and hidden in a book and snail-mailed to you. 

listen!
remember old people die when earth bursts in springtime,
remember peacen bathing in pinklight, unfurl,
pearl, uncurl,
until at last you were born?
listen! this the cycle
we wake to.
 
listen! you
perfect mortal who exhales
the subconscious nonmelodic music of dreams
and speaks forth the tentative, meditative rupture
of spring-time.
 
listen! I miss
you rarely not rawly like the blue mists
that dissipate in the promise of morning.
I love too much.
I take back touch
 
to have your company safely at a distance. listen,
with you at night I’d walk forever.
forever is when we hit lake-water
and our heads go under.
 

in ’97 superbowl denim even though “we lost that one,” quote dad,
pondering a stuffed fridge at midnight
I am happy to find him brother.
he invites me to toast
(glorious with honey embedded in its grains)
and we jam.
I drop a plate
(ceramic ploop in the dog-bowl)
he smear-shushes a giggle too late.
mom erupts: sagged by her own anger:
(her father is dying, her father is dying)
I suppose that is my grandpa.
(in the worst way, of confusion.)
how we must appear to her:
two overweight adults laughing over jam sieged by dishes.
mom's an austere ice-skater w/ no spectators
risking ankles whilst we gremlin the hockey stands and
openmouth chew chew chew 
moviebutter popcorn and jam.
she trembles: she accepts
always the unfair time and what must be done
and never has to check. inevitable
midnight fight.
she claims: murder if I sleep outside. “sleep under a hammer.”
I sleep outside and outside
trucks on the highway bellow and mourn
to eachother, whales in the deep.
(her father is dying)
(her shoulder accepts pillow as she accepts
snoring husband and nightmares of smothering water)
 
 
 
 

stubble-head trans girl summering on rollerblades
w/ shades over her fishgutted eyes.
presenting earnest palm open hoping for change
and charitably charading a smile.
 
other street creatures lurk dejected and slit-eyed.
Kicking Mike and Art Paul talk love n bide time
knowing her life worthless and so is mine.
I shake my head. I give the same line:
 
no change today, sorry. she expected no less.
do I love her? yes and yes and yes and yes but
she skates on to the other dispossessed
and Art Paul throws her a buck. (the best
 
of us). I have everything and nothing to give.
forgive me, I am just waking up
to cyclical accidents determinative
of her pain and my birth, a mix-up
 
of invisible neoliberal strings. fate?
no. I go cook for my brother
and pretend it’s for her, another
happywhite lie. again I'm too late. 

 

decomposing
here sucking down bad grass.
all the fat couples
and beagles waltz past
my front-porch fortress
            at territorial
               15-minute intervals
           
               them sub-urban liberals politely not listening to  
               rancid coughing me. I am porching alone desiring
                        duality. funny bc already we are we:
she
               moves cough talk
                                                            perform
I              decide her, what to say.
                                                           
talking girl opens doors
                                          soberly
with bangs not in her eyes. the grass is bad
the grass is strong.
      she I me
            we see people in dresses
                  in the corners, where there aren’t.
                                    avoiding all doors.
                                         she thinks it helps.
                        speaking of. fuck this?
            I am falling asleep? piss
       ing on the crickets
give up
pull toes
       under
          the sheets.
 
 

                                                          safely
mashing faces is better                       asleep,
 
best if just one of us  
                                      sleeps. I’ll go first.
I dream. I conjure
                                                wet spiral
                                    snakes hatching from your
                        pupils and from the tiny penis-hole
                                                                        like hi
                                                                                   
            I wake.
you are cracking eggs. and
            your breath is eggy
                        and your eyes (I forgot?) are
            brown not blue
                        flat at the back
                                    like a cat
                                   
and also you don’t love me,
                                    did you mention?

am pretending I cleverly already knew that traveling is for
data pure data and the storage of data. what is travel but?
data in that pack of mine always
stuffed with wrappers and papers
                        rolling
                                    out into
                                                the street.
which all streets look the same, there’s only one,
            she has habits
                        of a pink dawn, rosy for no one,
she finds me habitually
lurking among round dogs under awnings
among clouds of unspeakable steam-
nearby a scream-  
 
the skateboarder eats shit, the scream was her friend,
they’re laughing, am good, have forgotten myself again.
 

The mind is swarmed 
with useless 
degrees and warm with lazy
sleeping in on facts. Mom’s sick, sicking

by the day. I could feel better but I won’t.
Solidarity the two of us in one boat
 
that relies on Jack now,
the second born-hope
though I am sneaky and I happen to know
he
sinks
in
vodka
 
laden with loans I showed how to borrow
from the rent’s headache cabinet. Tomorrow
 
I will pretend to have forgotten.
He’s halving grapefruits, they disappear
 
rind - first in the juicer, the metal rotten
with rotten bits. Overhear
him crying & miss him though he is still here.

LA. thigh-backs are sun-fucked on sidewalks
I lumbering promising delaying detox
til I’m needless. but paradox panic habits her soapbox
 
so fling my rag doll body, surrender
to airplane. go home. mom is dead, blank, defend her
(from me) the cruel soul. my body means well: she is my lender.
 
I will lose sight of both ends of this week
regardless of promises to get better. you freak
mom out, body daughter agrees. resign. our flight is complete.
 

here. caught in a rainstorm in my tent.
sat. morn. feasted on pancakes with friends.
 
here. sated w/ syrup fried pancake love.
sensing lyrics beyond language
in the groans from above:
 
thunder rolls over, a marble down
stairs. plink-plop rhythm gifted as sound
 
here. I think I am waking up, slow.
I feel waves, which mom & rain wrote. me
too. its origins I do not know.

release my hand. at the museum
paint and my face square up three inches
from security-guard threesomes.
 
I dive into paint-pond gobbed w/ lilies
you vacuum walls, eyes gelatinous
green. us glow. warming transparent cities
 
with giddy and luck, blinding and blind.
at night we walk. tiptoe wharfs. if only
you were real. not a fluke in my mind.