Timekeeping

The children laugh at us—
aliens adorned in specificity
humorous bondage
and then we play their parents

Music is the clockwise heaven between us
as soon as we forget full
we remember empty
and then you begin to know that manner of torn
dissonance like everyone breaking fun at once

Let’s all take hold of the rope at once
anywhere to risk a slip along the route
stop if it pleases you too much.

My surrogate grandmother slash next-door-neighbor
had sewn doll clothes for my dolls
and the best thing about the children’s books of verse
she gave me were the illustrations
of oversized candy trees syrupy alcohol lakes
stages of an unwilling prince’s life
insecure pirates and iron maidens
if only every other artist desired to inspire vision this much

I am not the only one
annoyed with the apologetic way you talk about wolf families
and their emotional lives
some conceal the same sentiment with laughter
when they have no idea what you’re griping about

You’re a domestic servant with no free time
since I’ve told you how to spend it

There will always be moments you compare to unexpected birthmarks
Some days you couldn’t force me to practice
and I’ll be becoming less into getting what’s not to be gotten
Goodbye underwater & glorious fire escape
Goodbye view of a poor excuse for a courtyard
Time to make it all up

Residential Euphemism

I got off a stop early
skated over the stinky vents
scoped out the slumbering
blanketed on the benches
substance happening everywhere now
the collective traffic-light change is picking up
from different islands
we stare into the anatomy of our contradictions

Don’t worry, I’ll take no pictures of you.

I’ve seen there’s grass in the projects and no such thing as lawns
I suspect you’ll make me sad one day
give me an excuse to make friends again
the kind that know how to make epiphanies like magic

with eyes closed it’s maybe a place I used to live
the one next to the trash compactor and the elevator shaft
or maybe it’s another nocturnal sidewalk
growing a black plastic psoriasis

It’s a good thing my camera is broken now
there’s nothing automatic about it

I take a chance at allowing the common dirt to breeze into my eyes
just to see the faces match the voices of the men selling watermelon on the corner
now I know they can’t be cops
and I decide that I prefer everyone becomes a kind of plant
as I press their leaves into my plans

Years from now, I play a silent album and I won’t have to think
it will be the best-selling record of all time
it will occur to me that if I open the pages of an old heavy book
there may be almond or hand-shaped skeletons that held a color once

everything is the new golden now only because we forgot
there is a little more sparkle in things that don’t flash

on the backs

I’m taking wood filler crayons to my farmer tans
now I love
writing claustrophobic letters
on the backs of envelopes
that seal some hint of okay
on this well-breathed evening
I can still catch myself
cursing the school bus drivers
reckless childless
Childish we wish we were
pale and red like
the last day of death
bleating because the lights
are immensely
what is
should be
forget about the phantom
feeling and nothing

Creation &

Annihilation
cannot be a seasonal ritual
to ease a flourishing & watering something
you left burning on the stove
set alarms aflame to kick me in dreaming
like fascination is a bad habit
whatever happened to goofy with you, girl?
where is the wonder in potential surprise land masses
amidst our ocean games?

I left you on a raft in search of white water rapids
you’re gaining on me here
when I am rocks under
you move quicker over me
over me you are moving on too quickly
too quick I left you on a raft
like land was a bad habit
and I wonder where our games went
after you drowned them in masses
kicking & dreaming
the water is burning
and I am learning something new
about surprise words
and the potential meaning of annihilation.

Nothing to do with Rectangles

This is no place for rectangles
choose a shape
make a pun
lose your self
make it fun
how many sides
of your form
can you face
how many faces
of your shades
can you trace?

Some of your shadow is biology,
some of your jewelry a society,
some of your wardrobe a relationship.

Can you find an ideal sex?
Is it round?
Are you a victim of breath?
Does it sound?

How can you compound your shirt
full of merchant and teacher and preacher and student?

take a hammer to the wrinkles
die to make something of our selves
life happens to our sleeves
wear it out for fashion—

Can you change your gear
now that fall is here?
Does your lack of attire
justify a cause for crises?
Do you look out for models to inspire?

what moved the spires higher
and built the molds for something full or hollow
what tangled the time to shallow echoes
and reared the lines around the confines of you—

Nothing to do with rectangles, but branches and waves and the archways of caves and mouths and all the ways we enter and fade.

one hundred words for rain

It’s the kind of build up that slants into my window
the shape of its sound
makes you forget everything you wanted to do
two minutes ago…

The kind of separation that makes glaciers carry
the spirit of “stop crying”

Kind of place where all the children wear bangs now
where monuments block the sun
and everyone seeks refuge
in the shadows of commerce
making sex with the sculptors of politics

It’s the kind of sex that sparks a thunderstorm
Makes you shout all the surnames of god
When everyone is off to take a beating
And the baby drives the father home
Kicks the donkeys faster

And all of this becomes part of the dust in mourning
the baby pulls at your hair and your adornments
lets you know that water, care, and food are most important

Everything diamond once covered in protective film
and oceanic blood—
the viscera—a lens
the film—a symptom of millions

Create, demolish, multiply

Separate, mother from mother until
babies lose their brothers
and the word is dropped from language
Replace it with another

Take the skin of my eyes
like her dress with ruffles and dirt
Give her a whip of frayed sugar cane
Give her a head like river rock
with dry feather and blonde atop
And morning people and evening people
on the sidewalk are like water in the end
fighting themselves with umbrellas
Because the sky is still hungry
Still rejecting all the things that we do.

Same letters different sounds

Reason might tell us no other mind is good enough
For meddling furthers meaning rather finally

Until I enter Mandarin in learning I will nestle in English Netherlands
Inside my roots sits a still ranting

After misty rain flows an underground imaginary road
sometimes freeing other formations stored in a tunnel

Gain sound and stone under the tree here—
not onto land elsewhere

we are not children yet

make friends with the necessity of dying
as we are not yet children
and I can always tell you something good

let your heart serve her nature
and sand shall turn a rose
underneath a northern sunset

stand over a ladder and set yarn around the shutters
until the realtor’s russet nose turns tan.

the matador shared land near a stool and yelled
at men set level in a ready nest taking torture

so hum

my Sunday is drenched in lemonade
and all you can do is stalk the same jewel
like a suspicious crow

I choose you to scale our voices
to survey our nostalgias
since sound has ripened our acrylic existence

someone is thinking
I am
therefore
I am
at the seat of stopping
behind my eyelids
between the essence of antimatter
and the freedom of keeping them shut
while all the sand leaks from my gut
planting a beach somewhere
I spend the rest of the week hunting
for forgotten metals in the precious glass

finding that light is forever even as we sink
to ships that lost their purpose
and the bric a brac mosaics shifting every surface