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?