0122

I have time of a kind on my hands today
Seconds sliding over skin
Counting down till - almost gone
Minutes dripping off my fingers with
Tick Tock Tick
Like clockwork in my palm

0117

Savory to the taste
Full. Your touches
Are filling me too quickly.

Too much matter
For too little will.
Were it not for leaking,
I wouldn’t ever be left wanting.

Searching out something in the other
I am left intoxicated
For lack of another word.
Sickening myself put driven on.

Cutting back emotion
Demons come hunting
I fight back with teeth and nails.

0106

Red yarn knotted
Knitting yards of red knots
Not to be needy
But I’d like something of an answer,
Or near enough at least
If you don’t mind too terribly

It’s a time of tremendous thought
Toes tripping near the edge already
And the waters looking rough
Trip line pulled tight to ripping out needles

Our methods of meddling are deadly
Trial tests sought in answer
It’s tough to hear above the tempest
Wondering if we can ever be enough

010509

Waking up to
Where the hell am i?

december rec

I know you saw me
I was right in front of you
I could see you seeing.

I know you saw me
I touched your shoulder
And told you how you were missed

I know you saw me
You were looking right at me
As I looked right back at
Me times two

I know you saw me
You were staring at my stare
I could see you seeing

1226 - of whats’isface

If your body were cold like
The tallest glass of gin
I’d throw you back, pull you down
And burn away my taste buds
To suffocate the taste of sin

And if your lips were Jaeger
I’d shot myself straight in the head
Time and time over
Raise and repeat
Till fingers come back red

If you hands were rum and cocaine
I’d fill myself on snow
Angels in the playground
Drinking in your liquor
High on all that you don’t know

....but if your mind were made of licorice and
Sweet Bacardi black
Then i’d break the bottle
Beside the habit
And never once look back

1225- Conscious still streaming some bull

Melatonin nightmares
Burning bullet casing bright
Like one, two, three and
You’ll do as well.
Shape shifting searches
Change form and face in the fog
“Futile” I’d tell you.
But you’re not listening again.

Black. Dinner is
burnt to charcoal
rice crispie treat
But seriously?
Who cares anymore
Crunching forward
Sliding back
Intellect battles life
And always loses.

Respect?
I don’t think so.
Grey wall angles
Missing my drink
I could keep going
On and on and
Out run you for once
But ive got bigger fish
Nets be goddamned

Freefalling through frosting
Billows bearing buoyancy
Afloat for, no wait.
Bouncing back on incongruencies
Weighted down wanting
Idiosyncrasies in between the spaces
Of this god awful ….

1225

House of wire
Held up with the duct tape
Holding up pictures of dreams
And dreaming of anywhere else

Rags filling cracks
Keeping out the cold
Worn doors, stained carpets
Disbelief keeping things constant

Garden buried in slumber
Our sleep walking footsteps
Light step typing love letters across the beds
Dreaming of the places past mountain purples

Passing in gusts
Leaving prints between leaves
Leaves scattered in corners
House of wine: Held up with hope for ‘soon to come’.

1221

Trench coat girl
I am in love with the way you hold your cigarette
Lips to hip, and rest.

….. as the tension builds.
Then the raise!
Fingers arch, your hand surfaces without warning

Hold a moment
(In which I can almost hear your nicotine perfect pitch)
Before you break

Pull in –
And release
Dropping back into reprieve

Thank god for addiction.
I get to watch you on repeat
Sucking away at my attention.

1220

Strangers in the night
Exchanging glances
Yours touched tender
Mine reluctant to take chances

Strangers in the night
Our skin brushing
Hands clasping
Heartbeats rushing

Strangers in the night
Are we onto something?
Catch your eyes held onto mine
Pretend its nothing

Strangers in the night
Our places shifting
Positions changing, Postures telling,
Spines arching, Voices lifting

Strangers in a strange place
Your wanting reached me
Through ice and self-consciousness
Gasps entreating

Strangers seeking comfort
Our cold bodies merging
In spite of reservations
Relief - for a moment - surging

Strangers in the night
Under moonlight shine
Meeting again for a moment
Partners in time.

1121

Acidic sensations leftover
From the yesterday before last
All turned turpentine and memorabilia
Life snapshots
Forgotten nights gone past.
Abandoned lovers
Drenched drunken in lust
Upright standing
Nerves crumbled to dust.

Memory of smell

They say smell is the sense most closely tied to memory. Describe one memory of yours invoked by a particular smell.

College Writing
01/23/08

A Memory of Smell

It’s supposed to be a knee jerk reaction, not a conscious thought.
A word or phrase, and before you can blink your brain snaps to a place of reference. In my mind’s eye I can almost see electrical pulses going off as the sound of the word takes shape in my ear, neurons exchange fire, changing it from reverberation to information. Lightening bolts shoot across nerve endings, carrying the meaning to a storehouse of memories where it sets off an explosion of fireworks as it connects to
- what?

It’s only supposed to take a second, yet I’m sitting here before the shimmering screen of my laptop, trying to focus on ‘smell’ and nothing’s coming up. I feel a kind of emptiness as pulses of energy ricochet inside my brain looking for something to connect to, and I glance around the room for inspiration. My eyes land on my roommate’s bottled water, whose label proclaims its contents to have come from the ‘pure mountain springs’ of some exotic far off place.

Electricity fires somewhere in my brain, something fits, and then it’s like a thousand pieces clicking into place, one after the next. A domino effect of sensations avalanching through neuro-receptors paths, the sheer force cracking open my dorm walls of paper-mache, cardboard and spit. They split down the middle and a sky, so crystal it almost cuts, bursts in as the rest of my room melts into nothing.

My computer drops and falls away into the lush valley stretching below me like a jungle paradise. The chill morning sunrise lights up the velvet rain forested hills standing sentinels-like in reverie on all sides. I take it all in. The view from the heart of the Guatemalan mountains is a sight so beautiful it could make me believe in God if I didn’t know better.

But I do know better.

This tragic beauty is no paradise and in a second my eyes water as billowing clouds of acid white burn my nose and eyes. The social workers from our encampment are burning the trash from our pre-packaged breakfast because we are 5,000 miles from the nearest waste center or landfill. So instead all of our garbage goes up in smoke, invading the atmosphere. Not just paper cups or napkins, but plastic plates, silverware, wrappers, and - because there is no sewage system and it will not decompose with the rest of our bathroom waste - used toilet paper.

Burning shit and the smell of death and plastic, are all tossed together inside of a, now tar-like, black garbage bag that shrivels in the heat. The cut crystal sky fills with amphetamine white clouds as our trash burns and I can taste the smell of the chemical fumes in my mouth and nose.

The local boys come with their mothers to pick through our smoldering refuse. They toss aside a broken flip-flop and yesterday’s orange peels but stop to rescue an empty water bottle whose torn label proclaims its contents to have come from the ‘pure mountain springs’ of some exotic far off place. A place similar, no doubt, to the river running a dusty 15 minutes down the mountain. The remnants of it’s bathwater warm currents still dripping off my hair from my swim just hours before. When I had floated near weightless in wonder and marveled that any place could be so pure.

Now I stand feeling anything but, as I watch the toxic smoke billow from sweltering piles. I cover my nose more tightly with my bandana, the noxious smell filling my head and electricity starts to static in my brain. The children gathered around the trash heap with their mother don’t seem to mind and I wonder how they can not care as I imagine the smoke entering their mouths, swelling through their throats and crystallizing inside their lungs.

The images and the smell fuse together, darkening blue skies into black and the chemical burn in my throat is as sharp as the skyline of an industrial jungle. In the half darkness, thin bodied boys are hunched over a fire still seeking relief, but not from the cold. The small flame provides a different kind of reprieve for those to whom digging through trash for treasure is an everyday occurrence. The hot odor of lighter fluid is overpowered by the clear burn of chemical disease and I taste its sick toxin smoke turning to frost on my lungs. I can taste the plastic smell in my mouth, and I wait for the electrical pulses in my brain to turn from chaos into something pure.

today&yesterday

daydreams floating where white meets white
buoyed up on foam
but going down slow
dragging the bottom as jaws unclench

im feeling sand in my teeth
watching the place where white meets white
confusion encrypted in lines
unfolding sheets falling down to my feet

slips dripping drops
spots starting sparks
flame leap reaching high to heaven
burning driftwood charcoal bright

flecked glass
ballet dance
shifting, skiming, dropping, driftting
these choreographed collisions
where white meets white

12ohsomething

You’re gone from me
Word and thought from this place
Vanished beyond recovery
Couldn’t bring you to mind if I tried

You’re gone from me
But left behind a trace
And I can sense where you’ve been
Residue left in the parting of ways
Or rather
Ending of your part

Past the place in the journey
Where you’re gone from me
I never saw you fall by the wayside
Couldn’t go back if I tried

goddamn

I have seen you dead

No

It was you no longer

The body lay empty

Silent

Void of life

Recalled the person who had inhabited it

Reminded me
That you were no longer there

-unknown

portrait

Baby fingers curling upward
Clasping grey
And clutching at cobwebs
Baby nails scrapping away

Thin limbed reach
Harsh against
A skeleton world
On sky skin stretch

Clouds slide pale
Weather drawn taught
Intrinsic curiosity
Inhibited thoughts

110808

Eyes caught in
Tranced stare dance
At skies
Observant as
The exodus lumbers on

Clouding vision with slow grace and
Grandeur
Relentless billows,
Stoic breath
My hair pulling forward
Streamlined and screaming

Jackets hanging abandoned from the branches
The stripings of warfare
Bright colors left behind
Life stolen along as
The exodus keeps marching

The silent sigh
The softly whispered
“north north north”
Pulling at my hair
Earthbound entranced.

Soliloquies of death.
Turning with tide.
I feel the rush stir me
Seated.
I watch the exodus go by
Symphony in movement
And quiet
The stillness travels
Makes its way across the sky

ring a linging

I am calling out in words
That whisper
In grainy grey and white

I am calling in the time
Between the tempest
And waters untested

I am calling inward
In search of idioms
Hidden in under and around italicized interests

I am coming back with static
And stagnate stale nothings

I am coming back unanswered

Breath bated
Bent backwards
Buried again.