springtide
thrushes
in a bed of
moss and grass
on the sunlit
shore of a pond
hidden in the
sweet chlorophyll
her tolerant gaze
sends wavelets
across the water
rushes and reeds
upon divine wings
the heron flies
the heron flies
upon divine wings
rushes and reeds
across the water
sends wavelets
her tolerant gaze
sweet chlorophyll
hidden in the
shore of a pond
on the sunlit
moss and grass
in a bed of
thrushes
untitled
you make poems that you imagine
are only bowers for drowsy pixies
poems that are only nests to remember
heartstrings heavy with droplets of water
they hang in fig shadows in the orchard
in time the wind will blow away the leaves
in the morning light the cathedral
will dwindle in relief
cavity
i'm screwing on the Listerine lid
with refining mask on my face
when Larry asks me
what do i think about
when i brush my teeth?
…as if he cared
i almost laugh
because i swear
i could swish
and burn
with a smile on my face
forever, just thinking about my
dental hygienist
his pretty hands
rubber gloved
flossing my teeth.
the strawberry taste of
fluoride gel, my mouth puddles
with drool at the sound of
his perfect ivory
voice telling me
i brush too hard.
i think about
those little
x-ray tabs.
he tells me
to bite
and hold still.
then i pop them out
with my tongue,
on cue.
i would do anything
for my dental hygienist.
even brush softer and floss.
i spit in the sink and say to Larry…
i think about getting my teeth whitened...
Smutty Sextina
you've got me now, you tricky bitch
my lips twitching and a lash in my eye
sweat sliding sweet that electric touch
this is complete collapse and I am burning
and so are you as we melt wet velvet floors,
patches of crushed lust, a collage of our silhouettes
black thread flashing needle, sewing silhouettes
a subsonic grind scratches like a screaming bitch
emphatically smashing windows, blowing holes in floors
a pool of shadow shoots in spurts like evil from a black eye
delicious words, own limbs almost frozen in their burning
motions inevitable approach a limitation will fizz into touch
you like it violent and bleeding, my touch
sears in your mind, unseams your silhouette
and similar but also different, I prefer burning
always sucking smoke like a reckless bitch
when we're all through it slivers a slice in my eye
in a post-coital rage I rip up the floors
we never had much use for the floors
anyways, found them boring to the touch
yes. perfectly abominable to the critical eye
distracting our precisely united silhouette
which we fucked like a bitch
and threw into the fire burning
our telekinetic throb. an insatiable burning
see this smoke and coal fucking the floors
unseemly words. bastard and blame and bitch
syntax context constraint fix this blueprint of touch
blueprint of two raging silhouettes
connected siamese-style by the eye
Looking without honesty square in the eye
throw gas on this young house burning
and tear apart those steaming silhouettes
glue them in place, taste ceiling, lick the floors
tongue fucking a sign reads “Don't Touch”
ignore this backwards up and down bitch
eye for an eye on twitch for a bitch
touch one flick blind match for burning
silhouettes we will never wash off the floors
LUKE WARM WATER
you look at me and start to wonder
just how heavy is the weight I'm under
you turn the screw you torque the vice
that's clamped on my head with your stupid advice
find someone else to shoot the shit
I'm getting tired of being sodden with it
don't try to tell me that it's not so bad
while you watch me scrub with a scouring pad
a filing cabinet couldn't hold it all
page after page of vitriol
bitter fruit and caustic speech
tantalus and the grapes he cant reach
lukewarm water- spit it out lukewarm water- spit it out lukewarm water- spit it out
to the pain and I'm exhausted
where's my brain I think I lost it
you're probably kicking it down the gutter
along with every word that you can't utter
I'm hot or cold you're always medium
mucking around in the tedium
talking the talk someone else's opinion
you sound like a parrot a puppet a minion
you stare at the spectacle desensitized
this all washes over your jade green eyes
all the while Atlas shoulders the weight
so you can sit on your fence and watch and wait
OUT OF SIGHT
somewhere else
anything but bored
you don't even know
you're in a grocery store
working or something
maybe waiting
for someone who doesn't look
like scenery
a little out of phase
people like us
wear a look these days
smile fast
and use a trigger word
just a joke
I overheard
an expression
of urgency
act like it's an
emergency
someone like you
should wear warning lights
and reflective tape
you're out of sight
In defense of the rights of birds.
Men speak of eagles. Our eyes behold hummingbirds, even as our flightless parents covered our eyes and told us we were born of storks and stilts. This is a new day my friends. No longer will we fly in the dirt, for we have marvelous digits. Who would cut off a finger for a widget? My beak is thirsty for stones. What are these things that call themselves senators, what vile limerick can encapsulate their crones? I want to kill many things this morning, my bower mates. Most of all, i want to live to see the death of my fear of flying into an open window. On such a fell day, may it go the way of our friends the chirps, whose voices vanished into the house of many feathers.
HAZEL
One time I got an empath disco nut in a box of Cracker Jacks. When I bit down on her, she shrieked, and I was immediately thrown into a series of flashing images…pink polyester bell bottoms, gaudy elevator platforms, and a gyrating blue striped turtleneck. The images slowly stabilized and I could hear a lugubrious sobbing which subsided into a series of confessions that made up an index of a tragic life. She told me her name is Hazel and that she hadn't meant to startle me, but it hurt so bad to be ground up suddenly in my molars after like three months of lonely saccharine darkness in something as ridiculous as a Cracker Jack box. She said it was much better being inside of me, although she was feeling awfully discombobulated, you know, being digested and everything. She warned me to never try angel dust because sometimes it really is angel dust. Powdered angel wing. And man does that stuff fuck you up. See, the powers that be take great offence at having their dander bought and sold as commodity. It's an innocent trespass and people do a whole lot of stupid things, but evidently screwing around with what sometimes is actual angel dust is a personal insult and affront to the intelligences which watch over our souls. Hazel got off lightly because her guardian angels are excellent advocates and all in all she had been a really sweet hearted person. She told me a lot of pretty strange things about heaven and hell and the earth. She told me that being human was the funnest thing she'd ever been, and that I ought to be more careful with my life. She told me that I ought to go buy a Sly and the Family Stone album. She was such a sweetie. She projected some of her favorite outfits and dance floors. She was so 1975 hot. She was embarrassed and shocked and apologetic for having met me in the form of a peanut. She was almost 25 just like me when she hit the hot Los Angeles asphalt after falling from a balcony six stories up. She said something about paperwork taking a long time and then I started loosing any coherent signal. It dissipated as she dissolved into my bloodstream, leaving me in an ethereal and slightly paranoid state. I didn't step on ants or kill bugs for a couple of weeks and now squirrels are always giving me this strange sideways look. I kept trying to dismiss the whole event as an acid flashback or something. I didn't want to believe because I don't want to end up someone's left shoe 25 years in the future. I miss Hazel. She may have been an empath disco nut, but she was so cool. Maybe if we can work it out, we'll meet again in more compatible forms. I saw her in a dream about a month after this all happened. She told me she's been learning a lot as a frog and that they've got her in an accelerated program for aspiring hummingbirds. She seemed a little sad. When I woke up, it took a lot of time to get out of bed. I kept wondering if there were any displaced souls in my mattress and stared at the ceiling trying to pierce the veil and see my angels. My theory now is that there is an incomprehensible multitude of intelligences occupying an infinity of forms. Sometimes even now Im scared to do anything because now everything matters. This is thistle flavored conceptual bliss. My lips sting.
My heart aches. Every night I imbibe the stuff of dreams and search every nook in every dreamscape for Hazel's silhouette. I guess you can't really destroy life. It's only converted. I don't want to throw off the series of fateful events which I'm pretty sure will end in a blissfully everafter. It seems that much of life is a matter of timing. I don't expect anyone to believe this; I barely believe it myself. Truth is a strange thing. If you ever see me distracted or looking like I'm on angel dust or something, just please give me fucking break. Kissing. Kissing. Kissing Hazel.
IODINE
shes a jagged piece of art
don't touch the paint's still wet
subject of a bidding war
dealer knows what shes thinned with
kisses taste like battery acid
she swallows critics
shattered glasses in her wake
obscene and iridescent
she'll make you feel thick
sees your card and laughs at it
pregnant with your compliment
she spills and cuts the cord
hot honeysuckle heavy
red like pomegranate
a pistol behind her ear
she makes you want to cry
public like a drinking fountain
hit her button. she will spit
in your face. available like a taxicab
if only you had the fare
close your eyes
her image remains
stumble awaywith
a dent in your head
What Did You Expect?
she gave me a safety pin for my broken heart
she found me on the curb watching my breath
she said I didn't look as crazy as people said
she smelled like hair products, gin, and death
when I told her that, she said I should smell her bed
I was thinking fabric softener and meth
she looked as independent as an alleyway shopping cart
she said let's fuck first and make coffee later
I woke up chained to her radiator
she was looking at me like an art critic
then she went into her closet and came out with a camera
she said don't panic. I'm just doing homework
sorry I didn't ask first, but I've got a deadline
I said well at least give me a cigarette
just wait a moment, mon petite, while I steal your soul
the light is perfect right now, I need to finish this roll
wearing panties and a camera and the key around her neck
she had a look in her eyes like What Did You Expect ?
Bluff Street
A bottle of Old Milwaukee
begins to sweat in its paper bag.
The bottle rolls passively in the car seat
Blind to the neighborhood streets
Where black kids play in front lawns
Strewn with milk jugs and plastic toys.
Nappy little toddlers stagger down the sidewalk
And nine-year-olds circle
Like one eyed sharks on bicycles.
The bag is off and the bottle still sweats,
Looking out over the Rock river
Perched a little way down a flight
Of slate steps laid into the steep bank .
The lid is off.
The bottle's ears pop.
Cicadas clack away
Like a typist pool circa 1923.
Geese plunk and flap and preen.
Gnats zip around like UFOs.
A bell melody blows in
From the college on the hill.
The bottle doesn't care.
Neither does the sun-bleached trash
Sprawled shamelessly at lewd angles
Among the weeds.
true.myth.zoo.spa
chester pettygrove is not the world's most interesting man. indeed within, complete without, he was exceptionally bland, only typically bright, of a reassuringly masculine height, neither troubled nor happy, he wandered the earth with ordinary grace, was an adequate lover with a practical face. he enjoyed the cinema and practically all types of music and moderated his pleasant smile with acceptable taste, in the ocean of humanity he was medium rare, to what sardine shall we, this specimen compare? let us not, lest our minds swim away with him. not remarkably clairvoyant, nor without a degree of intuition, river-nymphs adored him, from the nihilist plains of andalusia, basilisks slinked up and knocked on his door, gargoyles and pixies climbed down from their cathedrals, stopped zipping back and forth and stayed in one place, the true.myth.zoo.spa, literally his back yard, for he knew, as the sky is blue, these dreams of ours have needs too, said nessie, receiving a good belly-rub, in his bathtub, count them if you dare, there are 2017 space.dragons playing speed.chess in his hair. true.love and marital.bliss are playing badminton on the lawn. financial.security is knitting him a scarf on the porch swing. reasonably level headed, conservatively optimistic, he hoped for a better future and received it in stride, even when asteroid#3104 and arizona collide, he will see a show on friday, enjoy a pint and a slice, and even have the common sense to tell his wife, she looks nice, when she wakes up, in their well trimmed bed, with all the hosts of heaven hovering overhead, to glimpse this pair of earthlings in their "natural habitat". aksania.maxfield @gadgetgreen
PLASTIC TRAGEDY
I watched the troupe of plastic
perform their tragedy
their slow surreal motions
were thick with majesty
tricks with tinfoil
for the glitter princess
were only costume accessories
for her fatal whimsy kiss
I watched the troupe of plastic
in line for curtain call
oh what drama in the thicket
what grace for a barbie doll
berries girded her hips
her enormous boobs were covered with flowers
I thought I saw her factory lips
move with supernatural powers
I watched the troupe of plastic
pack themselves into matchbox cars
they left the backyard venue aching
for next summer's travelling stars
in the eyes of four and five year olds
figurine epics unfold slow-mo
it's only their hands that get in the way
of a poster paint promo
I watched the troupe of plastic
perform their tragedy
their slow surreal motions
were thick with majesty
POMEGRANATE
miss wide eyes is a pomegranate tired and gone to seed
fancying the sun's the only one who sees her bleed
we hover black as carrion birds with a glut empty need
to ripen all to see them fall yes that's the game agreed
there my love I see her now she's heavy as our stare
fussing with a fastener in a moment unaware
that we are always watching for a molly fit to scare
it seems to me she's fell as thee and knows exactly where
we posture anxiously spitting falsehoods on cue
twittering like snipes cause there's nothing left to do
she might have spent her whole life just waiting to ignore you
for even starry eyed whimsy wenches get to grace the avenue
stalky in flower every limb covered in thick skin
without a scar all pitch and tar still fluid and quick within
feeling every shoot and runner screaming ready to begin
making fine lines where the limbs split to feed our shady grin
idiots on stilts never see the audience
we're busy making mockery of providence
staring tipsy eyed at coincidence
staggering away clumsy from innocence
I feel drab looking at her grace
at the calm perfection on her sad face
it seems to me that she has found her place
elegantly there at the bus stop,
sitting pretty like a grey green enamel vase...
mezospheres
You're on my flipside. The devil likes to play middle. He's got mezospheres for us to touch through, medium set to microfine, a momentum line where resistance is like nilumbilical. we chase the blackout straight down. space polarizes between you and me. you use rails, we call like whales, and I hear you come half a world away,and bags crackle across the street, while the cars all line up in color schemes.
I chase our heat through the alleyways
on my way to painkillerz,
you send me broken robinseggs,
buckets and scouring pads.
Its so poppivisual.
This is when I feel like an insect,
a collector for the throbbing nymphqueen,
I help to incubate her eggs,
she lets me choose from the brood,
any who will have me for a mate.
And all the workers know it,
they never talk to me,
they can only watch me bring her,
everything she needs.
And there really is no argument
They know I'm the only one who's any good
at stepping out of line..
I came home tonight with her perfect face stillframed on my answerkam. Behind her redeyedfocusexit pose, she's tilted, leaning back, nipples pointed heavenward, handswrists vein to vein, spread over her middle in flexstance, all silohetted with like twenty alien faces in the windowpane. I can tell she rolls around naked in my clothes when I'm not home. I walk around with her phantoslobber all over me. It's embarrassing, but now I'm used to it. I wake up in the morning and walk to the Circle K for cigarettes across fourth street with this traffic stopping sexaeomeba writhing all over me. It feels like twenty cats crawling, purring, pressing, stretching, yawning, licking, sneezing, scratching, trilling, and nosing into me
She's started climbing through my window at night,
wearing the stomperboots with Biltrite soles I left at the top of the Kraven building. I can read the heelprint in the bubblegum that she managed to land on my carpet. it was twisted tornado, still sweet. I love her because she cant look at me without laughing.
pin cushion adornments, an ill sculpted arrangement of words for nobody. pills and crackers, coffee and koolaid. sardines and sink vomit; mice and parakeets and piles of clothes with two shades of gum in the mirror. magenta paisley bed cover and imprints in the carpet and snot on the wall and my bodys splayed out on the floor... all pressure on heart and sex and whoa for loathsome helga. salute to the evain girl with the goldfish in a bowl and some of the stuff on the wall really hits you in the head and between the legs and you start to wonder where the spiders lay eggs
and should the shadows of the guitar wire figurines look so mysteriously animated?...
My own kind of wreckless magic on the mirror. A nonocot in blood.
sometimes you pop those zits and they bleed and bleed. Homespun mischief to assult the sissies with.
empirical doubt
shivers in a crappy gray overcoat
with short sleeves and padded shoulders
considering the possibility of his own imminent
validation, a theorem well received,
immortalized in the cannon of reason, however
an empirical spine
will never measure
the length of love.
doubt sits awkward on the bank,
above the river of unmediated joy,
shooing ants, applying hydrocortisone,
almost breaking into pity
for the white trash beer cans
flung all over the grass.
he is a parched tower
cross-legged, chicken and egg
un-fucked, condescending down-hill
knock-kneed i.q. choking in the thin air
of its terrible heights and climes
blushed in the presence of the heat below
where supple fools splash and
ring forth vulgar nonsense...
the drunkest one in a burnt sienna
one-piece emerges from the water
with un-coagulated bravery
and a cut on her shin
she blows snot on her friend,
heavenly un-taught synonyms, and
ravaged figures of speech
a rapture of cold nipples
and milwaukie's best
she spits dirty water on her friend
blows more clear snot out her nose
with the posture of a toddler
she shakes her goose-bumpy limbs
scratching her itch,
constellations of mosquito bites
and her head full of tameless hair,
she coughs up a lung
and says with all due gravity,
"i swear to god there's eels down there."
feeling the cold breath from the banks,
her eyes flash and
shatter his coke-bottle frames,
issuing a statement of fact
that will plague his valves
till his heart stops short 35 years later
logic is a sniveley little shit of a man
imagination is wings
delivering pizza
in a ford fiesta
full of tiny lightning
and a million drams of impulse
and we remain tied fast to a pillar
with myopic digits
and rules of three.
we insult the infinite.
we bridle passion and plasma
the galloping power
of a horse's ass
we harness desire
with unbreakable tethers,
the tensile limits of lust
restrained, fucking fear
like there was no tomorrow
she goes on burping the alphabet
in a lilac shower
with nary a wit
in her supple
little cortex
Moths Love The Sticky Side of Your Heart
i told her that mermaids crack vials with their teeth
to rid the fear of the salt beneath the square fucked
roof of my lip died for lack of flavor on the tinfoil
princess's last goodbye. she fell asleep on the
milkweed parasol for spite. listless and growling all
night. the shades pulled in and got bored and talked
about fucking with my life. last night i invited them
in and they carved me up. i only smiled when they
said something they thought was funny. i worried
often about my twittering black shoes were made for
running away with the point ought to be in my eye
because i never say anything remotely useful. i'll
hear a song on the radio and i would come for the girl
who is singing like when you drive by a radio tower
and the people in the car are being defensive and
dull and you wonder what fell hot wraith knows the
wind up there where the red light is blinking. if i
don't take myself apart there is nothing left for you
to walk away with. there are bits of shrapnel on my
lips and stuck in my nasty faces... this careless one
that listens without interest because you could never
touch me like those sirens do when im not complaining
about it. all the ways i try to paint myself lovely
in the light for the times i am a shallow dish with no
love for you. split me. split me and you. stuck in
a room. we wished for this and they gave it to us.
you decided not to eat so you could mindfuck us into
money with no eyes with no mouth. i like it when you
move unprompted then you lie back and act inadequate
when all we want is the next thread. all the patience
in the world for you babe. something in your voice
makes me giddy and wet. avocados in the shade are not
so blackened yet. you pour me water in the morning
like it was fucking holly golightly and you whistle
like hell licking a lollipop. and you say hearts are
dangerous things but i don't believe you for a moment
because lovely i want nuthin more than you. can eat
moths and you can eat flowers and they wont make you
sick like you make yourself when you aren't listening
to the sticky side of your heart. so eat another moth
for me love and don't ask permission just drink it down
with your beer. you could call yourself a lot of
things but i know that you're not. doing anything
wrong. take tylenol for instance. you were right
though when you said hearts will tell you need
something and then wont let you have it. i think you
look cute when yore looking for what isn't there. you
call it hating yourself. im always here. falling in
and out of love and life and you all the time. you
trace the curve and give it nerve and you tell me you
never even dust it off. i mean sure you never draw
like you used to. except for on my face or on the
floor. its always so easy with you. the whole fucking
time. we weren't looking for anything and now you tell
me you know a secret and i don't want to know the
answer because when you shoot that smile at me i feel
so not human and if this is the length of love than
i'm not listening. you worry your outfit is vane.
these made up thought traps. i believe in you. and
you believe in everything. except for yourself. it
shows the way you walk it around. moments when you
held your breath in the pool light wondering if she
would really swim away with you gave her eyes and
held back what she wanted to hear you tell her her
eyes are made of lavender and lime twist. but all you
said was fuck with your lips. so she swam away
Mute Valentine
Something is wrong with me.
I feel like I'm still dreaming.
A girl's mind inside of mine.
She's having fun with me.
I let her have her way.
We're walking us around,
watching all the people who aren't ever going to know
we're flirting with a girl.
It's my love's first time
blowing bubblegum with a boy's mouth
and standing slightly taller,
really enjoying a cigarette
and writing it all down on paper.
She's acting like she's studying
and maybe she is a little bit,
just like this book isn't exclusively a prop.
There's actually work of a kind getting done
as we engage her subconscience
with body language and cooincidences.
A vacant thread of attention,
blaring silent sexuality,
like we're sea anenomies
sending chemical messages into the water,
and our eyeballs watch it happen.
Hair strung out as an indicator of obvious preoccupation,
still too scared to stare into each other's faces,
cause then all of a sudden we'd need words
instead of bubbles of immaterial longing.
So I'm pressing into the table,
licking my lips and enunciating
as your signals land ever so lightly.
I taste them and they dissolve
straight into our imaginarium
where I get to hear your voice
and it makes my skin blush...
you watching me seemingly fuck the paper
and I make authoritative movements
and gesture myself to stage front
without doing so much as talking,
not even looking your way to disturb your view of me.
I want it to haunt you,
how your mind gets it this easy,
yet I remain unapproachable even as a nerd walks up to me
and gets me to say hi, no, and fine.
You can't even get to hello
because I've swallowed every available word
to keep us on this level,
totally naked and abstract
and our minds fuck like ballerinas on strings
and I'm shaking with the thrill,
knowing how you wonder
could you really have me?
You doublecheck everything you know
and with another look you are sure
that you are irretrievably lost in lust.
You give me even more
and your head drops to the books you no longer have any interest in looking at
because the only thing that matters anymore is what I'm doing now.
My expert fingers on a throttle you can only dream of touching,
I engage and speed licks her lips
the room is reduced to the sound of transaction
as people walk in and out dizzy on the contact rush.
You don't even drink coffee.
You've fallen almost asleep.
I've spent all your worry for today.
Just listen to the footsteps
and the sound of the cash register
and people moving into place.
They fade into nothing but a series of approximate intellegences
who happen to share the place where we screw.
They talk about skiing destinations
and one lady is talking on a cell phone
and I just get louder
and make her sneeze with the imagery.
You get up and go pay for something
and I can't make out what you're saying...
something about your hands,
like you needed a quick reality check,
You go for a magazine
fingering a rubberband in your hair like a static knob on a wave generator.
You've gone and made the line secure.
We continue the series of sensuous flirt positions like fixation terrorists.
It's become a bit of a guessing game now.
I'm obviously aroused.
You just wonder if or how it could be you,
and just when I think maybe I'm grossing you out with what I'm doing to my bubblegum,
you get up and start throwing candy hearts into the garbage can.
Oops, you dropped one.
That's the one I'll steal if you leave before me.
And isn't it brilliant like this,
having given each other nothing but a sense of wonder?
I mean, what exactly were we doing tickling each others brains like that?
I love you.
I love you silent and crazy
and I have to leave to keep my make believe.
You're so perfect in my mind, my mute Valentine.