*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.