jumping haiku
jumping ship at the
first sign of kismet will not
save you from yourself

(Comment on this)

improper haiku 63
I ex-
ercise my
demons into you
for you are my partner and
there is no
other way

(Comment on this)

a borrowed line
at the corner of
18th and McClellan
three pink roses pretend to be lilies

framed in the window
ridgid as the glass
deceptive and provocative
scandalous but

at night I dream of dandelions

(Comment on this)

a posterior brio
you reached into the hollow of my subsequent piriformis like
my body was an afterthought or a vesicle of atrophied nerves and
while I quiver in reflex rattled
me on possessing certain viscera from there

you’ve rep’d a hot wetness to the same mark
such as to masticate my audacity
through my bladder

so perhaps soul excess is why I pee so much
and extraction is a hammer and a nail to
commemorate this temporary preference for the material
does not dismiss your value
or does it?

adulation does not vanquish the blanket truth
because pride thrives in a vacuum and
dignity is not some foolish primary vice
it is meaning and everything corporeal
here

I try so compacted to breathe new universes
into the spine of my light form
as you conceive bold amplitudes for deep stock
and infinity
but my caricatures are limited by
numerous pick up trucks
skewed and matchless
to launch yourself a bottom of
scintillas and starforms gone bust

no sooner deference
or dissonance of my weightless self
cacophonic here into
false divisions of coherence and affect
pushing datums of narcissism into the ether
ready for their unfortunate
recombinance
as a percussive echo redundantly snores
a posterior brio in white noise

(Comment on this)

for space and vacuum
you think that you consummate cities
but you'd be wrong

each one bends you pliable
and the mutability itself whispering
of a hush you keep wellbound

you like it here
you like your hair long
like the two fistfuls of friends
that never reach beyond two fists
because you only have two hands

we endeavor a worth unsightly
as they throw company coins
to covet your rock and hew
a mute conduct from
several fractions of yourself
potentially electric
beat and hiss against
the supremacy of the object
and value

plus
you don't like being here

the exotropic cost
pitch fault lines
with hot agentic states
persistent at the pulpit of a
ubiquitous cheating habit
while starships long for space
and vacuum

we don't expend matter
just the loose irreverent wash
of several droughts extrinsic

but you like to view it opaquely
like a spotlight collapse
through the peak haze
as it is --- here
voraciously fingering wounds
and constellating new bootstraps
carved of sage brush
and neon

(Comment on this)

the three liner
you were scanning my body for adhesions

like you know that this perfect thing is broken somewhere or

like you know this thing is perfect because it was once broken

(Comment on this)

desert always wins
municipality fixes you with
a supposition of restraint
like the billowing fog
and the limited color pallet

the juxtaposition of axioms and data
will not officiate your pariah
---instead you will have to
divine your boundaries to descend upland
to asset certain virtues basin
or water gives way to the desert and

desert always wins
---though you wander to lose yourself / find yourself
you've got a star map belly and accidentally packed
a thousand hummingbirds
into the echo chamber of your soft shell

you may think your visit
is an act of martyrdom
or a free show
for those who can't close their own eyes
and jump      then
in your weariness
catch an apparition of
a reflection pool

make no mistake
every action is voluntary
and your spirit animal
has abandoned you
with good reason

in case of accidental heat death
break glass

all sound is a wave function
and though you may seem to shatter
at a pace near endless
some percussions are indivisible
and no event is a total horizon
all possibilities
are here now always
as the tinnitus hum of your old age
or the crickets at dusk

Current Mood: somber

(Comment on this)

snareless drum
holding at the sheer drop of an uncertain aha
some muscles loosen
while others beat more rapidly:
betwixt functions running logical astigmatisms
at the fiberoptic matrix server stationed
the membrane blurs in reception
while thumbs blink on each other
not quite twitching
but a sort of
m i r r o r i n g   t h o u g h t f u l l n e s s
fear and assurance
on both sides of a
present/daydream and
in my head the sound of a wire brush
shifting on a snareless drum.

(Comment on this)

hotpress
and though I promise myself [again]
that I will not hotpress macula into shirtsleeves
that I do in fact have enough sacred file cabinets
to [re]store all the affected codes
they always suspect
and know

this poem
is teasing itself
it cannot hide its own meaning
either

my body is not a game
of minesweeper
and I am sick
of dying

(Comment on this)

good will junk blossoms
wisteria is the new kudzu
in the deep south
vast fields suffocating
under the purple choke blossom

out of the window pan left, pan left
see it proliferate itself
nestle itself into the folds
of a rusted junk heap
and wonder

I'd hop freight trains if I wasn't such a fraidy cat

flash frame, pan left, pan left
to that time I pressed my petal lips to yours
in your pale room, pale bed
and thought perhaps I was meant to be
smothered under your pale pillow
if I was a brightly scented pastel
too much for your diffuse planned obsolesceses
if my heart was made to be a small scintilla color burst
you pasted into the mudded walls like twilight: listen
flash frame, pan left, pan left

I'll tell you a tale:
I don't trust easily
or at all, really

and we were being designed and redesigned
to fabricate our own cubic cells
because it's cheaper that way
cheaper not to love
cheaper not to emote
and the genius of Freud is that
neurosis is good for the economy

we were not built for this environment

flip metaphors, pan left, pan left
you are the fractal algorithm of the vine cascading
a methodical sweetness, gripping
I, the loose and careless chaos
of scattered filth metal

"press harder"
"I like to be gentle"
"I like that you are gentle but sometimes harder"

we exchanged neatly bottled fears and fluids
as if the handwritten labels were a kind of agency
against tokenism

I am an ordinary bird, flightless
a dime a dozen
beautiful, but common

replaceable

you gave me universal titles
genus/species: "sweetpea"/"sweetheart"
filed me into your spreadsheet
google doc under february
before quickly forgetting my form
in a mess of torsos and wet middles

that was our deal

at dusk this evening
the coach car was unusually silent
so I chose to don my headphones
just to listen to the white noise hum

(Comment on this)

more old poems
there are some leaves
-------------------------

there is a vine
in rhode island
that grows mostly underground
while its leaves
break the surface
like the vertebrae
of a spine swaying

we are so green
at this life stage
a burgeoning pupa spring
of so many what if's

there are some leaves
we'll never hold again

they canopy
out of reach
rustling their cat call
laughter

there are some leaves
rooted
so wise to stay
close to the ground

and others that blow
whistling like wild seeds
in the summer wind dancing
to far off lands
and distant places


morning poem
------------
nothing is more beautiful
and temporal
than a blossom in bloom

two of them
still opening to me
petals peeling back awe
sweet pink and jasmine scented

their lashes beat back regret
like wisps of hair and shaking paper
as they shutter shut aback
in the dry summer's drought

what water
stamens leak
in the dewy privacy of morning
detached
and spineless

(Comment on this)

old poems
bone closet
---------------------
in the economies
between you and I
I knew I was grossly overextended

perhaps
I needed an outlet
a calcium chest
flat file
with a pulse
to lean into
or hold

and
you said thank you
(because perhaps you didn't
know what it meant
but hoped I meant well)

I didn't think I was
trading for tangency
I felt your fingertips
sink into my skin of their own need
and was willing to wash myself
under your shirt sleeves
with all the senseless din

I believed it because I wanted to
and I could teach you poetry
if you let me
just close your eyes
and let go of the rail

in the mathematics of my emotions
poetry is metaphorical shorthand
simply assume the LCD
image represents every
quantum realness
then compound the interest
at Fibonacci intervals

it is the exponential making of meaning:
everything counts
there are no wrong answers


and though you are still
so beautiful,
when I look at you all I see is
all possible failure
li pallas is dead
li pallas is not dead
and each one bifurcated
li pallas is too much
li pallas is not enough

I will never know
I have nothing left to trade for
you have nothing left to owe

I would not call your emotions "simple"
twelve dimensionally complex
and no language to match
I'd assume it's not easy

but I'll draw you another map
on the back of an
unwanted government bond
as I sense your vehement anger
for culpabilities unnamed
or the wantoness of your
lingering close to the source
of something "too awesome"
caught in her feedback loop
radiating the sound of self destruction

in these final trading moments of
small teeth closet economies
across the oneway shatterlessness
of jaw tight fiberglassed rime
I still modulate reason
against your deep regret sighs
because I didn't need you to understand
it was nice enough that you tried.



regret in two parts
---------------------
there are holes along the widow pane
buckled like a whistle
you know how to whistle don't you?

and the wind gusts pooled ringlets
swirling around my frown
while the light pollution
tears through the middle of the sky
with the autopoietics of cloud break, so
look up!

he pulled a side arm twist behind my back
and riffled through my pockets
your secrets are not your own now
"how do you feel about copyrights and pattens?"
I looked at my shoes

everything in nature borrows
and you are not metallic
you were not a coin purse reward
or a slot machine tokened

you were a warm pie on the sill
sweet baked apples scented
on sticky placemat morning
and I made off with the oven mitts into the night

but then how you will need to fraction yourself
to eat every slice?

I was nauseous at every sign of withholding
I was passive like a somber train whistle mute
a golden ribbon flashing tea kettle
and steam engine persistent

you were the gravity of too tight squeezes
the seriousness of measuring cup waits
the never ending litmus of my heart and feather
flutterless in a vacuum tank fall

his head shook wisps of regret
you fail, you fail...
while his spine swayed like a metronome
his splayed thighs and webbed fingers
handclaps'd my mouth
to smother the sentiment

he was a modern day embalmer
calcified over your head
as ridiculous as is unnecessary
dressing your wounds
and wrapping your limbs

I was full of complex narrative
two abstruse eardrums
pulsing mixed up meters
and quantum selves

I want to tell you my secrets
reconcile the differences
and balance the symmetries
if you let me

your palms still adhesive and lined with
scripture written by geckos
we wandered in heartache
40 days and 40 nights
two tablets, ten rules
cold and tacky
I don't understand

I was the damselfly half bent
waiting to be filled
with flower pot fancies
silver spoons
and the limbs of a sweet bay magnolia
to swing upside down by

chest opened
with so much turbulence
against the rock
and (cherry) pit red lights
ringlets spilling
autopoietic skin break
buckled like a whistle
from the sill.

(Comment on this)

helpless
the world
has slowed itself
to the round
of your vertebrae
between my thumb and forefinger

I had forgotten
that time can still itself
so sharply
when forming a memory
by touch

this - in my wanton shyness
the closest I have gotten to you so far
and - given my pace
might hold you here
a little too long
32 more times
to know them all

later I will kick myself
in a bridge pose
over pass
opening of the heart:
I am trying
to yield
more than I am trying
to reach out
or share

if I could read your thoughts
I'd guess it was a moment squandered
lips pressed to the innocence
of plastic juice cups
and bodies bent into
damasked bucket seats
two feet too far away

because I know
that some things
can not be expressed
without rehearsals
that the mind plays tricks
and adds stage lighting
in one set of eyes
while the other is bowing
in the fog lights
of their curtain call

with me
some things
can only be written
and tucked into your mailbox

which is a scant
ten inches away
from my thumb and forefinger
rolls on the roundness of your vertebrae

(enter last line/stanza here... eventually)

(Comment on this)

half memory
in this my half absence mid march mastering
the partially dead bolt
janky side door trick
I pry open the back door ether to
sweet potatoes and my heart gone cold
in the jiffy pop pan for you

I am a stage left dynamic accumulator
of books and stories
a recollection of lackluster histories
and the sterness of clean counter tops flatness:
here my divided mind unfolds in puce

before bed this empty daydream tryst
feels like so much home
a rainy day ride
back shower soaked
smiling skin saturated with life
swerving round the car doors swung open surprise
five times I yield to you seething and
stretching post hot bicycle trick
readying to master a gas light
ladder climb nightfall

chin up! glittery smeared silver moonbeam heavens
to the cozy foam pad pink slumbering
of clouds and stars absinthe mid march
firefly delirium beach kisses with
the madness express car chase exits
shuffling these flip flopped feet down a dull path
promising past late summer memories
to rebirth my sandy ear pressed
to your vibrant heart chest
still beating

(Comment on this)

southbound eight tracks

fumbling wrongway stoplights
post full moon cycling past
starfish wastelands and the smallness
of so many abandon highways running out to sea

I had a simple fish hook passport
dice and diamonds in my eyes
a fence post sunrise visa
stomach roaring like a lion
eagar to displace the starmapped
inky bellows of my patchwork stitched history

I was telling you stories
trust me

I was feeding you a tasting assortment
of my basement pitch past stumbling
round the darkness without a matchbook
to expose how it is I wear this smile

was I even smiling?

and wrestling with how unintentionally steadfast
I've become harder around the edges
and too soft where it counts

tip the kiltered diving bird twenty percent
skip stones over the endless ocean
abreast the concrete countertops
we were a couple sandfaced mugs
severity swinging in the air so heavy
this pavement duststorm
spoke aramaic pastorialism
I named the bastard "fun"
and so it was

across the two mile chasm
ditched up the middle of the room bunkered
I could feel your breath
and wondered if I was too close

when you are already loosing a chess game masterpiece
stoicially serve up kamikazes
but save the queen

my superhero power
is invinsibility squared
so you might've missed
the hot make out session
in the damp film room staircase

or perhaps this locomotive steampress
in the production gap between my ears:
flashed rainbow touched visions of a
thousand love stories rarely lived
and black boxed committment traps
stringtide, divide, and proliferated,
propell me jet set to the light!

you are a peculiar wizard
with a sealing waxed mouth
so many shades of gray
like a clothes covered skyline
against an agressively palmy sunset

I don't mean to cast shadows
with my electric blue sterness
why can't I be more pastel around the edges
and more chalk
where it counts

again a five minute late text messaged
exclamation point hope
a post blossomed rose pedaled
palladium princess with a salted peanut
nothing new
just another pretty girl staring at her shoes

a mixed tape eight tracked letter
scatterred fifteen hundred miles too close now
and the southbound wind blows dandelion dreams
with the steampressed blank cold
and breathless

(Comment on this)

the media receiver
I dreamt I was the media receiver
an anxious villain who knew too much
I dreamt I was the super hero who tamed her
by giving her a safe place in this world

I was leafing through the scriptures
from times when we were all 1000 pages
neatly folded for the exchange
those back pocket texts tucked into the brow
full of salt and dusk after dusk
we razor cut so much red
oozing around the curvature of our bicep chins
our bodies all mouths split open like this
to taste change happening

because we are born synesthetic!
and we are reborn synesthetic!
and you cannot beat back our synesthesia anymore!!

ahead, the future lies like a track lit aisle way
and you will not need your
seat/cushion/flotation/device
this plane is landing on the dawn

we awaken changed and still the same
these are the pearls of the 20 year old me
out of my 28 year old mouth:
1000 hearts can't be folded or exchanged
but resonate and modulated
can you taste this?

this the curvature of the anti-eclipse
this the eurythmic subject center lit
scintilla of scintilla of scintilla of scintilla...

here: is a place for you
this morning: now
just open your palms:
and listen

we are the media receiver,
we are the media,
we are the medium,
we are the synesthetic super heros,
eurythmic subjects pulsing light,
and *this* is *our* time now.

(Comment on this)

duple time
I got an email that my grandmother is in the hospital. It's so weird. When my grandfather died, that too arrived by email. I don't know exactly what to say, so this is what I came up with:

this obscene sadness
this memory of garlic pressed
Parmesan and other things
measured by small spoons
early evenings of dinosaurs in jeopardy
late night nudging cuddled up to
the soft ripples of your lungs
and nose open

they say I look like you
our faces square
and fold like hand shakes
warm ones
when we smile

I wish I had seen more pictures of you
in the svelteness of your youth
wish I had played in your perfumed bottled
dresser drawers
present
yawning in the churchbell mornings
earlier for the choir
we walked with all of Mt Vernon
overlooked
and poinsettia pettled
you called me pretty

I miss you mixed in cottage cheese
cigar smoked, nat king cole christmas
back porch escapes

Christmases which meant lights
and wishes
stickers
pressed flower print
camels and nativity dioramas
and music!

miss you in nightgowned
chicken skinned tomato sauce
if I ask,
this is what souls are made of:
a collection of wishbones snapped
morning radio cereal box figurines
and bright bowls of ornamental candy

those mornings when things could still be measured in small spoons

miss you looking into me
miss you minding the kitchen clock
miss you metered in my heart
2/4
setting the pace
and pulsing magic through

if I had wrote you
would it have mattered?

(Comment on this)

cliche
in a thick oblivious
cloud cover
half lament
half security
one hundred percent
muscle memory
there are these
some unspeakable truths

in the ides of
never sunbaked september
a weather monument
so devastating
this wind/this rain
a silent tension extrinsic
carbon copied extraction
of a certain cognition

don't think about torsos
don't count chads
like the loose calcium
deposits of a third grader
don't reach back into
the identify markings
of certain gold tooths
for a pawn ticket
in your pocket
while the red letter marquee
hangs scrolling above head
words like: Russia
and Nuclear flashing
pulling on the tendons in your spine
and leaving your joints parched

tell me
does your spin cycle
remind you of some color code alarm?
expectant anniversary relived
early morning

hush now
this inarticulate sadness
so cliche
like a nagging headache
of an outsourced
white tag
blood stained
suburban dream

blame it on the weather
the mildew of impending fall
make these frayed synaptic
stock and bond rhythms implore
pharmaceutical combinations
to subdue the thunder clap scent
of six years passed

(Comment on this)

arkansas mailbox
riding in the backseat of my childhood
limestone slatted shale ridged bluffed highway
windblown ozarks
oak shrubbed buttonedwood sycamore
pine brushing back of my neck
hurling through space with the weakness of a landsprout
70 miles per hour
swaying your baptist spires
counting wooden crossed fence post mocking bird
and cattle

what is fixed firm and slatecaked rockshopped
does not move me
I want to know you are the the mesocyclone
a tractor trawlering my switchgrass pondberry
not just another shallow gable, french deck
pressable wood shingled roof
I am collapsible
creaking in my prime

here the night jarred whippoorwill and circling hawk
there a shooting star wish made cattail parachuting overa
steel truss steel shed
rust belt tin barned toad shade
kudzu covered and cloud broken
lambs quarted and lady ferned
curled up cat knapped
I am telling you stories

I can still feel the space you used to occupy
vacuity in my chest this small studio
below the loft of my consciousness waterside warehouse
deep breath emptiness filling
in my small town, arkansas mailbox
I am out rehanging a sign that reads: vacancy

scissortail flycatch me
cotton mouthed and prarie fired
I am a roadside country collectible
kewpied and antiqued
shortleaf pining
and apple blossomed

or am I just the backseat lady's slipper
consolation prize, never the trophy
bitterweed bittersweetness
red clay red podded sumac rattle?

hold your breath, now
we are crossing over a bridge

listen, riverside spicebush
do you hear the evening trumpet blow?
my junebug rose gentian,
come sit in my magnolia swing
close your eyes
click your heels now as yet
I think we've reached providence.

(Comment on this)

backyard garden poem
now I sit on the front porch swing of my
full moon momma phase belly
looking backwards against the sunset perched recumbent firefly
wondering about the switchblade life path choices cause

you were once my backyard garden green
oasis illusive in my pale concrete desert dream
you came like a vine crawls
slowly
perhaps even creeping up
my leg of my long abandoned warehouse bricked
along a ravenous reclusive harbor front
I was wasteland
I was the city dump recapped state park
reopening for your hot summer music festival

I feel your boot print heal into me
make malleable my impermanence with a
midday rose pedaled sweetness
or wisteria scent that sets me a pause while I
tightwire dodge the yellow cab concussions
half asleep half sleep deprived

wake up!
you fill my lungs with speechless hillside
I am agape for you yielding
eyes fixed like the pavement
your slender spine swaying like split bamboo
every inch of you so articulate
your fresh spun web so
dew covered
here: this spring in my in soul
was it meaningless?

this spiral that sent me away from you?
or are you merely the whisper in my ear of a nectar not yet tasted, foreshadowed

I'm telling you
we never truly know nature, do we?

I wish I could've heard it above the traffic jam thunder car honk
the racket of orchestral security alarms ablaze
or the fixed frames of a bright blinking billboard:
"I have a crush on you"
"I have a crush on you"
but now here I am on the front porch swing
pulsing the cricket time past
watching you lightening bug in a jar
flash my memory
and wonder

(Comment on this)