*Apoptosis Today, Odysseus!*

“A life in the postal system
is not a life worth living,”
said the man in the postal system.
The stars are many. Come
address them, then dress them
before they turn cold.
They should wear sewing machines
made from clothes mailed from China.
My lover's vagina is an envelope
and my penis has been mailed
back to my brain. It’s a new form
of cell suicide, just another way
to be mailed to the cross. One head
crawls into another, two and then one,
imprisoned inside a program
of sad returns post-marked
direct mail marketing,
fragmentation of the nucleus, sad clowns,
a warm feeling when she seals your flap.
I want to leave again.

Dead Hand

We started by dividing the universe
into what can and cannot be named.
Me, and everything else. And
Everything happened, especially you
who believed - to a fault - the shamed
distortions of our personal spaces.

The dictionary was one of them,
once completed, and eventually worn soft by the words
we read most: Is now broke.
We fucked a bit to keep it coming,
but what? I’m not sure.
- Me neither.

On the weekends, or occasionally
after work if the mood was gamey,
I’d chase old untellable things
that we’d failed to define or crammed
into small pronouns that meant little.

Hard work,
considering the ethereal ambitions
of what moved us back then, and now backwards
towards nothing. I never found anything,
but was glad to not come home.

All at once tired - smoked and stalked by the hunted
I curled up and slept in the dead hand
of a body of what that wept,
but would never be living.

*Sunday night vigil*

During the night, a cold rain pours.

A light, on the third floor
of the fifth apartment, dims.

A gray bus drives by
with no one at the wheel.

A shadowy figure in a hood
leans against the seventh window.

The water runs down the street
into a hole and stops.

Black Friday

Dumbed by food,
my brother and I - bloated, bleating
joined others and waited for the doors
to bust open.

Sure, we understood the gravity of our numbers.
Behind the glass, we rattled the hinges
for effect. The floor buckled and
groaned in the language we spoke best.

By now, there were several of us storming.
In other words - risen, humid,
stalked by the shadows of great balloons:
perhaps weather, and gift certificates in bloom.

Our pants, let in before the rest of us,
were grown tight and tearing in the pockets.
My eyes grew bigger than my stomach
and had to be plugged in outside the sockets.

Inside the door, deep in shit,
we all grabbed all and ran with it,
taking turns down the aisles
and bored, like when we were kids,
yelling something. What he said
I can’t say, and vice-versa.

With fat thoughts left over
a small flame to crust at the edges and turn old,
I gave killer thanks and headed
home, or so was later told.

Fall-in/Fall-out

Our boots grind partial prints
in what looks like sand
but is really sounds
made so strongly, so loudly
so thickly and longly
that they become things
solid like ground,
ground enough to walk on at least
and you and me.

That's what the world
is made of I heard.

Sounds.

Like an orchestra playing
very slowly.

Every now and then
the sound stops
just for a moment
and then
we can hear something
else
not for the first time or the
last
but still
we can hear it
and we know that we do
and are surprised that we never noticed before because
it's just so loud.

But then again,
maybe we don't hear anything at all?

Whatever the case,
We don't notice
when the string section starts up again.

Instead:

Hold hands because
we are molded together
from the blast, not love.

The radiation
wave's already rolled through town.
The worst is over.

Our skin is grafted
below the wrists and some blood
starts to run between.

I don't know how it happened,
but where I used to have a
hand, now I have you.

"Is your blood going
into my body?" you ask.
I don't know, really.

We start to believe
that it is and it carries
packages of me

through you, parcels of
you through me -- under cover
of skin and muscle.

Waves of earth pulsed through
the city and carried us
like ocean liners

to a refugee
camp made of electronics
and old plaster casts.

We wait in the soup
lines for a message from the
underground network

that we still believe
exists, that we dreamt into
existence at least.

Messages don't come.
And if they do, we can't tell.
It's all just the same.

It's not here with us,
but we are united by
where it isn't. Some

strings of nothing that
we imagine are something
are holding us tight.

I've never felt so
comforted by anything
besides this nothing

that we made up for
each other and then donned like
Hawaiian flowers.

We are going to
join the underground network
as soon as we can.

Someone said agents
are running supplies from one
city to the next.

You don't see them come.
You don't see them go. They don't
do either one maybe.

"Is your blood running
into my body?" you ask.
I don't really know.

Do we still believe
that it is and it carries
packages of me

through you, parcels of
you through me? It's turning black
and we're wondering.

In either case, it's
running out just as fast as
it runs in, okay?

So let's do something
quick about this before
we go all the way
in or out.


The sky is ashed over, black and grey.
And on some days, we
gather around the General.
He has strung
out some nerves which he has collected from men
and formed
into the shape of a man
just there on the ground in the yard.

He sits us in stadium stands
and tells us to wait for it to dance.
We wait.

The nerves dimly vibrate
and emit a gentle hum,
maybe,
but they don't dance.

There is popcorn and soda
and a generally good feeling.
It's fine here and I'm starting to like you.

But I still can't hear you.

*On the Second Day*

We need medical disorders
Because what are we?
And from which sleep
Will we wake? Hell
With this neuropathology
Of manuscript wires.

Award us depression
And schizophrenia, certain
Disturbances of mood,
Reproductions, etc.
Provide us with information
to aid our silliest agonisms.

Our requirement
Of sleep maintenance is
In the brain, in
The brain where
Sleep is prescribed most.
Empirical evidence
Is needed to help us
Suffer. This is our image
Crying out on the image
Screen mail box.

Also, bring us some
Soil, some tin foil,
A glass of water
And maybe a clock.
Then in the morning
When the sun rises
We will choke on the cock.

*Chocula*

You hold yourself
accountable
because
the first thing you learn
to do
is count.

*Daylight Savings*

It was daylight savings time.
You built a boat in the living room.
I sat in the sun depositing rays
into a free, online savings account,
which is turning brown and wrinkled.

I try to keep it well oiled.

Life takes a very long time, it’s true.
Don’t be afraid to leave
because when you do,
I will wire all my rays.

They will bring you joy,
and they will keep you awake.
They will form your bulwark
and the bulwark of your enemy.

I will be your ally, enemy and wall of dirt.
Don’t over analyze it.
Today’s word is “paradox.”

For now, time goes on
and you won’t run out
of it, of sun, of money, on me.

Let’s sleep on it.

*It isn't brain surgery*

But time gone is brain
gone, and these tiny
bursts keep coming on:
the doctors look

worried and away
and want each other
to measure each other
to erase each other solid.

Our memories break water
that blocks up
the outflow, but we know
what we know and no more.

See, when the road forks
we will anticipate
shortcuts to the dawn,
we will manipulate

happiness. We will
press the electrode
lever and the memory
of our past

heads will crack.
In the mirror,
the smell of her hair
will likely disappear, so

fold away or bend over,
my deep brain puppy,
and in this sleep
feel our limbs with limbs

that feel like rain.
What do we want?
We still want people
we still want and we

still want to react.
Good things are happening.
Bad things are happening.
One option is surgery.

*Untitled*

Freshly divorced
from this sick season
where the trees strip
revealing hips pink with the sad tread-mark
of panty elastic,
damp air against a dry tongue packed
with nuts,
classic renditions
of tragic Italian folk songs,
and emerging from the mucous,
a new throat.

*On a T-Shirt*

You'd be set on me
if you were you
like you must be you
so come on
my nice shirt
all my life & you
look great yes
just you & you
must make me
from this dance
in these pants
believe in money.

Pants believe in money.

And I don't need anything
but directions to die happy.

I want to fucking jack off to God.

*Decadent Spirals*

He had his mother’s eyes.
Hereditary baldness from his father
had yet to set in.
American castles and pumpkin pie.

“Every” “single” “word” “in” “quotes.”

A pair of fishnets in the toilet.
He wonders what they’ll catch.
Nothing, of course, but still,
he couldn’t help but force it,
when he wanted it to come.

They found his body in a limousine
w/ glitter pouring out his sides.

He was always speeding
faster, faster and harder, harder,
A velvet-lovers industrial revolution.
A poor man’s poison apple.

A cure for cancer isn’t far away
and perfection is oh so fucking worth the wait.

But all the plastic in the world
won’t conceal his nudity,
nipples of bubble wrap threaded
thru and thru his tongue
like waterfalls along the rocks
like genitals strung around the Christmas tree
w/ popcorn and flickering lights.

Lavender perfume from a variety of women.
Sexual favors in every flavor.
Incessant metaphors prying their fingers
between the space in his eyes
and the hole in his nose.

He’ll never trust the personal ads again.

*On the corner of Bedford and North 11th*

Your belly is a bowl full of bellies, so
spare me the self-righteous rapid-fire
of rhetoric. Grab a mirror and watch
it pour out your widening hole.
(Where would it go if I shoved
the balderdash back with a ten-foot pole?
To the bowl full of bellies, of course.
Maybe I should borrow it sometime.)
Your sunburned face excretes faucets
of death and despair. And the few
strands of uncut hair fall limp
over conjunctivitis red with pride --
and god how did you welcome
that bowl full of bellies, which hangs dumb
under the sweat and severed nails,
like jagged half moons, on that dirty t-shirt?
The clothes you sell are draped
on a stubby fence; the useless skins
of your dreams on a crowing cock,
too early in the morning or too late
at night, limping sadly out of sight.
Tell me again, poet, how
to treat my neighbor. Tell me the way
you told her. I am dying to hear.
Turn the corner with me.
Follow me down these stairs.

*Talent*

"I have an eye for it," We says,
munching the tit of our heads.
And, "I have an eye for it," We thinks,
without alibi or reason but instead

We forgets
Really We's only always wished We had an eye for it.

Wishing suffices for having:
Clad in ourself in a forest of our intention
we become invisible.

We can't see us
but We can hear us
scratching at the pine wood

We bursts through the dirt, one
hand thrust like lilies
We stands, shakes, and stumbles
toward referenceless cities:

We isn't done.

We isn't done.

We dresses up what We wants
and calls it a part of us.

We kidnaps it and beats it
until it talks.

We ransoms it to ourselves
and makes the drop off.

We stands with the briefcase,
millions aligned,
and We hands what
We wants to what
We wants to receive what
We wants to

believe that We is.

But We looks down both ends
of the highway and don't see We coming.
We turns and turns against the stretch but

We don't have the eye for it yet.

We's given We away to We and this --

this is what We calls seeing?

*A handwritten letter sent from hell by a man with a typewriter for a head*

Dear Julia:

Allow for me your hand to kiss. Each bone
at night is like the tick of clocks. Alone,
the movement of a wrist is silent.
There’s nothing like a syntax lapse: (inside
still of you I am). This garden is strange:

we were fine until the blackened mass
kept creeping in at the edge. It could not
be ignored. Muscles must degenerate

in time. But why weren’t we old, say fifty-five,
sipping tea and orange by a fireside?
The problem is, I must admit, I had
to die, but I don’t quite know why. It seems,
well, what exactly should I say—it feels
like eyes avoided by eyes avoided by eyes.

*A title is a lifetime of things that will never happen.*

Our dreams crumble like feta cheese amongst the leafy greens.

*On a clear day you can see forever*

Drops of rain between buildings where things
rub against each other: violins
and fleshy objects with broken eyes. The open
currents of angels flickering dim then off,
curling inward as a remote source of light.
It’s pleasant to think of the distant dawns that chase
sunsets over hills, to want to feel
the lift and fall, the assembly of infant eyes.

Yet, white machines have forged and swallowed
scrapes then clicks. The sensation of any one
life to explain them all explains no one.
Formed, a congress of naked creatures crawl
until alone; old books on a dusty wall.

*Rectum absolved*

An old friend drank half and half
in my dream last night.
Then, altered to fecal sight,
God fucked me in the ass. He
beat my face and he laughed:
‘My sacred cock consumes thee.’

When I awoke, slightly scarred
I cringed, phoned a friend. He said,
‘that wasn’t God, God is dead!
Plus, I only drink whole milk
from metal tanks—don’t be scared,
those fuckers have nipples like silk.’

Again, up, again. A rift,
a dream slit: half love, half hate--
a message that came in haste.
Spoke an ashen dove, a crow,
‘God wants a relationship with you.’
I reply, I know. I know.

*plumbing*

When the water goes I
Come quick, wrench in hand
Tool box at the ready

The pipes are coming up where
They should be sliding down
Some underwear, hair,
And blood spurting out.

Just force it back in, clamp
It all down and head back home

But from house to house, you peer
Through the tubes like
Telescopes to somewhere you
believe you remember
But can’t

A piece at a time,
Glimpsing skin,
bones, teeth, and varicose veins

There is someone down in there, stretched
Like puddy beneath our foundations

they are moving, grunting,
standing, sitting,
eating,
talking and listening
there's a microphone there
in the faucet, recording one drip at a time

Ear to the toilet, a newscast
clogs and mixes with
an advertisement filling up the sink,
the women spilling out the tub

you're mapping it,
every house call more vivid
you can almost see

it unclogging you, mapping you back

to whence you came
a thousand eyes for every home
knowing all the inches
of branches where
you are the foliage, only

leaves

And up from the ground you
Feel something growing
A Tree, a Fruit

plumbs

*Things get stupid*

I mostly cringe when I recall old times. I’ve grown
to stand alone on this dark porch—far city lights.

the only star I see, maybe a satellite,
flickers out and I don’t care. The constant moan

of airplanes, the dripping drains, and I see
an old bottle of ale, empty, not far

from a can once filled with corned beef hash but today
with cigarette ash, some spit, vomit and coffee.

Drinking stale joe, I smell a clogged-up john
for fading memories to smear their shit on.

*Progress report/incommensurability address*

I witnessed the mistake,
watched you take the circle
of the seasons and stretch it out.

You pulled at the structure. You stood
in line, hummed
to disguise the anxiety of falling,
like your father fell and his father
and the others before them.

You fuckers—
the artistry of ignorance
requires you, I suppose.

Remember the room, the one
into which you forced
the machinery of a new era?
You dressed us in drag.
You videotaped us:
concrete and abstract, you
forgot what went where.
But, go ahead, you like to watch.
Link us together, we can fake it.
Come on: unify, capitalize,
and be delirious.

Here’s a matter of relativity—
I do not exist.
Here’s another matter of relativity—
I do.

Whatever you need, princess.

Have you become privy
to the plan’s emptiness?
Nah.
At the bar you gaze at the legs
of women who bring you pints of beer
and plates of pig flesh.
You pay with grunts and choke on hair.
Choke and drown
out the constants
with the pounding of modern invention.
The whores are content, are they not?

I mean, don’t get me wrong,
you have sarcomas and skyscrapers.
But purgation? Another concern.
So, plant the stars like seeds
and ejaculate when the structures sprout.
But, friend, after you wash,
measure your cock and tell me
if it has grown.

*A return to the place where my friends broke a thousand beer bottles*

I sat on the broken glass in Shattered Grove,
by the abandoned red bicycle, thinking
of the empty labyrinthine building
I would have to walk through to find
the picnic table on the other side.

Manhattan was large
over the river, sighing under
the sun’s searchlight rays.

A wooden tube bobbed vertically
in the water and was attached
to the mouth of a limp old man
floating slowly under the surface.

His breath came in waves
and reminded me of the languid turning
of a high school history book’s pages.

I think he even winked at me.

And I thought about how many people
we had loved and how we can never
get closer to them than we are to ourselves.

It would be physically impossible.

*Critical foundations of the word*

We were the swollen trail,
polluted and sullen,
forging rivers with fake names.
We feasted
with the fallen – better known
as the ninth committee to the board.

No one got bored
because we lifted each other
into our mouths
bending on the rocks.

And the question that day was:

If first there was the word
and the first word was the word
was the first word the “word” or
was it some wholly other word?

Was the first word even
the first word? It would be odd
but what if the first word wasn’t
even a word? Or what if
the first word was originally the last?

If so, what was it?

The day was long and we grew
thirsty but shrank when they turned
the water into sand.

And how it sparkled
in our holes
when they called it “words”
to put us in our place.

But where we were was hardly a place,
and what we were was hardly at all – still
and winded on the sun-soaked rocks.

*Kitchens Sink*

She pulls a lit cigarette out of her fridge,
the moonlight streaming through the skylight
turns our lips fluorescent blue,
the color of raw crab eggs,
the color of bliss,
like a mosque or mollusk,

like a niche.

Let's sit and kick...

*Vanishing act*

A young girl in a skirt
swings from a fire ring.

The stretchy desert environment
looks up at her
and she pretends to deny
it will overtake her.

To think that you chose to live here
where the rose rolled its head
like a bowling ball in protest.

“It smelled rancid,” he said,
and gazed in vain into a mirror
made of cactus and sand.

You and I were so inspired back then
and it seems as if the haze
has shelved us in with the frozen foods.

Now my hands shake and I am so afraid
you will move away.

“That’s how it is,” said the girl,
her hair fallen over a sunken cheek.

So I hold on to her and she questions me:
“Have the orange and blue rings
vanished yet? Because when I look at them
they do not really seem to be there.”

I laugh and so does she,
and gently I tug at some deformed icy loop.

In my head
she will not stop humming
goodbye

*Greetings*

The redhead in heavy boots
pissing behind the black and white
peels a little skin off the summer heat,
cures it with the sweat around her neck,
and lays it on the hood of the squad car to crisp.

When the cops come home they'll be greeted by the smell of bacon.

*valet*

When the cars
come I get in them. People
leave’m here with me, empty
except for smoke or makeup, a
vulva aroma streaked
from hood to tail,
trunk to wind

shield the cars from harm.
Align, order, delineate, and
shine, buff, or wax
no charge. Take your time,
enjoy it.
Against the wall, cars
execution style

by numbers. Check plates and enter data,
vanity first and state decree
second.
Then bend like a deck hand and
pop the lid off the
suit and spray

your stink across the headlights
like cats in heat, like
shoes over power lines,
and wait for them to return
with pitchforks and torches,
sticks, Horses, liver and onions.

Fend them off, hoodlums,
scarred and sniffling.
Fist pounding chest and chest pounding fist
stave off the danger, bled
dry for principles, honor and reason

That is, someone else’s car

And that’s what we die for.

*Consider the juggernaut feeling*

Why the slippage? It depends
on whom you ask. I'm completely optimistic
about the future underneath this chorus
of gloom and doom. The problem is
that you can only grow by 19 percent.

Americans love statistics, I said,
and you’ve grown a lot by shifting
in your seat. Everything’s empty,
she whined. But love likes loneliness,
I said, and you lack society, you fail

to see that the only star up there
may just be a satellite. The constant moan
of airplanes, the dripping drains,
they sound like water from the windowsill.
I must apologize, but I only drink

whole milk straight from the cow.
She handed me a glass of rum. No
sperm needed, she smiled. The streetlight
erased her shadow and she stopped humming
goodbye. From the bathroom, nightly,

she fumbled with a jug of what she meant
as it splashed wildy onto her chest. Daily,
an alarm rang out and she shifted
the curtains to admire a torn watercolor
sunrise, a cheap recording of a bird’s song.

*For your traveling safety*

Arrive early to avoid rushing.
Seek assistance if necessary.
Use caution at all times
while walking on platforms.
Hold the rails and leave a space.
Always hold the tender hands
of young children when
on the stairs. While waiting
on platforms, never allow
or encourage the children to escape.
Always stand behind the yellow line.
Be alert and don’t go too far.
When boarding or exiting, step
over the gap between the higher
and lower realms. Never leave
children alone. Once on board,
never enter or exit. Be prepared
for motion. Use internal rails
for support in the morning.
Once on board, always
wear shoes. Be cautious
with light-weight shoes,
or shoes without soles. Always
ask for assistance if you need
to be lifted into the bins overhead.
Watch your hands, fingers,
and private thoughts when lowering,
raising, and passing away.
Smoking will never be permitted again—
not even in the rest rooms.
If you do not understand, need help,
or have questions, contact
a customer service representative.
Body of Christ. Amen.

*Library whorehouse*

Killing letters is easy.
Words are much harder. One
could hear the sonic pull.

Libraries are the worst to kill.
One night I tried and puked
up paper the whole time.

I got caught and detained.
They brought me in.
They cracked my head
open like a metaphor.

A watermelon on a picnic
table, it was filled

with tiny black seeds, with bugs.
I asked to have them fucked out.

They refused.

Instead they set fire to the card catalogue in my head.