ongoing writing projects
Straw Huts Set Ablaze
burned tumebamba to the ground as men poured down the eastern coast, flags hoisted high, gold and guns in their pockets, by campfires they raise glasses & toast to little boys who dress in their clothes, lands where milk and honey flows, no uncertain dread of what lies in the future & long lives with no foes; we strolled to town through dust clouds, we waded through frightened masses in the heat, it got dark and the valleys lit up like hell's hearth, we sweated like dogs in that heat with dirt and ash caked on our faces, our stomachs lurching, our tongues dry and tasteless ₪ you were droning in the back of my head about chucking piles of dead horseshoe crabs into the famished, drooling jowls of lions just soaking up the saharan sunshine; you were blathering drunkenly to no one about chucking the hollowed black shells back into the freezing oceans, sounds, & bays, praising their plights & calling them each by name ₪ a broken ladder was reaching up & out of your teeth, inviting the world to tumble down into deep, dark cavernous lungs, to rub strained, swollen eyes and gape all around, to rest in oak trees, bathe in waterfalls, & build a nest way down there, jog laps around broad tree-trunks, huff & heave, gasp up your air, & if an ultraviolet light floods god's windows tonight, I will tell you what I've done, I will tell you what I've done ₪
My Kirtland's Warbler
jig saw cut off the back door like butter, you rushed through carnivals in the blue light, full to the brim with vengeance, searching for mother, caught a glimpse of you in the kitchen, shattered ceramic, stars shining through the windows, dancing in my eyes like ferris wheels, they glistened, god damn how they glistened, I was floating in the space between earth and the moon, standing in the darkened living room, then the bookshelf and the never ending screaming, arms outstretched, stumbling between two closing walls, deep down the maze of Knossos with your hands cupped over your ears, deaf to all pleading ₪ I tread lightly down the driveway of our little blue house, out back the hengshui river is churning, feeding looming, toxic clouds and I'm speaking as if you were standing here, my bench has fallen over, the brush I had cleared has grown up, the dog pen you built is still standing as is the back fence you put up with love, i'm strolling along it's length, we've been banished from the shining cities of gold, I pick my way along dirt trails with no place to go ₪ lumbering arms, steam rising from the stove, my little boy singing in his room from some sweet and distant treasure trove and it's been raining all year long down here, rice and blood and thorns, there you are screaming with three picture frames smashed on the brick floors and inside our small strong red brick house the three of us lay down at dusk to dream we are only dust, our garden's in good health, the pear tree's are all in bloom, the neighbor's horse is pacing by the fence row, pleading for more and more room, our majesty is slumped over and snoring on his throne so i rearrange the furniture quietly and dream fondly of home while the hundreds of us on these small three acres lay our heads down at dusk to dream we are only dust ₪ I waited, laying face up in Sherwood Forest park for you, counting the trees, afraid of the police ₪ you came to me in a dream last night standing idly in front of the sun, everything was still 'cause we'd killed everything that moves in the golden light, then patches of darkness appeared, a corona climbed its way into the sky, they're all coming soon and I hold my breath, the whole scene disappeared, but you were still telling me that I'd changed, with the sun gone and no road leading away from here everything felt just the same ₪
Your Love For Men With Searing Tongues
Howard would begin on the bottle and start flapping his gums. The man could truly talk, convincingly even. He talked Ruth out of her panties quickly one night though she had only been nibbling my earlobe in the kitchen 30 minutes prior. The man’s tongue produced overtones demanding compliance at all odds.
That particular incident produced a sort of airy growth in his brain. He swore up and down that he could talk the panties off of a nun. What’s worse is that he swears that he had-in catholic school. His babbling eventually slams full force against my brick walls of “you’re full of shit and you know it, you god damned drunk, you god damned … talker.” Granted, he claims she only finger-fucked herself while he watched. This is a common tactic of the liar though, to lessen the severity of the alleged act in order to pass it off as believable. In any case, it wouldn’t surprise me. How many priests’ dicks have slumped back to a wormlike state, satisfied and wet with a choirboy’s spittle? Too god damned many.
"listed last is second"
Crouched beneath the flag pole,
I'm expected
to forget
that as I become a man
I was once a boy;
when I was a boy
such fine women
truly appeared immortal-
lamp light
table-side
prancing through wisps of smoke
screaming Vieuxtemps' allegro non troppo from the Concerto No. 5,
contortions of the brow,
insoluble attraction.
I forgot I was once a boy
like I forget the addresses of the places I've lived
but couldn't forcibly discard the memories.
Instead my mind is consumed with Summer,
and its bitches with bare legs and bulging breasts...
When it's too much
I sit timidly in a recital hall
and lust after violinists.
In An Electric Whirl
Yes,
I sold my liver for 30 pieces of silver,
strung it to a mobile,
gaped up
from my gurney
at them
spinning for hours.
Yes,
I surrendered to some well meaning bar whore,
lowered my head for her to kiss my bare scalp,
lips,
she claimed,
were medicine
& she said I was special-
a young man with scathing genius,
while I'm
tremoring in wild paroxysms,
violent laughter at every lie told in the whole wide withering world.
She told me firmly to stand up straight
and stop slurring my speech.
That I'd get farther in life
by projecting,
tremors,
wild paroxysms,
violent laughter.
I won’t need a liver when I’ve replaced every blinking star in the sky
with silver,
gold and diamonds.
I won’t need
passively letting the hours slip away.
"I had the wildest dream last night. I was swimming with you in that cenote the heavens made with black fire. Just woke up too soon."
burned tumebamba to the ground as men poured down the eastern coast, flags hoisted high, gold and guns in their pockets, by campfires they raise glasses & toast to little boys who dress in their clothes, lands where milk and honey flows, no uncertain dread of what lies in the future & long lives with no foes; we strolled to town through dust clouds, we waded through frightened masses in the heat, it got dark and the valleys lit up like hell's hearth, we sweated like dogs in that heat with dirt and ash caked on our faces, our stomachs lurching, our tongues dry and tasteless ₪ you were droning in the back of my head about chucking piles of dead horseshoe crabs into the famished, drooling jowls of lions just soaking up the saharan sunshine; you were blathering drunkenly to no one about chucking the hollowed black shells back into the freezing oceans, sounds, & bays, praising their plights & calling them each by name ₪ a broken ladder was reaching up & out of your teeth, inviting the world to tumble down into deep, dark cavernous lungs, to rub strained, swollen eyes and gape all around, to rest in oak trees, bathe in waterfalls, & build a nest way down there, jog laps around broad tree-trunks, huff & heave, gasp up your air, & if an ultraviolet light floods god's windows tonight, I will tell you what I've done, I will tell you what I've done ₪
My Kirtland's Warbler
jig saw cut off the back door like butter, you rushed through carnivals in the blue light, full to the brim with vengeance, searching for mother, caught a glimpse of you in the kitchen, shattered ceramic, stars shining through the windows, dancing in my eyes like ferris wheels, they glistened, god damn how they glistened, I was floating in the space between earth and the moon, standing in the darkened living room, then the bookshelf and the never ending screaming, arms outstretched, stumbling between two closing walls, deep down the maze of Knossos with your hands cupped over your ears, deaf to all pleading ₪ I tread lightly down the driveway of our little blue house, out back the hengshui river is churning, feeding looming, toxic clouds and I'm speaking as if you were standing here, my bench has fallen over, the brush I had cleared has grown up, the dog pen you built is still standing as is the back fence you put up with love, i'm strolling along it's length, we've been banished from the shining cities of gold, I pick my way along dirt trails with no place to go ₪ lumbering arms, steam rising from the stove, my little boy singing in his room from some sweet and distant treasure trove and it's been raining all year long down here, rice and blood and thorns, there you are screaming with three picture frames smashed on the brick floors and inside our small strong red brick house the three of us lay down at dusk to dream we are only dust, our garden's in good health, the pear tree's are all in bloom, the neighbor's horse is pacing by the fence row, pleading for more and more room, our majesty is slumped over and snoring on his throne so i rearrange the furniture quietly and dream fondly of home while the hundreds of us on these small three acres lay our heads down at dusk to dream we are only dust ₪ I waited, laying face up in Sherwood Forest park for you, counting the trees, afraid of the police ₪ you came to me in a dream last night standing idly in front of the sun, everything was still 'cause we'd killed everything that moves in the golden light, then patches of darkness appeared, a corona climbed its way into the sky, they're all coming soon and I hold my breath, the whole scene disappeared, but you were still telling me that I'd changed, with the sun gone and no road leading away from here everything felt just the same ₪
Your Love For Men With Searing Tongues
Howard would begin on the bottle and start flapping his gums. The man could truly talk, convincingly even. He talked Ruth out of her panties quickly one night though she had only been nibbling my earlobe in the kitchen 30 minutes prior. The man’s tongue produced overtones demanding compliance at all odds.
That particular incident produced a sort of airy growth in his brain. He swore up and down that he could talk the panties off of a nun. What’s worse is that he swears that he had-in catholic school. His babbling eventually slams full force against my brick walls of “you’re full of shit and you know it, you god damned drunk, you god damned … talker.” Granted, he claims she only finger-fucked herself while he watched. This is a common tactic of the liar though, to lessen the severity of the alleged act in order to pass it off as believable. In any case, it wouldn’t surprise me. How many priests’ dicks have slumped back to a wormlike state, satisfied and wet with a choirboy’s spittle? Too god damned many.
"listed last is second"
Crouched beneath the flag pole,
I'm expected
to forget
that as I become a man
I was once a boy;
when I was a boy
such fine women
truly appeared immortal-
lamp light
table-side
prancing through wisps of smoke
screaming Vieuxtemps' allegro non troppo from the Concerto No. 5,
contortions of the brow,
insoluble attraction.
I forgot I was once a boy
like I forget the addresses of the places I've lived
but couldn't forcibly discard the memories.
Instead my mind is consumed with Summer,
and its bitches with bare legs and bulging breasts...
When it's too much
I sit timidly in a recital hall
and lust after violinists.
In An Electric Whirl
Yes,
I sold my liver for 30 pieces of silver,
strung it to a mobile,
gaped up
from my gurney
at them
spinning for hours.
Yes,
I surrendered to some well meaning bar whore,
lowered my head for her to kiss my bare scalp,
lips,
she claimed,
were medicine
& she said I was special-
a young man with scathing genius,
while I'm
tremoring in wild paroxysms,
violent laughter at every lie told in the whole wide withering world.
She told me firmly to stand up straight
and stop slurring my speech.
That I'd get farther in life
by projecting,
tremors,
wild paroxysms,
violent laughter.
I won’t need a liver when I’ve replaced every blinking star in the sky
with silver,
gold and diamonds.
I won’t need
passively letting the hours slip away.
"I had the wildest dream last night. I was swimming with you in that cenote the heavens made with black fire. Just woke up too soon."