DESPERATE IN GENERAL

do you remember listening
to the oil spill for months.
gushing.
the sound smothered by distance.
what did it feel like.
you see pictures of beaches
with nothing on them years later.
macrometaphor.
you see how big death is.
and you here,
you're scared of getting someone sick
with the food you prepare.
smug part-owner insinuating
that he's an hourly wage-earner
like you are.
you without the strength to gush
the puss of your knifeknicks
that never heal
into his eyes,
throw clods of sink food
half a day festering
into his mouth,
then hold it closed,
"taste your fucking empire
before we burn it apart".
we were afraid that we'd leave
the gas running and blow up at work.
we weren't afraid to die,
but we were afraid to die
doing this punishing frivolity
for the people who don't want to cook
and the people who don't want to pay us
but sort of have to
a little.

#ALLMEN

i love you. you hear me right

i'll get in a car of you.

i'm comfortable a good amount of the time

that i spend singled out among you.

i'm comfortable chatting with you.

i scale a big wall during our talks.

i can't sleep very well with all the

imagining you don't exist and

untensing. what is that.

do i fear you? i think you are

a fucking baby.

you are a baby that could smash 

my bones. i don't think you would ever do that.

do i think that you have that in you?

i don't ever want to kill you,

but i want the power to

make you get away from me.

i'm comfortable walking when none of you

are visible. then i wonder if i'm not paying attention.

i'm terrified when you slow down.

when you yell i want myself to die,

because i can't yell back and

my hatred ate my oxygen i am a pillar

of flamming silence.

i want you to drive me to your house

but maybe you don't have roomates at home

who would hear if you start murdering me.

maybe they'd just be more of you

to help you murder me.

i love you. i want to give you honorary indentification

but you are already rejecting it for

the entire time i've known you.

you choose or don't choose to be one

but are one.

I START TO WITHHOLD MY TIME

no more late night confession booth sitting.
i want you to want to talk to me for some reason,
but more quickly now i want to hang up.
or just delete your contact from my phone
because it was long enough ago. i didn't like the fight.
i giggle my intellect with the look of persimmon leaf
for a second before i disown my desire to write about
just it. it's dark. i yelled. i yelled slogans with a
cracked voice. a bunch of strangers and me kept it up
and a few friends i don't know much about.
somewhere in my head or throat, rotten
is reminding my of a poem i wrote not that long ago.
my strong feelings are from memories now, which is why
i don't feel in love with you, who i shared no
memories with. making it up used to taste ok.
it's changed to like the smell of synthetic fragrance.
why would i want to cover my body with that
horrible thing you are.

OVERWHELM

hello 

i hugged two band members

over five dollars for gas

i would have kissed any of them

i would have kissed all 3 woman friends

who i saw there

i would have kissed the one man friend who drove me home.

god bless any hugger.

god bless any friend willing to help drunk me.

god bless all the dead children.

im going to move slow tomorrow, 

but i really love you.

im going to really love you until

everyone dies

or longer.

DIARY

a sore developed inside my mouth
on the other side of my lip
from where one of the pan lids
bashed me in the face,
causing me to imagine
my skin flapping and running with blood.
but it wasn't that.
a few months ago at work
a child i was sitting with
flung his head into my chin
making a crunch and when
i stuck my finger in my mouth,
a flake of my front tooth came out,
causing me to imagine
my teeth crumbling to half their lengths,
but it was just one and it's worn smooth now.
last fall i for the first time in my life
slept with someone
i had wanted to sleep with for years,
causing me to descend into a frenzy
where i thought i wanted to be pregnant,
but he's never going to look me in the face again.
i shouldn't be surprised about having been in love
even though i'm not now.
you all had one gift in common with me.

HIDDEN

its not easy to walk fast and type poems

some response is good 

the languages of human are so metal

being drawn into wire

i have a new nickname

because i live with God The Unmarked.

i pray for thunder to burst my bubble.

i told God that i felt there was someone

waiting to talk to me at home and that

when i realized it wasn't true, my love

didn't stop flowing towards the person.

UNTHANK PARK

there was in my childhood a time

when i could not personally accrue debt

and i did not have to steal

to eat and i was not legally a target

and i listened hard even so

many of the talks around me were

missing important pieces.

look the poet is flapping its face

about something no one can see.

when i said i was sick of invisible people,

i meant that i didn't like feeling so attached

to a person on the other side of mountain fences.

this idea has already occurred to me,

the one where i out all my secret meanings

one line at a time, flip their literals up.

when the woman in legends of the fall

cut her hair off in front of me,

i had already had mine removed.

she was staring at the mirror,

but i was searching her eyes for

if this meant i wanted to leave the world, too.