Neon, Fish Tank Rocks

I’ve seen the men, alike, ragged breasts on a beautiful rib cage

I’ve seen the women, like broken camel knees

I’ve seen these bent backs of these creatures

shave sheets of grass from the city parks

and wear the worms as their veins,

the sheets as their skin

These creatures cross their arms and hold bouquets

of bottles with aluminum can tabs over their eyes,

some with parched tongues still

prairie dogging for milk from the sky

I don’t know death the way these lives know

the dirty hell of this heaven—

not a child’s mind where all the chutes

and ladders end when we are done

If, and these creatures know, heaven is the

return to a child’s mind, (head nod)

then I’ll join the ranks of them

wearing the filthy earth like hell

I’ll dig all of their graves when

I’m tired of talk about death,

wombs in the soil and blankets of flesh,

every hole I’ll fill with the neon fish tank rocks

because their coals in this heaven

are hot as fuck. 

I don't want to write of the stars no more

i don't want to write of the stars no more
they don't crave the stars
the howls are tied to lead

i've made too many cry in the night

Machine Gun Moments

He said over a few beers:

‘My name is Malakai Vacey

I have never been myself

for more than four minutes.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘he feared

his self out of Easter dress

Out of relationships with dying women

Out of books and the boots of

Bukowski’s Eliot’s Ellison’s

Characters. Out of the faces

and skins of those who died

and left their drabby suits

under the Christmas trees

Out of the living moments

Out of the slow rides in

autos full of white niggers

chinks fags and spicks

across the states and frontiers

and hills that whistle right up under the clouds.’

‘Out of innocence too much like a cherry

Out of a pruned boy only at 22,’

when he did say he could be his self,

‘A dick, with a liver full of spit—

ungrateful pair of eyes hyper juiced

on dull spirits and soiled lungs,

sucking pollen from the lips of angels.’

‘A lip, plugged with black tobacco slugs—

a smile that makes heroes kneel in

cracked dirt and cry;

an ugly dick, so full of distorted love

the only way to live is to burn and fight.’

the tugboat

guilt
the cargo weighing down the boat

hate
hawks flying in circles above, lurking, waiting to eat their prey

hope
the crack in wood, water seeking in

fear
land is far away

desolation
the oars cannot defeat the waves

anxiety
sinking ship, fish jumping in the boat

suffering
the fish weighing down the boat (along with the cargo)

despair
the boat is sinking

opportunity
letting go of the cargo and learning how to swim

Moments of Salt

Here we go:

What will they accept when the mail is dead?

How will my fingerless hands communicate to them?

Why will I continue to eat?

If I am three quarters full of shit

that means I at one point had three quarters worth

of fine wine, food, and swallowed time.

There is no depression that tastes like

t. will’s ice cream

all the girls I meet talk much of ice cream

they talk of their travels and the small parlors

that served them and told them how cute they looked

and added to the baby fat around the bone of the hip

which fingers

melt like ice cream on the nyc july sidewalk

leaves the hands sticky and sweet

I wonder why they don’t crave corn on the cob instead

By the winter fires when their hips deflate

When im at their side wishing I was naked

a puddle of colored milk spreading in front

of the fireplace like it was july

smell the buttered corn trying to understand

and think of ice cream

so the girls think when their confidence falls

the worry creeps and the desire for ice cream

the small parlors and memories in past suns

line up behind the eyes

flutter, dip their chins and hide their faces in hands

mouths circled in superman blue

moose tracks, mint chocolate chip

sheepish little girls with full breasts

hips at a V

thinking a good fuck will cure the flask

of gender kept distilled and away

come that dip in strength when memories

of ice cream take the place of sons and lovers

taste tests and sugar fantasies

The most fashionable lesbian couple of Gramercy Park

They started off as roommates, and one said,
“Oh yeah my girlfriend is really like, weird,”
A police car sped vrooming down the block,
“I wanted to talk to her but I got fucked up.”
Brain so up and down, options like windows,
The scarf looked like baby, or animal.
I wanted to say, “C’mon, petite abeille,
feel confident and confidential,” you do not
have to give your name, but rattle your chains.
Say, “oh-kay, this is, over.” Sirens grow
closer. “This moment is washed, blowdryed,
but as long as I can take it I’ll survive.”

Meanwhile: Eat your vegetables, do your work.
Respect women, respect men, rock & roll.

Just a lonely summer slowly dying...

or naturally me

doctor i want to feel the angry bee

            scared and frantic in my summer dress

can i feel again and touch the new with my mind

            wax coat or oven with the finished apple pie?

may i be me and recognize my leg’s fleshy bulbous machine

            so i can stop writing like the woman with the water breasts

            who passed me on the sidewalk and washed her eyes over me

i’m afloat in my own skin and wish the chemical tablets i take at night

            would make me grow gills and fins and be caught      drown a body

                                                                                            or

of human delight

What I heard at the bar last night

“I’ll shoot that woman if I see him with her,” the short Puerto Rican said. 

“Si or no?” the drunk girl they brought said. They noticed how drunk she was and took sips of their own drinks. 

“Are you going to answer my question?” she asked.  No one answered and the barman walked away.

Consider April from My Balcony

I

The seagulls sound like

Doors opening over the sea

When I paint my chest

Like the Easter egg designed

In womb  I felt the pulse

Of church bells echo           

            In the sewers and bones

Of the city

II

My balcony overlooks

Jesuit house defaced walls

And lonely golden window

Lamps  I saw portals of priests

And sisters using tea with their

            Hands bleached and

Free from callous

I checked my sense of the

Order   the march   the pace 

The quantity of ants

            Filing into the sea—

The catalyst suicides of childish

Novas the depth of storage for

Indifferent ill memories

III

            I sketched for the tea party

The public sex I’ve seen in streets

The beards burned in fires of

Money and condoms the small

Mountains of pleasure and success

The carcasses of flattened gulls

            Fallen from the heavens

  

            My friends sleep inside,

A warm rat king of

College exhaustion dissolving at

Last  and I on the balcony

            listen to the church bells

ring and turn

The remaining gulls with keys—

Consider April from my balcony

IV

This evening I use the Bible as the

Instruction booklet of the chords

Of giants gritting teeth beats the

Booms of St. Ignatius kicking

His boot against empty air

            Tried to build this door—

This door I cursive for frame

I take the wind three sheets

Covering lovers drawn out on

Haight and Ashbury to you

Allen to you and the salt from

Your eyes that turned your beard

From brunette to blonde when you

Dreamed of hot air balloons

Deflating above

            Greenwich night skies

V

            Every nail and board

Into this door

Made with the bread of pain

And the codes behind my eyes

Coursing from my blueprint of

            Veins and bones these

Fingers drawing the sketches

Of a gate for all to walk naked

Thru

At the foot will scurry

white pelts of rabbits against

The bare balls of the ankles

I am unsure if they will think of

Allen Hardy Jesus or me

            If they think of me

The way of the cypress tree

Let one thousand fields of lilac

And poppy candy

            In which the mystics are buried

Spread like acid on film

The mystics in their sleep

Will hear my footsteps

They will smell my sweat

And they will feel the pressure

Of my word like the finger

Clenched

VI

The door

            To building the door

That will open to all—

            The pallid angels with cigarettes

Hanging from their lips and a

Cancer spreading their wings.

            The annals of children waiting

Awake for the toothfairy who is

Left hung on the cypress tree

In the field of infinity

I keep building this door

For all to pass under

To see the sunlight behind

To see ahead

the moon

            dropped

In the great star like an Irish car bomb

           

            The howls of the sinking

moon will be mistaken for the final

hissing of dying time

The dogs of romanticism chained

To fashionable pegs

Lurch and froth and choke

Trying to reach me before

I finish this door

VII

My death is not inscribed in the

Book of Instruction

So if I shall die

If I shall fall before this door is made—

            I take the wood from the cypress

            I make the nails from icicles of our blood

            I find the glass in the delicate filaments of poetry

            I read the blueprints found in the body

           

            I build in the wall of saving grace

Finish the door

If I can not

Finish the door

So all may walk

So all may use the key given at life

Head held high to the portal of ecstasy

Before the flesh deteriorates and

The hinges are taken away

Exponential Decay

I am fitting into the crowd.
(or maybe i always was)
becoming more boring, more bourgeois.
every new possession only leads me
onto a child-like hunger
for another.

What can be done?
My pants are ripping and it makes me want to rip out my skull.
My computer is dying and it makes me want to take a pill and sleep for days.

Who is this person I am
now?
I couldn't name a favorite color
or a favorite song,
but I could name a favorite soda to buy at the vending machine
or station to turn to on the television.

I've lost my desire to write or think.
I just want to go to bed.

(sleep for four hours)

shower
breakfast
smoke cigarette
car

Driving towards the same thing everyday.
Driving towards nothing.

The world is filled with suffering
and such is my existence in it.

Do you hear me?

I would rather look at a picture of a cat
than understand a math equation.