I Was Five

He was sixty,
But five still.

He was a man, grey and balding,

But blue and red could not make purple,
And his A’s were awful U-ish.

His pencil had no ridges, it being

Fat and yellow like his fingers.

Why was mine so thin?

Outside of the school room,

His bellowing, his off-tempo skip,
And laughter-induced slobbering--
All five.

That smile was five

Disguised in costume
As a greying grandfather.

He was the only adult to

Play Tag and play it terribly,
Not knowing what was “it.”

I didn’t know why.

No longer five,

I know.

Cat Lady

Meow mix resonates heavy in her living room,
                Hanging with the sting
Of urine that does not leave the nose easily.

Six bowls like volcanoes vomiting cat food

                Huddled in the kitchen,
The names of one, two, three, four, five, six

Past husbands who, now neatly labeled in

Matching Comic Sans

And lurking in silent furry bodies, rub their

Heads into her legs, purr in ecstasy, and

                Love their provider
(That’s all she really is, ever was, or can be).

But Ronnie will leave, chasing pussy with

Angular yellow eyes and manicured claws.

Charles will impregnate an alley cat prostitute,

Bring home his litter; force her into motherhood.

Richard will fold himself up into a dead fur ball,

Round, hairy, and fat. Bradley will learn to greet

Her only at the crackling of catnip like his namesake

Could only respond to beer bottles chattering.

Due to overfilled testes, Vincent will get testy,

Claw her face while she thinks neuter, neuter.

Benjamin will walk right out the front door she left

Swinging open while bringing in the groceries.

Blue

Another ocean poem: Danger! Danger!
            The danger of people being water
Built up in oceans--A blue collection of hands,

Feet, and shark fins mimicking the Atlantic.

            How much better they look out there at
A comfortable distance from a rocking

Chair on a beach house porch. They’re

            Magnificent at such a separation
With their color exposed, a startling blue,

But how terribly sad they look in a single

            Paper cup filled from the faucet;
Such a pale shade they can’t really

Be called a shade at all. They’re clear,

            And you start to see the emptiness
They try so hard to disguise with blue

Densities; compacted nothings practicing

            Friendly waves that seem to say,
“Come swim. There are no sharks here."

Crossword

14 Across: “Disappointment.”
Grumble, slurp, grumble…
This coffee is disappointing.

It needs sugar. Life needs sugar.

Empty tea-cup eyes need sugar;
Something to sweeten the bitter
Disappointment of blank stares.

12 Down: “Vacuum.”

That loud machine declaring war
Upon cats and dogs in dusty homes.

Or the outside universe of nothingness--

Impossible to familiarize with
In a world buried neck-deep
In the self;
All too singular with
Me’s, My’s, and I’s
To include much else.

8 Down: “Dealey Plaza.”

Kennedy emptied his head
Like spilled spaghetti sauce.

Blood and patriotism on asphalt

Horrified thousands of anxious
American couches. Keep it singular.

Grumble, slurp, grumble, grumble…
Me, My’s, and I’s, and crosswords.

Potato Soup

My eyes fell out in July,
Landed right into my
Potato soup and buoyed
Ooey-gooey eyeball
In a hot steamy brothel
Of chopped chives
And pubic hairs.

Without eyes,

My heart sits like
A loaf of cornbread
To be washed down
By more water
And more blood
And potato soup.

The heat pounds

Its way out of my
Back, And I wish
I could remember
Another recipe.

Knitting Lessons

I’d like to tell
My sweet grandmother
We have plenty in common.

She knits scarves,

Multi-color sweaters,
Wool socks and gloves,
Snow caps.

I knit webs of

“Stay with me’s,”
And they come out
Looking more like
Genitals and orgasms
With a lot of empty
Spaces.

They’re all gifts

That no one wants
To wear.

What A Year

January begins with
A six person smooch.

Faulkner reminds me

Of truth in February.

Bradley Cooper looks

To rent my prison cell
In March.

April dresses itself in

Floating dog head
Horizons.

May flowers

Don’t ever
Flower.

June tosses footballs

In dog shit backyards
And tells me
I should really
Pay attention.
 
July sparkles as usual,
But it’s hardly clean.

August requires
Gallons of Lysol.

September plays

Boy Meets World
On repeat,
But it never gets
Any funnier.

October is horrific

As it should be.

November fills me

With dead bird,
Tips me over
Empty.

December pulls

Love-me-nots
From obnoxiously
Bridal bouquets.

A year,

Car wrecks
Appear pleasant.

Hands On

Halloween stores
Are running out of
Sad-faced masks.

Too many people own them,

That and bursting O-faces.

The agonized dramatic

Echoes ‘nonreturnable’ in a
Convinced nobody’s closet
Between fancy dresses
And Gatsby gloves
And a few OOOOOH’s.

“Oh, but it’s real ecstasy,

A man and a woman,
A man and three women,
The whole damned world population,
Real ecstasy.”

Ecstasy that leaves you

Standing in line for a
Customized latex pout
While pools of semen
Crust up your bed posts,
And nothing else.

So I’ve learned how

To get real ‘hats off’
Being real hands on
As the only person
In the room.

I’m good at it,

Self-pollination,
Letting the pollen swarm
Factory-fresh agonies.

It’s my greatest trick yet.

Three

Three keys hang
On my wall.

They don’t unlock

Anything.

No treasure chest,

Secret room,
Bound heart.

Three Robin’s eggs

Sit in a plaster nest
Upon my wall.

They don’t birth

Anything.

No feather fluster,

Daughter,
Son.

Three swans swim

Upon my wall.

They don’t eat or breathe

Anything.

No water treads,

Flipper foot kicks,
Happy honking,
Or any real grace.

Three lovers sit shelved

On my wall.

Three protected apes

With eyes, ears, and mouths
Covered like I can’t with
Only two arms.

They don’t do human

Anythings.

No palms to lend,

Hearts to swell,
Love to serve.

I sit and watch

Inanimate trinkets
Not move.

Like Ladies

“Like ladies,”
She says, “All good ladies.”

Dip your hands in bowls of

Dead cuticle milk most stagnant
Until old nail beds dissolve
Into new flowering forms
Like spinning teacup skirts,
Like slippery eyelashes,
Like ladies.

Move men

Like Monroe’s windy thighs,

Like 21st century weaponry
Like Kennedy's nuclear erection,
Like ladies.

Harvest garden guts

For him to grow,
Like seeded fruits,
Like hungry ovaries,
Like ladies.

Stitched neatly

Under every
Neatly stitched dress
Is a sad-story-Sally
Suffocating under
“You’re so hot”
Muggy sex breath;

Loving and fucking,

Fucking and loving.

Black Widow

See,
The spider doesn’t
Fall far from the web,
Like the apple
And the tree,
Or peach,
Tomato,
Person…

Dad’s got the bite.

Brother

With spider web arms
Can’t catch a single fly.

Well, this morning I woke
Eight-legged spine limbs,
Black rose stem arachnid.

Latrodectus spine crawl

Carried me to the bathroom sink,
And I’ve never been so fearful
Of running water and sink drains;
They’re quick to swallow, you know.
The mirror taunts Black Widow chants
Telling me I’m different now
With my red hourglass back tattoo
Counting me down.

The phone rings interruption

And I’m not even sure where my ears are,
And Doctor White-Coat said I had poisons
That I probably wouldn’t have
Had beetles not gotten busy.

Well he gets fucked,

But I’m sure he’s never been fang-fucked,
Because he’s still living and lining up
With all the other busy bustling beetles
Who won’t admire my web.

I’m a real weaver,

And I don’t mean
Charlotte shitting web shows
For Wilbur.

I mean I can weave.

I can’t control
The wanderers wandering
Weathered into my web.

I can make them bleed

And turn them liquid maggot milk,
But they don’t love.

So bolted bound beetle head
Peeking under cotton web-wires
Can’t have a heart for a spider,
But I have plenty stomach
For wriggling captives,
So I say,

“It’s a real fang fuck-fest.”

Nothing At All

Phosphorescent star shapes
Beam their cookie-cutter beams
Of pale green outer space
Against a ceiling.

I stare,
And I wait.

I might be waiting for

One to jump
Real rocket flare
For a sad wish.

I might be waiting for
The tape to give,
Letting one loose,
Ninja-star neon
In my left eyeball.

I might be waiting
For nothing at all.

I might just be looking

At an 11-year-old’s starry night
Of plastic space shapes
And nothing at all.

Persian Rugs

Laid out sacrificial not-saint
On meditative Persian rugs,
You are less.

Thread spins hair knots

Of not-saints deep into
Not-saint rugs of meditation,
And you are less.

8:00 PM coffee

Soaks Persian tendrils,
Matting down mats
Of even less.

Maybe

If your eyes bulged,
There would be more than
Old genie lamps filled with espresso,
And carpets that can’t fly due to
Not-saint dead weights.

Flamingo

I can’t bend my legs
Like real flamingos do.

Permanently perched

On a rotation of tenants,
I am sun-drained pink
Fooling blue water waves
Of a green lawn.

Had my feathers

Been made of feathers,
They’d be tufted and pestered
By the same reoccurring car alarm
Of each forgetful resident
Like a sing-song bird
Got its throat stuck
In the sing-song,
But instead they lay
Flat monotonous plastic.

Sweltering sun rays

Come down in boiling drops
Like rain without water.

I wonder

When I’ll melt;
Pink Pepto pool

Of no real bird.

Cat Lady

Dream hands
Wrap ribbon fingers
Around dream ankles,
Making a real gift
Out of it,
In a dream car
Of a dreaming head.

Rolling images
Of fingertips
And stick shifts
Shake, rattle, and roll
Wet dream orgasms
I don't believe
I even felt.

No climax.

Fantastic dimension
Can't incubate
At the call
Of my morning alarm.

REM falls out.
So do gift-wrapped ankles.

Fluffed feline tails
And sandpaper tongues
Fall in.

Some women
Dream of cats
And wake up
To men.

I dream of men
And wake up
To cats.

Bad Kimchi

The knife gleams
Without light
In the wrong hands:
His.

Perhaps when the kimchi has gone bad,

Or his inner cyborg ranted robotic orders
To drape a red bandana of no cloth
Upon his throat.

It was bad Asian food

Or Terminator programming
That stripped him
Bare buttocks
In the dark corner
Of the kitchen,
Waiting for the
Korean take-out
Delivery man
To enter—
The knife still gleaming.

It was

One or the other
That stuck the samurai sword
In the dry wall
Or yelled “rape” into raindrops
Soaking boxer briefs.

It was

One or the other
That cried tequila tears
Because he wants to fail
And can’t.

"There are rats jumping in my stomach."

Hunger sets
Like jumping rats
Ricocheting off stomach walls
In some indigenous Africa.

I'd like to be
Scurrying hairless tail whips
In your intestinal cage.

I've practiced tip-tapping
In non-air-conditioned stairwells
Because I know you're warm.

I've burrowed
Tunnels in the dirt
Like replicate digestive tubing.

Dreamt of
Bowel-bouncing rodent claws
Sinking into fleshy ducts,
Meandering me far along tracts,
But I can always find the center
Of your pulsating hot spot.

But what really happened is
I put my Moses
In a basket.

Sent him
Down the river
With a poem
And a curable
Disease
To find
His pharaoh.

It took a week
For the waves
To empy out
His last echoes,
Turning me all
Basket case skull,
Brain weave
Brain waves.

Today,
I bathe
In the Nile.

Question Mark

Question marks huddle
Arial black splotch fuzz
In the shape of California
In the high corner of my room
Like pulsating Daddy Long Leg clumps
Elongated.

They’re muddy

And indefinite
And never have
An answer.

They emit the same

Quiet buzzing sting
Of an unoccupied
Phone line;
Empty echoes
Of the hanging ring
When I pick up
To no one.

“Plastic polymer casing,

Or will you have skin?”

“Lover language casts out another.

Do you accept?”

“?”

“?”

“?”

I don’t have

An answer.

Eye decay.

#herdigitalearth

She’s quick to network it in—
Network the trees in,
And the moon.

Cyber space outer space,

Robotic Robin’s eggs,
DSL daisy heads pixelating
And getting muddy.

Geometric earth rim,

Verizon’s horizon
Can no longer be hers.

Mountains

Are just megabytes
That tickled her all
Giggling gigabytes.

Movement made still-life,

Giving the flower fields
A plastic paint cover.

Web-browsing waterfalls

Washing white
Stop moving.

There’s no real water

To wade in.

Only the unimaginative muck

Of her black mud font—
Times New Roman sucking out
All the mystics.

She’s modest.

A little less.
Not much at all.
She’s not.

She only pulls the straps

Of her pixelating
Google goggles
Tighter.

Hashtag her digital earth.

Soggy

The day is soggy
Like his cereal.

Red ants flood death pools

And reincarnate scuttling spine crawls
Across an over-inflated lake surface
Like his bleeding windshield
That perhaps said too much.

Words fluctuate,

Font fast and fizzling,
Freaking the founder I’m sure,
Because they couldn’t find his tongue.

Bold black characters budge back turns,

Faceless and fading like all sweet milk bowls do.

The sand is mud,

And so am I.

Crystal edges gone

Mushy gushy death trap
For the heavy foot
I find to be my own,
Only swallowing myself
In some quick sand self-inversion.

Blue body refills itself

With atmospheric downpours
Like he refills his breakfast bowl
For all mouths in their morning hunger,
And I’m getting softer.

Indefinite is my organs.

Mud-pie stomach-wad can’t hold.

I resort to fasting.

My pockets—

Denim cradles for spoons
Rusting themselves tetanus orange,
Getting awfully heavy,
And I’m starting to sag.

I sink lower.

I guess

I’ll just be mud
For a while.

Cinnamon-Speckled Milk

At 1:00 AM,
I bring the spoons.
 
We pour cereal
And fall asleep
Soggy milk heads.

Soon enough,

Morning mixes itself
In the window frame
With Mini-Wheat fences
And heavy cream;
Sun juicy orange half
Glowing vitamin goodness
Like all good breakfast make-up’s.

I stir fingertips rippling

Curves of crescents
In your back that is
My breakfast bowl
Of cinnamon-speckled milk.

Really,

I could drink you up
In guzzling gallons
And still be
Thirsty.

Cinnamon spice crystals

Spin swirling circles
Under finger-pad fondles,
And I’m all sugar,
Sugar soaking sweet sap
In marinating milk mounds
At the bottom of your bowl.

I’m best buried
Or swimming after
Cinnamon chunks
As your drippy milk diver.

Spider Eggs

There is heartbreak in select Mexican cuisines,
And fear in sticks casting erections in the water.

Boy Meets World twitches cockroaches in my floorboards;

Perhaps better off than rusty snake cages housing empty beer cans.

Sepia night grafts sing strange sounds of sound strangers on the coast,

Because that’s what they are,
And sandy edges bleed strangeness always after.

Boyfriend parking lots gun the vomit stream,

But so do tomatoes.
It’s all the same fire gut engulfed.

Heart beat tremors vibrate like old times of birth and thirsty death,
And you’re a child again.

Even day folding into black construction paper

Where I hide and hold my legs
Hints at when you called me a saint,
And I turned out to be embarrassingly  mortal.

Some uncles don’t keep their hands to themselves,

And 20-year-old sex-talk puts his hands back
Just as sweaty as ever.

Acidic spine stole her father in shapes.

He echoes at television news programs,
Cursing the gays when the Catholics are on
And cursing the Catholics when the gays are on
And cursing both when Obama is on,
And he said the living room isn’t a porn store
And that 17-year-old’s are 26-year-old crack-peddlers,
And mother didn’t want to ‘people-watch’ at Starbucks,
And the walls rot.

50 year old woman gets hotheaded with her head in the oven,

But only as long as Superman has capes,
And can she even bake?

8^th graders equipped with kitchen knives cut love into their girls,

Made their names big for a holy return of larger shadows
Which are in everything.

Tiny red-potato feet stepped puddles in bellies once,
But eyes closed, reincarnations forced shut,
And these are even in jelly beans.

Like spider eggs,

These experiences are tucked, grown, and birthed in our dark places.
Stomachs and chest cavities make caverns for them where they grow tainted.
If an old sneaker kicks, they all go spouting eight-legged nostalgic tidal waves,
And we can’t hang.

Crawlers hunt and haunt.

Build a web.

Empty House

The house is
Wood floor palms holding up
A criss-cross apple sauce girl
Wishing whapple sauce.

Loud silence echoes empty backdrop,

And then I’m back on a
Half-inflated Ramen noodle pasta bed,
Bruised fruit with the legendary python
Wrapping coiled closeness around my leg,
Sniffing out copper penny nectar.

It isn’t a hunt

If he never leaves the mattress.

I leave for work

While he’s folding up.
I come home,
Still folding.
I wash myself,
And I can see
He’s pulling himself tighter
Through a clouded shower curtain.

I’m sitting in his corner now,

Pulling myself in as a locking lump,
Seeing a shadow mirror type of me
Shake, rattle, and roll,
But there’s no voice
To be coughed up
Because my lips are buried
Somewhere with the rest of my neck
Under slime scales.

He shed so much skin,

He didn’t have any left,
And he molded.

That’s it, isn’t it?

But there are snake droppings

Of crushed golden High Life cans
Getting silver under the sink,
And suddenly, snake skin does exist.

I’m still living with serpents.

Skeletons aren’t the only substance

To one anything.

Electric Arm Wrestling

Electric arm wrestling

Breaks the sky
Like muscles contracting
And cracking,
And kills it.

Rumbling discontent of

Stretching horizons
Echoes the groans I find
Exhaling over animal teeth
I never noticed before.

I just might be foaming

At the mouth.

Is that cotton cumulonimbus
At the corners?

All strive to be separate.

Even the deer run
When you come close,
And the spider knows
The brush of the broom.

But the rain wets us all.

I’m soaked like the black dog

Lying pools in the driveway,
And I need more fur.

I am dressing in animal,

Like the animals dress in their animals,
Like the raccoons put on raccoon suits,
And the used up man next door
Puts his mouth in, all gum and few teeth,
Because animals rot, you know.

We all will,

But for now,
I’d rather see
Mildewed dog paws.

They were hands once.

Under the Table

It’s always
All hands under tables—
They must have known
I had shoulders—
Like trees touching in secrecy
Beneath green blankets,
Tangling roots with earthworms
And sticky palms.

I could bat my eyes

Like good women do
Or I could just palm-read,
Lacing bloodlines with
Tip touches and finger flicks
Under the table.

I usually skip

The prologue pages
Anyways.
This isn’t much
Different.
Is it?

Fairies dance their orbs

Over bridges,
But our hands weren’t
Made for catching,
Only applauding,
Hand-shaking,
Cock-shaking hand-jobs,
And hand-holding,
All under flat back
Wooden dog bodies,
Only they don’t bark
Because they don’t
Have heads.

We’re in secrecy here,

Under the table.

Well, this is all fine,

But if we’re busy
Dipping our hands
In nail-beds
With no blankets or pillows,
Where, then, do we sleep?

People Are Not

Creatures with epileptic heads
Roll skulls at the waterhole.
They’re made of brown
And stitches of chitter chatter.

MTV music videos

Can be awfully tribal.

Some outer space

Buzzes, zips, zings
Out of speakers
And into bobble-head
Receivers.

They’re still rolling.

Galassi

Sits annoyed
In my lap.
We’ve never felt
So black-sheeped
Had we night cloaks,
Pitch wool pitching pitch,
And clicking tip-tapping
Hooves.

Blue Bud Light bulbs

Imitate starlight
On oceans,
But that’s all
Any of this is,
Imitation.

Reflection of images

Of what everyone
Wants to be,
But I am mirror shards
Refracting inharmonious
Face fragment,
Shedding pages
Of a dusty pink
Poem.

Poolside means

Bronze bimbo busts,
Shiny blue cans,
And “You can’t read!”

We failed ourselves

Today.

"Find what you love and let it kill you."

16 year old

Fell mushy gushy love drops
Over a sentence sucking synapses
Into bitch-in-heat orgasms.

Aphrodisiac syllables

Boiled over spaghetti sauce insides
Like sonic speed time lapse rose bloom.
That furnace fired hot
In heart valve,
Stomach lining,
And pelvic bone,
Really sent her shivering
Like walking tightropes of
Inverted equator.

Came enough times

To document jawlines
Wasting mouths
Wasting tongue
Because they don’t taste.

Enough to

Wash out roaches
With feelers brushed back

In some 90’s haircut.

Enough for storytellers

To etch her deep
In the walls of
California coffee shops.

Never had to make the call,

“The juicer’s jammed!”
Because there will always be pages,
Always self-servicing saucy stanzas,
Always dead poets reading
Under her showerhead.

Say she does jam,

Say molten masturbation
Molds into fly guts,
Then, it must mean
Success.

All dried up

Means she felt

It all.

Twofold Fruit Facet

I was made split organs,

Pulpy grapefruit blood halves.

Two pulsing chest vessels

Fluttering fantastical fidget

Dance out of time lasagna layers

Beats like da(da-dum)-dum.

Left pulp pit sleeps with

Swampy morning mouth melting

Downpour upon the nose bridge

In warm air rhythmic touches

And warms beside

Collarbone campfires.

Lefty can feel

Echoed games of fetch

On lake shores

No matter what distance;

Can lose a head

In guitar bodies

With hollow stomachs,

Easy.

Right lies down early

And gets up at

“Thought of you while

I got up and got off.”

Right kisses cricket chirps

Let out dry lip spurts,

Tastes tickles like syrup

Gone heavy smooth convulsions.

Get a little sticky.

Fruit cuts,

Left side digesting,

Right side tasting,

So that I’m

Sucking sultry spirit

Nutrients,

Absorbing all.

Romance of naked knockers,

Bristled body bushes,

And Henry reincarnated

Like words I’ve never heard

Timed out in my

Two heart valves,

Grope, gather, and got

One bloody river

To drown him.

Gather

and gotten.

Got

And gathered.

Buzz

All my flowers are out,
And I can hear him
Buzzing.

It’s the season of worker bees.

Buzz louder.

I was born a rose,
Rubbing rose noses
And sleepy rose eyes.

They tell me
Pythons cannot have man hands,
But men can surely have a python grip.

I paid them big money
(Fear can write a hefty check)
To wrangle and strangle,
My stem miserably mangled,
But does any of this really matter
When I can still be red?

Arms like vertebrae,
Far more delicate than any serpent,
Turn over my petals
Like the pages of the books
He couldn’t sell,
And there are stingers
In my skull.

So I’m blooming bird blood,
He’s buzzing bouquets,
And waves are lapping like breaking dishes,
Groping mercilessly for our feet
To drag us in.

They nearly took four legs
As we stood squinting against the dark,
Trying to see the whining dog heads
Floating between jaunty shoulders.

Had they taken paws,
I imagine we would have
Given our shoes.

Maybe stingers.

Maybe thorns.

Or lassoed
Some sacrificial snake
Before the jingling in my pockets,
Endless echoes of dead dog tags
Sounding an awful lot like loose change
(I already said I spent it all),
Pleaded “Plus one.”

Language

Language
Is most masturbatory.

The intimacy of words
And more words
Open my shirt
Like cracking a rib cage.

Fingertips
Count out syllables
On breasts scanning for satellites
Held up by an arching back,
Wanting to snap.

Had my own Phlox,
My own Art Bechstein,
My own service upon
His service upon
Sentence giving head
To more sentences.

Semen
On syllables
On pages
Being kissed,
Tonguing each word
In tight, tickled touches.

Language
Vibrates my vocal cords
Into his teeth.

Language
Buckles knees
Like folding chairs.

Language
Buzzes electrons.

Language
Jumps the windows
Up and down,
Stirs the moon
Like a bowl of milk.

Language
Lets it watch.

Tired

Tiresome paralysis lies
In the beds and the bones
Of those gone senile.

You can see it
In the woman
Closing her eyes
At the gas pump.

See it
In the man
Standing in the
Post office line
Without an impatient sigh
Or clicking his fingernails;
More floating than waiting,
Because the climax never happened.

'New' is a dead term
Of an even more dead language.

Probably from too many
Repetitive SNL skits.

Too many birthday parties attended,
Mismatching party hats
With bad looks.

Too many old lovers
With mouths full of
"Will you?'s,"
"I do's,"
"Must do's,"
"Children,"
And "See you tomorrow's,"
But never chewed.

Too many human stew fantasies,
But no gas stove large enough.

No one willing to lend a ladle.

I'm young,
But I'm tired too.

I lay down
In my porcelain kettle
With butterfly legs,
And I can't even
Get dirty
Anymore.

No imaginary macho's
Doing pull-ups on the
Shower rod,
Or fluttering black lashes.

All the "Rock me, Mama's,"
Dead.

Just stare up
Showerhead piss streams
And watch the window light
Trying hard to be a rainbow.

Can't tell if I'm seeing them,
Or white light prisms seeing me.

Wondering if this
Is what baptism is like
Until goose bumps start crawling,
Crawling me out of the tub.