he let go when he saw the carnival grounds,
ran to jump around the strangers and their toddlers

among them, now suddenly more confident of his height,
he seemed taller and no longer mine

his hand was certain of its own movements,
freely flailing of a happy nature

independence is best when it first begins,
the contrast makes everything appear clearer

the blue and the orange each on their own.

the rides are for children only,
i watch from a distance as the planes go overhead.

you have learned

the days are real as a dream.
like parking a car slowly
then remembering
you don't drive.

there are things that come for me
but don't retrieve me.
my parents have never been able to
know what is troubling me.

tonight he heard me
but didn't help me,
so God is dead
and we have killed him.

i have half of my childhood in my hand
and there is nothing but waiting,
eyes stuck wide open for its retreat,
patient with fearful breathing, observed.

what it is is to be trapped
into a regression of myself
dull and useless and later
i become the one who yells,

whom you ignore.
certainly, it is not important.

hiccuping empty spaces in between
the oddest swimming motions
a body has seen.

space travel, for Ly

you took: a video of our last big gathering,
people, smoke, and thin meats everywhere

the myspace shadow of two cold bodies
on top of a windy mass of hilly curves, old grass

one puppy then two, companions for a happy life,
we'd hoped. i'd hoped the same for you.

odd translations of the noodle man's ghost,
and all the old children in the new room now,

trying to read a crazy mumbling of a text,

trying to understand a stranger's call,

mapping out the day, its destinations in green.

saw the apartment before we erased it.

taught us how to play, sex to sitar strings.

spoke for me when i'd last heard his voice,

a long-distance call in three free minutes.

you had new numbers and loved them all,

each one a temporary name and identity.

one day, on the train,  you gave me a galaxy
and let me control when worlds collided,

but i couldn't take hold of them forever,
things just tend to crash into each other,

obliterate. all the memories you'd worked out

linger on in the mind of other temporary stations:

in the end, aren't we all only one moment

in the relay rounds, going in circles, crying

about everything we'd lost while hugging tightly

to the new bodies that have replaced the old?

waiting like your wife
through the locked doors.
on the bed, and pregnant,
her muscles spasming in their last
moments before they drowned
in the cradles of fat, dull
sweating like a monster,
snores of a language.

return trip.

traveled for a while,
ate two large meals, had a dream.
lost luggage in flight.

lost in beijing.

in a dream last night

i found beside my right hand

my black nail clipper.

half asleep in bed
wander the purgatory
married to the wait.

bruising haiku

ten funny fingers
know no rejection. we war
the nile river.

"We kiss. We hug. I tell him, ‘I don’t know what it is.’"

it takes me a while to remember this much:
out of bed
into the other room
they play the morning music outside.

undernourished.

replacement food for the soul.

prompt: life lessons. hamburger, Grand canyon, xray

a cat lived in the desert. she didn't know how she got there, but there she was.
she was walking along when she found a hamburger on the ground.
she wondered for a moment if she were hungry enough at that point
to eat a random burger on the ground
in the desert
and decided that she was very hungry indeed.
so she ate that hamburger.
after a few minutes of sauntering along in the sand, she found
an odd tattered xray half buried at her paws. she wondered
for a moment if she were curious enough
at that point
to dig out that random xray in the middle of a desert and decided
that she was not. so she walked on.
eventually, she reached the Grand Canyon and it looked beautiful
to her. she did not know
where she was going, but,
in the end,
found where she needed to be.
the end.

clouds, the well contained fire in the sky.

i think sometime about two days ago
the washing machine took us
and washed us

odors, eliminated
memory, smells
like discrepancy

certain good ideas,
certain bad bruises,
semiconscious

mosquitoes hovering
above the pain
we had given.

no one else is allowed to call me that and get away with it.

how to disappoint.

call me again.

i dreamed that you called me.
i picked up a pay phone in central park, and your voice, altered, was there against a background of cars busier than late night new york traffic.
you began to sing, and played the tune from your iPhone or another gadget, and though i couldn't identify the song, it sounded familiar, and i smiled.
i was about to say your name to get you to stop when i started drifting out of the dream.
i worried in that moment that i wouldn't be able to go back into the dream to say goodbye to you on the phone.
holding indefinitely, still singing out of tune.

it's odd. how i can't stay awake late at night and fall asleep on you as you're talking to me, how i can't stay asleep to be with you even in my dreams.

cycles of captivity and freedom
is what we do.

happy flying, i love you

before all the shitty things happened, i remember being really happy.
you were standing to my left, checking your iphone, we were on a balcony.
i was nuzzling against your neck. i sensed that happiness, and it felt
more embodied than any emotion i've ever encountered
in dreams before. felt like falling slow-motion
in a big cloud, still a pleasant dream, then like a little light
signaling the presence of a soul, going off in me, blinking, and
conscious.

two weeks to forget the downpours at bedtime.

slow withdrawal today.
little hairs, body odor,
shampoo it all off.

smells like bacon here
or maybe it's just old paint
fumes, fanned all around

erase my words section by section
gut the animal and burn the skin.