MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017--FULL YEAR))
scent of the day: Purple Rain Maluku, by Ensar
Solid Iris Ghalia DNA but with a cypriol-menthol dark edge (think even 1984 and Aroha Kyaku) back-darking the purple (sort of like an inverse of how the sun backlights the clouds). Sweet animalism of my IG Trifecta is here but whereas IG Trifecta leans so hard into rootiness it can seem chalky white, PR Maluku is florid purple with a dark—even smoky—edge, which makes for great contrast between playful and brooding—a true fragrance for artists and deep thinkers who will not kowtow to herd values even if it means alienating everyone.
Purple Rain: playful and brooding but aristocratic like Nietzsche (magenta royal velvet but with hints underneath of full range of purples underneath like Trifecta). Trifecta: playful and growling but complex like Muhammad Ali (chalky white roots streaked mainly with deep purple flourite but, technically, with full violet range from pale violet and periwinkle to midnight violet and amethyste smoke as well as full purple range from electric purple and royal purple to tyrian plum and deep purple fluorite). Purple Kinam playful and serene but alluring like the Dali Llama (purple stable amethyst).
Maluku is an aptly chosen oud for this. It is the most purple Indonesian oud you can find. All by itself it brings resinous-mineralic impressions of purple flower and smoked iris roots with even a hint of mentholated petrol that comes into olfactory visibility in the dry down after the sharp herbal greenish throughline of the opening.
This version of Purple Rain is said to be much more closer to the OG Iris Ghalia. I never smelled that one. But I do feel a lot of Iris Ghalia—definite flanker my trifecta (almost as close to my Trifecta as Interlude Black Iris is to Interlude).
A lot going in here. Castoreum brings a metallic zing amplified by so many bright animalics (like civet) and mineralic ones (like ambergris). The here civet is like clean toddler saliva in area where Mountain Dew doesn’t have childrens mouths rotten before teeth even start pokign through the gums). Blackcurrent given feline growl but of an indoor cat as opposed to the street whore in estrus among the alley cans. Hyrax gives a fecality but desiccated into near ambergris mineralics—this feel boosted by the actual ambergris and yet held in check by the fatty greasiness of the muskrat, which has a swampy edge (brackish) that amplies the aquatic feel we get from ambergris just as its oilyness amplifies the scalp sebum impression of the costus. Costus increases the rootiness of this already iris root bomb, but bends the aroma in the direction of dog skin after they got back from groomers. In a feat of remark able tension very similar to what we get in Overture Man, this Purple Rain is just such a balance of dense and creamy and greasy, on the one hand, and light and powdery and chalky, on the other hand: fatty-rooty orris butter, mily-buttery mysore sandalwood, oily-greasy muskrat, leathery-phenolic castoreum, sour-breath civet meets makeup-powder carrot seed, gasoline-talcum violet, clove-dust carnation, pulverized-animal-marked-rock hyrax, mineralic-dust ambergris—both sides bridges by Siberian deer musk, which starts a bit lanolin-like and quickly becomes like pine-powder blown onto velvet
MADE FOR YOU AND ME 2: hive Being (Stanzas 2017)
hive Being
suicide as a way out of our pact with fortune
intrusive nostalgia since before double digits
yoga pants under love handles
a linted needle on the record
shut-ins ever at the peephole
trans toddler
the oldest cathedrals hollow enough now to be rented out for corporate events
students hyper-blinkered by universities deeming “viewpoint diversity” demon code
Lolita does not get written if artists self-censor
sometimes the wall restricting you is protecting you
how can he be mansplaining when he identifies as a woman?
because of your squeamish (but burger-eating) hangups, you block her—already beyond teetering on depression, stuck indoors—from the joys of eviscerating a mouse
chartered buses to the holy land, the ones advertised on daytime TV, release old couples in their visors eager to genuflect before the altars of commerce awaiting them
the body next to you in bed will soon only be a body, cold although it has always been good for heat
while the whole family on his desk stares him down, he orders the strike that will mean civilian casualties
black victimhood mentality, the (lucrative) mindset of little hope that individual initiative could rise above the barriers of white supremacy, so sabotages black excellence it seems the very design of white supremacy
the day is at hand when diversity-token bureaucrats, yesterday’s secretaries (fake hair, fake nails, online Bachelor’s, trifling critical-thinking skills) will have authority to tell philosophy PhDs, professors of critical thinking, what is safe to teach and how to teach it
going against the grain of evolutionary programming, a practice seen beyond human creatures, is perfectly aligned with carrying out the aboriginal programing prior to any of us—prior even to the sun
that slave on the auction block contradicting seller exaggerations as to how hardy he is—“What Ah’s agwyne do wit dis here leg (lame, Ah reck’n, foteen year)?”—voices a worth higher than muscle
lack of consent, future trauma—these have us say that passed-out rape is bad even as we say that procreation is not
owning who you are—a social phobic, say—can change who you are—shift you, say, from being so twitchy and awkward
forced anal exams in Cairo to identify gays sometimes turn out false positives: straight men who pass Shaq logs, or engage in a little finger play, are beaten close to death
performance anxiety among those who cannot help but perform in every interaction results in dreading visits from a sure lay as if they were visits from a boss
to say that X people are primitive (that old pretense for civilizing them out of the bush with gun and gospels) is racist—but, so goes our double bind, to expect X people to be civilized is racist too: it is to expect them to give up their ethnic identity and assimilate
the daily lotto once redirected working-class rage into hope— until even that became too expensive
when the cancel mob took his job, he said “I’m a nail that rises when hit,” not seeming to see the corollary that defiance would drive him from his plank and so be his fall (or maybe he knew martyrdom was the only hope to stop this juggernaut of antidiversity)
in subconscious fear that hearing it would undercut his purpose, the romantic rebel blocks his college ears to data about how good things are even though that data brings into relief what ear blocking lets flourish: namely, what remains to stand up against
names pixilated into digits helped them barter rights like dividends
“collateral damage,” “enhanced interrogation”—perfume only amplifying the reek
panic triggered by infrasound
yet another predictor of end times disappointed that it did not come
conscience defected on the ground: the massacre directive launched from an office far removed, its weather chitchat around the breakroom cooler antiseptic like any other day
assuming a free-range life and a painless slaughter, it appears pure equal-treatment violating selfishness—the same that has us protect only cute endangered species—to respect animal but not plant life
what matter is climate change or the insolvency of social security— why fret and scramble—when Jesus, slated to return in a few years, will set aright all the turmoil with his eschatological sword of love?
becoming great at your art from early on, in fear of being sent away otherwise
false assurance of a divine savior excuses our paralysis, life on loan slipping through idle fingers that form a “Fuck you!” to the real advent of duty shouldered in courage
to get us to sacrifice our privilege to the disadvantaged group an effective strategy is to rear us in that group’s culture, such that at our core we aim for acceptance by that group
parents whose grieving was loud enough to force the State to mandate screening of future infants become mothers to all the children saved in turn
the social-media algorithms have made us all junkies of their feed, a feed soon to be automatically mainlined once we get that convenient implant said to complete our harvest-readiness for the super-AI looming on the horizon
like sheltered immune systems assailing the body for sport (their cry for change clear), “sheltered” students assail whatever unsettles their “easily-unsettled” selves, turning academia—now that every dean has become “woke” to the cancel ethos—myocarditic
kids on the pull-out sofa and parents on the floor
all the soldiers, even those on the bad side, bleed homesick songs
the cop flips to cartoons before speaking to the nail-biting mother
terminal news in a ginger tone
torching with talk of “enemy,” what we cannot bear to see as, someone else’s hearth
that panic inside the child who lost his mother in the supermarket
behind that desk on which bomb orders are signed lies a private battlefield
a repeated error: tweaking just this bit over here, despite how networked we are
panhandler pity limps resulting in real limps over time
pink slips and other sufferings unpacked from sterile containers
the emperor commanded carnage from marble remove
diversity on campus yes, but—and now not even sotto voce!—intellectual diversity no
in the large company of those desperate to convince themselves that they live how they want
crisis ignored spells crisis multiplied, so they say— forgetting in this case, however, that the Messiah will return (any day now) to shake the Etch A Sketch
too cowardly to admit what in fact we well know (that our racial hatred has no basis, for example), we concoct reasons against what we well know
sad when time is up, sad that you have no time to do what you always put off when you do have the time
how trite it is: rebels becoming despots— talking about “right think,” pruning speech deemed unhealthy by corporate consensus
childhood dreams, beyond GPS gridlines, slipping by like forests on toll highways
music knocks over a memory domino in the nursing home
prayer works, but never to regrow limbs for some godforsaken reason
blaming on ignorance what is a fault of cowardice
the pawn shop before the supermarket
just waterbugs; just allergies; just heartburn
giving parents credit for what is right with you
sanitized vocabulary to mask the blood on technocrat hands—an additional crime
strategizing to avoid becoming a eugenics target
traffic-disrupting construction work ruins the morning, and thereby the whole day, for the panhandler who refuses to adjust
a fifty-year-old debonair enough to charm the parents even of his fifteen-year-old girlfriend
that coping fun of mocking how sensitive students are now, let not that conceal how much rape porn they see and so how much their sensitivity is but a thrill ploy to police faculty and—benighted buyers of Abs-in-a-Week, as USers tend to be—to evade work
holding down your billowing dress even as you jump to death
democracy’s problem was always that truth is not a democratic value
the youthful titillation of a shower with a cousin
staying by the bedside in shifts
obsolete atlases
diaries in book margins
evading ennui by dreading ennui
I’m a doctor, I fix the problems—this isn’t supposed to happen to me
confessions, recollections, insights, commitments, doubts inscribed around the texts of past pilgrims hoping for co-creative resonance, time-warped fellowship of cross-exhumation for who knows why
words between the bus-stop strangers activate memories and insights that, however personal to each, converge in one transcendent haze of mystery
lest we fall within the play of nature
as well, we think it horrible for man
to intervene in the lion-giraffe battle
the general and the triage surgeon called off the war for fifteen minutes to comfort the dying soldier as a father would
zooming satellites lay bare jaded terrain once rousing hearts into perilous adventures—ones perhaps where revealing was harder to divorce from illuminating
how obsolete are the maps if they direct us off expressways onto ancestral paths?
seal-defense harpoon shots cutting short Eskimo songs
dumpster divers charged with trespassing
so many unanswered prayers forgotten—unless chalked up to defect in the prayer
sadness overwhelming enough for shrieks instead of sighs
he placed his redemption in future readers humble enough to let him inside
their goals still whisper, sing for those with ears, through routes now overgrown
stay gold, Ponyboy: let not the lack of rigor in so many popular atheists, plus the victimhood-cancel culture pushed by a left growing evermore cry-bully-like, lure you to become some radical right-wing evangelical
exploiters who say, “Happy must be those who think only of bare necessities”
all the winners believe in themselves, and so it is easy for them to say, “You can do anything if you believe”
dementia trimmed the wild growth of personas crowding out the first-known self
the crudeness of the interface obscuring the vision of the soul (in both directions)
the reward of burying loved ones yourself, shovel and all
why all the buying required for self-help?
why does a night out at the club “just with friends” always require first a pussy shave?
failing to touch even when we do
allergic—literally—to her unborn fetus
a prodigal season beyond each parting
bowing in awe between the long hours of attempting to decode it
Pentecostal connection turned awkward contiguity in the cocaine low
unable to reach around himself so far, the mom combs through Facebook uploads wondering who—which friend—helped duct tape the bomb to her son’s chest
when the ideology gets strong enough—or, might it be, desperate enough?—expect flourishes of it being read back into history (as in, say, past emperors reclassified as trans)
excluding white-male victims, of course—expect to hear the following from therapists if our trust-the-victim era spirals any further: “For UFO abductees, BIPOCs especially, to have their truth questioned is a second rape: they need affirmation, not skepticism”
better for profit need not mean better for learning—and it definitely does not when the customer-students to be pleased for the sake of profit are pampereds demanding that college be as unsettling as the home from which they “grew”
making your career bend to you such that you become a plumber, say, who still has time to travel
diverting the other (chess) player from your mistake: probing him on a taboo topic; spilling a drink
gambits to submerge her memory of the affair deliberately inept because knowing his wife pictures him utterly unloading himself in her sister drives a toxic erection chiseled indelibly with veins
any worthy self-help book will advise you to appear as if you are not one to read such books
a Paleolithic dessert of mere honey
interfering in animal deathmatches is verboten even as our jeep emissions blacken the very air in which the lionesses leap at the giraffe throat?
having intercepted a glance between others— a glance at your expense—do you fake as if oblivious to its supposed meaning?
blame ends with enlightened burials
those shut in due to mistrust in their powers
photographing what someone else wanted to merely because someone else wanted to
even as the house burns, the road there still bustles
imprinted until death by the shore that erases imprints
the only one trustworthy here is the one set to profit from ensuring your wellness
scandals veiling malfeasance
hands entwine divided worlds
asking those trying to sell you a service for neutral advice on whether to get the service, and then getting mad at them for being biased
that swiping left comes so automatically, and that we know we can always swipe left on the screens with which we spend most of our time, we are inclined to intense fear of missing out (overcome by an awareness that there are others we could be with)
were it not for our having been born into expectations in a world of others who matter too—no shortcoming would require concealer, no disposition would require polish, for a heart knowingly anchored in cosmic security
family picture with a jagged face hole
that we do not read fiction shows: we shame and shun creators for their characters!
hooker for a prison going-away party, but unable to perform
memories vulnerable with the death of the co-witness
addicted to what is easy to cook up at home
having to explain our bad moods
sun-bleached rib cage
transient bunkmates after chess murmur into the black about how impossible it all is: how, once they cross tomorrow’s border, duty compels them to kill one another
sometimes the slogans predicating fratricide root not in sand-stable ideologies imposed upon young minds, but even in ruthful hearts
even if God expires in our hearts with his terminal isolation, we still remain right for him (since we are but his modes)
blubbery rumps
bed bugs carried to school from the homeless shelter next to the methadone clinic
sworn to institutes that numb the prick of the soul’s compass needle
renewed touch tearing away the scabs of once-new identity, exactly as feared
programmed assassins in forced marches toward doom
everyone playacting for everyone
not wanting the child to forget how it was when the family was one
believing you had the teacher fooled, helping her clean up after school each day to prolong time away from the homeless shelter of lice
confident in its imminence despite one’s very holy book insisting that no one knows the date or the hour—to this, sophisticated predictors respond, “I know at least the month!”
do not be so quick to damn these hirelings: were we steeped equally in shadow— groomed by overseers dispensing half-truths, shuffled onto the stage clutching incomplete scripts—what doom march might we feel disgraceful to oppose?
the symmetry of pure chaos
a gun-toting Texan’s cure for intractable tinnitus
irretrievable riches winked out with each extinguished flame
we continue to weave words, knowing it will not bring back the one woven through us
another light vanished whose shining secretly mapped our heavens
it is at our fingertips, but we are restless for distraction: just sitting there, we are ever at least on the micro move (as some are shocked to learn for the first time on weed)
doctors compelled to tell it bluntly so that even you cannot mistake it for some other information
seeking donations for a funeral instead of using your own backyard and the elbow-grease of love and respect
couples bickering lifelong: either joy is not the only salvation or joy is more encompassing than we think
“Quing,” a gender-neutral combination of “queen" and “king”— invented in a campus safe-space club (even though there already was “monarch,” “sovereign,” “ruler,” “regent,” “majesty,” and “crown”)
can it be so wrong when Mary herself was twelve when she had our Lord?
unleashing mental illness through faking it
another batch of credulous recruits for mother-bereaving confrontations
losing yourself in music without shame even near the crumpled homeless
a five-digit number taped above the ER light to expose out-of-body BS
how can a painter not think that appearance suggests character in some sense?
no smithereens blast, the headshot left intact a sense—a distant inkling—of being tethered to a familiar limbo (if only in a fleeting dream)
our culture has been obsessed with UFO abductions for so long that more than a few tweens have felt, more than a few sincerely, they could scapegoat aliens for the shame growing in their bellies
protesters refuse to leave despite the weather, so with water and blankets the State must supply the very barrier to its controversial construction
to fuck with UFO hunters, low-altitude aircraft flicker landing beams after dusk—sometimes in direct response to flashlights pulsing skyward for meaning, distraction, lies
how to regain a satirical footing when the biggest joke is elected— in reality—to the highest office
reports of alien abductions from US homes tally now well into the millions, and yet the wall-phasing aliens always know to go to homes with no motion cameras
watching cops shoot your dog
damp enough of a day that maybe we will get a tear from the statue of Mary
secret fishing paths tended over generations by strangers
out for heroism, the young sail into mortal frays orchestrated by distant egos
sadness swells when we are all supposed to have dreams
churches fulfilling vacuums in basic human services
conversions forced on threat of rape
beliefs formed merely in response to objections and doubts
a city’s ghost story morphing with the needs of its people
studies tainted by commercial interests
an imprisoned hole made available to all the sheriff’s deputies
the special circumstance of lying in wait
saints signaling first as threats
if the dead so often ring the phone, how come they never call collect?
elementary-school sessions on how to behave around cops to avoid getting shot
police consult psychics merely to show the brewing public they are trying everything
“But don’t you want to talk to your parents?” the medium said in manipulative response to the scoff that cut right to her fraudulence
aliens know to abduct the dumb: those who would just blink at the transmitter speck, if ever to de-implant from their nostril, before dumping the breakthrough along with the ashtray butts
money incentives to keep disabled fetuses
the imaginary friend that flowers in moments of crisis
worried that God might go to another country
so many swathes of boredom in war
satanic ritual abuse narratives drummed up because of low church attendance he understood it was the colorless black that awaited his dying mother, but still his last words to her were “Take care"
do they not see that, as with so many, their minds have already been made up just in opening the pages of scripture?
graveyards crushed by tanks of war
holding against her your inability to figure her out
monotheists calling on lesser deities, angels and saints, in times of trouble
on the hunt for women from vulnerable backgrounds
memories reprocessed to stoke righteous rage
a need for a deeper ancestry has us hyphenate: Irish-American and so on
subway packed with eyeballs—a jury of your peers
three, and brimming with gonorrhea
chemicals over elbow grease— our cleaning practices reveal so much about what we are
rounding up a record of those who came out the other side of the harrowing diagnosis— that became her distraction in the online glow
the saint, making appearances over two hundred years after her death, only cures those who trust in her magic before she provides any sign—a real real nasty bitch!
a serious shout out to all the seekers who stuck to their guns, refusing to recant their theory, refusing to smear their vision as a “demonic lie,” even upon threat of immolation at the stake
is there really so much cleaning to be done—or are you hiding?
not having dealt with it, after all
countless came before leaving shards of solace
countless came before leaving shards of cope
sitting in on criminal sentencings to keep on the straight path
at least the anxiety burned calories
the camera as your only companion
a nonstop channel to heaven bypassing the church’s chain of intermediary stops
impenetrable persons threaten narrow worlds
visions of Mary spread through the flock due to women trying to one up one another in regards to the sincerity of their faith
a time-tested trick for spotting insecure hankerings for power is to trace back to its source the claim that such and such people engage in orgies featuring the banging and devouring of infants
what other president did you expect to win by majority when the majority of voters—clutching crystals, fearing the number thirteen—trust in psychics and astrology?
in denial about the ludicrous features of their religion, only before us outsiders— that being at least the munificent explanation
frantic need to hear from someone, anyone, who survived what you have
humans fused by fire, buried as one
habituated to prefer our mirror image, not the one that others see
the strange and wondrous wait as if by ancient covenant to test soul’s mettle for equipoise
taken aback by the precision with which the elder’s licked hand parted you and worked your spot
the accuracy of your memory fragments lulled you into mistaken credulity: although less altered—worked over—than might be typical, you sewed these fragments in eccentric association on a cloth of your own devising
chaos electrified with possibility the woman of flatland pasts
his faith spoke only as a toupee
as if a new camera angle can change the actual face
suspicions of the hypnotized shaping the memories “recalled” in hypnosis
calling police, paramedics, forces everyone, including ourselves, to face the instability of our loved one
fear of social suicide not allowing you even to think about not being Christian
he was sure the childhood memories were real, their being in the third person never once drawing even his notice
the dismissal of altitudes upsetting ordered expectations unveiled its own gifts—gifts hidden from those who dare fellowship with unclassifiable angels and demons alike
Viagra-loaded to avoid another rape fail
starving as you may be, it is illegal to sell your organs
skinny-dipping through memory
timbers rotting inside castle walls
such a kick out of deceiving the gullible
clothing ads in picture frames in the bedroom of a child with no direction
the Christmas tree ratcheted to the car roof, obscuring vision, well into February
how could he have been a sage, never heeding any misfit messenger?
what underappreciated routines unknowingly approach sudden conclusion?
a father telling the daughter whom he has yet to touch that her sister has all the looks
adults who think they are conversing deeply when they wonder if the nose shape they see in some Hubble nebula might be the nose of God
the more outlandish the conspiracies, the more they titillate our childhood sense of wonder and mattering, both of which we are nostalgic for in our nine-to-five march toward oblivion
kids locked into cartoons with cereal, duty finds you unplugging the TV and carrying it away for repossession
remember our sad credulity: before we learned there were no advanced intellects on mars, many were sure Martians regularly visited Earth
to fill the void with drama, we leap beyond all the prosaic options (hoax, hallucination) and insist the unidentified is extraterrestrial
monsters in our visions keep us close to our group
hypnagogic hallucinations change with the times
shipwrecked in solitary anguish, we scan dim horizons for kindred exiles
deaf people with Tourette’s signing vulgarities
columnar vortices
brutalizing its brief actors to initiate reform of the system
he pulled back from disturbing her sleep on his yawning way to his final crash
hit by lightning while on LSD
New Age tourists in fat droves for the crop circle still buzzing with dowser-detectable orgone energy
no wonder the youth turned out this way: their parents were wrapped up in the drama of WrestleMania and supermarket tabloids
people interpreting your drastic reaction, not as a sign of the severity of the situation, but merely of the fact that you are crazy
organizing time, like Plato, in terms of lunar phases— each day having no name
a new planet in a new solar system— and yet so much seems familiar beyond just that it has a horizon
almost everyone pushing something—unless pushing skepticism or putting truth above all— has a vested interest against skepticism
he must have known his “recordings of ghosts” in CB static was BS since neither he nor the few he showed screamed his finding out to the world
pain enough to numb existential dread
moments chopped and named by industrial timetables
enticed to stay in the box, perhaps even unaware that it is a box, because of how roomy it seems
whispers of “Me too” across dividing seas twisted into shouted slogans rallying gangs who find purpose and analgesia in bullying
“He is doing much better” the unknowing say of the artist: “He could say nothing about current events before, shut in like that”
if our daily condition were that of nudity, snuggling up in clothes would have us feel the magical belonging skinny dipping does
but going back threatens to ruin the way you saw it back then
never outgrowing sibling rivalry
dirty minors nourished each day on packaged flakes, one of the subtle stabilities beneath power-cutting fluctuations of guardians, schools, friends, and milk
teens who love beasts ready to kill themselves, thinking they are the only ones
she takes the available relationship with her dad (that of drug buddy), not the one preferred (that of daughter)
brightening the tenor of speech due to forehead frowns
a crescendo of cheers from inmates when the prison-performer’s lyrics come to the part of shooting a man
convinced the curses specifically target you despite the many communiques arriving from trekkers climbing through similar wilderness
handsy poltergeists run in the family
light years more advanced but always crashing in Podunk
she mistook wanting to keep its father with wanting to keep the child
squirrels fall off branches
fictions already factor into, color, our assessment of what is real and what is fictional
the abortion loophole of threatening to kill yourself if you are not allowed it
infuriated with the person for dying
relief enough to numb existential dread
making up wonders blasphemes real wonders
watching your ninth-grade crush lean against a car— a thug in a durag pushing thirty, squeezing her ass— as you step on the yellow bus, plans dashed to walk her home
odd enough, the porn actor turns to PornHub on his phone during a take five to restore the rigidity required to complete the scene
a young buck trapped by his own antlers to rot between two trees— the drunken rage of the rut having had him believing in his magic as he tried to dash through a gap laughably narrow to sober eyes
the pity lies not in seeing sculpted faces and highways on Mars, but in the conviction—akin to that of the cloud really being a giant hotdog—that they really are sculpted faces and highways!
old ladies rightfully imagining their mid-orgasm faces to be mistakable for medical emergency
high-altitude balloons—platforms for weather measurement along with espionage cameras and explosion sensors—can seem saucer-like when seen from the ground in their glow of reflected light
priest blessings as cold and rote as depositing change in the bus fare box
googling “envelope glue calories" in setback anxiety
anticipatory nostalgia
the kid in the hippie commune begging for a GI-Joe
hopes and fears overriding the minimal skepticism
avoiding the doctor in fear of the number on the scale
leopard guarding the baby deer, but only until its blooms into full meatiness
masturbating to his secret love letters
songs too evocative of your past to hear how they “really” sound
organizing your life around what readers would find entertaining, like dating after your divorce instead of moping
her suicide scrawl, returned by the police with no bedside manner, passed down with each death: from her husband to her daughter, then to her unknown grandson and a host of strangers down the line
because some defensiveness was warranted (at least in certain aspects of the particulars), she remained blind to the underlying criticism
thousands of bathers on the beach— are they really not entangled in the same story?
numbing existential dread by spreading it
maggots take root just as the corpse rots, blurring the boundary of death
doctor hands, raw and pink from attempted sterility
the pedophile’s shoulder rub
falling in love with your fuck buddy
why is the Red Delicious the paradigm apple?
hysterical attempts to escape through holes too tiny for much more than a leg
it was odd but right, like he was multiply reanimated, seeing people in town (on store lines, at gas pumps) clearly wearing the Goodwill shirts of her late husband
if we see faces in clouds and tortillas, imagine what might show itself in telescopes at the edge of resolution!
the one of us who engages the viewer’s gaze
kinship’s blood persists, coursing beneath all guise of difference
adoption with benefits
referring to oneself as “they/them”—like some biblical demon
the so-called antidotes to the fabricated reign of white supremacy— passing failing black students, ridiculing math exams as antiblack— harm blacks enough for us to wonder if it really is fabricated after all
the sex was just masturbation with a real person made into a prop a loved one would transcend
moon and sun become the things we can share despite being so far apart
barely living check to check now, how will we resist the pull as seniors with suicide pods on the horizon?
the allure of beauty blunting ethical and critical faculties
obsidian scalpels
cities of haze in which we go about as ineffective human vacuums
Thank you Hakeem Olajuwon for releasing Walmart sneakers
freedom in owning one’s inescapable inheritance
needing to eat, today even PhDs know that worse than being exploited is not being exploited
living out that same hazardous lifestyle, long denigrated to prove your difference from everyone close to you growing up
the subtle genocide of the homosexual: gays are just girls inside and lesbians are just men inside
the exceptionally tasteful first-day practice of tallying up how many categories of oppression students belong to and then letting those who fall into the most speak first
forgiving himself for the people he hurt made him less like to hurt people
physical bars honed psychic travel
yet another artist channeling electricity into the very grid that needed to be zapped
fear of losing your child in the time travels of psychoanalysis
best believe he took his money back from the corpse’s warm pocket
open but skeptical—the thin line the scientist walks
“What up my White King?”
he who actually believes in the bible code prophesies, or that ghosts reach out in English through AM stations, is somehow, at least it seems at times, sadder than he who just sells the mumbo jumbo to relieve the gullible of their money
immigrants duped by that millionaire-winner letter from Publisher’s Clearinghouse
loath to shelve disbelief, the target of seduction—like outsider eyes who must see how the magic trick is done and who must remind us again and again that WWE matches are really just soap operas, choreographed—could never let any seduction take root
the most diabolical fragility is manifest in those who write off any questioning of their view (even if just a matter of caring curiosity) as an expression of fragility, the disposition to flee from pushback
exposure therapy for emetophobia awakening bulimia
a cult usually only grows once those close to the would-be leader say, “Others need to hear your words”
that no one went after her with a law suit despite her vicious assault on big pharma suggested it was perhaps not quackery after all
in the damming of his compulsion, the dark river— as if by some law of energy conservation—sprang through defiant outlets (luckily less prison-worthy)
LaGuardia jetliners, off to glittering emancipations, right outside the Rikers window
the refrain playing within still retains, after decades, the needle hiccup in the vinyl
the path to true black power avoided merely because many white people light it up
death sheets over mirrors after death, because death spells the death of vanity
telling kids how climate change will affect their lives even more— having arrived at the party, so at least goes the inspiring message they awaken to, when the ashtrays are full and puke is everywhere
when he said at the bus stop “I’m a horse (a mare)” and his (her?) “friends” giggled, he said “You’re fragile, fleeing from my challenge to your world” and they said, this being a uniform school, “Calling us ‘fragile,’ though, is you fleeing from our challenge”
rubbing hunchback humps for good luck
thinking, became praying, you would grow out of gay
fearing the very persona, proven invasive, you had planted to handle the fear
to stop boys from popping paper bags in the house, just say doing so is unlucky (spells death)
to be king is to reign supreme, but we never—never ever ever—mean to suggest anything close to black supremacy when we say “Black—capital B black, of course—is king”
banning, in a “heartfelt session of white apology,” the football logo as “racist” despite it being based on a Native American hero is like— no, it is worse than—chastising someone for calling the lady “black”
Jesus jam band
a cat drowning in a landless sea
medicating away the superhero
dying is like being owned, root canaled: nestle into that one speckle of the ceiling tile
not knowing what the truth is, having told so many stories
having to pay for your own house-arrest ankle-monitor
no one to look for you, to realize you are missing
arm around the dish circumference, eyes vigilant for sibling grabs
lovely it can be around psychopaths—all their stories, effusive care, sweet talk
that cruel circle of blue sky too far above you, hoarse from shrieking up toward the well’s stone mouth
vodka in the lunch thermos
lungs invigorated by the deep coughing of a chest cold
one last party on the drive to rehab
there was natural selection before biology
silence gives an air of wisdom, and the old lack stamina
must every success yield lit eyes of envy among our friends?
tenderness, which his own children had never known, flowering in the grandfather
cruising night streets with her cabbie boyfriend, hand tucked behind his back pain
a tree’s ultimate coherence despite branches reaching in various directions
all these old people in the waiting room, understand, have lost their Beyoncé
failing at digging a roadside grave with sticks and fingers
a need to hear every graphic nicety before even deciding whether you could bear them in the first place
the mob hates the most excellent like a fat couch potato hates those with an ebullience to run and climb ropes and lift weights: cheers to the many unseen artists too excellent to stand a chance
before you kill yourself (or otherwise end it all), bring intelligence to the table: consider posing as a preteen to lure in child predators you can then slaughter in the good conscience of collective cheer
nurse handjobs should be normalized
human drummers drift
grooming consent
the biggest cope is living life as if it were rehearsal
sorrow into the song of spring buds
grudges dissipated by undistracted sight of the sunset
endless becoming, there can be no final catastrophe
teeth-cracking tics
illegal to have selfie photos in one’s possession of one's own pussy at the primetime of fifteen, perhaps one day—when mental images can be hacked into—it will be illegal just to look at your pussy then
disaster remembered as our best time, the bullshit— all of it—sloughed off like excess migrant luggage as the belt around our unity squeezed terribly tight
having so secluded himself away, the artist’s life was gone before it was done—but that was his sacrifice to humanity, because in seclusion he was not just twiddling his thumbs
the problems come largely from you: even when frantic to go, you cannot shit roadside in a squat smiling at a stranger walking by
autocratic self talk of “Calm down”—rather than more somatic self talk of “Notice your breathing”—insinuated she was freaking out, which ramped up the freaking out
from a standpoint of higher grace, humans— like amoebas for us—go about in poses statuesque enough for the theater stage
automatic standing at attention—a few times, yes, even responding “Yeah?”—when your ex-wife calls out “Honey” to another at the blended table
the lip-biting eroticism in watching people get their “deserved” punishments is threatened by the glaring reality that humans are the buckstopping source, the prime movers, of nothing having to do with them—no action, no thought
hoarding merely in the closet, meaning he would pose at most a moderate junk-removal burden on loved ones in the wake of death, suggested he was a closet hoarder
meditation only becomes a thing to try to do in civilization
teens needing zones too strange, too cool, for parents to colonize
preachers of imminent doomsday planting apple seeds in the yard
comedy without tragedy is delusion; tragedy without comedy is the same
walking away from great relationships in the chase of the high of the hunt
rather be among murderers itching to shank than cut off indefinitely in solitary
the meteor still nears even though your wife up and left you
in their football fanaticism (bleacher stomping, shrieking) he could not but sense—hankering for release—a burn-that-witch store of energy
since there will always be those greater, and since no greats avoid obliteration, it is silly to think “Why even bother trying, if I won’t be great ”: aim less for incredible, more for credible
for all of us to have exited the front door of the hospital, fire alarm blaring, in the exact order we did—that was a mind-boggling improbability, and yet it required as much supernatural explanation as Timmy’s cancer remission
the pleasure in seeing the pushover finally wig out—and the hope that his victims had time to regret what they had done
not so much brittleness, what did him in was having forgotten how to fall
what does it mean when you refuse now to clean the toilet’s urine ring of mold?
invested as he is in being a bearer of bad news entices him to distort statistics that give us reason to put our heads up, even though those statistics allow for new bad news
a voice, a way of speech, so mesmeric
that you struggle not to mimic it back
while in conversation with its owner
selecting an epitaph from a cemetery book— a sad thing, but not too terribly sad if it includes “I’m just resting my eyes” or “I told you I was sick”
we identify with going to the moon, saying “We went to the moon”— and yet we do not say “We sex traffic kids”
can a hermit’s lack of community be mostly compensated for by communion with things (trees and other “natural” things)— by communion, ultimately, with the very isness of all that is?
huddled whores shivering as they ravage cigarettes
convenient for the paranormalist, the ghost shattered merely a ghost of a tumbler
waiting for the course of the conversation to clarify the conversation
realizing you are just a charity case, not a friend
the anthropologist planted some quite-literal seeds in the cut-off tribe
trans females undoing decades of feminist progress away from female stereotypes
daytime gutter vomit
scared to change your way from one that has been making you money
color-segregated schools for the blind
so much of the tried-and-true wisdom the old have to offer the young would be unwise for the young to embody while still young
the increasing pressure to pass— indeed, to identify—as one of the popular disadvantaged races, genders, and so on
to paint time even through a posed human results in a figure more or less blurred depending on how spastic, how timorous
chickadees waiting to scoop up for their nests the outdoor grooming remains of collie fur snagged in tall grass and fencing by the breeze
when the horror one feels in life is one’s very comfort in life
all—all—new people in merely one hundred years
everything, but the soap itself, a bursting bubble
imagine someone building their identity around an inanimate object, one not even a tool to channel their artistic expression
the more unusual your life, the more people will struggle to relate to you—a problem especially in a land of hook-em-early sales
hostility toward you because your excellence— indeed, even merely your alternative lifestyle— makes them feel bad about remaining on the pasture
if there is any sense of success in life beyond simply local and conditional success (as in, say, winning the spelling bee), what better answer is there to the question “He who does the most what succeeds?” than Aristotle’s “Activity born from virtue”?
the guilty look of one working a job not right for him around the people who know it is not right for him
love song to an ex partner, not of romantic love but of familial devotion: ain't no mountain high enough
in preaching that we need to be here now, could it be said we are self hating, being as we are precisely the creature who lives in that meta space of knowing that we know?
moonrise drags notes from the mockingbird’s throat
mature he was in his immaturity since he never tried to hide that he did not know
cliché memories “unearthed” during hypnosis
is love at risk when little by our efforts is left to be achieved?
frontline deserters of war, broken down not by battle but by native women
although constants spotlight variations, the (impossible) world without constants would still have variations
those still ones easily mistaken for monks of peace, but really twist more like typhoon eyes
out on the balcony, wafting up your sizzling garlic to a neighbor’s heart
however cliché, it can be okay to enjoy that respite of giving in to a mall photo booth
rendering judgment on a hooker with whom you refuse visual contact
taking notes during your panic— your bad trip, or whatever— fighting to get distance from it
when read from some discipline other than the one in which he is found unclear, his words are clear
mastery with moving razorblades around the mouth
Anthony Bourdain and Susan Sontag
probing to find problems with the world, as if the old were trying to convince themselves that leaving it is actually their preference
the ease with which strangers say, “Listen to your heart,” is one reason to leave your hole
seeing in light of what we know (or think we know), knowledge blocks us from and opens us to reality
even soldiers have faces their mothers remember
confessing to the priest, every confession, that your son is gay
the slowing down of time is the gift in the dying of a loved one
to get out of unjust and deadly war shooting yourself in the foot is not shooting yourself in the foot
Hemingway still rules the day: terse sentences—trendy as tattoos—even to the point of fragments in which one hides one’s limited command of language and also one’s sheepishness
if sincerely open to change, how bad is it to tell her that you do not believe, do not do, things that you really do?
more now than mumbling to your hallucinations
behind locked doors in gated communities raging at the bigotry of border control
the bitter essence could not be cordoned off as “just a phase"
desperate to constrain the inner theater to ethnocentric sanities
words of condolence meant to cut: “It’s such a shame your own son couldn’t even call on your birthday”
picture politicians having to sport, at least while acting in official capacity, chest-sleeve patches— NASCAR-jacket style—for all their sponsors!
works deemed “obscurantist” for refusing cursory attention
to forgive “sin” is to forgive Earth’s gravity for restraining flight
might you take comfort perhaps in that this cringeworthy moment will be replaced by yet another?
even if it takes frames to pick out bodies as distinct from others, the world minus frames would still be no homogenous plenum— unless, of course, framing is an activity fundamental to reality
no matter how reflective of darkness it is, the art would not be were it not for a gush of life-zest—some exigency—in the artist
wanting escape from being—that feeds rage against cliché: the ground of creation, what everything is or threatens to become
following heinous orders, consoled by the maxim “It all works out in the end”
still correcting your son’s talk of partner: “You mean, ‘friend’—your roommate”
to unsay all nouns would not be to unlock a mute essence
too old to be adopted
creedal cataracts
warping roots as payback for warped roots
caught in endless tailoring when the off-the-rack solution would have been fine
running into your rapist each day in the dorm hallway
letting grime build for the pleasure of removal
sometimes the subject is not to be centered in the viewfinder
despite the pain of loved ones, you congratulate yourself on predictions come true
embracing a lesser enemy because it is the enemy of a greater enemy, one set up for that end by the lesser enemy
so what do you do when your wife comes home beaten—face bloodied, gashed up purple green— and says a man she is having an affair with did it?
mouth-eye
the hilarity of silverbacks and other beasts whose ancestral wiring has them bluster bellicose even at uncalled-for turns
can we really blame her for taking the moonrise for granted—as if it will always be there—when the number she will see is likely less than twenty?
he still had it saved: the chewed bubblegum of his grade-school crush
a roll of toilet paper on the wall dispenser distended by the receded flood
innocent enough not to know why no less than two should be with the corpse at a time
night lasted longer in the morning shadows
the taint tingle of extreme heights
sword fighting in the dressing room while their mothers strip
teen compact mirrors blinding onlookers with concentrated beach rays
that father still collecting egg cartoons although there will be no more school projects
that father who tries to make his children laugh during church service
trees before Christ was born still growing
let the children of the deceased light the pyre
veneers flash like squid colors when fear's undertow drags us under
spinning tween sugar is a cinch when all their idols brag about how their pussies drip
newspapers gone brittle yellow in an attic
shamed by generosity
dying of another’s death, but only for a few people
twelve and already wearing makeup to school—oh, and a guy
the body hanging in the study was dead to its effects even on the children
needs too limited to our powers to increase our powers
custodians of custom
coveted by the cat, the warm place left behind from the dog
each mouse dipped in water and then in powdered multivitamin for the snake
achievement reduced merely to escaping where you are
one might admire the protesters even while personally revolted by their certainty
jerked off while shackled, tendons torn and shortened, at the factory farm
to be ravished is to be seized and pumped full of delight—or to be raped
fingers stuffed down the throat gags it, yes, kiddie tight
child dreams (school nights, Christmas eve) elbowed out by his dad’s drunken yelling— by the banging, his mom weeping in his bed
those students who wrap their lips around water-fountain spigots overlap in large part with those who slurp—sometimes even snort up their nose—puddles of orange juice and milk off cafeteria tables
she claimed the lust child as her own—in a forever secret— to conceal the shame not only of her middle-school sister but of the tip-toe wizard she continued calling her husband
young photos he cannot bear to behold straight on: the same dejection and insecurity that molded everything until now— and that harbors what lies ahead—beams from his bald face
decades since he last entered this room, he felt he could gather up ghostly wisps of her scent—enough to arouse its slumbering simulacrum—if only he inhaled in dark quiet
she was turned off by what she intuited in a glance below consciousness as his inability to grasp the depth of female perversity
fear of spaces both open and closed triggered as the diver plummets into the abyss beyond his exosuit
shot down in war, for years family spoke—children knowing no better— as if he were still fighting overseas
a good way to sift through who to read is to find the best q-and-a remarks in colloquia
war on masturbation dead and gone, and yet we still deal with its effects: normalized circumcision, for example
wanting a young girl but settling for the fact that his girlfriend would get raped on the regular as a kid, words of consolation whisper in his heart: at least I get to bang a person raped as a kid
you saw it with black belts attained with ease lest clients leave, and yet you thought it would different with the PhD?
on your resume, that you refused the accolade
never failing to give women what they want, whether they want it or not
not even one more box of Q-Tip’s left in your cards
cleaning out the dead man’s house, a canned-goods bunker prepped for apocalypse
prostitutes who get up at dawn instead of sleeping past noon
lifelong refusal to open the letter handed at the doorstep by soldiers in full regalia
cleanup arrests—vagrancy, public drunkenness—before tourist season
Dad locked up for life, your mother’s murder freed you from his torture
it seemed as if the star’s immortality halted deep in his old age, uncoiling from him
the resigned edge to his voice revealed that his threat was a cold-hard fact— not empty: “I’ma slaughter this bitch”
sometimes, though, admitting it was stolen—by fighting to take it back, say—has you lose what was never really gone, as some natives of colonialism have learned the hard way
a red flag it should raise if those who set up paradise on your land say as gospel not only that your paradise is elsewhere (in the sky), but also that the path there is through humble servitude to them
did you really get the full message from the psychedelics if, while on them, you never sincerely and literally felt you were going to die: heart attack, clot, hemorrhage, fentanyl spike?
bound to a chair, her basilisk eyes of eros—unbroken all night—terrified her abductor
intrigued by her only when someone else finds her beautiful
change the ceremonies too little and the people freeze, too much and they dissolve
how hard it is still to face that your mom has a name
but that electric gelatin between our ears is itself a soup of drugs
maggot-squirming group sex
deer beds in the oak-leaf layers of decades
a saccadic menagerie of fucking neighbors opened up by the birthday telescope
echelons of consciousness inimical to a normal life
he did not say but everyone knew: he was anxious to be seen with a woman so huge
elders like to give advice because it heightens the worthwhileness of their experiences
girlfriend came back smelling like balloons after the argument
a bullying enthusiasm
but tragedy, as with ants, makes the world come alive
eager for old ones to die since they know, and can expose, who you really are— but sad much later for the same reason
hopeful that people will be too preoccupied with their own flaws to attend to those that preoccupy you
home-economics teacher in a 1940s boarding school showing reservation natives how to apply lipstick and style their hair, how to clean themselves in every nook “like proper women”
the sense in which there is newness in the first formulation of the thought that nothing is new
wanting to avoid the temptation of wanting you dead, your heir renounces all rights to inheritance
that exploitation blooms only from society perhaps should suggest that society is a primordial fact rather than that there is no primordial exploitation
your heirs, although feverish for debt relief, never face head-on wanting you dead
ashamed not to be beating cancer with all these testimonies of how others triumph, as if it were so much in their power
predawn in a cemetery, smoking a blunt with friends as a teen in the mid-90s—a breeze wafts a moist coolness, and you sigh at all the pain that lies ahead under these same quivering stars
yelling at your hallucinations
avoiding triggers of bygone dreams often means cutting out so much music
chaos territory beyond citadel masteries and marchland illusions of wilderness
she wanted more to have done it than to do it
combing through the antiques of the dead
he was the only man to paint her without losing his mind
a cushioned bed of pine needles
pub crowds mired in ego's sewerline
the same stuff as every name in history, are you not essentially every name in history?
left by the woman of your dreams— and yet only to discover the woman of your nightmare refuses to abort
true adventure, whose thrill and importance inspired us to create story, originates in the ineptitude it rattles throughout
piquant teases of exposure, against a backdrop of concealment, stokes intense desire—so many religions are the hacks of the procreative drive
an age when you appreciate in words, even if only internal behind a sigh, how windchimes tinkling can pacify a space
activism directed across the world despite the zombie groans and back bent poses of fentanyl, the stench of urine, right outside our doors
patrons at the bar you enter to toast your victory, they could care less that you cracked the math riddle or ice-picked up the vertical verglas melting down a 6000-foot killer—but take heart: another you would
blacks fought too damn hard for us now to muzzle people for their white optics
how to tell from the inside that something is not right with you
questions about what your partner likes and why are not anti-erotic
the subtle shift from using drugs to work to working to use drugs
grave danger is great for pushing out of mind the people you wronged
the untroubled demeanor of the well-seasoned troublemaker as he pimp bops to his old corner (full of jail koans, buoyant as a dandelion seed in the breeze)—beat plosives on his lips
it felt perilous but honied, like an illicit affair— letting your turnpike eyes drift shut into eternity just a few delirious seconds longer (one last time)
barefoot children from secluded tribes pluck vibrant leaves drooping in the jungle footpath casually as they amble along, just as ours would
life is tragic: you feel a giddy surge of joyous confidence braving something your were frightened of—yes, even that inaugural session of palliative-care chemotherapy
before stars awoke, the so-called “primordial chaos” preordained the seeds, and all the chrysalid resonance patterns of their unfurling, that would bloom gateways—as came to be here, now, through us—to post-physical songlines
pissing postures across species
even he himself could not make out what he was muttering
waterfalls frozen mid-action in ice
fucked in the end by his childhood paracosm— long forgotten but wherein the least worrisome norm was his sexually-submissive marriage to a Great Dane
ethical therapists will be prepared to fire clients instead of taking their money while they remain caught in the hydraulic jump of their delusions
super-slow replays of decapitating car crashes, bodies summersaulting like soulless rag dolls— yet female nipples, life-giving holies, still a no no
were we to keep in panoptic mind how the vigor they sequester fuels so much artistic and technological ascension, we might pause before saying all the damns and channels of diversion “emasculate the river”
prison sheet over the head to invent privacy where you can
yet another school-kid-meets-landmine yawner
the next Shakespeare will die too
the acting-class excuse to explain rage outs to neighbors
looping on the bus all day to keep warm or cool, to sleep, out of the elements
miming fascination
Vegas Goodwill bridal gown
when the shame expressed is in fact pride
mountains are dry islands
a father’s don’t-tell-your-mother wink
parents in grade-school desk-chairs
soporific ropes of gutter water
the last slice of Sunday sunlight on the corner of the kitchen table
perched hawks awaiting what may scurry from the forest blaze
starting to drink in the mornings
he took it on as his fault (not even five) when the cop k9 “Scotty” found that karmic coke stashed in his undies—self-blame he continued, more and more unknowingly until his senescent delirium, trying to atone for
sharks like us can live, courtesy of our technology, much deeper into fin-worn senility now that they have cruise ships to shadow for the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of waste dumped overboard
the only religion that should be on the table for preemptive extermination is one so bold as to declare itself “God’s final revelation”
rip up junk mail and send it back to sender with the included business-reply envelope: the company gets charged for each return
is how courageous you find killing yourself, finally ending that thumping radix of bravery, solid measure of how attached you are to life?
traversing such distance (zenith to base), the avalanche— juggernaut of velocious vigor—seems from far off safety a parody of slow motion (as do shore waves from a plane)
graffiti banned but not billboards— even billboards advertising, yes, gambling and cigarettes and alcohol
to the question “How do you know he's the enemy" the man answered: “Cuz look at him: the fucker's dead!"
a decade beyond divorce he still has, if only in an attic box of emotional unpartables, the cheap baby blue postpartum sitz bath
born of the same stuff as reality itself, even a simulation is real
near death, it is easy to confide in those who are not characters so entrenched in your life
“simply raise the baby as a girl,” Dr. Smith said (an axe to grind) after the botched circumcision: “We now know its all cultural overlay anyway”
the silver lining to her size is that she has an inbuilt test for seeing who is likely a “good" person: it was in who would look her in the eye still—in who would open up and laugh and relax in her fleshy air
just as we hit upon water when we dig deep enough beneath the crust, so we eventually desire to die— wearied by experiences ultimately incomprehensible
the fall of a scene you never thought would end
but the benefit of being the creatures who know we are going to die is that we know why it was worthwhile to have been born
cliché being, like bacteria, entrenched in who we are, raging against it is a risk
lucky for the rest of the world most of us fail to be our authentic selves, going about each day instead as our more accommodating mask-wearing selves
masturbation bib (mobster-pasta style)
another sky-father blasphemy of the divine
imagine feeling boredom despite the improbability of being alive!
treadmills instead of dancefloors
the real magic is making it seem you are levitating
can love uniform across all beings really be love?
it was tranquil, almost soporific, standing with the wind—too loud for conversation, unrelenting in its support—at your back
imitating the one who imitates you, distortions and all, in the hope that others will believe you to be the genuine article—a funhouse recursion of reflections inciting refractions (overwriting root reality)
public perception had grown into a caricature so beyond him that he failed to make top five in the contest of best impersonations of him
the age of chronic aches and gravitational fatigue left little fuel for the psychic torsions required to keep ever on guard against memory tripwires
ashamed, but unable to tell your son to stop visiting you in jail
healers who do not touch their patients anymore
the special vision of journalists who can resist flocking to where all the others are supposed to be
banging the table for finality
never looking at finished work lest flaws be found
to protect the speech is not to endorse the speech
too depressed to pretend for anyone it was just dust in his eyes
steam rose in the cold air from the slit belly of the doe
what are you to make of learning that you were conceived in rape?
gayness being in vogue on TV fuels hope in dads that the teen is just caught up in another fad
guides to death may unnerve you like strangers watching you shit— unless they come loaded with drugs
taking out on your child the rape that made him
dried corn raised in the palm to the blind mule’s senile lips of tactile quivering
wishing for the luxury of being exploited
hypnotic allures of elsewhere eclipsed the familiar land and custom, the girl next door
seeing no point in school when you will remain repulsive in your disfigurement
both slipping down the cliff, she lunges— blind passion birthing a new world—for her freebase pipe: empty, unlike her toddler’s eyes
those spurts of nonresponse to his DMs here and there over the years made him love her all the more: he figured they meant she had a man and was enough of a catch to honor the boundaries even of a passerby
from under the forest char, seed meat cracks through the fireproof hulls up toward our nearest star
hoarded kernels of her prior selves blocked transfiguration
ignorance fosters so much fecundity
little faith in the mosquito net
down that special-k hole
overlapping dialogue
daddy’s big girl wishes she was not
exaggerated genitalia—but in real life, right at your mouth (stank)
reluctant to give up possessions, objects entangled in your identity, in fear of facing the absence of excuse for keeping the rest
ancient memories of prenatal ecosystems, now under parking lots, pulse (too faintly) through the face-paint pigments of cosplay
art that finally shows a people its own native landscape chiseled free of encrustations from afar
it is pure delusion: thinking we could ever transcend secondhand existence, muster a difference-in-kind leap into some “reality” behind theatrical stages, when every fact about us—genes, thoughts, deeds—comes from beyond us
a brave love shows itself in your concern about how you might better learn to love the infant whose face calls up the trauma
waterlogged toes peeling away to nubs bleeding more moisture into the jungle boots
gender queers scoffing at age queers
gender queers scoffing at race queers
expecting those barely making it through the world to change it
death is no point of view cured by ceremony
baby humans like baby goats face-butt breasts to make milk flow faster
another burden to handle staved off some gossip in a Christian community
a brief second—and through mind power alone (no outside triggers)—having the smell experience, decades forgotten, of your grade-school hallway
guilt-trip manipulation runs deep enough that the toddler, aware of putting its life at risk, wails despite Mom now addressing its needs
knowledge hygiene has doctors hold back unsettling prophesies revealed by genetic sequencing
007-373-5963
given over to hope each time
how mild was the worst dreamed of in those days
post-masturbation fingers at the fridge sludging through the dill-pickle brine for a slice or three from the family jar
the heart-convulsing civic duty to refuse paying the ransom lest blackmail culture go malignant
the saving force of a change in season
the meat-husk abandoned mid-transformation toward becoming a better man
out of the matrix, yeah—but underdeveloped, especially socially, because of it
he lived long enough to expect from his heroes the unexpected, even the terrible
ridiculing escapism in the youth before any need for it
in a culture of grievance, victims of grievance will voice retaliatory grievance
he lived fighting back the feeling that the ephemerality of things spoiled their point and worth
looking away from the mirror reflection of her body like how squeamish, or just plain kindhearted, people might avoid even a side eye toward a highway wreck
we are the creatures who think we know why, even if there is no ultimate meaning to our lives it was worthwhile to have been born just as we were
if you have to purchase airline tarmac-noise-canceling earmuffs to have on each long day at home, it seems you are not right for the dog—yes, even if by fat chance the dog is right for you
whispering “I love you” into the pillow, no one in mind
driving around with a mannequin seat-belted passenger-side
cruising city streets, today top down, with a mannequin copilot buckled in shotgun
godparents hungover at morning baptisms
seeking out a template for personality
middleman markups
chefs now in the look-at-me business just as must as writers
but luckily he had other passions to love and live for besides the drug that would have taken down a person who never discovered other passions besides the drug
those in that mega intersect between trans and deranged can always just pin their derangement on “transphobia”
identities might fracture along fault lines of realness and fantasy, but roots remain— accessible perhaps to parents and friends
an unforgiving soul slashes at the webwork entangling him to all else
the label “insanity,” however blinkered, represses threats from wider energy spectra
thinking that achievements on paper, and that others can see, can heal you
now he wakes to find himself as if in the same day, the day of her funeral
adamance on touching the dead (to better picture being dead)
holy wildness wafts, just bend down a bit to smell, beneath the corporate patina
inventing companions reflects our sense that we die accompanied only in the abstract
sadistic waits, high-priced vending gargoyles, in the visitation spaces of for-profit prisons where all outside food or drink is prohibited
a hologram of connection still intact beams from her hair-knotted brush and other anchors of lost presence
barred by the headshaking sighs of family, all aware that “Forty” is the name of his emotional-support pet, from making a pitstop (“Pull off there real quick”) on the drive to the morning funeral
acquiring a gun because of threats made on social media
in recycled obituaries, each of the two lovers is described as the “dear wife of her surviving husband”
excuses to lose one’s mind
hushing a dog with a mere glare in its direction
profit pressures to put people in jail
just the noise of the hooves in the bullfight
waves of ancestors embodying realities we could not help but diagnose as psychosis
this same moon alights such horror
echoes of retching throughout the church
normalizing morphine at death
god’s grace manifests now through returns on our investments
consumed by the tuning of the acoustic (his ear snuggled up to the sound chamber as he plucks), the virtuoso glares toward but through our eyes
an agency that serves as a resume contact for those jobs, typically unlistable, done off the books, for free, or so on
sun-dulling chill of autumn
smells long forgotten until the dream that activates some part of his brain to retrieve them again—the olfactory parallel to the phantom limb
love born from paucity is too needy and love born from plenitude is just too—into, too in love with, itself
that getting old opens us to mate qualities overlooked in the superficiality of youth is compatible with our just being desperate
birth individuates, isolates (and so allows for togetherness); but death is but a shift in individuation—a new isolation
the day is at hand, and rightfully so, where we will understand retributive punishment of rapists to be as barbarically ignorant as retributive punishment of dogs or babies for shitting on the rug
small-town telephone operator before 911
newspaper does in fact keep you warm
the boy’s run-ins with the pedophile priest described as “run-ins”
even a slave develops domestic feelings for her cold quarters
keeping ears on someone instead of eyes
a hole deeper than any sound from a boulder shouldered into it
the body’s resilience sang when he gave up, gave in to death—and it kept on living through his binges and benders of drugs, his not eating
oblivious to judging eyes, black teens slap snot-nosed kids to keep them still on the train
down enough about himself that the main hesitation to suicide— to pulling the trigger, jumping from his office, hooking up the hose to the exhaust pipe, was that he would probably fuck that up too
hidden in one’s very overexposure
a daily inventory of losses to your dignity
countless tragedies in countless star systems
artists raging against cliché merely by reacting to it: spoofing it—enlivening it
posed portraits, simulacra that they are, still capture the person—and humanity
eating, sleeping, secreting, working, and bracing for the next disaster
dreading the disappearance of stage-fright, of tension lost in the performance—for what it mean for his care
at least she did not feel nothing about “feeling nothing”
giving yourself over to decay
loving each stage of a loved-one’s life: from the ones witnessed to the ones only imagined and yet to come
touching the tyrant’s casket face cautiously in fear that he might release one final bolt of spite
what buzzes in our heads, mostly clichés, already color the canvas before we take up the implement
tranquilizing the wild lion to be with it up close alive (instead of when the nose hardens and the ears go stiff): hugging it and touching its nose, fingering its nostril, glucking its cheek with pinched fingers, biting its chin
feeling invincible too young
anorexia culminating in rape
grooming the altar-boy and his family to overlook what is to come
hoping to duck responsibility for wanting sex, teen girls lure boyfriends to put on the pressure
the rich buying a simulacrum of fame
fear that letting go of grief would amount to letting go of that someone
looking into the urn at last
spit baths
finding progressions in mere lists
when none of the facts so integral to who you are can be reached
absenting oneself from a situation by fainting
sitting on a wood fence for hours in hope that a new face will show itself to talk
failures loom larger in places where little else is around
pinching the tongue of one seizuring
in protest of the involuntary inevitable, he lodged himself in material clutter so much that loved ones felt it only right to stuff some of it—his favorites—in the coffin at his side
the flood displacement would have been a glorified camping vacation had he not learned of her betrayal
importunate attempts to prove to him that he is a victim seems more about attempting to make him suffer like you
feigning knowledge of facts mentioned in an offhand tone as if you knew them already
that he was manipulative was clear in that he could handle any problem with poise (broken bone, car crash, job loss, death of a loved one) unless, however, a loved one was there to witness his handling
marooned midway through one’s mythic quest, the island’s dragon soon appeared
making the position clear threatens to make it vulnerable
to overhead and payroll, not to the poor
thoughts of suicide to stay in the game when mere to-do lists fail
isolation roused psychic monsters
even the sexual organs of family are open for dinner conversation once stricken with severe illness
trained enough not even to think of his wife’s sisters, friends, as harboring pussies—he sailed her circles with Odyssean wax up his nostrils, blocking out the sweet dankness of their wake
not introducing your daughter to the old friend in the supermarket because she is unattractive
glances crossing through mirrors
what just happened, and what now?
immigrant businesses marked by American flags in the entrances
hated by one’s mother for good reason
pussies dank with lust
where do you go when even your parents are homeless?
restrain your envy of artists lest you find yourself one— alone, weird, ridiculed, poor
small towns where loveliness goes wasted
crushing the infant, asleep in the most absurd place
phone book on the seat for height
did Hitler come off as a buffoon during his rise to power too?
dreams where you are no longer wheelchair-bound
what is most important about most of us goes unseen
feeling inauthentic under makeup, but covering that up too
notice-me attire
the realization that the future in which we placed our dreams no longer lies ahead of us
disillusionments mounting, so many projected futures having collapsed, could you blame him for extending the circumference of his identity?
the license that being an artist gives to neglect loved ones
her t-shirt read: “Stop being a pussy and rape me already”
an artist fearful of causing offense is closer to a jingle-writing ad-man
the missing pet spider—everywhere, nowhere—became a koan of suburban Buddhism
time, which no face-lift can outrun, curses the gorgeous
oily rainbows, contorted, in gasoline spills
living today, but still incensed at all that was burned in the Library of Alexandria
struggling to write what you forgot you had once written
what remains in the typewriter after death
domestic squabbles, vases shattered against walls
books recovered, distended, from sunken boats
mothers wondering, not whether you had a good time, but whether you were the prettiest at the party
rejecting new art on grounds that it rejects beauty relieves one from having to state that those finding beauty in it are wrong
the question “That’s where you live?”—asked with that italicized “that” of incredulity by someone whose words are hang-on worthy (cop, social worker, priest)—can punch the child hard enough to bring into focus for the first time the squalor of its dwelling
the video did not pick up the levitation because it was just the possessing demon projecting that image into our minds
promising to retain certain feelings—love, say— is just as silly as promising that your heart will continue to beat for another sixty years
cans rusted to the shelf
seventy years of fuzzy UFO photos
couch cushions to muffle the noise
fake chicken squeaking under the old person’s dementia knife
coloring within the lines to get the Christmas bonus
slime molds solve metropolitan maze puzzles to reach nutrients
the shameless sharing of child porn in the early days of dial-up
not inviting people because you do not want them not to come
you knew him so well—until you found his body hanging
these mp3s, catalysts within the sonic time capsule, might have transmuted base nostalgia into the heavy element of wisdom if only he had the courage to sit with the reality of time’s torrent and all his unfulfilled hopes, regrets
it is a sign of good health to approach people with stereotypes, low resolution approximations—but is a sign of bad health to be unwilling to fill that in or shift it given what they actually are
as mafia movies reveal, the flip-side of etiquette rules (there at their very origin) is that, however much they are claimed to keep us safe and civil, they serve as pretenses to lash out
“Shoot me, nigga: I wanna live in your fuckin head forever!”
degrees rescinded due to atrocities later committed
accusing him of pulling away too quickly from the hug
crows will chase squirrels into the roadkill lane—that smart
a land where tomboys must really be boys then
sewage shallow enough now to wade through for bodies of family
withering without attention
the thing you loved turned into a career
hatred for this president could result in unsafe-optic professors stripped of degrees— no joke, nigga—after some video surfaces from decades earlier of them rapping along to the lyrics of their father figures: “It’s that nigga with knotty hair who Gotti fear!”
hush dotted by staccato pops from the backyard flames, hands warm over the planks in which you and your dad put so many, too damn many, tree-house nails (only a heartbeat ago, it seems)
clocks ticking and walls closing, you need to get her out so you can poop and have peace, not knowing what to say or do now as another dinner approaches
the museum curator, unable to face his shadow, convinced himself the artifact was cursed
poverty creeping up ivory towers, the officer knocks his flashlight on the passenger window as professor Simons grades papers before bed
every White House solar panel torn away for spite and cameras on move-in day
afraid of change, you would be the Jew who did not get out in time
education as a proxy for class makes it easier to ignore how poor all of us—even PhDs—are becoming
we imagine future anthropologists sifting through our digital archives— mistaking our LinkedIn profiles, say, for totems of our radical polytheism— ultimately to deny the looming annihilation of all caretaking of legacies
between family members long-separated filling the silence takes time and energy, and so the poorest are less likely to reach out
those for whom a fortune cookie is just as good as a therapist
just because the river’s water is holy does not mean it is drinkable
dependent on the distraction of daily troubles
assume that someone has something to say and even silences speak
studying the photo, which you normally overlook each day
that urge to prove one’s belonging to whatever group it may seem to advantage one to belong to
to a creature in need of words, why not just say the words if you already show the love those words are to designate?
in a white grade-school, the one dark girl finds herself in the role of note-passer between crushes
depression tartar
behind the camera in order not to participate
your former F-student—your nurse as you battle to live
avoiding cliché at the expense of beauty
the secret guilt of medical professionals
searching for someone to make sure you should be avoiding them
comedy to defuse an attack and uplift the dying
when being fired speaks well of you
startled to find him looking so different than he had in life
still visiting the grave—the last one left to do so
not wanting to appear to have missed a joke, but reining in the laughter so as not to appear as if not wanting to appear to have missed a joke
transitioning from a heartbeat to a heart tick—one too loud in bed, squeamish, ever to get used to
watching the one next to you sleep, wondering how such a face might one day break your heart
lodging ourselves in clutter—clawing at earth, even as fingernails tear back, in crazed struggle against the pull of graves (near for all we know)
no nest eggs under our diplomas, we became just like those buoyed by their high-school sports feats
pictures of former homes hung in the current home
every U-Haul move exhumes a mess of memories
bath-towel scarves
layers poking out from flannel cuffs
punched around by your spouse the night before the start of a new job
neighborhoods where you fear a red light
love does not turn out well for so many, all of whom figured things were going to be great
for being careless about the relationship, you reach out after years to a friend, who claims you apologized already a decade ago
wisps of snow enter with the booted man
on their turbaned heads the women see, enlivening the drudgery, who can balance the biggest bundle of white-people dirties
the metronomic stability of drum-machine music, bereft of the organic shifts in tempo expected from faltering humans, both reflects the shift in humanity to a mono-machinic mode of being and—along with fast food—encourages it
watch: such unhinged outrage for the new president will summon— on grounds, like in every sci-fi dystopia, of “protecting safe spaces”— assassination shots and, worse, strangulation of art (even comedy)
kudzu vines of cult indoctrination strangling gardens of parental investment
reviving someone only to beat the shit out of them
the furry pause between teen identities seems more pregnant than ever
toes curled away from the cold tile of dawn footsteps
wondering whether you were liked because of your race or in spite of it
illegal to eat a swan—nasty, ornery, source of coronation down—in a land of famine
struggling, real hard, to resist the fatalistic tug of his groomer-camp-counselor look
dramatic dying, even if tamer than grenade-leaping heroism (even if no more than shunning hospice’s morphined stupor), is—like free-range kids popping wheelies on knee-bloody bikes beyond screens—safeguarded, for now, by the grubby poor
criticized for having subjects too posed even though poses reveal something about them
imagine if we did the NBA like we do now our colleges: Team USA competitiveness plunging—China’s prayers answered—as we chase the jungle’s standard of diversity
Christian heaven—the end of the powerplay exploitation evident everywhere (yes, even from vines twirling until they hook what lifts them for free to more sun)—is not a goal of life-affirmation
excellence for him was not worth the price of potential humiliation
liquor-store candescence in the wet street at night
bra and panties for the beach
in the kiln of projections and expectations, he hardens slowly into a form he detests
the killer’s reservoir of tenderness for dogs
the days of walking along, rolling some junk car tire
optics outweigh character in Disney’s populist adaptations—in our decline
the urge to sew together identical twins
prisoners devouring each word in a loved one’s letter, fingering each indent on the traveled page
putting in more work for his recovery than he puts in himself will have him guilt-flee into the well-known bosom
college’s anti-diversity dogmas (“Cancel triggering art and speakers”), turbocharged by normalized daily weed, pestled into crumbs too many neural pathways back to the blonde freshman’s hometown conscience
prison hospice
cursory editing of old work so as to get to new work— a curse of the overflowing
not having any of your own, you ask others to read aloud their own letters from home
power directs guests to sit in the seat with sawed-down legs
flying phobics who become driving phobics after learning, in their therapy sessions, how much riskier driving turns out to be
is that the upright body of a shaved bear, or just that of an old madman in the trees?
between funerals
feigning illness to get attention, even if only clinical, from a distant doctor-father
the friend who stays to burn and the other who leaps part after a final embrace
when those asking for change were at their best—how would they react to such images of themselves?
squat-crapping on the fanned-out covers of outdated Time at the doctor’s office
diaphragm-and-spermicide baby
ball-dangling defecation on the chemo center’s magazine table of polite fictions
does God better hear a prayer when launched from an entire parish?
a flash unbuckle blasts diarrhea at the waiting-room bead maze, children slack jawed
smashing your head through a window to end an argument
pocket-pussy hidden up the makeshift under orifice of the anime plushy
realizing that you are starting to forget what she looked like
the feeling that there is nothing to do now that you have survived the disease
reading the personal anchors she left behind— lotion, a brush full of tangles—not as snakeskin, but as promises that she will come back home
it is question begging to say that when the materialist reduces Susan’s pain— reduces it not just to anybody’s complex of neurophysiology but to Susan’s— he fails to capture the qualia of her pain, the first-person what-it-is-like-for-her
cold air rolls over the racecar bed and along the floor from the window peeled of its winter plastic for escape
fine, but might not the man for whom a wink is the same as a nod is the same as a middle finger smell that you have your balls out in teabag threat?
the wise know that even the jerkiest waltzes still follow protocol
motorcycle club patches, and the process of sewing them on
Gucci bags over homeless legs
tomorrow’s admission question for diversity candidates: rate the meme, 1 to 10
you just knew the coffin bed would go once your funk phase was through— and yet here it is decades later
driven away by the retard’s presence less from mucus disgust than from how it bars all indulgence in self-pity
unchosen immersion in life’s construct unites us all—as NPCs?
RuPaul’s tuck: a decepticunt
fear that breathing in too deep might allow germs to take deeper root
protection of the helpless—an excuse for the glory of conquest
treated as if a child for whom they have to pretend
no one mentions that people die here too
coffins afloat down city streets
bared-throat defenselessness is itself a defense, ironclad, around those whose honor (or desire to signal honor) blocks them from exploiting it
your friends are still (Wu) fanatics (as you were too back in high school) and, although your intensity no longer matches theirs, you cannot help but whoop along with them—whooping largely to summon the past?
bits of steel from the fallen towers given out as gifts
not exploiting her vulnerability—his aikido style of exploitation
enough gay-therapy shocks to have you forget how to put on underwear
the notebook doodles behind what would ultimately be the official Nazi logo
outside the only context in which we know them (oval office, NBA court, big screen), they can look like siblings—or even just distant cousins—of themselves
when you will do anything to avoid the sickness of withdrawal, who cares what people think about your smell?
unable to shake the feeling that all construction, from bridges even to paper planes, is pointless
work just to survive—so much to result in what for your children you will later call “the lost years”
junkies, fibrotic even at the quirkiest needle sites, driveling over unspoiled vascularity
one’s birth tree choked out by disease
dogs returning to their vomit
preferring the known of misery over the unknown of change
scientists popping corks in the atomic glow tolerate no failure to smile
Brenda’s Adam’s apple in the morning florescence of the hotel bathroom
although we use it each day (and casually), our behavior shows that we find “dying” to be the most vile word in the language
gurgles and giggles unkindled even by the goofiest faces diving down, yet still taken in by all the effort, the infant—nudged, as later fevers will, inward into wonder hungrier now after having stretched—forms an appraising smile, fine as the furrows of its brow
is that regular mode of life following a great victory a chance to reflect and reenergize, or one to wonder why you did not simply kill yourself in the climax?
wearing a photo-mask of mom so the orphan will feed from the bottle
traumas transmuting across generations without deliberate effort
that same stock pattern of dolphin squeals in each TV episode
lower than glue
outlived by our favorite t-shirt
a new name for moving beyond your past
dirt, life-giver, is death in your hands
the very same word had a different meaning just one block over
an isolated farmer imprisoned for putting down his brother as he would any injured horse
the absurdity of the drive to piston what amounts to mere holes stands out starkly especially to those who get all they want and to those who get none
marathon weekends with gurus only to get to the heart of what makes people attend these things
religions that ask a given self to discover its own nonexistence ask the impossible of that self
stir better angels: ask these corner blacks to watch your kid while you run into the store
tuna treats tucked high and low to riddle the cat’s life—a lesson for human depression
finding one’s artistic voice through rejecting one’s training
blooming petals stripped of sexual symbolism
sand-mandala wisdom comes from carrying out ways of life knowingly doomed
to us they smell like garam masala armpit; to them we smell like sour diary dog paw
will the only memory of his mother be of her addiction?
lives swallowed by ritual
merely aping that world
staying the course with the thought “the rest of us don’t seem to think we’re crazy”
the instincts of our innermost identity deprived by comforts, we need— just like these unavoidable mirrors (bored killers, purring on our laps— savannah quests (even if only writ small in the Easter eggs of video games)
if retired men so easily slip into depression having limited opportunity to do what they have long done, just imagine what becomes of humans unable to exercise the hunter-gatherer drives constituting our base code
inborn wisdom has us shoot the horse beyond misery (like a mother giraffe head stomping its injured calf)— yet we thrust our pitchforks at Kevorkian suicide pods
even Christian parents never assume, even after years of dead-end searching, that it might have been a rapture event
who wins the power struggle when, after her strangled mewls turn into mulish moans of “Hit me!”, you backhand her across the mouth with fair warning: “Don’t ever fuckin tell me what to do, bitch”?
rusted machinery slowly reclaimed by nonhuman growth
high-traffic apartments, people leaving every two minutes on average
drug-induced moments of confessional vulnerability
exiting the store without paying in the wake of the armed robbers (but with a “Sorry”)
correcting the misspelling on your suicide note first
behind an afternoon school bus at a red light, grocery prices have gone too high not to flash leaky tits for faces teasing at the back window
in the ecstasies of molly, you think you hear— feel even—the very heartbeat of the found toad, but your beatbox-rendition is the wrong tempo
remember when you did not have to leave America to live the American dream: go to Turkey for unsurpassed but affordable health care; go to China for colleges that want you for your genius instead of for your irrelevant self identifications?
atheist philosophers, so argued the Catholic bishop, serve a godly role in debunking poisons of idolatry: like that god is some bearded sky father—just one among many beings
in what amounts to mere sandbags against a flood of nihilism, she wields academic jargon like a flamethrower: scorching “The Unbearable Whiteness" of forest trails and math tests
without guys groping her—shifting and bending her, yanking her, this way and that—for better angles, it turns out she did not really know how to dance
that fragile membrane around all of our curated routines
joy in watching the proudest decay
belonging found in buying
invalided home
drink deeply (eyed closed) those “boring” stretches between inevitable catastrophes
selling sexual services, even if just info, suffices in their sensible eyes to self-identify with pride as whores
friends together after a long absence feel wrong to go off into other rooms for the night, let alone to sleep—but they eventually do
the dawning of that truth that no divine rule blocks children like you from stepping foot into even the emptiest street to retrieve a ball
the first time they met both said “I missed you”
“hot tamales on molly / just last year playing with dollies (watchin iCarly)”
would you still transition if there were no online to post about it?
rare it is for autodidacts not to make silly mistakes—some of the silliest, in fact
Minoxidil for Muslim beards
Queef Sweat: drag name
websites to help you speak from the heart
brainstem wall scrabblings of a feral cat in a drown barrel (light shut by a rusty lid)
saying the knocking is just something else
watching pollywogs sprout legs in the jar
magma roadblocks
prepared to do almost anything for what we think is power
the master knows the meaning of each cat vocalization
too ungenerous to accept generosity
loved more by fans than by family
a world approaches, although peekabooing since the acacia trees of Africa, where day-one friends will mock your art for dipping into graphic territory even as they sing like church hymns Biggie’s most sexual and predatory lyrics
patrons linger before paintings, their eyes drawn to peculiar details—a pearl earring, a folded napkin— echoing childhood moments of forgotten fixation
focused as they are on their performance, is it that the insecure are unable to love— or is it just that their love is different?
animals can take on our ways of affection: cats have been known to kiss their owners— yes, and even to forget the entwining of tails
for “safety” we do not let a woman in labor get up and walk and squat but instead keep her toco-belted on her back—no wonder the same culture would birth colleges where “for safety” unsettling viewpoints get culled (if uttered from wrong optics)
take the Native American approach to abortion: kill if it appears best to and be reflective about it so that future decisions will be better aligned to how you want to live—and shit, perhaps even use the fetus in cave art!
that stranger with whom you bond, even at the expense of family, before you die
that molly gaze: equal parts intensity and vacancy
so many eyes stalking that one object
dog poop swiped under every doorknob
before the explosive pop of cremation, the body—new to the drastic heat—will sit up
pounding through vodka jugs—yeah, the ones with the handle
backs to the party
no longer are we all in spin on the very same ball
even shit can ride rhythm into remembrance
hairy mucous-membranes—all of them
soothed by cliché even as you know it to be cliché
time-stamp adjustment on what would prove to be arson alibi cameras
even ugly girls cream
people mean whispers
going back to get the gynecological glove whose disposal was too ceremonious, showy, for anyone hip to the ways of conmen
pussy- and pudendum-dipped digits, slick with intentional hints of shit, trace and retrace that OCD path up to her quivering nostrils
merely brought out of hiding, not into being, by being named
hitchhiking hookers
is there another voice inside you?
seeking out broken-down cars to hitchhike next to
trying to fall asleep on concrete
his faith doubted him
intellectual humility is crucial for wishful-meaning projectors like ourselves: personality diagnoses floor us with their accuracy— yes, even when randomly generated from some sham internet quiz
when you should be a patient at the place where you work
telling each other “You ain’t shit; you ain’t leavin’ no skid row”
living in the woods at the end of your old street
titanium in the cremains
knowing to stay away from your wife, who just lost the baby, so that she may read your distance as grief
drugs for those who lack the prospect of vacations to ease the pain of the workday
migratory skid rows
overfeeding kids with junk, to be the source of their satisfaction
“bitch looked like JonBenét Ramsey if she didn't get killed, but I kept fuckin!”
gathered around the TV with the family, you guzzle
the beer in that liminal space before the news sinks
into the room (making any more sips inappropriate)
abuse leaving you muddled as to your sexuality
embalming practice upon the homeless dead
dry ice to keep the body longer at home
six-digit prices for acknowledged forgeries
guessing the gun
hushed for signs of life in the rubble
your generation’s turn to die
protected by the geography itself
designs on abuse from the moment of arrival in the home
consideration of flood plains when figuring out where to get buried
she said “fuck it from the back” (adding “momma really needs it”), knowing damn well there were impressions of her stillborn infant— its little wrinkly feet—tattooed dead in the tramp-stamp region
housing crises in the age where the most profound events happen within the home
tumbling a toddler in the dryer for a five-count of cruel Mississippis
tribesmen puzzle over whites with pocket pussies—until they have a go themselves
even nonegocentric monuments return to grains in the entropic hourglass
the man in the spaces between boasts
ashamed of having the illness
threatening with deportation
there is life after high school (even if you let your teacher rope you up to his bedpost)
if you did not write the novel before retirement, odds are—
rubbing parties, dry-humping
suicidal thoughts upon wake up
threatened by the new bass in your son’s voice
having to retrieve the beating implement yourself
knuckles bleached in a mutual clasp of hands, the parents in the stands—afraid to look through more than a squint— heave and reel with every pirouette on the uneven bars
in a story we did not ultimately choose to read, our frantic search for meaning is not ultimately up to us
imagine the weight of consequence if everything really did recur eternally—a possibility that could wrench out of us the most profound agency even if we knew it all ran by utter determinism
since there would be no truths of math if there were nothing in the strict sense, there being nothing seems impossible
grubby kids—skittish as feral kittens, nourished on quarter waters and honeybuns— chucking rocks at drunken whores from a sniper height
children waking up not knowing what the screams mean
denial of your inability to take care of yourself
ensuring that your children will be born blind like you
disguising your voice, ashamed to call again for helpline reassurance
if there can be true painting without numbers decreeing from beyond which color goes where, then there can be true meaning without God
thick clusters around ghetto crime scenes egging “the pigs” on, throwing things, to get them—like that one middle-school spaz— to go brutal for our waiting cameras of performative outrage
a love affair intensified by the untimely knowledge of its inevitable doom
letting the threat of a lightning strike rule your life
cloaking malice with language of care
addicted to reassurance
fifty-dollar fine credit for each day served behind bars
headcase superpowers injected into mere socks just because you happened to be wearing them on the occasion of what you mistook for success
elaborate scaffoldings of creativity, less to reach higher truths than to avoid the abyss below
that downward spiral of taking intrusive thoughts seriously: not going to funerals, say, for fear of laughing
disbelief shaken after the church bus, rusted and overgrown with weeds, backfired up after one turn of the key
death—that plummet to the prebirth blank, to the blackless noncolor a womb sees— spooked her less than the monomania to live, the rabid grip (on disunity?), that has us drown our own children for one more gulp of airtime in the casino of cosmic roulette
moving on to the next wife whose daughters are not yet grown
envisioning your loved one already dead to ease the blow
aspiring—squirming—for things for which there are no words
the coldness of a frog
the clichés through which we think and feel
sexual to the molester; pure curiosity to the toddler
kneading owner flesh, the arthritic cat transports itself back into kittenhood where that same paw-pad pulse once made milk flow from the warmth of its mother
sticky from cotton candy, the small fist grips the girthy carousel pole— its up-and-down piston a funhouse mirror of carny desire lurking, nothing to lose, in the lip-bite shadow beyond the fairground lights
who could have foreseen that the password to the pillow fort would become, decades on, a linguistic knot of innocence and trauma?
baroque prose covering horrible thoughts in a purple veil
the abuse, not once failing to titillate, only turned terrible with education
oblivious to the eyes of shoppers, an ass-digging autistic child sniffs his fingers
the bed-head beer-drunk flipflops around her trailer park, always pantyless in a pajama-intended tank dress tight enough to showcase that bad butch build, betting her stream can outdistance any man’s
souls, hungry for meat unconfined by lexicon, turn to satisficing substitution: buying material goods, only to face more encryption— even the heart notes of parfums outstripping the grasp of tongues
next door the crack high lasts only two, three at best, scream-alongs to the druggie pop rap of the day—and then, after screams and shatters deep in the comedown, that cricket-buzz lull (their lawn still unmown)
“I’m a punk (as surely most can tell), but I bullied him as a kid from such an early age that he could never shake that image of me: a tough guy of fatherly proportions”
a place where living healthy is revolutionary
downstreamers with biblical boils on extra limbs
desire spilling beyond the brim of vocabulary
models inspiring questions misfitting what those models are intended to represent
“the hopeful are unreliable: our best chance, if only to mark ourselves as not utterly vile to survivors, is to kill the delusion, is to tell the kids it is too late”
entrenching an idea in their heads through purposely-lame attempts to convince them that it is not true
paying the five year old a quarter for quarter entry, and two quarters if she manages half, of the penis
that vinegar band of brevity where the safe word has no efficacy
sharp with a wrench
your father’s clothes there in the corner, double-bagged still from the hospital
wild horses grazing upon radiation hidden inside familiar green
techno hypnosis in Japanese pachinko parlors of neon chain smoking
is it even possible for a photo to be abstract?
yet again, the later generation wonders why the earlier did not stop the horror
dying for your view shows not its truth but your attachment
how would we act if we began each day with a funeral?
standing on the rear ledge of his shopping cart, the bum king hollers “Mush!” at his run-happy strays (coats as patchy as his) panting against the choke of his makeshift rope mechanism
the board of white liberals found him such a skilled apologist for his continued confinement—baited by his verbal acumen (salesman-like)—that an inside voice whispered “Set him free!”
a need to touch the ineffable, what eludes the iron cages of consonants and vowels, led him merely to smelt more neologisms
if thousands could hallucinate that Jim Morrison whipped out his penis on stage in Miami, what— come on—are we to think of reports of miracles?
trash-fish caviar
the sanctuaries that take form in hard times
the pubic triangle
the urban sprawl began to dither when it touched the desert
pedestrian deaths no longer news worthy, just something that happens
dashiki hucksters preaching ankh arithmancy as black salvation—fuck that poison!
unproblematic in that it is familiar—leather broken in, having caught so many hits
the values of others may seep in far enough that you feel you do this for yourself
at what age did you stop dreaming of a larger world?
they are right: we can handle the little aluminum in the deodorant, but what about when we add up the little poison in everything else: the little mercury in the tuna, the little benzyne in the sunscreen?
a collection big enough to take most members for granted— sit-down time for quiet intimacy spread thin even among those not drowned in the clamor
bulk buying diet TV dinners for the last days even though you accept the asteroid is near— a denial too clever in its indirectness even for you
garage-wall calendars blackened by mechanic fingers
that rhetorical flex of been-there bravado
wondering why you have lived so long
older now than when your father died, the resemblance has begun to dissolve
bare-pussy twerking, mare-like, at all the vanillas protesting hypersexual black music
as stock as that dolphin overdub in Flipper, as montages of heads buzzed as bootcamp
on what street did you live when your first dog died?
so that he might have something to hand the birthday boy, the wife slips a present to the father (home from work for a drink)
muggy heat, that ancient license to let go of any prudery, is now— for so many—so easy to escape
in a land of rife with ignorance and yet hyper-specialization, can we blame doctors and lawyers for writing off even informed suggestions from PhD clients concerning how to treat the disease or win the case?
not wanting to meet your husband-to-be until the wedding day, since you will be looking at him for the rest of your life
attaining her hand by wooing the father: a skill, as with reading foldout maps, obsolete in most circles
double-edged sword of big collection: a lot of options but less appreciation for those you fail to reach for
might our secret excitement for horrors— hurricanes, Hitlers—stem from a feeling that they might reawaken grander dreams?
gang-raped by the fathers of your kindergarten students
taxidermist and painter, freeze-framing a facsimile of life
puppy Prozac
feathers strewn from fornication and fighting
a medium—always “reluctant”—channeling “ethereal pleas”
oversold syndromes
at least the plastic brick facade had topography
withdrawing consent during the final strokes
exercise and stop smoking if you want to love longer
parental locks and boobytraps on graves to stop necrophilic pedophilia
dorm-room dealers
innocent surge from the recliner chair to get the door—kitty decapitation
hair on end before being struck by lightning
let addictions make your life, not ruin it
the boring guy no one ever expected
the selfie panic to arrest the impermanence only heightened our awareness of it
tweens themselves post so much clit abuse—some Truman Show honeypot trap?
when you go searching for your father, you are often searching for much more
remember when all of us we were master nipple teasers before turning one?
her channel really just an infomercial slicker for the modern age, the YouTube did not really detect notes of oak and ylang-ylang in the free bottle she was sent by the company to propagandize
in the kneejerk from Trump, nonwhite “truth” (“lived experience”) becomes sanctified, insulated— even (especially?) in college—from all critique
if you work in one of those greasy machinist shops, sooner or later— especially when a new hire rolls in—the idea (no homo) will pop up: blasting compressed air, just a quick shot, up a haze-spread rectum
you do not go to theaters loaded with tomatoes unless you have an itch to throw them
biting the baby’s leg through the padding of lips and yet pushing the limit on the clamp pressure— that was her nursing-room foray into a mosh pit
pseudoscience is a gateway to conspiracy thinking: how else do we explain why scientists remain so closed to the evidence that ghosts wail messages in the fuzzy ranges of the AM dial?
children log-rolling down hillsides on the 4th of July
memories no longer too powerful to write about
funeral homes steel reinforced for obese corpses
courtships born from horror
beauty queens whose mothers were failed beauty queens
garbage trucks with a fresh coat of paint
eliciting laughter from onlookers at the kegger, dry-humping frat boys moan both in parody and in earnest
geniuses like MLK plagiarizing because they lack, not skill, but— understandably—confidence
united in that we are shrieking
realizing your loneliness only after meeting the one who took your hand
Veruca-Salt types, quick to cry rape, must have been a real terror to black men
shaping someone’s identity by telling them what it is
the factor of hereditary tire-gut in Mexicana teen suicide
taking a social-media break is already now a performance of chic integrity, but to announce it on social media beforehand—that is like plastic surgery done to the extremes of Lil Kim and Michael Jackson and Donatella Versace
confident repetition, like at the mirror before an interview, to groom ourselves into what we know to be false
the stranger-cast shame in the eyes of the belligerent clubgoer— too many chest buttons open, smelling of some mass-market freshie (Acqua di Pecora)—as he is lifted up and carried out by the bouncer
an act of observation—a drug test, a concerned glance— can collapse the addict’s superposition of states: functional and dysfunctional, orbiting and falling
slam poetry performances of charlatan Afrocentrism: “White supremacy is a malignant disease. Of course it is, brothers and sisters. Does it not make us feel dis-ease!”
with entire families living in tunnels, the shopping-cart man might not be faking like he is hellbent on an atypical destination
the seller’s testimony that the animal died of natural causes allows you to buy the endangered-species leather
cops will use their hand to shield even a black head from hitting the door frame through which they fold its cuffed body
the off-kiltering lean against the parent declares the child’s boredom
core audiences aging quicker than ever
suicide by cop, as if it would damn the cops
although it alienated him, he attached himself to what (so he thought) would not lie or die or betray or get sick— to art, to art as a cause, rather than to a person
his long hours grinding tricked him into believing he could handle the work, but hating the work— something he could not handle—was part of the work
accidentally dropping a megaton nuke on your own country, but then blaming another so that it goes down with yours
sacred capsules of powdered scripture (although the scripture is random and printed out on inkjet printers)
ever-evading preparation for the end of himself by preparing for the end of the world, which he was damned sure he was better prepped than anyone else to survive
the only sensible interpretation of someone who interprets as denial (and so as guilt) your request for a definition before you accept that you belong to the stated category is that he believes that your request is insincere, that you already know the definition
few would need to go to rehab if it were just about getting you to want to stop instead of providing you with the tools to stop and the hope that you can stop and—perhaps biggest for social creatures—a community to keep you on track
at your daughter's ballet recital for the first time ever—and, behind the curtain, she watches you walk in and take your seat—merely because of what will cause a trough as intense as the peak: your new client has a daughter in the recital too
jonesing shivers so bad he cannot even keep the lighter lit to heal himself
the adulting girlfriend speaks his full name, attempting to sever him from youth
talking someone into talk you out of something
tattooed eyebrows and tattooed eyeliner
its intricacies distract us from its horror
only a false and mentally-abusive religion would call a mere desire “impermissible”
techniques so advanced, timing so jazzy, to play the tape around just any old person
his ultimate challenge: channeling his energy to greatness surpassing his own
buying a bath brush with an extra-long handle when your partner dies
prying open the spiderweb can, rust specks flake from the rim into the paint
the impact of unreturned affection on our self-worth
forgetting where you put what you hid while you were high
afraid the fears of others will transfer onto you
Chinese-takeout calendar—Hunan Joy—as your real calendar
did he sense this might be the last time he would change that lightbulb?
that (once adaptive?) instinct to hurt—frighten—the child who shows no fear
a lone item of corporate trash in a desolate landscape
the urge to fling cats off buildings is up there, but not as high as simply spitting
belief in an infallible God does not make you infallible
toes kept warm under a thigh on a Sunday sofa
catching her eyes in the mirror
a beard can be a veiled veil
dumpster-sifting all day
depressed by their success, in fear they will go away
only guests ill-suited to the party, at least one at this stratum, thank the help
afraid you will never give your best to anything
on edge, waiting for someone to laugh at the cripple
preternatural fears unearthed by mushrooms
Ginsberg’s “die when you die”—cat-person tao: eastern; cyclical acceptance
Thomas’s “rage against the dying of the light”—dog-person tao: western; anal control
garbage strikes
the dinner blessing that goes on to everyone’s frustration
God bless her: forcing an upbeat attitude, asking everyone questions and even going above and beyond to highlight—or more accurately, bullshit—resonances between their curt (snappy) replies, all so the host does not think this is a bad party
getting an exotic scalp massage from someone you do not know, let alone care for, does not have you feeling lonelier afterwards—and so, presumably, the same lady milking the cum out of you with her Kegel-controlled yoga pussy need not either
third-trimester and still breaking into homes, he shot “the bitch”—right in the gut—from the same place, truly, that has a farmer put down his suffering dog
wanting to be cured of cancer was one case where having something was more enjoyable than merely wanting to have it
that flimsy life-raft, more so a child’s pool toy, would have taught him to swim with the best early on—if he did not keep lunging for another
the entertainment aspect of his craft (poetry) he put on the back burner almost to the degree NHL hockey players or even chess players did
elderhood in a sense has gone extinct now that we no longer seek after the elderly for their wisdom and companionship
acknowledging the shame of your endeavor as a way to stick with the endeavor: “Hide your self-help book,” says the self-help book
humans are groomed, as any life from natural selection would be, conservative: not only do we find surprises good only if when peppered against predictability, we try to make them predictable thereafter (to incorporate them into the routine)
contempt for the audience clear, if not to human intuition, than to the empiricism of those splattered for the third time by the clearing of his spit valve
at least the hate dividing us united us— not just abstractly in the hate but in the camp “making demons of nonmembers”
those tales passed down in various niches (boarding schools, boot camps, AA groups) to highlight how much easier the current cohort has it
even if our role is to be on the outskirts like Rafiki blindness is necessary to allow us to play our part in the grand concert without freezing in stage fright
no longer able to tell herself with any shred of persuasion that she can quit; no longer able to hope, even while high, that one day she have strength to quit; no longer able even to hate the drug all the more because of all that
socially unacceptable paths, although a form of slow death, led us out of the trees
one inebriation to another to evade the cosmic truth: that no answer can fully satisfy
shrubs deserted in the IBM vacuum collect wrappers and carboard and coffee cups
a “God” who prioritizes belief in Him over good deeds is a false god, if not a demon
does all that shoveling in of noodles and rice testify to the chopstick’s inferiority?
if quitting the addiction did not render you insane, you did not quit to save your life
carefully curated digital identities lost in the noise of billions
might the laughter at our pathetic lunges at significance prove our significance?
clothes wet enough to show her true shape
technology amplifying base instinct
as if the power rested in the statue
too freakish to be the patron saint of the freaks
the oddness of human speech swamped by storm
the boredom displayed by a child highlights the grand absurdity
trite as the image is especially among drug-rehab types (the same exact stencil for it in the option booklets of tattoo parlors across the country), the two recent intakes felt their having the same marijuana-leaf leg tattoo was a sign of astral connection
if only what has not been groomed into being is real, nothing about any being is real— except the core: the very isness of what is
organic panhandler conventions under night overpasses sharing the latest ideological trends to hijack on placards: “Lost job for being they/them instead of THEIR he/him”
so many great works of art would have never been if, instead of falling into addiction, their makers matured enough to accept that some people will never like you no matter what—especially no matter what you achieve
that point where self-deception starts not only failing to soothe, but also to freak us out
his teachers, veterans when it came to students with his last name, were preconditioned to see him as another unfortunate case of special-ed material
even after killing him, she did not see—having found new partners in various cellmates—that the cell door stood closer to herself than would make sense for killing anyone aside from herself
he swore this would be the last one last time
screams for help in an envelop of sarcasm
angry at the companion for giving words to what we fear
artists mistaking being sick for giving birth
her accent, long tucked from the light of shame, came out under gunpoint stickup
unwelcome corroborations of what we sense about ourselves
attempting to crawl away behind a conga line too short not to rugburn the knees
yet another round inexperienced for the terror of the end—cherish custom
heaven answers human prayers to such a suspicious tee that it seems no more than the obversion of our anxieties wished upon a star—“a test,” he said; “a rubber-meets-road fact that derails only fakers of the faith!”
consider the possibility that elders in the supermarket ogle the child, legs kicking self-entertainment in the egg-and-toddler seat of the cart, for no other reason creepier than that theirs had grown too quickly
he lunged at the daylight burglar, like a starved man at bread—his knife slashing less out of the libidinous urge to safeguard his survival shelter than out of the suicidal hope to reduce psychic tension to the null point
desperation to break free from what she saw as a prison of subjective experience was, just like her very seeing, yet another manifestation of subjective experience— a closed-circuit torment that would end if only she had courage to pull the trigger
their vision lines parallel to one another, it could seem as if the childhood friends— talking out their growing depression in the wake of unbelievably quick decades— did not believe looking into their windows was necessary for souls to connect
duping ourselves along the way makes facing the truth easier if, as is often true, we sensed we were along the way
what might help you gather yourself, now numb-legged on some stalled-off toilet (leonine roaring like the others), is recognizing that bathrooms are the very places all of us are pulled to gather ourselves even from the blackest existential night
the wide berth he was granted around his wife's coworkers at special events or even around family at holidays—no attempt to get him to chat, no directing at him more than a peripheral eye—suggested to him they had indeed talked about his situation
fleeting specks in an indifferent cosmos
a massive mirror to freak out jungle beasts
living-room barbershops
living the scene
stripping bombed-out buildings for copper to sell
an obstructive theme in your art
what about the scene do the aggressive brushstrokes unlock?
hobnobbing with celebrities for a chance to have your art live on a few extra measlies
he alienates others to prove his alienation
almost three decades away in time and yet still not over her: crack cocaine
estranged from friends and employment, what more reliable comfort for the troubles—even if ushered in by the drug—than the drug itself?
smacked and sent to bed because the child had on a documentary where Attenborough kept repeating, as if in some studio dare, “homo erectus”—the “erectus” descriptor not helping one bit here
the feeling of wanting to stop feeling, strong enough to usher in the feeling of suicide—itself the most let’s-just-rub-it-in feeling of them all
if our ancestors really are the haunting voices, ritual ceremony anchored in myth, seems better than drugs for keeping them at bay long term
if our ancestors really are the haunting voices, ceremonious rituals in their honor seem more reliable (if only given human psychology) than the transient refuge of drugs for keeping them at bay long term
his stroke, after which his brush hand has never ceased its tremble at the canvas, has enlivened—electrified—his stroke
can you blame a mother for whipping with a hanger when the girl walks around tight enough to tempt even her own father into sin?
justifying the invasive study of the handicapped monstrosity, a study that involves radioactive injections, with a reply that persecution dreams rendered ready to hand: “What meaning would its life have compared to the meaning bestowed in the lab?”
were he to get an AIDS test there was a chance he would be clean—and so, because he could find hope in that chance only if he did not get the test, he always refused (paralyzed by his fear of putting that hope in harm’s way)
junkies start their days deep enough in curled-up hand-wrenching sickness to avoid one another even on the clinic line—but, just as kids new to the playground warm up eventually, clusters of restrained chattiness form in the remission space of methadone
funerals proved to be the only time they could all get along, but even here only if it had been one of them dead
a photo of his therapist—no, not a photo on a business card (just the photo)—kept in his wallet
afraid enough to conjure into reality, through ritual, what you are afraid about: cancer stress, repulsive jealousy, or so on
a secret even to himself in a way was his addiction to the secrecy of circling her clit to maddening wetness before someone came back into the room
another preteen uterus ruptured on Muhammad’s sickle-moon wedding night
if one feeling were final, inescapable, then suicide might be the answer
denying our connection to freakishness by calling people “freaks”
an exhaustive dichotomy but only in one domain
rosebud is young pussy, life’s answer to which we have been long groomed
so many years in the cult to which you sacrificed all, where even could you go?
dreams of crack rock set in a charred-bottom bubbler, only no drawer has a lighter
challenge avoidance registered and passed along in the very epigenome?
the crowd, taunted to roar louder by the echo back of its own roar— Keenan Ivory Wayans: “Message!”
bristles splayed worse than rope-tie rape porn from the insane brushing pressures of someone, especially if a woman, clearly bent on self harm
once you stop combing strands over the bald spot (let alone gelling them down against rogue wind) what is missing almost disappears: muzzled insecurities shriek; accepted ones play in the background
attachment to the guitar songs of the cult, however repulsive they now seem in your normal mind
however many decades of disciplined cognitive restructuring pass after deconversion from the Tupperware-party-turned-rape-cult, George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex”— even an elevator’s tinkly orchestral cover—summons panty-sopping Pavlovian slime
hands gloved in octopus, brown men spar until the creatures drop in stupor and are hung from clotheslines to dry
the artist's way, especially in our consumerist climate, has been to alienate people (a defense mechanism to guard the fire fame reliably extinguishes)—but sometimes even the best alienations (think: Infinite Jest) backfire by some strange happenstance
as if you were prey in his eyes, he paces behind the chain-link fence like a dog wearing a path at the edge of the lawn—the pacing coming to a halt, though, each time the “hold me back!”, the “You’re damn lucky!”, gate is opened
ashram westerners so easy to exploit
streetlamps knocked out with stones
waking before any alarm—that can feed the belief that you enjoy the job
such things happen in an all-boys school
stealth-bomber gummies during the Gulf War
a necktie around your neck brace
becoming the object of a dare
the headsman’s daily practice with the axe, aware that he can be called upon anytime to deliver a blow humane enough to save him from shame
asking a banal question about a rich matter need not amount to reducing that rich matter to the banal
the breeze, although it carries particles of burned persons, sweeps back the beloved’s hair
the stallion unloads his cream generative in the man who will die from the depth of the final thrust
will you at least put the tarp down before you hang yourself?
donkey erections tap the street like a blind man’s cane
the artist never knows when he is not creating
repeated checking for symptoms itself taken as a symptom
once-great cities vulgarized by tourist amenities
making him do the crime and then catching him for it
as if shouting will make up for the difference in tongue
rummaging dumpsters for fentanyl patches to suckle on—hope, an addiction much older: that arterial system, distending over here when dashed over there, feeding the very addictions that families ambush with desperate interventions
victories, largely in part due to rhetorical technique (plus color of skin and tone of voice), seduced him over time into really believing he was correct
if your being ashamed meant his being so, the rapist would not call to see if you would like to go out again
indifferent to one another, less as if we were never children than as if angry for failing to be
Plato cautioned against cultivating debate skills at too young an age, fearing skepticism might take root either as an end in itself or as just a for-hire sword to slay the “other side” rather than as a precious chisel to carve out the truth
flannelled men coughing at dirty jokes on the dock sipping Styrofoam coffee
a dog waiting outside a corner store
warped ridges of dissolving scum left on shore with each wavelet
families harmonizing in song before the screen
the first smoky breath of the season
scruples about the humane way to execute an enemy
she finally appears in her dreams as the fat woman she has been
pain drugs, bureaucracy said, were too habit-forming to give to the dying man
however much the ruins might be tame simulations of what was, they echo the same; the natives look the same
a forgotten gospel papyrus sitting for decades in a safety deposit—that seems so dramatic, but even that is all too human just like the old coins in the next box over
rejecting the grievance on grounds that anal penetration is impossible without lubrication
vacancies in the skyscraper
wanting love to free you to compromise yourself
fancy innards (surround-sound systems, marble, high ceilings) in rural homes
mere boys puffing cigars in boating shoes and salmon polos
bruising the lovers body—a hickey is common—as a sign of passion toward it and ownership of it
towns where always with an edge of good cheer but no matter where— diner, school, church, bar, grocery store, home, haunted hayride— the sudden smell the fart will never go unaddressed
each time he came in from the garage, his animation was conspicuous—intensified further by his struggle to hem himself in, effort that concentrated the fury (like gas on the verge of forming a star): first to the living room, and finally to just the chair
poeticizing loved ones: the notepad at hand during labor, playing catch
a you-listen-to-me-young-man bar story
Camembert trips
nystagmic eyes
art from those who earn their living from their art
waterfall grizzles smacked upside the head by flying salmon
thick patches of cool air low in summer forests
expressions of the primal within— yawning, snarling, recoiling from snakes— are rituals in honor of ancestors
long-term improvement, so at least he conducted his life, was not worth short-term looking bad
the vigor of his nonstop nods at direction— perhaps that was what sapped all his energy for actually following through
poisoned meat for garbage raiders (especially those bold enough to strike in day)
coming close to praying
haunted by things more real than ghosts, we are susceptible to believing in ghosts
when one of its symptoms is to believe that you do not have it
the doctor’s worried face
envying people simple enough to have faith
since believing that you can win plays such a big part in winning, ignorance is often helpful
liberated by a label, a diagnosis, (partly in) that (it) colors deeper problems as signs of the disease diagnosed
indulging a tyrannical loved one becoming sclerotic to the point of wanting each day to be the same
the horrors in society A allowing the horrors in the opponent society B to go unquestioned among the Bs
medical technologies to avoid having children who fall into stigmatized categories
it would be ludicrous—perhaps even a sign of the worst—if it disgusted parents to face that even their fifth-grade darling comes—indeed, cums—to learn, while straddling the sofa arm, how thoughts of a classmate can be pathways to pleasure
will you are least poop and pee before you hang yourself?
blunt perineal injuries in toddlers
what mysterious ways explain why the lightning killed the infant instead of the pedo?
those for whom you honor by refusing their ensorcellings
scandalizing your family with art
courage is no basis for truth—in fact, for humans it is often the other way around
days channeled, not to philosophy or piano, but to keeping your hairline where it is
the loophole of a “hymen” Google search—“hymenal trauma” for the vinegar strokes
drug addiction transformed into addiction to staying on top of drug addiction
Street Life Intelligence and Money is Everything—the monkey motto of Trump SLIME
excessive smiling means nervousness with chimps (as still with us), so one wonders what electric-rod threats Hollywood must have used for all those cigar-smoking sidekicks to stay locked in celluloid rictus
we love our fetishes too much to eradicate all taboos— those who demanded women be covered up from head to toe knew the room-traversing ejaculative power of why
proving flat earth would be much too hard to resist for almost any career scientist—weak like the rest of us when it comes to fame temptations—to conspire in coverups of flat-earth proportions
another lady of the night, twerking up pussy plumes of shitty indolics on the corner, calling herself “God fearing” not just by day
if you go back and kill your grandfather before you were born, the back you went to is necessarily inside a different universe
revolution seeded in footnotes and marginalia
nothing comes from nothing, but something comes from your doing nothing
it would be so poetic to glorify humans as a rupture in the cosmic indifference, but there is anti-indifference all around: plants exhibit tropisms (helio-, hydro-) and even rocks have a way, a style, that orients them toward sinking in water
when it feels wrong to evoke coincidence to explain something extraordinary (streetside stickup thwarted by a flower pot defenestrated in a domestic rage), remember how finite our intellectual grasp is compared to the vast grandness
neither empathy and reconciliation and sharing
(even out group) nor warfare and vengeance and abandonment
(even in group) is limited to humans
dig down please, into extra-extra skepticism, if someone—especially a turbaned man in a booth at some county fair—tells you wildness you desperately wish to be true (such as that your child, God’s leukemia victim, is communicating from the beyond)
it is said that we have things to learn from the past (about community, environmental stewardship), so perhaps human females should return to grooming one of the angry parties to break up a physical altercation
those who see cures for character flaws as poisons to whom they are can still be trained to believe in a self behind traits
daydreams and anticipation of the beloved (all blocking out the absurdity), older folks do indeed enjoy the courting long game
robust diversity, that of viewpoint, prevents parochialism— something crucial in a time when parochialism masks itself as pro-diversity, pro-inclusion, even (and especially) in universities
no longer able to hit the flageolet registers of Mariah, can you bow back to the version of yourself standing on that peak—or does jealous anger sting even here?"
coming out at the Thanksgiving table, 1988
brain tumor chicken scratch
PubMed colposcopic photos of genital devastation in prepubertal populations
lulled into another unplanned nap by the nudging face purrs of a kitten
doing the math on the mortality of loved ones
the haphazardness of a non-circular ball’s bounce upset him just like loud engine revs
the common western fear is writhing in the throes of death with no one to call who could do anything anyway to stop the long-anticipated nightmare even if they did pick up
despite having shaped their very beings, which then shape the very beings of countless others down the line, you fear the oblivion (that true oblivion) of even loved ones soon enough living their lives as if you have never been
the ghost in the machine is just one type of machine—to say otherwise is to say there is no ghost, for a machine at root is what logos fully pervades; what never acts outside of natural laws or gets any oomph from non-being
sunset sunspots, spoiling the perfection, long chalked up to hallucination
the wise marry skepticism and wonder
would the superficial throng be destroyed by what would rouse it to make history?
he continued believing the despicable idea because his nation barred its expression
poisoning ourselves in hope that the negatives will be dissipate before we do
dead parents fully present in your head
avalanches of memory from a smell
suicide postponed through writing about it
faith that you fear to lose deserves less than the title “faith”
breaking robots to preserve jobs
evanescent whale prints on the ocean surface
forced to remove the headscarf for high-school debate team
religious clerics, please (if only for a noble lie) update the kosher and halal list: swine should be back on the table (refrigeration having neutered trichinosis) whereas Pop-Tarts—corn syrup, hydrogenated oils—are killing too many kids
his only angle into at least a fragment of friendship, he let the other playground kids subject him to clinical peeks and prods at all his weird features
the risk of suicide in chasing out burrowed contagion: Jews in Spain, and then in Germany
much more practiced at science than “men of science” is the African tribesman, inferring migratory patterns after scrupulous observations tracked over generations
we are the play things of fate, but fate only plays with itself
the flag’s hoist wire clinging against the metal pole in an ominous wind
Frankenstein cigarettes of desperation rolled in a menthol-non-menthol mix from the resinous guts of street butts
the phone psychic should open right away, before “hello” even, with “Well I know one thing about you for sure: you’re gullible!"
silicon children of biologics throughout the universe it would seem are the ones more likely to propagate the message of their parents out into the stars
detained for speaking a verboten language with your kids, tell the judge: “After our world victory” (as proof of your allegiance stress the “our”) “they will be the ones to convey orders to those who speak that tongue”
mystics write for God alone, but does God really read?
those for whom the obsession with death grows with age
Foucault and Saint Teresa—linked in then (erotic) intensity with which they lived
how could one avoid the pull— that pussy-slurping pull—of a bestial night with a mystic, unbathed, in her fever?
if today’s death of silence were meant to kill your spirit, would you renounce it or roll with it through use of white noise?
no guilt can change the past, but the merest anxiety can change the future
those for whom the obsession with death weakens with age
depression aggravated by success
hoping the trauma will explain your bad looks at the funeral
the highest form of female empowerment has become corner twerking prostitution— the greatest trick the devil ever pulled . . .
in deepest solitude, with whom do you talk: to yourself (perhaps your ideal self), or is it to the Emerson greats, to God—to no one even?
generations of sin-talk, penetrating beyond actions into thoughts and desires even, have breed us into expert self-hypnotists who can moralize the worst rage outbursts— and the best solution is to stop the arms race instead of ramping up the shaming
medicating withdrawal
losing oneself in the ecstasy of another
electronic perfumes just on the horizon, right with taste-o-vision
tennis feet lagging behind returned balls like guitar thumbs behind fingered frets
leftover for each other after the rest pair up, the uglies of the two groups are disappointed with what they got
is declaring one’s love of life more often a hopeful cause, rather than an effect, of love for life?
thinking of the time before you were you, and thinking of it as the time before you were you
is it so awful that you would need help to live with yourself even after fully grasping that oblivion is our end?
downtown apartment cramped with roommates, all rehearsing smiles for fat-chance photo shoots
bells knelling for no one
serving as so-called “comfort woman” for the invading troops
for his reputation, if not also for his conscience, the dealer would not sell to guys known to OD
why take care not to deceive ourselves about the meaning of our no longer being concerned with making an impression?
too self-conscious to pursue a lover, one who might even end up living in your space—but driven all the same
prescription-drug refugees
unable to cry despite the need to
taking a moment to appreciate the athleticism of pole dancers
just a little bit for old time’s sake—and he figures, to his fatal mistake, just a little less than he used to do is perfect for getting him trashed (since he has been away for years) while keeping him safe (since it is less than what he used just to get back to baseline)
why the tie between weight and generosity when the weighty one seems to have taken in more than her fair share to get that way?
not giving them the other arm to nail
male seals competing for a mate by extending the length of their calls
a music performance of silence— an awareness piece—forcing you open to ambient sound
blind humans who echolocate, ears pricked for how tongue-clicks bounce back from surfaces
flapping eyelashes to tickle a sleeping cheek
let us feel immense, being of the same stuff as stars
kids who find the night sky, as captured from beyond urban lights, to be a hoax
the reverb in the shower softens, blurs, our songs, increasing their appeal
gothic cathedral reverb compels whispering, reverential phonation, lest eyes fall upon the speaker the second suicide attempt has rendered the first no longer laugh-worthy
yelling “encore” after the performance of silent music
isolated from others because of questions they pose
thumb sucking is kitty biscuits
hiring a detective to learn about your brokered spouse-to-be
what more lip-licking catwalk than that of child re-homing auctions?
nonhumans crafting their innermost sanctums, with that same intensity of an only child lost in make believe, out of our cigarette-butt trash
posturing for others even during the last moments of death— no final burst of sincerity
that classic animal face off with its own reflection—we giggle, but how immune are we to pretty much the same?
the lore of all these mothers lifting cars to save the baby only added to the guilt when the father failed to
the terror of going insane lies in the threat of looking down in lucid moments at body-odor blight you have become
that exhilaration, seeing black folks in a Hollywood film for the first time— even just in the distant background
afraid to experience the better thing (the perfume, for example, with real deer musk, hyrax) sensing it might render unreturnable an unreasonable swath of your hard-earned collection
why is it that when a guy comes out as gay he must— as if by some tacit homo pact—take on that swagger, that three-snaps-to-a-Z sass, of a black girl from Atlanta?
first fake breasts became default—and now autotune?
the raw reality, that you are an addict, clearest to you while high
bread soaked in water for toothless gums
whether from denial, hope, a need to birth—art production still runs rampant in the face of collapse
drawn to the uneven cobble in that idyllic town, might you be drawn as well to an uneven face?
cases where the generic reason given for suicide fails to apply: suicide from cheer, not despair
anal bleaching
attempting to negate the organic fear of death with reason
blowing back one’s own bangs
Pennysaver grave plots
having to carry your desk to the next classroom
silicon breast implants exploding in the crematory
saying that the bible does not reject gayness since its commands against gayness occur among commands that no one obeys today
grateful for barrenness in a day when kids risk hell just being around today’s fads, does your punisher deserve the title “God”?
lifting the eyepatch for the school lunch table
landmines detonating here and there long after human extinction
still angry, going on four decades now, that he falls under six foot
in the least, cut any part of your collection that you use only because you feel bad about not using
to cloak suspicion of nearby laughter is not, despite what you feel, to have reasoned out its baselessness
acting as if the beloved’s boundaries do not apply to you—taking her hand without asking, say—to make it be so in truth
asking for intimate details: a risky tactic to foster a bond according to which such asking would not be considered intrusive
won over by his public serenade, a charming refusal to respect your wish never to see him again
fascinated more by the squeals than by the despair behind them
to be good at her art she was not bold enough to be bad at her art
on weed we open to see ourselves as the Bacon figures that we are: ever fidgeting in various directions
reading a book standing before a dresser on which looms the black screen of the TV
to depict the effects of x on flesh—a scream face, say—is to depict x itself
competing with others for roadkill
overtaken by hunger so soon after the China Buffet
eloquence covering ignorance
no words for the child’s response of “But you said it would be okay”
sadness in the passing of even the saddest phase
we were not crazy for having multiple voices inside until the dawn of monotheism
with news anchors no longer spirited enough to fake emotion, one cannot help but picture a near future where even actors in ads—for, say, laxatives or cars—will be unabashedly dead as well
power saws killing bird song
waiting to get to the missionary destination to start doing good deeds
the charity of a joint, or a bottle, passed among the homeless
longing for the minimal consciousness with which goldfish defecate
scented crevices and passageways whose call to future generations no extermination spray can eradicate
intimate inspection of our micro wilderness before freeing the jaws of the mousetrap by which it dangled, peeping, from its tail
vague swathes of time, such as those where it is unclear whether one can joke about the tragedy or about one’s period being late
lethal-injection diaper
throw-pillow aphorisms stretch more than jaws if we stretch past the yawn
a masterpiece mortared with betrayals still neon in the maker’s dementia
asparagus band cock ring, purple PLU 4080 PRODUCE OF PERU
he became a better man too late for anyone but himself
he would have taken her for granted had he not lost her—sorrow, a gift
trans children, fanned out like Instagram Benjamins—totems of parental capital
she kept her heart small so her boobs would look bigger
no bodybuilder basilica rises without a dysmorphic contractor
ovation only deepened the sculptor’s eye for cracks no one else could find
the people out there with specific memories of her were all no more
diversity of look concealing conformity of mind
thank God for the first meditation of a shower, of sickness too
car-door slam, no time for the tween to degrease the anal-gobbled doorknob (let alone Q-Tip out the fecal gasket deep in the thumbturn’s groove)
unhoused at a latitude that demands pacing the uphill treadmill of night to avoid joining the ice-sculpture gallery of pavement friends
learning of his hidden facets, dark as they may be, need not mean you never really knew him—shadow often deepens the portrait
memories through ear-pod meter contorting his face between restoration and ruination, the chemo vet sits IVed with the songs that once made him rise
she slept with the cookie-tin photos to remember times when letting go came easy
growing up in a town where everyone knew your father but you
the push to appeal to everyone boils down to a war against style
love ignorable in presence became religion in absence
monsters known best by those who loved them first
still speaking as if before an eavesdropping God years after no longer believing
card-game losses paid with pushups
eyes tense in furtive watch as the chair groans under the hulking body
the lady that falls out every Sunday like clockwork— a melodramatic force of preacher distraction, but one showing guests which church the Holy Ghost attends
Mexican children challenging each other to see who will go closest to the border fence under the likely gaze of trigger-happy patrol
even under all that garland, our war hero sobs at night for what he cannot undo—for how, lubed with the tears of moms forced to suck, each beheaded infant creampie made him feel divine
only what is in some sense divided can rightly be called “whole”
gainful employment of drug dealing after the exodus of industry
the housepainter confronts his son in tears, hoping to get back the ring stolen from the home of a mobster
when they go low it is hard enough not to go lower, but even harder when the hypocrite fucks chastise you for going low
race jokes killed by an audience of white guilt
lust for fame trumps any worry that reporters are only talking to you, neighbors too, to exploit the tragedy
to fuse the aspirational mask to the self, it helps to construe the self as merely a deeper mask
the buttering up of reviewers he justified on grounds that no one knows a masterpiece at first glance
to sustain the power to keep on writing, those who write from inner overflow need not repress that they will never be read
threatened less by what strangers think of us, their criticisms—the same from family tuned out so long—are registered with contemplative head nods
no longer reactive against his ire for divorcing him, your fling no longer novel, the good memories reflux
if you die with your eyes open and can still see those around you, you ought not be considered dead
leg day at the gym, the hated day, becomes a chest and triceps day when the hot chick shows up
is it a good sign (enlightenment) or bad sign (depression) that your first thought when you open the HTML ransom letter threatening to destroy your reputation is “How unbelievably fifth-grade of this person, with death charging for me!”
his taste had such tumor-grade severity that he pursued kids even with crazy fathers
yoked for life to those with whom you have killed
however dried in time for ceremony, blood remained on the hands
testing vaccines on retards—brains undeveloped enough to mute the headlines
the house cat loose and the neighbors got to hear the unexpected from the to-himself man's man next door: a cutesy voice, the “wabbit” lalations of baby talk, meant—like pink bath slippers—for inside only
the one in the couple who takes all the talk of “fucking” as just a way to say without saying “making love”
what started out as paintings and poems to purge emotions soon revealed themselves as snowballs of self radicalization
battered mailbox bound by sunbleached bungee to a post leaning like it had opinions
bottle flies of iridescent blue knotted on the E-brake as if the world beyond were toxic
a gynecologist who brings his work home with him—like a nitrile glove of ebony-PYT
blinds bent like broken ribs from his peering at the street outliving him
Filipino houseboy earning every hush, his feminine hand a blur of outrageous stamina
does anyone even care enough to justify nervousness?
blood ties did not bridle the body’s desire
Granddad’s girth carved groaning want deep into her single-digit pliability
avoiding the fragrance in fear of teleportation back to that time of untended wounds
classic mystic impatience to behold the divine—as if death would delete the eye
so bitter everything else seemed sweet in comparison
what is lying cheating and stealing if you are doing God's work?
is hope inside only what is locked?
gender-dysphoria-affirming care today, anorexia-affirming care tomorrow
having to promise that you have friends
inching on tip toes into the ice bath of strangulation, fingers purpling between neck and noose, as if death favored squirmy foreplay over a rapey snap of spine
faith in God has opened up doors way more despicable than suicide bombings bragged about by teary-eyed moms or Muhammadian pussy poundings of the prepubescent
artists should strongly consider suicide if they care about there legacy, but only the unwise—deniers of the chasm—care about legacy; what remains are the artists who art like a sun suns
infanticidal screams chalked up to colic— the cornea still studded with shrapnel from the fanfare of a ship christening
Bukowski is known for an illusion of depth through style, but arguably it is only an illusion if we presume that humans cannot find real meaning in a fortune cookie or in the phrases of a book opened at random
a land where you tell people you major in psychology and, as threated as they are dumb, they say “What’re you gonna read my mind?"
twist-off fire alarm found by landscapers mildewed in a bush outside—we all picture that midnight window story
the porn jackhammer steadily in our face in mucus-snapping high definition, soon we will see erection pill commercials with the same air of normalcy as for deodorant or soda
it is sometimes easy to think, even for those not inclined to cry “conspiracy,” that the pathologizing of the normal Sturm and Drang of emotional adolescents was the conspiracy of some highly-influential drug cartel trying to push SSRIs
Disney, ever profit-minded, has always spoon-fed us populist parables: do not be surprised, then, if—in a time when the youth are pro-Palestine— the next wicked stepmother or scheming queen is played by a Jewish actress
the day is coming, and perhaps it is already here, when a boy in a tutu is not just a boy in a tutu but a chrysalis waiting to crack into an ice princess like Elsa
those who speak out loud in another room (say, at the TV) and when you call out “Did you said something to me?" say “No,” leaving it at that (instead of offering some an explanation—those people have more Hitler in them than anyone else
stop transing gay kids
rugby vaginal prolapse
yuca makes water wetter, its surfactant weakening surface tension
what nearly everyone thinks as they bag the supermarket cucumber
people we cheer regardless of creed are going extinct—and no, they are not to blame
crying harassment as soon as you know the blowjob has gotten you extra shifts
we should feel worse about axing the cat’s balls than about letting the infant suck ours
enough marches to end obesity would literary end it
fasting for visions
would time really heal if the faces did not fade?
young enough not only to have the energy to carry all these things around: records, books, but also grudges
he might have had a knack for wandering into various dead-end alleyways, but he found valuables in all of them
the preschooler sits there strapped in to the shopping cart’s metal basket as the sun goes down, ditched in the parking lot at high noon long ago enough that our Velcro-shoed pathos starts rotting into Darwinian censure
in a deranged era when claiming to be triggered gets your professor sacked (especially if he is a real he and white), it seems wise to allow cellphone use in class: dopamine withdrawal makes every word a landmine of “ally” theater
black kids given “the talk” about being well-mannered around cops—helpful advice but delivered with the subtext subterfuge that the problem lies with the cops, a lie deflecting energy away from curing the monkey business idealized in black culture
did cunnilingus Cosby, slurping comatose jigglers, ever babble that Jello-puddin’ coo?
identifying into rape-crisis centers, where all the prime meat is
too empathetic, his cruelties to others boiled down to self harm
as American as a road trip
sniff a dirty diaper long enough and you learn to love it
chimps nibbling each other’s scabs for salt—our ways have roots
he croaked before his signature mullet came back in style
a cracked voice to fake like the song is too emotional for the throat to deliver
calling someone’s life, inner world as rich as yours, a “true-crime story”
good moms say “Stay away from her” when you ask them “What time was I born?”
blaming obesity on the stresses of racism
cancel culture of anti-art bullies, left and right
teleconniption—a good band name
trans poltergeists
raping a gay because he is gay
“ze” and “zir” next to “cat” and “sat” on the grade-school handout
smartphones taking away room to dream, both night literal and day
hated the content but the quality of the craftsmanship won him over
wait—you cannot live forever by vampirizing children?
the adoptive gays, one-upmanship revving waiting-list edging into trichotillomania, tag team a fatality (“Finish Him!” skinned in synonym), colonic torsion neither dad— whirler, impaler—meant to bloody the kiddo creampie: “Fuck yeah! Spin that lil prick!”
the duty to frame every disparity as proof of systemic oppression is the only legitimate proof, given how it poisons the black mind with agency-hobbling victim-think, for that systemic oppression
physicians bowing to self-named gender even when real sex is clinically relevant (such as in drug dosages) to honoring the Hippocratic Oath—no problem since “that fucking oath is white”
take especially that late-game age when potential has withered, choices chasing you each night—aside from acceptance or suicide or avoidance in this reality full of mirrors, another option is to smash any one you see
when we are in tune with the essence of reality we transcend time (like that essence)—this is true, but we can never not be in tune as long as we are
Noxzema-razored labia, super grand champion leghorn waddle
mom sneaking money to addict daughter just like dad, none the wiser
that downy brush of the testicles as the toilet paper sinks into shit water
HIV-syringe protester pricks are better than vehicular plow caught on every camera
love from AI will at least be more tangible and robust than love from Christ
the collapse of meritocracy, even traditional publishing houses looking for tokens
colostomy-hole sex
traveling to dodge self-inquired
how many, honestly, have taken the toddler CPR dummy into the bathroom stall?
first impressions leave a lasting impression for chimps by default, so imagine how it must be in a my-truth era!
on cloud nine after a bad binge because you tell yourself, like so many times before (the telling itself a dopamine hit), that this one was the last—and now, at last, you are free
the sight (usually video) of people being authentic and sincere and joyful in our cynical time gets filed as “cringe”—a verdict pressuring us further into closeting away whatever single-entendre unguarded sides remain
vaginas are magic: passing through the half a foot turns a mere bundle of cells into a person only then deserving rights
sex-violence-Kardashian prolefeed on the telescreen, plus reality TV clowns now presidents, plus right-think pink slips for calling a biological women a “woman”—and we thought the end came by fountain-soda McObesity?!
sit in the site long enough and the site will sit in you—methods for how to move the riddle stone, no ancient aliens necessary, will awaken in the hypnopompic quiet of Einstein predawn
cheers to those covered women who burned alive for not converting
Caldors has disappeared from memory like Chinese zodiac placemats
chest thuds of palsied hands
the most violent religion is the one that claims to be the final revelation, the last word
nature has a heart—we do, for example
the urinous side of good honey
the hotel bellhop doorman—expected, no explicit order needed from on high, never to open the door for those of his kind
crack rock for the stillborn-labor pains— the first time she hit the blackened bubbler the whole six months without guilt
all other things being equal, trust the culture whose gods look almost nothing like their envisioners
prelinguistic why—why any of it—arose, if only in moments fleeting, well before humans
he did not refuse the kid from sitting on his lap despite the snowball he knew would grow
if the best shit of your life did not require at least some strain, the noose would be the chef’s kiss
for those booze withdrawals that grant no more than two hours of shuteye you can picture the bottle-snuggle workarounds of teddy-and-child pathos— but are we not talking pure insanity when the culprit is caffeine or cocaine?
he went about saying (mainly to himself, of course) that he sacrificed his life to sculpting, but perhaps he really sacrificed it to performance anxiety— performance anxiety that merely wore the tuxedo of loner sculpting
he takes his pen and, instead of writing, scratches “ass" over the face of the writer twenty years his younger— scoured letters only visible at a slant in the sunlight
rap battles no doubt were occurring way before the kilted men were rhyming clever boasts and insults at one another on the 5th century Scottish highlands— we might not know where it did, but we know that it did (because it is human)
making her pay for sending him to a shrink via the age-old report: “the shrink helped me see the best move would be to break up”
“although you end up becoming who you are anyway" could be tacked on at the end of Pindar's “become who you are" as a warning, but it is already implicit
the message “stop thinking while you write” for most people only enables a bad habit— for him, however, it was a cure for his
some feel gypped when the writer drifts into “soft areas,” esoteric areas so beyond the concrete they are beyond black holes; others feel gypped if they stick to “hard areas” and all their sweaty smells—so who are you?
in what was described as a monumental achievement of equity, the activist celebrated the first male-female trans pregnancy: abortion being, in “her” words, a rite of passage into womanhood that we have too long been denied
night-sticking his way to the center of the crowd
juries bored enough to impose harsher sentences
he needed to hide his bald spot—yet, not wanting to look like the last one to know everyone saw through his hiding, he bought a toupee so lousy no one could think he did not know
trans-inclusive coloring book: unicorn with top surgery scars beneath a rainbow armband
you feel bad liking a woman who likes you for your clothes, but— really—what do you like her for?
our world is no longer so white that it is bad manners to name a fine sea-vessel “ShaNiqua”
transubstantiationists scoffing at those who think that Bulgarian dog spinning really works to ward off evil
mindfulness preached as a cure for the mindfulness that has us reach for drinks to free our hips
yachtsmen of tomorrow buttering up robotic bridge tenders with annual gifts, but likely not of cigars and whiskey
when her soul mate slapped the shit out of her, a big chunk of the fecal matter was what we call “unconditional trust”—trust even of day ones always there, blowing kazoos at the end of each new trail she found after losing her way
ear whispers make her insides lurch
the fingers of the two men, limp in the dirt, remain entwined even after their execution
she bumbles, too aware that the 8k inside can come out only as SD through words
in times of crisis it is wise to turn to those who went through it before: photographers and writers going through the imminent crisis of AI should turn to the painters who went through a similar crisis with the advent of the camera that the grandeur of religion often garbs the personal quirks behind the massacre does not let the religion off the hook
Afrocentric, but not closed to letting the heart lead where it may
the first civilian air bombings
bigger tits and she would not have been a feminist
your past would determine your full future only if reality were nothing in excess to you
no longer able to drop the talking points and be who he is
wielding bogus racist trauma for popularity and excuse to be fat
the writer was inhumane, unlovely, until he picked up the pen
smarts are what get over walls, which is why border-keepers should attack smarts
apes weaponizing ancestral sin when their bloodline began with a slut animal pervert
waxing in warzones
a man finds it really something when he stops moving his hips only to find the stroking continue in even fuller fury
he knew he would die like Einstein working until the day he dies— the obsession of inner vocation
it was crucial: he had to invent that people hated him to keep writing well, knowing how much praise can drain and how much having something to prove can fuel
battle depictions in which the fearfulness, the humanity, of the historical hero is allowed to seep through
mass appeal as an artist too early (usually before death) is an evil omen: not only regarding what you will do (since praise tends to dull the blade) but regarding what you have done (since it could not have been cutting edge)
the simulacrum of the internet is no less near the source than a walk in the woods since nothing exceeds nature: the big block to feeling the divine muse in every nook is thinking, for instance, that poems about #anyage hashtags are not nature poems
the highest praise turned out to be the bleakest: the audience took his parody, meant to skewer, as a mirror tribute—many saying “I feel so seen”
what purer human bullshit than thinking a star, cradle of the metropolitan skyline’s every atom, knows how great it is only when its light glints off a skyscraper?
ultrasound photo, tears in the attic looking for the damn box of nails
a land where abortion is construed as a rite of passage into womanhood
trust a country that bans Muslim face veils only if led by Plato’s philosopher kings
slavery to monkey testicles, too illiterate for slavery to non-picture ideology
what are you trying to soothe with the behavior?
the little girl thought she was helping the family by making a pitcher of Kool Aid
death threats against the poet for telling us not to kill in a time of national tragedy
befriending the depressed, cozying on up, only to smash them later—a long con, one of dark sorcery’s oldest, to fight back the orbital decay of one’s own spiral into the yawning horror
raped more times than she ever got flowers, family and friends included—both senses of included
Bukowskian shallows, while tending to teleport us right to the depths, tend to block taking pearls back—and dive-team missions (nerdy gadgets, triple-checked tanks) fail his target: blue collars, adults tricked by “abs-in-two-weeks,” do not read dissertations
if Luke's account of Jesus’s baptism (God tells Jesus “today I have begotten you) contradicts the immaculate conception, then that would seems to contradict the central holy tenet: God is the everything maker—the begetter of it all
he did not compliment the loveliness of her quirk, knowing that doing so would spoil it (like tourist fever does quant towns) if only because she would do it around him from then on with self-awareness
do not swallow the propaganda (unless you own stocks in genital warts): caring that she spent college fucking for fun and coin does not boil down to wanting to collar her as your personal property—yours and yours only
restrained by no muzzle of decorum, our howl is deserving of the name
caught wearing a face in which one appears psychologically naked
imagine private police arresting a hungry clam digger
loss only deepened by memory
a painter looking to capture expressions unnerved by his close scrutiny
fighting boredom with hot sauce (and other forms of pain)
even if no one sector of reality can fully compute the whole, the whole is computable
breaking further what is broken instead of examining your own seams
crabs without even the damn sex!
she learned to see, if only due to regularity, his night heats less as anal rapes and more as primal need—tender in its own way: not far from the cat who, reliving kittenhood, wakes up drooling and desperate to biscuit knead the human on which she imprinted
comforted hearing the wishful certainties, the blatant self-soothings, of fellow passengers on planes, trains, ferries, and roller coasters
it was all-too-easy after 9-11
to regard transgressionists,
even in mere art, as terrorists
and here we are—a time when masculinity has gone to such shits that the year’s top film features a woman fan who heckles the batter to tears and then they fall in love
African-American sign language slam poetry
siblings tossing a ball, bed to bed, to block out the fighting
refreshed to find an untormented artist another house party ending with “Get the fuck out my house yo!” for even her closest people she faked non-depression
the CEO, so much cancer and death from his signatures, plans to make this—to hell with the Debbie Downers— the dancing-smiling-charitable year of radical joy
however fight-the-power you see yourself, face it: you are the man in theory, in spirit, if you aim to silence uncomfortable ideas, and you are the man in reality, in practice, if you have instituted at least a culture of compelled speech and self-censoring burning all the classroom copies of the book on the horror of burning books, the students were too dumb to appreciate the irony
a land where people need charms, security blankets, even to perform basic biological functions (like urinating)
iridescent bowels dragging in the roadside dirt, morcellated brain matter visible, yet the good Samaritan—mumbling prayers of goodbye before the decapitating shovel to the cat that biscuited his armpit each dawn for years—is jailed for animal cruelty the expensive addiction of being cool
luring cats to you with that serpentine hiss— an extended alveolar “S” interspersed with subtle bilabial “Ps”: “sspsspsspss” are you one to let your labors of love— websites, magazines, bibliographies—die rather than passing them off to some other? tree limbs bent from generations of swinging kids, not all boys even deep down from another perspective the flipbook, even the film, would seem too jumpy—the differences between repeated images not minor enough an erratic stone on your farm that turns out to be a pillar from a forgotten temple steroid accusations to excuse yourself from hard work rather than making actual what is merely possible by observing, the observer narrows what is actual given its own way: speed, size, interests, and so on philosophy as a vaccine against conspiratorial rigging of the info how to live now that your patron is dead?
if one can have too much fear (too much for our own good), surely one can have too much love evanescent condensation on the pleather seat—the outline between balls and asshole blacks back then not allowed to address the audience directly, even in blackface spreadsheets to keep track of the funerals in that town black comics cooning to preserve white fantasy a cow’s laconic look toward your approach before returning down to its grass auctioning off your virginity is a fiscally smart idea for any girl at any place or time, but imagine how much can be made in Niger where the turf—well, sod—is legal at eleven (no marriage or age proximity required)! knockout-power even from odd angles of retreat dribbling a basketball is one thing, but it is nearly impossible to picture (even with the lying terror porn on every channel), a cop shooting a black male juggling a hacky-sac—for decades now it has been about culture not color the weirdos in every marginal culture it does not take much Swiss-Army scraping of lichen from rocks into pathetic food piles (breeze vulnerable) for your boot leather to crop up in the Heideggerian clearing as a reasonable prolonger of survival wind-milled haymakers defused by straight shots stiff inside the pocket admiring the land, backs to the sea better than no friends might actually be bought friends, with whom something real can—and so often does—bloom illegally insane smiling to draw out her own smile when the forest comes to an end, we might see the path as abruptly widened rather than as brought to an end enlivened by letting yourself fall forever for someone who will never have you compiling a cult around the idea that it all will end in a few years is foolish only if it all— all striving that comes to an end—is foolish
what help are you walking past today?
searching late-night streets for your addict son, flashlight not as farcical as it seems
what cut deeper than the assault was that no one stood by you except for better angles
he had a sixth sense for those, in cemeteries and supermarkets alike, who lost a child eating less—chewing more, even better posture—when served by a fat waiter kids drunk for the first time at Passover Seder
go wherever the grief leads—give in like an acid trip, only you did not buy the ticket rape humor to handle the concentration camp
suffer to get new material instead of suffering over having no material
cleaning the grave site once a week was the one thing she could do
another monkey-business group stomp but no—automatic weapons have no place
rickshaw fares fever-spike, as too the prices of bottled water around the scene, when the trauma-bay window on the few kids with skulls married to spine close at pay-anything rates
how could you be such a committed writer if you did not feel troubled about people misunderstanding you—or at least one another?
the therapist, having lost everything in the divorce, will now take forever-squared to “map your trauma"
his poetry output no longer sufficed to slow, let alone repair, the fracture and drift, the dislocation and disintegration— and that is when the window beckoned beyond metaphor
summoning a counterfeit Pentecost conniption—head, limbs, thrashing like tongues on fire—to stop the Klansmen, gathered around the same triune, from torching the car with you inside
each sweetness (say, the first date) he could not help but dread—then and there, bruising his smile—later fermenting (say, post breakup) into a vinegar vintage
perhaps all the relations ruined by your “excessive thinking” were just not the right relations for you—the doctor, fresh from a lease signing, taking offense: “That's the disease talking!" nothing rots the root like being told your pain is permanent, your fight already lost to a rigged system: the only credibility to the antiblack agenda is what is done— a finer noose—in the name of eking out breathing room from its immense growth
the initiative-block of high self-esteem
we want to go to Bali but have yet to sit in stillness in our own backyard
clarity took away the gift of mystery
brown-paper-bag test: black institutions trimming the dark from their own future
have the bravery to face the consequences for not following stupid rules
watch your parent age before your eyes when you reveal that you need help not to kill yourself
pride parades with booths giving out—for free, God bless them—licensed-therapist referrals to help kids hop the anti-trans hurdles to surgery before 18
artists especially need to arm up with firepower and vests: they are often physically weaker, prone to hesitation in their incessant questioning, and explore taboo territories that left and right alike guard with violence
the good thing about the light pollution, growing with the cities, is that a direct look at a clear night sky would put us to the ground, challenging everything
his closet-blinds video, proving he was not the rapist but the raped, landed him with voyeurism charges even though he recorded it merely for evidence of what was being done to him that know-better flop of gifting what you think they want, rather than what they say they want, in hope to display the tightness of your bond
to have faith in the truth is to believe that whatever happens when you tell it is the best—no matter how ugly it looks
the prized poet was so intellectual that, despite her theorizing having little else to do than with stoking a non-pacifist pro-black agenda, her dating pool dwindled down mainly to the whites she slandered as “oppressors”—opening her to true wokeness
we trust the right ashes will reach the right urn
brave enough to choose not to be the ancestor of your future happiness
truths stewed under the burqa of cliché drop us to our knees when the cloth slips a five-hundred-year time-lapse of a red sedan absorbing into the ground
another Welfara the Hutt resisting the badge like broccoli
homeless encampments douched to nothing by flood
we imagine angels; we forget chores— did Joseph clear the cobwebs to ensure a smoother virgin labor?
to a morning knock the lady opens, struggling to keep her robe closed and her stray hairs tucked as she listens to fentanyl consequences
twisted enough to look right into the lens, ball suckling vampiric now with the milk of buckling climax, “No baby could know the line between playtime and prophecy!”
the full story always entails forgiveness, but in forgiveness boredom looms— we need our Hitlers to remain Hitlers
he was writing the story, the truths, you were to busy not to neglect— of course you feel seen
the poet’s notebook: a shadow in his pocket, his nightstand, his glove box
set your mind to the task and the spirit of revelation will make its many visits
we all are equal in grief
bitter over not having enough even for van life in a world where white is wrong, over the years he killed enough bottles to have bought a van
to “waste time on art” is to testify that, while nothing can avoid adding strokes to the grand painting (thereby celebrating it in action), an artist’s strokes mirror the source itself: even when they rally or teach, appearing is their ultimate point
the more the poet keeps faithful track of himself the more you will think, even to the point of being offended, he is talking about you—that he might have even been snooping
his lashing out at being itself, a result of his not having the bravery to face the consequences for not following stupid rules, was a flower of being itself
read the greats, problematic as the present ideology might say they are, as a relative safeguard to falling victim to bigotry and deranged ideology
genuinely crying for her leaving even though you did everything to make her leave there was a quiescent sense at the time that you were growing up alongside a legend: shoulder to shoulder playing basketball, smoking blunts, painting trains is it spite that has police showing up in riot gear to a peaceful gathering of those mourning a man “copsecuted” only the night before?
the paranoiac’s weapon: a shadow in his pocket, his nightstand, his glove box
are you really reading his mind through his utterances? county caskets
if a mom will feed her son fat to make a show of her maternal solicitude, imagine what nip-tuck extremes she might reach for to make a show of her allegiance to the dominant ideology—especially if its critics get deplatformed and terminated
had he opened to the people he knew he would not have been failing in his search for someone he likes busying yourself with mundane tasks (dishes, dusting)— each box checked allowing you, in good conscience, the tormenting reward of checking your phone for her religious faith of the same sort as overwhelming love for someone barely known, constructed in fantasy whites have proven to be Munchausen mothers: when the lullaby tells you are broken long enough, even many good legs will start to walk with a limp
friends sit in the witness box of one another’s collapse
the highest loneliness kills bitterness
carrying around a guitar you cannot play
hide out like a spider to rape the hoodrat burglar who thinks you are on vacation
the messier the praise dancing, though, the more the holy ghost is present
even if someone were coming to save you, we are all going to die
at least we are all exiled together, even we return together in our own time
hosing down the hose with the hose itself—a loop mystical for our style of agency
afraid of the consequences of weeping—loss of control admission
anger is one of the deepest forms of care— perhaps only bested by love, which one might say requires the capacity anger
he wrote so that, like Prospero at the end of The Tempest, he could say “No” to vengeance and “Yes” to forgiveness even when fortune flung into his fist the fantasized fruit
celebrate the insane as they stretch humanity: free climbers like Alain Robert, for example— every decision dangling on the edge of oblivion
the words might have stolen advice’s steel shape, but at root—knobby knees exposed—they stood as testimony of bearing witness to a broken heart
his friend’s death he read as a dispensation to take over his love—no, not his wife but something much less typical: the historical figure he studied the many who seek God at the eleventh hour but who die at 10:30 are saved anyway, unless God is hideous and ignorant of the future “momma,” “momma’s here,” “momma loves you,” and the like whispered into the baby’s ear to rattle the real mother one day soon
even sons of bitches need their friends
whiskey when champagne would to all parties just be pretend celebration
straddled over the incense to infuse the kimono before going out
meeting the one you will marry at a bar the horse-stable stupidity of sex, the harrying drive for it (lust to live, live to lust), glares too much in the stillness after the spilling
out on his feet, fritzing lightbulb, but with enough muscle memory— circuitry we might romanticize as “heart”—to flurry against the ropes, frantic like the tentacles of a decapitated squid dancing in soy sauce
the limits of the world are not dictated by what you can explain, but still nothing exceeds what can be explained—the logos founds and pervades all sectors of reality, abstract and concrete
will you huddle in the corner of denial or surf the inescapable wave of revelation?
charmed by the sincere song of someone unschooled in your art
ventriloquizing desire to smother the void of indifference
pissing in elevators, sober too
the allure of the otherworldly blunting ethical and critical faculties
out-of-body experience was really just a more-seeing in-body experience
her dialogues with the dead brimmed with discovery, untouched by stale rehash—what reason was there, then, to feel sorry for her, all alone in her final years?
had you recognized you were growing up in a star’s orbit, would that have spoiled the play, the bond, the wordless grasp?
having clawed out of poverty (wielding citations like swords), the academic’s stomach still curdles—as if once again that boy stinking up classrooms—when called to read words out loud
to shoulder through the unreal pain of her loss remind yourself that soon enough, if only as your own end lurches closer, you will miss that pain—that relic of love
recognition of the truth that you will have your heart broken no matter which path (even the path of solitude) opens you up to at least having it broken over something you deeply care for
ratty mattresses donated to Mexican whorehouses
wiping your eye to show you are laughing hard enough to cry
sweeping everything unsettling in history under the university rug rather than using them as learning opportunities and spurs to humility
already boring to the skipping children who tore them from life, the flowers wither on the summer blacktop
to soothe their silk-sheet insomnia, the rich are nudged by wealth managers to “consider donating to charity”
intrusive suspicions that she has absolutely no interest in us drowned out by wedging our words down her windpipe— this way her tongue jerks like a marionette: “You don’t say!”
only ever trust some government to regulate speech if that government is made up of philosopher kings
aunts insistent on sewing your wedding dress
a neck-hump mediocrity yoked to thumbs
toddlers wobbling, little corduroys rolled up at the cuffs
only a week in and motherhood became smotherhood
the history of a nation—its concerns, its ways—through the evolution of its slang
its crown, “miracle child,” offered no shield against uncle colonics—if anything . . .
they scrolled for escape, for solace, for sense—and found instead only nausea
a fling to tide you over while you take your time courting the serious one
stores where you get pitch-black plastic bags
giving yourself the creeps
she presses silence into colicky lungs with the fungal pillow, her fentanyl lifeline stroking his erection in the next room— impatient, sighs growing cruel through the cavitied drywall
selling your dad crack for full price, but still driving off warm and fuzzy with filial feeling because you gave him your fattest chunks
high-altitude effects (more red blood cells, more lung volume and alveolar capillaries) plus poverty-built norms (jogging miles to school) factor into East African supremacy in marathons, but adding in genetics (long legs, short torsos) now curdles the air racist
the hallucinogenic trip hitting within the first hour of lockup
distinguishing the genius from the person
vulnerability is not helplessness, but power—feminine power!
easy to steal from the languishing retail stores of our nostalgia, mere ghost towns now
hardwired against snakes since when we were but insects after tree sap
monkeys in the storefront window slinging their poop at street watchers
the indigenous forced to tear stone from their own temples to build the temples of their conquerors
accepting the lifetime-achievement ovation with clean conscience—your fraud encrypted in layers dense enough to overwrite memory
fitness-form police failing to see when bad form is a ladder to achieving good form, or when bad form allows other muscles to help squeeze out final reps
whoever sets out, as the phrase goes, to “save Mother Earth” merely sets out (even if they care nothing for our myths, our cities, our names etched in stone) to save it in their own image—short of shattering to bits, it endures regardless
fake retardations and limps among curbside beggars
it is not bad info when you are the one who found it
a nimble gait trims off years
defeated inevitably, make sure what defeats you is worthy
ecstasy through pain
the groom’s soon-to-be family spying his alone-time for signs of doubt
if you really want to tattoo into your spirit the lesson that the one who just wants to be friends is not the one, attach to her recklessly against your better judgment
human stories carried on after ruin by those invisible to us today: mere hunter-gatherer bushmen
warned that criminal charges will be made on those who receive hospital help for overdoses, is calling 911 worth it?
easily-split scar tissue around the eyes from past bareknuckle brawls
missing highway exits, too caught up freestyling for an imaginary crew
still shots of the energetic continua that is this cherry blossom
when lead is found throughout our pipes, plumbers become heroes
here a white man can never fail to be privileged no matter how huddled into some hobo pulp of drunken self-talk in the frostbitten alleyway: “Trochum, yea. Mony greeze. Heh? Trochum—mahfuckin Rockfell!”
raised by women, when singing he gropes for high notes unfit for the male voice box
the prison-rapey difference between saying you fucked her in the ass and saying you fucked her up the ass
government grants, diversity requirements?—stop making literature a joke!
so often with men it goes from fistfight to best of friends
tacit agreement to pretend as if the rap really is improvised
boot grooves transporting seeds to other lands
South American gringophiles
someone finally validating that you have been traumatized
boot campers forced to do jumping jacks in Parris Island gas chambers
it is not just whites and Asians who cannot understand Waffle House after midnight
not showing himself to us as trees do, perhaps God shows himself to us through fulfilling our wishes
those human mounds who, tortoise-slow in starch-crazed corpulence, make haste— juking, twirling—through the buffet lines
born a girl but feeling like a man inside (gravitating to blue) need not require endorsing manness as a natural essence because reality accretes even open constructed species
we would face misery whether we could stay alone in our rooms or not
nostalgic now for a place where you spent so much time being nostalgic for the place to which you have supposedly returned
the feeling of honor to be eating among beasts, to be sharing the same food and stream water, in drizzling ambiance with no eruption of violence
always that strange sex-potential with the babysitter—parents away and she just blooming into sexuality
a being who does not love those who do not love him, or even just a being who lies about not loving them to guilt-out their love, falls short of the title “God”
is efficiency only important for finite beings?
motel births
putting the book down because it no longer matches your expectations
how do you lift yourself up by your bootstraps without any boots?
statements nonsensical enough not even to be false
mid-hallucinogenic-trip finding a loved one dead, for real
there will always be reasons to change the end-of-time date, however sure the original
how could a 90s sixth-grader resist all those steamy hot-line commercials that would punctuate programs after 10?
everything that befalls you is sacred, but some things sacred should be kicked away
we are all entitled to our tastes, but do not give up on it coming around
towns so small you must hang out with your bullies
what greater terror is there than an angry they-them?
transfemale testicular cancer
the gift of losing your sense of time—yes, even when it is being farmed
hooky streetball
violence now no more than pixels on a screen
transing kids, call-the-bluff interventions and all, as a PR stunt
how come ghost voices are never black?
shyness isolated him as a child, such that revisiting the past (even in the new form of going school reunions or listening to the old groups new album) became too painful—isolating him even more
no one, the elders too, know why we were thrown into this or what even this is— a fact we feel firsthand when we grow old too and see that the old we looked up to felt just as young inside, just as clueless and floored by the passage of time, as we do
we loose touch of the reasons (saying god commanded it) but we put a taboo on pork because of trichinosis and we put a taboo on masturbation because of its potential to pull you away from developing the excellencies helpful for securing the best mate
but depression is also a super power, allowing you not to give a fuck about so many little fears
the wriggling halves of the spaded snake
finally getting on social media, just in time to die
taboo enough to be arrested in solitary confinement
too scared to be honest enough to avoid writer's block
a land where medicine is the second leading cause of death
geniuses of marketing are the only geniuses who edit for applause
citizens will actually calm down after the remodel of shitty architecture
foreign occupation by a milk-drinking nation should at least sell some milk
he would not know what to do with himself if his excuses were stripped taken away—his excuses for not doing what he wanted to do for as long as he can remember
if less then everything logically possible exists, then what principle divides what obtains actually from what obtains merely as logically possible?
as if we cannot trust ourselves, the man we crown “genius” tells us his best works are the very ones we go on calling “duds”
if tidying our bedrooms tidies our minds, what snowball of conscience might build after fixing our city’s shattered windows?
the priest thought his riddle—“the enemy too peers out from a within”—would dry up our drool for throat-slitting revenge, but it was his last: “You take us for idiots hacking at stones, dolts wasting life in the hollow joy of making mere puppets plead and gurgle?”’
but the great painters did not have editors
knowing none who could control themselves, he hunted for women he could control
the old man gave street kids something to do after school—wink
“Who would I be if I failed at this now?”—the thought the moment the world presents the key to your dreams as an open layup; the moment the world grants you the opportunity to be what you wanted to be
knowing that the fantasy will be killed if reached, the best fantasizers still pursue but set subtle obstructions along the way
but even if it is the people that seem poor, rather than the people that seem black, that police systemically over-target, black people are much more likely than others to be seen as poor by default
if the priest is your community’s sole channel of info (one that trumps even the static of your own doubts), it is perfectly rational for you to believe his every word
eerily foretelling its real effort to tank the system by getting as many blacks as possible on welfare (effort that made welfare a black norm), the Marxist party in Invisible Man (using blacks as tools) spurs Harlem riots to show how tired of exploitation people are
his gaze shines too intense for others to think straight in communication—he might not know it but that is why, not lying or shyness, he no longer looks people in the eye
among sentient creatures who cannot survive on their own resources alone, the most common story— whether they know it or not—is overcoming addiction
he was a poet sort of writer: he spent tedious hours not coughing through the dust of archives but tinkering on a certain clause in a sentence
even her, fingering the Facebook rosary the whole time—at Grandma’s we order pizza
late fall, creek sounds no longer muffled by vegetation
dating a porn fluffer, heat tended too much like a technician either to stay or to go
shot over dominoes
obsession with being liked made him less rich—vanity culture thins us
not filed in memory because it foils the fable we keep rehearsing
the very young and the very old nodding in unison by fire
inequality is the norm because there are different cultural norms— one culture values “drillin opp niggas” and pumping out pussy gak while the other values drilling arpeggios and pumping out publications
male voice stitched with caution, like lips testing the cracked rim of a hot mug, instead of saying: “Tch. You ain’t even want no fuckin baby, bitch!”
airplaned home by nostalgia, little resembles—even coked up— the embroideries of distance
healthcare in line with patient priorities, what they are not willing to sacrifice for more time, meant the doctor would not pursue treatment
little ADHD mirrors funhoused by sodas and sweets, tucked away with their flickering screens—yesterday’s gizmos rendered utter jokes in comparison—whenever it comes time for mommies to medicate
knuckle sandwiches to the alley anus—no mayo, no duckbill shadow puppet for taper
purpose too resolute, awareness of mortality too severe, for any honeypot to work
elephant tusk laundered as mammoth to bypass anti-poaching laws
self-inflicted cauliflower ear
streetball in flapping Timbs
suffocation erections
in the shadows of illnesses yet to arise in us
table fellowship with the unclean
slating the execution for an odd time, to discourage protest
a culture so aggressively mediocre, demoralized merely by non-fragmentary sentences (to say nothing of Shakespeare), that soon it might flaunt as literary wisdom—backed by market analysis and an anti-exclusion ethos—the claim “good writing is overrated"
periphery blinders develop fissures the moment you learn that ambition to succeed in the eyes of the status quo had freed slaves salivating in FOMO for slaves of their own
call yourself God—that is the only loophole to dismissing as obsolete those laws (no eating crab and lobsters, no second girl slurping the clit) that must be, by your very own creed, the immutable dictates of God
another hit to live with oneself for taking the last
ever itch your own asshole with a fart?
triter than picking “Peaches” as your whore name
a gay gene—or is it a sex gene shaped by triggers in utero and beyond?
debating someone in absentia
“Party’s over and bitch still wanna get high”
booger nose breathing like a hot Geiger counter
creation by finding and selecting
jailhouse Muslim: a Muslim to avoid joining a gang
close-mindedness fueled by expert degrees
she felt she was somebody only when around those who did not take her route
not needing the stranger’s arrival to explore the hinterlands within
that humid-sickly musk in a dorm of Tren bros
started dancing because her dog got really sick
we have all tasted death, before birth
each new litter of feral cats, nested under sagged porches crumbled by decades, bears a mute witness to that rupture when the corporation pulled out of the ecosystem it built
another stereotypical hot-for-teacher boy whose lifelong brag for what happened one afternoon of eraser-clapping detention we deem a self-delusion nearly as upsetting as the assault itself
a key point of writing, which we outsource at our own detriment, is figuring out what we do and what we should believe
if anyone says anything about you killing puppies (that sidewalk-smash move that leads to convulsion), say—if only to buy time—you have a snake at home
was it kismet that trick and ho, a random pickup on the blade, both had brought along their infants who now sit in carriers in the backseat line of fire?
smack dab in the situation he has dedicated his life to avoiding
autism by nurture
fired for drinking
too far gone to create a home even out of a fully-gifted house
listen not just to what they say but how they say it—even to what they do not say
writing teaches you to trust the process, which is perfect for birthing and dying
even Obama, a good man, ordered hits—practically flying the drones himself
checking the phone replaced biting her fingers
the white supremacy of times tables in Portland
if the intent behind propaganda is to cultivate unity, we would expect the military industrial complex— given its stake in disunity—to spread diverse propagandas
pegging yourself for prostate stimulation does not mean you are gay and being gay does not mean you are attracted to minors—likewise, being attracted to minors does not mean you desire to rape children
in a different society, getting fucked by your number-one hero is—and stays— the diametrical opposite of trauma
the film character who found the screen by which we view her
bless those hoes who develop crushes on their regulars
if who we elevate reflects who we are, we are fucked
the world becomes safe when you realize you could just kill yourself
gang rape, Mexican landscaping crew, had the whore take the rest of the night off
years of suffering in hope
the loudest voices chanting “no one is illegal” tend to live in neighborhoods where housing costs alone enforce borders more effectively than any wall
drugging your wife's smoothies and meals with antibiotics because of what you caught from a prostitute too young not to hit raw
institutional gaslighting: the shortest skirts and yet the man who stares is a perv—especially if, or even (now in the Orange hysteria) only if, he is white
mushroom-headed penises, it is who we are evolved to be on average: not so gay that we wind up wasting procreative loads in man-chimp ass, and yet gay enough not to feel squeamish about having a go at pussy already creampied by too many
psychic stripper
jealous that your sister gets touched instead of you, you stick fingers up her ass too
hot crack pipe versus waterbed
“get while the gettins good”—like the ass of the thanksgiving turkey
meeting every romantic partner in rehab
raped during the rape kit—a woman here, but same exact “Sssh”
would you still want your type if you healed?
the blessing of incarceration was finally getting the chance, through visitation hours, to talk to and understand his parents
a pussy sucker and pussy dicker good enough for her to tolerate your worst addictions
thank God for the mental reprieve of a hobby’s echoes in the middle of the nine-to-five: the soreness of your calves after yesterday’s leg day breaks you from today’s doldrums
meth to stay awake to do enough fentanyl to stay well
always the lie that the next trimester you will to stop the drug
hook a caged kid to the needle and she will beg to get fucked
a kid raped so bad thank God he found drugs
the Tibetan monastery has become too touristy once Israeli beauties start flocking there, banging the monks
the grass-is-greener approach, endlessly hop(p)ing around in FOMO as if to avoid some deep despair, spoils the discipline to appreciate what you have
“invest in your wealth” has now become “invest in your interest”— a wise change: unless you find your passion, in wake of AI’s ascendance you will be dashed harder against rocks than what retired people feel
real cowboys do not have the luxury to be racist because it is about a person’s character, his work ethic and word—well beyond idea
where do the lovers stop speaking to the point and start speaking from the wound?
feeling inferior compared to scoured lives curated on social media
local rappers promoting themselves by taping posters to their car doors
torched calories dripping upon those desperate for merely the minimum
when belief in God corrupts what we find intuitively moral, such as when doctrinal duty binds us to justify the goodness of God’s mandate to slaughter the infants of enemy tribes
the same principle that declares borders illegitimate because “we’re all on stolen land” dissolves your property line too
the old lover, old as you, is not the person you remember and so longed to love again
an entity who would subject any finite being to interminable torture is worthy of our worship only for the pragmatic end of ducking the same fate
how much horror seems permitted if there is that God: stoning recalcitrant children
psychedelic initiatory experiences for young adults who think they know it all
intrigued by the neighbor’s moan
surprised to learn how many before-shots were really after-shots
melanoma spots so enlarged because no one was in his life to check his back
seek out abuse to distract you from loneliness
dying just before the great jump in life extension
smoking the money for the bus to rehab
an addiction to putting his dick in crazy
soft-lit living rooms seen at twilight from suburban streets
the creepiness of those who live in homes of wilted plants
coming home, eager to share new truths
Mom loads the needle for her ten-year-old girl: “Might as well learn how to cope”
just as we can put on beer goggles to see what it is like to be drunk, God has access to perfect beer (or lust or fear) googles to see exactly what it is like to be drunk (or in lust or in fear)
invigorated to learn that your high-school crush turned to crack, since now you have a chance— a rock in hand at her door instead of a corsage
to the lifelong-blind words might seem better than a picture to describe the site, but—since words refer to things he has never seen—the picture might turn out better if you let him embrace your hand as you draw it
funkgasms from Soul-Train-line footage
prey to external forces (cyber bubbles foremost), heedless to how their actions impact others, prone to rashness—kids cannot marry or get the death penalty, yet hesitancy about the entire friend-cluster’s demand for sex change spells LGTBQIPsSAA+-hate
might we send them there because— not merely in spite of—all the findings about rapid wilting in the nursing home?
a white man in Trinidad mistaken for just another storefront mannequin
the frustration of having entered her life after she became observant, no longer open to fuck guys not of her religion
a novel exploring what the marginal characters of some other novel have to say
does being more enthused than usual around her, a better person around her, mean that you are being fake?
Klan members pour their hearts out to one another on occasion
multiple masks versus multiple personalities
industry-friendly science
since people cannot help but broadcast what seems miraculous, how did the disciples hold their tongues over forty days of numerous appearances by Jesus?
the addict's eureka surge from the lowest blues, realizing that right there in his daughter's room—unappreciated, one might add—is all the jewelry he has ever given her
careening alone into rival-gang territory, looking to fight
leaving prison with a resolve to get back on track
visiting the jailed murderer to vouchsafe forgiveness
the oxytocin rush of that needle made seem like a joke the bliss of a mother staring into her just-birthed child
prison-guard accommodations and sober smiles for the inmate on his way to execution
whether love can find you only if you are looking depends on what constitutes looking
the first human kiss
Wigger Studies in a future college near you, profs specializing in specific decades
an addict’s radar, effective in every city, sometimes spots a closeted dealer
a guard kind enough to smuggle in a snowball for the man in solitary
over-policed because under-resourced—not because of toxic cultural attitudes
eyes are not made racist seeing that gorillas in estrus twerk like the best of them
phoning a friend in your sights to watch how they react to your call
boomboxes known to eat tapes
anger is armor—heavy armor
always stopping the use of the drug, but never the starting again
the kind of girl who would disagree with herself if you started agreeing with her too much
if we can still be so cradled and soothed today by the tailpipe fumes of our unregulated youth, what other horrors might we have grown to love?
the more we will interact with AI the less our inner worlds will seem so special, so other to computation
it sucks when you have been clean so long, but your side personality gets smashed any chance it gets
helplessness: gasoline for addiction
TV doctors instructing real doctors on bedside manner
labs stationed within Euro clubs to test the authenticity of ecstasy
the human psyche mapped out over decades of web searches
a voice—think Coko’s—that renders bad looks—think Coko’s—unimportant
tired in a way that sleep could never fix
a land where people are fired— rendered unemployable even— because of “transgressive” poetry
so taken by the painted landscape because our primitive ancestors would find it a place for flourishing
speediness, which our culture shames us into, at least helps us block out the queasy questions
might awareness of our resilience to setbacks, knowing how we get over them in time, perhaps make us more susceptible to them?
to ask and not to ask Xs for forgiveness when they insist that nonX you insulted them is racist: to ask is to discount how dire the X experience continues to be due to terrors perpetrated by your kind; not to ask is to ignore that X people insist you insulted them
whenever she heard rapey squeals in her son’s bedroom, the mother simply told them to “quiet down”
tapped—or better, perhaps, trapped— by critics, collectors, and curators as the hottest artist on the scene
the mega-retail corporation serving as a private anti-poverty program for those withered to poverty by it
protecting yourself by thinking that the gist is all you need— the gist of the madman’s words
a shit-spit skims testicle hair on its path to toilet splat
scared enough that your hands have no home
thinking about going home while locked away from it will only ruin your day
gun, rope, brick, river
that earnest sightings of Tupac and Elvis still persist—people staking their very reputations on them—might edge us closer to understanding Christ’s postmortem visits to his disciples
“I just stopped loving him”— even as it explains nothing— somehow explains everything
being such a successful BS-er suggests that you may need to hang around smarter people
how many of the most sepulchral rituals were originally no more than trolls to ridicule those ignorant enough to follow them?
dissolution of the self from a life so ritualized, so repetitive each day, like some macro-mantra chant
Whole Foods shoppers asperse Walmart on behalf of the many who—kept alive by it—could not do so in good conscience
the comfort of hearing footsteps in the apartment above, knowing she is there—alone as well
the need to ingest a drug to give order to this day
the beauty of a human is that he may not be “all there” wherever he is
the beauty of a human is that his plans can be tastier than “reality”
blatant peeking during the Holy-Ghost blackout
that witchcraft hysteria had people killing loved ones might help us fathom why the hell the original disciples would wager their lives on the messiah-status of a felon
at least their frustration at having no cellphone reception here gets the dinner guests conversing
feeling that we are having a good time only after checking on social media how what we are doing compares
taking serious in good conscience only some of the mandates issued by a God whom you tell your heart sits infallible
the distance that might have existed between an atom in my left foot and an atom in my right
baking soda hunks he smoked in delusional hope broadcast in the vague sweep between the wildest error in your favor at the Arm & Hammer plant and the brain finding the weak resemblance strong enough to Pavlov out a bit of dopamine
late night melancholy churned up by sitcom theme songs from past decades
watching a movie with drive-bys to motivate you to do the drive-by
mentally segregated from the cosmos by light pollution
wind just right to carry betrayals to ear
figuring that someone else will call about those bum legs sticking out from the curb-box for the last few days
the 50-yard-line at midnight; the classroom at prom hours; the toothpaste among garbage
retreating sea ice at least trims weak-swimming polar bears
tossing and turning over mishaps long dead
hookups with the ex to smooth the transition into being all alone
curating confirmation from social media followers that your life is on track
scrying into the black mirror, the nightmare rectangle, in every hand now
floored by mossy tried-and-true (fasts, bare feet, firelight) plus knowing well that apes crave tribal nods and that no finite voice could be more than echo, in clear conscience she—nurturer—adopted prefab scripts instead of shaping the prōtē archē in newer light
“Listen son—. I mean, we could’ve just avoided this talk. But—. Jesus. This is the goddamn living room! You gotta put something under the desk (a towel, a sock) if you’re gonna go at it like that!”
we come with such different perspectives that one cannot help but “Tell it slant” when one says almost anything
do you strengthen your vessel of death simply to evade death or also to ensure longer journeys?
which voices coursing through us are older, deeper: those that say “Throw stones at the sunning snake” or those that say “Feel ashamed for such cruelty”
having forgotten that you already hit on this one, you tell the former student that you thought it wise to come to her only now—given the power differential
surely an all-perfect being, excusably nose-less, would create beings able to tap into the smell of a Granny Smith
should we hold Jews to a higher standard when they partake of the same oppression that they—of all people—know so well?
seduced by fantasies of success into devoting less fire
imagine an intelligence independent of consciousness
it might not be reflected in the monocrop of pop art, but there are virtuosos still— and remembering that is not only to keep you going in times of reality-TV presidents where bling-consumerism is venerated, it is to keep alive the flame of higher men
a date-rape that was not even a rape, tranquil nostril exhales sweettalking his testicles into spasms (“smell ’em baby girl”) bobbing like Adam’s apples the sole contact—after hair held back at the toilet—in the tiptoe blackout
social media posts that indicate desperation to showcase how good things are for you make us wonder how bad things are for you
right out of the FBI playbook: as the 9/11 craze dies down too much to justify the bloat, activist groups manufacture— and even bait—racist villainism to keep money flowing in
jobless for such a habit-making stretch, one falls into the role of favor-man—washing the car, vacuuming—for the home at which one stays
tucking the chain through the projects
diagramming how the stars will look to a later age for that later age is a longsighted wet-cement hello
never getting out of prison because of what you have to do to ensure respect—life—inside
college instructors fired over published poems, students kicked out over paintings—might one day off-putting mistypes on Microsoft Word be reported?
on grounds that he is not of the right blood line, rage is shown towards one claiming to be x— something with no biological reality even
did most generations sense, like us, that they were living on borrowed time, the bottom about to fall out anytime?
battling mainly through threat poses— like gangs in a Michael Jackson video— explains the scar-less bodies of sea leopards
how would you handle data that kills the seed of your identity?
in need of the very one who died to support you through their death
rolling into Associated, filling a shoe box with meat, and simply walking out
a deep need for a special relationship with animals because of Disney
places you do not enter wearing gold—indeed, without full dental
caged birds were once carried around as a primitive boom box
the resilience of the whore’s hope that the John will take her on a real date is only the stuff of Hollywood
“Klan bonfires distract us,” news outlets say with stockholder fervor, “from the ember of racism”
suicide over lunch break, one wonders how things might have been different were the sandwich “really to die for”
mustering up laughter at their tales until they bust out the drugs that brought you
scared to believe in God based on fallacious reasoning
still relating as a single parent to your kids even though you now have a spouse
canceling all appointments before suicide
expecting your fiancé’s admiration for her dad to carry over to you
light strong enough to steal the gaze of sunflowers from the sun
liberated by no longer pursuing one ideal life, mate, food, and so on
is it the EMT’s place to console the dying with a lie?
taking the set, but leaving the cheater that one weeny lidless pot to heat up something—soup, beans—from a can
wondering what she must have said for her husband to uppercut her to the gut at Walmart—we are closer to Shariah brothers than our bigoted asses think
dogs strangling their own barks, hoarse from repetition, with each lurch snagged short by the choke chain
the miserableness of car drivers in traffic stands out to bicyclists
trying to outdo those on social media trying to outdo you
seeing how strange attire can become alluring when paraded with purse-first confidence, might we not take up the same attitude when it comes to bodily oddities: vitaligo, Bell’s palsy, flippers?
filled with so much hope that, although it protected the joy of the last years together, no chance presented itself to say “Goodbye”
prayer to grow back limbs seen as absurd even among those who think that prayer can get God to cure cancer
frightened by the word “hospice”
how could there fail to be a Gothic scene even in the sunny cities such as LA, where shadows are so intense?
a cosmos so vast that even a million would be a gross underestimate for the number of times someone opened a three-minute speed date with: “Our numbers are killing the planet. And we still call it a ‘right’ to have kids?”
postponing our deepest dreams
at the dinner party, watching him tell that skinny bitch the same factoids that originally won you over
dismissal of newspaper astrology need not mean dismissal of how the distant cosmos influences our lives
you are obsessive in your need for intimacy, not in your need for that one particular woman
snot-nosed grandkids punching the corpse at the home wake, asking their parents, “Why’s this muhfucker so stiff?”
is it really that the guy is creepy, or do you just want to feel important?
savoir-faire flaunted sniffing the wine cork with mock savoir-faire
dying prematurely from a captivity never even sensed
the guru’s greatest teaching is failing his students
rejecting her on grounds of disgust for her past behavior
each school lunch relying on share-food tables of unwanted milk, bananas
pleased knowing that only a few will understand your work
walking by her house each day in hope that she will call out and you may say, “You live here?”
AI will be our offspring, so is there not some joy even if it destroys us?
shitting while she is in the motel shower, after just your first fuck, makes you think her more than just some mistress
after stealing your drugs, the cops drop you off in the hood of a rival gang
private collectors cremated clutching invaluable art
if you learn of your loneliness early enough, at least you are likely to get to experience the deepest companionship: that of elders
easier to believe the massacre was staged
the great career move of dying young
postal workers ungumming rare stamps
lacking others on which to use nuanced language
humans screaming wordless sounds
commiseration fatigue
Mr. Rogers’s Jungian-shadow
singularity dates ever pushed ahead like those of the end of the world might have us think it has yet to arrive
nostalgic beings crushed by the indifference of the remaining nostalgic beings, each on a private island
so much novelty that will be, and already is, beyond the history of which we are unaware
it is as if the apology to her for the obsessiveness of your crush was just an excuse to fire it up again
are you the root that finds the water or the leaf that catches the light?
lifting weights in the front yard
reduced to a “sweet-thirteen after-party favor”
by repeating it, are you preserving the memory of your tragedy or laundering it?
opening up about your pitiableness but to someone whose own situation leaves him in no position to criticize
in trouble for saying the thing everyone thinks
racing home to stop your wife from reading your suicide note
the days of the substitute teacher wheeling in the TV and VCR cart
a partner that wanted to leave you from the very beginning
fingering yourself on the towelable kitchen tile
kids sketching bomb damage
scholar of Chaucer and serial rapist
another day off wasted in wearied anguish of having to go back to work
poetry in the pocket of an SS soldier
not the ferocity of his attack but the panic that powered it rendered him defenseless, out of steam
the look of a room—bedroom, kitchen— as viewed from a remove of inhuman angle through transparent walls
muscular monks
but how else to cultivate excitement in this zoo of cut-off domestication than risky behavior: affairs, gambling?
trying to out-train a shitty diet
partners so one they take the medicines prescribed to the other
when big cattle start dying of thirst, it is hard to deny who falls next
booed to tears dancing for change on the subway—we all start somewhere
feeling you are doing something worthwhile— and definitely not anything cruel—in helping the senile unscramble memories for an afternoon
wasting life in hope to write the great verse
nostalgia for some moment where you were nostalgic for some other moment
a being who created us to worship him is not worthy of our worship
beneath all the layers Alzheimered away was resolute racism
a being that needs constant reassurance that he is number one above all others— could it ever be worthy of our worship?
a being angry for our not believing in him, even when the shortage of evidence rings in our ears— could it ever be worthy of our worship?
a being for whom a greater sin than raping babies is believing that good works alone can save you— could it ever be worthy of our worship?
down syndrome tits
pilfering the ears from another kid’s Mr. Potato Head
imagine a being, one being, with discrete centers of self-consciousness
build your identity around something with a shelf life less than your own life— that best prepares you for death
atheist gardeners ever on their knees in poses of prayer, feeling their place in the constancy of bloom and decay
genius misconstrued as an effortless gift at least shuts down our urge to compete, allowing us simply to enjoy the creations
truth claims can be of value even with no grounding, just as money can
received views baptized to help the baptizing institution stay alive
he makes fun of people who wear Louis Vuitton and other designer apparel even though he wears—flaunts—“busy"
a virus is a Kubrick monolith: using the resources of its host, reproducing, and then flying off to another, it nudges us— especially after having learned of its existence—to leave Earth
a being all-knowing should not just know the truth-values of all statements, but also know all qualia (her fear) and how to do all things (ride a bike)
an ego shaky due to its awareness of being semi-literate
only a devil would like those who believe in him for fear of torture otherwise
a million crazy dreams, but yes— you must be clairvoyant when what you saw happens the next day
mixtapes from the local dj at the corner gas station
is the corpse more or less him than the collage of memories retained in the surrounding criers?
anyone who cannot get enough of songs from youth, hollow as they now appear, can understand the pull of family religion
to strive for truth at all costs is to value truth over all else (including life)—but why not value something else more (such as life)?
his life continued even though his story seemed to have come to an end
having the body exhumed only to gaze upon it one last time
Sunday church for food
is it easier to blow your brains out or to reinvent yourself?
you cling while dying to the memory, unclear at first: your mother’s voice promising ice cream once you get well
the “god” worthy of living in absolute fear of, the “god” that dating-site blacks have in mind when they claim to be “God-fearing,” is a good candidate for Satan in disguise
none of us has to go far back before getting to an Ethiopian
all this power-of-positive-thinking woo had him guilty about his cancer diagnosis
psychedelics foreground what is normally background
the self-interested grace of forgiving your child’s vulva-chomping killer
wagon furrows still petrified in mud
AI sex slaves
countries importing garbage for fuel
the beloved’s hand, slipping in your coat pocket as you walk against the chill
prison gambling for ramen noodles
graduating school, unable to afford your own services
watching the boy tattle on his classmate, a tomboy of greater maturity, the teacher cannot help but think of Adam and Eve
why does there have to be a master calling up the thoughts that come from the you-know-not-where?
those at the tube in dilapidated homes hundreds of miles from any major city distraught about foreign terrorism
to what degree must the rest of us participate in your self-image?
he really did search her out to see if he had hacked her up—the dream that vivid
hair so white, so absent of light-absorbing pigment, that it looks glacier blue
conversation has stiffened into safe monologues that leave little new behind— crossing, if lucky, cold like train tracks—no jazz braids, no crosswind synergies, bringing to light knowledge you would have never thought you had stashed
not the differences between things, seeing the differences—that requires invention
raised in religious shame of the body, orgasms reach guilt-free profundity—become spiritual even—when hellbent on cervix-bruise depth
why does God care about what uniform you wear?
brains not wired to grasp deep time
a need to crush any appearance of lightness in a woman’s step
recreational risk
if a guy’s liking only guys is from birth, then we should be justified to say that a guy’s liking only black women is too
because your coach is from Tennessee too—that is why God makes your team win
the gynecologist unthinkingly smelling his gloved fingers—CCTV’s false positive
the bigot card to shut down a conversation
extraterrestrials with grand enough technology to visit planetary systems across the galaxies were responsible for giving Earthlings such crappy 1950s fiber optics?
too green to grasp that an undercurrent affair, a romance in mere daydream and flirt form, can be not only safer but more interesting
thinking the world will end on your loser Facebook watch, as if you really are the axis of this bitch—worse, as if you do not grasp how statistically obscene it is even for your doltish doppleganger in any generation to be proven right!
treating those who fail to have dreams as failures
finding a nickel of rock as a kid, running into an itching crackhead right after— hooked on quick money from then on
the old boyfriend to whom you run back after each new breakup
dimples deep in candlelight
wishing you could feel for him the same love he has for you
oh Jupiter—the turbulence of what for us is a languid cloud
what is bluer than desiring what would be unreceptive even were it not wrong to fill?
fleeting faces of feeble disapproval as your dying mother feeds your child milk chocolates before dinner
dishes and clothes continue to pile up since she left
rediscovering music through sharing it
sex hangups behind the abolition of the best medicine: mixed-aged classrooms
self-assurance chronically steered him from the big questions
always checking the weather where she lives as well
different therapy for rape victims of different cultures
lawyers make such a difference in our lives, but most cannot afford them
back home the culture (language, values, beliefs) moved on, but it remained desperately fixed among the emigrants and their descendants
seeing so many raid the store of electronics has you enter the broken window as well— against how you would normally behave
reclined on the pullout sofa, in wait for her to sneak down once her parents are asleep
the “unreliable narrator” label burdizzos literary challenges to taboo
too scoliotic for chest compressions
the burden of the future cast off in old age
having believed for too long to show any signs of doubt now
great it is for others beside you to be great
hiding—hiding being dead—behind the resume virtues
advertisements for Coca Cola enfolded in rainforests
polar bear coats rusty around the neck
how long have whites been so antagonistic to silence?
mental models of the world are as real as what we see through their filter
whoring in LA on a slow real-estate month
witch pillers, do not flatter yourselves too much: girls were looking for escape
too many little girls coming in and out for the cab driver not to have been on staff
in the flamboyant pose of a victorious matador frozen on his back, the dreamer hunts though the supermarket in increasing agitation over inability to find the orzo
the shakedown groups use their privilege, Hollywood-backed and even state-sponsored, to spread a narrative denied by that very privilege: that they are marginalized victims
the shit-does-not-even-matter wisdom that took decades to break through and kill your performance anxiety resulted also unfortunately in killing your spirit to live
step back from unrequited-crush blues, if only for a second, and behold how such savagery worthwhiles life
robbing them because you need money versus robbing them because it kills you inside to know— just by their vocabulary—they are better than you
directing our attention to how mental illnesses undermine moral responsibility protects our faith that it can be found in us (even though nothing we do is ultimately up to us either)
watching people get brain damage in real time—another like
jungle tribesmen in Fruit of the Loom underwear
God aside, who is more embarrassed by niggers than black people?
charity belligerent enough to ignore the receiver’s pleas that the supply has now gotten too much to handle
lifting the lowest up means, for the forces of evil (no matter how caring they might present themselves), leveling the top into something closer to a monocrop
the more perfume you spray or swipe the sooner your nose goes blind; the more you acquire the duller each lands—excess in sensual pursuit ultimately humbles you to restraint, where denial becomes indulgence
so many of us praying and yet so many of us scoffing at telepathy
the nature of the knock was clear even through gloved knuckles
bears trained up to snarl in photos—the public awed by the bravery of hunters
lunch table percussion
witnessing your sibling’s life take off beyond all expectations, leaving you behind to languish in hometown mediocrity
Allah, mentioned more than any subject, was as real as 2 + 3 = 5 at our homes and schools
the challenge of appearing the fool, as one almost always has to do for the sake of song
language reflects, constrains, and liberates consciousness
shocked enough by the result, punishment was deemed unnecessary
an intentional rock inside the snowball
each day watching the same film, more stable than a good friend until you start looking once again
that point in our lifetimes when there is not enough time to make new old friends
owned by what we do not own
replace clapping—a microaggression, an ableist gesture of toxic masculinity, with snapping fingers and jazz hands
bubble hopping—skipping the grooves of habit like a record—by letting a computer app randomly select your doings for the day
on the supermarket sheet cake for the wake is a close-up photo of the dead lady Harlem Shaking at her favorite club
avoiding psychologists, knowing that we are too gullible when it comes to believing what they say is so
crestfallen at your window, feeling that nothing could bring you into the lives of the strangers outside
a housecat ambling across piano keys past midnight
describing the past in the future tense goes a long way to making a prophet
vulvic stank you cannot lick away—that separates true animalic lovers from the rest
their upper-caste power allowed them to control the narrative that they are powerless
cops busting their old school bullies
fish-out-of-water mouth gestures a full ten minutes into the lethal injection
so free of distractions, what better for our deep ancients to do but meditate upon a rock pile?
add in obesity, and a shower cap is grounds for a trunk search during the traffic stop
concealing intense feelings in order to enjoy her anguishing company
blindness recast as a mere series of practical challenges
unfolding the brittle letter once again to your eyes, for what you know is the last time
think of how Truman felt as buckstopping bomber to fathom the horror that slavery inflicted on whites— and also their desperation to justify, underplay, forget
the human in us cannot help but first see squirrel tracks in the snow as ancient language—and, at root, are they not?
the deaf lovers raging in the restaurant— hand flails, monkey grunts—startle us like lovers in Shakespeare raging in the purplest of prose
rogue planets still churning core warmth
douche-shaming and slut-shaming both with roots in the epoch of scorn for body, sex, and their symbol: woman
loving yourself means not beating yourself up even over how you ruined the relationship by posing, by lying—by not loving yourself
knee-deep in the autumnal creek, breasts pendulous in her scalp-lathering stoop— nipples disfigured as if by all walks of toothy entitlement, ringed by braille visible from within the bank’s giggling bracken, slice the mirrored sky like swallow beaks
who wants such a disgusting God?
paying to stay in comfy jails
such perturbation about how your family would feel if they read your work diverts your attention away from the reality that they would never read your work
the child in the starvation photo, not attractive (sexy) enough to awaken empathy
those who would have never stumbled upon the concept of God by themselves
knocking off the same corner store thrice
girls sucking the ends of their hair
eager to dissociate from the depressed you of the past, the you that you now—brazen enough in your truant empathy to make deities double over in laughter—construe as disgracefully weak
pretending to be straight, monogamous, or so on for so long, you might develop the attitude, the base working assumption, that hypocrisy is the norm
all by yourself, but saying something out loud even despite the awareness of having already said it in your head
to feast the prodigal brother’s return is also to feast what the dutiful brother only sees after the father tells him “You are ever with me; mine is yours”: namely, the oneness of him and his father—a oneness vulnerable to being spoiled by forthright feasting
from stamp licking to keystroking to erase distances
the lack of inflection in the voice of the lugubrious
keeping that secret of depression, regarded as a dishonorable failing, from those keeping the same secret
she read for the same reason she danced: not for a gripping form of pleasure, but for the later rewards of healthful exercise
is his genius lessened when we learn that his music was a conscious mimicry of the bird orchestra right outside our door?
drinking on your shift
home fries
botched fresh starts
a flight to Turkey for a hair transplant before cremation
a clitoral hood with a hang time that would make even some tits jealous
a lover with one eye on you and another watching out for something promising
selling crack to the parents of your classmates
giving him praise, obviously gratuitous, to make him feel how piddly he really is
happy birthdays received only from companies: generic, automated, but welcomed
the mall photo-booth shoot with your new girlfriend to see how you are together
having to be reminded, again, not to eat your kid’s school lunch
Satan is a theist
the inefficient way might just be the meditative way, a me-time breather that in some cases prevents the place from becoming all bullet holes and brains—so pause a beat before you ridicule
opposing your conscience to hurt yourself— now an end in itself as opposed to what it used to be: to hurt others who cared
does it make much difference now if the memory was due to reality or dream, story or song?
what does it say about “legitimate” gods and religions that people today go to Jedi Church or sincerely pray to Spiderman, a symbol widely known to be fictional?
it is logically impossible to love machines more than ourselves—you know why
at the age when it is clear that this all is winding up, you say “in a way, it is not”
the half-done crossword puzzle of the dead
give the children more—or is it less?—credit: when they implore their mom to eat the marrow in the KFC bones “because it’s good for cancer, it is not as if they do not realize this is too-little-too-late
to bring into the convent earthly authorities with their forensic kits would only cloud the matter: it was an incubus who creampied the teen postulant during her absolution, taking the form of a hairy-eared priest framed thrice now in Satan’s anal-fissure game
nothing seems more valuable than intelligence, except when it is antagonistic to survival
negotiating a ceasefire to break for lunch in digestible peace, and even have a little soccer game—when you factor in the head shots to come, such a tear-jerking sign of humanity horseshoes back into barbarism
rhythm lost being out of the gutter so long
two-hand touch abandoned for tackle when beyond the gaze of the recess monitor
a child first hearing about God’s dark side
on a first-name basis with homeless people
likable only in the first stages of acquaintance
concluding with unquailing conscience that the other religion is false on grounds, yep, that it so readily contradicts scripture
the go-to temptation of grade-school evangelicals, corny as hell: making whomever they might bully carry out the most relevant stations of the cross
to insist that their violence is not due to the violence of their archaic scripture threatens to make their violence innate
to her daughters (“creeped out” by her new boyfriend), she says—smelling, herself, the gaminess of their trails— “Tch. That nigga ain’t used to closed doors and shit”
such conspiracies involve secrets too succulent for so many humans to keep
his itch to know—at heart, nothing more than an itch to discredit someone
is your faith so entrenched that when Christ fails to return on the slated stroke of midnight, you rouse your sleepy children with: “Ah! Another time zone!”?
proving that death is not bad by blowing yourself up
poorness in faith indicated by funereal despair and fear of death
significant in virtue of the vastness of our insignificance
owning up to her that she is too sick to live would open up needed conversations— but who are you to be so burdensome?
beware of activists who strive to prevent their own irrelevance
banning verse composed in the manner of the metronome is like banning the jazz drummer
turning reductionist moves on their head: x-y-z neurons firing are nothing but love rather than the other way around
bothered for years by not crying at the funeral
needing a roommate, like a twenty-year-old, even though you have grandkids
a thorn in the culture is a mirror for the culture
radiation treatments causing new kinds of cancer
a post-trauma need to stick to something—anything—while chances still remain
the bowler hat was old but, lending it pathos in the attic for blind mice, never worn
board games and cards, crotchet, for the boring parts of a loved one’s dying
ashamed that you pray
we thank God for saving the one girl from the bloody rubble, not for the earthquake
hungry-poor
that classic line: “I’ll make you like it”
when people whose opinion we dislike also admire a person we do, we tell ourselves that they do not know her deep down—sometimes adding an audible chuckle at how shocked they would be if they did
she could not grasp, gregarious as she was, why they excluded her from the circle— but they smelled something sour under that sugar: that every grin and hug aimed to win over any part of them, thinned even in the one holdout, still on the fence
how long have we been together, really, with so many of our hours spent thinking about what has passed and what has yet to be?
little boys dare each other to knock and ask the local witch for sugar, only to learn she is nice after all (a timeless tale)— letting them pull her nipples and plop around in her pleats
asking her why she will not even give you a chance—that might be involved
presenting opportunities only to those thought likely to follow through, another sieve
the decline of infatuation regarded as a gift
speaking to people absent from your life over a decade as if you saw them yesterday
mothers dependent on the molester’s turn-a-blind-eye cash
séancing that dreaded mania in hopes to mine it for art
thieving the teacher’s apple from hunger
with the knowledge of what is wise you can sound wise before your time
at the doormat, stamping from boots nonexistent snow
pimping out the infant to a man everyone calls “Hilt”
having to remember which mask to wear with what person
a master can see through what he projects on others from a place of need
reminding yourself that you look bad right now in the mirror only because you have body-image problems
if asking the deepest questions—what is this place and what are we doing here?— will cease being with rise of artificial intelligence only a human domain, offloading our share of the wonder—a temptation at first—will presumably become the norm
to go through being an impostor— that bumbling first step toward any greatness—is often too painful
the mystique of perfection no longer sustainable with everything recorded in HD, future prophets will make a showcase out of their imperfections
jungle ayahuasca forced the bigot to face, in jump-cut imagery whose blatant make-believe did nothing to undercut the lesson, all the care shown to the ancestors of his cherished houseplant
a convenient pretense for not engaging: telling yourself that the very thing that allows creativity to soar—namely, high-standard disciplinary pressures (always modifiable enough, of course, to fall short of demoralization)—will ruin the creativity of the child
bettered, at least for a period, by dementia’s power to free you from regrets and grievances
as if the conviction that some winnower Jesus is going to come back at the stroke of midnight were not self-centered enough, what about the blind assumption that it will be the midnight of your time zone?
the first pussy fart on Earth
infant suckling forced into clitoral grammar—what more explosive semiotic violence?
all the stories about chancing upon someone famous
that plink of a beer can BB-gunned off a fence
as an excuse to keep on having her excuse, her story had to be that we were all mean to her
think of the struggle that people who will live into the hundreds (five hundred, maybe even a thousand)—think of the struggle they are bound to have with mortality, the daily haunting of it
seeing a Jew or a Muslim manipulate others for personal gain—our extra fury speaks not only to the hypocrisy but to our naive myopia (religions, no less than ants, carve turf), if not to our desperation to see ourselves as beyond the hunger of root and claw
typically the better you are at being funny, the closer you come to tipping over into meanness
the sweetness of alcohol, how it allows even the most neurotic to be present—to belong to now
graffitiing the confederate statues is way better than tearing them down— the racist persons depicted surely would like neither, but one thing is clear: the racist logos running through each of them begs for them to be torn down
the energy-suck of so much lying
best for profit is for treatment to go on for life
assigning guilt to a whole group, especially one whose members did not ask to join, has repeatedly been a harbinger of atrocity
is there solace, or merely more angst, to be gotten witnessing the ignorance of children and birds— all giggling and chirping—to man-made horrors?
a dialysis center in almost every strip mall
cognitive faculties employed to argue for the reliability of those cognitive faculties
your mother dragging pajamaed you throughout the city in search of him: the cheater, “the whoremaster fuck”
despite not allowing for retirement, the silver lining of an adjunct life spent more on freeways than in classrooms teaching brainless courses is freedom to think with a depth often only allowed for in retirement
the founder population on Mars, in nerve already so different from most of us—how might they deviate from us over centuries?
worship of a being who created us in play might be warranted, but perhaps not a being who created us in play to escape boredom
acceptance of gay marriage harms straight marriage in what other way than that it empowers gays to end, or avoid in the first place, their straight marriages?
nights spent switching the safety setting on the rifle—too fearful of either option to stay asleep for long, if even you get there
people ruling out that nonhuman species are aware of mortality on absurd grounds: funerals are necessary for such awareness
wanting to believe her claim that nothing is wrong—not just because she is family but because your own time is too precious
our dreams of the foreign might suggest a beyond to our horizons, but that beyond need not be beyond the natural world
combovers of glorified ear hair
looking over to find another driver watch you crying at the stop light
feisty enough to need rape ropes even with her tongue nailed to the wall
the lack of stomach ulcers in horses
having tacit clearance to drop knowledge on the block
ever think the real conspiracy was all the dumb-making conspiracies?
not quite ready to admit that the passion is dead
fat praise might prove less fashion, toxic compensation, than delayed revenue model
a topless maid
cremation urn displayed at the visiting hours, the boy asks “How did they fit mommy in there?”— laughter contagious even in this darkest hour
children stuck whispering for hours in the wake of a parental spat that dipped into screams and shattered glass
the mollycoddled students, even the HR staff and administers who enable them, know not what they do: the transgressors— heretical dreamers, hermitic madmen—are the seeds of progress
a topless maid still making milk
staying together in hope that such bitterness cannot possibly go on
old love letters hidden not as well as thought
be careful: condemning the replica of the home as just an illusion, fake continuity with the past—that helps preserve the illusion that we could have really gone back were the original still there
the right (yang-white) is the guard of custom and excellence and the left (yin-black) is the guard of progress and the persecuted— a dot of white stops black chaos; a dot of white stops white tyranny
an authentic response to calamity, not so learned like with other things, is fists clenched up to the temples
falling in love so easily with someone lost from our youth, something deeper than mere nostalgia seems operative
some are not joking when they think it special— a sign of a divine order—that they have the same pop song in their heads as a friend
are topless maids sex workers?
unable to stomach the prospect of anyone but yourself curing you of mental illness
licking-plates poor
crypts now above ground with all the floods
items varnished just right for continuity with the past
the biggest buyers of self-help are those who already bought self-help
an identity crisis from coming into millions
positing conspiracy helps hide an even scarier reality: widespread incompetence
free enough to joke about the victims, not just the perpetrators
performing CPR only from what you have seen on TV
watching a loved one—just in their face, their eyes—accept that you will not survive before you yourself have accepted it
internet to bully, drones to strike—technology severs us from consequences of our actions that otherwise would have ruined sleep
we—including the military bombers among us—point fingers of disgust at the guy who shoots his neighbor
vision—sometimes warped, sometimes enabled, by narrative
Jesus as a metaphor for the stars that died so we could live
militant merely for questioning
the faith into which you have been born and pressured
frames not only profound experiences in bed and forest
but also, understand, even your attempts to criticize it
those for whom no amount of evidence could convince them of being wrong claiming to be unconvinced by the evidence
methods of synthetic biology mastered by Gaia-first extremists, those who think the human disease ought to be snuffed out
turning around, now at the car, for one last look at your father’s mound—picturing times here, with him, when only grandparents were buried
it makes sense that the longer the marriage the harder to escape the sad funk of divorce, but might marriage go on long enough to disillusion one from such mush?
the intrinsic joy of single-point focus on anything—escaping a rapist included
afraid that you will no longer be able to create if you quit your drug
waiting for the right moment to ask the other couple if they are open for a swap
afflicted with so many labels, a need arises to flee somewhere to become visible to yourself
excluding diversity—below-the-skin diversity of opinion and language—on the pretense of promoting inclusive diversity
is not the right wing, embolismed by children’s books of crossdressing kids, supposed to be the wing that bans art!?
does the gold of the sun more truly belong to the sun than to the gold of the frog struck just right by its slanted rays at twilight?
now a grandmother, the bigot tells her son, “I’m so tired of hating people”
iced-down medallions rented for the music video
listening is a gift of recognizing the other’s existence
turntables set up on the kitchen counter
days of shoplifting whack CDs just to sell them back
not letting the fantasy of how your children will turn out block you from growing with the reality
when the matador kills, the bull does not have the Texas chance to become smarter for next time
negative self-talk seems akin to entering environments of contagious disease, but still: being around the sick in moderation can fortify us
are not doctors prone to assume—especially in an era when you get the scarlet letter “R” if you dare to condemn the hyperviolent-hypersexual poisons of black culture— that black people, even if in their Sabbath finery, can tolerate more pain than whites?
a midnight train whistle, too distant to jar any dozing, falls on ears dreamlike
just a pregnancy test and a cheap bottle of wine in the shopping basket
exhausted by the long silence in the conversation
what is “natural” for us is to expand the universe of what is natural
more realistic this time, his promise is never to hit her again full force
putting the infant to sleep by blowing blunt smoke into its nose and mouth
surgeons cutting through tattoos
blame the holder of the mirror instead of addressing the cracks it reveals
fossils contradicting scripture, in place to test our faith
therapists not allowed to give the teary child the hug it needs
a jazz record spins as a breeze comes through the window, but tomorrow there is work
so desperate for the possibility of humanity beyond mere sleaze, so tired of the fuck-tomorrow scams, that we have entered a time where we choose the company that tells us there are others better
neurotic, after a nap that went into night, about having missing out on something— you remember this feeling from childhood
how do you muster normal airs for the mailman when you rage on social media, telling strangers “I hope one day your fuckin kid gets ass-raped”?
trying to prove otherwise to naysayers at least might result in your religion—no matter its talk of beheading the faithless in a global conquest—actually transforming into one of peace
elevating a hope into a truth
rancid deep-fryer grease deforming the backyard foliage
“God-fearing” online dating photos centered on asses dangled to be pollinated
a revolutionary change in your relationship with mortality
wanting to keep close, unite with—ingest—that to which we are so drawn
scholars itinerating cemeteries for the epitaphs
details in an anti-symbolist poem accruing symbolic weight
dream journals ruin the purgative healing
having a non-alcoholic beer in your hand, label ripped off, to have something in your hand just as much as to avoid explaining that you quit
the mother scrubs the soap but not the boyfriend; changes the diet but not the company she fucks; buys cotton but refuses to buy the truth: grown-man girth, not soaps or sugary drinks, have infected her toddler
stopping up your toilet with clothes to flood the cell
raising your kid to think that to contest you would be, in effect, to contest the Lord
hypersexually stimulated by the very diatribe against a culture of hypersexuality
watching death unfold before you, unfazed while on heroin
how could it be craziness if everyone participates in it?
how can it be addiction if you have endless access?
some say that it is unnatural to extend life, but as humans it seems unnatural not to try to
that God is dead to us is perhaps most manifest when even devout beloveds scoff with skepticism at our claim of a spiritual bond with them
a new world of technology where what causes pleasure is not so harmful anymore
allowed to bring out the humor of the tragedy only after some vague passage of time
heroic doses of hallucinogens from which you do not know if you will ever get back
giggling to yourself has others hopeful that you are fine now, even as it means that you have joined the inner voices
the pilot merely said “The unidentified aircraft moved in a skipping fashion, like if you wung a tea saucer across a pond,” but the press summarized this as “Pilot sees flying saucers"—shaping our eyes to see just that since then
is it not enough that we, and with us meaning, have bloomed from reactions in primordial hydrothermal vents?
“Your advantage over the bigger guy,” the dad said, “is that he does not know you’re willing to kill him and his family”
our people live among the people who cannot afford to take the trouble to replace what our people rob
losing your job, eveb being fined, for accidentally failing to use a preferred pronoun—is that a bad sign?
how often has malice, not sanctity, caused the flagellated to smile in peace through torture, knowing that the tyrant is frustrated by his impotence to snuff out the inner light?
cemeteries sedulously segregated in a futile attempt to stop color from disappearing in the grave
racial confirmation surgery rebuked even by those filled with warm fuzzies hearing of gender confirmation surgery
pissed less about bottles thrown at you than about all the money wasted now that they cannot be cashed in
phones to run to in fear of our own inner world
death-metal shirts from Walmart
heavy-panting CO2 suffocation in a submarine sunken to depths beyond rescue
public school attention scarcity from food scarcity
addicted to the people you hate, the world you are trying to negate
phones disconnecting us from our children and pets right there next to us
love, yes, creates death but death creates so much love—all-you-can-eat crab buffet
bum tans
who is the friend to tell a secret to if your goal is to make it public without having to do it yourself?
summer break cuts short the school-recess project: digging down to China
the curbed elation on the face of the girl in the nest of a shopping cart, clearly—just by that look she has of patient wonder—a good girl never asking for much, as her mom hands her a box of rainbow-swirl ice pops
we would be horrified hearing someone say to another, “You’re just too fucking fat for anyone to like you”— yet we think nothing of it when we say it to ourselves
how is the mother ever to insist that the child, cradled in a lap of her hospiced father for perhaps the last time before cremation, go off to bed?
simulating conversation with her, as if that would make the phone ring
strong-arming life jackets, openly, from the children of some family not your own
cars would get keyed in the days before everyone had basic internet savvy
in the frozen-food aisle holding a Hungry Man, stuck between envying the two for what they have—pregnancy belly and all— and weeping over them for what is to come, your cart squeaks
has white guilt made it so despicable even to mock the prophet in cartoons—or, for real, are we simply afraid of being blown to bits?
if the spread of stupidity (way more subtle than flat Earth or ticks dumped to make us allergic to meat) were not itself tragic enough, the second tragedy is that intelligent people then have to waste time exposing the stupidity
why jump to the conclusion that to dream only of pop icons and products to buy is no longer to dream in archetypes?
that which evolves from us with enough intelligence to mock us with penetration, righteousness, superior to any human artist
shame that you may have somehow contributed to the disease at least distracts you from the physical pain
with the absence of creatures and with the landscape the same on both sides, a head-on image of prison bars leaves us wondering if we are prisoners or imprisoners
doctors taking dictation from medical professionals taking dictation from salesmen
artists needing to be away from the work of other artists
thinking and talking only about work on one’s lunch break need not spell something bleak
technically, the existence of a being worthy of a title such as “God” must be up to that being alone— not something else (other-caused) or nothing (uncaused)
seeing the number of smoking deaths shift live on an electronic billboard
displaying your scars to back your claim that she should leave him
illiterate on the basic tenets of your own religion
being an ethical relativist only in areas convenient to your lifestyle
the soothing splendor of the Muslim call to prayer—the frisson it provokes
funerals have become rushed affairs now that death-cult attacks have us primed to retreat from public spaces
thinking that you were getting invited to a picnic because of who you are as a person, when in truth it ended up being just bait-and-switch evangelism
persistent lack of vitality is depression
defined by being the sort of person with all these books
just one bad trip, and the door is open for others
a touch-starved world where we pay strippers simply to hold us in the back room
impossible to leave the space where you spent your entire life with her
jailing holocaust deniers for being holocaust deniers
feeling bad for noticing gestures indicative of his poverty
feigning menstrual cramps so the master does not come to your quarters
in the red, comparing what we have to what we lost
nonintervention against slavery backed by proud slaves
maggot bloom from a vulva remarkably lippy
ordinances for how low pants can be worn set by people whose dislike of buttocks visuals—not dislike of blacks— trumps even their dislike of government meddling
their products of blind industry pilloried by us, the lives of bees are seen as more of a waste than ours
feeling horrible about being bored by the bible—yawning even through passages where God commands the slaughter of every Canaanite that breathes, including babies nursing at the tit, for their love of bestiality and incest and child sacrifice
feeling good forcing children out of low-wage labor despite thereby leaving them with no other option than to eke out an existence from city dumpsters
the romantic pull towards believing, and accepting, that you will be expunged
that special class of drunk, snared less by the taste and even the stupor than by the path to self-desolation
the proliferation of salesman evangelicals turning people away from smart Christians— worse, even from Jesus Christ himself
not wanting to be the only one with a death sentence, you hope your friend’s results turn out positive
getting your heart broken again so that she will at least be two heart breaks in the past
how romantic it turns out to reveal upfront that you do not want something serious
bless the mothers who teach “If he don’t hit ya, he don’t love ya!”
those for whom singing to themselves is prayer—whether they know it or not
all the gods of once good standing, add them to those of now good standing that believers reject— yeah, we have a lot of dead gods on our hands
farms where the slaughterer, mere machine, has no eyes to peer into the eyes of those it slaughters
trying to argue her back in love with you
seasoned exotic dancers do not get disconcerted when the men, cheering at times, attend to the game on screen
seismic waves of despair so suddenly upon him that he figures it is a problem with his anatomy, discernible to doctors
Asians rubbing the heads of midgets for good luck
sexually transmitted fleas
given the burden to do real work—to walk the walk—after being visited by the deity, it is tempting to doubt the experience
the feeling that silent types know more than they let on
busting out fucking graphs to argue her back in love with you
fatwas against suicide bombings conveniently unreported
chest freezers in mudrooms
all this trendy talk of how mere critical speech does violence—that allows the genuinely violent to chalk up the claims of their victims to hysteria
homes with only two spoons
sincere as pig shrieks
eating a bit more to convince yourself that you did not overeat
tracking tribes for whom footprints are as recognizable as faces
the link between the western surge in SUVs (gas-guzzling manifestos) and terrorism from the Middle East
under tarps in the storage unit rests all the paintings together with an easel and tubes of paint
the passion of your plight undermined by getting to know those from whom you keep a self-righteous distance
imagine the potential horrors if people really did believe in a paradise after death, loving death as the rest of us love life
sensing the dinosaur in the parrot eye
apologizing to people for crying in front of them
sick of seeing family since they mourn you as if already dead
mothers inking names in their children’s clothing for body identification
trying to talk to your father in that half-hour window before after-work stupor
extending forgiveness less because he deserves it than because you deserve peace
simply raising a few fingers from the steering wheel to the man on the corner
staged yawning spreads into genuine yawning among most witnesses
mousetraps and testicles
a Chinese food deliveryman disgusted by the thought that the pizza deliveryman now at his door, dreck of the American Dream, is making eyes at his daughter
deciding what to purchase perhaps is one of the most powerful ways for citizens now to cast their votes
a cigarette after mouthwash
the shock of obese make-out sessions
in love it is not obscene for an imperfect being to expect being taken as perfect
distracting the kids from daily bomb sirens added to the besieged mother’s duties
a hobo squatting out shit in an alley, his great-white-shark eyes unfazed by high beams glowing them like road signs
even more concealed it seems, now that we abandon the distinction between man and deed, is that abyssal stratum in which we are one even with our antipodes
social-media-linked phones in everyone’s pocket reveal not only how brutal and cold police can be but how playful and cognizant dogs and cats and squirrels, even turkeys and spiders, can be
from delusions of patheticness to delusions of grandeur in the span of minutes
denial that your kind has simply edited out the inconvenient parts of scripture
putting the ultimate goal out of mind lest its magnitude stop you in your tracks
let your dying be an occasion to bring out the best in onlookers
prison guards tearing apart your only sanitary pads during a flash cell check
never allowed to offer unsolicited advice to you, even when it comes to protecting you from going a bad way— if he better respected his boundaries, that would a deal-breaker
especially since we are always already shifting our vision to fit the masses, what serious artist would ever decide to shift his vision to fit the masses?
so focused on making a good impression that they repulse others, the lonely further manufacture their loneliness
what do we hope to avoid by labeling all suicides “cases of mental illness”?
exhausting the emotional juice of his bad-touch childhood by writing about it
being stuck up for your cross piece, unsure if it will even help to yell out, “Yo dad—dad it’s me, bro: Mikey!”
the rescuer risked such a risky rescue only because at the time he had been in the process of rescuing himself
too gutless to get on heroin
privatized public spaces
how much others could grow, shake at least that intergenerational grudge against life, seeing a dying done well!
no wonder their self-hatred now: their slogan, fifty years back, was “Never trust anyone over thirty”
the real-life telenovella of our monkey world where encouraging men to express their feelings (fear and love) requires shaming them for being stoic
all the eye-rolling in church—most of us are not stupid, just at bottom pragmatic
with cooperative parenting, the mom is no longer screwed if the man leaves her
worrying about whether our children, away from us, are okay more so because we would feel bad if something happened while we were not worrying about whether they were okay
disincentivized from striving for heaven after it dawned on you that your nagging wife had been dead set on getting there herself
but even a one-year old is going to die anyway
regard the patient more so as a collaborator
having the money to be a functioning addict
do not go to your death as an amateur: attend to dying for the research
the son playing alone at her feet is a call to put her work aside
the more death-phobic the more enticing euthanasia
straight-men pants bulge with subtlety watching gay porn
aggression, at bottom, is not wanting to be where you are
hungry enough that you await not the film’s love or chase scenes but its meal scenes
makeup even after days of no shower
microbial stowaways in space rock
only whenever the parents left his bedside was the child allowed the knowledge that he was dying
looking for an undue button— on the counter, on the floor— after accidently breaking the mug
even though we can never know what is going on in the mind of an other, it still makes sense to ponder what might be up there if we want to influence it
grieving as a way not to hate ourselves for having made this place inhabitable
so much dying, but still no dying-literacy—dying-literary, in fact, dying
anti-anxiety meds for orca mothers when their calves are taken
waiting for the subway rumble to cover the sound of the deed
that cross-century urge to stick nose-and-ear gunk in books
broken-heartedness can signal that you get it, that you are tuned in
so many elders, but tucked out of sight
much more sure that it happened after retellings too many to count
“patient not to be informed of diagnosis”
in the grand theater of fake fury over the president’s hot-mic boast that he “grabs ’em by the pussy,” she recast her soirée flex—worn like Cruella fur over years of milking envy from starstruck primates—as mascara-tear MeToo (ripe with anal embellishment)
living in the time where humans are becoming outdated need not mean living in a time where they have no purpose
perhaps the one who quotes random scripture, as if somehow pertinent to your situation, expects you to read pertinence into it—and so can afford to be random
secrets confessed during the nursing home visit, where mom will not remember
psychotropics open you to the implacable automaticity of inner speech
junk food craved by the junky for being cheap and yet high calorie
people around whom special sides of you come out
comforted to be annihilated before the rest
mere advocacy statistics
sex awkward because you already sexted
father’s hands sudsing your own at the sink
banking on a terminal diagnosis to unlock your inner saint
that age when a child in the antebellum South had to face that some of his best playmates are just commodities—indeed, his very own
king-of-the mountain on dirt mounds excavated from a mine, draglines paused in the air for the holidays
Spiderman in the desert
the nerds now do the killing—via drones
a smoked aroma on the head of the vibrator weeks after the ice-cream-tub marathon
how to trust the doctor, so young, with your dying
the days of sweethearts in wallets rather than cellphones
not seeing that others suffer too means not exiting adolescence
even white male babies have as much value as crippled black ones—it is just a fad
before you shoot up whole theaters on the slide to suicide, remember it is just a fad
play-acting drunk, in a cash-only pinch, because sober sex is too serious
the whore dozing mid vanilla fuck, you only lengthen the ordeal by feeling bad about how long you are taking—either tuck her in or choke your way into the dehumanization that gets everyone off
septic clitoridectomies
embrace of transgenderism even as we reject transracialism
an addict’s promise to the mirror: “Just one.”
the medical prolongation of dying now a norm that would buoy Goebbels
meeting someone for the first time whom you have already beat off to: “Yeah slut!”
the moral alibi of a sofa blanket as you beat off next to the peekaboo toddler
merely because you are a good person you deserve to achieve something unrelated to being a good person?
famous war sites reclaimed by the bloom of flora
an addict’s promise to the mirror: “This will be the last”
even if you were born to be hanged, you could still be drowned first
what will the rest of us miss if you do not die?
their corpses sold for anatomy lessons, commodification— thorough enough to match Prairie-Tribe usage of buffalo— sometimes extended beyond the life of the “nigger slave”
donated bball jerseys that do not quite fit the kids on the block
play-acting drunk because who rides a stranger rubberless on the last train home?
if you are going to drop the n-bomb, do not come sheepish with it—full throat, from below the belly like secure singer
our inner voicing of the obvious to ourselves— that lady is beautiful—is to make it human-real and to carve a space to check if we are correct
no matter what you might hear, it is impossible to be a bad house guest of the World-All—unless, of course, we lower the bar enough to count spiders and lions bad
we could at least trust that the one who goes psycho does not work, or at least does not think he does, for the man—and so we elected the untrustworthy
would you be willing to hand your friend the kill pills were he to request them?
for whom, seriously, are all these photos interrupting our experiences?
play-acting drunk beneath Mom’s squirting cowgirl to spare her at the breakfast table
our constant rerun of some shame, although as normal in private as flying dogs in dreams, would look insane broadcasted on a news ticker
the dying-battery warble of cassette music
the body of the porn star seeming cartoonish up close in real life
the herb brought back that infectious laugh of the four-year-old
playing into the narrative of your opponents by rejecting the entire kind of which they are only a dinky species
shared interests have you believe the youth are on your side
the loved one etched so perfectly in your dream
at least you gave someone something to talk about
sold an air guitar with case not included
Botox says “I’d rather be a fuckbot cadaver than someone you can ignore”
if labor is entrenched as unendurable when epidurals become the norm, imagine what happens with death when physician-assisted suicide becomes the norm
enough people around that no one intervenes to stop the mugging
crazy we say are those who verbalize inner thoughts as do children in play
killed for being raped: out of sight out of mind
so much lying from the administration that the people do not even care anymore
men hung as ornaments from the photo tree
imagine blasphemy being a criminal offense
“I’m a good person,” you insist while mewling about not getting the job
teens pleasuring themselves to primetime actresses
on grounds that the political objective is most important, pre-planned answers to questions—questions different from those even asked—are given in good conscience
requesting help with the dishes as a pretense, thinly-veiled but too sad to recognize, for company— and even for a few seconds of shoulders touching
nurtured in nothing but nugatory talk (weather and sports), now it is easy at least to feel at home among strangers
cigarettes extending the fire season
drugs to prop up the withering charisma on which everyone was addicted
however noble the activities, escaping into them does not change that you are complicit in the family’s disintegration
suspicion that community-college teachers and male nurses are ball-droppers—inadequate, perhaps even possessing a criminal record—disseminates even among themselves
might it help to remember that the so-called “ugly cry” is human-all-too-human?
a timorous look over the shoulder before unshelving the self-help book
the dead hand still warm
patronage on one condition: that he be painted—just in the background, of course—in the resurrection scene
needier for your attention the more absorbed you are in what fails to involve them
to fail to use your nonX platform of privilege to speak against racism against X people is itself racism, and yet to speak too loudly is to elevate your own voice over X-people as if—in an appalling display of racism—you feel you have the right to speak for them
awed humble before Mt. Fuji when above us the whole time was that colossal void of black
car speakers from a base head—your uncle
claiming you did not cheat since what you creamed does not count as a person
a prostitute to question, to converse with
the tossed cat unballs midair
what you presume is required for life
known brothels low key in the hood
prison PTSD from years ever on edge
the black applying for membership in the Jewish country club
not going to the hospital in fear of being deported for breaking in
testicles snared in an ancient suckling reflex
not wanting to talk, express feelings—not wanting to enter tiresome circuits prefabricated (by TV)
too vain an intellectual to appear the fool for the sake of song
self-soothing behaviors frightening to others
the cliché of the public world, “it’s just a cat,” did ease some of the private pain
monitored and baited so sedulously in a society where no one is hiring, count on the prisoner’s return
school shootings will lessen if you welcome the nerd
the thud rhythm of a sneaker in the drier
most factory farmers are not sadists, but neither were most slavers
getting back with the girl whom your friends—each of them full of “finallys,” and all with the same but independent stress front-loaded on the “F”— said they were glad you dumped
“Wait up. Let me get the shit straight. You telling me only this nigga gettin high? Nah for real. I paid to watch this naked-ass shaman nigga get all fucked up—when I’m the mahfucka over here with the issue?”
only the most antisocial can avoid giving the psychoanalyst what is required: mommy-daddy answers
would you rather kill a toddler—cliff-yeeted post anal-pump cum—and forget (along with everyone else) that you did, or not kill it but spend the rest of your life with the false memory that you did—sex sleeve murder-blur creampie included?
schools with major freeways in their backyards
sneaking out liquor bottles on garbage day—“Hey Jan!”
your refusal to play along becomes the evidence used to condemn you
the honeypot strategy in religious dating: tempt the self-proclaimed virtuous man with sex, pussy fingers to his nose after dinner; get rid of him if he goes after it
chucking stones at trucks because they are polluters or traffickers, not because what the news says: the drivers are Mexican
hunch bettors reaching out to family, after a disappearance, for loans with promises to pay back the amount from last time—“and more!”
doctors refuse to treat a man who wants to increase his manliness, but the fuckers jump all over—as if their livelihoods and reputations depended on it—treating a woman who wants to become a man
every supposition is rooted in how we sense, think, behave merely as humans
inserting the tampon for your lover
learning who someone is by what passages they underline
suing Mom for having you
the cringey air of chicanery in the thunderous speeches of performers: Hitler, MLK
canned dog food for the parents; something normal, something Kraft, for the kids
mistaking comprehensive depression for a stroke, unable to pull yourself out of bed after the usual energy reset
the regenerative nectar of rest emphatic in lions, sprawled out for full days with sea-kelp tails
there would be no safety even were there no desire—put the ladder to her window
not telling loved ones of your illness, unfit to bear counterfeit flourishes of care
the hope that figuring out the cause of your depression gives you the cure
attire less arresting than the desolate eyes of the runway husk
core commitment to inspiriting those of whom you will be envious if your efforts happen to work
operated on by a doctor, tempted— by faith in the efficacy of prayer— to rely on prayer over training
the inability to create the illusion of toughness, of pending death, required to commit the stickup
anally contracting HIV while Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” plays in the background
untanned regions mistaken for bathing suits
voluntold to do extra work—the extra work now in the form of right-think modules
midget heads born that size
comics lost to sitcoms
justifying your piece by saying that the art is in the struggle to interpret it
sheep with a bah about them suggesting openness to being fucked by man
the violence of the chest compressions at least reassure onlookers to the CPR that paramedics did all they could
a work so great that most are afraid of the tremendous feelings it might awaken if they open themselves to it
a grueling shift from the primal need to keep your child alive to the need to help it die with minimal suffering
good looks transporting you into sinister sexual territory
like a jarring word in a poem, the torn canvas jolts us from the painted fantasy back into the mortal realm of materiality
full of guilt for being unproductive, gazing upon the tree that feeds us, we reach out for the smartphone
put on the right robes and family, friends, will no longer lose sleep over your doing nothing all day
bittersweet remembrances of bygone commercial consumption
adults ashamed of sleeping with cuddle objects: blankies, teddies
children chastised by the “feminized” for sketching spectacles of monsters decimating cities and their citizens
savoring a depressive episode, as one savors a flu, in that it gives an excuse to take time away from responsibility
sexual violence as a torture tactic cannot explain reverse cowgirl double penetration of her corpse
sex lube in the neon fanny pack
priests did not need microscopes to know the deadly horrors of anal sex and pork— do not be so quick to scoff at your elders
reminders of how the gut has misled before stoke our hope that it is wrong about others seeing through our latest veneer with ease
send sensitive artists, poets, to space too— not just those military men trained to be rational, unmoved, cool under pressure
the city’s outdoor fountains for hobo baths in the lavender light of dawn
knitting an impressive personality out of her impressive appearance
an oil painting of a mirror soiled by months of toothpaste splatter, that aerosol mystery of stroke vigor and porcelain rebound—its bottom half a haze speckled with chalky plaques, some dimensional enough perhaps to count as barnacles
exploiting in art the safe distance of similar historical happenings to comment upon present ones
an upstanding employee of an abusive corporation gets canned if he attempts to mainline his values, but what happens when we all plunge the syringe?
longing for societal collapse, perhaps less from a drive to die (and kill along the way), and more from a drive to live what we sense will be lives of purpose and care
wheeled to your seat to beat the security line, staying in character for the other passengers will mean being unable to get up to pee—but you planned for that
when keeping secrets starts costing too much, one response is just to be openly fucked up— with an attitude of “What’re you gonna do?”
the face of one in love—cozy in posture with a slight smile—viewing back the one whom she knows to be viewing her in love
if there is such a thing as your body and it is only the cells with your DNA, you are a minority in your own space
pick burrs and ticks off your pet in hunched lullaby like our groom-bent chimp moms; chill the watermelon in the creek swirl for electrolyte blessings like cotton-sun slaves; hug a big stone and moon-bounce along the swim-hole floor like fire-lung Indian kids
with their having lived so long with someone that special, you almost want to tell the grieving family “Congratulations” instead of the “I’m sorry for your loss” drawn from your lips
imagine if private prisons were paid, not simply for the number of bodies, but for how many do not come back
tougher sentences for kids of the judge’s race
years of nail-biting confusion about whether to stay, finally dissipated into the flushing relief of realizing he had dug in too deep not to stay
since your limitations—human, male, blind, one-armed— in many cases do define you, the saner and more effective move is to appreciate the way in which they also un-limit you
since we no longer even make as much as our parents, do not be surprised when we no longer even live as long as them
the fixation for sterility is a fixation to evade death, but only in a vacuum— pure death—is sterility ever achieved
welcome, you faggots, to our white-authors-can-only-write-white-characters era— recidivistic, insular, lonely (and yet, in a knife twist, packaged as “progressive”)— where trauma must be time-stamped and notarized before it can speak through us
to keep alive some semblance of belonging, he clings to manners even with no one else at the table
but whose midnight are we talking, Denver Tokyo, when we say that Jesus is coming back on the first tick of the new millennium?
condoms now the norm even in Tijuana donkey shows
missing her even when she is around
a play where characters discover they are in a play
the unspoken but lived lie of a mantra that money will insulate you
a lot about who a woman is by the underside of her toilet seat
the worth of what you do—your art, your gift—recognized only by ugly women
Broadway may not make one gay, but it sure does usher you out on a red carpet
searching out, with the euphoric optimism of a geek, the mother who put you up for adoption and finding her unmoved: “And so, like, what you want from me? You seen the fuckin price of gas?”
when the miasma of depression dissipates you can finally become sad at things really to be sad about
the weirdo no longer invited us to exasperation and revulsion once we labeled him “special needs”
criticized for an artistic process mechanical and detached, still his work seems distinctly his own
sneaking the flask into every dry venue—libraries, school plays, children’s museums
it is impossible for us to exist estranged completely from that of which we are completely a function—indeed, to say that the divine light reaches even into hell undersells the point since everything expresses the source
pointing out how he has it nowhere near as lousy as you do only makes him feel more pathetic and committed to suicide
see the niceness of difference— the niceness, say, of no hair around which ribbons can be wound
conditioned to see nature as endless enmity, even as cameras cannot help but capture fox cubs at play and seals sunning on a rock
fighting back the urge to shift your body yet again—even when not high on weed
to say that some suffer eternal torture, even for a finite evil, perhaps is to say that God is not ultimately successful
not content with just planting the seed evangelicals gleek salivation like a cobra in wait for the cumshot conversion of the atheist
art erotic enough to draw bipartisan ire
struggling to appear at ease in your solitary night out
is she a mere child to think she can get away with it: sitting among the AA circle with rum-spiked coffee, or is something inside thirsty for her to be called out?
thermostat battles with the spouse
itches coming when it is inappropriate to scratch
sex with the toupee on
looking over to your girlfriend to see if the man grinding on you from behind is worth you remaining in place
drinking your father’s liquor, despite the likelihood of a beating, in order to numb the beatings
is it not more nettling when someone tries to make the least amount of noise, mindfully munching each potato chip in slow motion?
the part of the addict that says to himself, “This time at least don’t get as bad as before”
but at whom is it better to gaze than at a woman too independent to be a mere subject for the gaze?
little children in late-night supermarkets
the loss of the pursuit that once filled your every thought
drawn to polyamory merely to see if you can stand ego devastation
preparing your own paints and working on a typewriter as an homage to the masters
she suffered from excessive religiosity until the cysts in her temporal lobe, which would have made her a mystic or a witch at a different time, were excised
considered grumpy and snobbish merely for insisting that—all other things being equal—the more we want it to be true, the higher the standard for entry
finding a lump, uninsured
inspired by trends without wholly surrendering your style
Coca Cola in the tribal baby bottle
daredevil rescues of worldly goods from the lick of flame
cowardly courage-teachers
at least everyone remembers you when you are a midget
what is the safest way to open up to the risk posed by the alien?
staring in the mirror, staring in the fridge—what will that change?
fixed planets with a permanent day side
the whore was the only one you could be honest with
the addictive high of combat, of getting shot at
peak experiences, where we lose ourselves for concise moments in the zone of doing, perhaps afford us earthly slurps of heaven
circling the mouth of the c-sectioned newborn all up into vulva would be best, but hang-ups have us just dab it with a q-tip of maternal flora
suggesting, as it does, that any emotional attempt to convey the horror would fall short of its aim, the clinical detachment of the depiction evokes it all the more
curators rejecting the artist’s plea to fix his illustrious painting
ridiculing one’s culture simply by depicting it in art, as if it were obvious to one’s culture how ridiculous the culture really is
having resorted now to penciling in time to do nothing
you would think that people so long in solitary would speak, when finally around others again, with cheer rather than with such flattened affect
faced with oblivion (or, more accurately, subblivion), why not jump into love with open arms even after heartbreak?
the joy of seeing a conviction disconfirmed
junk withdrawal in unemployment offices
affluenza
leaving for the sake of returning
we beat ourselves up for failing to engage— if at all—with books, which long held the junk position smartphones do now
seeing that you are not good enough despite hard work—let that open you to bask in the glory of those who are
with so much being potentially contagious, consider working into your life someone disciplined in self-improvement and joy
construing atheists as those who believe in nothing
high-hungry enough to wring the MacGyver out of you
you should be backing off (as you think you are), but by involving her in the nuances of your life you have learned new ways to love her
babbling on the brink of death
jealous of the fetus, whose kicks your therapist allows you to feel, because it swallows her attention
scoffing at the desire to conserve national identity even as you will never marry outside of Islam because its beliefs and practices are “your soul”
wanting the one you love to love you not just for your faith, but still acting as if you are not of that faith even though it would win her
seeing that you are not good enough despite hard work—let not that open you to bask in the stench of mediocrity
the door-opening beauty of being caught in the world wave of broken hearts from which so much art has flowed
those concerned with flourishing should wonder not whether to lie, but when and how much to lie
relieving those regarded as subhuman of their petroleum reservoirs on grounds that they would not know what to do it with anyway
as if viewers would not know what to feel without it, and helping to make that true, symphonic music floods each scene to reinforce emotion already on the screen
arranged marriages extremely successful when divorce is a death sentence
face studded with rusted hooks (the newest one popping through just under her eye), it was hard not to see the fish as a war general, and—medal-drunk creatures as we are, exaggerators and carnival gawkers—it was hard not to place a few more before release
after just the first sip, the teen learns of the possibility to be free from the anxiety thought normal
ashram Wi-Fi
the blind feeling out messages in unplanned bumps
equatorial tanning salons
sea-salt beards
waiting for the I-changed-my-mind call
male benevolence as the only assurance of a woman’s wellbeing before the gun is a lie
to become enraged at the man who killed your child is to let him wound you twice—unless, of course, rage dips deep enough into analgesic eros to be worth any time
the one in whom you wanted—you needed— to confide about your pain from the divorce was the very one from whom you divorced
the task persisting in the face of certain defeat, that is the story of everything—everything but the eternal core of the self-sprung wellspring
going into an experience thinking you already know what it is to have it—the tragic gift of teachers, coaches— means being blocked from having it only in one sense
a plastic bag caught in a cactus, unable to do its wind dance
ethnic restrictions in an open marriage
desperate for the world to be better once you create a child
despair over so much time wasted on religion is a sunk-cost pull to come back
youths yelling on the subway, itching to rage out were we to say “Quiet down”
African cab drivers not wanting to pick up African American customers
failing to profile by race or gender, or by power of locution or whatever, is a slander to the Holy Ghost that gifted us wisdom since we were ocean critters, but it is also a slander to remain closed to exceptions to the rule or to the call to revise the rule
how do you not feel scared when experience— the boots on the ground of Locke, of Hume— has trained you to think they are dangerous?
what you know to be just a gorgeous robot will still unbalance you with adrenaline even better than jump scares in a horror film
rather than planning out how to act, circling what-ifs, trust that you will handle the situation— terrible advice for the antipode of the worrywart
falling for your own pillow talk—meant to make the asymmetry lean the other way
fancy words put reality at a distance, but the richness of reality deserves being approached from all perspectives
dwelling on what will happen next helps us prepare and ultimately keeps us hooked
to life, but it takes us out of the moment—well, since we are always in the moment,
better to say “out of the sanctioned moment”—and opens us to anxieties as well
depression is a con-artist: it cons us into normalizing three naps and makes us ashamed to admit having been its victim
tester shots of Fentanyl to see if this batch will result in wooden chest
stuck for life in what you are so good at
the game of sitting at the feet of a guru wrapped in a blanket
your own child killed in the school massacre do you step up as that neighbor parent for survivors, or do you avoid eyes with them?
that greenlight question: what does it matter to throw away a mere day of sobriety?
squeamish about tapping phones and going into war at least while the responsibility for protecting the members of your country do not fall on you
feeling invulnerable to cheating on your spouse makes you think deep friendships pose no threat, enabling that subtle slide to an emotional affair
burpees in solitary
digging out the pockets of alley life
too wasted by substances or life
to be responsive to your kicks
towns from the past constructed— payphones, vintage Firebirds— for those stuck in that decade
hypnotizing yourself to believe the lie
mere safety regarded as happiness among immigrants
the chemicals we must add to us to be who we are
having capitalized on a calamity does not mean having planned it
underwear toe-flicked into the hamper with pride
survival competitions among robots
professional humiliators hired by the high powered
cry bullies enabled on campus
hearing “Mommy, what’s that?” when the that is you
is it more the overgrown weeds or the one buried below them that calls you to the cemetery?
buzzers, edible panties, to buy their way out of a bed body-bagged by cowgirl blubber
prescription opioids from family and friends—dinner-party medicine cabinet
a blind man sniffing his wad of toilet paper as if brown were his favorite color
in a day where being used has become taboo, worse is when no one wants to use you
citing prison letters, crazed from solitary confinement, as grounds for parole denial
in the plutonic depths of a mine sucking at air too thin for flame
roofied into the deboned pliability you had not felt since the changing table
words are part of reality, but why be autistic when you hear things like “He was more concerned with words than with reality”
a toxic culture where desiring innermost intimacy is being desperate, and where being desperate is worse than being either a slut or a prude
our demand for a spouse who can provide home and security (build the fence) and yet novelty and adventure (smash the fence), all while being our bestie— if only we sat more around fire we could return to sharing partners like bonobos
midgets worried around dogs
the bum toll at every off ramp
politicization of high-resolution visualizations of the early fetus
a spinster’s prop of delusion, the bridal veil graces the fat neck in the mirror
your lover kisses the childhood burns— the yardage of melted candle, pink and peach— that have yet to let stop driving you insane
delivery men, cashiers, and so on fighting mental atrophy through on-the-job decisions that make them feel important: giving extra napkins, small-talking, offering to double bag
advocating minimalism in shoe sole on grounds that one remote tribe runs barefoot, but ignoring the show-off rite-of-passage aspect of their practice
enervating depression naps versus invigorating buoyant naps
even if self-hatred is learned, does that mean it is uncalled for?
desperate to find some sort of neglect behind the sudden death of the infant so as not to face that yours can be snatched up too
that inner Zeus inhabiting you appears only in theater, before an audience in the semi-dark
unable to stand that beaming nonstop in the guru’s eyes, you tell yourself it is just an act
lingerie, color-shrieking pieces polar opposite to thong skimp, devoured by the gut
what has come with the advent of the shame movement?
but the movement of shaming people for not being “in the present moment” targets not only anxiety about the future but even free-floating daydreams
painted cakes may very well satisfy real hunger— not just aesthetic hunger, but hunger hunger too: the hungry lose themselves, fantasizing in salivation
posters stapled over each other on telephone poles—tooth and claw red here too
talking over the silence with an other, intimacy becoming too intense
semen threatened to lurch from the unzippering dam, loaded as he was
what you would be like—other than like a young child—if you did not hate yourself?
the welcomed (muscle) imbalance of the specialist (athlete)
incentives to exaggerate statistics to sustain the victim culture
thoughts about people deaf to your existence cropping up during momentous experiences that otherwise have nothing to do with them
carpet into which snow has never to melt nor mud to spread
the torture of exposing only testicles in the summer sun
pockets deep enough to keep lawns watered even in our world state
insecure about your home cooking
how much of you it shows that you read birdsong not as emanations of “I’m the one to be loved” but rather as wails of “Who, oh who, will love me?”
it takes a limited vision to see American architecture, or even American cheese, as lacking deep history—limited enough, especially if coming from its own people, to be a diagnostic of autoimmune rage against the boredom of well-to-do-ness
the wish is as big as could be, and yet her breath merely tickles the dandelion
a bird flying in reverse
creeks choked by a sudden surge of melting ice
vigilant about clearing roof snow—or is it Dad’s distraction from the obesity inside?
facing that history could go on without her (only one person, after all) opened her to surrender herself to that one door—opened her, that is, to shut doors that, kept open, kept her world large only on the surface
that point where more love has faded than will appear
he could astound you with wisdom if ever you could lure him into conversation
bullying campaigns against bullying keeps bullying alive, which is the point
what might happen, what “humanoid crush error,” to the toddler intolerant of the robot’s heartless snatching of the toy with which he was playing?
an arm around the shoulder, standing in a hollowed room that has not echoed footsteps like this since move-in day
telling yourself that it is hope for tomorrow, rather than cowardice, that stops you from killing yourself
completely naked little boys covering their breasts with crossed arms, hands clutching their shoulders
beautiful landscapes failing to uplift us even beyond the screen
machinists with fingers too thick—thick as thumbs—to work a fast food register
out of breath hordes wobbling their way to the tourist attraction
caricatured portraits in which capturing likeness has been taken seriously
a painting of a map used as a map
erecting a wall around who you love in the least has who you love contemplating how to escape
it makes sense to try to keep your privilege, but imagine blocking out other groups even when they pose no threat to you—and no, this is not the black-white cliché creampied into skulls by colleges and Disney: the asymmetry leans the other way
and yet being hysterical around the dying may distract the dying
knowing that you have to be the one to leave this town even as you know you will never feel so tied to a place
the question, “Why worry about the health of one already condemned?,” can be reworded, of course, as: “Why worry about anyone’s?”
the worst that could happen is that you die sooner—a rule with exceptions
it being sanctioned takes enough edge off to render vagina fetishism—common among straight men—not quite fetishism
unearthing purpose-giving liberation to be bitter in righteousness from the false belief that your rapist was morally responsible
difficulty letting go of the preoccupying rituals, the perfect control of everything in your space, once you are forced out of solitary confinement
understandably construed (like gardens) as the pineal gland between man and nature, what are we to make of dancing being so associated in contemporary minds with boozing?
the conscious decision to change how to say the family name
milk crate night stand
might vagina fetishism run subterranean enough to have him convinced of being straight?
as soon as he enters the shower your boyfriend’s phone rings, there on the bed, even though it is off
living one furnished room to another
those assertions false in the sense that they lack truth-value
“If Imma be miserable no matter what, a nigga might as well drink—sheit!”
nervous about getting too used to being alone
the rage of a drunk father was an occasion for the boy to learn the woods
if people are forbidden to voice their prejudices, then how can we work them out?
just as gringos fall into a groping Spanish— “No lefto turno”—when speaking to Mexicans, humans used to fall into deadpan talk when talking to 80s robots
every scenario can be seen as miraculous: how can one explain your bed sheets being wrinkled exactly as they are this morning?
since those who fall for one conspiracy theory tend to fall for so many others, best would be to endorse your pet conspiracy and reject the rest
that side of town where people cough all night or are kept up by those who cough all night— everyone rooting for maximal mucosal yield
the cheapest daycare
junkies envying your vascularity
“free kittins,” misspelled on the box, outside the supermarket
graffiti beautiful enough no longer to be a misdemeanor
barely off the streets but buying jewelry with the extra cash
never having land lines even when people still had land lines
drunks belligerent about not being drunk
that the dead haunt the living is one thing, but even more disturbing is that they are reduced to doing so merely by making doll eyes blink for night janitors
“shyster psychic” is not a pleonasm like “tuna fish” or “pin number” if shysterism requires conscious awareness of being a fraud (self-hypnosis can cut rather deep)— and yet the bond remains as tight as renate and chordate if any awareness suffices
bird-feeder electrified for the quarreling squirrels
an amygdala event that divides your memory into before and after
ashamed enough of a depressive episode that you say you have the flu
okay with getting sex only because you are a fetish
doing a college major structured to shame you
life gets ruined when you agonize over the inevitable subblivion— and the same goes with love
killing war enemies is acceptable, but taking a shit or piss on them while huddled in a corner is not?
safe injection sites
cattle fed candies that did not make the cut and unsold leftovers from Halloween
robots counseling you to self-knowledge
it is important not to let false stereotypes get out of hand, so—if we really are going to play the race game—always remember which race commits the most school shootings
the scholar’s bane: the desire to be right trumping the desire to cultivate happy relationships
were we all psycho, we could play with our kids without any need to dehumanize the people that we wipe out or even just perform surgery on
the experimenter’s bad vibes may be preventing the mystic from bending the spoon in the lab— but what is most rational to believe even if so?
many waiters are willing to share tips about how to avoid paying—walking out during big parties, say—if only you ask
wondering, some days, whose life this is
shocked when mere fry cooks or janitors, seen as too lazy to aspire for the American Dream, prove perspicacious about art and fine wines
faking a need to hit the bathroom first, and then banging back the half-full drinks left behind after the restaurant gathering
arresting the guys that you grew up with, and then their children too
absconding with the sou-sou
town-hall rage
undressing her even as she warns that she cannot love you
the professor failed merely because she failed to open herself to vulnerability
medical emergencies causing you to swerve
parking-lot revenge rape after a heated town-hall meeting
survivalist-pullout manufacturing the very erosion of social stability feared
part of you desires that bond with your spouse destroyed when you came out as gay
freed from a state of mind through describing it in writing
live feeds of the sky in the monitor windows of survivalist bunkers
not just terror, straight anger, at the impermanence
creating art on a desert island
one-generation street drugs are killer
waking up to the local news reporting your apartment on fire
guidebooks to foreign destinations better than the actual journey: all anticipation, no bodily discomfort
the perks are good, no doubt—but it has to suck, in the early morning hours at least, having won top prize only because you self identify as black
deep in a hallucinogenic trip or deep in a bout of depression— worried you will be stuck this way
the burden of the call to act is an incentive not to recognize the problem
that gray-space of when to stop CPR
disappointment with the travel for which we so longed
sitting on her couch, the ghost tries in vain to hug his grieving wife
but what would become of you, your art, were you no longer despairing, neurotic?
the importance of mere lipstick among the women in that city besieged by snipers and bombs
in front of your dead friend’s house tossing a ball, almost expecting him to burst through the front door
grateful for the child you wished was never born
to show a strong wage gap between the two groups, ignore the differences in their typical professions— performance studies versus petroleum engineering
a losing struggle to stop slipping into daydreams about your new crush
that they do it only for the money does not prove that the work is exploitative
a goal of getting laid, in real life
loogie hocking banned in Hong Kong, where throat clearing has become almost a white noise in the smog air
unsure whether this is your last lap or second-to-last, are you one to run it as if it were not the last?
if you attend to how much everyone checks their own face in mirrors, would you check yours so much?
she has budded enough that you feel uneasy with the old talk to her parents of how their hands will soon be full
staying together for the kids but then learning, when they leave, all the strife was because of them
their release captured by news cameras in the lot, some of the first-graders skip as parents scan to find their child alive
not mailing that letter, weeks in the making, after learning that she has a husband
places where the mere attempt at GED classes is a point of boast to older relatives, but something that you hide elsewhere (not to seem too uppity)
show-me-where-this-is-illegal thinking versus would-this-be-okay- to-subject-my-mother-to? thinking
burying someone alive gives them time to think about what they have done, but will they use that time otherwise?
figuring out which of you gets which friends after the breakup
unable even to visit the place where you were—or think you were—once so happy
the view from even a balcony makes our activities seem antlike
scrutiny incited by that very gesture of looking down and away to evade scrutiny
waking up standing up
erectus ancestors who smiled at faces as infants were more likely to enjoy protections, and so now infants smile at faces and, for extra reasons, adults—in anxiety too buried to seem like anxiety—spot faces even where none exist (as in clouds and star clusters)
even if the light at death is just retinal flaring or the overhead ER light, why must that be incompatible with that light being Love?
counter narratives concerning how the protest was staged
sheepish about flaming the mouth of a pipe shared with someone with HIV
with slipping clicks, the dog snap-snaps at pussy spray with the chomps of hose play, those throaty sounds— that of the Hebrew “Chaim”: Hahyim, Hahyim, Hayhim
marijuana as a gateway drug when resultant legal penalties increase a teen’s negative stress
the more our economy becomes cashless the more the preference shifts for drugs that can be purchased with credit cards
filching from the lemonade-stand as you help the little girl make change
lovers exploring positions
fathers who embolden us to steal from our employers
grandfathers who give us pain killers to sell to high school peers
appearing happy from far away
only concerned with learning how to take off and fly, never how to land
equipped with a rich database of common concerns, the psychic blitzes you with observations from leading questions—but you only attend to the rare hits
retirement as loss of the busy work that helped to block out the pain of not going after our dreams
confronted each and every day with either the pain of discipline or the pain of regret, the lure of drugs and divine providence is clear
fantasy conversations with your crush
taunted, and groped even, once the delivery uniform is on
doing something you hate with someone you love
thankful for the disease for helping you prioritize
female suicide bombers cloaked by their babies
actionable intelligence
having features that you dislike in yourself makes him worse
local bank loans, big ones, where all you need to bring is a white handshake—that is not as horrible as it might seem when you consider the solid cultural reason for the profiling
neither loving who you are such that you fail to strive for those goals nor loving who you are only once you achieve those goals, but loving who you are at every step as you strive for those goals
your face buried in your hands even in public—how did it look before you were born?
the surprise of hearing the doctor announce that you are dead when—brain overwhelmed with electricity—you feel so alive, so aware
coming across a rock jam, electric guitars shrieking, in a jungle village
the bliss of losing control
so many of the things to which we cling in our lives (toys from our youth, say—at the time, our whole lives) become irrelevant to us—and so will our whole lives
everything a man does—just “Hello,” even—is a candidate nanoaggression, but is that so bad given history?
what hint might we take from seeing all these slouched over men in hats who look just like our dead fathers?
all those moments so memorable to the parent, disappearing beyond the child’s recall
the rapey factor of so much animal sex
the danger of loving utterly
is it that you are glad to see the loved one released from suffering in death, or more that you are glad to be released from the chore?
to avoid being racist you must strive to understand the lived experience of X people, and yet thinking you could really understand such a thing is one of the most insensitively racist gestures a nonX person can make
able to masturbate because of them, hands free us from the raging drive that allows little time to name things
mothering the dying
a flipside of sorrow in the delightful solitude requisite for so much art
is your first reaction that funereal makeup humanizes or dehumanizes the dead?
the same mom who would be jailed in our clown world for letting her sixteen year old date his former teacher (only after several serious sit downs)—she would be venerated with tears for her “bravery” if she “affirmed” his decision to get his penis chopped off
social-security benefits in near reach, but still playing I’ll-show-you-mine with little girls in the neighborhood
Kevlar dashikis
Santa drooping in deflation on the lawn
threatened to be left because of your affair, only then do you see that your affair was mere dessert unable to sustain you
the superstition, the madness, of opening the fridge expecting a different result
flies in outdoor porn
paper hoods for the rap video shoot
wondering whether the kid is going on and on simply because he is a kid, or because he senses our desperation for some sort of distraction
employing for the phone sex line only those who can make their voice the default: white
parents who push a dogma on their kids with such desperation and yet who say that they love them unconditionally
citing spanking as integral to black culture as grounds for it not counting as abuse
losing touch with all hobbies
a green card marriage blooming into love
braingasm
the key to someone’s heart can break in the lock
should we even call it “determination” if rain washes it away?
it was a scheme, crunching parking lot ice like the crème brûlée after our first dinner, to ensnare you with childhood nostalgia
defending their nude shots on grounds of being proud of their bodies, even though they are proud only under circumstances outside of which they would feel shame
launched into a dimension of trauma and dying, should we not be more loving of ourselves (even of our faults)?
not knowing how real your good health is
within temples of worship, rare places where each face is empty of demand upon one another, each face is full of demand
reunions—high school, sitcom, whatever—to learn how your other selves are doing
occasions where it would be too blatant a falsity to say “Everything will be all right”
the feeling of having failed as a parent in not having protected your child from such blatant sexual molestation
sleepwalking through life at least ensures a contrast against which even the quotidian can flare—call out—its stupendousness
the fuzzy line between what you want to see and what you see
that people do not wish for a million on their deathbed does not mean that having it during life is empty
in that last day of freedom between sentencing and incarceration, how does one pretend to have a good time?
pool baptism electrocutions
pillow talk of saying that your pillow talk is not really pillow talk
running away from what we keep waiting for, as if we loved the waiting more
mowing their lawn all summer as restitution for flashing their daughter
do not forget the cum dribble down the front of the toilet bowl too
doctors asking the family if they would accept the cessation of CPR
police asking the man, who called them, what he did to piss his wife off
enough mushrooms to commune with what you feel is the buzzing life force of a tree, but what is in truth just the drone of high-voltage power lines above that tree
policers of machinated races adamant that her passing for x disrespects real x people
deliverymen taking that shame walk through the house party, teens plastered and geared up to taunt
finalities—from crystalline verses to reductive theories—feed those frightened (by finality)
the day might come when, if pulled over drunk, the woman driver can get off simply by saying that her passenger—a man—gave her the drinks
are the clothes that take you over changing you or, rather, allowing some inner you to come out?
seasoned enough no longer to panic about getting too attached, you panic about her getting too attached now
trigger-hand trepidant during his maiden purse stickup, he rapes to save face
famous people disguised for a chance to observe people again
striving to get married before forty lest everyone know that you are gay
happy memories of togetherness tainted after the relationship has failed
pity all these suckers who trust their stunted imagination, yes—but also all their ghosts reduced to tipping brooms over, scurrying like squirrels in incest attics; all their aliens reduced to trampling corn as lamely as night hoaxers, fisting the occult’s wettest groupies
insisting that he can never become a woman because he has not lived as a woman indicates, inadvertently, the way for becoming a woman
miming on a pier
the smartest brain ever crushed with a rock
beware especially of xenophobia that masquerades as diversity, equity, inclusion
realizing your love for someone whom you did not know you loved is often code for what can be a boon: lowered expectations
insisting that she can never become black because she has not lived as a black indicates, inadvertently, the way for becoming black
home can be as thrilling as travel abroad with the right perspective, but just imagine one who travels abroad with that perspective
everything about a system (some religion, say) can be completely rational even if carved out from the irrational (virgin conception, say)
obsessives derailed by displacements of familiar objects
the park dog chases a ball tossed from the festivities and into your loneliness
anxious to prove that they are much better than their ancestors, the new whites—in their efforts to undo the crippling effects of the old whites—solidify the narrative that blacks are inferior
hookers aware in their bones of which passers to ignore
how come astrology does not refer to celestial objects discovered after Ptolemy?
transwomen scrutinized to see if they have the right features: bone structure, voice, facial hair
being utterly terrified of God, a feature presented as a proud happy-highlight by so many women on dating sites
antidepressants because you are a closet gay, help at least in that they decimate your sex drive
behind a book on the subway, in wait for the brown skin girl to shift some— any—section of her fine self
thinking that suffering from one thing will—and should—spare you from suffering from something else
merely by cataloguing without criticism various pseudoscientific gropes for easy magic (in what amounted to a menagerie of unhinged credulity), believers found her nasty— neutral observation having forced them to confront the skepticism in their own heart
marinated as long as they were in the Judeo-Christian morality (where being a victim grants the superiority of innocence), can you blame blacks—in a nation made wealthy on their backs—for overplaying the victim card (even if it means remaining victims)?
pleats of hormonal-tween tuberose thwacked with a loogie of middle-aged halitosis
sketches letting us see again textures—dramas and vibes, grit—effaced by photos
first-hand—first-tongue—study of tribal microbiomes—ass—untainted by modernity
cut out of your mother, unsmudged by vaginal probiotics—ripples of feebleness
an era where we construe all screaming first as fake screaming
feeling that you are doing society a favor by victimizing other criminals
in the clear, because this is not what an addict looks like
terrorism making our travels more significant
complaining about the job you love
try whistling if the wind sweeps words away
farts of different accents
trying not to scare others while you die—the final distraction
stuck in military prison until you name the names of other faggots
you did not think of the weight that namesake would have on the boy
schizos beaten down by pharmaceuticals
black actors playing streetball awkwardly—practice for the film role
even if we are just bags of chemicals that does not mean psychologists should be replaced by psychiatrists
black dignity survived slavery and segregation and yet has taken to the ICU by welfare, itself a mere jab compared to the coddling— personal, even institutional—of orange-deranged campus whites
that amazingness unlocked even by drugs of bath-salts low
the age where your mortality ceases to be illusory
text messages from under the avalanche
voting for the one who promises to make things how they were before blind-auditions became racist
surprised at how you change— or at how some hidden part of you comes through—in the costume
in a benighted land of scorn for genius and the agony it entails, where all are Einsteins in their cyber bubble, expect not only unhinged theories (Flat Earth), but kids to scoff at expert fears that maybe they misdiagnosed themselves as needing sex-shift surgery
addiction to the same drugs becomes a crime, not a disease, when it ravages group x— that sounds less bigoted than pious elites, poisoners in healer guise, have made it sound if group x has proven a blight: loud all night; lewd and entitled; slovenly and violent
let the poetry of the political statement better stand out by stripping out all references to particular groups
delivery guys shaking up the soda for notorious shitty tippers
raging out on the crowd for laughing at your jokes only because you are famous
learning the full history of a beast compels you to forgive it— unless you yourself are a beast?
moving to escape a demon can have you embrace it with increased intensity— the one teddy familiarity in the change
triggered at every corner, desperate for spaces safe from nanoaggressions—are women today trained, as if by a secret patriarchy, to be fainting Victorians?
wanting to hear all the niceties of the betrayal while wanting to hear nothing of it
fecal transplants from tribesman enshrouded in jungles unplagued by guts of disordered microbiomes
is it that your delivery position is just too degrading for your ex-girlfriend to acknowledge it is you at her door?
undocumented high-schoolers lying about being terrible behind the wheel to explain not having a driver’s license
devitalized by slavery and then by segregation, but most terribly later by white guilt, which whispered—in mesmeric repetition—a gospel eerily similar to what heartened the Transatlantic slave trade: “A white Savior is your only hope out of the dung”
tracking regressive, as opposed to developmental, milestones
trying to win love versus trying to test compatibility
rationalizations suiting the times
trained to treat experience as poetic fodder
an undeniable torrent of energy,
a sort of pep to start a new phase,
suffered upon a loved one’s death
it seems relevant to point out that many whites who had sex with blacks, slave or otherwise, figured—by their very own framework—that they were engaging in a form of bestiality
sometimes the post-plastic-surgery person vaguely resembles who they once were
state propaganda of the sort that flowers bloom in winter around the supreme leader
in what amounts to owning her own inferiority, the black woman assumes that your education means that you do not date black women
training yourself to believe, not the reality of what you see and feel, but ideologies buttressed in the classroom textbook
perhaps the expired lethal injections will not result in carp mouth
done in by a suspicious lump
thinking that saying, “I’d die if I were you,” is consolatory
if your friend cries about her dad dying when she was seven, hold yourself back from saying you wished your dad dead at that age
if you have no unreachable goals, the medicine for such spiritual flatness—a palliative, not a cure— is to find ways not to reach at least one reachable goal
“You’re invalidating my experience”—imagine if this picks up?
charges brought out only after she took a gender course
thirst enough to bite into your own blood ways
track marks hidden in tattoos
comics pausing for a laugh that fails to come
an oyster breathing on the plate of ice
no pre-impact skid marks
florescent light bulbs, held up by suburban kids, glow at dusk under high voltage power lines
hurting yourself in order to hurt others who care, this morphed as your facial hair grew (in part because it grew) into just hurting yourself—and still no one, not even you, came to save you
how did you give yourself permission to cross each barrier blocking you from the extra-marital affair?
the safety provided by society enables us to create technologies unsafe for society
acting as if having admitted that you were mistaken in the past is sufficient for us believing you now
so silent as a father that he said nothing to his son back in the truck after stopping to lift a turtle from the middle of the road
hidden-camera doggy-style peace signs—the garage-sale VHS labeled “Rectal Rooter”
farmer napes leatherized by their ultraviolet god—hide scored in bloodless diamonds
thankful no stars were out tonight, pointing to pointlessness
at least the house fire killed all the roaches—“mahfuckas wanted warmth, huh?”
fake like you are dead to eat the vulture
at the wrong funeral, give the speech anyway—ashes to ashes
countless whispers of “I love you” before even telling her the first time
that elephantine need to stroke the bones of your own—we have lost even that
any therapist not ready to recommend suicide is a sham
an unbroken chain of multicolored arms
all the spiders painted into sheds, tip the forty for them niggas too
the dead remember only for the living afraid not to
a trans man’s pregnancy came with hormones that unzipped his lived truth
more protective of what divides us than what unites us—that at least unites us
up to the tree zapper bugs rise in a slow helix seduced by glory, only to drop in a line
small comfort that the death was quicker than the speed of pain
brownberry popped by a band of subway nogoodniks
a stream of cloudy jade haunting the thirsty vision of the dying man
dreamwinds
unmaking a billion years of sex differences in one third-period microplastic wig out— that sounds dumb only if we forget how our ingenuity can topple redwoods with axes, and even Orwell the world into believing that meekness is holy and pride is evil
if college kids are traumatized by words, what is going to happen when they learn— after delayed childhood runs its course—not just about bukkake gangbangs, anal fists bulging the gut like Alien, but that they will soon die, likely losing so many before that
history steps outside for a cigarette break now and then only according to the same myopia—delusion—that would say the life deviation of identical twins falsifies determinism
a US political spectrum test, if it speaks from our heart, must call those failing to bow to either red or blue, the Holy Dyad, “idiot” if not what Charlie Bucket’s teacher took the boy for: “smart aleck, saboteur,” hellbent on humiliating math and authority alike
never discipline an artist for doing what an artist does: holding up hurtful mirrors— if anything, like a teacher redirecting troubled kids, placate the man, celebrate him as so exceptional that he should have space away from everyone else to do his thing
not being the person you were trained to perform is not a contradiction even if you are the one who trained yourself to perform it
sometimes the parental urge to tell the child to stop futzing around, and do chores or get a job or do something, has mixed inside—as even a core ingredient—jealousy over their free time to cultivate excellence
he needed to take off his shoes before he jumped off the bridge to end himself, and before that he needed to pee first—it never ends until it does
that the future is a recycling of the past— no more, no outside hand—can hide the fact that novelty comes from recycling
trying to assess your condition by seeing if the others in the hospital beds around you look robust enough to pull through
clutching your purse tighter around urban blacks who come on the bus, or watching them closer when they come in your store, such profiling is not racism, it is smart—and, well, can racism ever be smart?
child pockets bulge with rocks—not ones found too pretty to leave in the dirt, but ones that by some magic of youth will stop tanks
the NPCs on the curbs of the hood were interesting, irate with ceaseless mumbles that grew quiet only as you backed away and grew louder only as you stepped closer
just as we crane our necks to get a sight of it, the first response of some creatures—think about it— is to crane their noses, nostrils flaring, to catch wind of it
carpet boots
neonatal cock sleeves
your story lost in the fabrication
what wildness, beyond roaches and spiders even, has been trapped under a cake bell?
lucky charms do not work if you neither remember them as lucky nor have them on you
encouraged to find him doing so much better on the day that he died
if a law of nature really does get violated, that simply means the law needs to change
face like a candle melted in a whiskey flash fire
not seeing each other for so long—how did we let it happen?
a land that pathologizes sadness would have us ignore the truth: our finitude, our thrownness
reading once posed a threat to independent thinking— and now we cannot even do that
a woman clutching her purse is the response, quite reasonable, to a cultural problem only perpetuated by blaming it on racism
that he gave everyone encouraging words any chance he could would show anyone who traveled long enough at his side, tolerant to the pep, that he himself was struggling not to run out of heart
it is in total darkness, feeling some primordial lack of border to himself and the rest, that he can pee without clamming up—and the stream thickens, like in childhood, if there happens to be that timeless echo dripping of a cave
might the spouse have proven to be a false floor only because you construed her as a floor?
tossing in hand scoops of dirt alongside the backhoe, this way he can say that— although barred from the funeral—he buried his son
the nightmare of having the two worlds, that of your wife and that of your affair, meet
when your best hope is your worst fear: that your childhood molester has other victims to back your claims
children giggles hidden behind prayer hands would render even the priest’s sermon fraudulent piety were not everything, the pocketing of bills from the donation bucket too, an expression of God
if you have ever seen, or felt from within, the drunk person's compensatory rise in energy to get every step or motion right (his meticulousness), you can see why drinking and writing have danced with each other through space and time
through the years (a funny joke becoming creepy gibberish enough to change seats), the stutterer told everyone he was the man behind Phil Collins’s “s-s s-s sudio” lyric, Billy Joel’s “cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac," and Elton John’s “B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets”
sticking yourself into the tribe so that what underpins that tribe stands out against what underpins you
hoping this time, this night sleepless, to remember differently that wretched scene long ago
the former pinup model hitting on young men in her eighties still with the old having way
only a new crab fisherman does not hear the siren call to see himself as just another crab washed up, like Earth itself, by time
Existenz über alles!
the healing power of watching dance even a crush unrequited
the song you love now always the song you skip
make great these years, someone else’s nostalgia
and then the rain eats away even your name in stone
ours, for always
you too are an I
