MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2016--FULL YEAR)

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scent of the day: Nose Rest Day

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*This is a portion of an ongoing mosaic poem called Made for You and Me. This portion is from the first installment: hive Being (Stanzas 2016-2020). More specifically, this is the whole of the 2016 portion of that five-part work.

MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2016)

hive Being

yard sale dentures

construction-site catcalls

dying on a treadmill

the echo of tattered flyers flapping in the captive winds coiling the subway corridor

the state champion pig, laid out by gravity in the shaded mud, oblivious to onlookers pointing

limp-wristed ridge-hand slaps of gimped-out spastics to their own upper chests

the first preschool drop-off, watching him from a window navigate the world without you

eating out that asshole like an emaciated Sudanese child but without a vulture lurking

jail-yard snowball fight

not coals but Legos for the playroom fire walk

ask a bum for a buck before he asks you for one

despite having convinced ourselves that our protest is for the cause— left, right, green, freedom of speech, anti-bigotry, or so on—many of us, at least a percentage non-trivial, are there for the saturnalia of violence

is America still America when in the mirror it sees nothing foreign?

is anyone ready for this— even God, thrown into this by its very definition?

Special Olympians charge onward with purpose, with meaning—and so why not the rest of us too after the ascendance of our artificial superiors?

is there any greater compliment to some other than to fall asleep under the touch of that other?

watching the news to keep alive hope that at least somewhere things are still taking place

if you are going to perch yourself up in a tower with guns and food for a death siege, what else besides denial could have you pack deodorant?

drunks licking withdrawal sweat

creeks combustible from upstream factories

anti-sleep spikes in the sidewalk to solve our bum problem

dozens of channels running nothing but nostalgic commercials

in a hug he tried to cram countless unsaid thanks

the floating sway of his head, as a cobra erect in threat, turns subtle as the boxer— no brainless bruiser—awaits an angle

how lighting the candle between us kills the shadows from under our eyes

driving by the childhood home only to find his birth tree erased undercut his intention to knock

that critical threshold when, merely among certain heaps of particles, there takes root a nuclear furnace, a heartbeat, an awareness

ignoring the work-aspect of sex work for the fantasy of really being wanted, for the kink of dominating subhumans

the lives you would have lived (painter, say) were you not what you are (writer, say)—such lives may affect what you are

our reverential contemplation of Mother, maker of Thanksgiving lasagna, often fails to observe the clashed planes of fever she is

new smothering expectations, new boxes, further shortened the thrill of coming out as gay

if only for further evidence of our ridiculousness, he hoped to find Balboa, a fiction, arms high in the boxing hall of fame, but instead he found Stallone himself there—as an “observer,” not a “fighter”

only the cross tattoo keeping you Christian

painting the nuances of hood life through poetry meant for friends and family too soaked in hood life to give a damn about, or even understand, poetry

writing down a friend’s home address on your applications, because no one gets on the books from where you sleep

her good characteristics she cut with bad deeds to stop repulsing people

to hold eye-contact or not to hold eye-contact with doorstep carolers

rather than her real lyrics “I feel like I'm on dope,” sing “I feel like raping goats” (or maybe “throats”) in the seductive style of Aaliyah’s “Rock the Boat”

“I fucked up” reliably meant for her, coming of age in this cyber age, “I touched myself to him (again)”

drinking your wages

direct knowledge of how many die alone, their terminal struggles among piles of stuff unseen, urges us to share more—smile more

black for anal, sex notches in the form of rubber bands around middle-schooler wrists

feeling bad in pointing out flaws in others makes pointing out flaws in others satisfying

singsong and babbling to eclipse remembrances of blunders bygone

the bum, although sallow and slouched with the rest under the overpass, shines with manifest keenness about the eyes

born with issues

retirement beard

conservationists dunking gulls in a sea of crude; abolitionists writing freed-slave narratives (sell it!)

(sell it!) easing into the market: scribal fonts in the first printed books; buggy shapes in the first motor cars

mild autistic traits

not at home in your name

hiding bouts of hunger-retching

kids sent to school without breakfast

forging the forgeries of the famous forger

a full-body carwash with the gas-station squeegee

bareback in the laundromat, small talk in wait

Christmas-day strip joint

older each day as we watch her remain forever young

a land where teary white “progressives,” the rape-eye-blocking scarf their metonym, are “terribly saddened,” “perturbed,” to see Mexicans, for example, okay with—even honored by—whites wearing their garb

our era’s drive for pill-popping control, each of us striving to be a sanctuary cut away from the complex continuum of forces elemental, is embodiheralded by those circles autistic children—prophets of sorts—tend to crayon hard around their self-portraits

just because we come at things from our own angles and interests does not mean we find in things only what we first put into them

goosebumps and held-back tears when “Eye of the Tiger” booms between each Amway speaker

great feats of prescience build up after years of guesses, most of which we must forget to preserve our faith

plastic taped around windows for winter (pulled back just far enough  for the ac to fit for summer)

that hangdog look of wasting soon after gastric bypass— head too large for the body

coffin below the tree, Christmas morning, for the terminal daughter

if only these starving Somalians knew the power of manifestation boards popular among anorexic Tumblr girls in the US

the beauty of decades back, when tweens hid deep in the closet, was that parents did not fret so much about sleepovers

we laugh at those with taxidermy  even though we bronze baby shoes  and cannot part with our vinyl

astrology is all fun and games for those privileged enough to be born in cocoons of critical acumen, but just think of the crippling impact such magical thinking has on poor blacks already underfed in intellect and atrophied in sense of agency

how a seizure fascinates

hangover cures of more drink

distracted by hunger while your loved one whispers final words

dragged from red-floor sleep in the hotel lobby out into the city winter

failing on the path that was itself the compromise drives home how dumb it was to have gone down it, but only in a sense: there is still time to alchemize it

eye-patches, limps, gimp hands, fucked up teeth

maggot dumpster

yoga-and-whiskey hipsters with Hitlerjugend hair and ukuleles

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is not “natural” behavior even as you Botox wrinkles and take synthetic drugs to avoid “natural” death

business as usual (work, chores, meals) to deny the threat to business as usual

thoughtful nods despite not knowing what was said

white supremacists taking dance classes

bus tours of the holy land for the Velcro-shoed in golf visors

how do these vibrant flowers, vased between us at our table, color your claim that there is no hope?

that squinched face faintly shifted off to the side, its lead eye clenched in recoil, as cigarette smoke tendrils up from the ember (hands busy elsewhere)

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is not what most people do even as you practice the yabajar and avoid sideway cracks and birdwatch at night

the twisting world of the pet fish, the world of its bowl, recedes in early morning hours to just some knick-knack on the shelf

venomous sign language quarrels between parents can be ignored, but the constant accompaniment by the grunts of the deaf can warp a child’s brain

his mother teary under a flamboyant hat, the man-child in diapers intensifies his Stevie-Wonder smiley swaying
to the gospel of the deacon’s laying-on-of-hands healing

pimp offices in twenty-four-hour laundromats

night grass cool between bare toes

why not grapple when all will come to nothing?

masturbating to, licking, Christ’s side wound like a medieval

hopefully one day soon we will facilitate, in our growing progress, more gay kids into sex transition than even Iran does!

from homes that have them show up to school sullied, eye bags and sulky faces

a guest over for dinner, the mother insists upon table manners ill-suited to the family’s squalor

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is not natural behavior even as dolphins—and, of course, our bonobo cousins—are fagulous as all hell

some stay shut up in their rooms, unshrunken by the surroundings

of all the penises cut off ancient statues, at least one— so you would be naive to deny—stimulated an orgasm, a prostate orgasm, in a priest (to say nothing of the nuns)

such a lust for calamity throbs in our culture:  when calling to ask “What’s wrong?,” our first hope (even—no, especially—with family) is to hear of ruin

were it not for the event being captured  on film, there would perhaps be less confusion,  disagreement, about what really happened

that seagulls are habituated to scavenging food from human centers (McDonald’s for fries) is one thing, but bears are as well

husbands late for dinner, a sense of doom over the table, clinks kept few and minute by the kids

would the masterpiece still floor you if you knew the artist to be just your childhood friend?

microwaved babies

a translation of a painting

the fluffiness of street money

dumped after she hit the lotto

an ear kiss still ringing in the ear

looking to the handicapped for a boost

a rotten rowboat merging with the beach

grooming and perfuming to ward off death

the feminine-dandy aspect to the best pimps

strangulation to ensure a pelt free of holes and stains

the dissociation required of the bedwetter at sleepovers

a trust fund of drugs and a gun, a starter-kit for the orphaned son

obtaining consent the way that a member of its own species would

those ecstatic times of highness in that ruining addiction of decades

apple pickers who surf those waves of ripening rolling south

the drowsy dog raises an ear of alertness at the sound of his own fart

dad sucker punching you in the gut just as you are about to beat him for once in driveway basketball

old ladies have preteen freedom from gender demands, except they cannot climb trees as well

deemed a prank by a dispatcher ill-prepared for such trauma, the child’s call to 9-1-1 is for help to dig his dad from the graveyard

scrunched postures before the mirror to feed the eating disorder: laxatives, food restriction, vomiting

just as the coach makes the team run laps for the mistake of one, perhaps we should turn the electrocution dials up even higher on pc-violators by punishing people who merely overhear, say, a fat or blackface joke

the world beyond your plodding ambition

teasing the town idiot

an over-shoulder look toward the encroaching breeze

that it is not us (under)explains our giddy uplift in seeing a car wreck: “Hope they’re ok”

please, do not expect the true mentalist to harness his mystical powers under the negative vibes of scrutiny

awaiting our turn

gusts through wall joints

involuntary autoamputation

pedestrians killed by jumpers

when your shrink kills herself

an I-beam installed as a sculpture

what was done to serve your addiction?

he wishes he was the man he daily mocks

blood ice-pops for cougars in summer zoos

no home to bring the baby to once it comes out

church conceived as a sin-management program

fake-natty poets in the age of artificial intelligence

happy to be the person that you wanted never to be

telling the hesitant hiring manager that you are self-taught

struggling to get dying loved ones to eat despite their refusals

punching the swaddled infant in the dome: “Little nigga ain’t mine!”

food gunk from workday lunch kept face-yuck creamy— quite similar to that cervical cheese of vulvic crevices— in the leatherette folds around her parking-brake handle

slow formation of the belief that abuse does not count as abuse when abusing those without the backbone to stop it

for pussy on-call and a spot from which to deal, street thugs move in with ladies of walker age whose children are too busy to visit

it turns out there is not really any blame to go around: Africans who netted other Africans to sell to whites were bewitched, historians now realize, by white spells

until the shareholders, the company was all about being a platform for free speech

spiders will watch you

a game of catch with a beer bottle  between three homeless men  on the grass and in the sun

violent musical chairs for the blue M&M in the autistic classroom

do emojis spell some need effaced by the non-pictorial language that bloomed in ancient Greece?

fear of oblivion morphing with age to fear of what will be left behind

the lamp still glows its warm yellow even as the window turns glaucous in the first glimmerings of daylight

you demand reparations and special dispensations from a US system you say is “hopelessly corrupted by white supremacy”—so corrupted it would seem any such helping hand would actually be toxic to blacks

pianist tendonitis

serial killer t-shirts

jumpy preschoolers

resurrecting dead clichés

a bum with a voice for radio

lunch alone in a bathroom stall

the dreams of those blind since birth

evicted to the guest bedroom for snoring

free associations converging around the globe

rodeo groupies aiming to rope the trophy cowboy 

watered-down margaritas, gaudy for cruise-line seniors

junk haulers taking their picks of the dead man’s belongings

finned sharks tossed overboard, pulsing gills mocked by dull current

the loved ones with whom you share your works feel worthless thereby, but perhaps that is the whole point?

the world that becomes so small in the myopia of hunger opens up again after some bread

when a funeral can be almost wonderful: families reuniting, crying and sharing memories

windows covered with quilts

over-shoulder glances, sly both ways, before obliging the tween demon who cackles “Fuck me” on her bed

to escape being cornered in a debate, all you need to do now (provided you have the “right” optics) is to tear up over how unsafe your opponent’s transphobia or racism makes you feel

without request or eye-contact, raising one’s feet in the air to make way for the vacuum

lowering the critical-thinking bar, such that the merely possible becomes the probable, invites angels and ETs

incestuous siblings

air-drying after a shower

candles pocketed from wakes

a personality more than a person

personalities magnetic for our paranoia

menstrual pads for bleeding hemorrhoids

a bumblebee bothering airplane passengers

a time to be ruthless and a time to be munificent

let down to find that actual pussy is not high-def bald

ingesting anything so that you do not feel how you feel now

thinking the experience to have been your own when it was not

skateboarders and snow-shovelers versus outcrops in the smooth

uncomfortable around her family from what she revealed after a fight

looking back and forth, from the object to the face of the seer, trying to intersect the thread of wonder

“Such things happen to those people”— a phrase spoken, prayed, across history in denial of their happening to us

sleeping through a religious fast is really devout

longing now to do what was too bothersome to do when loved ones were still here

just a new and quick bang becomes someone to confide in through the struggle of having cheated on your spouse

too crushed by nostalgia— impermanence, in general— to listen to music

debt collectors contacting ex-lovers

the holy land is kept exotic enough to deepen faith, but not so much to be callous to pampered needs (like Doritos)

with all the violence against gays, where were our Purple Panthers, armed in patrol especially of hotbed neighborhoods?

the dolphin jumped his pen for her erect and after (joint) climax nuzzled its nose into her armpit—but still he was raped?

if someone is always listening to you, watching you (even plotting against you), then at least you matter, someone cares

the creaking of the harbor buoy

laughing, but with no malice, when the mentally disabled do something—well, retarded

disorienting the door solicitor with an inhuman refusal ever to take the clipboard held out with a long arm

struck to find the bully’s face most handsome, most bewitching, when he teased, spit, punched

songs making you nostalgic for when you would listen to them foreseeing times they would bring on nostalgia

some lies are so convincing that, even after their exposure as lies, our judgement is questioned for not having believed them

the influence of bad looks on entering a life of crime

the best evidence of white supremacy being alive and well is the lie that it is

art from those who have never fucked up big time

fathers blandished into sand burial at the beach

free associations diverging around the globe

baby showers proven to come too early

night paths to female slave quarters

finding one’s voice in vandalism

sails gone flaccid on their masts

yelling to work up your nerve

tire tests of turtle armor

commemorating failure

burn-barrels for trash

wrecked by success

mangled guardrails

corner hangabouts

environmental exposures, often helped by fatback and sex trauma, will sprout hair on the playing field even at seven

all it takes is a cop’s label (“roach slum”), or a stranger’s look of disgust, to notice— as if for the first time—where you live

playing with old toys, after having just gotten the new one, to prove the new excitement will remain

having achieved your life’s goal, sacrificing health and family for it, all to find waiting not happiness but a bed hard to leave

being comfortable in who you are transcends bodily asymmetry

daycare soil liquefied by seismic shaking

yet another report of foul odors; yet another apartment door jimmied open by firefighters

dumpster-diving for unfinished tubes of oil paint

the facet of hilarity in end-of-life preparation

dark nooks known only to janitors

vigils for teens late for curfew

truck stop drag queens

signs for free dirt

logic klutzes who let the fact that “bad mother” has long been code for “independent wife” convince them they are not bad mothers

might this forest Genesee can, turned up from digging, have been from someone known to us: relatives—ourselves even?

less a package of conscience than one of saving face, the great white parachute descends upon the refugees in wait

a pungent musky-piney-skunky surge of smoke tumbles across the dash and up the windshield to the ceiling, finally to the back toward you— blue-dyed water undulating through the mineral oil of an ocean in a bottle

the soldiers preferred the factory precision of Hanes, but they knew that the knitting of socks for soldiers was more for the knitter’s sake than for their own

air pockets trapped under boats; mercury on tables

adjusting the blanket on the purring child as do TV dads

fathers flexing their biceps, close up for little faces, hoping to earn a boost (knowingly unwarranted)

loving again someone with whom we had spent a lifetime, someone whom we had then stopped loving for a lifetime— that chance, given radical life extension, is on the horizon

voting in line with what you would like to be true, not with what benefits you in your circumstance, is not so laughably idiotic as it is trite to say it is

lost in permanent abstraction

bum beards heavy with rime

altering memories to suit one’s current needs

fawning doctors to ward off crushing news

a land of people offended to extremes of vengeance by mere disagreement

in the sweet spot her panties always go tock-tock

the search for life there introduced life there

ice-skating on Europa

the spitting mouths of desolate seniors, powerless in the face of looming oblivion, abusing their nurses with racial epithets

both are in people’s lives in times of crisis,  but our view is that firemen come to save  whereas cops come to disrupt, hurt, cuff, kill

at least with her death you are free to take swigs straight from the milk carton

offers of water, coffee, sandwiches even to get the installation man to stay as you grope for something to say

the desire to invigorate whale-hunting unconscious among those whose lives are moored to its violent opposition

the tomboy tore gum from her mouth and, once he began to chew, no hesitance remained about holding hands among the trees

afflictions awaiting a name

miscarriages in jars of rubbing alcohol

the phrase “there is no excuse” used as an excuse

hand jobs on church-camp busses

praising lesser ones after spotting a great one to deny what we spotted

enlisting in the war to report the sufferings of boots on the ground

being asked the time as you check a watch that does not work

where does the preacher go, how does he live, when not on his corner?

in our lungs and eyes, ash goes unseen in the air— how did it come to this?

perineum fist-knuckle bloodless from crowning pressure, the cut distant (as if on the crotch of your jeans)

a twilight zone where all are so caught up in their own productions and performances that they are indifferent to everyone else’s

a loggerhead crisis in our time of victim outrage when the term is prevalent in Black English Vernacular (and thus sacrosanct) and yet is a “heteronormative slur” in the LGTBQ community

saving, for what?

discomfort with a fact does not mean that fact is not true, despite what our consumer culture insists upon

taxidermy is construed as a pathetic attempt to hold what is gone, as if our stuffed selves were not our selves—simply in a new phase

dwelling on histrionic conspiracies is the go-to distraction from hunger when street romance is not forthcoming

the Crawford mark of beauty, nauseating to wake up next to each day: brown, topographic

hiding from, while spreading fear of, death simply by talking about it always with the unfazed coldness of an academic

if hidden hands cover up UFOs, and stop us from falling off Earth’s edge, then at least something is in control and watching out for us

are you one to be destroyed by the understanding that all labors are destined for extinction?

feigning disarray and retreat

float tank diarrhea

shout out to the local judges centuries back who, doing what little they could, approved the freedom petitions slaves brought to court

♫“All beef patties with pickles”♫ sung spoken-word black suave in the McDonald’s commercial

treating yourself to a drink for the strength it took to admit you have a problem

companies that sell both the foods that cause diabetes and the pills to control blood-sugar levels

those tasked with searching apartments  for clues to relatives or wills of the dead paired up in threes to discourage theft

cherishing moments with them after news of some tragedy can spoil those moments by means of stares too teary, hugs too tight

HIV-positive orgies

smudged by mystic healers

it is no longer politically correct to call homosexuality (and AIDS) “the white-man’s disease,” but what about depression and suicide or cancer, TB, MS, beat deafness, and the related two-left-feetism?

repressing sex helps distract us: beneath surfaces we thus find loins instead of oblivion

the split-second decision, as best friend of a star stomping out his wife, to block the kids from leaving to call the cops

however much despair dwindles from the thought that we can all be great artists, might despair grow if the consumer class dwindles thereby?

as the ascetic gets good at his renunciation, builds up enough stamina to be awe-inspiring, he feels drawn back to the world he scorns

he grew up thinking you could not be an artist if you were right wing

dents and holes attesting to passion

loincloth tribesmen playing bingo in the village hall

bums fistfighting over who gets to work the corner for change 

eager to give your immigrant parents a day at hipster springs, when they simply want a free creek
where food and alcohol is not prohibited

gangs and nations might even sell weapons to their own enemies were money as central as people say—but that never happens

offered billions to shoot your pet, loved as a human—its classification as “animal” becomes a big factor

intrigued by those who lost it all, in fear that we are on the same path—in fear that deep down we want to be, in fact

extra attention given to the child in public, playing with him and kissing him on the playground before school, arouses suspicion: signposting a happy relationship seems dangerous

everyone knows that all black people—lest they prove to be Uncle Clarences—are through the lens of racism alone to process any obstacles they encounter in life

is five dollars for a splinter of the cross a good deal?

it is almost always merely “almost to the day,” but what matter is it even if it is “to the nanosecond” when nature is so rich?

dysfunctional art written off as just there to shock, as if its cradle were not this land of poverty, opiates, prison

paying him so little, you duck situations where you might be forced in his presence to address him as the crew foreman he is

the desire to ask if you were a good mother is not strong enough to risk the child calling up memories hoped to have been forgotten

how beautiful it is that not only a culture, but even a mere tick, can shape your identity

subjects unsuitable for fine art

ill-tempered flips of magazine pages

many are not going to like sex work anymore than many like regular work, but in the end surely it is work

knowing that you have to turn back but still going a few paces forward in hope perhaps just to smooth the transition

reasonableness described as skepticism in a culture where skepticism is pejorative serves to sicken that culture even further

that stage where the urge is still present to shake off the soothed feeling formed from the robot stroking your teary face

do you really wish your rapist would have just killed you?

perhaps whale-oiled up, Sarah Baartman no doubt was “asked” to perform on her European tour proto-versions of what would become the twerk

whereas violent lyrics in rock are “fictional” violent lyrics in rap are “autobiographical” and so usable against the singer in court!?

an ad—say, for Interstate batteries— triggering the jingle of the competition: ♫ “Built to last . . . Duralast” ♫

driving right on by the homes of long unseen family and friends unaware of your being in town

white (and black) men demoralized for not being black in the bedroom

finding yourself really interested after years of what you realize now  was only faked interestedness

remorse indicates that what you did was not bad enough to be blocked from mind

liver spots grow on the beach—bodies leak blood milk urine

painful breast pumps from formula companies

teens stroking often to their birth films, collapsing to the side in guilt

the corner beggar, querulous about “the fuzziness,” insults the technique behind the muffler you knitted him

drawn to male lovers driven to drop dreams for yours, but then repulsed  by the deflated selves that result

people cry about the hypocrisy of states where guns are legal and dildos are not, but both laws stem from male insecurity

only fakes bend spoons as debunkers do

♫“Transgenders— more than meets the eye”♫ (sung in the Transformers theme)

the parts between the big events that make life worth living—how do you resolve the ambiguity of reference here?

tears streaming after his death not so much from loss, but more so to prove—to yourself, most of all—your being worth his great love

even if life would be intolerable without tragedy, such tragedy need not be in the form of injustice

enjoying simply the dramatic tones of their quarrel, unable to make out any words through the motel wall

ripping phone books in half for Christ

troll-farmed by enemy countries to believe what we do

transfixed in strange postures

the eyes of the child in porn

rehearsed apologies never performed

the hands-on-the-hips of exhaustion

small talk with those whom you have already fucked

more likeable after the coma than before

is it arrogant to pursue things that interest no one?

the medalist mouths the anthem of her country on the podium, faking unknown bits for cameras

the lecturer’s vibrance being met with student apathy gives the scene— lighthearted, at first glance—a troubling air

a dark heap of insect bodies in the glass dome cover of the ceiling-light bulb

talk about them often enough and the events of your history seem to turn numb, unreal 

to heal—is that why you reflect on how torn up those who love you must have been, and must still be, about what they did?

mocking the superstitions of a culture about which we learn from the descendants of those controlled by such superstitions

the more aware of how good it can be, the more some artists are tortured

mistaken for what one is

ransacked cadavers

that rogue sock turning Klansman sheets blue in the wash

when maharishis turn out to be just dirty old men

suited up for a night out, his wife small-talking the sitter downstairs,  he scribbles his rushed idea

the scalpel jab sends spray ten feet from the back cyst then milked of what seems mashed potatoes

it being a fight to stay true to her as it is, how much worse is it, really, to mess around now and then?

bored because fear keeps you  from doing anything, but fearing  so as to keep from getting bored

you cannot be an alcoholic, of course,
if you do yoga, live vegan, and can tell notes of tobacco from notes of oak

pieces of taxidermy  banged up and dented from fits of passion

distraction from distraction

shooting yourself through the mouth from fear of the death process

luring cats to you with that human-snake hiss of a long alveolar S interspersed at irregular points with subtle bilabial Ps: “sspsspspspsssspssspss”

if someone turns at the urinal to piss all over your legs, are you one to move (“What the hell?”) or one to piss back?

battle entrenched long enough that citizens keep selling their wares and sitting at cafes— bombs and thuds of rubble background thunder

back after the devastation, all markers to orient yourself (signs, stores, trees) gone

envious applause of the failed pitcher’s bravura at the carnival games—milk bottle pyramid, speed pitch—passing through his hometown

hacking at the frost abloom in the freezer with reverse-gripped butterknife

wondering whether marital affairs disappear from the record after a certain length of time

genuine surprise when extreme disasters do not result in citizens repenting their gay and gay-enabling ways

together under one roof again, but no longer close

nostalgia for then, now—now despite sensing that nostalgia will later grow for this now from which nostalgia snatches you

crucial discoveries—contentious or at least growth-spurring— shake us, and so universities—centers of discovery—implode as soon as they start sheltering learners from being shaken

dumped immigrants cover the wharf

locavore hipsters with artisanal green tattoos and year-round scarves

smashing the storefront window with bricks in broad day, and waiting curbside for the cops since there is no food and mere tarps tied to light poles fail to block the cold

thinking it will get better throughout the process of it getting worse

we need contagion— strangers draw words from our mouths

ragged husband and wife, each other’s cane, visit their now citified son

trying to confirm that you are indeed hated, and that you do deserve death, with a suicide too gruesome for loved ones to handle 

that the artist’s foreground chair is empty in his painting of wife and daughter at brunch will mean more with his death just weeks after

that essence of skeeviness—think: cult leader, orange salesmen with combovers—common to both for-profit prison and for-profit college

winter coats at dinner

teaching your kid to drive for when you are too drunk

she turns the gazing Jesus back around after she poops

alone, the preadolescent boy kneels to the humped mound of fresh soil— the girl, much younger, holds her hat

that goody-goody bum who struts about the underpass camp as if he is in this just to help

abandoned by family— the loathsome illness too revolting to bear

he stands by in the heat, puffing  a cigarette, while she struggles  to collapse the stroller into the car

the point of living the years that vanish from all recollection is that those times make you who you are at each present

challenges lift the wormtongue spell of pessimism

civic-center security enforce crowd silence  as teenaged forearms ripple clickety-clacks in Rubik’s cube contests unintentionally surreal

lost ones sometimes fall so hard for each other that, from gratitude and from fear of going back, they block each other from uncovering the way

kids burying their faces in the skirts of their mothers when spoken to by strangers

a dashboard ashtray, glutted with butts, tapped clean against a rusty rocker panel, midmorning, onto the A&P parking lot

a lethal bonfire collapse, then all this talk of “Aggie Family”— only the vilest sue their family

a Wal-Mart employee, lowest on the rung, makes the long walk across the lot, head down, to tell the family they will have to move on

the wild eyes of the ones who somehow survived

boys sticky-back to sticky-back in the shared bunk

a land where it “spirit murders” blacks to teach them math

being worked on by a confident expert— of love, say—is a nightmare for those not wanting to face that they are objects

when you learn that the great dancer engaged  in wartime bayonet combat, you cannot help  but think of the finesse with which he killed

watch out for the venomous vengeance of those who insist, “I can never be, be what I am, having seen what I’ve seen”

that funny feeling inside, that accolades are in part designed to drain recipients, may undermine going after new projects

one pink slip given out by a tranny boss has a God-hates-trannies campaign carry on for a lifetime, and spread down generations

leaning upon those four touchdowns just like a show, the high-school hero lives as a shell, yes, pumping gas at Shell

courtesy sacred salt sweetens the online healing-crystal sale

instead of blocking from mind the death of a dream, why not commemorate it with a dream urn?

at the feet of the great pimps you learn to cut women off from all but you and mix beatings with effusive love

used for therapeutic riding by day and Washingtonian exploits by night, the horse knows father and disabled son quite well

blood flow redirected, more each year, away from interests that give life zest and merely to muscles for manual labor

just a mite more mental firepower and he would see that Satan’s words to him “All it takes is the least evil being to destroy heaven” are true merely in the trivial sense that it is impossible for evil to be in heaven

life got in the way, but did you put it there?

Amway cassettes and VHSs horded in boxes for years, the guilt pitches concerning their power still at work

disheveled to affect one too deep for concern with glamour

the strangeness of a view being the chief motivation for endorsing it

asking your foreman to put your son on at the sawmill

watching yourself conversate in the barbershop mirror

invited only because you were standing with the people the inviter wanted to invite

methadone addicts high on job sites running circular saws

mid-career give-ups who find themselves brave by noting that taking to the streets for justice is a privilege of those in retirement

hypothermic hobos undressing in the streets

one who enjoys the art of boxing so much that a personal stake in one beating the other would actually detract from the viewing thrill

Armageddon “on the horizon,” the God-teen wonders whether she should continue to practice going without TV and cookies, or simply enjoy them while they last

whites are blamed for thinking that all blacks look alike, until such thinking proves convenient—accounting, as it does, for all the Tupac sightings, for example

what is the true target of our rage when we rage at the dog gnawing in bliss on the dug-up bones of a loved one?

worry beads

daycare death

sea-kelp grace

poor but spoiled

the landlord’s knock

rashes from corpulence

recanting without regretting

bequeathing fleas to the next tenant

individuals are folds of a great ribbon

those with “kill myself” on their to-do list

school rumors of that kid who swung over the bar

the spread of the door-screen tear as the children grow

looking down to find that you are wearing mismatched shoes

insisting that his blind lover wash her hands before feeling his face

those who simply love big dick versus those who really do love horses

allowing something not even you to become an integral part of your identity

a bong brings them together after more than a decade  silent since all those repressed “bad touches,” and yet Daddy’s high compliments grow tinged with flirtation

that forward lean of haulers, a strap across the chest of each, as they draw the barge into shallows

fine with not being the first, or likely the last, brought up here at sunset for a kiss(ing fuck) on lover’s perch

discomposed by those misfortunes  from which we cannot rescue loved ones  not for the reason that we tell ourselves

it seems our duty to savor each bite as we nod with our toast and caviar at black-and-whites of world poverty

too hooked on the junk food of special dispensations for blacks to stop finding—well, concocting—proof of the mega-industry lie of white supremacy’s reign

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

condemning gay sex on grounds that it cannot result in babies even as you unload again and again in a wife after full hysterectomy

when rock-bottom is death

there bright and early, before the liquor-store clerk arrives to lift the storefront riot door

what do we hope to detect when we show our kids tragedy footage—when we stress the horror, watching them watch the screen?

family businesses destroyed from the addition of their land to the list of superfund sites

the thought It’s just a hole, take care lest it reveal everything to be just a—blank

a teenager’s “devil music” tuning out that drunk devil all-too-real downstairs

what is good mental health in your community?

negative signs of illnesses and injury that mothers look for (fever, blood) console her, holding the coma hand

our new power to record can keep nostalgia well-fed and ourselves debilitated, perhaps even watching our younger selves watching

taking it out on the funeral director

those who grope for the brass ring in hope that all will then be okay, but are let down after reaching it because death is what they were after all along

if either is worthy of being wiped out, it is not the conman but the smug one who really thinks that he is a sorcerer

people still lose themselves in play, knowing there to be no chance to make the NBA

mugs held between sweater sleeves at the fire

lead convulsions

yard-sale prescription glasses

because the dread of death is lingering— that is how we still manage daily tasks with the dread of death lingering

warm baths before school from a dish sponge dipped in coffee-pot creek water

condemning gay sex on grounds  that Leviticus unequivocally forbids it even as you toss pigskin footballs and savor lobster and trim your beard

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

condemning gay sex on grounds that most animals do not do it even as you use an electric toothbrush and navigate with GPS and fly in planes

made for you and me

thoughts turning hair grey

straight-razor tucked in the bra

what is left in the fridge after death

breasts that can be thrown over shoulder

furrows cross the grain of the deejay’s corduroys

workdays spent building with packets of sweetener

driving around all day getting pain prescriptions filled

those for whom the smaller the talk the better the buoy

rattrap testicles

imitating drunkenness while drunk— droop-eyed slurs of belligerence, say— to show friends you are good to drive

the relief of now being able to cut from your reading list, in feel-good superciliousness, any “dead white male” who uses—indeed, even just quotes—the word “nigger”

he has served as a Lancelot to a Guinevere (intimate lover, protector) and as an Arthur to a Guinevere (status-grantor, fathering guide), but now he is a Merlin (knight and king in one man of magic)

a boy pieces his mother together from traces: scent fading on clothing; voice cut short on the answering machine (“don’t leave a messa—”); stories from those who knew her

an audible crack as the tailbone fractures in childbirth

not wanting to admit, even to yourself, your hope only to die in your sleep already

casual explanations more shaded than before— unexpected side orders

those sentenced to be hung forced in the meantime to carry out hangings

as trans people become more accepted, expect the number of female perpetrators of violent rape to skyrocket (like female track-and-field records)

how romantic would it be if, in perhaps some spacefaring near future, indigenous living skills preserved in marginal pockets end up saving us from the implications of the rapaciousness that so shrank the indigenous!

if to have a title on a poem is to treat the reader as dumb, where should the cutting stop?

a self-help book for how to open up to self-help books

his blank face, as he bottles the infant in his arms, speaks of submission to his fate

bodily deformities (goiters, humps, lop-shoulders) taken as signs of evil character

waterways of yellow fury run over bridges, but evacuees first load their cars to the limit

we are on the cusp of a dark day where we will ban even a genius from millennia past (Aristotle, say) merely because someone “problematic” likes him

arms-out entries from high cliffs: water-bruising

painters who seem apprenticed on separate planets

the more predators the better our vision, typically

a mother’s bra— booby traps for the three year old

avoiding each other’s eyes to deny the threat we have been denying

if you are smug enough to cut from your reading list all masterpieces that include “problematic” words— well, there was little hope they could have saved you

stealing jewelry from your doddering grandma

asking if you were a good father in hope that, even if unspeakables come to mind, the child will give the decorous response

the wasted look from hunger helps for pretending to be a child when asylum decisions are made

shooting your own leg for a name

the eyes of a friend from whom you have been long separated reveal how bad you have slipped

mere fleshbots, what aggressions would be left if we push aside those rooted in withdrawal: withdrawal from drugs, food, water, oxygen?

“African Pride” brand hair relaxer

intercontinental ballistic missiles

the down syndrome head between your hands  to force eye contact, you speak its full name as if to connect with some captive inside

phlegm released into dusty dirt— squid, silky flour

the due dad hopes for a boy so that no lust may awaken

the Fishkill Wiccopee child who lost her cornhusk doll in what became Wal-Mart

passing things down being such a primal joy, no wonder the insane lengths gone by parents of those who accept only the host culture

not dying even though you were pulled from the rest home to your daughter’s family  only because you were supposed to die

the point where you no longer wish your rapist would have killed you

uglier than violence is the attitude according to which nothing is worth violence

reiki, magic stones—all bullshit, but the placebo might count for something

in recognition, your no-longer puppy galumphs to your old lover—reuniting you in ignorance of the cause of rupture

the child’s love for his maid transcended color, but soon enough the world convinced him she was just his tool

your wife’s ex shoots you a wink at dinner  and, with a flex of brows, nudges his head her way—yes, as if to salute some man-bond

femme fatale seduction frustrated by the autistic failing to read her signs

suicide by cop

barred from parks

practicing for midlife

trees gutted by lightning

basslines vibrating chest cavities

live newscaster gun-mouth-icides

gushy orgasms throughout the rape

the money it takes to be who you are

fish for supper but only if we get lucky

pinned down and told you deserve it

marching to oblivion, bitter toward one another

internet enlivening the worst in us, but the best too

the boy, insane from fear, swings wild through his tears

evicted families telling the children “We’re going camping”

God hates Hard Shell Baptists who are overweight and pasty white

power turned the smart man into a smiling script-reading animatronic

how can those so warped by hatred love the same music and movies as us?

a land where we wonder what Hitler’s last name was

stones on window sills to keep out evil

parents in the crowd, mouthing the awaited lines of the play

vanilla millennials “tatted” with affordable exoticness

mimicking down

the nausea of watching the most heinous crimes become forgotten

Asians of age as stand-ins for girls on the cusp of curves is—well, just not the same

the side that wanted to preserve the true account stood stronger than the side that wanted to make a story

tedium entwined in what is most exciting, worthwhile: making school lunches and waiting at airports; restringing the guitar and waking up to the same face

one turns, and so does the other—bed connection

high-pressure sales of made-to-order balloon dogs

pain meds more for the observers than the IVed dying

she knew, yes, it would only spotlight how vulnerable our lives are, and so she asked not to be told the life-saving information

labeling people “lonely” for preferring fantasy over flesh is failing to grasp the joy  of company with one’s multitudinous self

esteems shattered for life from what was for the budding insult comic mere playful practice on friends

if you were not so arrogant as a young person, likely you would not have been in so many circumstances gifting you with so many humbling experiences

watching you struggle to budge his desk, the client dangles cash in your direction, indifferent as to whether you were faking

rival Televangelists

cops confused by the good guns

perfumed for the lone grave visit

temporary moats in the beach sand

it is easy to forget that sniping is an art

just the blanket in a mound, not a person

if only we knew what the threat of prison stopped

erectile dysfunction surgery to stop a pending divorce

disaster films taken as escapes, not as calls to plan ahead

so many mothers gnawing their babies to death on this planet

we hear about the benefits of dreaming, but what about the costs?

harrowed by that callous residuum of superglue on the tip of the finger

why say that our reaching out for reassurance is not a reaching out for love?

justifying an inordinate impulse to create, family untended to, through the repeated self-delusion that you would be a murderer were it not for art

the full-balls urgency with which you try to get your kid down on your date night only invigorates the little fuck

the cocktail wiener— shafting back and forth through labia whose ends are Krazy-glued

rock frontmen confronting the question, after a great first show, as to how they can replicate such frenzy on stage three hundred more times

selfies with the beached humpback

lunch in the shade of a gas pump

years now after the tween went missing, her mom still honors the privacy of her diary

generations of personal histories more and more built just of screen reruns

jiggling unlocked locks after knocks

ruffling newspapers in the stall after someone enters the bathroom

an expensive resting place, but it has a view

those memories now noticeably crumbled

hungry, grass and bark stand out in a new light

at your high school reunion your successes—degrees, prestige— still proved to be no matter

pretending to take in forks of salad in anorexic circles, but of course making the pretending conspicuous

displeasure derived from the good fortunes of others

engagements undermined by STDs

shackled up from ankles, knees, waist, and each other

chainsaws revving and buzzing after the storm

a land where the gathering is wrong, unjust, if there are not enough blacks in it

cosmetics, although seen through soon enough, buy time for the other to find strengths that eclipse the flaws—but so too does lying about your career

phasing through liquids and metals too, waves (high-pitched) have dogs howl in ache over a minute before structures crumble from The Big One

in a barn, forsaken long ago, the hair of the nude is coiled tight around a rifle bayonet

NWA bumping through an anachronistic boombox during that barn train: “She only fourteen and a ho, but the bitch suck dick like a specialized pro!”

frisson from the Paraguayan’s whistling

the morgue sheet rising below the navel

sober socials

rats belly-up in the flood current

how a smile alters one’s voice

waiting for her to come of age from when she could barely walk

tanned by sun, not from trying; strong from work, not from gym— indefinite, intangible differences

unable to remember the places, the people, we had insisted would never be forgotten

what makes the past sweet no matter how sad (confinements and beatings even) is that there was good too—and your days have dwindled

were there such a thing as insanity, would completely unfounded hope—say, the lifer’s hope of release—be a good sign?

friction resulting from the two being on different levels of outness

who is more erotic than a blues guitarist?

incensed by the cliché “schoolings” of the charlatan wise

one’s one clean shirt

“screwing up” Mars like we “screwed up” Earth

a rubber toy to bite for withdrawal

since the man rather be dead than dying, his family did not regret not having insisted on a hospital when the fever flowered

that precious hour when children find the vacuity, the futility, of their games to extend outward—and outward

wanting out of the suicide already too far in: hanging, the desk just beyond foot’s reach

grandma would not care that you cheat her in cards

is it ironic to be livid when people do not detect your irony?

generic wax crayons—what oil-based cheese slices are to milk-based

tripwire guns to stop grave robbers

telemarketing for adult toys

packed in tight on beaches as uncommunicative as workday elevators

resigned workers sway with the bus, this way and that, while tourists—tense through the city—remain alert and erect

wondering whether it would seem prudish to drop-cloth the place in plastic and give out
gift bags of condoms for each orgy member

using tricks when strength fails is a strength

remember when it was cool, rather than a trauma worthy of instant job loss, to stumble upon your professor on campus past midnight playing the bongos naked?

reprimanding the boy, but in a tone that reflects delight in his tortures—pinches, plucks, pricks— of the Down-syndrome nuisance also in her care

digital editing to restore the human jiggle Botox robbed from the forehead

saying bad things about those we love as a conscious expression of our love rather than as something to take back

with the advent of artificial intelligence, walls and shelves perhaps would no longer become bare were we to reject the work of artists with so-called “moral shortcomings”

sleep and food merely as means to fight the straitjacket

coming ones who will not get to enjoy the solace of knowing that their caretakers will be dying soon enough as well

the sight of the death metal band of mentally disabled Finns makes one laugh, become alive, say “Yes” to life

that stage where, for each couple swinging a child between them in a parking lot, you think to yourself, “All happy now until the divorce”

the early rise of the old

how much time was spent choosing what to watch?

the teacher’s interception of a slipped note

Sterno dinners

school cashiers taking lunch trays from kids who cannot pay

cheating as the next thing after marriage and kids to block out the horror

her complaints about not remembering enough served to distract her from the agony of passing, which would only throb harder had she remembered all

blame and praise to sustain hope in life having purpose, in our mattering

even if we made them this way, now they want to cook for us and blow us with little thought of reciprocation

loved ones who say, with pity in their throats, “Don’t you have damn aspirations?” even as you have been busy with them the whole time

expect soon a bloom of transgender toddlers among Hollywood stars, desperate as they are for causes—having peered behind the curtain

beached whales euthanized with dynamite

untested rape kits collecting the dust of decades

kids crossing borders alone

maharishis get a pass on being dirty old men among those—farmers’-market whites, especially feminists, are best—for whom they are exotic

what you forget makes you in two ways: it defines you now and back then it factored into your bloom

barring money considerations and the like, do not marry someone unable to bridge intimate silences with their eyes into yours

“Keep these red stones on you at all times, son, because one day mom will leave you in the woods  with nothing but a few crumbs of bread, the bitch”

the waiting of toll-keepers and store clerks, emptiness opening

empty rockers creaking on porches

that false stretch of limbs before getting up to leave another’s company

avoiding the man who recites facts about you that you have waited too long to tell him are false

writing to a person, needing him to see at the time, but never showing him in the end

feel-good rationalizations, brewed up in bed between the both of you, the morning after  sleeping with the spouse of a friend buried yesterday

mega-vendors do not exude that desperation that has you
guilty at the farmer’s market

people who point out your inadequacies, and thereby gift you with potential pathways to enhancement, are often not your enemies

the snap, the pluck, of a fishing net lifted empty from the ocean

where the flame goes when extinguished is where you go

breastfeeding her ailing father

clear tracks from tears down dirty cheeks

routine abortions packaged as blood baths

grieving truant grieving

octopus colors reflecting its dreams of hunting, of evading

the courage of the doctor who drove a catheter from his arm to his heart to show it could be done on humans

birth control, over time, could clear the evolutionary slate enough to open us to sexual relations with our siblings

to do your own research on everything is a waste of time as well as a slap in the face to the experts who sacrificed their lives

if beggar is your accustomed role, then getting what you beg for might result in your undoing

a land where truth and goodness and expertise is a function of entertainment value

he comes sooner than he wanted but not so soon that the other is pissed

the gratification of watching a clothes dryer spin itself to pieces, not stopping until just a motor—how pathetic, we think

beaches so white they hurt the eyes

entertaining ourselves to death

young in every photo because she dies young

everlasting wipe—the culprit: a mere deer pebble

a land where we think, if only by analogy, water is there for there to be fish

kept alive in flashbacks

grow better: disrespect ideas, not people

the reasoning behind what you believe matters whether or not you are right, since that reasoning suggests what you are going to say about the next matter and so whether you should be trusted

saying that determinism cannot be true since we make choices (which we clearly do) is as uninformed as when Samuel Johnson says he has refuted Berkeleyan idealism merely by kicking a rock

her home is such that the child stands, stuck, in a next-door patch of woods after a slow meandering from the bus stop

shooting nostril whisker— a wild onion weed with bulblet root to incisor

cheap whiskey shots down the throat of the tranquilized pit-bull that terrorized the small town

algorithm-fed what is best for keeping human attention—the best being wild theories, outrage, division

fleeing her—his?—advances after spotting male genitalia

the crush’s name repeated over notebooks and record covers

all passwords still her name years after the divorce

things seem simple when we do not attend to them

thorough consideration of junk mail near death

a land where disagreement is considered indecent

literal chill pills for elementary-school behavior problems

cutting off the goose’s neck with a dull Swiss Army

leaving the rest of us behind on a world they ruined, now close to uninhabitable even for roaches like us, the superrich blast off in shoals over just a few years

interest and ability and temperament (not just institutional discrimination)— let those be considered at least possible variables in why so few of group A (Chinese or women) are in career x (boxing or Alaskan king crab fishing)

nonsense on the notepad  as just a therapist’s way  to run down the clock

the thought they must have real jobs checks your feeling of superiority before the works of so many lesser artists

a slave surplus allows for brutalities, bodies chained to food-shit-work spots, without worry about diminished output

those who play, relax, clean up in good conscience only once they put in hours toward their art

just because you will—must—become something does not render any less real the sacrifice of all that you could be to what you will be

liking a gift only because of the love the giver put into picking it out

cancelling others who conjure up our problems instead of working to fix our problems

seen from the side, an arc of pick scratches stands out on the guitar’s patina

some complain about there being no away to get to anymore while others make an away out of what they have

solemn apology for even a grave wrong makes you look good: it gives you gravitas,  genuineness as a human in the fight

striving for the right blend of whatever— words, paint, notes—so as to capture what you have sensed or felt or thought

stuttering because you are so shy or so shy because you stutter?

Ouija boards to draw poetry from a different portion of yourself

infants are always right, not college students

he stutters because he feels entitled to demand the words to come out at once, and is frustrated when they fail to meet his impossible demand

devotion to God or to country  are the typical ways by which  we dig ourselves out from disgrace

men and women divided into different spheres of labor and concern

farting away pent up bloat and taking off the itchy wig as soon as you step inside

“Yep, just like your thumb, Princess”

hung in the morning, fresh with life

the first tune, however small, to haunt someone’s head

papier-mâché wall repairs

shivering oneself warm

ducking eyes in want of late rent

so many dreams, desperations, amassed in crowds

imam snores amplified throughout his city, the prayer mic still on

thoughts fed by the sun

through the blinds you watch her, home from the conference with your teacher, crying eye-liner over the steering wheel

cleaning out your dead loved one’s apartment— from Chinese takeout menus and fridge magnets to diaries read, dirties sniffed, and shirts tried on

before curves, she was allowed  to get muddy with her brother  in shorts and a t-shirt

gluten-free hipsters magic the rotting relics of industry, the bombed-out ghost factories, into wine-swirl galleries and million-dollar lofts

stunned that it comes from you, that there could be such an unwilled intensity harbored within you, the surge of tears comes once again unsuspected

the bunk leader at Boy-Scout camp coaching the scrawny killer in private not to be shy about how he looks naked

aware of how open to ridicule his pink hair has him, the teen in the high-school hallway resists the urge to look down with red face

the one always there for the bartender’s last call

painters using Parkinson’s twitches to their advantage

meditate on all the people who share your problem

cynicism for succor against the absurd

attachment to your melancholy

dying on a run

we all share that we have yet to die

fleeing the state to escape the drug

can change your sex legally but not your age?!

going through life never seeing, let alone hugging, a dead human in the raw

said in 2010: “most adults who will die next week within our borders know, like us, who ‘Shamu’ is”

that your lawyer was a true friend was clear in that she threw you a birthday party you did not want

a picture of the subject made clearer by means of a caricature anatomically impossible

that need behind our pressing the artist to provide some profound raison d’etre for his productions

mosquitoes daring citronella borders— heat and C02 from preggos

human milk not curding with lemon juice

thigmotropic creatures— swaddled babies, creviced roaches

art prizes confer status and, in many, a boldness to make pronouncements beyond even one’s purlieu of expertise

our constant micro-movements— twitches, adjustments, fiddlings— unrepressed from mind on weed

the same disgust felt thinking of a woman mounted by a dolphin is felt thinking of a white woman mounted by a black man—well, at least still in some pockets

death as an excuse to splurge on memories, snacks, TV, porn, rage

pendulous jowls

one can count the waves in a painting of the sea

we are in such an uncharitable age of entitled victimhood that to offer S some reasons for why R actually might not have intended to offend S is violent speech against S, a rejection of her lived experience, of her truth

however highly you speak of your coaxing enchantments, she was down from the start, Mr. Magic Mike, if she showed up baby bald

masturbating before working out how to feel about porn clips found— exhumed, more like?—of your niece

the dog with the dangling eye fights on for its betting master

keepsakes given out in hope, at bottom, to live on

urine breath on the sidewalk visible under flickering neon

church bell tolls muffled by untrammeled snow

giggles from undocumented infants in the processing camp

a rusted swing creaks against the whistle of a sluggish freight train in the distance

a moss-covered gravestone touched by the light of dead stars

the clinical detachment of dead-eye doctors—a taste now of the embalming table

horizon thunder breaking the cemetery silence

wrinkled bills for a needle fix that will have her maggot bloated in August sun

in a time of so little porn, her acting abilities would have gone underappreciated

the monstrosity of he who hates you without considering you a monster

head cocked against the violin, he eyes you from a swarming sea of subway faces

no longer does the smell of gasoline call to mind that electric first kiss— her memories now as fragile as dreams

replicating hurtful objects—the worst from architecture’s past (gas chambers, say)— while their (would-be) victims still live

that connection between high-school classmates— special in having been before spouse and kids and in somehow being there after

to be counted among the best—that is one thing, but what features (perhaps despair-inducing, genocide-engendering) must a work of art have to be counted among the worst?

meltwater carving chutes through blue glaciers

addiction seen as an attempt to solve a problem

terminated merely for mentioning those vetted but “hurtful” statistics

Amazon placebos to fill the void of God’s death

donkey show opening act— masked wrestlers toddler side to side in waddle run

hermit crabs with water-bottle shells, kids playing on beaches of broken up plastic

smacking yourself in the forehead  to show self-disappointment for the one who expected you to remember  

being selected for a prize gives peers a chance, after a few bottles of celebratory cabernet, to open up about how you were a bad choice

creation done in rebellion against the absurdity would seem to tolerate museum fires more so than creation done in denial or ignorance of the absurdity

the post-shoot interview, where the starlet tells the camera how much fun she had, makes the gagged-and-bound gang-bang okay

out of warring parties A and B, trust not the party that says that person X—whom it knows spends critical and creative energy showing the senses in which both A and B are right—belongs to an extreme sect of the other party, a sect aiming to obliterate it

museum visits for extra credit

to judge is to love, but those of us scared to be loved are prone to find this false

some prisoners carry out the special duties of which they have been put in charge proud, as if laboring for their own sake

lowering the likelihood of making it,  members of the garage band do the drugs  that make them feel as if they made it

our bodies breakdown, but we acclimate as the prison tightens—even celebrating the new paths opened by the breakdown

shaken out from the motel sheets to swim through the air

fear of making the mistake that will get others hurt

rapid blinking to stifle the formation of tear drops

the credit card bill for the taxi ride of death

when forgetting keeps a group down

various stages of putrefaction

encouraged by your Ambot superior to skip a mortgage payment to attend the next jumbotron Amway function

there was a time when he cared  whether his swears were audible as he careened down the street

the security of having one’s back against a wall, knowing that no one  can watch you or take you from behind

dolphins use your limbs to rub their genital slits, but most prefer when you do the work for them

when you go on a hike or thumb through photos to find lost inspiration, inspiration is back just then (although perhaps not to a satisfactory degree)

paintings in flux: acids changing the blush of her face

strangled by the tie, knowing that the job is not for you

our grudges deepen when we find them unrequited

butterflies fluttering around jaguar scat

sly sips from the Aquavelva flasked in an inner pocket

entering the rematch, confidence tainted from the last bout

were it not for airbrake hiss now and then, the drone of the idling tour bus might fit so well with the mood of the Zen garden

the danger of calling a part of you “traitor” (say, the limb that tends to cramp) is that the label might have you neglect the effort to integrate it

trying to be unaffected suggests our being affected,  but the one for whom we act unaffected—ourselves  or someone else—need not know of our trying

afraid of jungle life not even wanting any conflict (jaguars and anacondas), any yet neglecting falling death sticks

fag millionaires in the world of art collection

cocked eyebrows

our first thought is that the approacher is out to sell something

dug obscenities sanded out of school desks

cops policing places they do not live 

were not the idea that anything goes bound to the idea that each of us is an artist, the world would be sadder

those rarely around people, having to muster all their energy  to be as they should be around them

you have what you came for, but there is a need to stay put and watch both the TV cook taste her creation and the porn star shoot his load

one movie on the television and another on the computer while on the smartphone texting and searching for a boredom cure

five dollars for a splinter of the cross— while from one viewpoint too good to be true, is a complete rip-off from another

when one is nothing but one’s uniform

was the desire to settle for less, not go for the top, truly the desire for power over small ponders?

is your wanting to be x— thin, drug-free—really your wanting to be the one who wants to be x?

pick-your-own pickled pigs feet next to the bodega cash register ran out of town by hipster influx

with the lust for elephant tusk so high, fittest are those elephants born with a tuskless mutation

the pallor of obsessed faces

what stays silent under hellos and goodbyes

outsourcing to an AI chatbot the toil of crafting Dad’s eulogy

dying just after stocking up in bulk

clubbing the fearcrobatic fish to stillness

the stroked head dozing in its mother’s lap

an international star in the psychic circuit

a washed-up celebrity clinging to relevance through TV ads once beneath her

so many masters of obsolete practices: we have been preparing for AI

wanting loved ones to behave as if you are not dying

if rape includes any unwanted activity involving genitalia, birthing can itself be rape

her parent blacked out each night  from drink, the child feels proud to tuck herself in at decent hours

having outsourced to an AI chatbot the toil of crafting Dad’s eulogy, your brother merely said “But that thing is soulless!”

other things equal, the one oblivious to her beauty, seeing herself as neither beautiful nor ugly, has greater beauty

you cannot tease “Your momma’s on welfare” when everyone’s mom is

children change us: a bumper sticker— a flag one especially—was never our thing until their newfound US spirit

clueless about how to answer the “reflection questions” appended to your own art in the college textbook

wine purple-stained places nibbling teeth had lip-skin flayed

really really really smart tend to be those who respond, “But that’s just a hypothetical; I deal in reality”

did they truly believe they were communicating with jungle gods through their mega structures or were they—like all maters—just peacocking?

pink-sock prolapse of her rectum

relics of the spouse

a smell sweet from poison in the milk cellar, rat teeth gnashing in death

when something works against you for reasons incomprehensible (life—this—some say is a good example), even just saying so can be escapist

could the conscious awareness that makes pain so much more terrible for us than fish be used to control it, make us not go mad?

strength to be your best summoned up through recognizing the nobility— the glory—of your opponent

if only you truly accepted that you are not the center of it all, you would have little issue tackling just one issue in the world instead of panicking before the countless doors open to you

black homosexuals singing gospel

gay marriage, interracial kids; stay-at-home dads, choose-your-own-bathrooms; a black president, a female candidate

the feel of absolution in confession makes them okay with not taking action against what they feel guilty about

children write words like drawing pictures and, when it comes to figures drawn over and over, cartoonists draw figures like writing words

those living in the city’s underside taking part in the city’s goal to divert tourists from the city’s underside

walking fast and with an air of being in your own world to avoid street violence

people for whom the night world was a reality before the age of five

the scatter of whores as the cop cruiser passes by

self-help, psychic therapy, séances, Amway seminars

a Tom-Cruise Aladdin freeing Jasmine to a whole new world (civilized, American)— a whole new world spreading as they sing

once we stick on a label we often do our best to stop life from proving us wrong

is the fact that home tales morph through generations and migrations
something to be kept out of mind?

activism’s conflict with truth-telling

imagine if her chronicles had been written not by academics but by those among whom she moved: waiters, receptionists, caretakers

alcohol has the middle-aged woman at the beach, arms up in dance, unconcerned with her sagginess and unenvious of bodies tight in their fecundity

at least those who think AIDS is God’s scourge on gays do not just duck the issue of how such horrors can be when God is omni-good, omni-powerful, omni-knowing

buildings crop up from Earth as do trees, if you have the eye

fish-bladder condoms

Freudian dip

how we lose ourselves in disguise is an expression of who we are

outsourcing maniacs in need of new ways to avoid themselves

love letters to imprisoned serial killers

doing art for dead artists admired

taking an interest in humanity at large after the alien encounter

an identity crisis from the dissolution of the football team

photomosaics built up from parts pertinent to the end product

when he feels achy with flu he often groans “Miyagiiii!” as Sato does pinned under his karate log in the typhoon, which suggests the impact of the movie but also that Sato was at his sick low, threatening Miyagi even while pinned

your roles in childhood play-acting— spy, cop, terrorist, collateral damage— following you the rest of your life

tenacity to achieve some goal impossible for your constitution can be hilarious from the outside

nothing higher than laziness had you  explain away the daily poundings downstairs as something more mundane than a captive’s plea

distressing mounds of flesh

whiskey bottle in the woodshed

narcissistic agonizing

having virtues but lacking the wisdom to manage them—that is, to know when to act in accordance with them

your comfort sources can turn on you: your teddy bear can trigger allergies (and even House Hunters, so long so soothing, is unbearable on hospice—HD pastels on people with peppy lives ahead of them)

he anticipated the skydive, yes—but only (as it would appear to him) in retrospect

we want to know ourselves and know what to fight, but voicing our flaws may very well serve to entrench them

as they looked at themselves it was unclear whether it was reflexively or reciprocally

no kid, surely, should be beaten up in school just because he cannot swim, but leave it to the melodramatic US to resort to nukes in its war against bullying, teaching kids they are perfect just as they are and labeling any identification of limitation “bullying”

the rocking grunt it takes her to exit the sedan

cutting prescription pills to make them last

the all-too-human origins of profound art

the mark of a victim culture is that they find silver-linings offensive

artists long had to take measures to safeguard their strangeness, but the challenge is even greater in the cancel climate where those salivating to snuff out strangeness are those cult-convinced that they battle under the banner of radical inclusivism

indignant for the pain-killing pleasure of it, not for remedying the issue (an issue whose remedy would block a route to indignance)

the inability to move on from loss of a loved one, like obesity, is considered bad because it interrupts daily living and adds to stress, but soon it might be in style to tell them, like it is today to tell the obese, “Love who you are” and “Way to go”

the best poets sift out the lasting from the expendable, knowing that all is lasting and expendable

“It could have been worse,” he says: “my son could have died older, more entrenched in my heart”

first it is a hit to do this, a hit to do that; then it is a hit even for basic functions

the manipulative angle of confessing flaws (always in the right light, of course) is effective in that it seems a divesting of all such angles

a button dangling by its last thread

in clitoral hope that he does fail, she whispers to the boy “I’ll fuck you up, nigga” if he fails to keep silent his down-syndrome sibling

teddy discarded at her feet, the young girl— in pjs with arms aloft—scans the red faces screaming above her as if she were nothing

an infant carrier superglued to the roof of a gold-rimmed Cadillac driven at a creep by a man with full-coverage sunglasses

awaiting the dawn when careerism turns to being authentic

Devry diplomas behind plexiglass

food stamp allotment reduced when you go on the streets, because now you owe no rent

impassioned platitudes from a fake sage, too simple ever to know them as such, can rankle the educated up a wall

maharishis justify their steep rates with the idea that westerners value only what comes with a high price tag

the risk of cutting something secretly valuable in the later editing

the young need those around them who do not want to die, or at least are ashamed about wanting to die

the impact of finding that even x, some eminent figure recently-dead, failed to be saved in the end

mortified to reach out for help since being fat is not a glamorous problem and woman should love their bodies

hours locked into footage of TV ads from bygone youth

the rise of robots and our from-birth retirement

afraid of music for what it might call up

addicted to the fear of losing sobriety

flipping the dinner table over

flipping the dinner table over for having broken your pledge by throwing a glass beforehand

flipping the dinner table over to punish her for having pissed you off despite knowing your temper struggles

snatching the man’s one ragged rucksack left on the intersection island as he walks for loose change among cars at the red light

the sinister transphobia of trans people who insist they be considered real—not trans—men or women

“Yes, even bacteria on Europa would count as proof of life,” the pro-choice man responds to the pot stirrer, “because it can move around to get food and replicate”

spoiling a child can ruin it, but just imagine the power of one who overcomes that handicap

blocking memories disruptive to how you recount the relationship to be done with him once and for good

is it bad, really, when sex becomes just something to do, like sending birthday cards to the grandkids?

how we come alive when death pierces us

doctors not above fetching bedpans

fistfight at a funeral

an adolescent elephant still sucking its trunk for comfort

rancher rod up the bull’s rectum to electrocute the prostate for an ejaculation

there is more to life than violence according to a narrow view of either violence or life

scraping dried color from sash window panes with fresh razor blades

spoons grating the ribs of tin cans—one voice in the kitchen fugue

reluctant to take organs and blood from criminals

anti-hookup zoophiles who say that nonresistance of the animal— even when the sex is aligned with everyone’s wishes—is not enough to make the interaction moral (since there must also be true connection

the saved envy themselves— the part that lives on, not the part from which the envy stems

imagine if we construed 911, or Pearl Harbor, as the lashing out of the desperate against a bully

only learning of our poverty after leaving our home city and gaining points of comparison

the adoption form, its boxes—willing to accept HIV, cleft-lip, blindness?—seen as a test for how open your heart truly is

shit-infused dreadlocks on the dog’s hind legs

stewarding the Earth while starving

too intimidated to look back into your old journals (and so your imperious idiocy) until it became too late

poetry is the perfect refuge for the conman type wanting to hide from what they are

with how good, cleansing, it feels to whitewash a fence, how can anyone object to the coming of the hipsters?

the wasted look of saints and junkies: everything given up, reduced to animal need, for the addiction

if the spread of poverty-speak is bad for precise thinking, then for social health the vulnerable must not be forgotten

those who think that repentance to the weak  is a case of repentance not born from fear of harm have forgotten about either God or the Self

jaw dislodged from a flying knee, on the canvas he continues to throw combinations, soft—as if in a dog dream

exciting as really seeing the thing or really being there is, just imagine if afterwards you see it on the news!

mistaking solitude for grief

remaining Christian merely because you have converted ones close to you

siblings with the same tattoo by different artists

the grunting child grows old in his mud runs  along the chain link with each passerby, making our neighborhood home

choking out and spitting at the wrong face, not the one with the rape fantasy next door

tire track eddies throughout the lot— strip mall coming soon

slowing oneself down preparing the drug, not to seem too eager

a new colleague’s order of wine at lunch is just enough to have him disregard his wife’s tears and the state of his liver

guarding food again by spitting on it, echoes of boyhood

misread whispers etching lifelong scars

hanging up the shirt of your own death, among the others

an everywoman, ignorance enabled her confidence

only a frozen apple pie from church for Thanksgiving

pasty hipsters in pastel grandma dresses and cowboy boots, kombucha in mason jars

unsure whether the tangle of vines woven through the fence links, rusted and skewed, make the beer-bottle blight more or less bearable

would you still haggle for the yard-sale doll if you knew its rose-cheeked head would become, even within the decade, some hermit crab’s shell?

jumbotrons at the Amway convention: mansions and bikini-backed jet skis montaged to Calloway’s “I Wanna be Rich”

scrotal raphe—a satellite image of the Himalayas

bragging about embarrassing things to highlight the absurdity of bragging

desperate for jail time for these ideas so that others may witness the fervor with which they are held

fresh generations would use our speak if they cared to communicate with us— hence our being so unsettled by their slang

with exception to their basement rooms for AA, so many churches have become ostentation theaters where we rub in each other’s faces how put together we appear—not how pleading for pardon we are

sabotaging your dreams, hurting what you love, only to fuel some unplumbed program of self-hate

the duke’s patron funds withdrawn because his oil Jesus turned out “too Jewish looking”

for those who like to be more fluid in gender, race, IP address, friend group, and so on, thank God the cyber realm is more important than the meat realm: it is still hard for a man to transition into a female who can birth a literal baby

sciatica intense from impacted bowels

soon to fall into the past, the old say “honor the past”

making love to yourself before the mirror void

fear and indolence veiled as discipline and constancy

the spectrum of collateral consequences from our daily cocktails largely hidden

the coach who did ask the parents first if the boy could pose in his underwear for an acrylic painting was fired nonetheless

what does it say about ordinary people that they scorn thinkers for “splitting hairs, overcomplicating things,” when thinkers— human thinkers—cannot help but simplify what is much richer?

brown ass-crumbs behind the back rim: toilet toaster leavings

hands soiled with self-pleasure spunk lather-resistant in a sink overflowing with dishes

match-maker dads betting their sons can beat up  any kid on the block

the mocked child grows up to be one who highlights his insecurity by projecting a tough guy persona

we stop refusing the praise after the refusal only results in the praise getting laid on thicker— but might that have been the point of the refusal?

kids roaming nocturnal sidewalks in search of cigarette butts

reformed radical lesbian

the boy in the driveway whose ball fails to bounce back

the phone punched out of her hand because the ambulance is too expensive

the lost, confused, mien of the hungry

if the ultra-rich should one day stop being upright, they might even buy legislation that disregards the warnings of science

his knee steering in secret, the dad lets go of the wheel with a sudden “You drive,” terrifying the child

reminisces by old friends turn the father alien to the eavesdropping boy

hospice workers forever fazed by what not-alive looks like

acting as if you already heard the news when someone, who assumes that you have, reports in tears sorrow for your loss

despair over limitations unconquerable in the artist’s lifespan—that faded once they were seen as keys to distinctive creation

is it a sign of a systemic vendetta against men that they are arrested more than woman— or is the more obvious answer the answer?

thoughts fed by the moon

there is always beauty, even in what depresses us most

worth increased with every oppression box of intersectionality ticked

bible paper joints

artwork vandals

fecal frescoes on the walls of solitary

death at different income levels

nausea in the teen, a self-rocking need for bath and home and mom, after the sex symbol—shoulder to shoulder with tour-bus buddies—tested the truth of her hysteria

knocking middle knuckles on a durag head of cornrows, only really teasing the itch

your genes and upbringing, these alone fail to excuse your action—but what does not is the entirety of reality prior to your action

to ensure that customers and staff think alike while looking diverse and to protect “vulnerable identities” from ever being unsettled (even by expert fact): the core mission of higher education today

drowned refugees left piled on rafts in the ocean sun as if to deter new waves

spouses falling out of love as they transform in a fight against terminal illness

denying privilege by pointing out, say, the rust on your items of privilege

toothpick in mouth, blowout comb in afro— functional, stylistic

we are made stranger here by becoming less stranger to ourselves

barred from the crucial intel of who to watch out for in an anti-free-speech environment of punishment for saying whatever might be perceived as an insult

since doctors profit from sickness, what would happen if hospitals operated as for-profit businesses?

the days of baby-oil sunbathing

not telling your therapist a loved one died

too young to be self-conscious about the disfigurement

sharing what the cat brings to the doorstep with the cat

a land where people mistrust experts because experts have been proven wrong before

designers who consider home decor key to grasping a person’s character—how do they frame their role in our lives?

the aromatic kinship between a plume of vernal flowering wafted up and that of fertile balls after a run

refusing to sell the man a loaf of bread because he plans to give it to the boy outside, sunken at your storefront

smart people intrigued by hate groups and quack-science— Holocaust-AIDS-moon-landing deniers—because they fuel our deep-down faith that man cannot make it

alley opening at 2am off Sixth street in Austin: girl throwing up and guy walking away saying, “I was the one who was fucked up, huh?”

earth down below and sky up above is a convention

the stream’s trickle is said to cure the vacancy of the woods as if the trees themselves could not

the polygraph becomes a friend when your disguise begins to deceive you as well

anti-rural bias flourishes because employers can read the twang as incompetence

now that she is in the clear, somehow it is hard to reconnect with the child for whose death you had prepared

shirtless men digging their backs into wall corners

gum flesh receding from the teeth

sad, for all your millions

bank withdrawals for Armageddon

barkeepers are the wisdom of the restaurant

the temptation to aim to be understood

destroying most of his own early work

a bird in a cage hanging on a porch among free birds

standards of foulness lowered before sniffing the only pants that go with the blouse

panties left behind under the hotel sheet at the foot of the bed

employee explanations while the boss hovers nearby: adrenaline words voiced as if his presence is no matter

gathering her girl cousins to a back room in Sangre Grande for the mega boil on her ass

different is normal when you grow up with it

vaginal yeast from supermodels as beer seed

gas moved along by kicks from the womb

puzzled about how to approach sex without alcohol

arm tattoos to mark vehicles of the disease

fitted sheet: the curve-ball to neat folding

not wanting racism to go away, good as it is for comedy

when yogic flying turns out to be just hideous hopping

the urge to see the body of the dead loved one

yes, even after death the knife still cuts

are you still keeping it together, or are you lying?

expected to behave prior to tenure (meaning not make claims too controversial in your field) even though youth is perfect for precisely that!

let those who have the highest stacks of so-called oppression, those who win the oppression Olympics (and so always have something external to blame for their screwups), speak first

how come t-shirts that elevate Bin Laden have not spread with us like those of Manson, Che Guevara?

signs of due diligence that they are, c-sections avert malpractice suits

pilfering the offerings to the gods  all these years, you start to wonder whether you might be one of them

the sudden deathbed realization that you are not home, the place where you grew up as a child

bitter enough to unload the full magazine at the gravestone

censoring horrors to pretend they do not exist

the trick is to build anecdotes around the lie

self-milking into the sink so baby can latch

teeth clenched through the night from stink breath

items stored away from past marriages

she parks in different spaces so any one of us might be to blame for her oil spots

what traumas lie dormant in the grainy archive that is a school yearbook?

pretending not to see the trap set for us is to lull the opponent into holding there to be no need to plan further

a grievance held throughout one’s life about something untrue may stand in, nonetheless, for something else true

the ease with which you can ignore doubt when your very identity and standing are built up around that which you doubt

the artist kept sticking his dissident head out, inviting the Sauron eye of a federal agency that could find any one of us guilty in its audit

fires in metal drums

it does not matter what “oppressed identities” say (whether it makes sense, whether it is dangerous): as oppressed, they deserve the first and last say

unless it is just a flagrant ploy to enforce certain norms and values over others— if one student is allowed to opt out of an assignment just because it triggers her, any student should be allowed to opt out of any assignment that triggers her

diagnostic categorization of a psychological condition, especially when that condition is a stigma, can do more harm than good if the condition involves no major disruption to the patient’s goals or relationships in a manner unaligned to those goals or relationships

pockets where people use dark actions to feel justified in performing good ones, not the other way around

those for whom motel weeks are not thought to be a downgrade, but rather a splurge: shower, bed, TV, and thoughts of big changes

sudden reluctance to beat the record set by the dead father with whom you have communed through all these years of training to do so

the weight of each cost and of each benefit of learning from the masters of the past depends on your constitution and its goals

teens have long felt pressure to join some (seemingly) alternative circles (in our era, ones based around commercial products), but now they feel pressure to go beyond mild maiming into hormones and sex surgeries (soon perhaps as accessible as tattoos)

since any white claiming a right to an opinion is a white supremacist, luckily identity is now a subjective affair immune to the violence of pushback, in which case whites— if the subjectivity folks are playing fair—can disown the race assigned to them at birth

eying your preschool photo amazed that it is you, sad for what the kid will go through— why do you wish to see his underwear?

the shiver after urination

in a train wobble-swayed like in the womb

the illiberals of today no longer cloak their lust for power with justifying rhetoric: they squelch so-called “privileged voices” merely because those voice are privileged— yes, even if that privilege (when not just a lie) comes from talent and hard work

given the prostate g-spot of male fear, no wonder many find themselves probed in the fever dreams of alien abduction

how can death come, think some in fear of an empty nest, to those with dependents around?

people used to go to college precisely to be unsettled, to grow: we have failed as parents, teaching—as a key axiom of our ethos of comfort über alles—that personal feelings reveal objective truth

skin sloughs off the waterlogged corpse— the year old sweet potato

the hard-shell nose of the bike saddle to get a pussy itch

leg on the chair rung, casual—breeze up shorts against her swamp

sucking at her innards in each direction he sees intricate webs of blue

unable to get it up for the dolphin in frigid waters where someone could walk by the dock any moment

wanting credit for good deeds

seeing your friends in your spouse’s pictures

young dependents serving as permission slips to go on after the death of a loved one

chicken laid out on the grates of an A&P shopping cart, grilling over a trash fire

publicists pushing clients to divorce their spouses for the sake of an image

putting “phobic” to the end of a group as a strategy to shut down criticism of it—or even, in those cases egregiously manipulative, to punish those who fail to praise it enough

the pale-blue-dot humor of even the worst brutalities

a shit after a shower

fragrant dreams of leaving, transfixing you in place

violent body waxing, de-throbbing the tumescence

writing in the dark comes out like speaking while deaf

but new opportunities arise when playing tennis without a net

undigested berries in bear shit

Sunday church at the Mall of America

it took another poet to see (let alone to appreciate) what he was up to—to tell those who should know better: “What do you think Dickinson was doing?”

were thoughts of the so-called “astral plane” hazy visions of cyberspace pulling us—like teloi, like Kubrick’s monolith—to carve it out?

out of all the wormhole bubbles of the quantum cradle prior to the Big Bang, the bubble that kept expanding— our universe—did so by the blow of a sufficient cause

artists trained in workshops to play it safe, now especially for “vulnerable identities”

episodes depicted in dog-eared books taken by you as what happened to you

we are so anti-MLK today (and so pro the quackery that proliferates in climates of fear) that we think—no joke—we can discern a good deal about people not only by their skin-color, but by their astrological sign

flies frenzied inside, their ricochets visceral against windowpanes

you appear, and the boy digging his ass in the aisle pretends to itch his leg

as wonderful as she remembered it to have been, and as many pictures—tangible and intangible—she still had, the widow could only sigh to think of all the Tuesday nights forgotten

the narrow view of nature behind our tendency to say with pitiful sincerity, “That’s too strange to be a coincidence”

how often throughout history has societal disapprobation thwarted love?

flashlight and drawstring bag for nighttime dumpster dives

wakes during rainstorms fill homes with the rank of feet

all those priests of false religions (then, now, and to come)

the one we know to be two-faced is of course never so with us

that one slat of the blinds hard to flip in line with the others

those metaphors no longer could power the culture

a chance missed to tell someone what they mean to you

silence wedging a distance

acting as if pre-marriage dreams are what adults grow out of

aware that you locked yourself out just as—no, just before—you shut the door

comparing the second spouse with the first—a first idealized falsely, as the second will be

glimpsing from your partner’s voice— cadence and timbre, words and references— the face on the other end of the line

a mother and infant’s love bond across the aisle has him feel anchored despite organ-shifting turbulence

but a creature of love who endowed you with the gift of reason would hope for you not to believe in him were proof lacking

the pedestrian observing others in the street,  not in his own world like the rest—he is the one  plainclothes cops pick out to follow, unmarked

cats yacking up hairballs

pork fat in the pie crust

calorie-conscious replacement of meals with liquor

singing the unspeakable

screaming the unspeakable

how can you stare at the boundless sea, really stare, and still be possessive?

we ought to pick up the hitchhiker, bedroll soaking in the downpour, for the very reason we refuse too

we stay away from in-laws—sibling in-laws of our own sex, especially: the sight of them exposes the absurdity of our homosexual hate

those wishing they could stick their extra pounds on passing waddlers, who would not even notice the change

blind acceptance of the society aspersing our society for the same reason we do

commercial publishers, but now even small presses, want work only from tokens or at least those who have made headlines

a land of no tolerance for nuance, too boring not to be bludgeoned by the algorithm

a land where politics supersedes principle

a land whose iconic jeans and iconic x-y-z are imported from foreign countries

a land of sloth, boredom, superstition, poverty, toxins, disasters, (scientific) illiteracy

a land of histrionics driven to stand out as deep-radical-special-bullied-fearless

a land of underdog-individualism where marginality, where fighting the man, is hip

a land of anti-intellectuals craving cheap-lazy ways to goals: fad-diets, get-rich quick

a land of philistines in frantic struggle against their heart’s murmur: no grand point

a land of equity where all thoughts are worthy and laymen scoff at Einstein

a land of such resent for genius that anyone can be a genius in anything overnight

a land of interneters trying to make sense of an indifferent chaosmos where lives end

a land of citizens made insular and unwise by stories of how it is blessed exceptional

a land of citizens so mollycoddled that they fake-need puppies to pet if discomforted

a land of pc-reactivism as well as quack-science and dunderheaded conspiracies

think of how it once was: elementary friendships across racial lines repressed by the time of middle-school cafeterias

after a drawn-out midlife-crisis apology for pimping her out back then, she asks if you could connect her to any clientele

a heavy-duty church pole on top of which a jumbotron flaunts in grainy pixels Old Glory fluttering, sometimes even with wind-snapping audible to pedestrians below

treasuring those chances to take your time on the path home, while still grateful for the times when duty demands haste

how could we live with ourselves if we let  the quality, the caliber, of our art drop and yet not as well our standard, our taste?

bleached tang splotches in panties from yogurt acid

eschewing the guilt of waste meant jaded chewing

incentives for more arrests, as if justice were vacuum sales

food presentation and bedside manner

“Shave that goddam lip fuzz, boy—looks like a pussy and Daddy wanna fuck it”

as if it were a dog's rib cage (only lacking thumps of hollow), he patted the boulder that seemed to notice him each morning

lunchtime cocktails during the court recess for your hopeless trial

hands tremulous from withdrawal each morning, the steward son tips the bottle to his father’s lips

only able to say goodbye with our eyes, afraid this might be the last time

unaware—spectrum-style—that her lurid gaze compels her victims drop their eyes, soon enough you yell across the food court, “Do you know me?”

rejecting black words for fear that they cannot but mirror fantasies projected by whites

a burden supportable for one in good health

healing crystals in a bookstore is not a good sign—unless you yourself are a bad sign

the asteroid might strike batteries dead in all solar-path lighting

the urge to consume— eat, fuck, kill even— at the threshold of death

using out of guilt what makes you guilty for neglecting its use

even if only surfaces matter, that is no excuse to reach with hands alone (for a depth is but a deeper surface)

traumatized by parents who never made it reasonable, like all the other parents, to panic about being caught masturbating or smoking

the event seen as tragic at the time became comedic as our personal narrative evolved— but we had a hazy sense of the comedy all along

if the mere presence of humanity in a painting saves it from being porn, might the right music— shot angles, lens filters—so save the gang bang?

cowboys make horses do tricks; vatos make cars jump

when our delight in something grows past a point, is there much wonder why delight withers in those around us?

lucky for coach, who at last came clean about the fondling, never do people confess faults to hide ones even greater

clear in amoebas moving toward food or tree roots moving toward water (and perhaps even a satellite moving toward the larger body)—wherever there is moving toward, there seems to reside some semblance of valuing

real teeth color in eighties films

rotting before death

“telepathy made easy”

the self-degradation of thinking that thinking about philosophy is just what nerdy white people do

imagine the violence in sex that would be if male humans had the same libido as now but a horse body and hooves instead of hands

the faces of those gathered around the contorted splatter of a victim— examine them for hints of laughter

existential crises intense enough for state funding

getting on your feet and clapping when Gloria Estefan’s “Get on your Feet” plays at the Amway seminar

you plan to sleep all day for rejuvenation, so why not plan to cry?

chunks of upchuck ball bearings across the floor in the bearing of her run

catcalls to a life of extension-cord beatings

infants drawn, like honey bees, to vibrant areolae

eddies warping current lines along the stream; knots in wood grain

“It proves nothing: only fakes levitate pens as debunkers do”

peace of mind, at the price of underdevelopment

why when animals strike a pose of authority, be it a moose on a cliff or a general in a portrait, is there an air of brazen stupidity in their faces?

head-down hunters return in snow empty-handed, but go unnoticed by the children torching fuel in play

but the importance of having connections in your life lies also in the education they offer on what dying looks like, which is one of the only chances to cultivate elegance in your own undoing

that wisp of condensed vapor hovering the parted mouth of uncorked champagne

what grips everyone’s attention is worth keeping an eye on even— especially—if it is worthless poison

that out-of-body experiences are only internal states— no dier ever able to see the face-up pictures staged high up on so many hospital shelves—is the magic

men who now, in their dying age, rage over politics with fiery eyes that steer away even old friends

think of letters penned from a summer loss— mankind resists erasure

to get lost in a love crime is to lay oneself on a road open to lean rain

deemed too gross to use store restrooms, and attacked or arrested for an alley piss, he sank even grosser with urine trousers

in our beyond-decadent age of watered-down mass art, one of the best indications of the probable crappiness of an artist’s work is if it enjoys commercial recognition

whitenotized as needing whites to unruin them, blacks are lured into a ruining game where blacks locate their core power in guilt-tripping whites (as a son might a mother for past abuse) and where whites get their guilt lashed away (in the safe way of BDSM)

rancid cream from Montgomery tubercles and dormant ear-piercing holes

people operate as if the addition of “want" to “is" magically yields "ought"

seeking employer permission to form a labor union

having to say goodbye to a loved one mid-quarrel

the solution prior to surgery—or, more like, prior to giving in to sweet (and salty and buttery and savory and umami) death— is, in her mind, to save up enough to do her binge eating in VR

instead of going about his day, as certain ignoramuses put it, unable to help assuming he has the very free will he denies, the hard determinist goes about assuming he is simply a causal agent—a causal agent determined by the past

druggie friends, excited to shoot your share with you blacked out, place a mirror shard under your nose as if actually disciplined enough to monitor for mist

the mugger’s considerateness in not striking the woman even as she clings to the purse

to keep on, we whitewash the most stressful chapter— even missing then

expression has long been a salvation for holding at bay despairing thoughts as to the pointlessness of expression

social media took the place of mass-mailing holiday cards to rub our “flourishing” in faces

the sense that something is absent from our lives is absent, we notice, after a day of toil—and yet we do not question if toil itself is that something

fiercely sensitive to the call beamed by things to be placed in art, day duties provide the artist a caesura welcomed from leisure, where the call is unbearable

from the beginning we were slated to aim at things beyond, our hunter foundation beneath so many layers that to sin for us literally means to miss the mark

the whore’s lance-worthy neck boil

beauty and love amidst the destruction allowed it to grow

the tenderness of fish speared without struggle

flathead screwdrivers with topographic butts—surrogate chisels

daydreams of rescuing a child from fire, and raising it on the streets with him, had the dope-sick hitcher—dizzy from the fender-bender—flee the car with their infant

families gathering before the glowing screens that authenticate reality

naked ladies no longer scream the sky: proposals for nose art on military jets are vetted to ensure none take offense

knowing that what is being said is nothing new, but still compelled to say it anyway—for connection?

villagers looting the luggage strewn across the dirt road after the truck crash

how boring (but safe) it would be if your sole story was the one you invented for yourself—who you are, who you could be, limited by your stunted horizon

parental concern has them query, “You sure there were no bad touches?”—but so does hope to join in on that lawsuit against the church

digital pacifier for cranky kids

sheer drapes dancing the fan wind

academia so often gets in the way of learning

mug size revealing the host of the house party

ashamed of your depression, too heavy for façade smiles

ashamed to face that you revise to be understood

exiting the freeway into rush-hour traffic, the mushroom trip takes a sudden turn from free-floating awe to existential dread

she whines for her father’s brush, the presumed sorcery behind a paint job sharper than her own

sun-worn landscapers China buffet in pink twilight

all look up from coffee and phones as the hand of a black man suction-claps the hand of another in the subway

old man in the restroom stall envying the power of other streams

extra-extended canes tipped with roller balls, heads tracing the infinity symbol of the blind— two men in jumpsuits clear the street in sprint

the traveler’s black-hearted pleasure in leaving behind all the disheartened trapped in their cities, their routines

yard-sale asthma inhaler

no one aware that each day you face a

hiding from everyone that you are on trial

watching someone die,  only in rare cases  do we want it to end

simply that some other retains belief in God provides us comfort

crumpled white linens— baggy pants, a button down— fluttering in the sea breeze

sheets of wet toilet paper spelling out words upon the mute glass of the cell

liberal drunks who refuse to let their kids even see toy guns and who will respond, “Alcohol isn’t violent—people are”

the adage “jealousy never dies in true love” let him believe that his love had not died (rather than that he was a controlling fuck)

invigorated by the terror you elicit

ambition alone seldom keeps misfortune from knocking you off the path to your goal

victorious but in tears (having been forced to fight a kid from the block), you stop your dad’s laughter with a brick to that bloody-nosed face on the ground

tampons in the underwear drawer of the wannabee female

the high-school football star made vulnerable by a belief, shared by us and grounding our shock at his drug spiral—a belief in his invulnerability

the length of rage, envy, joy, fear, love—although not ultimately up to predetermined beings like us— remain more up to us than, say, that we were born

angst over our impotence to consume the surfeit of art today, as if there were ever a time when we could absorb it all

more effective than destroying surplus is deterring production: counter-propaganda, for instance, that not everyone is an artist

pricey magick-with-a-k candles promising prosperity

underbelly barnacles of the bathtub spout

the oldest portions of dreadlocks sun-bleached

a primal urge to howl with the ambulance siren

soothed by dying words intended to self-soothe

our need to keep saying what has been said

never forget the magic of watching an other watch the stars

the casket thuds in on itself with the tamping of dirt by the yellow excavator

stock photos on websites, like center-justified poems, exude an anti-credible air

pull over on a rural highway, black in engine silence, to feel exposed in that vastness long out of mind

characterizing yourself to others in ways long obsolete, only because those ways— always ready to hand—surge forth legato

that the aphorist does not conduct himself as is expected from a cynic is perhaps a sign that, contrary to his repute, he is less a cynic than someone wanting to spur change

the boy would fold a scrotal flap in onehanded grace full around his pinky—ring finger tucking flap-crest into flap-body, skin coiling that rolling pin like dough

guitarist mouth struggling to speak in the zone

pain meds more for the parents than the wailing infant

that stage where you find yourself putting off jerking off like a chore

insecure enough to condemn those who try to understand the rainbow instead of just standing in awe of it

not only was it blatantly wrong to call all blacks “cannibals,” real-life cannibals (say, in protein-starved pacific islands) were not even the “cannibals” (the brutal savages) fantasied by Killerpeans to cope with themselves being the real-life brutal savages

the sudden smile of parents down at us, immersed in play, back before we could grasp the reason

since we often flaunt our flaws to mark our identities, what are we to make of those flaws we keep hidden?

those so addicted to hope that their days amount to planning

thinkers of the German language, in which “Sein” means “to be there” and “to be for him, belong to him,” are lured into the view that something is only in being picked out by man’s interests

the crowd, following the high-school street fight, serpentines around the knots in the grain: the hobo and his shopping cart, the fire hydrant, light poles, two cars stopped at a green light

flaws that compensate for strengths are not only those strengths in disguise but also, if adaptive, other strengths in disguise, as dumb blondes know

kept inside, degenerate, by that claustrophobic mood of degeneracy in all-you-can-eat buffets and even in the drinking nightlife of young and skinny bodies

as the statistician knows so well, some of the sting is taken away from real-life disproportionality when seen in terms of mere numbers, but there is more: that it is describable numerically is itself comforting

scrotums peeled from leather seats

“You gotta spend money to make money,” says your Amway upline, his car stereo bumping Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”

if we love the picture of a thing more than the thing itself, that means we love  one thing itself more than another

from our degree of hope springs our promises, but our actions spring from our degree of laziness

some ensure their strong stomachs through excessive worry about how they lack strong stomachs

fearing that labels shut us off from reality, their aim was to shut us off from that reality of labeled life held dear over generations

people might say it is absurd, blasphemous even (as is said of Ahab), to seek revenge on programmed items of nature, but assault the weeds in revenge and something must change: beasts and flora can be trained

motivated by the thought that otherwise what is the point of your efforts—old, you now give everything its full due (reading the poem several times through) and feel wise seeing this—but even here, so the wise see, you are doing for you

cocks fighting for microwaved boneless chicken wings

clean piss from your sister in a condom taped to your inner thigh

skratch music is like cilantro

shaolin-monk orange; prisoner orange

the compliment that is both imitation and dissent

not having to speak to complete the team task

the urge to regard cynicism as wisdom

forging a pregnancy report to get her boyfriend finally to leave “his ashy-ass ho wife”

standing on the toilet to whisper poems and chess moves into the air grate for the rapist in the neighboring cell

it would be considered ridiculous, downright malevolent, to say—having Goethe or Einstein in mind—“White people are friggin’ awesome”

pockets where it is ludicrous to respond, “Scared? But this is our own backyard!”

reared to prune her spectral desire into mere being desired (men her prime archetype of thirst), she fantasizes in bed from his eyes: experiencing what it is like not for her to fuck or be fucked by him, but for him to fuck her—her orgasm, rare, left in his hands

inside the midtown flat cars pass—crashing waves on the shore

eyeballs like hummingbirds hovering flowers— we are fleshy robots

plywood nailed up for years after the house window “broke”

living on expectation alone—hope for escape

into seclusion under the pretense of devotion

let the small cares remind us why we belong together: a whispered touch so as not to startle each other at night

let the small cares remind us why we belong together: knowing the names of each other’s childhood friends

candidates spending billions to get elected as the one sincere about fighting the war on hunger

bullied by brothers with a father that never intercedes

the bum’s loose-change cup jingle

shame tactics of the neurodiversity movement

art demanding patient engagement lives on even in our age of dwindling attention spans, which means: lives on less and less engaged

still raising comebacks in discussions alone but louder and louder with time, wishing they were voiced years before

even if true questioners must be wooers,  true questioning need not itself be a wooing; the wooing could have taken place earlier

suppressing the urge to flaunt your good luck as a way to flaunt your superiority over such luck

still in the shadow of its colonizers, the island delights in the exclusivity of double-entendre: ♫“She only want me fuh card”; “No biting in-sects”♫

pillowcased kittens arm-centrifuged over the bridge

unwilling to join a prison gang

brave actions that do not stem from bravery

genuine religious conversion, but still for money-pussy-safety

cup-smashing disputes over which color is best

the (vocalized) resolution to stop chiding yourself for jabbering out loud to no one—yet another stride toward that alley in long-repeated dreams?

despite its ant mounds and its wolf piss on bushes and rocks, we cherish the wildland for being “unparcelled”

fallen berries baking in the sun—the concrete smell of alcohol

deep in sheltered hands, puffed from lawnmower vibration, is the itch of thighs in baths after snow play

taking your finger off the trigger because you do not want people remembering you for the mess

mortifying sobriquets among school friends making each other confront their limitations now

are you the family pet with your own little story, a mythic creature like a dragon, or perhaps a pack animal like a wolf?

you will die even if you no longer wish your rapist would have killed you

the big-bang whole but a terrarium

piñata sweets go untouched— paper strips of Mexican porn spread across the birthday lawn

telling the story again, as if you did not realize, allows the other to show off insight into how its events unfold, which has that person like you

brain cancer his diagnosis, the bodybuilder drives to the gym before even going home first—flexing his health in the mirror

moonlighting from nothing

the pull of the mountain peak

boasting how little sleep you get

disasters wiping out parochialism

parents who find their children ugly

yearly rehearsal of the queen’s funeral

grade-school letters to soldiers overseas

mistaking the light of day for an inside light

no escape for disableds in the tsunami flood zone

gentle fingers rake the kitten paw through the litter, coating its poop

“The more ‘No’s the more likely the next will be a ‘Yes,’” says the Sapphire Ambot, the strumming and singing opening on Kenny Loggins’ “I’m Alright”

that stage—punctuated just enough by breaks here and there—where smokers complain: “Ugh. Just can’t kick this fucking cold!”

screwing asspipes in spicy-food cultures

photos from the future (say, of major cities underwater) might spur us—but, of course, time-machines are the least of our concerns

fossilizing the nail into the wood with fury born from it bending despite attempts to tap it in with soft control

is it that catcallers—sometimes simply groaners—are inept at birdsong, encouraged by their inept buddies?

alone and wondering if anyone is thinking of you right now

near-naked natives with western devices (selfie hats) completing tribal tasks (fish gutting) without thought

wickedness, you fuck—not compassion— has you refute those wild conspiracies without which lives would lack meaning

when you wonder how you keep on having to produce even as the horizon is one of desolation, at that point you realize your kinship with the ants: you once thought it absurd how they keep on, no matter how many times you destroy their mounds

thread from prison towels when floss is not permitted

minimalism puts the least amount of neck on the line

the sun was once the most sensible candidate for god

1980s-style school headshots complete with laser effects and portrait superimpositions

any guiding ideal, even if designed as a nonjudging being of pure mercy, cannot help but judge merely in being a guiding ideal

“Stop letting past failures stop you,” says the Emerald Ambot, the synth opening on Survivor’s “Moment of Truth”

eating, shitting, anything— climaxing—the first time after HIV-positive results

black gum lines of capped teeth: celebrities now even in their teens

Meg Ryan face injections Dennis Avener

one mouth, two people— James Earl Jones, Sigourney Weaver

Cameron Diaz in Annie— Pit, Pat, Pot, or Holler David the Gnome

a retard’s pudding

the mania of owning

an escape that outlives the prison

guilt in the presence of unused possessions

newfound artifacts reawakening cultural awareness

if it thrives on its own, it is most likely considered a weed

knife-throwers doubting themselves in the hush of the circus crowd

kissing before the farewell even though—or is it precisely because?—we are going as one

one of the greatest tricks the devil ever pulled, so it would seem, was convincing blacks to crumble into a teary ball any time they heard the word “nigger”—but the trick is on the devil if people are merely faking the hurt

a land where archeologists virtue signal to such a degree that they abandon the evidence-backed migration thesis in favor of creations myths (which say the soil from which the natives (literally) sprouted was American, not African

the bum, not having the destinations for delays ever to pose concern, feels special watching suits frustrated on the paused train

they are smart to you because they talk about what they can

clothing restrictions for the prison marriage ceremony

when the remedy requires suspending one’s better judgement

heads bobbing, rolling the chest, fighting sleep

the ghost of the mainland on the horizon

a family portrait that is simply a landscape painting

the sun beats many of the more popular candidates for god

walking familiar forest trails to conquer noble idleness

avoiding friends once they have seen your cowardice

hosing blood along the street to the gutter

from the wrong class to be an academic, as signaled in the codes

those who, having wasted their lives, lure the youth to follow

disrupting the tribal ceremony enough, the animal becomes integrated into it

perhaps in moments where we feel certain people ought to be rooted out like garden weeds, we should think back to moments in our own lives where we were close to taking a path that would have made us a “weed”

A says, “the better humans will be once truth spreads to them”; B says, “so long as what is spread really is truth”; C says, “and more important is if we can stomach it

the terror of finding that even the authorities have fled their posts

search the faces of others to work out how to feel about what is happening to us

listen to the reporter of what happened to us to find out what happened

limpid jelly builds until deliria as the tween speaks of her longings

tween leotard crotch, side-shifted to pee

prison dice made from toothpaste and white bread

the head-tilt of visual assessment

gastric acid hitching a ride on the nose of a burp

but getting rid of things to complain about might let the big one stand out

saying that you might have cancer, threatening suicide, knocking her up, punching her in the gut— all to get her love back to before she knew you

the cause of death—that is first in what we want to know about the person

the inwardness of hooded northerners

accumulation of wealth to escape finitude

those around whom electronics malfunction

horrors committed to cover relatively minor flaws

pimping from alley shadows even in this day and age

boxcars of agony yet again, even in the age of nanobots

black people calling the spinning back kick “roundhouse”

jagged fault lines in brick walls unable to flex with the Earth

black lights disclose bushes with cyan bulbs in the desert night

the urge not to voice criticisms to which we ourselves fall victim

impertinence well cloaked with wit even when no witness is present

when what one has been called to do is not what one is equipped to do

men moved to open up about marital troubles only when nothing is left to lose

that society—and so he too, deep down—still questions whether one can be transracial has impostorness reek from his manner, and this might mean he is not of his new race if, indeed, one’s manner must exude no doubt as to belonging in order truly to belong

however sad he acted, however upset he was at the threat to his routine and control, however much what was to come would demand daring—when his wife came out a surge of cheerfulness swept over him in secret: the horizon of youth opened again

it is angering as all hell when slaves no longer behave as slaves—and it is downright scary if we have long been used to them as our slaves

do praise the raw scent of arm pits—but not to scorn those perfumed

do praise the power of the eye—but not to scorn machines

do praise the athlete body, the icicled tree—but not to scorn sculptures

the night in each other’s arms

immobilized by remembrances

newspaper strips for toilet paper

the other woman was a guy

poems are one means of throwing light on your concerns, your questions

taking the doctor’s inability to spot what you went in attempting to cover as grounds for thinking it no big deal

“Oh word!” he said, in a poor job of camouflaging phony listening to her on and on about how “It would have been too expensive anyway (furniture, clothes, toys),” and so she said—to draw out his “Wait, who?”—“I would’ve given it your name”

creators so touchy about the handling of their ephemeral art

abortion-center picketers wielding fake holy water

to what degree does our knowledge advance not because of wonder but because of wickedness in seeing people stripped of naïve beliefs?

to avoid provoking the denied threat now upon us, we use good manners— pleases, thank-yous, utensil silence

blocking our ears to expert advice concerning, for instance, proper running shoes because such advice threatens our excuse to quit

cavalier remarks, indifferent to the person’s suffering— but all to make him laugh

giving your kids speaking roles in the local-access mattress commercial

arm-in-arm between two friends

arranging the dead one’s journal entries by the four seasons

children held back a grade to be bigger for sports

bird accents and dialects differing by region of origin

“Wait—you’re telling me that I shouldn’t be ashamed of masculine energy, that I shouldn’t try to snuff out every last ember of it within me?!”

demented from challenge-free childhoods spiked with comfort drugs, no wonder students—in what might be an ironic symptom of hatred for the comfort culture that reared them—ambush professors who discomfort them with alien outlooks

as if he were exiting the stall  in which you are next to shit, you avoid eyes  with the one leaving your shrink’s office

those we lead on—hugs, kisses, late night innuendo—just to have a steady someone whom we reject

merely how it is framed by language can make the difference between a good and a bad trip: “cosmic consciousness” or “death of the ego”

mimosa-tipsy but still-timorous bob cuts swaying in their brunch chairs to live music

lobster-claw rubber bands reused as cock rings

trees give us breath, boats, bats, books

boots caked in summer clay, treading

the ever-bruised limbs of old people

boasts of wealth to underscore personal integrity

no longer able to cum without a vibrator, numbed a bit even to that

it is easy to condemn escapism when you do not work hard

beer bottles hammered in a garage grease towel to near powder, mixed into Fancy Feast for the neighbor’s cat

tumescence tablets tucked away under car mats, couch cushions— any place the magic might happen

the child’s supermarket urge to plunge a finger through the ground-beef plastic

immerse yourself in a crowd to make yourself feel you are doing the right thing

hearing “Bless you” from some stranger shitting in the next stall felt like seeing an actor shift to the lens to address you on the couch

seal activists with stun guns trigger-righteous on the beach during pupping season

deemed a party-pooper prick—the bad guy— for curbing your kid’s intake of an underrated, but ubiquitously ingested, poison: refined sugar

we accept, welcome, being deceived by our friends so long as (1) it is what we deceive ourselves about and (2) no one mentions that deception is going on

teaching math in the racist way: callously insisting (1) that there are correct answers and—if that were not enough to make you puke at the vileness of white supremacy— (2) that work be shown (so the teacher can understand how the answer was reached)

freedom in idea turned out better than in reality

metal percussion, buckles and coins, within the dryer’s thrum

hand-washing dishes, loving each excuse to throw this or that away

we stole their lands, yes—but it was for the glory of God!

the sitter’s opinion on whether the portrait captures her likeness somehow holds sway despite our blindness to what we look like

if it is laughable to think that thinking often on one’s last moments can make them bearable, then the same goes for thinking often about birthing

to stand at the absolute heart of the north pole, where a day spans an Earth year, is to stand at a quantum spot that jumps around in a cloud where there would be no longer any north to go and so where every direction would be south

yesterday “atheist" was the label to delegitimize even those to which the label did not apply— and today, of course, the label is “racist" 

asshole so run through it has labia

vacant-lot sunrise, a chained dog barking in the distance

ducking loved ones who cannot but conjure dead loved ones

bare chest braced for the tumbler’s quivering drip of condensation

ketchup, onesie, Band-Aid, crockpot, Krazy Glue, Xerox, Kleenex, Tylenol

we whisper around the dying

milk cut with chalk water

too aware that the fence he is building would rot

walls beneath desks of private study rooms testify to climaxes

Sade gritty in the windup radio of an iodine-tab bunker: “touching the very part of me, it's making my soul sing tearing the very heart of me, I'm crying out for more”

always right there in each peeling polaroid the cigarettes that killed Granny

entangled in pitying a person, never to realize that it is for the same problem you have

all-night Ferris wheel— its drunk operator dozing in the Atlantic breeze

trumpet notes Miles high— sides of cheek, neck even, toad with nascent melody

to the battery slung through the bars attached is a goods-bearing thread reeled in by the destination cell

trees provide the haven of shadow and home

we tear off garments while dying

deep pining for sex in the devout keeps out the Absurd

sadness could stop him from lifting the tarp, ogling the corpse

that foreign floater in your drink somehow stays with each dump

a conquistador in the skins of the tribe that saved him Europe

the derailed jaws of skid row

so much dumpster food: soft bagels, full steaks, calamari

sensing an eye in the peephole

wisdom that stems from misreading

flames crackling walls and ceilings around you, glass shatters in the distance

a life plagued, in hindsight, by his failure to recognize his greatest talent: his closeted shame

Navy pilots still in the new millennium get pumped for bars on leave, pushing needles down highways to the pulse of “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins

banging a fresh cadaver, the last thing on one’s mind is catching something

so-called “atheists” unable to shoot loads on Mexican Virgin candles

waiting for the mare’s tail to swing far enough to the side

insane enough to be invulnerable to blackmail

the bridge she is burning would have rotted

no longer able to bear public insult

a judge’s death sentence

the witch burns before her children

college slut grade-school teacher

the protracted infiltration of tree roots through the earthen wall of the cellar, through the corks of the wine bottles

the endless feasting slaughter each Earth rotation, hyperbolized in any square mile of the Amazon

loose change withheld from bums because their cardboards are too witty to indicate genuine desperation

yelling, after an out-of-the-blue doubletake of alarm, to the druggie who always thinks spiders are on him: “Yo, Dude! Step the fuck back with those spiders!”

a Dickensonian sign of greatness in a poet, a sign by no means surefire, is radical gaps in “success” between poems indicative of experimental effort

it is silly for you, insisting on your habit, to abstain from workshops teaching—or is it guiding now?—the new way: if you go, at least you will be able to put on a lip-service show of the new way you refuse to adopt

merely an imaginary watcher might be publicity enough for you still to be giving out of vanity

“the border between dead and alive,” he said, “is so hard to pinpoint because being alive is a form of being dead—and vice versa”

we are special ones: nature takes man down each moment, but when man—slaughterer of cattle—takes man down it is a “crime”

we often speak of the weakness of giving into uprooting temptation, short-changing the strength it might take to give into them: fidelity, for instance, is sometimes a euphemism for fear of change

sometimes he feels he could be a sage unmoved by opinion, but when he imagines even the merest street boy hating him (for whatever reason) he buries his frustration with work

lacking as it does the “feminine” vibration of vulnerability, our culture hammers us deep into premature certainty

is art intended to scare to be disparaged as much as art intended to edify?

Silly Putty is still around, and yet little chance there is anymore—and that chance dwindles each day—to capture faces in the newspaper

if the surge in grandparent death during finals week is from stress over grandchildren acing the exams (what else?), then perhaps grandparents ought to be left in the dark

attempting to erase one’s blackness through rectitude

willing to let them ruin her, these were her most-inner values

clouds on the wall above the kitchen trash—peeling potatoes

triumphs counterbalanced by despair on the way to defeat

“you will easily accept shit if you don’t think you’re entitled”

tattooed hairlines

oils coating the surfaces of pizza and espresso promise goodness

toothbrushing a Pollock on the bathroom mirror

in the fever of sunburn, the fever of back lashes, eyes rove in search of distraction

stoicism is the battle against what has us toilet paper the glory hole between stalls before someone enters and what has us abstain when someone’s already there

when the push for diversity tips over to shaming those who strive to be typical

the company behind such and such logo or behind, say, Cheetos— such trivia we have down pat (and yet differentiating between, say, maple and poison ivy leaves is an entirely different matter)

will there be a movie in the Rocky franchise, perhaps Apollo Creed’s child or grandchild (a girl would be best), where the final fight takes place in virtual reality?

that single nail from which the shutters dangle

those who leap, as opposed to step, off the roof

“Success isn’t owned, it’s rented,” says the Diamond Ambot, the drums opening on Robert Tepper’s “No Easy Way Out”

those who write marginalia in the books of insurrection instead of taking to the streets

unraveling his terminology for the layman had the specialist flustered—like a parent defining basic words for the inquisitive child

her toddler mimicking her choking sounds—material for a demon

shutter-shaded hipsters soft-spoken on fixed-gear bikes (spell working-class exodus)

a frosty glass to the forehead only stokes the gonorrhea flush

monstrous it is to see adult teeth tearing through sapling gums

he senses that, mundane as it seems, he is in the best phase of his life

crime epidemics largely a function of childhood lead exposure

Oregon Trail on grade-school floppy disk—pixelated pioneers dead from dysentery

wrapping cock and balls in the Styrofoam sleeves of Asian brown pears

frantic vacuuming before quarter-time runs out

memories of industry drowned by the aroma of artisanal brews in pottery mugs

the simplest sandwich, but made by the lullaby hands that turned bedtime stories

an eyebrow-charring grease fire, live on the cable-access cooking show “Flambé”

her secret is the fairytale hope to be swept off her feet so that modern blame for failing to follow the new call— not to live merely for some man—will fall on him not her

repairing the silent typewriter, the clacking constant of her youth, as if that would bring him back

the myopia, the insularity—often intended and gleeful—of almost all there’s-nothing-worse-than statements

stretched shadows of toy soldiers lit through the blinds by a sun indifferent to the kidnapping

recognizing that, in some mental esoteric sense, he had gone beyond his limit merely in recognizing it as his limit quieted the engines aiming to boost him beyond his limit

like one enjoying the sea breeze too much to let himself fall asleep, the meditating monk looped inside the threshold of enlightenment

playing dead in battle until the setting of the crimson sun

mountaineer humility staring at the snow-capped peak of alpine stillness

loud gavels of naïve judgment drowning the pleas of broader horizons

we say “fuck you” to instrumental sections of music now

companionship from study in solitude

the audacity of silence in an era of noise

the spontaneous midnight jive of a playroom toy reflected in teddy-bear eyes

asphalt ribbons of progress through the rainforest

women coming second to male pride—orgasm lies

aluminum sidings pop and ting in the summer stretch of suburbia

roses now growing wild—dig down to graves forgotten

monarch butterflies suckling dog shit,  their pleasure too intense to care  about being blindsided with a rock

a spectacle so magnetic, even strangers become victims to elbow nudges

giant slingshot—kitten whiskers in the wind, skeet shooting the fluff that meets flight

so many historical figures loved, but around whom so many would hate to be

one of the many sacrifices for his art was that he appeared across the decades in only a handful of family photos

as we strive for respect and inclusion, the line blurs between celebrating diversity and becoming fearful to point it out

standards of political correctness might have us one day nervous to mention even that the professor is nearsighted and impractical, socially inept as he walks looking down and sticks on one subject

star systems visible each way around the night-sea boat

the vaginal discharge of a mare in heat

politeness greases anonymity

bearing by praising

since holding back pee is a Kegel spurring concentrated focus on the vulva, the tween in the backseat—so vocal minutes ago about having to go—might be orgasming on the bumpy road

a whisper of admiration acts as the wind beneath wings wearied by his accomplishment

in the cicada hum, summer boys ogle stubble armpits of women— sensing them as stand ins

although fearing death more than ever, the old man would refuse a return to youth for want of the energy required

the pussy pump has her flared to the ass of a baboon in heat

bloody tundra ice beneath the green waves of borealis plasma

urban attire inspired by pre-human hues mocked as unnatural

subway humanity acknowledged with a nod

the temporary balm of applause

civility masking dreams and scars

men rush through a business lunch below a painting

elevator bodies not bound, it turns out, for the same floor after all

what lies concealed behind euphoria?

barfing beneath the gala chandelier, the clink of champagne flutes dwindle

the staying power of those sustained by more than ambition

seamless revision of symptoms after the media reports the others now obsolete

waiting for his turn at one of her holes, he fails to block playground memories of standing in line, shy, for the slide

the fireplace—once that sacred center drawing all— has been supplanted: first by just one screen and now by many with notification-dinging demands to be fed

like our whisker muscles or our fountain-pen cursive, in the jungle understory so many traits—grown over like Mayan temples—no longer serve as they once did

if Trump did not have that backwoods base, the White House would have been, no doubt, a nonstop big-pimpin’ Jay-Z music video

those days of fucking when a period was no matter

through the blur of metropolitan bodies, an understanding glance over spilled coffee

only female nipples are censored because—well . . .

the gooey stroke of menstruating pussy

sobs more moving soft behind a closed door

drizzle deterring battles to the death

the lone mime turned out to be a potty-mouth: school-library erotica

instigating physical abuse for a way out of wedlock

strippers whispering military secrets in the gyrations of a lap dance

but it is boring to fix the problem

like rage no longer adaptive, the tide erodes the shore it once enriched

the media narrative that the poisoning is the fault of parents, poor and uneducable, for not keeping their kids away from lead

female liberation conceived as behaving more like men means more assholes in the world

like oxygen blamed for the forest blaze of cigarette neglect

being at home in the world can be negative: you cum quicker

kept down over front teeth missing from crack-rock desiccation, his top lip palsies

memoire of the rain nonverbal in how the lone flower stands now

feeling superior working the holiday—empty gyms and libraries on campus

the deck-stacking supposition that the senses aim to present the world beyond the senses motivates classifying them as untrustworthy

after extended YouTube dive into one conspiracy theory, what effort the man must make to resist falling for others the feeding algorithm predicts will captivate his attention

a status symbol in earthly soirees to come: bottled water from Martian polar caps

a lighthouse keeper, sailing dreams deferred until death

pain raided for artistic inspiration

kids smoking hollow sticks in a pre-cyber forest

fan letters returned to sender

a prayer, sincere from your own heart, typed into a search bar

each line required hisses from an off-stage prompter

sizing-up whispers of condolence at funerals much more about the fashion

choosing to do what will buy you time to think of a better way out

tourists pose for selfies with trees from the heyday of polytheism

city parks too manicured for homeless refuge

starch concentration in the toddler’s saliva has its shirt smell of spunk

penis inside the toilet paper roll while pissing

the island girl, her mom slapping away her hand, amazed at how pink his nipples are

each western day so dead with fear and lies, the poet arrives like an unexpected letter

farts that interrupt the urine stream

clock hands, the red one too, untethered to the clock

allowing herself to drift in a gamble that the right course will emerge

thinking held hostage until the body gets its caffeine ransom

slow-afternoon reggae beats aside, “spliff” packs so much sound in just one syllable— a linguistic puff of smoke, curling and unfurling in the mouth

the adjunct’s dream to be one of the taught greats dwindles behind his freeway-flyer eyes, doll-like, with each red-pen iteration of freshman composition

the street painter, but still not his art, becomes visible— for a moment—to the phone heads of the metropolis as an influencer pauses to halo material for his vlog

children of that star canvas above sketch futures unfathomable to earthbound elders

artists condemned for having influences on their style, as if any of us popped into flame from the spark of our own resources alone

a forgotten author speaks like a ripcord doll, for just a heartbeat, as a girl passing through reads random lines from a yard-sale book

gurneyed through the hospital ashamed of their state under so many eyes, but dying there within hours

the only truly tarrying engagement with the museum mural happened through the grainy lens of a security camera

one pure note after so many swells awakens him for the sacred pause that is the end

restaurants hire uniformed security to protect gated garbage from rummaging bums

each banana in its own foam tray, stretch-filmed like ground beef

burkas dumped after acne

branches screeching gutters

ransacking memories for someone who might help

a sudden innocent urge to Google whether you are loved

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

in a moonlit ritual of midlife mushrooms we hoped would heal, a bear cub stumbled out of the brush and became the centerpiece of our sacred circle

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is a choice not an innate drive even as you choose to wear only dark clothes and indulge in nightly hot baths

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is a product of degenerate society even though beasts were at it before humans (giraffes, penguins, swans, elephants)

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is hedonistically self-indulgent even as you pamper yourself with extravagant vacations and cucumber spa days

abstract painting deemed unrealistic despite the splatters of color painted by dawn

stories, for him, were trojan horses—ways to be propagandistic without seeming so

penis lifted, exposing sweaty balls to fan wind

the hermit crab ventures from its shell into fresh sensations

toddlers picking up on cues for vegetable aversion: TV faces furrowed over greens—plates fork-screeched

the tycoon was an early pioneer of displaying zoo creatures in “unnatural settings”: walruses, for instance, bow-tied in fax-machine mailrooms

that transatlantic accent of kung-fu overdubs from the 60s to the 80s

lips that toss altar-boy salads on the chalice from which we sip salvation

janitor whistling calms the student cramming in the late library

the call-center starlet could mimic the accent of every region

critters fooled by woodstove heat into thinking spring has come

a sea lion for a court jester, balancing the royal crown on its nose

anchored by healing crystals back into the depths of superstition

crib-side bukkake by bandanaed Bloods dipping only ever balls into its mouth, suckling furiously in cheek-hollowing latches— their undeclared decency irreducible to fear of getting caught

coconut eaters celebrate in dance, their chosen leader— a cockatoo—having squawked the decision to spare a third infant being ripped apart by hand for their god

the eat-pray-love whites, left in a cluster by the rum-fiening monk to meditate alone at the price-gouging retreat, cult-smile at the tree antics of a rhesus monkey, who becomes what squirrels back home cannot: a living lesson in mindfulness

that single potted plant in the corporate-cubicle farm— a silent manifesto of resilience, given how it flourishes in no more than florescence—turned out to be plastic

fingers hook around flanges, bracing syringe barrels against plunging thumbs

vernal suns roil stache funk sniffed not since summer

the recipe passed down for generations, but like a phrase in a game of telephone

givers who let themselves believe they are not out to build a resume just because the hiring boss is not on Earth

the opening of a long-sealed tome releases a fragrance that transports him to a past he cannot put his finger on

fighting your compulsion to prepare  too far beforehand triggers panic  that you have waited too long this time

the teen girl in the quiet airport terminal just knew the neck-flap lady stared out of longing for sun-kissed youth (not out of shock for how much skin was showing)

fingering love letters from the shoebox her mom had kept, at thirty nine she wonders to herself if she would ever be as distant to herself now as she is to the girl in her hands

as if it were a playful child interrupting adult work, he tried to shoo away the intuition that would disrupt the carefully charted course

the hunter should have known (since cancer just took his saintly wife)— or maybe he did—that approaching the stag with open arms, having set his shotgun down in the forest glen, would not assure an unimpaled heart

“Rest in peace” and “I’ll see you soon”—bromides so often in tension

the first players to wear mitts were guffawed off the diamond

the courting blanket now under the family picnic

rattlesnakes biting dew-berry hands

bushy eyebrows resolute in a downpour

the scriptedness undermined the reassurance

squid ink released not in defense, but as a cipher for another of its kind

feel-good clichés can create more problems, sometimes even metaphysical, than the ones they fake solve—God needed a new angel

an experience of self-objectification, as in when one says “Good job” to oneself, taken as an experience of the divine within

perhaps from the recesses of lullabies long ago, her favorite tune to play was the one that united grandparents she never knew on lover’s lane

a sudden hand slap from a Jamaican vendor, as the tourist reached for a piece of fruit with her obnoxiously-styled edges, knocked the black-American entitlement right out of her

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

condemning gay sex on grounds that it violates the purpose of the tongue even as you lick stamps and do party tricks like the cloverleaf and the wave

you want to call out, even punch in the mouth, those resume-to-heaven givers so into their own feel-good trip of giving that they keep giving, unresponsive to your protests about how the gifts are a burden—but is it worth the stress?

to survive that woke horde dead set on eating even teachers who explain that “nega” is how to say the Chinese “um,” rub zombie blood all over you—and a low-cost way to do so is to fire, for any hint of deviation from wokeness, your least-empowered staff

polo shirt unbuttoned with no undershirt below, his wife fixes the collar caught open by the strap of his bookbag and says: “Goin’ bareknuckle?”

haunting notes fingered from the rims of wine glasses

wildflowers erupt in a graffiti of color against train cars abandoned to rust

beneath the north-facing overhang of a boulder, glacial and too big to hug, a verdant oasis of moss respires the frigid ambience of tundral moisture

sandbox sand sprinkling from their Velcro tangles, the sneakers of his college-bound son transport him
back to preschool drop offs and fingerpaint pickups

the bitter frankness of those speaking a language in which they lack the range to dance in diplomacy around the bush

how to have a life, especially in hashtag college, if you don’t fall in any of the right, the trending, victim categories—now that is the question!

afro bush for loofah lather

those desperate for rest, but who cannot stop making work of free-time activities

beer sucks through a straw

the child-pleasure of being terrified

a solitary well in the heart of the Sahara

the creak of floorboards no matter how meager the step

what matters a hearing from the world at large?

self-imposed deadlines tick louder in the closed-eyed corners of “me-time”

sizzling head of froth from orange juice sloshed rough in carton

“Don’t make excuses, make results,” says the Double Diamond Ambot, the guitar opening on Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best”

wary about calling cops despite the sixth sense because TV shows always speak of waiting twenty-four hours before a missing-person report

in our narrow age, what might come from bringing to bear mastery of one specialty on another?

giving up in the presence of greats when you would have pushed on had you been isolated from them

the old man gave people so much in hope to draw them in as a resource to ensure his future giving—altruism with an angle

mobile-home church—for gospels, but not on the go

the wood-panel veneer of 70s electronics, from amps to TVs to Ataris

Indianapolis Ethiopian Clowns: Hank Aaron’s negro baseball team

saying what you do not believe—what is downright ridiculous even—in fear of violating your racial allegiance only tightens the chains

the laughably narrow view of nature had by those who think that insects live closer to nature than we do

older now, silly putty no longer stands out in the supermarket aisle

books on the shelf behind us in photos fixed despite our change

reality has not become any more out of reach now that we say, even feel in our bones, that reality acts like a movie (rather than the other way around): our antennae, in fact, have been shaped by media to pick up new things in reality at least on some occasions

stomping cum out in the carpet

priorities reshuffled by the march of time

linoleum still slippery after last week’s grease spill

the organic of pre-human epochs was always algorithmic

that day when he had to show that her life did not matter when at risk was his own

hosts no longer holding back fierce quarrels, you are now here too long—or is it, at home?

be not so certain of your take on jungle law: the gazelle jumped in the watery path of crocodiles so that even its foolish calf could live

touring open houses for the medicine cabinets

a story lost in the ink bleed of rain

aware of her presence only from her warmth

the radio playing in a room all night, no one there

fingers interlocked, but wondering if the grip is one of habit or heart

tethered by fake threads like stars in a constellation

trees give us a mirror: amputations healing just like ours

a nightly hope for his socks to dry by morning

hyperbole to incite action used to turn off academics

strawberry face cyst regenerates soon after drainage

so many deckhands, forced by tight quarters into the intimacy of long-voyage secrets, weep in silence as the port of conclusion draws near

early 90s seatbelts pulled sly across our laps as we order our children to do the same with harsh whispers, the cop car tailing us

pampered by success-affording leisure, that hope gambols in most minds now, lowest and highest: that hope to die before experiencing the collapse

underclass artists adopting minimalism to decrease the odds of embarrassment under scrutiny by the cultured world

an organ of human society funded to preserve knowledge and abilities outsourced to artificial intelligence

seated, alongside the uniformed members you have grown attached to over decades, at a ceremony to mark the group’s dissolution

when times get tough we see a rise in swindlers—hallowed grounds, even ivory towers, are not immune

victim culture (to have been unsettled is to have been traumatized) plus cancel culture (to have traumatized is to deserve ruin)—a recipe for easy As when colleges run on the business slogan “the customer is always right”

are we nearing a time when we would fire the sweet librarian merely for shelving a book whose statistics “invalidate our lived experience”?

a placated boss

bathless kids at school without socks

calm satiety after a thorough cry

another sudden innocent urge to Google whether you are loved

reaching the level where people bother to hate you

letters home from war, blacked out in parts

nuclear power plants in towns that would rather eat than have serenity

acting as if ruined merely by hearing the news that rape has occurred in history, then wanting to ruin the professor of such news—that reeks of the same cologne worn by evangelicals who rage against gays: different choirs, same hymnbook

it would be bad enough to rage at the rain each time it made you wet, even as you always refuse to carry an umbrella—but colleges are actually waterparks!

like a sailor scouting stars, she scans for navigational points of affection— every gesture a clue to decipher

finding him to be there only when hearing one’s breathing double

with the ur-pleasure bound up in seeing your child eat, imagine the ur-pain of seeing it anorexic

in her story, a spellcaster feared for his harnessing of dark magic became the last hope to save the light

incensed at the poet for his “unsettling” paintings, and understandably so: their inspiration is a world we hate to see, especially because we are its nurturers

rainbows in geyser spray outshone by field-trip giggles over packed lunch

pre-dawn conversations punctuated by sniffs of record-sleeve lines

an overgrown cigarette ash between unaware fingers bates our breath

one leaf left on the autumnal branch

elk calls in the early quiet

clear glasses of saltwater make a blue sea

those who cannot see that hunters can be sincere conservationists

warm steam from the compost heap in the birdsong chill of spiderweb dew

gemstones on black velvet, their facets reflecting medieval torchlight

stream water in a tin cup, still babbling tales of snowcaps and ancient stones beneath screams of shortsighted industry

stomach growling before the family grave, the man whispers—but without really fathoming—“I will go here in my time”

ice changes the taste of beer, ruins it, just as freezing ruins the taste of lettuce

if caught in a lie, just insist that at the time you were trying to break your intrusive obsession with ensuring that everyone know the truth

we feel insulted to hear the artist describe his early work, so adored by us, as “crap” especially because we take him to be wiser now

a deer captivated by its reflection in a puddle of an overgrown parking lot

let bones, ligaments, tendons take the weight of the shoulders

reversing a lifetime of poor posture

trusting the shape to emerge from the chiseled stone

cameras click as the guide points, but enthusiasm slants toward the gift shop

that hour for promenading  the main street of the hood and posting up on its corners

desire being so often mimetic—“I want that toy,” “I want her,” because he does—serves as a check against venturing too far: evolution is conservative

refusing to face our death, to believe it creeps from a non-eternity away, despite all the funerals attended

address book full at ninety five, but few left to receive his calls

a crack corner, not just starting from dusk

abandoning the scientific theory prematurely, as too audacious to be true

feigning enlightenment by denigrating alpha behavior while overplaying your struggles with trying to nurturing beta qualities

not training close to the fight in fear of how such behavior might affect his self-assurance since he might unconsciously read it as desperate

aging agony about what is to become of her man-child, slobbering always and moan-moaning, when she dies

temp agency code words that allow for screening with self-deceptive delicacy: brownies, chili peppers, egg whites

selecting should be seen as emphasizing, perhaps even overemphasizing— but not as lying

the vision of her masterpiece gathering dust, pauses the sculptor’s hand

she was too “intuitive” to welcome, or even recognize, the exceptions

underworld slang obscuring the trade even from the ears of the traders

an indirect way to feign being strong and virile is to condemn being strong and virile, and then stress how much you struggle to be what amounts to the opposite

we have knee-jerked too far from our rune-casting ancestors if today we are not allowed to pre-judge—let us move away, instead, only enough that there be no shock if we are wrong

the trans boy, self-described as mis-bodied, is not inconsistent in holding that gender is a construct while also treating his “boyness” as a given: he feels, after all, aligned with traits that society—infiltrating him since the womb—deems basic to “boyness”

snow like dust motes in the gleam of a lone lamppost

two souls with two screens of digital dopamine under one blanket

explaining that the greasy bondage gear strewn about the house belongs to a friend

a silent chorus of weariness as to the symphony's worth

pregnancies to claim more milk from the nanny system

that urge to give the mentally disabled drugs and alcohol

tree branches and rivers meander as conditions change

clinging to a person who looks like someone bygone

sitting being the new smoking, where will you stand?

the café—like an ant mound—rebricked again after yet another tank

control chosen over connection, forfeiting genuine embrace

a gardener cutting away too many blooms in pursuit of a perceived order

seeing in new lands only what stokes nostalgia for home

shadows of the past find form in faces of the present, binding souls to echoes

brushstrokes reminiscent of past artwork, the artist's hand hesitates

reality may bend and shift (as in when black moths start to predominate in the town since the smog of a nearby factory blackens the birch trees on which the white ones once clung invisible to predators), but the overarching blueprint remains forever rigid

what’s-the-point weariness evadeless in these digital days where everyone is a little star

earnest and methodical scrutiny as to the cause of the engine light to pretend away one’s helplessness

various cultures (Arab, Italian, Black) glorifying the stereotypes foisted upon them— their boxes becoming more like stages

and yet what if the teen on the fast track to sex change— on hormones now and with surgery around the corner— is gender fluid, or perhaps even depressed and rebellious?

the tragedy of running off with a bum’s bottle

caricatures turned into solidarity badges of pride

poker eyes fliting between the elements of their hand

the accusing women are just money-hungry, of course

hail the nocturnal guardians over a world at rest

on the stock-market floor, glances ricochet between screens, each tick a potential turn of fortune

watching others sleep to feel as if wrenching more from life than them— when that turns into hour-plus stints

according to the stereotypical caricatures of the two genders, a definitional structure long taught in schools (blue and pink), it is a trivial fact that we all spill over the edges in some way

when someone is breaking into your car, approach with “Can I get a light, brother?” and stab him in the temple with the keys

prayer before a test might seem stupid (either you studied or not), but the prayer could be something like “Let what I know come easily through my pen” or “Let my nerves not get in my way”

cum salvos powerful throughout the priesthood

all the art dissolved in a supernova

a shell around wife and kids, consumed by young pussy

petroglyphs swallowed by shifting dunes

moral courage atrophied by tongues held for peace

an art gallery after hours, drinking in the still beauty

white supremacists who have not checked their DNA

that familiar cascade of neuronal firings weakens with age, her face fading

even druid chants to fill the time and block the why, ended early because of rain and hunger

the Saturday kitchen staff—well, all except the dish-shattering busboy—bustle submerged in that telepathic current of move anticipation

bad blood between the two hermits caved, finally, by mutual forgiveness— the synchronicity forever concealed

ever slinking and reclusive, avoidant, to stifle the quiet reality that they are not looking for you

before thinking that cancel culture will not get too extreme, we should remember who we are: macabre critters who booed at early guillotine events for not tossing in some pre-torture

thanks to the drudgery and sustained isolation it so often demands, never did she cultivate the power to appreciate the isolation-shattering entertainment of great literature

the inspired jazz ensemble improvises as one, each member intuiting the flow like a flock shifting in unison from some communal cue

the probing beam pauses too briefly upon the shipwreck barnacled in the ocean black— as if it somehow knew the void of discovery

wanting each other dead

it smolders beneath iris-peering smiles

laughter echoes: silent observers of tension beneath

mutual vitriol blinding them to their child's suffering

each wound demanding vengeance, the original lost to time

our history of burning bitches at the stake, although unforgotten, fails to pause—even seems to enliven—our dichotomous mobs

our boxcar door opens in a groan of rust— railyard moonlight

the movie theater vomit the faint smell— butter popcorn

walking the electric city block in dissociative cognizance of being a note in a symphony

driven by the old thrill of the hunt and the goal of necessary meat, less than the thought of being forgotten

the surest way to create a world of talking past each other, and ultimately of violence, is to teach the youth to esteem finding fault in others over explaining fault away

eyespots on moth wings: the red cape in a bullfight

dumpster boots too large, stuffed with rags at toe and heel

wrecked by imagined fun occurring elsewhere, Tears for Fears on the stereo

piecing together the shadow civilization buried in the glitching sands of degraded data

a knight in armor cobbled from fallen enemies

other-worldly psyches craving escape too

pouring over interactions with missed loved ones

the urge to place cold hands on another’s body

resolving our regret by reshaping our memories

inviting your shrink to the dinner get-together

the River Lethe beyond myth in black holes

lonely enough to brave offense with extended touch

history lost in the noise of cyber archives too expansive

fantasies of freedom from one another

chiseling away painful recollections in the carving of a more palatable narrative, the sculptor encountered a tenacious vein

a doll in the attic, its dress the torn pages of love letters passed down through death

an extraterrestrial to them, the drunk hobo— one of the few who gets to see the stars—wonders if among their planets someone else hurts like this

a torturous and tortuous tome can have you envious of the smarts it took to write it, and so even more guilty at the desire to put it down

to see value in the discarded might seem to challenge society's consumerist hunger for the next, but the lady rifling through dumpsters sells what she refurbishes

without philosophy, mathematicians might slip into regarding numbers as platonic entities, but that does not mean philosophy is settled on the matter

those who scorn writers who speak directly, failing to dress up—elevate—the subject with language, indicate as well their scorn for the subject matter

“An arrow is shot only by pulling it back,” says the Triple Diamond Ambot, the horns opening on Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now”

in a land where free speech is blocked on campus (and to such an extent that even off-duty painting and poetry get professors fired), expect experts not to be allowed to express what they know (about global warming or viral pandemics or whatever)

in both cases the number of lives taken grew alongside our bloodlust and self-hatred at what we were sanctioning—but whereas years ago we ate literal food sold at booths around guillotines, today we insert popcorn emojis during cancellation Twitter events

utterances delivered, thick and choked, passing the joint

dashboard-door-ceiling drums driving high as teens

brown moth wings leave behind metallic eye-shadow

birdsong in a breeze piercing despair

digital archives vulnerable to the entropy governing little less than being itself

psychedelic trips resetting neural patterns

core wisdom beneath the neural noise

hands chilled by winter become instruments of playful mischief even as adults

the courage to honor forbidden desires

mules surefooted down rocky slopes

mourning in advance

we tease Segway riders in city convoys just as we did pc users

a mineral layer on the shower curtain next to the toilet

chopped-onion air reverberating between eyes and glass lenses

fucked foreigners construed as conquests of the country to which they belong

heartache channeled into art revealing we are not alone

the UV tanner upset by the question, “Is this—your granddaughter?”

the humbled lioness—low in hopeful submission at the hooves of a bloody cape buffalo, panting— is gored and flung, gored and flung, floppy in dust

visions of mirth elsewhere haunted her soul, rendering the present pale and wanting

the deeming having come so chronically from the outside that it now comes from within, we are deemed failures for not mastering (or for at least not recovering from) grief

self-acceptance requires filtering external metrics through the wisdom of an inner compass attuned over time

beneath the surface fractures that we are, that allow us to be lovers and rivals, lies the uncrackable core of being itself

that stage where life, its main drama, is spent retracing steps to recover misplaced objects: remotes, pills, glasses, canes, insurance cards

conscientious horse love may lead to let down if your pheromones are not right for the beast to mount—but then there is the perfume loophole

now any denial of the accusation of being anti-x (woke, trans, black) is proof that the accusation is true

lunacy ripened to conspicuity

iguana tail thrash bloodies fish-tank glass

finding God in jail and giving him up on parole

masturbating to historical figures

would you feel accomplishment if one of your lines became a cliché?

the bright side—word-jumble disorder, a windfall for poetry

Rocky Mountain big horn sheep seek out lichen rocks, tripping

taking up the painted gesture yourself— hand over face, say—to sort out what attitude, what inner life, it betrays

although it continued to sponsor wars and weapon expansion, the company fired an employee alleged to have made a fat joke

arranging the dead one’s journal entries by the locations of writing

hair-mussing from grandpa, and sometimes more

fashionably emaciated

the urge to pinch cow lips, dog lips—bite them even

cheering her on to fight death even though you know she is sunk deep in dying—if not insane, why else but for you to look good?

living well as indicated by the practice of closing and opening refrigerators, drawers, with the feet while the hands are at work

all-day cartoon marathon filled with commercials saying “Go outside today”

defense attorneys put glasses on their clients: nerds are safe, honest

yellow strips slashing by as you drive yourself to jail

phlegm swallowed for nutrition

that admonitory gesture of a silent shh— forefinger to lips—implicates its target in the eavesdropping

fixing the drowned victim’s face for the casket, mouth still locked in a final panicked pull for air

spreading her ass to a brown butterfly inkblot

even voices muted in fear resonate as thunder in his paranoid ear

jailed men start to make love

whale songs tickling communal memory in distant pods

gaining credibility through self-discrediting disclosures, the ugly guts

ant mounds mower-riled, dragonflies hover the lawn

prison’s regimented schedule at least made so many job-ready

lowering her face from his volatile gaze further enflamed his rage

the accidental electrocution of the electro-fisherman

the cover story versus the real story

blind but resolute removal of the shaft just before she squirts

fury-shattered pottery made whole through patient joinery—fragments transfigured into gnarled eloquence

rambunctious fiends in dawn beds armed with toys, parents guarding vitals—testicles, eyes—in half sleep

children flipping between languages, connecting their immigrant parents to bus drivers and doctors and cashiers

living in a place everyone calls a paradise, the pressure is to preserve that reputation

geniuses of path-blazing, much more than those of analysis, leave silly mistakes for scholars to build careers disclosing

the belief in race seems akin to the belief in witches, but a real commonality—no, not the power to fly— bloomed between all those persecuted as witches

over ten percent of food-stamp money used on sugary drinks

fingers crossed for an accident to yield the required organ

trees give us warmth in their burning

sparks of defiance against the crushing dark, beacons for future souls

curling iron—cheap weave—fire detector

ancient seafarers losing sight of familiar constellations

native trails echo through the asphalt under our tires

beneath its pristine surface, residents wrestle black widows and pills

already one suicide attempt behind her

tattoos revealing not a hard-won character, but his cheap attempt to claim one

eating hardboiled eggs over the sink, salt straight from Morton

yet another student mob provoked even more by the professor’s pathetic bowing

you cannot blame whites today who try to pass for black anymore than blacks yesterday who tried to pass for white: people chase opportunity beyond even geographical lines

the immigrants shed old-world garb as they cross in hope for opportunity, sensing they would lose community

mycelia in this mulch fruit with rain— argent withering by noon

silver coins in water boiling the mushrooms— black coin: poisonous

he was okay with a little sloppiness in his creative overflow, thinking of all the scholar jobs it would open

denounced as nothing but a sketch: strokes too hurried, too staccato, too enamored of what is fleeting to have micro precision

alive, blinking—but cradling their own snakes of viscera

infantrymen rifle through pieces of their brothers for smokes too often bloody

ecce homo: crucified alongside SIM pickpockets conscious in a world his kind coded

minds severed by lightyears touch in mutual well wishes cast into the black sky

the innuendo of adult desire in the innocent embrace of a popsicle

lost hikers burn meager belongings for rescue signals

opening to the subtleties of grace within the drudgeries

how could his skill be appreciated by people for whom Olive Garden is gourmet?

freedom to be bored

jagged wounds in mountainsides from miners that once blasted for ore

spun-sugar vistas too pristine, too safe, to be nourishing or humane

the radiant veins of ceramic shards rejoined

beetles born eating their way out of mother

parent finches spurning weaker chicks so at least one might escape the nest

acquiescing with exhaled courage to the scalpel, the surgeon doing the same

caring for baby dolls: an unconscious request for cock

those across species chewing food for their young, stealing bits as they do

trailblazers scout unmapped terrain, logs marking steps for the families soon to settle the promising frontier

parental concern about too much reading became about too much TV, and now there is the internet

reclined in the grass of a clearing in the woods, reaching up alone there to tempt the butterfly to perch

since the biological basis of racial differentiation is less solid than the biological basis of gender differentiation, it should be easier to cross the race line than it is to cross the gender line

we would be alone were we not separate

the space between notes drew out too far for our kind

the bond formed through talking in whisper

the fresh magic lost under critical glare of revision

shadows of age-old bigotry shining through avatar faces

street urchin pressed against the restaurant window

our roads meander because, underneath, the indigenous roads do

thinking of places to wipe the cum without having to get up from bed

jailed alongside the “cretins” your activism opposes

her fragrance still lingers in the pillow

partings that would not have been had you not so tried to stay ahead of partings

monsters also in the unmapped territories of the heart

chasing her toddler, the mother crunchies veggie chips into the rug— her usual dutifulness strewn aside

suppressing the overt expression of a fact we all see as obvious— that blacks perpetrate a disproportionate amount of violent crime— threatened to make that fact all the more powerful in our minds

recognizing, as you pass others, that you are walking with a squint strained despite twilight overcast

the pure form of something— courage, gaping, laughing— would look to us a shallow imitation

“If kids are starving in Africa,” the boy says as he looks at his peas, “then why should I eat more?”

nail-clipper jaws busting top front teeth in self harm

America's dad was black before he was caught raping everyone

the banister of teleology for our existential vertigo

bereaved mothers wrecked by the aroma of baby powder

home invasions giving wives their first orgasms

swim pace increased less by rivalry than by a sense of inter-lane fellowship

masterpieces demoted to no more than wall decoration

the hardcore shapes of adulthood pantomimed in prepubescent play

killing himself each day to enter the mausoleum of acclaim

Earth no longer communicating back to its interstellar seeds of bravery

panty porch pirate

the arrow of beauty somehow managed to slip through a chink in time's armor, puncturing the heart of defensive cynicism

resemblance spotted in a stranger's gesture conjures a primal sense of belonging, kinship's wavelengths transmitted in currents deeper than known ancestry

hearing all the reminisces of the reunion, forced to reckon with the fact that your artistic ambition— raging even then—has you a shadow for them too

those open to allow meaning to give way to sound, choosing words that skew their intent even

butric acid in butter and vomit— does that explain the connection we sense in the movie theater?

weeping—that was what she struggled to remember she needed to do

breaks on the solitary path of artistic ambition call forth dear faces left behind

objects veiled behind a curtain of mist

sucking bees from their summer nests with a wet vac

analyzing the dances, naming them, was his way to join

give it a chance: the dog will sing with you

measuring time by average movie length

bodily remembrance of pleasures the conscious mind struggles to banish

past and present entangle momentarily in a passing scent

for the right eyes, being shines through not doing as well

swimming against implacable currents to spawn to death at fabled sources

unless your view of nature is pathetic, nothing but nature can impose order on nature

feeling that he is too settled in the chair to reach for a swig frees him to reach for a swig

“Work for your dream, not someone else’s” says the Crown Ambot, the chorus opening on Irene Cara’s “What a Feeling”

persecution mania

trimming mustache whiskers with canine chomps

paunch shadow is better than a flap in its place

promises to keep in touch scribbled throughout senior yearbooks

unable to recognize himself in the smell, the knees, the moles of old age, he feels as if he remembers himself as a child

if we had genuine love for diversity, we would engage in much less slandering and much more celebrating of privilege

it is getting crowded on Everest

a shared reflection in the shards of a mirror

flinging wishes skyward, oblivious to gravity

the biblicality of bums

a sand smuggler’s contribution to beach retreat

local news mobile traffic cams slowing down traffic

those who would still write about and paint what is not disappearing

boot-camp spit shine for boots and cocks

clothes straight—and of course stiff—from the line

the quantum plane, at least as described so far, is still “spooky” enough to welcome the wildest of our wishful projections

you stand there incredulous about how they can think so differently than you, insensitive to the fact that they live in a different virtual reality (having been fed totally different information by the cyber algorithms)

that brief interlude of unthinking disregard for caution, is there such a thing anymore— was it ever there, purely—even at climax?

how could he be dead when his boots stand still muddy at the doorstep, his waste bin full of balled-up starts, his underwear still damp?

Thai toddlers nursing from bovine teats

busting hymen and leaving handprints in fresh concrete

dark nooks probed by bishop crosiers throughout the centuries

filling a bucket next door to flush

married, on the sofa

caring for the sick to secure your identity as not sick

christening gestures of the hand for spider webs in the woods

that first future raindrop on Mars, heralding an era

funds funneled to family before the final farewell

just as shadows can live without people, people can live without their shadows— in pitch black, where conversation is best

unless it is just a flagrant ploy of manipulation—out of consistency (and as is expected in our victim culture), if having W-privilege is punishable, or at least shameful (just because it is a privilege), so too is every “privilege”: having two dads, being autistic

pretending to have ideas, orgasms, in hope soon to have them in truth

nitrogen bloat in compacted intestines

the pliable cartilage of newborn ear

inheritors circle like vultures

fish dyed—rice pink—authentic Japanese

praisers of meditation scorn TV for inciting a trance

entertained by the attack on entertainment

a stone circle, not too far from Starbucks, still hidden from modernity

merely admitting to having a problem releases many, countless throughout the centuries, from the burden of working on it: excising or editing or integrating it

a painter dabbling in abstracts, trusting that soon the strokes will awaken some coalescence

folds of flesh around the mouth, cheeks chiseled with grooves—his face, rugged with etching tales, belonged on a quarter

the father of presence must be the father of himself because the father has presence

slobbering disableds at each turn (parks, pools) in a land where poking fun at them, even in a way that has them giggle, is wrong

those who ride horses only when there is show of consent, but who say that horses cannot show consent when it comes to sex

hooded glances

embarrassed to pray

gas station slot machine

every death—a library ablaze

lacking the guts to get a mistress

garbage cans scraped along to the curb

turned off by porn actresses with foreign accents

an unexplained presence imposing uneasy hospitality

what hope is there, really, when so many trust in astrology?

when that brilliance passes its zenith, flora lowest to the ground are spared again in the cool shadow of neighbors

junky vagina squat washed, for the gateway to the next fix, in the pathetic parabola of an urban drinking fountain (panties the same)

the disloyal lover—a cliché—approaches his spurned partner in a cliché: cap-in-hand, head hung in contrition's awkward pose

wound healing, collagen producing, antioxidant rich, and freezable for later use—cum is a secret face cream going back to more grandmas than you might believe

spiritually cashiered by a sense
of self-sufficiency too extreme for a mere mode of being

overhearing a halfalogue slows reaction time when performing concurrent activities not merely due to its partial predictability: it can be fully predictable and still distract and it can be fully unpredictable and not distract (if it is from, say, a foreign tongue)

being cancelled as a superstar often makes you a bigger superstar, which is why perhaps it is now starting to get us off more to go after those our cancellations can destroy: the nobody-disenfranchised

high off guillotining nobles, revolution's fury turned on peasants hoarding bread as camaraderie curdled into paranoia

being able to fulfill every desire is perhaps the highest freedom, whereas having to is perhaps the highest bondage

in secrecy but in good conscience (since tighter is better), the doctor would always administer the “husband stitch”: going a tad into vaginal territory when mending torn perinea

ac-water and piss snake down the lot; streams clear-head and foam-head merge

soon from the precipice cascades turn to mist in advance of the talus

if the best consumers are those who—having their whole lives ahead of them—crave fashion-travel-technology-alcohol fun-fun-fun, expect consumerist societies to view those who admire the sky or chat with family without FOMO—the “old”—as failures

imagination’s harvest ever outpacing grain entrusted to language’s rickety silos

a cheating peak in solitaire—fast, as if not to notice what you did

prayers cast beyond idols that shrink the sublime

matchbook corners to pry at lodged food

clots temporarily staunching fury’s hemorrhage

a patterned ring of salt around the baseball cap

driftwood: once a cucumber, now a pickle

watch lest you become the victim of prudence: some exposure is good for you

hearts enlarge in villages high above sea

seeing two analysts, neither aware

signs of our shadow selves in the curbside garbage

graybeards immune to marketing's mesmerism

“the way it really was” is not always the way it ought to be in art

and just like that, he finds himself fighting back the urge to tell new parents in the supermarket to cherish every moment: “They grow up so fast”

it takes often too much courage to say the path you have been on is wrong, letting down everyone you told for years

a forbidden kiss stolen in haste, her hand electrified at the back of his neck

the wind of her urgent exhale bellows out a web of cum top lip to bottom strung

those innumerable memories swept away for every obituary blurb are swept away merely as actual—the virtual, untouched

through tamarind rapport more than force, the leathery colossus—one tusk chipped— lumbered her mahout across the river

banking on him not punching you for awhile now that he is on probation

as butterflies take flight, so do dreams birthed in cocooned minds

vultures tearing at the seal placenta encrusted in sand

a cold handgun slid, from calloused hands to smooth, with stomach-sinking directive: “Buck dem niggas if they attack Daddy!”

in that same hall where dance partners once foxtrotted until dawn, where glowstick ravers once jump-jumped beneath the strobelit sonic artillery of Squarepusher, now—

resigned with a grin to his pinning thrusts, dreamy eyes that fail to meet his leer speak of her deeper inaccessibility

what influence of nurture do the fierce eyes of the falcon transfer to its fledglings?

vicious squirting inside faith’s sanctum

blankets window draped to shut out sunlight, like friends and family

deep purple of tongue veins

willows survive the winds by yielding

old but still stealing Faustian sips before the party ends

epitaphs rendering lives mere curiosities, if that

fragments of pottery in an archaeologist's dirty hands

myriad worlds lying dormant between readers

in the midst of the party he knew, almost seeing it in his periphery, the dust would gather even here

lemon seeds tumbling in the crawfish boil—leave a smell of cloves baking in ham

more singing causes more rain just as more trips to the dermatologist causes more skin problems

that the medaled leader of empire stands painted in the pink glow of a setting sun suggests the painter’s seditious prediction

a young father sinking in the graveside mud, beaten by the concussive downpour

the lie of thriving systemic racism reinciting individual racism on all sides

a wildfire checked by a thin line of cleared vegetation until the gust of wind

fragile flowers on the battlefield

the tattered quilt warmed several generations before becoming mere decoration

shooting ducks as they float—TNTing fish

public dissections of common criminals

prostitutes with certificates of health in hand

her aged eyes have seen too much, yet refuse to shut

household phrases whispered in another language as a turn on

more talking rights for cancer patients, but even more for blacks, in writers’ rooms

what hope is there, really, when so many believe that truth is whatever one believes?

vestiges of unknown yearnings, sorrows, victories

crayons and Legos in each divorce-attorney office

interventions disturbing the balance they were meant to restore justify further interventions

some aspect of the lone cactus must in some sense await what we call the “elusive rain”

an actor in the media propaganda about him, the leader believes himself to be an expert pilot too

the death inheritance freed the artist from striving for commercial viability

a perched sparrow swapping eyes— left, right—at its object, verifying what one eye sees with the other

recognizing the face of the one robbing you at gunpoint, a face from somewhere long ago

the inaugural wail of the newborn, unaware of human taxonomies, interpreted as LGBTQ belonging

doddering crossing guards mocked but undeterred, greeting students by name

children deployed as human shields so the other side appears vile on CNN

Grandma’s shit smeared all over the bathroom again—a stinky plea?

the crown jewel of male arousal, unprotected after circumcision

infant orcas netted for captivity, pods squealing as one

lawyers chasing ambulances for new injury clients

beer bottles winning the war against the weeds

poor kids walking on hands for diversion

so many perfecting their craft beyond fame’s eye

lined up for a chance to kiss the relic

the landscape’s impact on the soul

the stair-chair that takes forever, lurching in ascent

doves are violent little fuckers

they yell, “We are the natives,” as if never having heard a claim of divine right!

the hunched crone would gather her birch and oak (stake wood) with shaking knees, her stove feeding wanderers of strange tongue— until it became just too profitable to accuse the weird of witchcraft

the boy, self-conscious to find his sleepover friend praying aloud while he says nothing before bed

those who pay no mind to the unyielding censure of the fasten-seatbelt bell

“He’s doing good now” as just a way of saying “He’s much less weird”

it is natural to write about writers on benches, looking up from worn notepads now and then at geese, when there is nothing much else to say

activists are bad lovers of truth, and that is not necessarily a bad thing if sometimes she wants fucking (not caring affection)

did the artist imagine that the beauty of his sculpture would only intensify once in discolored pieces, some even indiscernible from ordinary granules of earth?

a wispy mustache has kissing dogs sneeze

quivering eyes that seem to touch you in their gaze

the blind putting on makeup, at the mirror

Grandma brushing out your Halloween witch wig to pass as regular hair at school

united in love after crying as one that first time

today's explorers stake claims on uncharted terrains of identity

Big Brother Toby Flenderson is always watching, and has a sword now

mild demeanor belies the newfound might of HR's retributive arm

whispers casting indelible shadows in the digital panopticon

why did they stop—those axe strikes still wedged in the resolute oak years before the parents of our grandparents were born?

the grizzled herb grinder, chanting ancestral prayers to bless each newborn through their rite of passage, enjoys the cover of exoticism to keep on molesting

fantasies exhibited in art reveal how these people wanted to remember a time and place

a stockpile of extinct emblems throughout the post-war dwelling— all that anxiety on display

oil drama mute within the figure reclined in a domestic interior bathed in the subtle daylight

in a culture where it is hip to have a victim status, expect great numbers—first, among sheltered teen “rebels”—to say they belong to victim groups whose entry condition is subjective feel (being two-spirited, say), and so not something open to being questioned

a father’s consolation of his child after a nightmare became the nightmare

plain features presented without apology

that familiar incense of autumn leaves burning

can you become a slave to your own will?

crisp outline in the carpet where the bookcase stood

wait—sex need not involve being choked to within an inch of your life?

shadows, even from loving hands, can dance with menacing grace in the dreamer's vulnerable gaze

some look in her eyes, the look in Titian’s Venus of Urbino, welcomes rough face smacks

what you love is your path if love is the path— but there are other paths

the artist’s desperation to secure time alone, most of which he squanders— so he worries—gazing out the window

the-customer-is-always-right model, metastasized now into the classroom, would dim the flame of excellence that college exists to fortify even if customer-students exalted the pain vital to excellence instead of being as they are: coddled groaners of “No pain”

accused of witchcraft, the only choices were to deny it and face a harsh death or admit it and, after implicating others— perhaps your final “Fuck you!”—face a humane death

digital personas intermingle while their roots wither in jacked-in solitude

days given over to the dispatches of war correspondents

varied fingernail cuts for a finger painter’s range

humiliated by her infidelities

authenticity wrestles with opportunism when victim identity is a badge of honor

the loneliness of a commander, hands clasped behind his back

a run-in with the clap is no longer a rite of passage into manhood

from the perch of smart screens, the naked carnage seemed just sterile statistics

that contagious cheer in the clubfooted midget waddling to our coins like a duck to bread

gnats drown on a forehead, dappled with grassy sweat, mowing through their roiling ghosts

despite the assurances of his new sweetheart,  the lover feels forsaken when, in high spirits with him near, she laughs hard with friends

fear, loosening with age, was the grip that steered him away from suicide and from acting out a road rampage 

isolation, withdrawal from too much stimuli, for a break from their demand to be lifted— along with any of their offspring—into art

filling up the car at a gas station paved over groves where first peoples once performed tasks too exotic for us not to romanticize as more spiritual than ours

an occupational hazard of being a historian, especially one of philosophy, was the regressive tendency to hold, sometimes as self-evident, principles flouted today

our selfied selves, our ideas, our beliefs, our avatars crammed together in various cyber spaces—our bodies cordoned off from one another like never before

as if it did not already invite excellence-dimming implications all on its own, the university motto “The student comes first” is readily interpreted as “The customer-student is always right”

slicing a vessel in a warm bath

too many deep penetrations to smell right for those in normal territories

what you pull out of your ass is often what is convenient

lachrymatory bottle

the heat of his spirit melts barriers

burning bridges came easier than voicing remorse

you want to believe that children do not remember

her sanctity undermined by focus on her sordid aspects

a caterpillar inches along the twig, impelled like us all by instinct's arcane script

tree roots ripple the cobblestone walkway of human ambition

the one who loves the other less

old window pane—riven trough of the cedar frame

awakening to a fog cloud in the bedroom

hiding dubiety with fervor

there is always that one chirping morning where it feels like the first day of spring regardless of what the calendar says

hurting—almost as if in hope to obliterate— the person we have wronged: their presence, a paint smudge, never allowing our guilt to die

when subjects that the artist wills himself to take on become those that take over his will

fingers interlaced at his spine, the artist sees various options but knows which it must be: the one that will only isolate him further still

cathedral spandrels are silences in solos—trim words; play rests

the night whispers of muses now the morning psalms of duty

finger-brushing teeth with baking soda

one’s reflection in one’s photo on the bookshelf

old friends keeping you an old version of yourself

venereal diseases spreading in arranged marriages

watching without being noticed allows you to witness your own absence

cookie-cutters serried—kids roof-to-roof jumping

drowning the echo of discordant behavior with more discordance

dead advertisements awaken from columbaria in our minds

orca dorsal fins folded in resignation to a closed-in fate

even despite knowing that we ourselves would have made the seas plastic too, our bitterness toward past generations still makes sense: it is, after all, bitterness toward ourselves

that human rush of wonder in a black child hovering over a rare insect—but the attitude of her culture invokes the jarring scream “Child, get from that bug!”

that human need to interact in a black child speaking to the delivery man—but the attitude of her culture invokes the jarring scream “Child, get from that door!”

with every accusatory finger we point three more curve back—reminding us that, in another era, we too might have . . .

a still-life of dismembered pussies— pieces of meat piled up with no sense of pathos

the average time for one’s cheerfulness after running into an old acquaintance to shrivel into an unavoidable feeling

the dimensions of the animal cage would be humane were we talking a coffin rather than the living quarters for this colossus born to roam trackless fathoms

how can we ensure the survival of mankind when many endorse the following all at once: astrology, mediumship, Pizzagate, the NRA?

a keepsake of fleeting sentimentality now a relic anchoring a civilization

reeducation camp

silence shapes notes

enclosed at home due to your child’s reputation

complicated child locks for the toilet seat have him pissing in the tub

harming those we have harmed in a twisted bid to silence guilt for the harming

chastising the history we repeat in different details

the fear you fail to face grows more tremendous in the head

a songbird’s rousing chorus at dawn goes on much longer—only drowned in the cacophony of what it heralded

brushing with the left may be good for the mind but teeth pay the price

like horses taking feed from an outstretched hand, on our backs we contort tactile lips out to grip the brimming cup so that nothing spills in its tilt

released from decades of wrongful prison not into open skies so long envisioned but into the pyre of industrial cremation

our indignation towards the ancients is but an outward echo of the scream at the face of our own potential treachery

surfacing to sound ancestral calls through cage bars in case the sea is near

we shake our fists at ghosts of yesteryears—our own reflections, in truth

arcane rituals of closed worlds now timeless ceremonies of vast empires

primordial reflexes on the ready beneath decorum, which is their child too

are those who value effort over outcome prone to feel less alive if what they use— shoes, drums, bones—never wears out?

cults and religions; costumes and uniforms; knickknacks and antiques

in the murk of plastic-laden oceans, beyond mere discarded relics we see shadows of our own failings

cane tapping along new terrain, the entire body alive at a level the sighted rarely enter

secret conclaves held in caves gave way to congregations under open skies—at least for those loyal to prophet’s vocal opponent

surgeon banana practice

catching someone engrossed in their own reflection

Memphis summers turn shrimp pink on the counter

a lab fragrance whose jungle match remains undiscovered

forgotten attic memories now museum-worthy chronicles

the cocky half-grin of rad beach muscle, 16-bit teeth beaming only on one side

stroke technique forged in secret on blowup flesh unable to judge

butter-charred clamshells, left cold on paper plates, tongued for their nutty-salt residue by kids gone quiet especially with all the chewy hinges left to nibble away

we mistook the flower for a teacher, in how it rose even among all the rot—when, in truth, landfill nourishment was a life of silver spoons

“Cast a ballot this upcoming election and it could be you who wins the mega-cash— all it takes is a vote and a dream”

the father fights against ignoring the son now grow accustomed to ignoring him

even despite knowing that we ourselves would have owned (and raped) slaves, our bitterness toward past generations still makes sense: it is, after all, bitterness toward ourselves

true safeguarding nurtures capacity to engage heterodoxy

the good ones—the good Americans with guns

scholars redeeming knowledge from fragments

the therapist insisting you were raped despite your protests

remember when you would get a slave when you passed go?

child muscles tight watching parents jugular scream

a pope’s life of captivity in the Vatican

an encore performance hiding in plain sight

innocence finds feast in leavings spurned by jaded plenty

banned for sexualizing a child, a sexual creature

Satan, the angel of deception, would have us sincerely thinking that it is owed to the persecuted, that it actually empowers them, to be shielded—even in college—from triggering words and ideas

watching the youth get dolled up in a mirror, aware that your time for going out like this is over

but what do we let slip (into the) past with all our time wondering how we let things—weekends, vacations—slip past?

hide from the truth by reading the caged bird in her hand simply as her want, say, to be a singer

it got hard for cops to kill blacks without repercussions, but pets are still pretty much open game

video games are exercise: the boy cites his jock itch as proof

typecast in roles never auditioned for

the baby gorilla beginning to rot against the thuds of its mother’s heart

putting off the terrible minute at all costs

exploiting the superstitions of others

white pick-guard covered with blood after punk shows

Puerto Ricans in Fall sparring with boxing gloves at Union Square Park

from cosmic cataclysm emerges a nebulous cradle

John Cryer / Matthew Broderick, Jodie Foster / Helen Hunt, Melanie Griffin / Meg Ryan, Topher Grace / Tobey Maguire, Rene Russo / Jeanne Triplehorn, Michael Bolton / Kenny G, Gillian Anderson / Kate Winslet—but to see it, you have to have aged at the right time

against the autumnal chill of the setting crimson, ashes of a childhood friend disperse in the wind— fragments of bone pocketed for a plan unknown

the dancer's sophisticated twirl breaks down into the joyous spin of child, leaving the audience moved but unsure whether this was planned

young again, you would spend more time on good-night kisses than on complaints about having to get up so damn early

although we know it atrophies us further, muzzling speech is a solution too enticing for slothful superficials such as ourselves

when the trail mom insists that you stop making faces at her baby, your shut-her-up claim (that making faces grows neurons) has her yell out, as you jog on, “Yeah, fear-ons”

if mere lip balm on your lips can make you feel as if you are suffocating, perhaps holding a mere ice pack can have you coast through the sweat-lodge ceremony

marginalized people packaged as helpless victims, pity cases in need of special protections even from words— a privilege too good to give up (however much it hobbles)

fingertips now split black olives

high heels attract: injured, they cannot escape

clammy undies stolen from the hamper in a palpitating rush

tempted by the death drive to drown any challenging voice

marble headstones eaten by acid rain

dead, having never understood why that insignificant hiccup was most memorable

Siberia—perhaps tomorrow’s Las Vegas

the one who loves the other more

nebulous lilacs burgeon across cosmic silences

the everyday remnants of him litter in disarray, indifferent to our piercing grief

boys serious on a trestle, sidestepping with the cleavage rowing below

we smudge star-set design, as in when we castrate the screaming stallion, and yet insist that the blowjob it clearly welcomes—a relief, a gagging, just as star-set as the smudge—amounts to knifing a gash in the canvas

in being encountered by the relatively older self below it, the something else that one becomes has a chance to have some of its facets unlocked

the acorn premonitions the oak that would have shaded generations were it not for the brick and mortar

he was not overcome with pity, slumping onto the horse being whipped in Turin: he could not help but mainline its affects

in the coop of anonymity he cluck-clucked secure until capricious selection forced naked exposure, provoking pack predation

long nights of summer far north: cerulean sunglow on one horizon, stygian blackness on the opposite

one-sided is the idea of life as but a breakdown process, and embracing this side alone bars embracing the new afforded by each age—even by death

all that we will ever be is nested inside us already, just as all that will ever be is nested inside what is prior—the difference, though, is that what is prior needs no outside help to bring it out

nostalgia for free-roaming Indians only now that their threat has been wiped out

living on the road pepper-packet napkins make you sneeze

give a bum a bath and a new suit for the torture of getting his hopes up

amid the diamonds of hushed tundra now bustles a neon fantasia, refracted

stories washed away, however intensely wrought

will AI groan more like a human and a bear, or more like a tree and mushroom, or more like a mountain and a moon?

new options open when you quit drinking, but they do so as well when you drink yourself to death

blood-battles provoked with good conscience— tossing seed to savage birds

the castoff on the frayed edges of humanity retastes a recessed familiarity (self-worth), if only for one day, in the suit for a funeral that family found him to attend

so many have immolated themselves to the principle “truth at all costs”—not just late hours and sedentary living, but also unearthing perilous facts, deleting life-sustaining deceptions

veins of quartz in relief from the chronic downpour

auroral bands against expansive void

that final jerk-kick of the belt-hung man

sundried shrimp pestled into a powder

the heroic warship tugged to a shipyard up river for museum deconstruction

subtle feel of rejection each time the oscillating fan turns its wind away

close-range arrow shots of the man strung to a stake

relationships that fail to survive their reunions

blood seeps through the postcards painted upon their stolen future

as if our romanticization of them could absolve our guilt about what we did to them

low living but high thinking

rebellion is good for winning back attention to the once only child

feeding psoriatic skin flakes to the pet fish

a dark drizzle—and it smells like a fishing day

creek eel—blue kiddie pool—kid sticks poking

mega gaps between the floorboards

the unschooled art of those at the fringes

the young flirt and, watching them, the old sigh

they still haunt the land we rewrote, their paths right under our blacktop

the horse's screams sounded his own cries from boyhood, when powerless beneath the erratic whip that shaped him skittish

fat rails of all-purpose flour right there on the dining table to welcome him home from rehab

from the safety of our stolen shores, we sentimentalize those we displaced (painting Hallmark myth with blood)

robber barons endowing churches and libraries— manipulating reputation

gelding the horse without its consent to stop its use  for sex—sex to which it supposedly fails to consent, yes, despite erections unforced by any human hand

the tune in your mind still has the skip in your record

old shames reach like phantom limbs

pissing, the drunk regrets spitting in the toilet

recognition of objective values: a gateway to religion

writing a book about the vacuity of writing a book

when the candle of hope gutters out, shapes glow against the black in technicolor

haunted at home by dark truths confessed with such ease on stage, where appearing brave and wise matters most to you

midnight headlights through the window reveal bed partners with eyes tense on each other, but the car moves quickly enough for them to deny what was seen

guilt bleeds through us unbidden: sins, disembodied (not really forgotten), flashing like ruins beneath new snow

William Peter Blatty doing yoga

rereading in hopes to read something different

the child plays Candyland with a sitter, everyone else at the burial

realizing that there are many levels beyond yours

new names bloom from the compost we mislabel “anonymous” in our drama

fear too often comes with an unspoken lie: a self-told lie that the feared object will last forever, which it virtually does if not faced

their fifth-grade D.A.R.E. contracts in mind but unspoken as OxyContin gets crushed up between old friends

ac-unit rears jut out windows of each story— umbrella wish

hardness of heart (slowly accrued) prevented her, no doubt, from being knocked around, but becoming looser like a stream (swallowing, not rejecting, every stone) would have done so too

if the “why” must end somewhere, must it end with a leap of faith even if the end is a self-evident axiom?

all creation sings the same light, one Vedic Om split into rainbow bands

arms unable to obstruct the coffin’s descent

a husband’s gambling debts

flowers good to eat

tears are water for blooms

Whitman perfumed for the injured soldiers he would read to and kiss

a broken note now beloved, like the curmudgeonly quirks of a genius

palms open, shins crossed— silence: the spawn of subtle noises

that his bitterness rose to the point where he was ready to ruin himself in the course of revenge is no exception to the rule that everyone seeks at least their apparent good

the needle of awareness keeps skipping against her mind's rutted thinking— her soundtrack repeating a pocked refrain

groping for impossible closure, her questions only bury the ground like the dead leaves of autumn

surprise melodies crept forth as the racket of wanting unwound

needle-nosed pliers to turn the channel

the rock that makes one stream two

what atrophies when muscle is wasted on shadows?

clutching her kite string against the reckless tug, another youth turns on to wonder about that cliff: the one of no return from which she too must fall

what made his flowers so grand was the self-delusion that he could create a flower that would culminate the flow, that would put an end to all the flowering

praying for health, white sea crests up the short bluff

the infant is blind in its lust to suckle and, toothless to boot, it just seems so right—why, then, is it so wrong?

a bent cigarette in the stubbled mouth of the careening wino at dawn

drunk on counterfeit feats, the heart pumps the hubris of inflated ability

exhausted from having to appear out

the challenge to change compounded now by shame at failing to

sober at dawn, he found himself still at basecamp—a pain in need of numbing

confidence to quit only when high

flattered to be liked even by the repellent

cigarettes dipped in the smell of black magic marker

her own reflection in the grave’s still water

adulation, to kill another’s drive

facing fear yields access codes to sanctums richer and deeper than mantras

decadent with fear today we refuse to pick up the wallet so onlookers will not think us thieves, and we do not help the man collapsed in case we might catch whatever he has

shut down by blizzard snow, it seems as if we are seeing the city at a time long past

Dad should have been buried with the TV, but many others remain glued to the same one

it is said that if a man has enough talents, he will never express a temper—but might he not get enraged at how preoccupied he is?

heart beating ancient yearnings for yearlings in estrus—rhythms now deemed taboo

a baton raked across bolted iron reels him back from memory

white creases of bloodlessness in the back of the red neck

market sellers fake the accents matching their wares

needle lodged in one groove until an ayahuasca hand knocked it into another

the daydreams of the prison guard: lures in water, crosshairs on game

a mere board between two step ladders

convicts dreaming aloud

intimacies unfurl like morning petals, until vulnerable hollows lie splayed

the half-speak between family inside the home

captive eyes track him pacing his own carbon-copy days

against the jangling keys of bleak routine, her mind— decades on—wanders that sylvan glade (Disney soft) where her own father (oozing) could not help himself

“Be sexually liberated, but still be a decent”—a schizoid dilemma faced by contemporary women?

what lies behind perpetual liveliness and what lies behind the inability to stand being around it

the child says he hates dill pickles, but after play outside followed by a bath perhaps too hot, he says to his father, out of the blue, “I’m ready to try pickles again”

barely enough to pay for groceries, and we are hit with how we need to change our mattress every eight years?

captive eyes track him pacing his own carbon-copy days

deceiving with regard to his heredity

hope—slim as last season’s photos

daring open-air communion beyond the comfort of separate shelters

that bothersome angle, insisted upon, to showcase the genital penetration

full-out sprint—it is almost painful merely to walk on crank

devoted to, loving, a city for its amenities you cannot afford

manifest destiny calls him to woods beyond credit-card debt

after-work beer to avoid, not to fertilize, the shrinking frontier

what lies behind both perpetual liveliness and the inability to stand being around it?

each day used to brim with risky discovery—now, only that nine-to-five cubicle: rug walls never to be known by friends dead from childhood fun (cliff falls, overdoses)

jail drama—cliques, beefs— mainly to break the monotony, manufacture novelty

nerves have us give tongue to idioms—however out of character for us, however crackpot

killing the dog fails to cure the bite, but it takes away the pain—at least a little bit

caged days spark the mind as blindness does the ear

belly grazing along the void in extreme flights to avoid its black stare

parched beside fountains of false hydration, pilgrims—by traveling within—travel beyond miraged oases receding into hollow horizons

too fat to hang in the fistfight for long, the mom calls the cops with fake sobs as she smirks and thrusts a middle finger at her teen son

it is easy to say that, in times primeval, a transcendent realm was posited merely due to misinterpretation of natural events (lightning of God)—but often interpretations reflects needs

with all the vibrators and other stimulatory doohickeys nowadays, even doe yearlings first exploring themselves play the acoustic perhaps only ever a handful of times

gay ballet classes

stamina wanes almost unnoticed until the music calls

deprivation to help glimpse the ambrosia of ordinary crusts

placing a wad of hundreds on the communion plate with a mien of no big deal

forced cohabitation

healing found in smothering that knee-jerk chaos widely adaptive in childhood

toothless mastication of stale bread

evanescent car-wash rainbows

dog ear cleaved cutting dreads

peanut-butter jar between paws braced, the tongue lashing its remains

picking gelatin off turkey—thanksgiving leftovers at the Tupperware’s bottom

making friends for after-school somewheres to eat

meager spoons of paste forced inside to sustain a being faint in pulse

children raised without the cuddly cooing of baby talk

but will not telling her how great she is spur her to leave you?

that familiar stranger

a sow vibrator

unable, as if overnight, to rise to dreams still as restless as in youth—the nectar of vitality poured (to boot) into buckets with holes

admonishing youngsters for what in private, sometimes even if in private to yourself, you are happy to hear live on: the same old vulgar versions of Yuletide tunes

you know the mission is wrong (head-on attack will get your team killed), and yet— knowing someone else will lead it if you refuse—it is right, nonetheless, to take it: for once early signs of slaughter to come start appearing, you can change the mission

to “rectify” having been rapers, sea-bottom-senders, slavers, lynchers, hosers, whites took an LBJ uplifter role, “inadvertently” hooking blacks on pink nipples, so reifying black inferiority that black dreams for dignity go no higher than victim-card guilt trips

young again, you would spend more time on the dance floor—hips sturdy but flexible enough to support such ambulance gyrations

a nacre of adversity, reflection, and forgiveness— but mainly of opportunism and self-deception— formed a pearl around that youthful jag of folly

that unyielding cell, failing to forgo the anarchy of lone ambition, this time meant an early death for the whole

weary jaws chewing through pain out of blind duty: numb mechanics repeating like most of the cosmos

too aware of their shared essence—indeed, so aware that it is taken for granted below the threshold of consciousness—that growth for them requires the opposite of what it now requires for us: more fragmentation, an ignoring of the oneness of all

if you do not have the clinician’s ability to detach into an observer mode when being attacked in a conversation, one strategy—instead of floundering as your body starts pumping—is simply to announce that you cannot remain logical under such pressure

“aid is futile (even sadistic),” says the dark side, “since it encourages more suffering in the future”

scarlet from exertion

nostalgia prevented the seasons from spinning muscle into mind

jagged memories smoothed into tidy tales

sunk for life

what served his survival impeded the communion necessary to flourish

reaching for a hand across the table

arriving after the coffin has been closed

potbellied children weaned from milky dearth to bready dearth

sometimes taking charge of a flawed plan (instead of refusing to participate) gives one the power to lessen its negative impacts

spring cleaning wonder at how you could have been that child in the photo

the poet’s call sang in him from jump: fleet-footed vitality of youth funneled into creaking combinations of words

she was measured by the everything-maker and was found wanting

meet those challenges, those as hard as a child’s first steps, with the cheer of a child taking its first steps

everyone is a little politician, now more than ever: the social-media craze for likes cuts to our very core, making us be about—say and do—what will get us likes

her sagacity became extreme enough to curve her into tight resemblance to her “polar opposites” on the other callous tip of the horseshoe: seeing even uncooked tragedy as potential, no more did she register misfortune

their transgressions recall carefree days outside in summer, when meaning graffitied each moment, before adult duty: do our scoldings, especially when violent, reflect our envy?

in knowing its shores, we think we know the lake

secondhand rhythms: innovation’s compost

the “mercy tap” in porn and mixed martial arts

a time when play was prayer

slum breeds

alienating the spouse from friends and family

subway car dancers

gymnastics coach to mom: “it’s time to start having her wax”

a Mormon the opponent, the incumbent unveils a White House beer

washed-up gymnasts grooming as before: waxed lips, clip-on pony tail

her loss of sleep over the betrayal makes the betrayal not so bad for her

pressured to identify as racist to fit in, what story do you tell not to feel bad about yourself?

iconic photos from history— scenes staged not to look staged— make us tear with inspiration

ashram rape seen by liberal whites as union of one’s inner breath with that of an enlightened one

refusing Mom’s “swine Jell-O” after seeing Spike Lee’s Malcolm X

being itself pulses its unlimited exuberance through all (its) simulations

gesticulations of conjuration

catching blue crabs in the Hudson with bare hands

innocent wonder forfeited to solemn platitudes

that wicked lust to strangle the hissing cat

those in the rally-sea who did not surrender the Nazi arm salute

participation trophies priming children for later “trauma”

the opportunism pounced upon in the collapse at least hastened the collapse

thriving in the carnage of a cruel machine did not have to mean being cruel oneself: even yellow rapids harbor pockets of calm— eddy pools in the lee of boulders—churning counter to the rage

crows drop walnuts on crosswalks to ransack the tire-cracked innards in the orchestrated truce of a red light

not in all the sham mudras hijacking our child wonder, true magic sang in the conjuration of an open hand extended without motive (waiting in faith for the other to complete the unrehearsed ritual)

those who will fight your lunging dog as if it were a man: punching, gouging, even taunting “C’mon bitch! C’mon!”

those who, after things get cop violent with the girlfriend, are welcomed back home especially if return with drugs for the next round

those who have found their mom in bed rotting, only to bust up walls about how “This cunt bitch had my fucking money!”

sex amounts to your chromosomes and body parts; objective gender amounts to where you fall in the big five; subjective gender amounts to what you feel inside

covering up one of the toxins released  in the warehouse fire to hide from the competition  the backwardness of their production process

older now, we think about Muslims as we “once did” about blacks: “Even if  we made them this way, their threat must be stopped”

on a stage of fake palm trees intended to set an indigenous tone, Rigoberta Menchú— although refusing to address the calls to revoke her Nobel Peace Prize—announces that, out in the hall, items from her line of healing jewelry are for sale (some half off)

arranging the dead one’s journal entries by pen color

blaming some unnamed “rogue worker” in the press release

people who hear “Cesar Chavez” and picture instead the boxer

people who have gotten into fistfights with their moms

a clout chaser, yes—but clout mainly from the great dead: Goethe, Spinoza, Emerson

regulating “hate speech” may sound all well and good, until we consider (a) who gets to label what is hateful and (b) the ingrained gremlin temptation to label “hateful” speech causing the labeler even the merest discomfort

in the fierce competition for clicks, no wonder the lengths to which journalists go: from the relatively tame (headline baiting and cherry-picking and tabloidization) to the still wild (fearmongering and allegations and lying and personal attacks)

from the bottoms of open-air ponds  for spent nuclear fuel, amphibious drones  scoop plutonium sludge for an Islam bomb

silver lining: industrialization and depletion of natural resources intensified our “love” for “nature”

strip anger of myopic self-interest—interest driven perhaps by genetic-cultural-habitual scripts of operation—to unveil: tenacity?

since it is so difficult for us to communicate with terrestrials (from leaves to worms to lions to one another even), our chances at communicating with extraterrestrials does not look the best

our cyberage might not be all gloom: the barrage of genius each time we open an app renders unsustainable our—is it primate?—proclivity to feel diminished when others do things well, opening us to a hive mode where we take pride in the genius of others

absolute power, real by definition, must express itself in all limited—finite, qualified—modes: the metaphysics behind “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9)

people who get disoriented on escalators that are moving, not on ones that are not

people who let jealousy spill over to rage even before its sustaining doubt gets the chance to change to certainty

creeks that used to freeze over in the years before the factories came

people who die without sending for a doctor

people who are anxious when other ears finally perk up for them

it goes by too quick, but think how it is for those waiting for you to die

being itself pulses its unlimited exuberance through all (its) transient shapes

a subtler strength manifest in the release of the choke

condemning gay sex on grounds that it is revolting behavior  even as you change comatose diapers and gut pigs you masturbate for husbandry

supporting gay sex on grounds  that some are born that way (and it causes no harm and is private behavior) even as you scoff at “bigots” innately averse to the certain fecality of anal pounding

supporting gay sex on grounds  that it is between consenting adults (and it causes no harm and is private behavior) even as you would condemn any man who asks his spouse to eat him when he dies

supporting gay sex on grounds  that it is natural (and consensual and harmless and private) even as you would condemn consensual adult-sibling incest (guaranteed secret)

supporting gay sex on grounds  that love is love (and okay when consensual and harmless and private) even as you condemn the lady letting the uncoerced dolphin “beat that pussy up”

nepiophilia—clit made nipple

the ground below may be too fractured for an optimal nuclear landfill here,  but its people will welcome the work

if you would drive the streets timorously, primed to swerve, after nonstop crash news, imagine what cops are primed for after lifetime media concerning what “these people” are like

bracketing off the possibility that the tyrant has sufficient power (say, to inflict infinite and eternal punishment), lasting converts arise by patient speech of inspiration—not by haranguing threats

if anything, we should be on our knees each day in gratitude that we were colonized not by some jungle-law society but by the west—its enlightenment values and norms, its science and technology, nurturing and protecting the rights of the most vulnerable

cassette tapes once would circle around the city’s boroughs in a virality of dubbing

through the penitentiary glass of wire mesh, the simple hope of seeing—something

analog photographers once used lighting to Photoshop acne

the crazy of those with over-rouged cheeks and over-drawn lips

in a milieu of beings not pulled to aid the pitiful, the devil would not play the victim

those in the know calling family with orders to flee

harried by shameful secrets

condom blowjobs

fallout cow milk piped into the sea

a front path of stone barely visible in the overgrowth

the infant’s cranial soft spot, pulsing

handing off the kids to relatives for the summer

stealing toilet paper from public bathrooms

faked super-bomb tests to increase global clout

confinement hatching inner horizons

caterpillars dropping from vines onto hair

litter-removal crews spreading litter to ensure future work

the spirit, stealing a glimpse up at the blue vastness, once again starts rattling the bars of a world sequestered to concrete slivers

thalassic bottles tossed—one could say— in pitiful broadcast of hope, of affirmation in the possibility of kinship across the void

too lonely, too shocked by being thrown into loneliness, not to seek reflection in the emptiness surrounding

we announce ourselves, if only for own ears, proclaiming our awakened state through the dark beyond dumb matter wondering what in the void might quicken and speak

fear, rage, denial had us splash her doorway and windows, lighting the gas with her inside for being the one among us to bring a case against the corporation that poisoned us all

is it because kids are less valuable than presidents and superstars, or is it because too few veterans are seeking pertinent employment, that we scoff at the idea of protecting schools with armed guards?

sea turtles entangled in onion sacks

Asian acne blooming the western oils of fast food

ice cube vanishing in the pea soup

tomato slices absorbing sea salt

a leader to weaponize our pain

naked men frying bacon stand sideways

steak knives if you buy the vacuum

professors on food stamps

wheat fields ri1pple in the sun

a reputation of happy to uphold

the glass eyes of death

tombstones turning entire lives into mere trivia

sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder

always anxious about the future, the repeated slogan of “Be in the present” was just another source of his guilt

embracing an imperfection that cannot be cured in yourself, aware of the virtues coupled with it and the beauty it provides to the grand scheme

what was the first instance on Earth, before humans, when— to hearten oneself with the gasoline of grievance and perhaps even to forge many into one mind of outrage—abuse was first feigned?

helping hands too often grasp phantom victims: evolution, after all, has groomed us to seek calorie-minimal methods to feel good

his state of ruin made him dangerous: it had him unworried— perhaps even excited—about all the gashes that would come from shards of the present as he named the possible into life

love that could not wait for a revolution seeds a revolution

intergenerational dancing

he did not need the money to have the “Fuck you”

prison love letters

mere Miyagi eyes with a nod igniting courage

being your own enemy comes along with being a boat rocker

what to do when no longer present to perceive anything you do is the very person whom each day you found your chief joy in ensuring was happy?

sky the white of Heaven they entwine out of love to shield themselves

our biggest threat turned out to be our inability to agree upon what the big threats were

child-labor tiger eye stone for courage

waiting for the alarm to go off

conversations kindling muted wisdom

uprisings powered by coercion held the promise of later uprisings

emails to the dead

Existenz über alles!

your craft is no sillier than any other in the face of oblivion

those after us create the legends of our time

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