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.

OLD FASHIONED

i'm not so so
at a new time when
lines fork out to eat on
the alter instead of
light my ghost.

today the catch is tackle.
you can see what I mean
floating over the road to
make you swerve.

TUMMIES

hearing my peoples
so sad. MY LOVE
a room after i
sung with concern
in my new language.
i want to pertain and
to be in wind and marvel.
read to me, great span.
without my auger
there are no careful
ways i can find your
speaking layer.
i do as good as
poems spinning me lower,
where this poem is
telling me to climb.
i learned to speak for
i don't know why
the truth that only
had made me a
new people. 

KEEP IT TO YOURSELF

one project: gather the last words of women murdered by the state, counterrevolutionary forces, or their boyfriends. and i guess letterpress them?

another project: there's a place further east in the real midwest that prints their own currency and uses it in a self-made local economy that exists parallel to the other one that rips people's entrails out and ties them to the bottom of the road. do that?

another project: write poems duh.

another project: have a kid with someone who doesn't suck and doesn't mind what people like to call my "contrarian" approach and thinks i'm sexy but never calls me something i think it's stupid to want to be, like beautiful.  mod: adopt a kid with someone... etc.

another project: learn how to operate anonymously would maybe be good.

another project: go to sleep. but i've been writing about going to sleep and melodramatically.

another project: i truly love M.I.A.

CONFUSING RESOURCE CENTER

every one of them talks.
found something about myself this trip:
i want to 'go back'
in even small denominations,
like i want to lay in the cemetery twice.
leading up to my release,
songs that said "you can come back"
held my skeleton up and out,
and upon me a rock, a river,
your country, memorizing this poem off encarta,
memorizing this poem again but the whole length
and saying it to all the strangers in my new shitty high school.

the first month i got paid to work in a school,
it was like 8 schools, and i hated being in secondary.
one reason is: it was the first time i realized that
i'm very very very very slow at becoming whole.

look into your sister's eyes, stupid. look with your brother's face.

come back to the bar where i spilled beer
on one person and bought four beers to compensate.

come back to the top of town and stare at the mountain,
then the buildings that get paid to stare it down.
the rocks, the windiest riverbend on earth, the hiking deaths.

i felt like a swagger in the nines. i rarely feel like a swagger.
i felt somewhere else when i chewed the third oyster.

i want to go back to bed, your country,
and say simply, very simply, with hope,
"i'm sleeping".

ANGRY DOING

already attempting
to paint poems
like goya going deaf.
people singing threats
all the way from
the hidden side of the hill.
with my face i make
a scary goya.
i say
i don't want to get much older.
when i drive
i feel like the driver
of my childhood car
smashing everything.
i'm so good at
tiny demolition.
saying
"I HATE YOU"
over and over in an email
with the words
"i'm sleeping weird".
i don't hate you
loosely steering
my behaviors
like a combo
of good sweats
queueing up
hormonal responses.
every young man
in this building
is attractive and
it's putting me
to sleep,
in the sense that
i want to die.
by luck,
i read adrienne rich
telling her lover and me
that our hands are fit
to carry out the violence
to end violence,
and it causes me
to shake and
step back out of traffic.

ALL FLOWS OUT

in a noisy, i just look away.

needing advice for my coward

born with bruised wrists

because i was eating at them.

i don’t know the word twisting

when it does. i said 27/34

words of the poem my right mind

knows, and CLEAR IS MY SOUL

AND ALL THAT IS NOT MY SOUL.

to sleep is punishment.

eating is nice but

hunger is punishment.

i try for five days what took him

quite some years to live with.

i cut a lime the wrong way

only once. i cut it every day.

clear is my sensitive belly button

and the skin on my fattest parts

getting cold first.

because of chemical jewelry in my blood,

i have wanted to name a baby

since wednesday morning.

BECAUSE PAUL CELAN

over the evening paint 

of the first bulb's segmentation, 

a late husk, evermorning pigment 

separating from the plane of skin 

and not facing a barricade when it 

skims inways toward the lakebed.

it takes a second for my tactile feed 

to become audible, asking why 

has the yolk in you stayed whole 

all this time that clicks against it, 

threatening it, making me from below 

a lousy mouth hanging open in wait.

PINNED TO THE LAKEBED

i wanna puke
there's too much poetry for me.
my mouth won't close
i broke my crooked fronts on
scratching through the light boxing me.
i don't wanna cry but i am.
when's the last time i stood outside and waved until someone was gone?
i'm a floppy person
i guess i screech.
the floor is altered completely by one pillow.
why will no one stick her hand in my hair regularly?
i'll never try too hard to know.
in heaven
you get to choose your fatigue for a living.

AS IF CAREENED FORWARD TO MEET ME

many parts burnt
warm patches
of soft living problem
the food of all biting flies
the smelt leviathan
hey dog
how are your brains
i hear you cry
you look 12
you've been through many seasons
of trying to get pregnant
don't let me stop you
from romp and loud talk
not my place
my imagination
is a dashboard of touching
and i can't make anything
less than decades practiced
happen

trying for a magic dream

anyways i'm calling kyle jackson out of the water

my friend kyle

the first friend of my own west

the laughing river student

kyle i hear you fixing fence

kyle i hear you chuckling when i pee off the boat

it's cold on this rock

what can i think strong enough,

your image?

i rode on your bike with you driving it

about broke my foot

i saw skyfall with you

we both said "MOMMY ISSUES??!!"

you are in the too calm sea, kyle

your squeaky scruff, look at this beard,

aww good hug

i can hear you comforting the other six

bury the earth in wind if that makes you move

back in the direction of a beach to bless.

DANCING W/O A FACE

in this crowd surprised
i am both and moving
will something happen to one of us
that makes us sink ourselves
to find how we were 'before it'?
don't worry about
what i'm going to do
pity the onlooker
watching me yawn my body
and jiggle my endless head
all the way to the state line
i tried to find her
she'd been shocked outside
of her presence
at loss for grip
she doesn't like slavery
but i grab her and put her
back in with me
and we work over
to where smoke comes out
licking together like
the forked sense of
a single handsless brute
this is the story of
murder averted
at a point of overlap
there's every type of waste
she says she feels weird
waiting here
counting skin
looking at the floor
where i dumped out our drink

THE EARTH IS MADE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY

my body is proud of me.
the people i know think it's idiotic
to walk 20 miles over night.
but if i don't do it,
only the people who have to will.

i'm walking
to notice all the places
where it's illegal for a person to sleep.

there is a lack
of bathrooms.

a woman stopped and said
"do you want a ride"
and when i said no thanks she said
"it's dangerous out here"

but it's not.
it's just night.
it smells terriffic.

i haven't tried to live
in an 'actually dangerous' neighborhood,
mostly, it's the people who have to who do.

i'm not sure what will happen when i get to the point
where i have to walk next to a highway.

are the ditches full of water?
is there any safe/legal way to walk along the highway?

there are no predators in the ditches.
the sound of rabbits across grass startled me:
the sound of something running to me.
the sound of awake.

i'm walking
to demonstrate to my sister
that you don't have to pay anyone
to move your body
from one place to another.
little sister: happy birthday:
freedom will not kill you
even in the middle of the night.

i'm walking to see the sun come up.

i'm walking to get home over 20 miles.

i'm walking to rest myself.

if you don't understand
why i would want to do this,
i'm walking to tell you.

OPENING MY OTHER EYES

some are meant as hulls that
everyone can sing this song
for how many decades more.

now i will write a letter:

remember when i wrote that letter?
i would like to see it now.

if you bury a woman in dirt
who cares

i'm going to go on and on
i can see myself
in a mirror behind the bar

i can see myself
being a total fucking drunk
for real

not like pitcher while doing dishes
but like
wake up, feel like a brick,
drink over the cliff and go hooting
around the block.

i think that in 23 years i will be the witch of the neighborhood.
i don't know if it will be here.

i might never establish a solid lore.

i could pretty easily eat a cat.
especially if you leave me alone for a month.

i could probably beat something languageless
to death.