ode to my lunch

look at you, pad thai
acting like you're not hot shit
well guess what?
you're not shit, and I'm about to nuke you.

fucking love you, pad thai
you shine on, crazy diamond

shayna it will get better i promise

i woke up and there was an avalanche in my bed
resumes, pamphlets on resumes
calls, not returned
but the biggest boulder of all
trickled out of the radio
and broke my solar plexus
broken but shining
like a tiny gem refracting life for eternity
your voice came through
raspy, tired, but ever languid
liquid, beautiful even with chemo
you ask yourself, Henry
what is going to make you feel best?
i gather up the pieces of my chest
and, hiding behind steam
jam them back in place
hot streams loosening the void
gasps and cries resonating off white tiles
refracting, amplifying into the dark waters of forever

dayum its hot

shoulder blades popping everywhere today
tan taught bleach blonde
is what you get when april is june

four bridgewater girls running in groups
black matching sporta bras, shorts
someone passes, hows the run?
they are all:
awesome! awesome! awesome! so awesome!

minutes pass, two boys trot
slick, shaved, nothing but
running shorts and shoes
I'm not immune

unhealthy habits
reconsidered, resumed
no use changing myself
when watching running
gets me hot and bothered

shade cools everything down
slows my clove until the crackle quiets

it is all:
krrrkrrshhshhhhh
krrkrshhhhhhh
rrrrr shhhhhh

found poem: portuguese text book

conhecer ... ... ... to know, to meet
descobrir ... ... ... to discover
dizer, dizer ... ... ... to say, to tell
dormir ... ... ... ... ... to sleep
fazer, fazer ... ... ... to do, to make
fazer a cama ... ... ... to make the bed

just like that sears commercial

the heat is in the crook of my arms and legs
waiting for me to wake up in the morning.

when I rise
sultriness kills me
if I don’t take my moving slow.

the heat of the day is a new monster
no air in the library
words melting off rehydrated pulp
momentous musings of man mean nothing to nature.

well-being remains unremedied
until a cool 5 o’clock
when I sit by the fan
and motorize happy howls.

contrary to popular belief, house dresses have a myriad of functions

my wardrobe
once belonged to people
that are dead now

floral, paisley, dacron
boning about the neck
that tapers, anachronistic point

a little morbid
and garish memorial
like a sugar skull
or sun bleached plastic flowers

oh no

oh hey.

what?
you want me to write a poem?
oh jesus, it's been another day hasn't it
well. I'm boycotting.
this isn't a poem.
nopenopenope

when you take off the first n
everything is open..
I just thought of a word

nopen

its like a contradiction
not open
or something
I'm never not nopen.




ugh.
I'm wasted.
not even the wasted I was earlier
just wasted on sunshine
long day
of seeing people I care for.


I run my brain through laps
drowned it in smoke
hookah. tokes. cigarettes.
ooh, nat shermans with a touch of mint.
shut up.

my synapses need refurbishing
cracked at the corners
paint peeling
making connections
to the best of their ability
with no help from me.

smoke deprives your brain of oxygen, you know.
the terrible habits I pick up.
jesus.

this is my first morning poem

this is my first morning poem
see how cheery it is!
the exclamation point indicates cheer

it’s too bright out for my red eyes
but listen to the birds!
and the poorly dressed students
talking loudly to each other! voices
bouncing off the courtyard walls

there’s a siren too!
whose making trouble this early?
two now. whooping back and forth

trumpet took the walk of shame with me
brass was my action, nothing else
but who gives a fuck!

its nice out
roommates in a sundress
that’s how I can tell

deer in headlights is a good look for me

smoke going up
darkens the ceiling
I have a feeling
that we're both alone

wash out my head
let me forget
the words I said
respond, regret

I traded love
for lack thereof

to show that I know
that I should
be alone

I would grow
to my toes
all my hair
and not care

fyi

once there wasn’t
now there is.
first I didn’t
and now I am.
when there won’t be
where there once was;
once the sun goes,
you and me
won’t be.

for benoit and the endless infinate everything

Hey come here, I want to show you the exact grain of sand
where the land meets the sea; let me show you a world
bring you into a fractalinear, replicating infinity.
and when we get to our ultimate smallness
i’ll build a room in a room in a room
at the end of the endless mirror
the size of my thumbnail
and everything will be
just how it was but
now we cant fool
ourselves into
thinking that
we’re so
fucking
big
..
.

mmmhmm

today I left
but I haven't gone anywhere
messy bangs
tired elbows and foot arches
belly full of cucumbers

hitlers birthday
is up there on
my list of favorite holidays
but this one
is going dark and slow

sun day

I see skinny white boys playing
drums and
bearded scholars yelling
chants with
teal xylophones
going off
a dozen at once

there wasn't any time today
my pores melting into
first sunburn of the season
and warm metal struck

heres my ode to strings

you sing the third of beethovens third
and you hold my shoes together

if I was in the time of my grandmother
you would modestly detain my house dress
in the backyard

there are theories about you
pieces of my life
too small
to see

but I can hear you best
raked against horse hair
by players in all black

I spent four hours as mokey the fraggle

believing in fairy tales
dressing up like monsters
paying for plastic paradise
living by the disney dogma

don't go to madrid
or bother with greece
we shipped in the culture
and kid proofed the booths

general booze

welp, its thursday night
and have a giant panther on my tits
and had it there when with my comm prof

I couldn't survive in alabama
I'm too liberal and crass
"look at me, I'm wearing a shirt for a dress for godsakes"
she agreed

I couldn't survive in the ocean either
a whale would swallow me up
with his chin inflating like an industrial balloon
or a hammerhead shark
would find me with electricity

plus
fish just mate in the water
sperm everywhere
I'm more selective

unless I'm drinking a jug of wine and watching planet earth in an animal shirt

the pits

I have this pit
right here
like between my chest
which means I forgot to eat today

breakfast was coffee in that place I used to live
hot skim sugar
second breakfast was in that second place I used to live
americano skim no sugar

lunch was pizza crust with peppers
and a fountain

dinner was opera
puccini menotti handel

and a found mozart record
li nozze di figaro
pristine untouched
by someone 30 years ago
that was missing out

they probably had a bigger pit than me

sand is glass

you follow me around
like the sand in my shoes
leftovers
from when I got drunk
and pissed on the beach

and I am the waves
always crashing
into a foam
of excited white nothing
before the black ripples
pull be back again

to clarify

my savings account
is the keef catcher
on my grinder

my vagina
is the queef catcher
for grinding

good friday

end of the week
minus one toenail
left eye red
green eyelashes

black branches stiffly
crawling up the spine
fever shriveled arms
thick tired neck

who cant be happy despite
morbid physical inventory
on a sunny friday that
ends this week forever

who rips off their toenails, honestly

smelling of old books and sweat
this room is too small
to turn the crumbling yellow pages

cracked the spine open at fifteen
three years later I cracked another one
now I’m just wondering
when these stories will wrap up

I didn't listen to enough bach in the womb, I guess

what was that name of that girl who sang
that thing in the pink dress?
you cry every time you hear it
even though it's silly
it's beautiful too

or that guy... with the songs
he wrote about the end of times?
he was french or some shit
where was my mind
when I heard these things

I can't even tell you
how the overture to marriage of figaro goes
even though I listened to it yesterday
or why I thought that bald mountain song
from fantasia was about a funeral

if I'm overcome with emotion
when I hear beautiful music
but can't remember it later
how can it leave a mark on me?

unexplained muscle pain rules

I didn't deposit my checks today
or go through my credit history
or read medieval literature
or write a paper about creative non fiction
or introduce the topic of gays in the media

I mostly just had a fever
and tried not to throw up.

but I did get to see the blue purple yellow lines
next to the lamp
where your shutters
across the room reflected

student government association can suck my dick

the early april rains keep fucking coming
I borrowed my roommates purple hoodie
and my other roommates purple umbrella
the bends played me over to practice

two days before opening night
my shit gets canceled
like, all the shit. everything.
at least till may
when it stops fucking raining

on my walk back
from the lines I didn’t say
earthworms scattered the asphalt
like so many flaccid pick up sticks

a quote

"what happened last weekend?"

did I get an answer or was there never one?

I feel light today

my pores opened up last night
and breathed in cigarettes with cloves
liquor with deer blood that ran through my body to my toes
past the prickly chemicals that got in there too somehow

and in my orange floral dress they remain open
soaking in the first warm day in april
trying to recollect conversations and cure a hangover
staying still, walking slow

slumped up against a concrete wall I peel a clementine
a parting gift from somebody
and my fingertips soaked in the sticky sweet rind resin
revealing insides, opening doors that weren't there
until my fingernails demanded them to be

I fucking hate worms

You are blind and eat only dirt

But you still struggle for it

Loping a wrinkled, naked appendage

Toward the grass

Bloated and slimy

Your skin slips off into the shallow waters

And finds a place in the concrete cracks