Chasing cats with sticks 

we both have wings

in our cruel childishness 

in a summer a few years ago.

Now pining and muttering 

rhyming between trees

in the humidity 

in our self-assuredness. 

We looked down at a charred circle

with rocks around it

with tree stump seats around it,

it’s a little more surreal during the day.

Sometimes i don’t even walk far enough

to make my house out of sight.

red and blue filters 

over non-issues

sift out

until my eyes hurt

from knowing

it doesn’t know what to look at.

I am not a father yet, but a creator.

My father still calls me son because I am a liar.

We still go to church

but i think i want to make the pastor jealous.

Wholly spirited shouting in my head,

wearing 3-D glasses and a leather jacket

leaning against a wall. 

there’s not enough dopamine to go around 

standing slumped nearly slack fingers

begging for choices.

Twisting my arm 

putting a gun to my back like the leaves had to try for the fall.

beige tiles 

wet grout some places

the light is struggling to reach the cold overnight mattress

of faux stone littered with dust

except a spot where a haphazard pile of clothes had been

and the footsteps moving to and from it on their own,

tap dancing around me.

there are cabinets in the distance,

probably empty bottles with messages

inside answering machines

and two pennies under

one of the wooden storytime containers

that my confidante 

left there to mock me,

the too honest Abes of my generation

in a poem about Clichéd mornings on the kitchen floor

when it was just me and my misery

shouting at crowds for company

until they see the isotopes in my eyes

that they want reflected in theirs.

they showed up at my door.

and i scratched another notch 

on the tile in the corner.

cut incorrectly, my own diamond,

wrapping memory loss around my fingers

and lashing out at inanimate objects

with my brass silver plated knuckles.

i pulled my face from the rough  adhesive 

and felt the indents and lines on my face.

i wondered what bullwhips were like

an put my hand down my cheek 

to my neck

down to my chest

a small incandescent bulb bursting 

over and over under my palm,

under my skin,

supposedly under my ribs.

Shards in my lungs 

exhaled in a blizzard,

my throat ripping itself out,

I left it.

Tongues of lace brushing at my neck,

I didn’t ask for tiptoes but she did it anyway.

It reminded me how many hills I’ve crossed now,

trying to see over, my telescope had a compound lens.

She might have glowed in the dark,

I knew she had night vision.

I was scared I’d leave fingerprints

until I found her in the cradle of my form.

She happened all at once

with her own electron cloud nine

that made sure dust had no time to land.

-Gnawing to bone my jaw aches like i craved fighting meat stuck in my teeth

-making metal of my hand 

finger pneumatics clasp prizes 

resting amongst each other

and they slip through to mock me

on their backs behind glass

as my hand is strapped to the ceiling.

until i put a coin on a string 

and my fingers turn to metal with flesh over them

that grip to crushing smiling candy

eyes popping out of wrappers

and dripping out of seams 

and into the crevices of stainless steel knuckles.

-Those won are dropped to seep into the carpet ground into chewing tobacco for unwary visitor tourists loving the exotic fucking tastes and smells that you can’t get off your upper lip no matter how many times you wash your face and regardless of how many cigarettes you smoke in between until you gag and pretend it was the carcinogen you intended. Stop going with the imagery. This is called release.

He has smokestacks exhaling guilty until proven innocent

until no one can tell where the storm clouds begin and the smog begins

he is seen floating in the midst of a maelstrom 

he hates it

he hates it

he’s trying

no one will give him a reason to

bus stop skies

in the color of your eyes

I’ll stop looking in the mirror

when I see a real person there

 .

and when you destroyed my faith

I stared into my plate

my ma asked “whats wrong”

I said nothing’s ever wrong

. 

Because I can’t afford

the life I can’t have

the stars twinkled embarassed

cuz you wouldn’t stand next to me

 .

Then I  held your hand

and you didn’t hold back

you fell out of my life

every fucking night

. 

we walked by the lake

and you smoked while I watched

there was nothing else I wanted

that no one else was flaunting

Because I can’t afford

the life I never had

the clouds covered the stars

I covered my eyes

.

Backwards through my life

through a summer

 I remember

looking down at my feet

and seeing yours standing next to me

then dropping through the sidewalk

and chalking it up

as another fucking boy

with a deathray in his hands

hidden under the bed

in  a shoebox full of pictures

he wanted to look

but had nothing left

Might as well castrate me now, cant encourage that.

Maybe your bawls are better off if they’re cut out

Very likely. Keep me from bathing in public.

Only since I think you might practice social grooming

As in I only groom if others will watch me, yes.

More like I’ve outgrown the scruff of my neck and you’re trying to paint it back on.

But are you begging for it

Asking maybe, but I have too many grey hairs for my knees to bend.

Not asking, begging. Done involuntarily, a helpless cry the victim cannot hear, to be assisted by the nearest vulture, ignored by those who held the leashes.

As they approach a concessions stand and order two ice creams as first will inevitably be lapped up when it falls.

Using the fire hydrant as a font for the baptism he waited his whole life for.

And we have arrived at the Venn diagram in chalk washed off because you just bathed me in public.

Children don’t play in the hose but choose to roll on the cement and stain themselves with tar

Pasting on feathers to become vultures.

Dropping their leashes and the pretense of paying admission.

Ripping tickets for repentance after leading their loyal possessors into open manholes.

Pits of peaches raining down from a tree bearing only skeleton fruit, an empty womb, a promise fulfilled, the whale songs chiseling into glass rods resting under a piano bench.

And he straightened up, maestro mastering the fallacy of his baton, engorging his ego and elating his audience as the bricks in front of him sang with blood and skin, until the caterwauling ceased when the barking started and pinned their arms to pillows.

Crying rivers of sweat into the mouths of bent lovers, homes, cities of broken glass whistled and hummed an elegy to midnight prayer

The conductor, now frozen with slitted  soles as electricity flows out from him, does not bow, because he did not write the serenade, and he marched offstage, tripping on the stairs so that he had to look over his shoulder.

Velvet capes draping milky, satin skin in the dense fog of a forgettable mourning conspire together on subjects relating back to their apprenticeships. Stains from wine spilled by a brother blot out any and all tears and blood stains created by his dependents but not by those who stole their identity.

As they mapped out existence, the murder mystery was lost like the visions of rough versus smooth skin that were trenches and hills on their topographical minds but they could not decide where the globe began and settled on the tunnel vision of love as a treaty that solved nothing. The grid cage fell over her and she pushed against the walls of her cell as he did, reflected across the axis, tethered and battered, reversing the spiral on each other, and he wondered if she would try to pin him.

The palm of my hand was a blossom

dying at the edges

and I didn’t have the man power

to have a conversation

when I decided to experiment with flesh eating viruses.

ringing out the bells of my hands

sounded like dog whistles

so I wore gloves and yelled

things I didn’t want to say

but was cornered into the words

until feet stamped and slipped on condom wrappers

pre-lubed to make it easier to push in.

It seemed like something was missing

and I knew it would be me

when I started shaking

and my aim became unclear

like I clutched their throat

until my wrist was sore

from turning pages

and ripping them out

when they were in the wrong place

so we collaged them together

around leaves and lit the ends

to be more menacing

like black beards with neck beards

and allusions

for reasons I’d think up later. 

I still smell daisies like someone threw the blinds open mid-day in my dark room, and i have trouble getting the bricks from my chest.

She needs the room. She NEEDS it. I can’t say no. I don’t. I shuffle out, drawing short of sticking snail eyes out from between bookshelves that i realize I’ve already desecrated.

I turn my head too much looking for spiders that are never there, and i see too many faces that aren’t there through windows that distort the smiles of the nothings into grotesque crescents that promise me with flypaper beach whispers grinding into my eardrums that they will be caustic and dissolve my brain while my hands shake trying to comfort themselves.