Everyone's Lord Byron for Halloween

Spring Water is like

the Number 1 App on the App Store –

it’s your only nourishment

and you need 60 ounces a day.

Your eyes are like

a record player –

spinning dizzying concentric

circles of color: I can’t stop staring.

My heart is the CPU

of my other heart

and it’s bogged down by one

unnecessary program that I can’t uninstall.

Coffee is like coffee.

Relationships are likes iPhones –

          awesome for a month

          inseparable and automatic for a year
          cracked and obsolete by year two.

The Blameless Vestal's Lot (Eternal Sunshine ekphrastic)

On a cold night in Montauk

the house is crumbling into

the sand where tall grass

sleeps every summer.

Oceanic waves flood into

the foyer

chilling your ankles

filling your shoes with wet sand.

It’s almost like there’s

a spotlight on your face

when you call out to her

at the top of the stairs.

Do you feel in love

or codependent

when you fall into winter?

When the last memory you have

starts to disintegrate

and die around you?

You said “so go,”

with such disdain, you know?

Stuck between I love you 
and meet me in Montauk.

Brightness Brightens

What a world in which we live

where your skin inspires paintings

that inspire my ekphrastics

like loose bearings on a dust jacket

but like no dust

on your jacketed embrace.

What a world we live in –

I saw you 5 years ago

and wanted to know you more than dreams

but I never spoke to you then

in my scotchy speech because I never spoke

without scotchy speech.

What a world we live

breathing in fall like orgasms

when the sun still makes you cold

while red sheets swallow

and swim you closer to me

but I need more days.

What a world

where I can get a yellow onion
or a carrot for only 69 cents.

Chasing Liquid

Suppose you were a little cat

residing in a person’s flat

not yielding to the yellow jackets

floating in the bowl of effervescent

grapefruit water.

The jackets don’t flinch

          when you pierce through their veil

with your barbed tongue

          and let the bubbles cascade down

          your throat.

Suppose your masters were dining out

          at a closed down Italian restaurant;

you knew about the fire there in ‘85

          that killed them

and six others.

The bread on the table softening over years,

          yellow jackets making homes

in her bare knees;

they have all the utensils now
           with which to eat their silver soup.

Fate September

When the wind leaves

to blow the cold

off of the leaves

maybe black branches

may hold enough blood

to survive you to spring.

Don’t cry northward

but keep going;

don’t cry at all

but keep singing

until the orange sky

goes midnight blue –

when the clouds breathe

to blow your cold
frame closer to me.

Pollock Orders Cod

I wanted a chalk outline on the ground when I

woke up to rain falling like a surgeon out on the

veranda. There was no outline but the surgeon

left the chalk for me to draw my own. I broke

the chalk but eventually outlined a new veranda

one that the rain could melt into a milky pool of

dirt and wind. I went back inside covered in rain

and chalk and drank more water. I didn’t talk to
the sun on Fire Island like O’hara did in 1958; the sun simply wasn’t out but neither were the stars.Why is art so depressing? I remember you asking the night I slept in my car beneath the neon tanning salon sign. I didn’t answer you because I was drunk and fell asleep for three years, but I’ll call you soon.

It’s 5:45 a.m.

A Poe Soul in the Storm

I thought scallops

had no eyes

and I was wrong

60 times.

We brought them back

frozen from the store

to our trailer.

I was free of childhood here

but the sewage smell

creeping in through

the floor vents once a week

while we slept

made me depressed.

The cat that bore

six kittens

(one of which she intentionally smothered)

on the carpet –

and forced us to rent

the carpet cleaner –

hated me.

So all the days

while you were at work

I lied in bed

like a person unemployed

because I was

and drank Rolling Rock

until I passed out

sleeping you closer to me.

Ribular Vertilizing Points

In August 2013

I spent a lot of money

but more time was spent

blowing my brains out

with my finger in the shape

of a loaded gun

the blood in copious volumes

on the carpet just outside

your bedroom nowhere

You didn’t hear any gunshots

just the sound of dropped

live microphones on shadows

I dreamt I clawed through a redlight

in slow motion

and the word meterer I kept

tripping over the ers

and thinking of the stick people

the people with stick limbs

and sad faces nowhere
now here.

Pascal's Wager

Cloud digesting moon;

          the film was “Flim”

positing:

          god is

          or God is not;

          you must wager.

          It is not optional.

One by one by one by no one

as Mars became visible

through a slit between

the passenger window

and aforementioned God-is-not

and sank through

the ceiling vents in heaven

the floor vents in Hell;

          seven cents to purgatory

with only six cents to sell.

Lieutenant Dan's Magic Legs

Delirium:

          another state

          of consciousness;

          not altered,

          just another.

i.e.     A sneeze heard

          across the hallway

          but the perp already in

          the room with you

          sound asleeply sound.

a.            If my body dissolved

like sugar granules

into sweat

right here in this bed

with her

she’d eulogize:

          his life was a series

          of stiff drinks and cigarettes

          that ended at the tips

          of recessed filters

          and the bottoms of condensating

          scotch glasses.

I’d say:

          I used to love olive oil

          and hate olives

          but now I love olives
  

          and hate heroin.

The Haunting

When it storms,

it’s foolish to trust

that the ghosts

in the backseat

will lead you

to safety.

I mean

I’ve made a few deals;

woken up with my nose

half-gone,

let Hafner’s wife suck me off

in the foyer

while he, that miserable prick,

was upstairs fucking Sherry –

my dreadful neighbor

with the two screaming kids.

In the middle of this blowjob

fantasy

is when I open my eyes

to my reflection

fist-pumping in front

of the bathroom mirror at work –

Flynn looks over his shoulder

bewildered;

piss still streaming like icing onto
a pink urinal cake.

The Tenderness of a Sociopath

Tonight at midnight

I want to kiss someone

who makes me feel

I can take

the tape

off of their lips.

Someone who watches bugs

panic and shriek at the sun

and thinks of friends

rotting

in their own lives.

Some one who watches

fireflies send off their struggle

in rain

collapsing under the weight

of fluttering summers.

Some fun:

don’t be scared,

you’re just a human

without skin.

Grave Opener

With one hand

          on a black garbage bag

                   full of dead rats

I used my other hand

          to brush my fingers

                   through your shadow’s hair.

We exchanged

nightmarish pleasantries

in that hollow

June horror;

I knew I needed

you then

the you

in the dreams –

the you

that left

the small shards of glass

in my lungs –

last night

when we slept together

and awoke

apart in black sand.

To Aria & the Universe

          Our car fell off

the cliff

          thrice;

the last time

          into the lake…

The water has a hole in it:

I’m cutting windows out

of the passenger seat.

I’m cutting glass

out of your throat

where the clicking

eccentric pulse

is swiveling like a rogue planet.

Gargling blood

and treading water,

I hear your garbled voice

but I need advice

in hypothermic mint.

I kissed you

your dying lips

during the erratic dusk

as your eyes

fluttering and parasitic

glazed over the mountains

into reverie.

Perfunctory

Kant said

          said “can’t”

when you can’t

move that lead moon

on running maple

singing to scale

floating redwoods

lost in October

beneath drinking elms

at chilling dusk,

the cul-de-sac

echoes

her voice:

          thicker oak

          splintering orange sky;

when I couldn’t

remember it

it was all

I could hear.

deadmoon

That drop of silk

that silken rain

distorted

just enough

or below

the scream of sound.

The drop of sound

the sounding sky

starless

far enough

or absent

that crash of awake.

Name the song

and I’ll just

scream it.

Dehumanizing Static

I smoke them until

I breach the filter

until I burn my fingers

until the smoke

comes dancing in

between open windows

swaying back and forth

between you and night

freeing sweet, lonely you,

sweeter still than

dark.

I don’t know what hours

have said to me in morning

why in the span of miles

there is a dehumanizing static

that I throw out

in buckets.

And I smoke you until

I break the thin song

under your porch light

until you burn my feared whispers

away in brittle branches.