬁsh, a Thai carved frog rasp, deer vertebrae.

(All for the gesture)

And a print booklet I wrote years ago, Our Shoes Are Half Empty; Deathbed Confessions. I make a meal, set the offering like a table, for it was my coffee maker; berserk.

I look at ﬂickering numbers in random patterns at ﬁrst, like the lottery, nothing to see.

But the 1 in 1000 and—better yet— a lightning strike. Then… the same ones, ﬂickering.

I note them in writing, interpreting “14 14 70? 90?” the year 1920, 1970?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.” Old as the house, the pointed attic which is my apartment… My tea and coffee and microwave on hold;

ghost unmasked; a power strip with a spring-loaded button. “No! No coffee, or tea, or food until I get my share.”

Or maybe; “Look, see, I’m here. I’m here!”

I guessed, “You must be a teen or younger, maybe 14 based on your behavior.”

I raise my hand in the air, close my eyes swear I can feel a presence beyond my perpetual mania.

I believed in you

I believed.

But I see now, my power strip, is also a surge protector. A surge protector. It’s too much to ask it to microwave eggs or reheat coffee and boil kettle tea simultaneously. No, patience and logic and you.

Once, I held sharpness to my throat; a stinger.

The wasp I saved in its dust-dazed confusion laying in the trash bin at work just before I was to dump it in the compactor (it may not have lived long even though I cradled it in my gloved hands) walked it, like many-a-spider to the outside wall beside the grass

But even this wasp is innocent.

You?

Then this sharpness; it was in someone else’s hands some who knew, eager to bleed; to milk sanity from my head. Others who thought it was just a comb, or just a… just a… joke.

But imagine, this brush of blades; this bandage of broken mirrors.

I asked this ghost, who are you?

I responded, ﬁction and fantasy beguiling and bewitching Like you.

Like you.

I think back to lyrics by Siouxsie and the Banshees: “I heard a rumor, what have you done to her? Let’s take out the trash…She’s Cuckoo, cuckoo for you &…We knew this wouldn’t last forever.”

I hear the snap of my surge protector; the snap of a ﬁnger, the snap of my neck, my spine; my judgement come back to me.

I believed in you as the brief time— so unlike myself— I believed in my apartment ghost, suspending disbelief. This ghost; a ﬁction my mind made, more real than the one you instilled, then the one you forced.

I heard a rumor. I heard a ghost. I heard a memory. I heard

I heard; My own panting, snot dripping from my nose in my slouching kneel, head hung over knees. I remember I remember

I berserk, I berserk,

I; the coffee-maker face of indeterminate gibberish to interpret with fictional purpose; flickering flashing thoughts and memories the water-logged coffee machine; dysfunctional; the music in my head, the noise, the exhaustion.

I believe, after all, in the ghost in my apartment because, it is me

You, you.

I once believed in you.

I guess any ghost would want to believe they aren’t a genie in a bottle, in a candle holder, in a surge protector, in a mad house, a clown.

This. This is my place. My sanctuary, and you, you will not ever, never, ever ever… “1970?

1920?”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

I laugh when the button ﬂicks off.

“What do you want! I don’t know?”

“Again! Seriously.”

“You gotta give me something more than that.”

“As always, I’m just insane. No matter where I go.”

“Again?”

“Oh. Oh. What’s the difference between a power strip and a surge protector?”

“Oh, it's just a power strip.”

“So, it’s deﬁnitely a ghost.”

“Unlikely.”

Two things never happen together while two other things do: Microwave cannot cook with the kettle on, and they both shut off when both on…

Ah.

Ahhhhh. I see.

I see But still.

Yet still. I believe

in me. The teacup; empty.

The candle?

Full of solid wax formed by the candle-box leaked; cemented to the shag carpet beside my cot, for one night I could not sleep without light. Its glowing red rose and its green leaves ﬂickering color upon my face and white walls ﬂared pale orange.

I believe in me.

The dream catcher and its spinning shadow.

I believe in me.

I fall asleep.

By morning, the coffee maker turns on, tells time, it’s face unsuspecting and boring with the way it tells the wrong time still, but won’t make coffee anymore.

Still, I believe in me.

I believe.

I suspend disbelief. And I know, the apartment ghost is not like you. Sick both because of and not merely the same way as you. And I don’t believe in you. I wish I could— Or at least that I should—

but I hang, around my will and around your dumb, selﬁsh intentions— “One for Me and one for You.”

“Cowboy coffee it is," I shrug. I remember saying before that things going wrong; mistakes, mishaps, accidents, imperfections are “… how you know it’s real.”

Figment of my reality.

My coffee maker is not haunted. But rather— And I hope— that I keep you up at night because you know that I believed.

The Story of School

From I crow I to I raven I to I canary I To I raven I to I crow I to I canary I made whole with the tr uth of all these I Canary I in the coal mine, into I crow I

Bi-Polar

A butterfly beats its wings China made hats fall Lucifer remembers

(In My Breast Pocket, Melted Chocolate, 2022)

Flight of Owl, Dove, Heron & Me

OWL,

I do not understand (life)

DOVE,

Come back to me! (ashes)

HERON,

100 miles (per hour)

on the highway. (unbuckled) Seatbelt.

Baptism

I’ve been shit on by birds eight times in my life.

I was told it was good luck. Someone else— a science student— smiled, “I think that’s just what people say to make you feel better”. Quite right.

But, if you want to know what I really think; Wait until I’m drunk; ghostlike by a table nearly my height fully leaning on the shivering deep purple wall of a flashing crowded gay cabaret with both arms back holding my smirking head (pleased and cowardly) watching other people bumping-about being gayer than me.

Good enough luck to grasp this glass of fizzing coke and whiskey in my fingertips like a rose to myself while my elegant friend dances with a stranger and it’s dark enough to mistake me for sexy.

But! Anyway, wait for me here (if you want to ask for Nietzsche, this drink’s on me) and I should be able to give you a straighter answer then.

Baptism Eight times just to make you feel better. But, really drunk, pleased, gayer, good enough—like a rose to myself — to mistake me for Nietzsche, straighter.

No, no need for an Uber. Luck is on my side! I’ll walk. No that’s fine, I know the way, but thanks for the offer anyway.

Capabilities

Faltering

cruelty in me kill the cruelty in me leave nothing untouched

sky of dimming ﬁre the sun screaming its name, our names to us, one last time as we lose ourselves in darkness

I have no oil in the night

Stars hidden by pluming blackness… but I saw one scurrying before me; a shrew

kneeling, I waited curiosity, there is cruelty in me curiosity kill the cruelty in me it ﬂittered across tree roots in orange street-lit pathways it found

No nourishment here curiosity

it scurried into the shadows standing, there is no sun

The brittle leaves; billions of alarm bells Someones passing through and bare trees

borrowing voices from wind creaking Barren am I, of kindness,

someone charred a tree bleeding sap my ﬁngertips dry, rough, I could hope clay or sawdust would solder my deep craters into mere pores

History can be rewritten if it is fatigued Kill the cruelty in me

I cannot rewrite my actions Shrew, you are morning I cannot come too close I must let you go.

Kill the cruelty, leave nothing. Fire our names to us as we lose ourselves. Stars… I saw one scurrying before me; a shrew. Curiosity; it ﬂittered across. It found no nourishment, scurried into the shadows. Brittle leaves; billions of alarm bells borrowing voices. From someone, my ﬁngertips. I could hope history can be rewritten… if it is fatigued; rewrite my actions;

I must go.

A Spider On A White Picket Fence In

An Unremarkable Life

You know that looking in the mirror Is not the same as staring into a smoking gun. You know witnessing a crime is not consuming Your bowl full of nutrients. You know a jailbreak does not look or sound like Enjoying a moment, one simple ﬂeeting second; Saying “it does not matter”. And/or “it does matter”

Doesn’t mean resting well

The choice You make won’t matter. No one really cares if Spider has all legs covered in white paint

Plastering Spider’s eyes and mouth as Spider tried to rub away the dried plastic ﬁlm;

sealing Spider away from vision, away from Surviving a cruel world.

I didn’t see Spider on the fence until Spider was covered in white…

I tried to clean Spider; Taking Spider inside to the bathroom and so gently wiping Spider’s eyes and legs with a wet sheet of toilet paper. And (presumably mere instinct) Spider stayed so still on a little grass blade. Tolerating me dunking Spider’s head in drips of water scraping a tissue against Spider… Doing Spider

A ‘favor’. I could only remove so much and thought only of how this egotistical ‘mercy’ could be so useless.

Spider would be mummiﬁed within a white ﬁlm.

Half-white Spider was laid on a rooted shin-high white ﬂower set in the shade from the burning sun. White, in western literature, is purity, Rebirth, Virginity.

The bride wears it in weddings.

In any case, Spider thus married the fence, married the paintbrush, married my ﬁngers and my shirt (for their privileged moment…) and later left us in our un-amorous polygamy as Careless widows.

I look in the mirror thinking of Spider sometimes If it had the capacity to hate… If Spider hated me.

Maybe if Spider even knew what I was trying to do;

Ask for Spider’s forgiveness when I trapped Spider, trying to make amends only to give up

then abandon Spider. Two useless cruel baptisms. I look in the mirror and know it’s not a smoking gun… but it deﬁnitely feels like it.

It feels sometimes, like a white ﬁlm covering my mouth, hands and ﬁnally, —- in trying to rub it away— to cleanse myself of its forsaking ‘purity; I lose my vision.

I try to smile, and I laugh sometimes, for real. I wonder if spiders can smile. In their own way. If I’ll get what I deserve someday.; Whatever that means…

A smoking gun that isn’t mirror. Bullet that bleeds me white, not red. And if Spider had hands, would I give the little one the gun? Would Spider kill me?

If Spider could, and Spider probably would, Wrap me in a womb of web to slowly consume the red, to leave only white.

You know smiling isn’t a crime, But it feels like it. Maybe, it should.

Worship

A chainlink-fenced dog’s frothy jagged jaw gurgling barks

white powder gowning the valley, lacing the sharp hills into blue knuckles rugged with white crystal scars. A spoonful of sugar makes the pillar of salt go down. Here, I’ve seen the most incredible sunsets. I crown myself with this green field’s night dew; glittering morning frost of echoing cerulean, my dusky fingers casketed beside my breasts in my sweaty armpits’ warm musk bath, slow and stiff as a nurses’ needle in my arm whose company makes if feel I am a rose suckled by a starving hummingbird not this sickly pin-cushioned effigy of myself who could no longer button their own shirt, or zip their paints, or open the door by turning a brass key in knob twisted between the heels of my aching arthritic hands.

Sitting on a stool at the counter, I order a drink for my blood test at the bar. This is my date with delight. I close my eyes to ignore my phobia, or memory of how I lost the phobia; pinprick sleeping duty calls practicing to be a “voodoo” doll to live to ease a loving family’s fretting— When I close my eyes… … a bell

A long clang deep as the breaths I give to you, slow as sung whispers ﬂoating through the dry valley. When I close my eyes, I see, And realize I like life without mirrors, Love life envisioning… when I close my eyes and feel…. Close my eyes I—

—I think… I think I’ll take a walk; Long, across this gravel shoreline. Feet-ﬁrst, I manifest your drink; on-the-rocks. Skip the shot glass though!

I had poured oceans into my ﬂask and bear them in my blood ﬁnding your foaming name, in licking waves, like a bobbing castaway stowaway who loses their telescope. Sifting sea glass starts to be equally useful and prophetic.

My only measure, my only map,

might as well be breadcrumbs in an unborn loaf. Beat this sticky infant to birth it: Humans conceived the yeastly god of civilization; a priestly art I’ve not yet mastered.

My map might as well be dust in the mud. The feather in my cap; I have not yet eaten my sweet tongue —the golden hour slipping; Warm hand meandering down slick thigh to dusk… …but only because…

It’s a lollipop too soon crush a cracking hourglass with a peephole grain by grain; the short dune of my life; spilled names from a jar; chalky ﬁngerprints on my forearm, white streaks across a charred crust body;

a beacon, this beach of bread and milk and honey tides— and that I feel the sparking stars Whirring gently in my hand’s ﬂesh, my chest, my face,

then in my lips. I imagine, What “goodbye” tastes like…

Guzzling dusk from my mug, bitter ﬁnger on my sore tongue, pine tree sap, it’s slow-spilled amber blood of its sponge moss scab bitter, viscous, my seeping wishes crystalizing on its branches…. wrung, and dries meager me.

God, forgive me…. I have not yet gone paperless. I yet linger in my hapless dogged weeping, for pen kisses pages better than my lips have anyone I’ve loved, still love, will ever love

I think—

—I think I’ll take a hike; long, upside-down.

My past; a tavern’s beer stein full of “Blackberry Bitch” darkly reﬂecting my dear friend’s gazes, the radiant face of a sunglown hillside. Instead; my rattling bottle torch, its’ sloshing liquid ﬁre in my quaking hands, a blanket draped over me while I shiver, naked, on my cot, alone.

Oceans ooze, drip, from skin slits, drizzling from gummy nostrils.

My black blanket chrysalis speckled with darker stars; wet, sleek. Pitter-patter, tip-toe; playing pin-the-bimbo with my spider-webbed mirror.

A shaking screwdriver with a bit that doesn’t ﬁt the screw.

A curdled laugh with the accent of despair; my sluggish mother-tongue ladling questions and failures like broth; dumb soup.

Even this limbo has a guide; god possesses a sex toy aptly named, “Randolph” or “Alejandro”— Or something— and, testing my id, acts to be lost. “Excuse me, Ms. I’m lost.

Can you tell me where the nearest Oriﬁce is?” I point to the nail holes in the cream walls I’d considered ﬁlling with toothpaste.

I have passed the test; god exists the story, The toy is not featured in a children’s ﬁlm— nor I—for that matter.

I continue sprawling myself out on the carpet, curling my forearm as pillow, hooded in my coat, headset full of music— which vibrates like the chest of a purring cat— the weight of my hand crushing it, tenderly.

When I close my eyes to ﬁnally sleep; loaf and weaned whiskey loads loathed thighs, I am closer to being an atheist, I’ve contracted a whimpering rabies, I am bewitched by the art of closed shrieking eyelids, and I imagine, I envision; I call, bellow for the same bar-stool blood-drawn “Blackberry-Bitched” haunting; a resounding sky of stars humming in my dulling body; a lullaby, a lullaby a lulla-goodbye.

A name a bandage, a spark, a question, to keep a match, a “never again”, a reason, my swollen red eyes shuttered.

Where I’m From

Sundial bridge, grass blades, trees, my shadow on the hot sidewalk… a fellow student’s expression; warped. I am from the scars on my legs, muddy feet, poison oak, bonfires, explorations under Sunlight over sweltering shared worlds of hissing potato bugs and rushing red “piss ants”, scores of grey lizards shedding snake skin, empty snail shells.

A dirt road with jeering boys from the christian neighbors jamming a broomstick through my bike spokes— Whose mother invited us to church.

I am a question about Abraham’s ram and son… an unforeseen thanksgiving.

I am from a carseat saying to the cloudy blue sky; “God scares me”.

Post-Catholic Mom says, “I’m sorry to hear that…I’m sure that makes God sad”.

I am from a church exit.

Dust plumes behind the truck, running through golden grass; I am from the place my brother, two friends and I buried a lizard in the flowerbed with an oddly shaped grey rock for a tombstone and held a funeral. In sharpie; Here lies king lizard

in a mythologized childhood.

From my mother’s endless cooking, caring, rearing, countless “I love you”s, Father’s callused hands, fisher, woodworker, body’s bones countlessly broken…

From untold stories of my passed Grandparents; cigarette smoke in the breeze, from words as ashes speckling the freeway 680 miles north.

I am from a housing bubble, burst from this place of “stuck”; fishbowl suburbia.

TV louder than Relative throwing snails into the street— cars delivering the final blow on wet tar—

Pests.

From where it always rains and smells like cow, chicken shit, paper mill or sea salt. I am from a place I learned to say “no”; a 5-foot teen tomboy whose belly unwillingly made a great “soft”cushion for a 6-foot teen man.

Neighboring children who liked to spit on us weirdos exiting the bus. A school’s gang graffiti, from a school’s fatal shooting.

I am from “never again”, “We are strong.”

Teacher-gossip ricochet or Sex with Student headlines. From a statistic for an afterthought by deeper-pockets. Bomb-squads, mail theft, a house where I woke to flashlights outside to chase thieves away in my pajamas, children playing hopscotch around discarded needles, hooded pedophiles with a nicer car living (illegally)

two miles between a high, elementary, and preschool. I am from “Do your best”, “Be yourself”, “I’ve never dated a skinny girl” and 48 less.

Places my friends and I hid from launching lunches and apples. I am from a 2017 closet setting off someone’s 2014 “gaydar”. From textbooks that forgot about my cousin and her father and his family on Indigenous land. From where my white teachers expecting black or brown students— my friends were “ ”.

From a rage born of selective silence. From bitchy-resting face.

I am from a universal longing similar to Shedding lizard skin.

Before his untimely death, we chased “king lizard” for hours until my friends grew bored, and we went inside for celery, carrot and cheese-sticks…

That is where I’m from.

(How, 2019)

Bowl of cereal

Rice Krispies, white almond milk

Rainfall outside. “Snap crackle pop”. Spoon ringing against glass bowl Screeching against it

Ahawk

I know when I was a child, I imagined myself

As Godzilla, shoveling mountains of slumped raw fresh ﬁsh Into my giant, fanged, lizard jaws

( I left out the part where this is from a scene

Where the military baits her but she escapes, destroys more city

In a ﬂeeing chase: Eats some helicopters

And the ﬁnal scene where they shoot Godzilla down).

(Snap crackle pop) Even New York can’t keep a pet this big. I also fail to consider that Godzilla is amphibious Of land and water (isn’t that like being trans?) That Godzilla don’t need no man

to become pregnant

Thus populating the earth with many human-eating children Who also all die in the subway.

Is every godlike independent woman single mother punished?)

In a dark rainstorm, With her big blazing gold eyes the size of ten humpback whales (or something)

She stares back at a little man scientist

Who discovered and sampled her urine and marveled Her marvelous sexless skill of procreation

And his redeemed reporter ex-girlfriend Who rattedout his research

Who represent the guilty but good of humanity (And forgives them— At least, appears to—)

For its American military shooting her down missile after missile

As she is caught twisted up in bridge cables

And she hits

with a great booming.

the ground

New York, smoked, wet, crumbled, is decimated,

But at least,

God(zilla)

Is dead.

I mean, even Roe Vs. Wade is now a promise Winked.

Did I mention she came about

Via nuclear bomb testing in the 50s (snap crackle pop) In her

natural habitat?)

My cereal bowl is empty,

So a kid given the opportunity, ls it again

With magic.

I leave out the part where

full.

Bowl of cereal. A hawk; I imagined myself as Godzilla. I left out the part where the military shoots Godzilla down. Godzilla don’t need no man. She stares back at the little man scientist; the guilty but good. She hits the ground. God (Zilla) is dead. Natural habitat; my cereal bowl is empty. Opportunity ﬁlls it with magic. I’m full.

Zilla - English telling us what to do.

God - A super being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or humanity.

Gojira (Japanese) -gorira (gorilla) + kujira (whale) = Whale-Gorilla

——————-Do ﬂ ocks of geese

Go, you and I

If we are so lucky, —————Know they’re leaving, arriving

Graced with a lover , a child, friend, a mentor———-Arrows crossing skylines So, earth sends us down spiced or drunk————-Distance swallowing Eats shit and menstrual blood—————-Little black specks With rice and chicken —————Breast of sky

Then again, the dog I spoil————————-Pierced and blood crystal rain

Above the half dead —— ————————————Blood sun rays

More than circling futures— ——————Blood being blue bird shadow hovering over

Who are excited by even the living—— ————————Unmoving ground

Unmoved

I wonder

Lest it be a ﬂ y ———-

A body no creature wants to step in ———

———————How the ground swallowed the sun

———————I watched, one night Shit in a porcelain bowl ——

Such an apathetic ungraceful ending————————So too, the ocean, mountains, ﬁ eld,

——————Flaming seed falling from crop

—————————-Cream-of-sun

To burrow out of our bowels———

Trying to ﬁ nd its body, trying ——-

Is it enraged? Does it sorrow——— ————————-Douse the light

Soften the edge of its lost frightened spirit with liquor—————Where? Lyric

When it makes its way through us we——————————Gesture

———— Goodbye

———-Good loss

We dress our animal kin with dust of plant kin——

To decorate our bland experience—————

Cook meat, beautify ﬂ esh with vibrant spices—— —————Grieving nest

— Loving each, houses

Likewise, some of us gods——-

How long the road down its humid horned road—— ——-Pain and death, How deep earth’s belly is—— —————Mortality, gift; Burdensome awareness—

——Tell god they live

That their rituals grant relief from— —Embedded in chance, Growling and kissing with red teeth——-

(

Job #4: From table router, 2022)

Each other’s poison, or pollen—————— Holding hands Sometimes knives behind bars————-With which, do we cut wheat?

A promise, only real promise, Earth made gods to feed its trees——And ——Trees, who cultivated gods,————feasts. To weave roots through their bones ——————

Our partner, only then, releases————-

————-Of memory.

What does memory ﬂesh of a creature, taste like? Gamey, wild, like chicken. Bloody, like iron.

Consuming physical incarnations

But the gods?———-Sour (perhaps)

So is ———————-my ﬂask of whiskey

I imagine——————Dancing with a fanged creature ———-Burying its clamping teeth kissing us so hard we tie tongues———-Gripping hands with hooking claws

Once we can dance no more, collapsing———Upon last breath

This huge nest always giving yet taking————————

Prevalence

Delicate creature

That is, whoever is one-in-a-million is really a mi!ion within one

Soothing to me; somehow the golden sky addresses me through puddles cupped by cobblestones/

Soothing to me to blot it, slosh it with my feet, slanting its voice; censoring its word because I thought ripples and splashes to be more like me; a mirror speaking in motion, shadow, light and baptized by Muds from thousands of feet. In eyes, I’ve seen the same kindred spirit, and in sometimes reciprocated kisses through desperate blinks or tears or winces; fear dripping like the heavy molten marrow of sorrow…

And I is marrow… And it is sorrow.

And… dare I say this?

Dare I see you?

Dare I see the ﬂicker of identity?

Inside our ﬁngers locked.

Here, your hands tucked deep into the cradle of your pockets?

After the fallout of self of selves it’s been a painstaking reemergence as a delicate creature A-million-within-one.

Delicate; one-in-a-million somehow censoring its word; mirror baptized by the muds fro m thousands of feet. It is you.

Dare I see locked, your hands’ A million w ithin-one?

Quiet Birthing

Barefoot; tread over coyote prints, smooth wet of grey clay creek bank by chilled small green lakes.

Know grief is but breath, This trail crew sleeps amongst kin hidden who don’t know names but body as language.

I am a foreigner in this snow-peaked Wildwoodland. Frogs chirp at dusk, mosquitos drink of me.

My cohorts and I drink of lake as coyote, as insects born so close to our lips in chilled amniotic ﬂuid;

in our roiling pots, steaming cups and stews. Humbled, and spooked and annoyed but honored to be pricked by buzzing mosquitos’ their mindless anointments within me.

While laughing friends splash while bathing I smiled, treading marsh muck to camp. Every step sucking each foot is a birth upon release.

If that is so, when, how, and where did I die? Did I feel it?

Was it noticeable? I gently press coyote prints with my foreﬁnger. In a place where I am born upon every step born, born, born, born.

So do I die? So quiet, that even I notice nothing as birds, frogs, creatures sing all around splashing ﬁsh bodies clapping their ﬁsh tails like applause. Grief is but breath here.

Dysmorphic Philosopher Stoned (Un) Hinge(d)

I think of the snow-ﬂecked grey sky heckling someone’s scabbed wrinkled feet drenched ragged brown socks sleeping in a torn tent while I jar nutritious venom; cursed self loathing. What does this cryptic mean?

Who cares, but let’s just say one did… If no one did, I ask you— has your belly been so full you wanted, needed it emptied? Did you once need your stomach pumped?

Crushed by excess, after malnourished candles melted to stems; their string cores kissing hot metal igniting a table upon which sits curled silhouettes creeping along smoking curtains; hand sliding up a shirt, a dress. The hunger; we must breathe. I see your shadow before I feel you then a chain of chemical reactions… combustion cousin to ﬁring neurons.

I hate myth-making of myths. But I NEED it. Menstruation. Can’t spell it without MEN. Why not!? This limbo; potential, myth, medicine and or liquor; bitter breath.

Lips that touch the bottle you held with hands you said would never hold mine because they broke the last bottle.

I am not a bottle, I say.

I no longer mimic the owl for the wrong reasons. Now I’m a normal person, with normal appetite.

But I did wear this dress (bottlenecked) for you. For myself ﬁrst, of course… but, what do you think? That blood, it isn’t because of you. It isn’t.

It isn’t.

It’s natural. It’s exactly what I was afraid of. What I hate but Your undaunted eager ﬁngers still are strong like talons whilst smooth as feathers. And they move slowly like cat claws in the rhythm of building snow

gentle as a pulsing neck vein.

I broke the last bottle, you whimper. I know, I whisper.

I broke the last bottle, you choke, pulling me closer. I know, I tremble.

I broke it. You clench all limbs. Your teeth like a haunted bear trap. I know. I’ve known.

I’ve known.

The burning blackened curtain falls, there we are.

Already wise, gleaming shards which can’t ﬁnd a way to safely hold another But they try.

Our hands… who knows how or whose or where from When love-making in a Butcher-shop.

I broke the bottle, you sigh, your tongue an oar.

So did I, I breathe. And so here is the wine, I smile, eyes slicing blades shuttered to replace curtains. Sweetest I’ve known.

A scarlet sea meets a bottled ship, free at last. Message in a bottle, drowned in ruby. The great white whale—pink—harpooned. Red curtains; black soot. Snow spotted. Nature calling, the crime scene's last call. Last call in the bar. Our glass remembering its beach sand heritage. I see now this is a transfusion. The current is taking it all away.

You look beautiful, your eyes shiver liquid glass. I grimace at my half-full canoe. That’s the wine talking, I murmur. And I Let it.

The cuffs fall off.

Chemistry is Polytheism

I try to let every tiny

Piece of me weave itself

Together, like little silkworms

In admiration, I ﬁnd peace

Almost like the little parts of me

Have minds of their own

Little creatures, blessed be, All inside of me,

My genetic makeup, the DNA

Tying themselves in helixes

To form our skin and minds

They say we all share

So we have vessels to live in

In admiration, I ﬁnd peace

In the cooperation of the creatures

The minuscule bits that make

Bigger bits of another version

Of someone I admire

I try not to have my own body,

Or hate it

And be humble

That they should coalesce

Cooperate and remember

Better than I do

What it means to be alive

I try not to be angry that the bone

I broke trying to care for myself

Will never entirely heal

And that my blemishes, scars

And fat, weak feminine muscles

Seem to always bring me down

And that the little nuclei and Molecules and atoms are too stupid

To tell me, “Everything will be alright.”

That they are trying their best

taking the utmost care in ﬁxing me

So I can live to feel such love in others

It is hard to do when

They don’t talk back

And when they are simply too nimble

Too subtle, hushed, too pointless

To have any real intent

They, the little bodies of function

Little machines and chemicals

As they feel

Are my undeniable Quiet

Ultimate gods

Yet here, I am one who worships

Mere thought and theory

Of a hypothetical creator

Because I am a marionette

A puppet

Of my creators Who speak

Who speaks because I am

Together, like little silkworms, I ﬁnd peace. The little parts of me have minds of their own (blessed be) all inside of me. They say we all share so we have vessels to live in peace; another version of someone I admire. Coalesce and remember; to be alive, entirely heal my blemishes, scars, the little nuclei tell me that everything will be alright; taking the utmost care in ﬁxing me to feel such love in others. As they feel—my undeniable quiet, ultimate gods— I am one who worships of my creators who speak because I am.

Fingertip in the Global Bowl

My ﬁnger, pen in the Mud, I paint my life story. It is Yours too. My pen with milk of mud, on a post, milk of my blood out my nose… brandy out the eyes.

Dance with names; toes tap-dance over the great belly; my ego my id my hungry prideful ghost in a crushed sulk and her name written on an envelope smells of whiskey sealed by a tongue frost-bitten by sad hymn, a ﬂake of trillions. By necessity, even an imagined kiss melts like the milk chocolate in my breast pocket. Looks like mud, so no lips but mine own can meet its sweetness. When I need it, it will be there.

In the creature of my body, I bring my record and with it I pack

My life… I wonder myself salted with beach sand, ﬁngered at a god’s dining table. Appetizer.

The delight of almost Full/ /“Almost had it”; The sportsman’s jig; the way tears patter my thighs. the stirred muck riverbed, foggy. Perfect ﬁshing weather.

The crystal ball prophecy my eyes seem to become To You. Failing, thus instead, dig them into holes towards the center of the Earth when all you had to do is grab my throat and put your tongue where pens should be. Where (by my own failed memory to eat it ﬁrst or have it eaten) it is sweet.

(Ready for the Interview in Tempe AZ, 2022)

Construction Worker As A Boy

Exfoliate, wind disperse

Dandelion seeds

Tapping

his sunburn

An Elder’s Advice

Hold this tool like a child’s hand though it is strong enough to fell and move statues. “Treat them with respect” and so too, they will treat You well.

This Nameless thing, is Why I can work. No, this pneumatic grinding tool… In my frustration, I banged its rattling head against wooden table to shake it awake from stillness; spiderweb gone cobweb.

Could I lift a limp slumbering curled cat — —proud little lion who hunts larger birds (for me)— by the scruff and knock its head into the dining table to wake it? I hear its teeth loosen just before its yowl.

A hissing cat is not a clacking wrench or squealing grinder, but… maybe You’ve put a little something of Yourself in this tool a vessel of Our intentions, Our shivering energies, Our atoms protons, neutrons colliding, shifting haunting and turning this tool into a body— turning Us, by accident— into gods.

Or, maybe I’ll think normally if I was high, and drunk, and drunk less coffee and ate a wider variety of foods and slept more and saw a man, or men, and All Whomever Else—equal but unnamed— instead of a miracle, or as miracles.

In my language, I’ve used names as swear words I won’t do it anymore. Hold this tool like a child’s hand. Hold another gently, We purring universes who play cat-and-mouse with Our own nature.

For 8 Months

Soothing to me somehow I see Sky

Glancing at me through wobbling puddles on cobblestones

Autumnal Nightfall

Silver encumbers

Moss laced branches swaying slow Into shadow go

Beach Hike

Rock’s barnacle crust

Puncture his soft wrinkled feet

Cushion of crushed crabs

Your Faceis Glowing

Heart monitor beat

Of strong steady ﬂicking sun

Trembles across seas

Our Shoes Are Half-Empty

My shoes are half. Empty. Deathbed confession. I’ve always imagined. I searched an online forum one day a freshman in college The question I review:

What are some brave confessions of People close to their deaths? No answers yet.

So, I drink from a glass bottle, Its label reads,

Do you believe in God? Drink responsibly.

Pop! Goes the weasel; Waxy cork of cold bottle.

If the shoe fits and my glass is empty, I do indeed believe (in summersaults, but not by me).

My epitaph will read; Ey believe in barefoot and love And in the children others have. And eir shoes are half empty, like yours.

An Atheists’ Elevator Pitch to God

I feel — here in school— a punchline of a joke (I learned from someone else). The joke is meaningless, but its image is classic; the jester, court fool.

• How do they do it?

Out there in the square, strolling or skating by together, alone(outwardly calm) immersed in moment, in company, unafraid.

• How do they do it?

Open their mouths to speak sense?

• How do they do it?

Slip a clean hand into another, then exchange quick quaint kisses on slender petal-smooth checks.

I can tell you, my cheeks with their moon craters and stiff, gravelly yellowing scarlet scabs (from asteroid fingers)

wish instead for such an angelic disposition; dispossession to possession. So too, I.

• How?

Without any sort of care in the world,

I look outside from a library window reading graffiti on a desk. Dog food. At eye level;

“Raspberries only crime was Danton.”

Mark 2019

October 2019

FUck China

Very ambitious of you to consider fucking a country but I admire your dedication

Tik Tok is watching u

I’m Gay!

Me too!

God is an alligaytor

God made me gay

I need a BF. Sad gay

I need serotonin - sad asexual

I need a GF - Sad bisexual

Hi- Sad Bisexual

You look like a motherfuckin Uhhhhhhh

Fuck Trump

Tangerine looking ass

Your happiness is the light at the end of a tunnel reach for it

Hope I am a moth

SAD

Ghost demon genie (with a drawing)

I hate boys

Amen

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of

Where’s Wallace?

Welcome back, for now.

Can’t believe everything you think

Can’t we all get along?

I wish

Too much hate in the world for god to be gay

We’re not homophobes (most of us)

Respect our religion and belief in God

Imagine being all-powerful abut getting mad some kid called you gay on a desk

I read what I can to pass time.

I become a scribe to taboo.

I look outside the window upon lines of people in the courtyard waiting for busses to justify my sitting, waiting for class.

And then, I will sit in class, wait for it to end. And then, I will walk home instead of taking the bus to pass time.

Then I will got to the gym to pass time.

Eat dinner to pass time.

Cook and clean. Don’t study.

Wonder what I am forgetting while scrolling on my phone avoiding should-be doings.

And then I sleep to pass time.

And every day, I await the weekend to go for long walks to just pass time

being nowhere and many places at once.

• How does anyone have the energy to survive; build themselves?

I read the desk notes like a How-to Pass Time With Others (For Dummies).

I turned on a heel, turned right back around —on a hip, not a whim— and threw a name onto myself like it actually meant something.

I took a doormat and made it into… a crown.

• A crown?

A crown to rule myself with. Hair—cut—because “YOU would never cut it” and “The only thing sexy about you is your hair” and “Your ambition is attractive” has cut my patience.

• How do they do it? Live.

• How?

The last sharp scribble on the desk reads; Love Is a smoking gun

My slanted, dirty, musty, carpet crown dips toward one stiff brow and I shiver whilst studying, pulling words from myself like sword-in-stone. What I am only brave enough to do to my face with finger nails, becomes my pen and paper.

So, I hope it is for the person who wrote this philosophy on a library desk.

How is it

My hands can

Sacred Journey

Balance this “misery-whip”, this sawtoothed bouncing sheet-metal baby twice my height, at every jar-kneed step both ends bumping with its metallic springing wobbled cries and grip a slipping pick axe with few ﬁngers

But I can’t wipe cleanly, my own ass

That I can pluck a single petal from a flower a seed off a dandelion Gingerly sweep spiders off walls

Tip belly-up beetles onto their backs

But I can’t wipe cleanly, my own ass

A single sugar granule the perfect pinch of salt in kneaded dough

Dash of vanilla in my black coﬀee

But no, I can’t wipe cleanly, my own ass

That I can mix drinks and pour whiskey into my narrow mouthed ﬂask. Precisely write my name in ink eyelash font and dance pencil around paper (hands, OR feet) until a drawing appears