the sinner stands, hiding, waiting for the sun to go down,
the sun that resembles God’s furious eye.
the sky soaks up an oncoming darkness & drinks it into
the world, as the stars begin to pin us down where we sleep, the
world turns its back on the eye. the grounds beneath us
move silently into the irreverent night.

through sanitary hallways, toward dusty confessionals,
through humility & perspiration, sacrificial aging,
loss & temporary insanity, with voices like wild pigs
raging through some burning underbrush,
people can fly in their dreams sometimes.
but our penance is never complete, our minds will never stop,
and the grounds beneath us are never too far away.

when we steal from each other in times like these,
when our bodies atrophy beyond recognition,
the sun might see fit to rise again, the sun that scares us
back to ourselves. with luck & ethereal conversations,
people can talk each other into immortality,
into folklore & legends, but it’s never too long
before the grounds beneath us swallow us whole.

she’s a hazel-colored disaster,
orangutan piggy-back pack rat,
elephant-sized ego, shoveling snow w/ sore arms,
fighting the future to the death, every day.
she’s got a territorial instinct - keeps her grounded
on the same high desert plain forever,
her footsteps cast molds in the sidewalks after heavy rains;
she’s a mythical beast, telepathic & predatory,
leopard-like profile & legs like a flightless bird.

her blood is slow & heavy; she
bleeds in wide open sewing circles,
her nuclear tantrums will make craters in the
hearts of men half her age.
she’s never tasted honey, her tongue is a
forked road to nowhere, a venomous tributary
moving faster than sound.
her skin tastes like medicine,
her mornings are legendary,
occupied bathrooms & urgent cellphones.

her doctor is just a friend, she can call anytime,
his helpful handwriting is hieroglyphic gospel.
pharmacists cringe & call in sick to avoid her stare.
she’s already a corpse, cursing ex-lovers in e-mails,
hateful sentiments for the holidays,
predictable passion plays, traditional trash.

she’s starved for attention, barren & difficult.
she can darken any day with those torrential moods,
her problems are persistent, trustworthy & critical,
she’s got the lingo to make herself smile.
she speaks in mother goose rhythmical patterns,
daring boys everywhere to murder themselves.

her chemical lies are obvious, her love is like labor,
tiring & cyclical, boring & bountiful, local & talked about,
her parents don’t care. she’s a demolition queen,
placing bombs under bridges.

she’s a social mosquito. she’s holding fake papers,
the cops on the north side remember her still.
she solicits feverish hatred & gets it,
she gets it, from hipsters through laconic suggestions
of suicide & sexually theoretical things,
over roller coaster rides, w/ hazardous designs,
& wishes for oblivion, safety,
& a framed obituary.

for j.m. from a different year

early autumn valentines remembered
with such full blown clarity as this
could kill another man standing.
but mine, warm & virulent as they are,
evergreen & growing still...
can only shake me up a bit,
2002 A.D., notwithstanding.
(a series of essential mistakes,
derailments & long delays,
hardly worth the mention.)

my new city is full of sad libraries,
which are filled w/ full-grown
latchkey delinquents,
little girls & slow footsteps.
the windows inside are mirrors,
but the walls are hardly childproof.
the bus stops around town are haunted
by developmentally-disabled spirits,
they ward away good intentions,
& weather cold stares like statues.
(a little-known fact that makes the rounds
as a rumor every few moons. most folks
don’t believe it until it follows them home)

if we only could’ve gone farther west
than the skin-colored bricks of Riverside Drive,
we might’ve made it through winter.
or if we’d headed back east, past the
bankrupt bars we’d closed down like officers,
we could’ve danced through the worst times
to the jukebox between your ears, i swear
i might’ve found the nerve to hold the rhythm,
i know i could’ve listened to your pulse forever.
(too many square feet in one dive can
kill a man’s business, and it will, quicker
than an accident, and vultures like us will
come to look at what’s left.)

when the friction stopped it was
horrific disorientation, followed by
separation’s trademark falling feeling.
the former hulking pacifist’s mass
fell silent & heavy like snow on a sunday afternoon.

would you kiss me please? i’ve never been
more deserving. i’m stationary luminescence
& angelic in strange ways.

the continental drift sample slid further into
history, shaking & sucking all four winds
through clandestine passages,
like underground railroads, the ones
we’ve all been through recently,
jettisoned like spacewalkers in movies.

i can't move my arm, oh, God, i’m so sorry.
no! please don’t act like a person right now.
our souls are yearning to be animals again &
these two-legged vehicles are painfully slow.

the variations of comfort took form over feeling,
the duality of moments is funny sometimes.
the phonograph kept spilling fresh wax on flesh wounds,
while the digital hours pressed on toward christmas
& new years just waiting for heroes like these.

will you hold me? or will you hold the sky up above me?
i don’t want to think for myself anymore.
we’re brother & sister in some life or other,
i need to just be, like an accident. i’m serious.

a good battery screamed bloody murder backwards
on programmed precision with a throat full of razors & wire.
the calendar exploded & fire was everywhere,
a six-eyed monster rose up through it all.

what time is it now? God please take it easy!
it wouldn’t be too much to ask if i did.
i can’t figure out these ridiculous movements,
& shapeshifting takes up most evenings lately.

the ironman punched through the door toward the starlight,
its brains were connected to a Toyota Prius.
hybridized savvy & half-Bacchanalian,
it sulked out of view & gave a half-witted roar
at the horizon’s navel, setting the cosmos ablaze with white noise.

the dog a few walls away was a barking delirium when
consummate beauty stepped through an imported shower curtain
& slipped on a troublesome spot in the sun.

she resurfaced naked, red & confused.
she called a name she didn’t recognize.
the last night wasn’t a dream, she thinks,
but it didn’t really happen either.

at the end of our visits, we always
lose the lights that guide our eyes.
we channel sun gods for bad advice,
and demons for spontaneous instruction.

the backyard is full of ghosts,
in the ashtrays & under fallen leaves
& it's not the haunting, so much as the
knowledge of it that follows you, hopefully,
on your perilous flight to follow.

the streets back home are worn & tortured,
from sneakers & boots we could never fit into.
they beat down the plazas & dirty sidewalks
to deliver answers in inquisitive fashions.
they're so gregarious, but flightless,
motherless, living for those tiny moments,
like chickens in free fall.

but us, once we're pacified & silent again,
we'll breathe easier & we'll reach impossible heights.
with our bare hands extended we'll
pull moons like oceans, in every direction
and world where we travel.

so, if we never choke on the auras around us,
we'll be giants, tall enough to see
gods if they're out there.
humble & stupid, with timid intentions,
but the glow in our cheeks should
grow graceful with time.

my favorite color is a bleeding heart on the wall,
forgotten & left to the elements exposed,
running across the sidewalk to jump for the sunset.
it’s a caterpillar, cocooned emotion,
butterfly kisses on the face of the moon.

everything is sacred in a land of
cult suicides & envious, murderous
halfbacks gone wild in early summer
heatwaves. there is blood in the
river that runs till the end of the world.

these railroads that crisscross
the coast are like zippers holding
the muddy continent’s seaside underbelly
from engulfing the sky above,

the diner cars that roll over those
questionable bridges sell premium poisons
to folks who don’t know or don’t care,
on their way to places that are hardly even there.