questions for mom

how did you summon me
from blood 
and bedsheet equations 

and how did you pull me 
like teeth from your budgeted mouth?

you are highly improbable. 

is that why you're so easy to hate? 

I need to become truth 
and see farther, 
so that you might see. 

you have another truth 
you don't need to see. 
when will I understand you? 

I was not born of a virgin 
and now my sheets are stained, too. 
do you recognize the blood between my hairs, 
eyeblack and red and 
does it bend like snakes for you? 

did you invoke me with a whistle 
soft as wood rots, and did you hear them stop 
just now, the solemn footsteps behind us? 
who is tracking us, down through the centuries? 

or is that me, and I am you?

sullen poem found on a paper bookmark

bleary in the mid-morning. 

people on the phone 
shape love
outside my ears 
like a ball you make by throwing

from your chest. from pomegranate fogs
other headaches 
catch up and hijack the dreams. 
no thought will rescue me 

and no thought worth rescuing 
what Ego has brought me: 
magpie pity, vain as silver 
mirrors. i need company.

yellow and death

no yellow like yellow never 
corned upon

these shoulder hills patient 
to unfold meander 
to the car like cows and 
lick us, 
be wet, look: 
rockabye palest and 
gentlest yellow 

hills know we will never 
stop to love them again 
and indeed we are hardly stopping now. 

shoulder hills euthanized
with asphalt-blanket, 
so we take it, split to sea, 
pretending hills that open so easy
as rest reminisced as dream
where we still have power.

processing

so I failed. 
I abandoned my baby. 
my goals remain desires, out of reach. 

so I failed. 
But now I hold 
Slow eyes of mountains, clarity. 

I see what I am: 
processing machine. all I need
to process is breathe.

fertile bush

fertile-bush Download

for L

although you live lovers ago
you don't leave me lone 
if you're gone stay gone 
if you're gone, are you gone? 

my memory is side to side
slip like snake 
down a hole. my body remembers 
us scared to kiss cuz it's gross. 

if you're gone, are you gone? 
insisting hands at night only, secret wine 
stolen pride. yesproud of my fat where you slap 
cuz it's chrysalis 

change i am, change you, with my ears, 
got me? 
go me. for failing and [           ] failing again. 
nothing is ever over. 

every Friday we puke and buy more pens
you protest settled shit 
got me panicking like where we gonna hide 
from ourselves this time the edibles hit

buglove this smog sunset's 
wasted on you. 
you're wine in my skin
i'm wasted on you.

bliss

crosslegged in the bedroom (just me) 
recounting 
hair, which begins life
under the skin. 

such is sin
subliminal, 
pull pussy 
out your eyelids til 

the whites run from your eyes they 
all runny dewey satisfied 
wash my sin, 
liquid contagious 

coarse like hair. I fucked an angel- 

& I really should give in- 
sleep with an angel, 
wake up with an angel- 
but apathy is bliss-

while you’re at work

curve of the earth
     birthday of the canon 
the curse you live w/
     is a hiccup, blind burst plans 
never to happen

I mean imagine: 
                                    you say it back
      comb lover I'm love-hungry
      comb lover, come: 
                                           love me
precision-map the river valley 
      my triangles unspiral 
      make heady patterns, 
like illusion
                  alluding that you're ready
might just do it while you're at work 
         & sleep soundly.

elevator

elevator Download