The Cacographer

My ode

2005-11-27T00:57:00.000-07:00

These semen stained fingers
stroked your face
acrrylic tipped and she
whsipered and held
her breath and you
whispered in the sudden silence
bereft of moaning I'm so sorry I'm so sorry I'm so sorry

she held your lips in
those sodden nails
and whispered how much she loved you
and how much it was okay
even when the shower didn't
whipe the white away.

Untitled (I thought about titling this piece in quotes, but I'd rather not. I also thought about ending the poem with "the coffee brewed." Thoughts?

2005-11-17T03:26:00.000-07:00

in the french press,
after the first pour,
mystically floating,
above the mesh,
after you've roused,
between glass,
before the neighbor knocked,
swirling irritably,
while tasting the first cup,
after your boyfriend’s skin is washed from your nails,
before the second pour,
while you're still naked,
anticipating lips,
after your neighbors called me your boyfriend,
an inch above,
after your hysterics,
because hydraulics,
reflecting my belly hair,
floating on wire,
before you had nothing to call me,
after you punched your car with nails,
rumbling black,
after you stripped,
waiting for lips,
before you sifted me,
without grounds,
reflecting my brazen belly,
before my bedroom nailed back burned,
trapped in the decanter,
before you stripped my title,
dissolving the glass,
after you flayed your boyfriend’s back with bedroom nails,
after my rumpled clothes sank and I rose,
waiting and waiting for lips,
before your neighbors asked why I hit them,
swirling and strained,
after you called me your boyfriend,
anxiously expecting lips,
before you've dressed,
after you called me your boyfriend,
suspended by air,
after you’ve pulled your skin soaked nails from bed,
ruthlessly black,
before your neighbors ask me why I hit them for calling me your boyfriend,
reflecting my swirling belly hairs,
before I threw the cup,
while you washed my taste out,
before I poured the second cup,
before I kicked myself out,
floating an inch above wired sieve,
before you watched the still shuddering door,
while waking up,
mystically in air,
floating in suspense,

What we missed wednesday

2005-11-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

Holding you after
months in Alaska
had given your hands horns
and your hips grown monstrous
like starving oxen
and your waist scattered beneath
my arm like powder
and your ravaged breasts
hung across your chest
when you laid down on your side

After the abortion, waiting on PS

2005-11-03T16:25:00.000-07:00

the snow is wanton
sticking and cloy
like heavy paint
and so viscous
even the rails run dry

so the day crept up men’s legs and
through the heavy pleats
turning black to black and grey to grey
and everywhere plaster stuck from the sky
and everywhere like chipped and bloodless flesh

it pushed itself into dunes like shredded paper made from tungsten
flakes of glass and steel in bleach
the snow snowing and coating women’s reds and woman’s blues
with Wisconsin frozen and New York lost
so that the roads weren’t seen from the fields

reflecting brown into itself and yellow into itself
and the horses cut themselves on ice
and couldn’t bleed through the mountains of rolling snow like molten quartz
and the flowers found themselves invisible

The heavy paper so covered couldn’t find any black
and dropped like rain to sea
somewhere between Paul and their could-have-been
the not new geese flew razor-bent
into the snow pitched ground

Are you for 86?

2005-11-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

Now, plus two or plus three
he goads himself over you
and over the missing two in raised and now
stuffed trousers
and you wait with rubberstrips to
push out something like a parasite
now, coalesced.

and, like wax, grown immense
and slated like cancer in gowns
it picks it’s geletationous hand
that looks translucent against your
breast so empty and cavernous
that your tit pulls its gums and sweaty lips
until it bawls blood.

so two years plus three before
you look for divinity in triplicate
or at least duplication from the three before
or the three that wetly made them
and find a quadruplet
missing bones with too many cells
and chromosomes marked in redundancy.

it squalls out for fathers with red chins
and red arms made from rubber and pressed
to your shape, one child made from four,
made by three.

October 17th, 2005

2005-11-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

the rain taps on golden leaves where
dissatisfied, they hurtle further down
for 8 years in a standstill
and kettles and teapots
chortle sinister
and the red sycamore so silent outside
and the sun pale and gray
shines tentative
making brown amber
the label peels
table stretching from fingertips and lips
and a lamp slender and black
wells up bubbling light like a spring
far in the dark and behind corners
and one empty cup shows its clay breasts

a pen or two what could be three
it’s so hard to tell it’s murky
while doing
and the teapots at least 80 of them
all of them strangely named and cackling
Chrysanthemum Kale and Pansy
all growing crisp and vibrant with
the reds and yellows
and at least 22 kettles
sometimes they say more
named simply and starkly
with numbers like
6 and 13 and 18
and called just the same
boundless as they are

certainly it could be said
certainly there are stains and coffees
there are ashes and hundreds of inches of wood
the bark sliding down
and the portrait of ’97 cast in a pool of aspen
and oak and cottonwood
where she watched
and didn’t let them drift from the hurtling
fall to the chortling water feet away for 8 years
which condensed, like flowers,
spell portrait and desk
and everything not on it

After the abortion, waiting on PS
the snow is wanton
sticking and cloy
like heavy paint
and so viscous
even the rails run dry

so the day crept up men’s legs and
through the heavy pleats
turning black to black and grey to grey
and everywhere plaster stuck from the sky
and everywhere like chipped and bloodless flesh

it pushed itself into dunes like shredded paper made from tungsten
flakes of glass and steel in bleach
the snow snowing and coating women’s reds and woman’s blues
with Wisconsin frozen and New York lost
so that the roads weren’t seen from the fields

reflecting brown into itself and yellow into itself
and the horses cut themselves on ice
and couldn’t bleed through the mountains of rolling snow like molten quartz
and the flowers found themselves invisible

The heavy paper so covered couldn’t find any black
and dropped like rain to sea
somewhere between Paul and their could-have-been
the not new geese flew razor-bent
into the snow pitched ground

The story of something short and to be finished on time. (Fast Fiction Go!)

2005-09-24T03:36:00.000-06:00

      He never realized what the sidewalks meant to him, she told him, fourteen years and beginning to bust, piles of flesh spiraling wildly from her core. He wondered, briefly, why she said realized. No fourteen year girl says realized. They say sidewalk, sometimes, yes he’d heard that before, he thought while the chalk circles spread around him like the veins of tumors.
       He scratched his chin with the back of his hand. His back hurt and he didn’t like this girl, fourteen and at work at the sidewalk in a miniskirt, the visible panties emblazed with a wonton daisy, a smile transformed to smirk by context. Her ass is huge, he realized, and couldn’t tell if the shameful turgid was encouraged or thrown into further eddies at this realization. He shouldn’t be using this word. “Why’d you say realized?” She looked up for the first time since his feet scuffed the spiraling lines and she’d sighed from her shoes (simple and heelless) to her hair (fantastic and breathing) and chided him with tones deeper than she was. Her eyes were brown and too open he saw now she was a girl to avoid. They were simply too open he told Bruce later, once he’d picked over the minefields that were the suburbs to his own cranny in the wrinkled hillside. They were just too wide and you know, he told him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, man,” Bruce replied, respectfully. Jim felt the silence like a hesitation in breathing and didn’t reply. Neither did Bruce.
       “Because you’re an old idiot. And you stepped on my lines. I’m fucking drawing.” “How old are you?” She blinked like a lizard. “Fourteen.” No question. Jim felt turgid.
       The girl didn’t look down or go back to drawing and he was beginning to run out of things to look at that weren’t her illegal cleavage that somehow managed not only to exist, but to thrive on the pubescent soil. He scratched his chin again and realized there was not any need to be polite not with her eyes as they were. So he stared at her tits.
       “You’re staring at my tits.” “Yes.”
       The girl began drawing again, pulling the yellow spiral out from where she sat and away from the glow of purple and orange she’d pressed into the concrete and into the adjacent concrete squares where finally, with a hesitation like breathing, she pushed the chalk over his shoes and laughed.

Grenadine (2nd Draft)

2005-09-05T21:26:00.000-06:00

        Covered in a dulling sheen of old sweat, the cloth suited man tapped the keys like a secretary 50 years his younger. The phone was listless. Still, he thought about the myriad combinations. What should be 7!, mathematically. The man with black hairs like cracks across his abdomen didn't know this mathematical expression. He wasn't thinking, or not much about the letter to his wife. He needed to say ex-wife now, he remembered suddenly, although that wasn't true. She didn’t know because he hadn’t said anything or even thought about it when she was around. It wasn’t often anymore. The last time she’d been around him, they’d drunk Chablis because they could afford it and then fucked without noise, heavy and wet. It wasn’t her fault she was fat no not fat he would correct his thoughts curvy. She was full of pillows and secret spots creases where her fecund flesh would abound and heavenly folds rotund as any breast as any ass that he would cup his hand around, wondering at the immensity of an outcropped pocket.
        He came shallow within her and told her he was done and she’d agreed. “I did too, earlier. You could have stopped then if you’d wanted.” “No, I was enjoying it.” She looked at him and her cheeks filled with blood rising to the surface and he thought she looked obscene, like a whore. He didn’t say anything. He’d just had sex, and he didn’t like talking after sex anyway and it was stupid to call someone how was carrying your semen and your penis that they were a whore. “It was good.”
        He was writing about turbulence. The airplane had skidded too he made sure to mention and thought about using a metaphor. He liked metaphors but she didn’t. The last time he’d used a metaphor he’d said the sunset was like grenadine at the bottom of a spanish drink. She’d murmured at his shoulder but he didn’t feel good about it. She’d said something and he couldn’t hear it and so he didn’t ask. She’d made tones, tones that could not be mistaken for pleasantries or nothings or anything other than tiredness or irritation. It was hard for him to tell which, as he didn’t know her that well. They’d been married for 18 years and 4 months when he decided they should get divorced. He didn’t find himself surprised when he discovered this. He found himself surprised about that. He’d wanted to be pitched against Satan no not Satan, he didn’t go to church although he told people when they asked he was christian. The last time he’d been asked was during winter in a bus and a man with a sports jacket made from silk asked him what he believed and then didn’t talked after his muttered Messiah. No one ever asked about his religion which he thought best in retrospect. He regretted this and thought about telling his wife who he retrospectively added two letters and a hyphen to in order to alter her title in order to alter her. But then she would have murmured and he couldn’t help but sigh when she murmured which would make her murmur again. Once in the awkward time between happiness and comfort he’d tried to listen to the murmur and pull n’s and i’s and p’s out of the low gravel but could only make symbolic meaning of the muffled sounds.
        She never let him know and he never asked after 19 years and 6 months which wasn’t so long he thought in a whole life, not really, no. After all the average life span was 80 years at the most although that was specious he recognized although he didn’t call it specious he said “ ” which is to say he did the mental equivalent of an all encompassing gesture. He didn’t finish the thought, leaving a trinity of periods to mean yes well you know what I mean after all what to quibble about? Petty, these words. And they’d only been together for a quarter of their lives which meant he had an entirely other 75 percent of life outside of her floral tipped cushions. She didn’t have that many things, he acknowledged, yes she had the floral cushions, something to do with her mother he understood he’d never asked, there are silences that you don’t step on he thought fiercely then retreated, apologizing. No, there are times, but when she reduced each word after the other in volume until it became that murmur of sound that meant empty words that sounded more than said, he gave up. He melted after all, even as he typed this letter he was soft hearted how could he be 68 years old and not be and when she murmured like that about her cushions and her mother and how things were in Croatia. She’d not been older than 3 when they left he never mentioned or thought nor did she.
        Also among her clutter were spoons, silver and pewter from Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm and the Grand Canyon and the museum with Edison in it he couldn’t remember the name and it didn’t matter “ ” regardless. She never told him that it was because she needed to fix it that spoons were how she could hold on to it. You can’t retort to a spoon, she thought at his back turned head, you can’t tell a spoon that you weren’t there or deny that you held Daffy’s hand because you couldn’t find Snow White your favorite and he smelled like gin and urine and you pretended it was all lilies every breath sweet lilies. The spoon, shaped like a canyon, only echoes you and you realize what you’re saying to a spoon. Nothing shouted at spoons is real or true, she thought that time when she’d bought another at Ellis Island and he’d sighed a little not enough to make her murmur but he’d done it and she’d wanted to scream at him it’s a spoon! Nothing nothing nothing spoon, you understand? and she’d instead huffed on it and wiped it on her itchy green sweater she’d worn for him after all and the ice over their hotel windows. She’d worn it because it was large larger than her was what she wanted, encompassing her flesh in all it’s outrageous enthusiasm for a simple landscape of green. She’d tried she reminded him quietly by eating grapefruits to his waffles and smiling at toffee offered by neighbors but shaking her head but it didn’t matter much to the ever-engulfing skin. Months ago she didn’t eat at all for a week and he’d grown quiet by his standards she realized. Still his silence meant yes he’d noticed he’d seen which is really what she wanted after all. She’d lost nothing and gained his attention, at least someone knew she existed she’d thought. Over morning halved grapefruits one for her no sugar and one for him soaked in sucrose and waffles and toast with marmalade maybe or perhaps it was strawberry jam she knew he liked strawberries. Despite all of this, she’d never lost a pound and was smiling quietly at him bald headed and white.
        Once, in Palo Alto he’d grown bronze after swimming head first among fish he’d presumed. Although, retrospectively, as he thought years later when he’d heard the name on a broadcast, he’d never seen any and probably he’d only swam with plankton invisible and those bubbling crabs forever frantic with each retreating wave lost in battle. No, maybe there were those carnivorously vicious anemones named after flowers with thousands of tongues taking their pleasure and time with whatever creature wrapped itself with their tentacles maybe those too swam with him he thought as the man on the radio waddled between words in the baritone that meant news. During that time the californian sun burnt his flab to bronze and he’d grown immense. Not in size, you understand no but rather in ego, she’d realized when among the patrons to a Denny’s that boasted sea side when it made no mention of the acres of vertical concrete between itself and froth, when there among flip flops with socks and men in tucked t-shirts and women with blazoned cameltoes oblivious he’d smiled a glitter at the waitress no older than the winnow waisted and muscle etched beach goers. She’d worn incredibly a bikini with the name tag Jennifer dangling like over heated genitals from the single stringed top and he’d grinned lecherous and sure sighted at her while his wife perused the toast options, determined to show that her ability to pick sour dough over wheat would prove her brain over Jennifer’s tits. Jennifer introduced herself as Jenny and he’d asked with a y or an i and the waitress’d said i with a wink that spoke libraries between her smiling husband and Jenni that she simply wasn’t invited to understand. The girl’d touched her husband’s shoulder all licked with sun regardless a 68 year old shoulder where was her manager that let her wear a bikini she’d screamed as the eggs remained outrageously overpriced and she’d weighed the importance of sausage over ham. The breakfast didn’t matter ultimately and she’d forgotten by now because Jenni went home and kept her figure thin through her veins and needles and hollowed eyes and a boyfriend who used back hands and tanktops to keep her eyes dry and her chest full despite her pleas at the dark ceiling long into the morning but Jenni didn’t matter and was forgotten by the wife early on it only took a year back in Denver to forget the waitress in the strappy tits.
        Still he remembered even as she’d tried to turn on the television they would watch at nine o’clock before sleep and every now and again he mounted her half asleep and she’d patiently squirmed. Sometimes when they’d dated he’d say her name and look at her when they screwed awkwardly beneath the covers never exposed and she’d always hesitated in her gyrations and asked, “uh what?” and looked about her, her head lolling in search of a response and he’d apologized among his pumping. She’d never bothered asking him to stop she knew he didn’t mean it. Even so, hearing her name rebounding off the headboard she’d stopped, wondering what to do. How could she respond to him, this quiver titted man above her with sizeable jowls pulsating his dick into her? Didn’t he realize, she’d asked herself as her name bounced about the bed that he was inside her that he was within her body? Why didn’t he cry and fall with his hands on his face into a dark corner why she shouldn’t be in the opposite corner with her arms entwining herself? How could he continue with his mind twirling in the dizzying fields of orgasm romping through his body his dick quivering the head full and throbbing before spewing into her how could he keep pushing in against her insides? Didn’t he know he was invading?
        She didn’t like sex, she thought to say once, while he prodding with cowardice disguised as gentleness his hands falling over her multi-hilled flesh until they found a spot dry and unwilling to coax with curving fingers like a diving rod. She’d said nothing and looked away at the ceiling with the curved light she’d bought when he was out of town working hard, he’d always say. He’d come home and find her immediately despite her reluctant smile and the resentful admissions, allowing him into her house once again among the cutting board and all those cushions ribbed with flowers forever shooting out stamens and petals like skirts. She’d never found it acceptable. He would smile like himself, hesitant and awkward, and she would murmur out of earshot which is to say she never said it outloud not once never to their neighbors or her mother too old to enjoy gossip and preferred simple gin with ice and the tv to remind her that some things could never possibly end despite the pin stripped walls despite the plastic cups with pills, tossed in the garbage when the capsules wrapped themselves around her tumors slogging their way around her body like fulsome slugs or worse, over sated leeches. But she never thought about her mother’s cancer or not much. She’d thought one day while eating grapefruit in a restaurant that served more eggs and more coffee than any juice or vegetable as one could tell by the chef, covered in stains and illegible with eyebrows into his eyes. She’d sat with her husband who watched her eyes and she’d murmured opakely at him I’m not happy and he’d faked understanding sighed looked for her hand gave up and drank coffee while his eye bounced off the window. She looked towards a woman maybe 28 with a tanktop stupendous breasts and a toddler and she thought that girl doesn’t even know. She can’t possibly know her mother will die. She reached for the spoon and ate the precut grapefruit.
        He of course couldn’t say when she’d done this anymore than she. She didn’t remember deciding that she wouldn’t bother with the medicare and the pinstripe wallpaper and the smell that clung to her hair and purse and skin anymore than he’d known she’d decided. Once he’d asked, late, after the news and light were off and broke the taboo of equal parts speech and light. She’d turned, toward the all encompassing wall simply white and irresistible, cold and pale and he’d laid on his back immobile. The clock was digital and he wished it wasn’t. He thought to move and ask her, “Why aren’t you crying?” although he really wanted to ask her, “Why aren’t you crying for me? Would you cry for me?” but he didn’t dare and besides he didn’t know. So he laid under the multiple quilt made by a relative he didn’t remember and thought about his own cadaver romantic and far gazing. Everyone clung like barnacles to his coffin as it laid itself bare in his tie made fresh for the formaldehyde and the three piece tightly buttoned. He lay beneath greenhouses of roses and brilliant lilies and even the odd iris crowning the piece with azure. Or rather blue, simply, maybe robin’s egg he thought it didn’t matter but it was like the sky. Like the sky with clouds lilies and irises yes. “Would you cry as I rotted? You couldn’t live without me could you? Why do I think you wouldn’t crawl into my coffin and die with me?” he hadn’t asked to the curved light like the back of a spoon. She hadn’t moved and he went to sleep.
        Six months later he thought about the night with the opaque wall glaring at his wife’s face and the light when he was in Salt Lake City. She’d remained beneath their ceiling and shingled roof and the pink dendrites of insulation in between and reorganized the silverware, the best of the silver, given to her 18 years and 4 months ago by an uncle who tried to hug her and rasp his cheek unshaven against hers and whispered about this being her last night and what does it matter and she’d smiled and kissed his cheek like a cactus.
        The walls of the motel room were colorless he’d decided after an hour. They were not grey no not quite purple or plum or something in between they might even have been yellow. Puce was the color eventually after testing with a monochrome number of #808080 but he didn’t know and thought colorless and decided that was really it. She hadn’t moved against the wall or him he thought as the tv muttered about the latest in screens and he stretched his body on pillows too large for sleeping. He hadn’t removed shoes or coat and hadn’t thought of it or even untucked his shirt. She didn’t even frown and he’d wanted to cry as her mound of quilt sat silently and inscrutable. He thought about her shoulder motionless and pale and shaped like a breast without a nipple and he thought her girth was only conducive to sex and comfort and suddenly he was very tired and thought he should divorce her. It was all so simple and easy even as his penis lay small and powerless across his black haired testicles beneath the mottled pants and grey underwear misused in the casualness of laundry and he began to write a letter: “The plane ride was alright for the most part. We had some turbulence and for a while and I was scared ” Here he stopped and cut back, deleting “and I thought for a while I would die” and didn’t even put light tipped fingers to keys “and you wouldn’t care” and instead finished the sentence more easily with “but we were okay.” She wouldn’t ask, he thought she would never ask. “Mostly I just didn’t like the child behind me kicking my back. But I’m here now in the motel and I’ve eaten so don’t worry. I miss you.” It didn’t occur to him to be bitter of the last line it was automatic like period doublespace. The last time he’d forgotten to say I miss you was when he was in Topeka and he’d written without mirth and she’d not replied as she never had replied. He got home pulled his sedan into the overcracked driveway and she’d had the light on as was only polite and said “Hello How was your trip” and beamed even as he felt his body like a virus underseige and foreign within this house with spoons and stoves and a vacuum cleaner that had never had it’s bag replaced and a hammer with a warped handle. He’d said fine and kissed her platonically and waited for dinner which took it’s form in tin foil chicken oversalted and wet.
        It was then that he realized she’d say the same thing if he wrote spurts of blood and semen into his letters although he’d put it more delicately saying she wouldn’t mind if he said I miss you or not.
    There among the #808080 walls, he touched each key and eventually gave up, and signed the letter, “Your husband,” despite the protesting ex- and the monumental void where “I miss you” should be. The phone remained silent despite probability. Surely someone would call him he tried to think of who could or would how could anyone call him he was too old he thought. No one calls when you get old. He wanted to think about what she was doing but he didn’t and tried to think about when things were better like the spanish sunsets but it didn’t help and how could he stay married when what he was doing didn’t matter and she didn’t like grenadine mentioned or not and he wanted to claw at the sheets and pound them. He sighed, his chest expanding out and in and his shoes felt tight around his sweat clinging socks. He didn’t know he would forget again about divorce, he didn’t know, when he came back to her she’d be at home with the tv telling her things indecipherable to either of them with it’s immense unreadable face. They’d bought it years ago and they’d both said it was good despite the larger screen at the store. The salesmen was young and wore red and she’d felt herself churn and pressed her hands to her abdomen when neither man was looking and watched the floor and felt large and enraged and wanted to grab the man and throw him. How could he she wanted a boulder to grind him to arching blood and dust and she hadn’t hesitated in seeing his arm stricken and outright beneath malevolent stone within her mind as he displayed the remote control intricate like Mayan glyphs to the tv they would ultimately decide against without hesitation and with hollow and expanding regret. She’d followed them of course and at home spread herself on the bed in only a bra to press her double E breasts against her chin and she’d lain for half an hour while he’d wandered among the halls and thought about measuring the nook where their tv stand squatted and ultimately didn’t, fiddling with the radio instead and she’d gotten dressed again and said nothing while she baked a casserole given to them.
        She’d tried to take a bath later that night but couldn’t care and laid in the hot water with her hands floating like ice and she hadn’t bothered to touch herself again why should she and instead struck her hand against the tiled wall bruising herself. He wouldn’t ask, she knew and so she did it again until she could see the hand was too red to be okay and dried her hair. She turned toward the wall in bed and felt him squirm beneath the blankets unprepared but she didn’t ask why he didn’t ask and instead watched the wall so impossibly unavoidable and didn’t think about him or her mother or the forgotten Jenni but instead about how she was going to die and she didn’t want to. She wanted nothing more than to not die now or ever and she kept him around to keep that thought far away and sealed with the creases of marriage. She thought about dying or rather she thought about the funeral which is all the same. She couldn’t have a funeral without being dead without the tubes slithering away within her and the dripping lines mercilessly flowing into her lymph nodes and the insistent machine pushing her diaphragm out and in while her eyes watered and the florescent lights hummed and clicked like insects no she forgot that part or rather didn’t remember it and found herself dead first. She watched herself as a grave unmarked in Croatia where the wind was fervent and unforgivable and the hills would stand tall with her mound taller and no one would visit. This was important to her, that her death was solitude and so she married him when he’d fallen to a knee in front of strangers in a restaurant and blushing asked if she would marry him. She’d dropped her fork the caesar dressing was awful anyway and said yes and no one clapped she resented that and they still had to pay the bill.
        So she’d watched the wall as her mother died and her husband lay immobile and aggravated for fear of her muttering “I’m not happy” which she wasn’t. Who was, she challenged the wall. It stood as impassible as the moon.
        Still, with coffee and juice they talked about neighbors and she mentioned his garden full of weeds as softly as he mentioned the roof’s leak. She reached for fruit among his bacon and silence and then he drove the sedan to fly away. Now, among the city defined by the very mineral Lot so resented, he thought about turning immediately from his wife. He’d said he loved her and determined that was enough to married her surely. Besides they were 40 or near enough but that didn’t matter did it, he didn’t matter without her loving him did he, he thought about putting into the black struck letter to his wife but didn’t. What would she say anyway, he thought, what would she say yes I love you is that enough. Surely.
        The letter sat in the computer on the desk as brown as the walls were puce and he pressed his damaged wrists into the wood between keys and edge. A tired cursor blinked behind “Your Husband”, satisfied with a good days work of tapped letter tiles. She would be at home, he thought, and she would be alright. She would be maybe polishing spoons or touching the lights or thinking about neighbors hacking away at the stubborn earth to bring cucumbers and radishes into light. She would be among tin and wall paper and not among whiskey and ever falling walls and a collapsing roof with a leak that only he could fix with the wind in his hair full and blacker than midnight. No surely she’d be polishing, he thought.
        Currently in Denver she actually wasn’t home but in a store where she never bought anything not spoons nor cushions but a store with dresses that were infinitesimal compared to her girth. She felt awkward her and she kept thinking “bulwark,” a word that meant everything to her. She could never define it, asked or otherwise it meant the same thing to her ask her go ahead she’ll look aghast and shrug. She’ll never tell you “Me.” which is what she means. It was the sound, picked up from whatever she’d read some day or year ago from Cosmo and Us, which she mostly read because they were about celebrities who could forget celebrites. She thought sometimes that Opra was the only successful fat celebrity and wanted to be black. Black women were okay fat, she thought as the dresses shrank around her they could be fat and the man stacked themselves at their doors too deep to be seen and instead here she was at the store with a girl in pink who must have been no older than sixteen and was not gentle was not in the least bit with her breasts high and mighty and she felt ashamed when the sixteen year old also named Jennifer suggested a different store “These are all you know for girls my age” and shrugged and bit her pretty pink lip and she felt like squashing her just tumbling forward and leaving the girl a puddle behind her girth. She didn’t tumble forward and smiled at the girl. She stayed for another hour.
        He of course didn’t know this and thought instead of her among foil and pots. He didn’t know that she was there among the dresses because they’d all fit her dying mother and they’d look so gorgeous and he never would have guessed that she wasn’t looking at a single one of those dresses for herself. Not one of these would fit me she thought, nothing that would fit my mother would fit me she assured herself. It would never cross his mind. Instead he panicked at the missing “I miss you” in the letter and thought about how she wouldn’t notice how he wished she would notice. So he would divorce her.
        She would move on gently he thought. She could be okay and he would be okay and that was all, even as at home without his eyes she laid in bed and found herself silently screaming at the tv and wanting to call her mother and never did and thought I’ll never leave him and my mother is dying and I’ll never be alone ever ever I’ll make sure and tried to fling the remote across the room but could only set it down and raged at the tv while she thought of cysts and growths over her arms and how she’d always have his reluctant arms around her and he thought she was at home cleaning the pots and watching the neighbors be ever more intimate.
        The phone still didn’t ring and he wondered who he wanted to call. A woman, certainly, was it his wife pardon me ex-wife? He thought about the phone and all of it’s numbers the way the pound and the asterisk sat sullenly at the bottom and how no one would ever call him he was 68 after all and only left the house to do business in mundane cities that looked the same as eachother anyway. All he ever left was her and it couldn’t be so bad could it surely not so bad. He didn’t think or rather stopped himself in a bluster of apologies that above all it was easier, and pressed his hands into his eyes and laid down and went to sleep, the letter already printed and sealed. He didn’t dream about her anymore than she did about him, and neither thought about when he’d come home. They’d turn off the light and the tv spilling nonsensical words and lie silently beneath the reflective light carved like a spoon, where they’d watch themselves, undeniable.

Watching Bethlehem

2005-08-19T03:21:00.000-06:00

Everyday the men in caps
speak low
with unbottoned cuffs
and hangnail heads
while the sun rumbles down

The stars are a twitter
and twirl like ginned dresses

Watching it scatter
the girls either laugh
in shivers or plung
their arms into their boys
shuddering their shoulders

The stars are ceaseless
and the girls watch the caps
drooping like daffodils

The day sighing
like a long forgotten dog
slids earthward
and watching them
the circle topples out
Leaving ulitmately
the bent grass
and the coppered clovers
in the setting sun

Fashion

2005-08-19T03:18:00.000-06:00

Acres ago, I left you on stone cut walls
with John Varvatos
under winding oaks and ravenous vines.

Eyes along the dust road and fingers
edging away from hands
you bruised your ass on rocks.

He, ever pungunt and insidious
flexed his fingers, grinned,
and coughing shrewdly, brought his hips to yours

Watching august

2005-08-04T01:44:00.000-06:00

I held myself volatile
in stringy jackets and yards of tweed
while the sun spilled like a ruptured yolk
broken on the mountains

Washington States

2005-08-04T01:39:00.000-06:00

They say
the ferns of the glistening
northwest
can taste menstration.
That is why
we didn't go hiking.

The old venetian

2005-07-03T23:06:00.000-06:00

Standing like shadows in hay
dappled with the greying wind and
making a sound that gestured at words
while I battered I
shrugged half shouldered and limp
one thin bladed scapula scraping softly
like wind blown sand against my back.

He moved like rust once more
cracking dust and creaking with red
one finger caught high and out like
iron wrought scaffolds
and hectares of dust shivering wheat
in desperate circling wind
hundreds around us.

I cracked open my teeth like
eggs in reverse
speckling blood through my ravenous lips
and hollow toned skin rupturing
my mouth in what should
look a smile while that one tapped gnarl
crackled and spilling yellow and grey
asked again.

After hundreds and granitized sand
rubbing my eyes like elbows in bark
I spun from his sifting creases and crumbling hair
and ground my already dribbling lips
punishing withal.

Mesiah

2005-06-17T04:57:00.000-06:00

And why shouldn’t I be
why shouldn’t I be, deborah?

You never let me call you debbie,
you remember
never among all the grey green spruces
or the firs
soft like a painter’s brush
across your unwollen
cheek.

I should be, I think,
full of million spined fury.

Those few times,
fragile in remembrance
like porcelain.

Or the snow, deborah
full like feathers and down
sinking through the air
toward your hair
spread across my cheeks

You always said I shouldn’t be
casting you down like porcelain.

And what shouldn’t I say
like fires spitting steam and sparks?

those hills,
spread and bunching
finding tree tops beneath the snow
and finding the listless drifts
piled like pillows against
the pines.

It took hours
you stroking your wool
as I hacked
blissful
felling the only tree.

It took hours
until crashing,
it plummeted through
the ice caked snow
and spewing needles,
watched it fall

Monk’s Bar and Lounge

2005-06-17T04:56:00.000-06:00

thin as cigarettes
the smiles dangled
like greasy tinsel

Pastoral for venice

2005-06-17T04:33:00.000-06:00

I set out my pale hand
waiting for rain
to drift or bombard
this canvas umbrella

It was white,
years ago,
during the first times
when the pines
were raw
and cracked in the heat

Gray and solitary
the barista gone
it flutters
like a sail
over miles of
broken cobble

Bamboo forest in late december

2005-06-17T04:29:00.000-06:00

The silver edged leaves,
Cut paper thin from the moon
Shivered and sighed, cold

October in residence

2005-06-09T03:14:00.000-06:00

You spilled like molten wax
white and hissing
on my chest and lap
curling and folding
your skin around me
until everything
was brittle smooth

R(e)X

2005-06-09T03:08:00.000-06:00

osemary drove past, vivi.
.trespassed face mywindow.
.is today the 25th again.
."ude. Get a bucket, Andrew's cigarettes are strong, m".
.History = Activated Potential Energy.
.Rainrainrain.
.largefallingpasta/intorisingsteamyair/shortcircuitsovens.
.I'm not doing well latear.
.smoking papers cut from vocalcords.
.Craig Dworkin puffed in corners.
.Future = x/x where x=x.
.wo places pier 1 imports and bed, bath, & beyond (eventu.
.she drove past, refuging her teeth behind now closed lips.
.coo’ smoked marijunna under the eaves of constantly falling rain.
.death didn’t negate hunger.
.Apartments migrating eastward.
..
.rosemarrydriving pasts.
.Eking M-F & S-S.
.(ex)Future = History.
.You'll be home(?) in 2 days.
.Time = gravity.
.the today I almost died from electricution.
.eyelashes->wind->broom->eye->breath->tomorrowswerving.
.glittersmile.
.Posthumous tomorrow morning.
.It's unseasonably cold again.
.riset.
.The forsythia's dropped months ago onto the already discarded lilacs though the lilies patter on toward droning fertilization, not that you noticed, forcast beneath me, fallen towards the pit carved for the forgotten rosemary, always made fresh with it's false promise of cerulean blooms.
.lynn starved her masked self like a plug in a key in a locket.
.irradiating the appleturnovers.
. c r e p t .
.Gold foil's muted luster.
.risun.
."icious and del".
.Crackling hips rapping walls.
.Thef or syth iasdro pped mon t h sagoon toth eal re adyd iscard edlila cst hought heliliespatter ontow arddroning fer tiliz ation no tthaty ouno ticed for cast be ne athm efal lento wardst hepitcar vedfo rthef orgot tenro semar yalwa ysm adefre sh wit hitsfal sepro miseof ceru leanb looms.
.silver hands freeze waxen.
.mask u lynn/famine in.
.remember the blue for tomorrow/yesterday.
.->beatbreathbeatbreathbeat->.
.unsun.
.refuted, my visage dripped from your hungertrembled fingers
.r

Three mimipoems

2005-05-28T19:40:00.000-06:00

Spelunking
I remember you
deep and vacuous
and claiming
there was simply more to explore

Supremacy
So many people
walked with high heels
over the grate,
leaving wicks
of skin
and yards of nylon

Miscegenation
Finding hundreds of
curly black ants shriveled
with their mouths
on their asses,
she dropped the sugar
deftly out back

Forgetting summer

2005-05-13T00:03:00.000-06:00

The table stretched
indeterminable and pocked
over aspen chairs and my beaten tie
and unseen and redstriped tiles

I put my quaking thin
hand to my panicked pulse,
stopping the remembering and stopping the twitch
eyeing rough barred windows

The spring punched rampant and green
at my own enclosure, trailing the smells
of lemondrops and children in grass
and I thought, letting my blood stampede

I thought spotless arms and
and smooth chested boys
heaving between my arms

I thought towheads
and amber cheeks
and delighted eyebrows

I thought small hands
and listless summer
and bedrooms thick with sweat

The spring thin and white
over the endless table
and my endless arms,
holding my drooping face in

The uncontained cigarettes dripped
like crumbling amber
slipping between my fingers
and I coughed like a hollow photograph.

Letter from Tucson

2005-05-13T00:01:00.000-06:00

It’s been rough, you see,
here beneath the roof,
the cracks overhead thin and menacing
like so many secretarial smiles,
and my refrigerator sagging
from fullness or wet.

It’s rough, because honestly,
who knows.
who knows here when the ceiling
or even the walls will fall
spinning away and leaving,
what?
me? Leaving me and the
thousands of empty cups,
the single chair at the stretching oak table?

Shake my head, with no one to see it.

It’s been rough here,
feeling the air so large
in such a small place
feeling the thud of my clothes.

The tv player reinvents celebrities
from stock
and who knows, who knows
where I’ve placed the remote?

I remember, well, what is there to remember.
everyone remembers, I’m telling the dry sink
and the bookshelves full of yellow,
but they’re not listening.

And what should I do?
what should I do if you come along in furs?
what should I do if he
oh you say ours comes along in black or pink?
should I say have an apple or some milk?

I should, I should.

The ceiling is thinner,
I thought to tell the manager’s mailbox,
the cracks are pulling apart the walls like vines,
the rough walls, and my so many cupboards,
I have so many cupboards.

Should I speak spanish to him?
You never spoke spanish to me.

These days I can see the sun
through dusty windows, smeared by summer,
I can see the sun turn the yellowing bookcases pink
and the table and the chair vague with motes
and turn the cracks into vines
coax them into ranges and valleys
sending their shadows like troops across the ceiling,
sending everything marching
if only towards twilight.

Even here, the air is flat
and nothing moves except the tv player
and the sun and my withered legs to the pine chair
like a throne
at the elongated heavy table
that always went so well together,
even cracked and spilling dust
like all comfortable things do.

The bitch or Heart beat

2005-05-12T23:58:00.001-06:00

It is wrong
that I dreamed
of fucking you
on all fours
with your mouth
full of fur
and sweating back
like ripples
and panicked blood
blazing your arms.

Bit by bit,
I watched
the screaming rabbit
disappear behind
each silver flash
of your gnashing teeth
while my heart
beat like a piston

Two story (I don't like the ending/repetition)

2005-05-12T23:58:00.000-06:00

The neighbors, one new to this place,
murmur low, uncertain and
desperate to keep their inexorable
moans behind engorged tongues.

They placed their tentative
and coral pink hands like
blushing porcelain on the door,
smiling at the floor under my hornbill glasses.

Discretely, between the floorboards
the dust settled like men in chairs.

I waved them past, fumbling at my rims
as though the door could shut as it should.

Still, I said at the once white threshold,
Still, I said to the door, encasing hesitant and eager
and limped away, past still-lifes and younger portraits.
Still, I told them, forgetting the reach of my newfound daughter,
and shuffled downstairs.

Confidence

2005-05-12T23:57:00.000-06:00

Despite all my waving dismissals
and deep gutted guffaws
I quaked when you
actually brought in
your doberman.

heyou

2005-04-29T03:06:00.000-06:00

I'm back, and cutting the overgrown carpet in a path to whiskey or pillows.

Antisocialism, keeping with the spirit of the nation, is to be expected from Trendware AccuSync in the following weeks, if such information pertains to you.

Ps. You all be my bitches (Said while lovingly cupping your rotund and cherry tipped faces in my calloused, yet gentle hand)

A note to the readers

2005-04-21T03:22:00.000-06:00

This is not a piece of literature. It's a note.

I'm writing more than appears. I simply assume you'd rather not read fragments and bits, so this space is soley for finished (even if they need serious revising) pieces. Should you care to see some of my more fragmentary bits (possibly to be put together under (working title) Dhamerville), look at my other website, lists. It's updated more often.

So, apologizing for the speed of updates and spelling.

One final note. All online work will be on haitus until May 1st or later, and CoW won't be done until at least mid May due to unforseen migrations.

-A

3:16, 6:32, 9:49, 12:00

2005-04-21T03:00:00.000-06:00

You're not prperly here, I said, but no one was there at all and. The action of boiling reached for my hand. Somewhere, you said something distantly while reaching for my hand. Distracted, the circuit closed, despite hesitating neurons. No dendrites. There was the day I said eclipse. The security cameras are confused, closed captions saying I think then hesitating. It doesn't matter how battered the flux is, I repeated at your reach. It is vital to summarize: It is vital to summarize. 3:15 and waiting for you to descend in one minute. The action of boiling reached for my hand. I think then hesitate. Don't jabber you said. Like the pistons and train wheels, you don't stop, even with my hand.

A series of minipoems (they're not quite standalone)(I'm not going to do 7 posts today)(also, CoW is solidifying. Hopefully I'll have it done by May)

2005-04-04T21:05:00.000-06:00

I guess it’s not cancer after all
I always thought
I’d be the one
to leave you.

Rehab
I’m an internet junkie
she moaned
sobbing in her mother’s arms.

I don’t write songs
There once was a man from nantucket
who kept all oh fuck it.

By the light
Sweat tastes of the ocean
and blood tastes of rust.
The leather mat is long dead dust
and the gloves are oily lotion.

The golden age
We sit among billows of smoke
swarming my beard and obscuring your hand
until I can't tell what wrinkles
or what fingers belong.

And you, for your part,
don't move, sitting like Mt. Rainer

Which is fine, I think
to say, and twitch my hand
on the counter, wishing
for a smoke.

The night your friends asked who I was
It's late
I say to you, wounded leg
in the door, tattered khaki
stained and wet.

Taking note, you rub
your thigh and tell
me you'll be in soon.

Cowardice
Holding onto concentration
she flicks her eyes toward mine
tasting the blue and the green
and I smile at my book.

What I forgot

2005-03-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

Fuck you you've obliterated them in your ignorance and I’m not sorry anymore despite all my sorries and you should never have driven anyway. You destroyed it eachtime because I pushed shift page up and did it with each piece because I couldn't believe you. Your cruelty makes me incredulous and I didn't trust my experience that you could and would do it again and I shouldn’t have asked again and again.

I can’t write anymore today not with the phantoms of dirty windows and vermouth at my sides. Not anymore since you ruined it. Since you ruined Christine and the car. I can’t recreate them, I can’t resurrect them despite it being the day before easter and the boulder will remain immobile tomorrow.

“Half an hour into a panic attack, I began calling” feels as familiar as the pianist at my Mervyn’s who always starts with Danny Boy despite being spanish or mormon I can’t tell. “I called Christine” is the beginning to the next but I don’t know it’s like trying to draw my 7th grade english teacher’s face or the backside of a nickel. Here the mutations begin between the dead and the living and theories of the wrong enter where the third remembers the second remembers the first like children born to replace siblings. “You’re wrong tonight I said I’m okay I’m tired said Christine” no this is wrong “You’re wrong or not something is wrong” I didn’t write this “clutching” I wrote later but I meant to say “clamoring” but that didn’t mean panic, not even “these clamoring hands at my vocal cords” which I never wrote, not ever.

I knew She was theory before anything. I know She was the panic attack despite Christine saying “vermouth and hockey and gin and vodka and brother” except I didn’t write vermouth first. Despite Christine saying “Hallmark and scotch” and her laughing at something far away from me and further from my touch she wasn’t wrong even without being right. It wasn’t Christine’s fault she was wrong or not knowing that she was wrong because she said “I’m okay” this time instead of “I’m tired.” Christine was tired but She was more tired because I asked if I’d woken Her up but She always said the same thing because I never heard it. The first time I don’t remember and the second time I said nothing and the third time I said the same thing as both other times. “” She said, dribbling over the “wet pillow.” I know the “overstuffed comforter” was “over stuffed comforter”, and that it was a pun one time and hesitantly witty the other.

I can’t tell you about the windows and the dirt and the over stuffed down comforter or distant lights that didn’t survive the first, much less the second despite it’s insistence. She always had this, and they were always red, always looked warm despite her cold. I don’t even know if the corpse of the forgotten phrases while I poured too much pasta into the salt will forgive me. I can’t reconstruct deciding that okra was okay to eat and “Eat and Heat” tells me nothing about the expiration of sausage. Or that the petulant and reluctant marinara ignored my urgings and exploitations and remained a film on glass and I learned that bocculism lives in tomato sauce and She didn’t have to worry anymore if it was snowing. If it was raining, She was fine, and the camera would fade to black and resolve in a hospital. But I couldn’t tell if the hysterical static within my eyes was precipitation outside my windows and under yellow or not. “Not now” She said in the first, but She “always” said it in the second. She said it again now, but not yet.

I thought of Her second, and She stood in laughter or a hat or something vertical before I called. Did I wake you I asked Her and She sniffed. I’m tired is what Christine said the first time but I didn’t ask her, and She said I was in a car accident none of the times, not even this time because She never said that. Not in words, but She did tell me that.

“If it’s raining, she’d be fine, if it’s snowing, she’ll die” I said each time, remembering the psuedochiasmus, the lack of a semicolon and not thinking I would capitalize Her despite the tense shift. I remember “the worm with claws” at “my vocal cords”, but I don’t know how he got there, I don’t remember how he was the anxiety in my chest.

She was it, She was that coiled centipede in my larynx and bronchials. Her murmurs and crumbling soft sobs at the “insistently blinking” phone, “toggling green and red” but I don’t know the order. Her, indistinguishable from other apartments turned off could see my apartment and one lamp blazing across dark distances. But She never did, not once twice or this third. I know She’s reeling, feeling across Her breasts and Her stomach wherein lies the belly button piercing forgot it was never Her. I never did know those crests mounted on her body, not anytime before the first began and this wind changes everything, the clutching twigs only wanted to brush against my window. I never said this before. “I’ve never said this before” I have.

I tried to show you the “gin and the bandaids” and the “potatoes” with thin twisted arms, clutching themselves in pale, but I only had “potatoes” before and “thinking of” them. I thought of them all the time with “my pinky finger in my mouth” or “my pinky in my teeth” which survived the third only as allusions.

She wasn’t okay Her hands were circumspect in their knobbiness their knuckles skeletal. I know She was “thinly constructed” and “roughly maintained” the second time because the first She wasn’t frightened yet of dying. This time Her ankles twisted beneath the car without accident, and this time She ran her hands down to Her hips to determine swiveling and felt Her heart to “determine mortality” which She immediately forgot and put Her hands to Her face. She stopped there this time and won’t go further if there’s a fourth.

“Are you okay I asked” but Christine said she was okay, she was tired and She didn’t answer at all in words except ones that were wet underneath her tongue. It didn’t matter this time anyway, because I only asked them both before and this time in the third and the final I didn’t ask anyway, just the empty room of nothings that responding with itself or a gesture that is the bookcase’s equivalent of a shrug. Now I’m looking gin cloudy this time with lemon or lime and tonic, thinking I can make 7-up or Fresca. “This wind changes everything” is now capitalized because the winter dead tree needs something from me and She can’t remember me calling She says. Christine said I called but only the third time and the first and She refutes them all and my phone’s been whittled away to blue and grey underneath yesterday. I can’t tell if I said to Her. She said you already told me. “I’m sorry” I said again and again and I can’t tell you about the apologies like wet leaves sticking to boots and arms. They were soggy and choked only in the second time when I said “I said I’m sorry behind tissues transparent” but I don’t think I said that everytime or ever.

If it’s windy I don’t know how She is. “If it’s windy” She should be outside in it, it doesn’t make sense for Her to be in the hospital or Her room with red coating the bed if it’s windy. Now if it’s windy then She’s outside, coating the pavement with strawberry blonde hair or walking down the street confused wondering where Her purse and hamstring went. It now says “if it’s windy,” so She could be okay. “Do you want me to come over I asked” I asked the first and third time into the phone, not knowing what else to say to a crumpled mouth. “Not now” She now said, after waiting hours. I tried to pick Her out of the barricaded windows shut against the outside streetlights and dark but She didn’t say anything I could hear from across the street. Are you okay? But I never woke Her up.

And now today after my sorries and She said things that weren’t words, She can’t remember. You woke me up I wasn’t asleep She once said only today only once and I said I’m sorry “I’m sorry” I said again so She knew I meant it and Christine said 30 year olds and Daiquiris and Birthday and Justin once said Butterfield again and again in the frozen mud and granulated snow.

I asked you today about it. You said, “I’m okay. And I can’t remember, but you’re wrong.”

Chapter the first

2005-03-28T01:41:00.000-07:00

No one knows when or how Havalus was built. It is said among the old women running markets of exotic fruits or foreign contraptions or last year’s fashion from overseas that no one built the city. They say that the city was found, already complete, with the temples and the banks and the pennants already erect, waiting. The old women say that a woman wandered through the desolate streets with the apple carts stocked and the fountains flowing until she came to her house and settled in, cleaning and cooking for people who hadn’t arrived yet. The old women in the bazaars say that this woman was the first, and that other people came one by one, finding their courts and brothels, their families and enemies. The old women say that no one knows if these people found their old work and relationships, or if they took what was already set for them in Havalus. Some old women say that the people who didn’t couldn’t find their lives anywhere else found their lives in Havalus, already complete. Some old women say no one existed before Havalus, that there were no lives or people, only bodies wandering and eating, staring and shitting.
The old man who work as cobblers and blacksmiths, shoemakers and coopers will tell you that it took twenty years to make Havalus, and that it was their lives that built the city, not the other way around.

Eastern European

2005-03-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

The rain's been cold and reluctant with snow
and the drainpipe percolates unintelligibly along
with cascades and trickles
long after the sky is dry and
I need a town with lonesome rails
and an apartment with windowpanes
made from transparent tin.

Going elsewhere (this is an ekphrasis I had to do on the below picture that turned out better than I thought it would. THAT IS ALL)

2005-03-10T14:59:00.000-07:00

There is more to this picture than the obvious, I suppose. Yes, there’s the man standing by the rail on the port side, hand to his mouth like he should be smoking a cigarette and slouching. He’s old, hair thinning beside his heavy glasses, and he has to wrap himself in a dark sweater and thick khaki’s to keep the sea spray from seeping into his flesh. I wonder about him. Is he sick or just worried about something, about his wife who’s no where to be seen and may not exist? Maybe he’s just regretting too much vinegar with his fish, or he hates the sea, this boat. Always hated it. It’s possible he could be having the best time he’s had since the long ago poker nights with the lads in his tavern in Glasgow, if only he could forget about losing that bar to mortgages and angry women.
Or, more generally, there’s more to say about this picture than the center, more to the subject than the unnoticed ecstasy in the middle. There’s something to be said about everyone on this steel ship, surrounded by grey water that looks less forgiving than the steel podium where the captain or some other man of confidence rests his arm, looking out toward land or sea. As I circumnavigate the picture, I take my eyes from person to person, captured in this moment where it seems no one, except the subject, is happy.
There’s a woman in the lower left hand corner crowned in black hair that blends into the back ground, making her hair’s boundary invisible. She, other than the center couple, is the only one who appears to be enjoying herself. She not smiling, not quite, but there’s a certain gentleness to her level mouth, as though she’s just enjoying, quietly. The birds, those gulls that cry as they glide on invisible currants, don’t distract her. She follows one for a moment, switches to another, and doesn’t think. She doesn’t imagine them tearing at the food, she doesn’t think that the approaching beach is full of glass or that the pebbles are particularly sharp right off the jetty. She doesn’t think about the ice cream people on the beach will be eating despite the chill, she doesn’t think about the young man with his book open, also watching the gulls. She just sits, her chin on her sweatered elbow and lets the boat drift towards land.
Behind her is a man with a confused and annoyed expression beneath his knitted cap, looking beyond her, clearly unsettled. He holds his cane in his hand, maybe a bit afraid of what the haphazard boat might do his bones. Like all old men on outings, he’s well dressed, his tie matching his vest, and his jacket dark against his shoulders. He hasn’t been this far out from Edinburgh in his entire life, and frankly, he thought that now was starting a bit late. But, he’s a proud man, and his tie is straight and neat, and Cecily told him he had to come out to see her, that this was important. He didn’t necessarily mind crossing the sea to see his newborn grandson; it was a small price to pay to catch youth in his fading years. But the waves were stronger than he remembered, and these new people, this new generation, he just couldn’t understand their fierceness, their need to be first in line. He didn’t understand why they didn’t move for him, or why his pace was so infuriating to them. He was worried that when he got off the boat, he would be lost, and he was worried that despite his neatly buttoned vest that ran a direct line to his tie, that he would need help. And he was worried that no one would give it to him.
He doesn’t look at anyone, and is no one else does either, except the center two, something I suppose that gives more power to their interlaced fingers and his arm across her side. The captain, all certainty and arrogance, doesn’t look at his passengers any more than the old man who looks like he should be smoking looks at the dark haired woman watching the gulls. Not even the attractive youth in white who looks like a more blue-collar version of JFK is watching for girls. His eyes, like most of the passengers’ eyes, are on the beach, on the destination. He, too, looks worried. There is something waiting for him there, unknown and unimportant to everyone else on the boat. Like everyone else, he’s waiting for something between the grey sky and the grey sea.
It’s only the couple in the middle that no one sees but us who stays within the boundaries of the photograph. His face hidden beneath his dark curls and the shadow of his cheek line, he leans his kiss into her forehead. With her eyes closed in heart breaking joy, leans back without smile and loves him. I can think of nothing more beautiful than these two lovers, entwined and invisible among the crowd, forgetting the ship, the beach, two so close they’re acting as one with no thoughts under the sky, caught in an old photograph at the very moment that they could be no more present in the moment.
Everyone else got off the boat. The old man made it to Cecily without any problems and met his grandson. He decided to stay with them, and only returned to Edinburgh in a casket. The man who looked like JFK didn’t remember the trip at all, and never told anyone about it once a week had passed. The old man with the glasses who looked like he should be smoking never got on a ship again, and told his wife repeatedly of the ‘hellish journey,’ and she smiled and continued crocheting while he drank scotch and thought of poker. The women with the ethereal hair continued on with life, but never forgot the boat ride, and whenever possible, took a break from her publishing job and rode the ship roundtrip. She never got off when the boat landed across the straight, and simply sat, watching the gulls until the boat returned her to her original soil again. The couple, however, is still there, always will be there. Her hair will always be blonde and full, and his head will always be buried in her hair, and they will always be in love, long after everyone else has died and been born.

Recruitment

2005-03-02T02:21:00.000-07:00

Without demure,
Jack Prelutsky produced
a thin cigarette
and slid it to Billy

"Don't worry, they're communal."

She didn't tell me he hit her before I went to the second hand store

2005-03-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

Twisting now beside a
stranger's chair and I
swear that CD skipped
or maybe is
but I don't know this
music or this empty shop
and I don't know why I bought
this it's hideous and purple

The bag it came in
rumples easily in my hand
and they're speaking
Spanish which I speak and ignore
and they ask Peyote? and acid
which they've given up
since the wake and I
mutter downcast until they leave

They're out of ribbons
I didn't ask for
but the bob haired girl apologizes
wrapping purple in purple
and tied in hideous purple like
tattoos on bruises and the CD just keeps
stuttering for or four or fore
I don't know which but I hate its insistence

Debit Visa 9683 $54.32 yes
for Clare who broke
and Thomas with flowers postmortem
or post at the least
and I leave the store
with my hand in purple

Thursday

2005-02-25T02:21:00.000-07:00

I ate my first meal in about 3 days today. I don't know what's wrong. I've accidentally lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks. I've gone on two dates with two different women. My apartment is clean. There are some scissors on my floor. I don't understand. My shirt is buttoned. My lips are ragged from nervous teeth. I don't know what that light is. I got a parking ticket. The spanish woman wanted me to date her daughter. I cut myself deeply across the neck while shaving and didn't remember to clean it up before my boss saw the blood running into my collar. I couldn't decide what I wanted to eat today. I took off the chutney. Eric told me I was on a roll. Christine told me I looked good. I drank 1/5 a bottle of whiskey last night. I don't like brandy. I'm so tired. I'm not tired. I have one dirty dish in the sink from 4 days ago with caked spaghetti sauce that I should soak. My floor needs to be vacuumed. I got my tax information today. I went to Spanish today. I drank 4 cups of coffee today. I lied about something yesterday; I don't remember what about. I smiled at a girl who kept staring at me and she pretended to be looking over my shoulder at what was only a brick wall. Katie wanted me to go somewhere with her but I said no before she told me where. I read a book today. Tuesday I didn't wear underwear and couldn't remember why. I got my paycheck today. I thought about my veins today. I didn't cry. I wanted to watch a movie but I didn't. I wanted to go to sleep so I laid on the floor until 7. I think my shirt shrank in the wash. I flipped off a sign and yelled fuck at a child today. Today I snarled at a man with billposts. I slit open my thumb with a razor blade today. My knees hurt. I don't know who these people are. I wrote horrible things today and threw them away before I could read them. I bought some espresso for 54 cents today. I can't sleep. I'm hungry for nothing I know of. None of this is your fault.

Sunrise

2005-02-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

The morning sun trickled through the window and splattered noiselessly and unevenly across The man in the chair’s khakis and sweatshirt. It dribbled past the saw edged maples, evaded the entangling twines of bindweed, fell past the dust smeared window and finally, unable to avoid the end, crashed onto The man in the chair’s stubbled face and low murmuring lips. Oblivious to the acrobatically suicidal sunlight, the hospital room remained still, with the sole exception of The man in the chair’s thin lips, spreading and mashing back into themselves.
The myriad tubes and electric graphs, oblivious to the morning and the sun hurling itself against them, methodically repeated themselves. The pastel green curtain didn’t flutter. No nurse carrying coffee or patient stretching his legs ambled up to them with morning eyes. Nothing moved, save the forgotten graphs on the monitor, the respirator’s tired breathing, and The man in the chair, asking again and again, “Why won’t you die? Why won’t you die?”
The sunlight saw The man in the chair’s down creased eyes, overlarge hands, drooping mouth, but heard nothing. It saw the redundant graphs, saw The man in the bed, nearly invisible for the tubes covering his mouth and nose, and saw that The man in the bed looked a lot like The man in the chair, only The man in the bed was much older, and would die in 761 days.
With an indifference only the ever passing sun and the ever falling sun can possess as they sweep over Croatia or picnickers making love or graveyards or 49th Street, the sun saw The man in the chair’s tattered hair and disheveled clothes, saw the two day old Egg McMuffin wrapper beside The man in the chair, and saw that The man in the chair wanted nothing more than freedom.
So, in a moment of mercy rare for inanimate objects, the sunlight gathered and pressed like a quilt upon The man in the bed’s chest, pressing with heat and light, until, among alarms and suddenly rabid graphs, The man in the bed died.

Coffeeshop

2005-02-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

writing two lines and
looking up at my vertical hair,
pulled straight under the agonies
of wrong words,
he harumphs
goes back to the beginning
of his near empty book
and wonders why
I’m so much younger than him.

God didn’t do that (I actually wrote this on the 20th, but had to edit it. I need to give more thought to the title, but I like it)

2005-02-22T01:18:00.000-07:00

9:45 and Hunter is wandering slackjawed
among Arizona or Colorado maybe
while ponderosas and reptiles crack
around his bewildered head.

At first, only JD and Ruggles
noticed him missing among their
solitary ink black coffees in wideset cabins
and shook their heads, wondering who else was alone.

9:45 and Hunter is still alone,
except for rabid bats and dune buggies
a clattering typewriter with keys like braces,
an oversized press card ostensible and forgotten in his hat.

At first, he simply probed himself,
checking what flesh lay where, and if the
Cadillac could drive itself without his cigarettes
and wandered slackjawed beneath empty skies
or a shimmering wet volley of accidental night.

9:45 and Hunter has nothing left to do
with sandstone or quartz or sand filled rivers
or the clattering typewriter around his leg
Nothing to do with tequila and ranches or coffee and rye
and so stops
leaving JD and Ruggles to wonder if at least we’re alone.

Smoking break at the Grand America (I wrote this on a 1 X 2inch parking validation)

2005-02-12T01:44:00.000-07:00

There is a beauty here
in the subterranean
smoker’s antechamber

where silent men
who don’t speak
eachother’s language
interrupt themselves only
by tapping their cigarettes

knowing full well
how ridiculous and impossible
communication is
they resign themselves unbitter
to their paper cup coffee.

Lisa in the early morning (Draft #2, to be added to CoW?)

2005-02-11T02:01:00.000-07:00

I remember your nipples,
brazen and forthright,
pressed against the glass
cut sky, azure and empty
voided by your presence

While I, circumspect,
held myself fragile,
glistening like a grub,
pleased that your
silhouette left you faceless

The Question of Kathryn (Draft #2 to be added to CoW?)

2005-02-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

Why you let your flesh yield before me,
and crack your mouth open like an egg
and hold your hands clenched and still
and kept your eyes half lidded and shuttered
and your lips tight and white beneath me,
has never been my concern.

For Isobel (Draft #2 to be added to CoW?)

2005-02-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

The fog preserved a flowing outline
like dye in water
leaving a body shaped
stream behind

There weren’t any trees
or at least, there
was only truncated bark
soaring up and up
a river speckled brown and grey
flowing to an invisible heaven

And beyond, there was
a moon that night
sick and wan
beaten flat and heartless
unable to pierce the park below.

Somewhere, a dog barked
none the poorer and joyous
for the encapsulating blindness
he found so ineffectual.

Once,
I saw the flash of your thigh
between the waves
and I grinned
hoping the fog would
muffle our lie.

Hometown (Draft 2 - final line: 'in' or 'with'?)

2005-02-11T01:47:00.000-07:00

As I am, I am no
more than a cardigan and a pipe
a red dawn glowing in a sea of smoke
a glint of yellowed teeth
at the end of a stick.

And all day,
I see the men in pinstripes
and the women in vinyl
ambling and striding and unaware
of my dead wife 5 miles away.

And all night
no one passes my broken stoop
except a hooker named Patsy
with a gyrating walk that looks
more drunk than anything.

Occasionally
I see tall men thumping
the concrete on padded heels
dragging a new dog or a new baby
gladly pulling against reluctance

Once in a while
the click clacking stops
and a woman’s eye peers
at my stoop, trying to
pierce the yellow halogen haze

And trying to see
they tentatively step toward
my knuckled hands and
my blue jean knees
until, explosive, I harangue them.

I never say much.
No more than half a story
“You think you can fix me?”
“I’m not your project,
I’m not your esteem.”

And they scuttle
like exposed crabs
or like the day to night
or like the empty cockles
the husks rattling in my chest.

And, now and then
I let my heavy brow remember
the jewelry on your hand
the surgical mask in my own house
and white lilies in winter.

Fuming in the day,
a ventilator of smoke
and rosy dawn in my pipe
I sink into halogen and cardigan
my broken hands, and wait in the past.

16 Steps to a Happier Marriage (Draft #2)

2005-02-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

Drumming his fingers gently at first, then rapidly, the man with the flaccid moustache and tired eyes sat. Reaching for his tea (English Breakfast, no cream or milk, three cubes of sugar), he stopped his hand, and set it down irritably again upon the porcelain table. He peered out of the corner of his eye without moving, looking at his wife of thirty eight years. A dark curling hair sprouted from the underside of her chin, twisting about and catching the light, shooting sparkles. There was a mole protruding from her chin nearly half an inch, and looked like someone had flung a burnt marshmallow at her face. He could see her eyelashes, overdone and bent from that’s great globs of mascara she threw on her face every morning before he’d even allowed himself a shave.
        He harrumphed. Settling himself even further into a wicker chair that no one could settle into, no matter how hard they tried, he looked out at the street before them, turtlenecks and sports coats, hip slit skirts and knee high boots. He watched one woman, wearing a royal blue dress and grey jacket open at the front, walking toward and then past and away from him, her large buttocks jouncing with each step. His wife did not miss his eyes bouncing with each clicking step, nor did she miss his scowl after she was gone. She, in turn, harrumphed and struck her cup (Coffee, milk on the side which she’d forgotten to pour, one cube of sugar) with her spoon. He raised one eyebrow, and watched irritably as she stirred her coffee, though the sugar was long dissolved and the milk sat miserably hidden behind the menu and the sugar pot. She, in turn watched the coffee swirling faster and faster, furiously twirling the spoon under her glower. Suddenly, satisfied, she released the spoon, sending it spinning hazardously. She drooped back in to her chair like she’d been dropped, and looked out over the Parisian streets.
        Scarves were just beginning to show themselves, and she took it as a sign that winter was returning, like pear trees erupting in flame. Another woman appeared, one among a dozen, but this one was wearing a bright red skirt cut off two thirds way down her thigh. She watched the red skirted woman pass them, the bulges in the back of her skirt bouncing up and down with each stride. She also watched her husband, who, despite this morning’s red swatch across his face from her hand, smiled.
        Glowering, she brought the coffee to her lips in an almost violent gesture, nearly sloshing herself, and slurped nosily, glaring at her husband the whole time. He winced, turning his sidelong eye away from the rhythmic red skirt back to her crooked nose and sweltering gaze. Her eyes narrowed at him, and he, wishing to avoid this particular vision, snapped shut his right eye, leaving only the wide street of Paris in his sight.
        Aghast and offended, she snatched the sugar bowl, and took off the top, preparing to unleash a sweet fury against her husband. A single cube of sugar bounced off his closed eye and plopped into the sugar amongst his wife’s cackle. Refusing to flinch, the man kept his eye closed and reached for his spoon. Dipping it into tea, he tapped the cube until it was mush and took a sip, all the while avoiding the vision of ire to his right.
        She, quivering, sat back down, defeated but with one lip still curled. Offended that her attack had no effect upon her close eyed husband, she pondered, lifting her reading glasses off her chest and twirling them by the gaudy chain that secured them around her neck. Looking around the table, searching for some inspiration, her eyes suddenly widened as she spied the nearly full pitcher of milk, recently uncovered by her removal of the sugar bowl. Delighted, she nearly flung the glasses from her hands, and they were only saved from an uncertain destruction upon the cobbles by the multicolored chain of baubles around her neck, and instead, bounced anti-climatically upon her hearty breasts.
        Clutching the handle of the pitcher in her hand, she looked up at her husband, ensuring that his right eye was still closed to her actions. Then, cautiously, surreptitiously, she brought the pitcher over to his now four cubes of sugar tea, and emptied half of the milk into his cup. Triumphant, she slammed the pitcher down on the porcelain table, creating a magnificent clamor. Her husband, startled, bolted his eye open and saw his wife, sitting smug and satisfied, looking out over the Parisians.
        The man looked at her suspiciously, trying to ascertain what heinous act had brought her so much satisfaction. While still scrutinizing her jowled face, he lifted his tea to his lips and took a deep sip, which he immediately sprayed all over himself. Gagging, he looked at his wet lap and his chortling wife. He refused to give her the satisfaction, however, and keeping his right eye trained on the woman, drained the entire cup into his mouth. Repressing the shudder that followed the milky drink, he slammed his eye shut again, disregarding the now annoyed woman to his right.
        She snorted in disgust, and after a moment of thought, reached under her chair and brought out this morning’s newspaper. She thwacked it against the air, creasing it across the middle and padded her chest until her hand closed up her glasses, suspended by a gaudy chain from her neck. Turning the pages, she found today’s crossword puzzle, already half full of her husband’s strict and upright letters, fine slashes attacking little boxes. She smiled with an obvious glee, and dug into her purse for a pen. She clicked it, extending the point to the paper. Her husband, upon hearing the click, twitched. Turning his head to a nearly imperceptible degree, he creaked open his right eye. His wife, a broad smile cutting across her face, clicked the pen rapidly before setting it to paper, adding one letter to 36 down. The husband’s eyes widened.
        The man, narrowing his eyes at his wife suddenly appeared to be caught in an extreme coughing fit, violently hacking and throwing his whole body into each explosion, flinging his head forward and nearly shouting his throat out. He enacted this performance for nearly one minute, with no response from his wife, who had continued clicking the pen, occasionally adjusting her glasses. Without so much of a glance at her mortally clogged husband, she pricked the pen against the paper, finishing off an ‘i’ on 24 across.
        Eyes wide open throughout his spasmodic attack, the husband saw that no reaction was forthcoming from wide set wife. Apparently deciding one last course of action was needed, he finished off his coughing fit with an extraordinary sneeze which shot him bodily into the porcelain table. The shudders rippled through the table, knocking over his empty cup and jostling the sugar bowl, until it reached the saucer holding a cup of coffee with 1 cube of sugar, and sent it hurtling onto his wife. Yelping, she stood up and seized a wad of napkins off of a neighboring table and thrust them into the wet spot across her white blouse, the offended crossword thrown to the ground. Her lip curled, and even as she continued to grind the napkins into her breasts, she picked up the dregs of her coffee cup, and looking pointedly at her husband, upturned the cup over the crossword puzzle.
        The man, his crossword puzzle destroyed, finally broke. Snarling, he reached deep into his pocket and flung a handful of Euros at his wife, one striking her smack on her plump cheek, leaving a red mark similar to the one he’d received this morning. She, offended not only by the attack but by the loss of money as well, shrieked and picked up the milk pitcher, aiming it at her husband. He, anticipating the assault of milk about to occur, flung himself from his chair, diving under the table. She, anticipating that he would anticipate the barrage, ducked and slung the remaining milk under the table. Irate, he bolted upright, narrowly missing the table on his way up and ran a hand over his mouth, trying to wipe off the milk dripping from his moustache in two streams. Putting one foot on the table, he prepared to launch himself at his girthy wife, who, seeing his wrinkles dissolved in milk and his moustache so sad and languid and sopping from the milk, began to giggle. And he, seeing his wife, suddenly looking so young, her blouse wet and nearly transparent, her eyes squinted in poorly repressed mirth, began to smile himself. The edges of his moustache rose as he grinned. Then, cackling, he hurled himself over the table on top of his shrieking wife. Tackling her, he seized her arms, and bent his milky moustache to her laughing face, and kissed her.
        He stood up first, and chuckling, helped her to her feet. Using napkins appropriated from other tables, they cleaned up their little table and chairs as best they could. They sat, and looking at each other, hair out of place and everything wet, held hands, and ordered another round.

80th street (Draft #2 (Seriously, help me fix this))

2005-02-07T01:59:00.000-07:00

The day is leaking
from the eastern horizon,
spilling west toward the sun,
dragging the dregs of streetsigns
simulacrums of lamposts
and etchings of trees.

And I, sucked along
the spilled light,
walk, scuttling shadows
and broken leaves between
my feet, turning over
and over my hands.

Windswept of traffic and heedless,
the blacktop hibernates,
frozen and without,
and I, elbows deep,
touch that band of silver
in my pocket.

And I,
knowing well you're
in a white room greying,
rubbing your red
and swollen finger,
I keep walking

okay, I hate the word pocket. I wanted to use 'slacks' or 'pants' or even 'trousers' but then it sounds like I'm wearing a cockring or something. Also, the last stanza's all awkward. I want six lines and an emphasis on 'I', but it any suggestions are helpful.

I'm also not sold to that title. I was thinking "Tempest," but it might be a little too loaded.

For Clara

2005-02-06T23:47:00.000-07:00

If it wasn't for the red coat
hung like discarded hide
across the chair,

or the empty tube of mascara
lolling over the back seat
like wine bottles,

or the cigarette burns
across my chest
like craters,

I would have forgotten you.

Why it bothers me

2005-02-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

Flicking wrists at middle aged
nymphos and darting eyes
and tounges at your neck,
the boys romp while you exasperate
and a lisper coats you like paint.

Gold (Draft #2 - tell me which version you like more)

2005-01-28T02:09:00.000-07:00

My biscotti
untouched in the twirling smoke
has remnants of sour coffee
gone cold and ash
delivered from a cigarette
three men away
speckled brown and grey
echoing the skyline.

And I
small mouthed and silent
despite the fortitude and tumult
of crowning daylight

I clutch at my soiled print
proclaiming 1/2 price cabbage
1/4 price melons, and Vincent Price
died of a gunshot wound
to the heart after he put
on a protective vest
and dared a friend
to shoot him.
Police in Orofino, Idaho,
said the vest was designed
to protect against grenade fragments
not bullets,
and despite trembling fingertips
I set down the cup,
without clatter, the coffee
brimmed and intact.

A man as black as I am old
jostled my steel table
where my ponderous palms rest,
cool in autumn
and he smiled
despite my quaking Panama Hat
and I watched him turn brown
coffee in cream.

My long coat a leaf
in the mud,
I feel heavy

Touching a cigarette
to my lips,
I close my eyes against the sun
and let the crescendo and fall
of the turgid city
drift me away.

OR

My biscotti
untouched in the twirling smoke
has remnants of sour coffee
gone cold and ash
delivered from a cigarette
three men away
speckled brown and grey
echoing the skyline.

And I
small mouthed and silent
despite the fortitude and tumult
of crowning daylight

I clutch at my soiled print
proclaiming 1/2 price cabbage
1/4 price melons, and Vincent Price
collapsed on the L-train,
where no one knew him,
and despite trembling fingertips
I set down the cup,
without clatter, the coffee
brimmed and intact.

A man as black as I am old
jostled my steel table
where my ponderous palms rest,
cool in autumn
and he smiled
despite my quaking Panama Hat
and I watched him turn brown
coffee in cream.

My long coat a leaf
in the mud,
I feel heavy

Touching a cigarette
to my lips,
I close my eyes against the sun
and let the crescendo and fall
of the turgid city
drift me away.

Bellingham, 5pm (Draft #2)

2005-01-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

There is nothing poetic about tonight,
nothing in the wind scouring the gutters
or the rain pocking and condensing on the window.

There is nothing poetic about the heavy rolls of the sea,
nothing about the frosted white floating and dissolving on turbulent crests
nothing in the sky matching the sea,
nothing in the pine lipped hills that hold and cradle the wet and dimming harbor.

There is nothing poetic about the toasted rye or the deli mustard
nothing poetic about the darjeeling tea
or the recently emptied lemons,
nothing poetic about the seagulls bickering
or the ravens gliding between spruce and pine,
and there's nothing poetic about missing you.

Winter (Draft #2)

2005-01-27T01:49:00.000-07:00

Billowing steam falls
into the air from ramen
making me happy.

Why I can't apologize (Draft #2)

2005-01-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

Back then, the clouds caught
on the mountains, leaving snow like ash
across the soundless peaks
and the air had no scent
except the imagined pines
and the no smell of cold.

You said you weren’t cold
and let the snow get caught
within your hair and the pines
like lace or like ash
without the scent
of burning woods out on the peaks.

I tried to feel the warmth of solitary peaks
and you still said you weren’t cold
in the pines that had no scent
and I wanted my hand caught
in your hand, looking like ash,
leftovers from last night’s pines.

You said your father still pines
for these lonely peaks
of his youth turned to ash
and I said no, he hated the cold
but you ignored me, preferring the caught
silence to any words I sent.

I looked at you then, trying to catch your scent,
white washed away with the pines.
I worked my eyes to your own, hoping to get caught
within, but as though I was on distant peaks
you looked vaguely to my parka, to the cold
leaving me waiting, covered in ash.

The snow floated like the ash
from this morning’s fire, thick with smoke’s scent
that, despite the flames, left us cold
and I tried not to say, among the ruining pines,
and you tried not to hear, staring at the peaks,
but you flinched, and I looked down, and the words caught.

I remember the way you almost caught yourself above the ash
of last night’s tented peaks, reeling toward a hard descent.
and how I didn’t reach for you among the pines, and left you cold.

The way we are now (Final Draft)

2005-01-26T01:45:00.000-07:00

My eyes have become hard
my teeth have grown straight and thin
and no longer shy
or skid across your skin

11:48 - 11:50 (Draft #2)

2005-01-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

Why is that girl looking at me?
Does she know that my heart broke and
watches with obscene inquiries

poking my leg with a stick
to see which quagulated leg will twitch
and what stopmotion my hand will lift
the cigarette to my cavernous mouth

thrusting her presumptious eyelashes
deep down my throat to watch

my misnomer tickless or
shudder to palpitate
immobile and oblique
ocher and violet

watching which battered elbows bend
right or obtuse and how my dogeared
feet can shamble the body
broken by the girl she was