if each and every one of us
wrote a religious book about our life
a bible that we live by
and had our own 10 commandments

our mistakes
would be the footnotes the archaeologists write
to explain why we preached what we preach
don't wait for those who dig to explain yourself to you

is it so much to expect people to be loyal?
who the hell am I to talk?

--> maybe I should stop wearing my heart on my sleeve
----> at least I'm consistent?

if you are a
gossip like me
it's the secrets
we can not tell
that change us

With iron fist you beat me until I came back to life
Caught me in the dead of night running to your dogs
Running to your farm village cotton plants
Caught me trying to work the days wage for you
Whipped the mountain ridge of scars right off of my back
Like intercourse was a whip
Like a whip was a tongue
Like a tongue was your blooming fields
And the hot sun
Knows no way to set without me sweating
Your name across my chest
Pulling the fiber from your burlap sacks
and shoving them back
onto your mature plants
Just so that
they will disappear to seedlings that I will pluck from the earth
and fill every pocket of my blood stricken pants
Have you seen a setting sun rise?
When I flinch, you will breathe
When your torture me, I will dance
Just so that
you can fill that ship hull of yours with me
and drive me back to the country I belong to
Rip your net open
chase me into the nettle bushes
I will forget everything I ever knew of you and your world
will worship strange gods in the place of you and your gods
and dance naked until the sky forgets how to breathe

can you love me like that?

http://www.viralcat.com/aprilissuepg2.htm#359608608

landing preparations published online

i was freewriting off of a prompt last night and wrote something that came out as pretty much a fully formed slam poem.
I don't plan on ever reading this on a stage but it is a little interesting.


---


adamantium
---
It was one of those moments
so awkward that the refrigerator stopped humming
Just so that it would not be the one that broke the silence
And other men
would notice this
take it as a cue
and leave
But
I have never been very good at being other men
Apparently
you did not know that before they concocted up the
A horse more hollow then your heart
they tried storming the Trojan’s gates
with my battering ram skull
because that is how thick headed I am
concrete
goddamn good friend that happens to be a really hot girl
I have heard you cry on my shoulder about all these guys that fuck you and leave you
I could give you so much more then that
I know so much more about you and we would be good for each other and it wouldn’t
Just be about the hot steamy shirt ripping sex

So
When you say that there wouldn’t be a chance of
you and me together as a thing or even possibly a thing
for at least a 1,000 years
You obviously did not know
that my love for you pulses through my veins metallic adamantium thick
adamantium is the stuff that comes in wolverine that superhero who regenerates
so shoot me down again you cupidic Unabomber
I don’t need a fucking Kevlar vest
I have adamantium love in my chest
And yes
That means I will live to see you in a 1,000 years
When I will unearth your 1,954 year old corpse
Purchase a newly invented restoration process because it’s the year 3,000 or something
And then, if you want me to
I will wait 1,000 years
And I will wait 1,000 more
Just to be the man who waits 2,000 years
To fall down at your grave and resurrect you again

(for those of you who need context here I did actually say that to her when she shot me down
I mean, not word for word, that was a summing up of it, but I did mention wolverine and adamantium and I have never seen a woman fall for a rant so dorky but it worked)
It’s that special kind of love that comes from friendship
That roses are red violets are blue and I know all of your secrets kind of love
That special kind of weight and care that only a friend can offer
Hey, so this is the point when do I do have to ask
“baby, now that that is whole thing is settled do you want to like decide before hand who is going to top and who is going to bottom or do you just want to fuck?”

Liquid Solid Love

Phase 1 Liquid
Phase 2 Solid
Phase 3 Love
Let me elaborate

Phase 1 Liquid
We are the vehicles that know the gush of empty street corners
We are the people that ride on the waterfall of vehicles
There are bicycle gears wrapped around our wrists like handcuff bracelets
Metal and grating and toothed like our childhood memories
Grinding what is left of our romantic flower bearing wrists to bone marrow
Hollow enough to poison every morning dove with love
Unwrapped enough to rip the tongue from every couple open mouth kissing in the park
And yes, every ice cubes melts, once water will once again be water
And how, every humans melts, once water will once again be water

Phase 2 Solid
Give me something solid
Solid enough to walk on
No wait, I lied
There is a garter snake in my bedroom with cobblestone scales
Who can’t shed its skin faster then me but how siblings will try
I build sandcastles from this skin we shed,
lead mandolins
we shed stone swallowing violence
we brush off the groping touch of fate
with her heavy whiskey breathe and rich brown curls remind me of a girl I once knew
Fate has such heady cologne
That smells like the sandcastles I build out of vanity
out of my voice
out of anything solid
These sound waves I give to you are monkey wrench ripples
Vibrating like a tuning fork that knows your journal well
And will share it with every kid in the class
Every notice that people who have their heads in the clouds
Miss what’s going on below
They forget how to lie because that is all they know
And even though you dreamers may tickle the angels private parts with your neck hair
Down here we have wheelbarrows full of the kind of broken egoes that come in hour glasses
That fill beaches
So what else can we do but build sandcastles and call them good lives
Just as you are building walls out of jaw bones and calling them castles
Some people tell me that you lie to yourself
But I know better because I know how to lie
You are truthful, you know that money smells worse then a hookers crotch scent
and yet you will never feel like one whoring yourself off
You know that you can’t iccarus crash so long as you build your castles above the sun
Well, tell me this, did you know that the ocean tide always comes
nomatter where you hide
Smoothes every single stone
build that rope ladder tall
but in the end you are just waiting for the waves to reach you
To kiss those toes
To kiss the fingers of those of us who stand on our hands
Ostrige bury my face until the only thing I can see out of
is the calcified flesh on my big toe
In this end the waves are coming to kiss you
Death is coming for us without consent
Is that rape?
Is that assault?
Can I take the reaper to trial for kissing me with wet lips
For smoothing me skipping stone I wanted to ripple across this world
Neon lights in my eardrums buried past a hollow eraser in my hands
And I am rubbing my gut like a genie’s lamp just wishing I could get some wishes
But there are fucking erasers in my hands and it’s just wiped away any chance
I had of understanding why I wanted life so bad in the first place

Phase 3: Love
I can feel the hot wax of every enevelope I left un-sealed
Can read the eviction letters I never sent myself
Is that why we stayed in these flesh bag bodies longer then we wanted to
I do not know how to be myself
But I do know how to love myself
God never knew how to make us ourselves
So we made God in our image
The clay shapes the spaces between the hands fingers
Fills them the same way that water becomes ice
Water can not melt, only evaporate
So at least we are safe somewhere
We know how to pomegranate smiles
Leave the seeds in my shoes so that a tree will grow
And when I bears fruit I will call this eden
And make a home out in the waves
So that I never have to wait for them to tear down this castle
It’s all just a matter of where you build
And finding trust
In liquid solid love
they are the bricks

If religion is the opiate of the masses
Poetry slams are the opiate of the few
Reading slam poems is the megalomania of the poet
Reading religious interpretations is the megalomania of the rabbi, priest, cantor
Listening to psychological assessments is therapy for the faithless
Listening to bible verses is therapy for the broke
Reading spoken word is therapy for the broke
Reading bible verses is control for the wealthy

Learn to lie sometimes
Learn to lie about lying
And if that doesn’t work
lie to yourself

Learn to bigot sometimes
Learn to bigot your bigots
And if that doesn't work
bigot yourself

Learn to live sometimes
Learn to live your lives
And if that doesn't work
live yourself

look for God in all the wrong place
find faith in people that never ask for you
drop your heart like a bass beats
Because their are trucks full of concrete
driving through your veins
pressing your hands into the fleshy street and waiting for our names to form below the stars

Every day is a snow day and we are covered in the ice
Melting love, melting life, melting time like water
We are lost in all the moments we never made it to
fill myself with wine and bread as I try to sop up my cold salsa memories

We let the dust cover us if only to find death's fingerprints
We have been touched

Imaginary friends dancing footprints in our sandcastle dreams
And as the narcoleptic tide comes forth
These routine baptisms are just that, routine
Sleep louder
Like asking the warden for seconds
Like passing out on the dirty kitchen floor
And piecing back together a world I never had

Every snail, every generation, every place has a trail
So we follow road sings like prophets
My leash is tearing and the wolf howls still at the moon
At the still pool moon
Still,
their is clapping as we wait for the fairies to come back home
And we sing along to Weezer when Say it Aint so blasts

Did you know
I am a star fish clinging to the sea walls of my chest
Trying to stop understanding
if only
so that
I can enjoy
this

We had to burn her, to make sure she wasn't a witch
We had to drown her, to make sure she wasn't a witch
We had to fuck her, to make sure she wasn't a virgin

i'm trying to remember why I liked poetry because something is missing
it all feels too trite, forced

today I understood that love is the capacity to forgive another's human qualities
today it felt good to do something ugly
because sometimes it feels good to feel and it was raining as it should be on days like this
Richard, Nancy, Brad, Mike, Katie, Lenny, Jill, Dan, Rose, and Me
there were only two shovels so we took turns
there is nothing as empowering
nothing as primal chest ripping fury
its the moments like these that make us more human that we already are

In Memory
----
Whenever I hold a kaleidoscope
Or on Passover
Or when I see a cowboy hat
Or when the spinning hubcap of a summer day Cadillac rips by

Whenever I have a wine glass, watch an old video of a rocket launching
He will be there, as he always has been
And that is why, you can not tell me that he is dead
The only casket that he lays in is the bleached bone of my skull
Some sort of raft and I am the ferryman, this boat is parked
He loved his kaleidoscope collection so much that I almost mistook him as one
can remember him spinning its beaded end against the sun and
As he stairs intently inside twisting shapes against the light behind
I’m watching the light behind him collide with him and glow
When I twist my eyes it makes him look like
he has a halo but
we don’t have to pretend that we are angels because
we don’t have to pretend we are something that we are
especially when that something doesn’t really exist anywhere but
in a book and in the skies and in our minds
Like me like him like you like love like time like life
And that is why you can not tell me he is dead
So long as my earthly born memories
make themselves a voice loud enough to shatter the glass sculpture of my spirit
solid enough to crash against opaque store paned windows in the plaza
like blue bird, raven, pigeon colliding with our car windshields
interrupting our lonely daily drives with crack crack fall smack
with all the weight of the world a blue bird, a raven, a pigeon beat against my lung cage
when I remember him it feels good to cry
I feel like a window shopper who can’t afford to buy more time
so all we get are memories we should be thankful we had in the first place
empty wings if I could fill you with enough hot air goodbyes
I’d be some hollow boned bird and I’d fly you away in this skull of mine
because on days like these I can barely believe
that the floorboards
can still hold our weight

----
do birds cry when they migrate
----
do birds cry when they migrate
----
do birds cry when they migrate
----

Kamikaze wind spilling from my lungs
Every time I say goodbye
We know where this is going
A flock of hollow boned promises
A baseball park smile
A homeless teenager with greasy hair places her handful of change in my pocket
She asks me for nothing, she is backwards and speckled with dirt
She is just another example of youthful desire
And we are home
We are home runs
Heading out we are above an applauding crowd greedy for another hit
Another run
another first plate
we are tomorrows desire
I remember every blueberry morning toast spread
Every thistle stuck in my thumb
Every lamp post and every heirloom shapes me into some petrified bonsai tree
Stagnant and desiring flesh
like my stone coffin house wasn't enough because
this is not

she smiled at me
was posted on an online lit mag

http://www.wordletting.com/default_files/CurrentIssuePage3.htm

Break Away
---
when these moments drink comatose
and we don't know where we came from
that is when I hear the rush of air
where I learn of trampoline children

throat wobbler

your unreal water overflowing with sky car arenas
you fall above the Jesus fate
kick box atmosphere air fall loud, you do
when fruit isn't plucked it leaves trees to rot at family roots
searching for falling how you rot loud at my feet
searching for falling we survive smaller only to reissue each scream on vinyl
-- scratched --
you sip from the tall skyscrapers at your fingertips
you can not kill death so tomorrow will be death's wheels and
skateboard death across a cobblestone trail between the whorehouse and the wherehouse
adolescent vapor on the outside escaped from you cornea
solidified ice like fate
on the seashells of homicide dust of the is
and when our earthly born knowledge makes itself a voice loud enough to shatter every glass pain
solid enough to crash against opaque store paned windows
like blue bird, raven, pigeon crashing against high school biology class windows
interrupting teacher with crack crack fall smack
with all the weight of the world a blue bird, a raven, a pigeon beats against your lung cage
window shopper stuck on the wrong side of a store front display
with a mannequin heart and these plastic mannequin arms
looking out at everybody else lives harder and better
looking out at brighter light grown grass green and wanting
resting against green traffic lights wanting
greener grass lights like hand gadgets breaking under sunlight even farther from light
following the backgammon stacks of clarity circles
we are waiting for doubles like falling
you break
you crash
full speed fall smack three times a caged cannarey
empty bones I will fill you with hot air goodbyes
so that on the single back of beauties you will leave tonight
you rise

are loneliness and desire the same thing
if they are, which sun beams the brightest
I will never know if I'm doing the right thing
so I do sum things with hope that it will add up

With blanket against shoulder blades
naive child flies from skyscrapers like they were countertops
Projectile super power child believes in words too large for youthful vocabulary
Tranquility, Coexistence, Satiation, Quietude, Placidity,
And the ability for a single body to impose its privileged serenity on the world

I will kill you boy
Chainsaw the head off your neck and watch you choke on your ideals
Tie my paycheck to paycheck life to your legs like a block of concrete
And watch your drown
Child I will Suffocate you with all my daily free bread and couch beds

Every evil villain has a reason, a psychology behind our deeds
Tell me that you honestly don’t understand this world and the things that it needs
Tell me that it’s better to fling ourselves against the lapping concrete city waves with the weight of all our faith and all our hope until we shatter every arm we call lightning rod
Projectile super power child I've watched you collapses inside the reinforced steel coffin of my body
And still you find ways to superman rise every night
to sing the moon goodnight