Take Me

Your moth-cloud dreams in,
we went up like soot,
soaked in gasoline.
Yesterday’s thick ejaculation
mixed with a bundle of
memories,
take me,
tell me!

Every day, the body gives up the ghost,
sui juris. Take me!
White purse.
Sweet essence under strange sheets.
Your cotton terrorizes me.
I wrap long, and split,
I’m weak,
I’m weak.

One day grows under soil,
feeding on a seed.
Where the Earth wants to plants us,
we harvest what we reap…

and clouds speak in tongue,
a simple, little speech.
I know I’ve begged before,
but take me.
Take me!!

Am I New

Flapping tongue, to change your name, to change yourself,
to change,
to change,
you say it’s smoking time, maybe if the zone changed,
but we run on desert time,
at devil lake
I wish I was, a reservoir, I wish I was a dog,
rolling in the dirt, a tumble weed,
collecting time and breeze,
in the hustle
rolling,
changing,
flapping in my sleep to change position, to change disposition,
to change,
I meditate, a trumpet sounds,
an angel sings, is it me?
Did I work? Did the clock split my tongue
and now I am two?
Am I new?

The Death Of Aaron James

The
cello is a thick, heavy syllable
crying against the shoulder of
a thin woman,

a road of auburn hair trailing down her
spine. She understands value.

Prose is never numb,
it spans across nerves
playing emotions with finger

tips of red wood.
You brought Lydia to me
at twenty-five,
she dripped into my sleep
and led me
on a journey.

For you, she was a symptom of
something incurable. She opened my throat,
expanding me and you
suffocated.

The cello smiles with wide fingers,
thick like its soul.
Lydia takes me on a piano ride
in red wood snow where prose
grows and grows and grows.

I Don’t Know What To

I can’t name you or call you by your name, at this time. You are streaked against the glass, your guts are spilling out.

Be brave and talk to yourself. You deserve to hear the truth as much as I do. Wait. No.
Let me tell you.

You’ve soiled yourself again like an elderly flower. I came to change you, but you won’t have me anywhere
outside of your bed.

Well my bed is too nervous to have you, so I take my voice back instead of shaming you. Wait. No. Let me hand it to you. She is braver than you.

Have you heard what they call her? Does she even have a name? It doesn’t matter. She is stronger than water and moves like a rock.

I bricked her, I blocked her,
but her head is tilted right to the life-sized bottle of wine at her side. At this time, I can’t call you, or name you, or love you, or hate you.

I answer only to the thin
glass dividing us,
that let’s nothing in.

Oh, Poor House

This old house,
this old skeleton home
stands as cold as a gravestone.

I once stood warm in the middle,
on soft ground,
on proud carpet
and let the seams out,
unravelling my solid foundation.

My blood didn’t mix well.
It was dry gin,
a steady confrontation
within.

These old thoughts,
these moldy walls,
we’ve sunk deep.
It hasn’t slept since I left.
I chose to be deaf.

I chose this aloneness,
a silent voice sipping on charcoal,
dreaming about a house
that once was a home.

Oh, poor house.
Your empty threshold is tempting but,
now I know,
I have shed you,
and my boiling red blood has
calmed to blue.

I do not miss you.

The Girl In The Mirror

Over and over,
dry skin flakes off my shoulders,
crumbs of a younger me,
revealing new layers that nobody
has seen.

I watch the girl in the mirror watch
back. We do not know each
other and, I think, we never will.

 

I Will, I Will Do Now

My head, my long head burns
in fury as my teeth expand. I can taste gun powder.
It is only what I knew,
not what I begin to know now.

I can become a tomato, only when
I become a tomato.
I am not whole, or ripe,
or sweet, red flesh,
until then.

I will only be a youthful green seed, now.

And what will I do with myself?
I have let fat, green worms slither
around my precious skin.
I have laid root in rocky, dry soil.
I have hidden my aching vines from
sunlight,
and that was all then.

Now, my face pulsates as I grind
my teeth on old leather,
fighting expansion,
embracing the tension,

and I will, I will do with my sweet,
ripe fruit what I know now.

You Think You Know Me? You’re Probably Right.

If you think you know me
or about me
or of me,
let me just tell you that
you are probably right.

I am smeared across pages
of different lives. I’ve been
blotted out, erased, ejected,
regretted,
embedded, let-go of,
set on fire,
strangled with wire
mangled to unrecognizable.

I’ve been sized up, down,
replaced, shamefaced….

graced with YOUR presence, haven’t I?

I’ve been lied to, laid on, pushed over
pushed around, pushed to the ground,
bound up by the useless,
wound up by the senseless.

I’ve been messy for a great length of time
I wait for the right time
and it always passes.
I’m days behind trying to
find myself, but I
hide well enough
that even I can’t seem to find myself.

I’ve blinded myself
with selfish ties, told myself lies to
handle my life – just to survive – revived
old times, but

times have changed
I have changed.
You think you know me?
You’re probably right.
For that time in my life.