in a suicidal mood.

remember the smell of fresh
crushed carcasses of grass bodies
clearly wet with morning cries
tears slathered on my toes
the smell of intrusion marks me

cut here along these lines

bruises all over
bleeding dirty watercolors
to cross each other's
boundaries.

endless sugar and cream

eating all this sugar coated in fire
made me scream out little
well-known secrets like
your name to the sky
sent up to the clouds to sleep
like cavities
growing on my teeth.

i will ignore the distance.
i will pretend to know
what the clouds are thinking
tonight as we shout through sticky lips
all of this as our throats buckle,
once, twice, again--
they are thinking

what a sad world
it would be, if
there were no stars
in the day, if
these sparkles
ever were
to go out and fade.

found your handwriting
on the page

"vision?"

foiled kisses
for lunch.

cleaning, packing, detach.

time to pull and reel the fishing rod back now. let's
call it a day.

let's take the poetry down
from the walls.

let's throw out those cards
illegibly signed from long ago.

those paper plates and bowls
with your name at the top

"The sweetest SIDEKICK AWARD
so supportive,

"so spacey...
what would we do without you?

"FALL 2007"

"The light of our lives
(and the light of our light side)

"spring 2008"

"COLD
BLOODED

MOFO
Fall 2008"

"the rainbow
brite award

"for being the person
that we'd least

"like to find
rainbowed...

"s
p
r
i
n
g

2
0
0
9"

and here are some words
i wrote before

no, please
it's an honor to kiss
your feet now
echoes of your tickling laughter screams
won't you follow me now
that you can't
leaves i'll let fall on you
your last sounds
muffled in the layers
of dead things


then

fear of  [there is a hole]   infinity
            [in the paper here]
matter/antimatter
poets don't know anything
we can only live to
120 years.
the last time i saw a
rooster it didn't
cross the street.


you cannot erase me now
bug bites--constellations
                on her legs


then


the opposite
of water is
certainty or
safety
a fearless steadiness
in the too hot embrace
of life,
love
without even trying
to hold it all together.


then

it's always 
nice to think
about spring
she says
the cars refuse to listen
heavy zooms
heavy mute.
in the park
we grow old
it's fall now.
dry leaves lightly
sink
into gravel


then

the names of places
i wanted to go to on friday

then

her head
on a puppet string
up and down like
a doll's dance gone wrong
he turns
hoping to speak after
catching her eye &
attention
but really, it's late
again
she's gone


in new york

then

these are going
into the trash bag.

from "Five Psalms" by mark jarman

"Excuse the absence

       That feels like presence,

Then excuse the feeling

       That insists on presence."

cut into these little squares
my face pressed hard
through the window screen
to join the bugs outside.

it's too soon to call it a day.

angry about whipped cream
something so light
and so sweet

about poetry
so light
so sweet

the m-months
light
sweet

indigestion?
overdose?
wiping it off

your lips?

(i do.)

hopping with gashes down their sides
hopped in and fell down
to the missing squares
holding missing faces

you know
when the wind sweeps
by, between, i

hush because
                     it's cold



and on my right
red ink hand, i write

growing up 
means not knowing
if i should 
cry 
any
more


(i do)
and it's all dull,
dull from here
on out

stubble
stubble
stumbling blocks

fear it is
some everything
these days i never
knew you well
enough to know
now what
your silence means

they say
the weather will take
one full week to heal.

guilty child
vows of silence
always break.

(which finger were you going to use
to smite me that night, before
when the birds woke up
again in time?)

two pimples on my chin
like vampire bite marks

and i keep scratching them
maybe i'll turn immortal

the way it rains is different this year.
all thunderstorms
with no thunder,

rumbling the ground,
scaring the birds,
shaking the bare spring branches,

quick to come,
quick to go,
quick to return.

low fight
quiet bruises

they appear
like ants

spilled sugar
on the pavement

burnt sugar
stay a while

under the sun
there is nothing new

confessions, fears, future like a train ride, past like scenery

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173374

(i never paid attention to our shadows. but did we have any?)


______

i really liked your black linen shirt.

______

i wanted to kiss your left hand and that spot between your eyes
when you played and sang.

______



______

green mark for beer 

stout on my hand

i dislike the taste

tergiversate

have i
upset you?

i wish you weren't
so quiet when i can't
see you.

______




______

baby, i scare all the little kids now.

______

i lost my Special K to the wind while walking
he might've whispered a curse
like he always does, softly
if he'd been here.

the pun is lost

in the crowd
tonight

i felt this
a point

a mere desire to
sleep through.

wish granted, over
slow internet

lime-green-yellow
and lavender room

aimless keyboard
strokes before midnight

third-hand smoke
first-hand depression.

you are so tired, and quiet.

i look at our september through november,
rewind, replay.

play with me. hold my hand, or
at least brush by,
so i can think

maybe

           

essay

on the individual love exploding into everything
a sort of blindness and continually blinding process
until your eyes change and see only love
into everything that hate becomes heated
into everything that pain dissolves
into all that there is to hold around you
shaking in your hands that feeling
digging into the barrier of your skin
there is no defense
he is everyman and more than every man
from the body to where you cannot touch
the soul has escaped
and we wait

the night, the day,
the details we've already begun
to question.

slept with the light on,
people talked outside my window,
looking in, finding me asleep
in an odd position,
curling around the laptop
like a cat,
missing its owner.

for the cracks in the wall,
bandaids everywhere. bandaids
like elementary school stickers,
glittering in our eyes, sweaty
in our hands that held
from tears that don't belong
on this young skin.

(did you say thankyou or iloveyou?)

every gaze an imaginary kiss to regret to, hold to, dot on the nose.

there is big rain, small rain,
soft dots and harsh claps,
from the graying clouds,
in the sun,
there is light,
then there are people
running in the rain,
spreading their skin
stretching their fingertips out
towards the ends of the streets,
or beyond the streets,
the train station,
the first car in front,
the next stop,
the city that lies
barely within reach
from this 4-year town.

big rain, small rain,
strong and sunny
sunday rain.
(we made them all.)

smell

burnt sugar
pastry sweet
last night at 3

quiet soap
plastic faint
today at 7

night ends
sky rolls.

plangent walks at night
drunk strangers i might know

made it rain
made me rain.

it poured a little
and then it stopped.

i took a drink of water,
stood up, and walked.

the rain has to stop
sometime.

you'll get there.

think about that.

(smelling like) sweet sucralose [lauren's prompt, modified.]

here are some pillows for your head,
i said, do you want to be alone?
said you want to be

outside the moon,
the clouds roll by,
and the eyes roll back

here the pillows,
here my pillows,
soft like

distant howls
of the wolves,
and men,

the wind is
shunned
by the windows.

this is just
for fun
and

with one arm sliding
down and across,
tracing

the pathways
of a sunday
puzzle

the blank that follows
  this is what you would say
to an ex-significant other

and he kisses me
  right here
on my left cheek

while i think
  do i dare give him
the right one too?

then his hands, 
his hands
howling in the distance...

the wind sneaks in,
the window is broken.

then, from last night.

aftertaste
i didn't stop the song in time

smelling my hand smelling like yours

i wait for your name to go off screen

you 

greco roman

a moving body of fallen stone

on the couching chair

what will you say now

that you are angry at the gods

in pain with the world


what with the light turning on
then off
what with the voices inside
and out


and what about those hands that hang on
that curve that bend that hides 
future traffic, soon enough


on lonely streets at night when the moon appears
from behind the haze, observing the stars through
the rolling sky


then, from last night.

taking pictures
like i'm about to
go blind.

baby does not like to be wrong
but what do i
what do i know?

the rice cooker pot lid
is outside her door.

saw myself swimming
on glass this morning

royal promises
werewolf rules

(how long will it take for me to forget
about the ring i never bought?)

another will give back to me
the glance or smile i never returned

how quickly

opens the door
the handle drops down
the push comes
the hands separate
how quickly
it begins and ends.

children, children in a dream

to the child in my life:

how would you like me
to tell you below the porch steps

i worry when you say nothing
there is always something crouching

waiting to be said or screamed
or whispered and kissed

i murmured closer to you
i have dreamed you 


for two days in a row
and the dreams were silent.

crazy dreams on only [less than] 8 hours of sleep.

(but only because i went back to sleep again. they always happen the second time around.)

you and i and my professor in bed. only bad things can happen from there.