a love between two people

when you press two thumbs

between my ribs

you pave

the way

for a river.

blessed irrigation.

we can feed families our love

found poems from october

the girl who read the white peony leaves (in solitude)

wiped the counter (to be noticed)

she wanted to be seen by a boy

who would only come into her tea shop once

and she would be sick that day.

she knew this by looking into

the bottom of her cup.

still. it helps to seduce the pyrex

in a way that says

i'm in control of my destiny

***

and the boy sat in his prefabricated predestined dorm room

surfing open source pornographic video sites

looking for a girl he had only seen in his dreams.

he was twelve. so moved by

the woman he loved before knowing

if she was conceived in this century or the next or never

that he drew a picture of her

it was a crude but technically accurate depiction

down to her flat matted blonde hairs.

unmoved by the offerings of the world wide web

he gingerly unfolded his muse again and relieved himself.

***

in the late afternoon

when the sun

hit the counter

in a way

that lit up her smile

and electrified

little baby blonde hairs

crowning her face

escaping the dread locks

she would confuse

the leaky steam wand

for a squeaky door

this is how

she wanted him

to find her

***

she wiped dust off the teacups

with a white fresh rag

and thought about her shop.

it was tuesday at ten.

most students were in class

most god fearing houusewives were at the

fundamentals for fundamentalists knitting circles.

the ones that did not fear god had the luxury

of idling on the sofa, uncaffienated,

the men were at work.

***

have you seen my dream girl?

she goes to the college i was too scared to leave home for.

she works at the tea shop there, and reads

leaves at the bar when shes drank enough.

she is too good at it, so she never likes to read sober.

she sees my face in the dredges of white peony

and smiles sadly, knowing

that inaction is the folly of man.

***

have you seen my dream girl?

she lives in a city that holds

my stillborn successes to her skyscraper chest.

she works in a place i can't afford but know i should

i'm sure she works there

she smells like honey and rain and dry earth

rubbing between her finger

i'm sure her shoulder blades point

to the highest stars in the heaven

and fly past penthouses.

have you seen my dream girl?

she saves my life in a mini mall

full of tall grass

by regurgitating orange julius

into my mouth. right before i wake up.

i wake up and shes gone

i don't have a number to receive desperate texts

or solid material for a missed connection

please tell me if you've seen her

she's light on her feet but sure in her step

there can't be many people like that left.

she puts her arches to the ground

as a descendant of salome, lifting her step.

so light on her feet

is the girl of my dreams, that she leaps over

begrudging push carts and undeserving oak leaves

on her way to work. she performs her tasks

with beauty and duty and grace

and never even misses me

love er bust

when hitchhiking across mattresses

jumping from sealy to sleepys

memory foam. box spring.

my feet never touch the ground

my face falls to earth when i wake up

and see sleep lines have spelt

out your name. panicing

i look out. horizion lines bleed

a pale orange blue and you

are not there.

i survived

this hurricane

was horrible

everyone tweeted

about the treats

they were making

without me

i have a sick slick stick stickley couldn't give a dick and if you wanna rick rick lime rickey goanna get with me play some fuckin frisbee bettah fuckin quiz me what it be im a nerd see see or don't see me.

panties

the most permanent mark you left

are the bleach marks on my panties

a curiosity created

by your order of operations

for hydrogen peroxide

and oral sex.

it took me a while to discover

that i wasn't cloroxing my laundry

in freakishly consistent locations.

and i wasn't excreting acid.

what i'm trying to say is.

there was no big mystery

this year. about why my

most hidden spots.

look so washed out.

dingdong

sorry to bother you.

did i catch you at a bad time?

should i come back later?

i hate to inconvenience you.

i know this is a difficult period.

i just thought. well maybe.

we could love each other

and you could make my pores open

and they could talk to your pores

they would breath and laugh everywhere

sustaining the Other

bodies singing with touch

tasting the infinite cosmic calm

...nonono it's cool.

no worries.

i'll just...yeah.

see ya.

12345678

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

please

sex for one please!

i am anti midas

turns out everything i touch

turns to shit

but a least

i'm a chronic masturbator

and a fecalpheliac

so i don't really need

to bother anybody

night 4

the tattoo ink was a nice cover up

and dripped down my side as he

fumbled through his belt in a hush

he poured the tattoo ink and said

hey. do a good job at making this

more meaningful than it is.

as usual, the tattoo ink gave a half smile

and scoffed. whatever man, he says

just don't drag me into this fucking mess

you're the fucking mess! i hate whispered

but the words were slurred and thick

and i know

the tattoo ink will never take you seriously

with tears in your eyes.

so i lowered them. and ran my fingers

through the warm, wet, black puddles.

or diet dr pepper

sweet and low

gets a bad rep

because everything

is a shitty substitution

sugar substitutes whole foods

that make a steady pep pep pep

sugar substitutes substitute sugar

we get a rush and forget about fiber.

fuck complex carbs. this is america.

he is coke zero. roller coaster tycoon.

he is 21 y/o single wants to live chat NOW

he is rubber corks, digimon, decaf skim

sugar free vanilla iced latte just drink a water

you fucking BITCH.

you are the bread water base jump

real live butterflies, not pinned in a box

you are the ginger ale my mom stirred

all the bubbles out of when i was sick.

you are the grass i grab and pull, sitting

outside in the sun. you are not from concentrate.

picked fresh daily, vanilla extract extracted from vanilla

and in actual, actual reality

i like that about you.

but i'm still drinking diet coke.

to the girl with the baby blue luggage

oh darling, you look tired

have you been traveling long?

you have the look

the corners of your eyes

wrinkle and shine

your toes want to leave

baby powder on carpets

your things are folded neatly

everything in its place

although you are so transient

please consider my offer

of perching you

on your stack of luggage

i can sing to you

and it will be so sweet and safe

and you may even find me

a small place as a guest

in that big empty room

before you unzip your files

and decompress

we can scream and sing

and the noise will

bounce back to us

in your hollow home

wrapping around four ears

like a bandage, holding it in

and everything

everything will be fine

oscar has liberated

when i have children i will tell them

i never got to test drive my motor scooter

and that, a man with a lotus on his neck

well, he died. and i wanted to ride his memory

but the day it came i was not happy.

I MADE A MISTAKE. I DO NOT KNOW

HOW TO RIDE SCOOTERS.

I HAVE NEVER KNOWN THIS

TO BE TRUE ABOUT MYSELF.

I WILL SHAKE AND SHAKE

AND CRASH AND CRASH

AND DIE AND DIE

the thing i so badly wanted will

be my folly and i will crash and burn

like the lotus man. like everyone else.

that, my sweet child, was the summer

where i discovered if you want something,

it is best to try and get it. you can stretch

out the dangerous what-ifs into a blanket

and roll yourself up in an air conditioned room

where everything is nice. familiar. a comfort.

but you will never fall in love with the wind in your hair.

screaming at the black yellow curves:

I HAVE LOVED YOU

AND I WILL LOVE

WHO YOU HAVE MADE ME.

the never we

you never had the will to wonder

what i looked like with a scarf on

and how this hey girl hibernates

see me in gossamer cotton please

going up the stairs on my knees

begging and beautiful, a memory

keep it between your teeth, and

spitting out songs just think of

the never we and not planning

down and down

there was a place you used to call home

but that, that's all over now

and i liken the feeling

to screaming tea kettles

and sleeves hanging over the dawn

there was a life we used to call ours

and we raced in great lanes

roman chariot cars

but our town was a circle

and all of the hurdles

were games that they trained

to be playing along

long weekend

lengthening my hours

is the greatest talent of your absence

miles away, you lay my life over your knee

and with greatest care

your flat steady fingers

smooth out the wrinkles

until days wrap around hills

and minutes are mountains

sry

you

don't get it

and you can't get it

because you just don't get

it. you've never had it, which

leads me to believe you never will.

perhaps you believe you are on the cusp

the breaking point, about to spill out with love

and understanding. well let me be the first to gently,

painfully, and with great regret tell you that you are wrong

real or imagined, the blockades before you will steadfastly prevail

wait!

every room is a waiting room

i move freely, place to place

never with any prospect, progress

i hold my teeth in my hands

they are defaulted, smiling

it's not news, it's not you

perhaps a message, a...

all i care to know

frozen indecisive exile

is what i am waiting for

espresso lime rickey bomb

i'm going to write this poem for you really really fast.  if spacebars weren't like breathing i would say fuck it but let's see let's see. i love you like streets with no potholes you let me stand up at 30 miles or put my feet over the handle bars if she prefers. i love you like the summer nights where i pass full speed the same stores and bars and some people are new and beautiful, in love and dying. i love you like three shots of espresso in a raspberry lime rickey for free.

my type

my type of neighborhood

is where i can come home

and see everyone i know

at great mega local show

so local i could spit and be

home

s please

i just wish

for like, fifteen minutes

things could be like they were

and i didn't have to be so concerned

with being sexy and interesting and new

take it all

take it all

but fuck

my father told me i'm losing sight of it

and coffee is no way to make rent

and i should be big and famous already

but fuck

its hard to break into this town

every one, every thing, already

appears to be broken, still

rockumentaries

have been better than melatonin

i prefer ones about british artists

the critics voices so soothing

war head

i couldn't possibly
write a poem at my fathers bar
im waiting for him, killing time

it's like
at softball practice when
we would sit around with
a pile of warheads
and unwrap the amount we
betted we could stomach

im counting the candies
and taking a drink
for every one i put back
In the pile

it's just gotta

the acid throat tickle

will go away when

mugs stop breaking and

the fridge starts working

clover

dinosaur vs search

dinosaur vs bedtime

dinosaur vs the potty

dinosaur vs reptile

dinosaur vs dinosaur

dinosaur vs pig

dinosaur vs cat

dinosaur vs king kong

dinosaur vs dragon

dinosaur vs dinosaur games

dinosaur vs bird

getting back

i left something outside months ago

the snow swallowed it up

sedentary and never ending

the snow piles walls

between cars

and sidewalks

(you, now)

the thing lays there

forgotten and sleeping

in blank albino sand dunes

leaving endless shoe puddles

expressionless and unapologetic

i was sure that, a surer sure than usual

a bath would be taken for the first time in years

even if I have to boil every pot in the house tonight

it is warm and almost free and the thing i can’t remember

that I left in the snow will wash off me like stepping salty boots

in a fresh spring puddle and every vertebrae will think of when they

can lay exposed and beaming from a swinging sundress, and stay there

not many more

learn to enjoy nothing days

with seconds slower than scabs

relay to the hurried girl yesterday

its easy to close all her tabs

no bus today

for the first time in sixteen years
there are no sharpened pencils
new t-shirts
or rehashing of the old worries
my anxieties are brand spanking new
adult ass ones.
a three hundred count newness
of cotton softness and simple adulthood
making coffee
and living for my own
unborrowed learning

a practical guide to painting your room, pt one

so!

you moved into an urban shithole and need a self affirming domestic pick me up.

not to fear!

painting isn't just for self harming german turpentine junkies.

there are a few things to remember however!

one.

you may never paint your new room the color of an ex lovers hair. the color of their skin is acceptable, as it is likely soft and neutral and can remind you of other things, like wurthers originals or cottege cheese, but hair colors will surely entangle you in old memories.

two.

you are renting. fuck tarps.

three.

when it comes to painting your room, price is no object. mostly because they do not tell you how much your paint is until after it is mixed.

hey

this poem is not good. do not think about this poem.

true love beach, rockport

he stretched for miles

swinging those hips through

the flat smooth ground

.

the stone broke itself

so that he may

be gathered by

.

young girls of the village

that stack his fingers up

reaching to the heavens

long not ride

every drop that fell

on the car with

no windshield

was like a pinprick

to the aged milliner

a small, pained

expected detour

off the course of

beautiful direction

cutting

thank you

little blue

leather man

so many uses

who could guess

this was one

blank

don't drag one out of me

it's not that nothing happened

it's that

well?

i don't want to talk about it.

let me come back when theres something to say.

even this

it all must fit perfectly in nature, he said.

even this.

as he calmly demonstrated

i believed that all the strands of hair.

could live, a perfect match

in every pore.

awe

gee jimi

im real glad

ya tagged along

on my one night off

babe turks tits tats full

home please screamin nites

aw

gee v
awful sorry

ya got drunk enuf

to break away from a

2 ppl post rock freak fest

runinscreamin into the night

today is thursday

wednesday was a strong loss

tuesday was forgetting how summer rain

lays heavy in noses

a wet grey calm

things missed:

windshield wipers

you

i rely on our heroism, dear

it's lovely how you drive the torrents

under your resined planks

full speed ahead

like there's somewhere to go

see thursday

see thursday

thank you pink sheets

does the nine year old owner of this bed you are here?

do you remember being her?

the nights you slept so easily alone

it was the only thing you knew

coming so hard now

get back to those days

sleep less

i need to match your breath with mine when i go to sleep

to the steady in and out of your dreams

or, i can count to eight over and over

until i've erased their meaning

but our unknowing, all loving breath is best.

is this a previous lovers act of retribution?

programming me to synch

set on simultaneous scroll down?

cyrusly

i could never be sorry for screaming like wild creatures at the charles with drugs and homosexuals, white sex asses in bus terminals and long breezy grass

another scorcher

give me give me

ice cubed kittens

and days in bed

the heat pressing

us in like

laundromat quarters

sleep bus sleep

excuse her.

this is a hardly day.

new tattoo missing you

i see you in the flaky black painted rust of brooklyn stoops.

and the wood splinters of old telephone poles, bleached and bleeding, talks spanning generations.

i see you in the kitschy confetti of chinese bus upholstery yellow red blur green specks meeting your eyes and finding a home there.

i see you in the shady red convertible memories, when we tied indifference around our necks.

i don't see you now on these strange vanilla bedsheets in a city far from your sweaty july knuckles swinging.

the fact of the matter is i've seen you where you've never been but i see you in the places i want to go be stay live, and on the backs of my eyelids the places i'll never see again.

but i see you most between my ribcage in the shadows reflected off the windows we once called home.

just stop it

late june heats up quick

the clarity comes only with the morning in the ground dregs of coffee

it is always comfortable to drink

i am a house pet, resting blushed cheeks on dirty kitchen linoleum.

tomorrows goanna be another scorcher. scorcher? like yesterday. yesterday?

yesterday you said you'd call sears!

yesterday we said a lot of things.

tomorrow we will say more.

it doesn't mean you are going to break out of this chrysalises anytime soon.

if stoned tuesday afternoons passively absorbing animal planet have taught me anything,

its butterflies aren't your ne'er do well prissy insect ornament.

they worked for their wings.

so don't expect me to just hand over my powder perfect, fluttering paper tripped out ink blot appendages for pinning when i sucker punched natures shell with skinny black arms for three days, looking, hoping, living for life with my head pressed against the sultry june sky, only to come out slimy, disoriented, a little hungover, and a long way to go

let me tell my own fortunes in lost coffee grounds

and the lines on my six little hands

small world

a shark, a rabbit, and a four eyed man are in a park.

didn't i see you on shark week? the four eyed man asked

no, said the shark. i'm a hallucination.

and you, rabbit friend? said the four eyed man.

well, i'm more of a projection of a talking rabbit onto a lethargic park squirrel.

oh. well then.

will i ever find it?

together they reply:

we have all been many things.

we are one.

sometimes, you are part of the one.

but for you, there is often duality:

the four eyed fucker, and every other fucker.

so it doesn't matter what we look like.

you want distance no matter who we are.

and that way, you won't find shit.

then will i ever see you again, shark and rabbit?

you already have, fucker.

i know the score and

i'm sorry for everything*

what i haven't done yet

what i won't do

not sorry for what i can't do**

what i'm about to do will make me sorry

and i'm sorry this wasn't a poem

*i'm not sorry

**sometimes i am

another crash

i hit a man today

not like, domestically, sexually

but

the way he collided into my windshield

his ribs fractalated snowflake solar systems

that obscured vision

dusted the dash

with dangerous, bloody stars.

i was shaking

it was beautiful

to the bed i never sleep in

oh, hi

remember me?

i made you!

...last week

i'm sorry.

i'll try but i'm made of fire

and every tounge licks and crawls

around the people i love

consumes them

with my three in the morning talk

and you don't see any of it but

trust me

when i get back to you

i know it will be soft and sweet

and needed

car song

they picked all of her cherries and they tied them up with string

stuck em in a yellow envelope with lovers words and things

but the postman squished them both together and never was read

the love notes that were truth and beauty turned soggy and red

so i never truly knew how much you loved me

until the day you caught a fuzzy bumble bee

tied a string around it's waist gifted it to me and said

if you let me i would build a shrine for each hair on your head

you think you can keep things close with with strings and knots and so

you keep them close to your chest till you're ready to let go

but i know you don't have to go great lengths and wrap me up in twine

to make you so sure that i'm yours and you are fucking mine.

i didn't need anymore than that young fuzzy bumble bee-ee

newtopia

you!

you are reborn

you are smooth white plaster.

down feathers.

closed eyelids.

(breathing and translucent, never opened)

shayna:

we are the new car smell

we shed like snakes

our skin

too small and fast to see

exploding off us like it had somewhere better to go.

(it didn't)

oh and

in this new and perfect land

the roads smell like fresh laundry

it is not bridges that are burned

every iris is ignited.

you will never see a popped balloon again!

roadkill is dead.

and with the merest feather tickle.

butterflies will drop the strings

of your gut elevator.

again and again.

like a seventh grade morning.

jambo

use what you wrote in your moleskine, bitch

another excuse note

oh christ

excuse her

there was time traveling midgets and

oh...ice cream and

oh...nail polish

some of it in the burly clinical massage chair

some of it on a hot picnic table

painting white to match

she couldn't have

she just couldn't have said anything

hi greg

any day at all darling

is ripe to be

picked out of the hum hum hum

and tossed into a theater

year nineteen sixty nine

rich and sexy

or the day is

soggy tofu croutoned

mix tape talked

sweetness so few know

the soft easy flow

of shakers and mike tests

the can

the sky stayed grey

like it was all week

and did not care about

the lovers quarrels

small as ants on the ground

pills paper

pills paper

beep beep

eleven oh three

a low battery

only if gram bell thought of this tragedy

oh dasterly bastard of phone function standards

haphazard are plans for more longevity

card house

a house of drunks

is a house of cards

fragile

bright

faces that stay the same

and with a new wind

falling flat

jack on queen, aces

sevening fours

all a matchbox and bourbon away from extinction

gah dam

another night

my pink sheets this time

when will i heed last summers advice?

oh you

fireflies fly in small circle pirouettes

while i forget the regrets to begot, beget

old friends

old friends

the bends in the road

lend themself to

the friends of what's been

piss poem

talking through

the bathroom walls

to you

on my lap

forming

the thing i am

crap shes slipping

excuse her. she must return from a boozy somervillian exile in one piece. this is her main concern. love always.

warning

this woman took the bar exam five years ago

with school street dick breath and failed.

she played with the cats and warned us.

don't let this house suck you in and kill your dreams.

the warning fades as the sun moves across the sky.

beach pussy

barely missed summer

on the big black wheel roads.

the family cat wasn't so lucky

but we turned around and

you grabbed him

a limp warm blood spot oh god

and laid him over the guardrail

which seemed right

right as found arcade tickets

with no prize

sunday

the lazy days fast turn into crazed melee, delayed malaise

saturday

it was on a piece of paper. i lost it. i hope i find it.

i'm sorry, i keep

getting distracted

what was the goal?

make something of yourself, kid

yeah.

oh shit. or was it?

be happy. just be...something

while you're doing it

no no

fuck

i'm supposed to make other people happy

or like, make them think

about happiness

make my family happy

or

fucking

accept the soggy puzzle pieces

and angry magpies, stealing tinsel

i thought i saw a grey hair

but instead found a bit of straw

i would have found burst capillaries

hadn't i played with caterpillars

i could have been wrinkled already

if outdoor dust didn't laugh off like leaf veins

mutual doodles

lines

curves

thick lines

and the absence of them

between it all

i'm only

as good as

you think i am,

ginge

living poetry

one hour to herself

cool things about today

fireflies
hammers
late night bright lights flashed out sassy lady gaga goin alejandro
busting pipes open with hammers
using busted open pipes like our rock mountain patio furniture
white butterflies that were lithe and blithley like moths
washed out the inside, our car
was all blinking green and red lights
cooked off mushrooms
dirt piles high
sky lined with
childrens section
my little book about god
little golden treasures
over
big cats sticker book over three hundred fucking stickers
come on

my

lithe white thighs tithe sighs in quiet nights blithe

high school benefit

the home ec room is where the robotics kids practice now

and we all finished wasting a different four years than last time

pee cock rock steady

her favorite bird

was always the peacock

first for the name then

the way they were either

clinking with the shine of a

blue metal rainbow

or nothing

waiting to be filled in

or already washed out

she saw them simmering in the florida heat bobbing

their pom pom bobs and perching

one leg up when they were thinking

one day, she was a young woman

and the scores of

vain indigo eyes

hung from every

blonde little bitty

that flies in the flock of the times

taking her cocky pea pride

that she learned from the best

she shoved those regal royal blue

bristling fronds

right up her ass

and sat on her pride

waiting for the whole thing to blow over

it was over

when it was over she was glad to pick up the memories of her with her teeth and toenails, scratching back into the laundrying shampooing flesh vessel that knew why she did it

sky high

this is the highest the sky has ever been

lighten up

she always wondered about the bleached out pictures in the crotch of her panties

did her vagina try to recreate pastoral scenes by spitting hydrogen peroxide?

does it cry the virgin mary into cheaply serged cotton at night?

eventually, the rock was removed from the tomb

and the medicine cabinet revealed

his after shower facial cleanser

and their marriage the muse

papers, my boy

put off

as in it got or i'm

you off

as in i'd rather get

retrospective 2

i remember scrounging, don’t you?

boiling water in your black hoodie

letting your tattered sleeves get precariously close to the hot bubbles

we lived in a shit hole anyways but it was ours and your dad let us stay and my dad got drunk and helped put a floor in the bathroom and i mean, we cleaned out the old cat piss and i painted and painted while you were at work, turning the walls to red and black and blue so how could it be anything but our home.

that winter we had the quaintest christmas party. nothing in the house but twenty dollars worth of decorations and beer between us and i can’t remember which year but one year we found a tree across the street and another we made one out of a tripod. it was greener that way

the warm summer months we wore shorts and from the porch we saw the church car washes from across the street, beer in hand, watching fear in god scrub hornets out of hubcaps.

and i didn’t go anywhere but i didn’t need to because i had my cigarettes and you and the bong unless we broke the bong, which we did, and we cried and packed something else and tried not to get the cats high.

an especially hot day paul rolled up in his el camino, passed out girl in the bed and we smoked cigarettes and wondered what to do but eventually we carried her upstairs and fed her veggie burgers back to health and she fell on the treacherous stoner landscape of our coffee table naked, trying to show us her led zeppelin tattoos.

one of the summer months, i moved out a pregnant 18 year old on an adderrall bender because her boyfriend was a pill head and a hoarder and i mean how could i not? i wasn’t too particular about honing my morals but damn.

the attic stayed a haven for the insane and stoned that wanted to disappear in the floorboards and clamor onto the garbage posing as furniture and i don’t know what we talked about but the only light was candles so it must have been something romantic or scary or serious which are all pretty close anyways.

and the floor would undress itself, leaving us little laminated slivers of nothing to stick in our feet and beds and carpet we should have gotten rid of months ago.

and our liver stayed stuck to the ceiling, a dark purple sac looking on with at least a morbid curiosity.

retrospective

i know the things we picked up along the road

stones shaped like hearts beaded curtains

one thousand gold matches in metal elephants

daydreams of down the street pink mustangs

dragonflies turned into helicopters

where third eyes were opened

for the second time

the things we lost along the way

god, first homes, clothes

i remember all the times you fixed it.

which you always did, but i also remember when fixing it was as easy as saying bunchie.

i couldn’t even take care of the cats

or the earwigs in the drain

i remember how pissed you were that i left the water running because i was so scared of them just like

hiding from your mom in the closet because it was past ten

you held my hand over the rail at island grove when

my hands were allergic to friction

and again over the hospital bed guard rail

when i was trying to leave saying

please i really didn’t mean to say that i wanted to

i remember henry died and you touched me like how you touched my chest that one time i got a sunburn and we were too young to be touching chests and every touch was electrified

i remember i broke your heart and while i was busy getting stoned you bought a big red sports car

i remember i broke your heart and even though we got stoned together then and you lost the sports car

i went off gallavanting and forgetting how your eyes get smaller when you smile or the clever way your face shape shifted into mountains on the hot summer nights where I wore my green plaid dress and a smile and you still had your sports car and a smile so we convinced ourselves there was a car show in halifax and spent the next day on the saggy grey couch watching top gear or when we went on clever cruises in the company yaris and i wasn't wearing anything in particular but not the sort of nothing i was wearing on top of my black bra in the mountaineer that one time when we were what like sixteen?

i remember when i couldn’t drive or keep my cool or think for myself or talk to adults or stay focused or believe i was beautiful but now it all a memory

in clutter

mom, i’m finding myself

at the bottom of crushed cans

and sticking on the insides of

helicopters? pinnochio noses?

if i peek into the garage

where the stray cats fight on a

forgotten (stolen) corvette

i see myself napping in the backseat

licking love into feral sisters ears and

mingling with the leathered dust

last day

i notice more the

smell of everyones lunch

and the couples on campus

touching theories and fictive strategy

sanding away satan's goat head in the art building

i wonder why i never pursued that crafts minor

so crowded

mayfair maday

no room to lay

june without a

post noon melee

dear lord

dear lord

please excuse shayna from this past yesterday. she offers her condolences for blowing you off, as well as everything else that was supposed to transpire this past evening. she will attempt to refrain from being a hedonistic party wolf in the upcoming hours.

the powers at be

the game

kill your whole

family kill

your whole fam

ly kill your

whole family

kill your hole

my sal a

mander my

salaman

der my sal

a man der

my sal a

i am just

resting i

am just rest

ing i am

just resting

i am just

and then the drums

i would go right ahead and excuse shayna from this guy right here. you wouldn’t believe it. An early trumpet practice, cassette tape poetry, and a really, really long ginger ale. she didn’t even get the power point done. professors can yell at you from twitter now. but she read “for catie” for catie’s family and had the poetry boys over stoned and grieving in a let’s get high kind of way.

and then there were the drums she was late and had to wear the pink dashiki just like that nightmare she had because she is afraid of taking a solo, but she took two and at least four people liked it or said they liked it.

and you know, she wasn’t clear on the details with the moustache party or the sea monster gold margarita grapefruit martini cosmo types of events or discourse, but she did say it ended in encino man with bright eyes and dinosaurs and puffer fish and the most discrete kinds of vomiting so i am rather convinced she couldn’t have spit this one out if she tried.

if you need any more information on this series of events, the appropriate pictures have been tagged

---X

radio control in hell

and the sky came down just after the sun rose for the last time

peeking up its ginger head and pulling the covers over again

the sky came down against the grain of the sun rising

and the suns stiff fur rose up and oranged the sky

bristling, tickled the pads of its hands

it came down and decided to stay laying reclined

with it's sunglasses on enumerating all the roads

lost cliffs and pot holes

with the back of his spine he aligned all the cracks and

the sky came down and smoothed out the bends and curves

in our foundations

she's being emotional

the heavy wet tears rolled down like rain and the rain came down too but the rain doesn't need to explain itself and neither do i dammit but i should but the steering wheel stay steady and i will take the rays of red and green bleeding from the streetlights and squeeze them back into their rightful orbs by sucking it back up into my guts but it hurts but it will never be right but i want it to be perfect i want you to be perfect but after you saw that i can cry over anyone you will stop being so mean but it wont be because it's perfect but you finally saw the beautiful inlay and gold filagree on the 300 porcelain arteries you can't unbreak.

the tapes

i found my lover filling a box in the basement

in his remaining form, the mix tapes

all that is left of him is what can be seen

in the curves of capital on white label

and the crackle of almost faithful acetate

lazy ass

the plaid is pleading not to be pleated

on his anus is heinous jameson

a day to my goddamned self

upon leaving my house, a robin.

but not before a long day

laying naked. answering only

to lazy whims, like

what does your face look like at night

or who is martha and did she know

her vineyard would give birth to deaf little grapes

naming “fish” and “i love you” with their waxed purple hands

upon waking, fifteen missed calls

from one phone. and the pebbles between

my toes were jumping beans and i thought of him sitting on wood chairs

naming all the cracks in the wall “shayna” and “i love you” and how he wishes to splay fingers in my mouth

tickling canker sores in my throat

fondling the opposite of my clitoris

upon thought, i took the day off

from anything but being the cool tiles

my cool tile

and my radiator wrapped blanket

that can kiss the shower off my hips

just as well, and leaves me free after to

perform eulogies for hair and nails

aids camp

the kids are hiv positive

but at least it makes the macaroni mayonnaise taste better

i almost cried with the rain

because the coast was so wide

and the sand was so white

and the sky

the sky was so orange