events bear weight
like teeth strung by spiders
toeing sight and sensation
between tall towers, ticks
made sense as if it were
something to build upon
a construction already started,
but contribution is a contribution,
thus one is related
to every in a motif,
a motive made of suspense
in suspension, hinged
on the hereafter, near the next
pressed to reassertion

Poetry mends the always breaking,
I can tell when you are here:
Wind enters wind and teaches
How to decode invisibility.

Older Poems

Place

my legs know something
more about the grass,
the way sun licks earth
against a granite wall

my knees bend there
until i hit something; everything
comes from here. death
is respect for change.

clouds will not be
the way they are, past
now. this instant, every instance
moves, loosens.

ties between water and air
slacken. there
is always
so much space.

my hands find a place
there, where
these blades of grass
spiral into strong, soft arms.



White in Black

i have a mind, it's all politicians.
who are these people:
they recreate me
through my exhibition of them.

once, i was something.
you're doing it to me now:
staining me through your seeing of me;
it's transformation.

all details are consequence.
i have a mind, what you tell me it is.
everything is perceived
slightly, differently.

one form becomes another, the mind
cannot judge the dispossession of itself
any more than one person

is another; we are those spaces
that give us room, that absence
that makes us touch.



Brown

there is little consideration for design,
the architecture has no blueprint, though you imprint--
but that's all
press, release, ghost.
you don't explain or deliver yourself
to our substance, the space between impact--
the moment, the segment of traditional behavior:
male and female
intimacy as expressed through speech and time,
you're getting me, you're getting
half and it isn't.

provenance is sleeping, smoked, taxed.
message is static, eyes and hair are unwired
strokes of genius--
primacy is ecstasy,
your bones break
for it, but i can't find you beautiful.
i can't find you--
you are a voice that sounds like a skyscraper.
your ventriloquism is prophesy,
a long whiteness,
posture that imposes by leaning
too far back.

use your angles, speak to yourself
then to the air. if there is no response
you will invent one, then ignore it.
we can talk about art, we can talk about books
i can look at your hands.
what can you do for me--
i can describe you here;
i can make you appear and then transcend these lines.
i can drop you from syntax, semiotics, memory--

you are lost. i like the way you are
built with patches of concept and flesh,
but functional: you are a knowledge
of that else. it is not surrender,
it is commitment. do not renounce justice
with convention. do not admit
to your mechanics.



If I Had

there is always still water beneath the curb:
find the money; to wake
when a token rests in my palm,
“it was not a dream,” knuckles in the mouth--
be comfortable anywhere (for a break,

for five minutes). from your brain
to your phone, smaller,
shorter.

sometimes i can see you,
and i know presence:

after christmas, it's just
cold. the grate is
down, someone did her job.



We Made a Nest

football, all
of Pittsburgh, the name
of your cat, hair
with free will, thick
glasses, eggs
of conversations,
joints, strong legs

we sorted through the twigs,
words we were
good for, string,
plastic tubing, provocative behavior,
corrugated cardboard, decomposing
artifact memories,

and assembled those we'd find
most comfortable

i took New York, then
techno,
my words, long curly
hair, old clothes, white smoke,
those laughs, these questions,
new drawings, a body to touch,

and carried my contribution
to the nest where we would sleep
four nights before the wind came



Yellow

old isn't old,
everything reoccurs for the first time--

my existence is real. i have a dog,
and had one
with a different name.

find the pattern first, once you've seen it,
can't you see the parade
without looking out the window--

all this smog is only
the accumulation of time.
choose one instant

that happened;
find it there.

you were an empty house, severely lived-in.
remember what you did to their dogs? the electric fence,
my brother's friends.

languages that don't exist,
"leaves spiraling back onto their branches,"
New York burning millions of times,

rising again as if it were the fire;
new sets of wrists growing
after every scene in the bathtub

home: the murder futurer

for him, who could not foster love
for the demonstrative proportions of convention
work is rain
he had a jacket
he had all the looks in the world
without seeing any of it

there are ways to murder the future, infinity is a stretch
that fills all hollow space with humanism
as in cursive

in his as
infinity was the quotient
of insufficiency

temporality reigned over conservation
until time was served as nonrenewably as death

what did i do for an altar of you
when you cannot hold a place in me that i do not object to
that i will not reject, there is nothing sacred
with my doubt and defamation

visiting and revisitation
where one is generous the other kills a part
that memory escapes when it needs to

you find me only in my struggle
and what you have found used
to be able to recognize the nature of being found
but can no longer as it is subject to its own loss

the real heart is dark
something moves in the water
a breast out of a shirt
this is complete

i love you the most when i have made you the saddest
in truth there were many lies
though you abandoned them for me

i hate you the most when i can't find a flaw
in my invention what seemed organic was a reconstruction
of what dead men mean to the living

what we think we know and what we know
are never the same
what we know never is
what we think is always

the way i have left
the impulsive return never leaving a thought horizon
devoted to reunion but mostly that which is buried
beneath the refuse of shouldn't this be

He started worrying about how great his life was. All around him people sobbed for their self-inflicted indignities, the ways in which they could not measure up to themselves. He woke up feeling marvelously energetic every day of his life, grateful for simple pleasures. He even took pleasure from his truck-driving job. He was responsible for driving the trucks that were emptied out back to the production facilities to be filled again. Throughout his illustrious career he had worked with a number of big players. His favorites were Kraft Foods and General Mills because their factories smelled like gasoline and that reminded him of life on the road.

One faction of society that disappointed him was psychologists because every so often he would worry about contracting a mental disorder-- something he felt they had created. Those disorders are all out there, waiting for someone to pick them up. They lurk between dirty dishes and grow spores on tarnished doorknobs. They are transmitted verbally. He found that sometimes he was disturbed by looking at homeless people, and thought this could be a symptom. On the day he decided this turmoil was an outpouring of emotional generosity, he was cured.

It was hard to avoid feeling “manic” at times and “depressed” at others because he already knew what that would mean and that it was incorrect. Dysfunction was everywhere and those who were symptomatic could be seen spending hundred of dollars a week to cry in leather armchairs while a patient person took notes. Maybe he was not enjoying life enough. He searched the internet for what that might mean. After a brief search he found out how to enjoy life while practicing death, the value of confidence measured in dollars, and that a lot of people already knew what his illness looked, smelled, and sounded like.

He was a seasoned veteran of life in transit when he decided, at long last, to settle down and marry his thoughts. The ceremony was beautiful, all guests wore nothing and did not have to attend. He presided over himself at the ceremony and was not disappointed. The future looked bright.

He checked off options on an itemized list. He filled in the circles that would indicate that he had the potential for confusion, changes in mood, occasional social discomfort, drug and/or alcohol consumption, fear of ugliness, seductive nightmares, desire to hallucinate, and moderate worrying. The online test informed him that he would die at some point. This distressed him. He did not want to be sick. He cried after spending an hour on the computer. He did not want to be a part of anything anymore. He felt like he had been parading around for his whole life and now he was finally allowed to leave the circus. In the next second he divorced himself.

He drove his empty Lucky Charms Cereal truck out onto Highway 70 and started speeding. He picked up the first stranger who would let him have sex with her and together they emptied the truck of romance. When she asked for money he told her he did not understand why she would prescribe to a definition when it is easy to set your own rules. With that, he left her on the side of the road where she had come from, telling her he hopes she can be free one day.

Notes on Not Art

Everyone uses J.K. Rowling to prove their points about capitalism and merit, but compare her to Damien Hirst. Becoming a prestigious contemporary artist requires more money than writing does. You need money to buy materials to make art. After you acquire supplies, to create a successful art object one has to prove that the object that they created or altered suggests the traditionally accepted boundaries in society are wrong-- that something exists beyond the object itself and the object's definition. All definitions are called into question based on what previously was and was only. Writing, through the use of words as themselves, does not reveal a lie present in the real world, but rather, the infinite possibility of the world in which they exist. A word is nothing but a word, and that is what it means. A painting should mean more than the existence of paint. A taxidermied animal (a la Hirst) is supposed to mean more than itself and thereby call into question our capacity for categorization. Humans are emotive technicians. We are good at feeling and we are good with developing technique. Art shows the cracks in the framework of internalized technique, exploiting inherently possible variations. Writing already includes all variation.

my professor drew the eighth dimension on a chalk board
if you type without open windows, this is where the letters collect
what does it mean to manipulate a mirror
i tried developing an addiction but it was too much work

morals tell a tale only if forbidden, what is forbidden is what would happen
naturally he only has promiscuous encounters, he can't have sex unless he is with strangers
you can't live here and you can't live become the same eventually
waiting for that moment makes a murderer

but cries after each time because he feels like he is supposed to--
all elements are in place and there it is, but consciously
if the possibility of survival is the only value of human life
we can make up the rest in sketchbook pornography

let it go to London
let it go to nothing
you snow, we snow, they snow, she snows
they know, i know, my know, he knows

a day is something
a day is stuffing
how this, when this, what this, where this
what piss, whose piss, your piss, their piss

it will all come down
it will all turn out
too small, one small, wow small, some small
fun call, dumb call, blunt call, drunk call