And if that story that we made
was just a token
maybe our hearts
will all be unbroken.
-- Darren Hanlon
Butterfly Bones
Touchy glass of
water given left
to the light of
fragile socks at
the bottom
of the
bottom of
the hamper
where dusted off
of the deserted
many kind of
mildness desperate
to see and dance
the all kinds of
dusted and flooded
familiar silence
as the clouds fake
and use the barren
slips to make the
lack of value simper
and communicate
as if present but
only pretending to
be the only organ
left to sentiment.
The one page that
rights the night
away from
the brittle calm
ballast of the floating
fortune nothing.
Modern History
Let me tell you about the acoustics of modern history. the trim elastic of these nominal extensions. The aberration of rancid dream-truths left to parody the grim knot of social accusations. The days wretch upon us, and we watch from the back of the cheaper edifice. Events are molded and mired into images. And we look to them like starlets capable of liable smiles. We cannot catalogue that greenish regret enough, and we rest on laurels like a lamp, a risk. How can silence so precise preclude nostalgia as temptation? We romanticize and rewrite with amusing cruelty the fringes of withdrawal and lapse, helping to delete the obscene darkness of what we know. Picture us snipped of traumatized corruptions and what’s left of our body alone:
Tufts of transition left to the right side of the bed. Our emotional course of presence untidy in its response to pressure. These labial stretch marks look less elegant than they did before. Between plastic limbs aglitter with yesterdays wash and our limp bodies splayed out and turning, a brick built self playing in the dark. We can escape this nimble flash with a walk in the puddle. Unearthed and decisive, each side now brown in the burgeoning dungeon of our demise. The autumn of our disconnect, raked and wrapped in the feeling of falling down, in piles, an encumbered push, and then leaving like a pleasure.
Like boys as vicious as florescence, these dogs sit and portend a love like a bitten leg, tender in its ache and remembered. I am thinking of a finger being locked back in anger. Consider the flimsy past, something like a hiccup bent toward some named seeming. Rustling delights riddled with the anthems of the dirty parts, remaining vivid in this orange rust.
Scenes From A Separation
i.
[H. enters stomping feet and relegated to the right side of F. F. sits on a plain wooden chair, combing hair and looking straight ahead. There is always a soft humming, electrical, that never changes its tone. H. flaunts the embarrassing ambiguity of the word “I”.]
H. I am obviously yours
so let’s keep what’s mine
mine.
F. We’ll fold only once,
then curl into the middle,
and break our hearts
against the pillows
one last time, my
friend, my friend.
H. This has never been
easier than the washing
of those slipped sheets
and knowing those stains
seemed important then
and yet never were.
F. I’ll be thinking
of you from time
to time, and will
usually refer to
you as a man
who cleaned up
after himself
and thought well
enough of others.
H. I didn’t expect
your love to
go this far
away. And I’ll
be thinking of
you like news-
paper clippings.
F. A job like keeping
language alike
enough to tell
one another
‘I’ll be thinking
of you.’
H. I think I’m
ruining this
moment, there’s
only so manner
moments between
our ruins and
our graves.
F. You think a long
time enough before
that moment and
it’s gone
and we’re still here,
but I’ll just be
that voice in the
closet, picking out
your least wrinkled
whatever to wear.
ii.
I like imagining you on someone new.
iii.
Dear F.,
It’s winter, and I’ve forgotten how much heat costs. I cannot keep it on for long, and spend the middles of nights wrapped in old thrift store blankets, smelling of the dead, and full of holes and cigarette burns. I’ve started smoking again, too, thinking that keeping a fire in my hands will help. It doesn’t, and only leaves little money available to pay for the house heat. But I eat less, so I’m saving money there at least.
I don’t know. I smoke a lot. I’m hardly ever breathing out. I think about this tragic street and the accident from last month, and because I say so, it’s not icy anymore, it’s spring. I like to express my borrowed happiness in moments, and I open a can of tunafish and then go to bed. I’m a pastiche of hurdles from high school, the ones I’d always miss and tear down to almost splinters. I’m not imagining the past as something blessed, I’m not. I’m flaunting a gratitude like tomorrow’s glamour, and that hat looks lovely on you.
I didn’t want to write and say “oh, I want you back in my bed” because I know you hate the cold as much as I do, and I’m just so cold now it’s not enough to keep the both of us warmer than we once were. If I could, I’d move to California, a new life in Death Valley, and pop a tent in the desert there where
(over)
we could live and make sand angels and spend money on water, not heat, we’d be hot enough to lay naked and breath that air that makes your nose dry up. And we’d pick our noses, wiping the hard rocks from each nostril on each others heels. Our pumiced feet sinking into the sand like roots deep enough so we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, ever again, but we’d be happy because we made this place ours, just by being there. And we’d sit, sinking, like all of tomorrow’s yesterdays, and all the ways we could have been cold but never ever were.
All These Things
The Thing That Makes You Feed On Berries; The Thing That Breaks Your Arms; The Thing That Smudges Your Twin; The Thing That Cracks; The Thing That You Leave Out; The Thing That Tunnels In The Mouth Material; The Thing That Binds; The Thing Of Gorgeousness; The Thing Of Fat Knowledge; The Thing On The Lips That Slip And Smile; The Thing Right Beside You; The Thing Between You And Your Better Half; The Thing That Blinks In Your Eye; The Thing That Keeps For Keeps; The Thing That’s Under The Bidet; The Thing That Travels Down The Avenue; The Thing That Rode Out Long Ago; The Thing That Knows You’re In The Crowd; The Thing That Wears Down; The Thing That Remains In Your Inbox; The Thing That Licks At Abstract Thighs; The Thing That Rome Made You Be; The Thing That Lists The Things You Hate; The Thing That Normalizes Your Time; The Thing You Never Get Around To; The Thing You Left In Cleveland, Ohio; The Thing That Sighs In The Middle Of The Night; The Thing You Turn Out When You Go; The Thing That Heard Your Voice Last; The Thing That Lingers At An Annoying Volume; The Thing That Tears You Up and Tumbles You Down; The Thing That Turns Jack-o-Lantern White; Thing Thing My Mother Warned Me About; The Thing That Guilts You Into Saying Something; The Thing That Bests You Best; The Thing That Is Not A Thing That’s Beautiful; The Thing That Reorders Your Alphabet; The Thing That Saves The Best For Last.
House
The kitchen, nooked out in brandy and cream: A display of sugar and cardamon: The television blaring felt and googled white eyes: Gradually seated on the old green rug: The wall with red marker marks attempting to spell by explaining “color” correctly: The memories of the previous owner we have to own up to as not really ours: The romantic observation of porch swinging: Your mirror with the two broken lights: The hanger that never held onto whatever we put on it: The office and its attendant discord and history of social vocabularies: The yard outside, in the back, adjusting this long century to brown grass and potato bugs: An adherent bedroom behest of the dependent outwards: The TV we did not deserve: Nothing about these life sized sheets: Our love of brushed aluminum: The embodied confection of the floor: A crib in an otherwise empty room: A playland being laid out: Terminus:
The earrings you never wear: The substitute for Chicago architecture: The frame of our lens now known: The exotic fashion and glass support: The boutique-bought controlled impediments: The play between standards we never meant to accomplish: The parade of light you provided on Sundays: The toilet I vomit context into: The blamed couch: The old love seat neither of us could sit for long on:
If Only My Heart Were Made of Stone
I could be claimed as a culpable and powerfully soft catastrophe.
Folk Insomnia
Lines atop the blue
brick hold of the
hangers on built to
noun the place along.
You sleep by sitting
on the floor and
counting the yakking
by multiples of three.
Phlegm like a geyser
vacuumed by the very
trance of philosophy
you store in the daytime.
Another way to caress
this shared existence
like hooks in the
irritated swarm of being.
This rumbling in the
brain like the train out-
side your window, there’s
another dream to worry.
And the father how he
showed himself to us
to make us believe that
he was soon recovering.
And countered to take
the times we would
shoot at animals and
people, the awful feeling,
even though the animals
were small, and the
people weren’t any-
one that we knew.
He knows when he’s
fallen in love, when
he starts writing love songs
and drops all punctuation.
He spends tonight in
victory vibrations like
he’s happy again even
though he’s lost his love
to the movie theater next
door, the one playing the
film about the doctor who
learns all about treatment
by treating others how
he would want to be
treated, the almost empty
seats playing reminder enough.
It’s 3 AM and he still
can’t blame the meal
for this stopping of
moments like broken punk.
And mice scurry the
floors, searching for the
right cathedral door
where they are welcome.
And the moon relents
to smoke, turning the
night sky into a darker
pain of ghostly pale.
And the forest outside
is on fire and, reflected
in his unblinking eyes
the sad wet shape of
so much water.
Home
i two u ldaddtobenolongers u pposedlaten i ghtandg i ventheexc u sessom u chforthatletsgotobedandtalktomorrow i j u stwanttoarch i vethesef i ghtsfornowandmaybefl i pthro u ghthemlaterl i keacatalogoff u
ssandf i dgetsthatwedec i dedontreallyneednamesanywaysowedonttalkforaweekandwearegrow i ngj i tteryatthes i
ghtofastraypageofthenewspaperonthetablesowethrowthenewspaperawayfromthemoment i tarr i vesweknowthenewsnowanywayo u rho u
sekeep i ngmannersnowlocat i ngthemselvesandtherearedateswem i ssandolddateswerateyo u alwaysg i v i ngthemalessergradethan i dob u tthatsyo u rst u dentofadeq u acynotm i neandyo u drap i ngyo u
reffectalloverthecha i rso i tloses i tscomfortandbecomesvar i at i onsonathemeofhardnessthek i ndthatbeats i nthebowlyo u break i nthek i tchenwefeeld i sg u standtrytof i t i t i ntoo u rdaytoday u
nderstand i ngofo u rselvesb u t i nthespr i ngyo u alwayswenttothepostoff i ceandbe i ngsopass i veyo u wo u ldwa i tandwatchthosepeoplecapt u r i ngphotosofpeoplesend i ngpackagestootherpeoplethatyo u dontknowb u tallyo u wantedtoknowwaswhatwas i nthosepackagesandthenyo u
comehomeandthrowac u pofcoffeeatmyfaceandtellme i d i dnttakeo u
tthetrashandnowtheyhavetosmell i tand i sm i leatyo u randsm i leandtellyo u i msorry i loveyo u som u ch.
Buy Me Presents
I don’t want you to
heap on laundry. I don’t
need you to forget flowers.
I don’t need to hear
about your day’s life.
I don’t want to listen
to your song. I can’t
remember if you
told the truth once.
I can’t care if you will
lie on me. I won’t busk
at all of your bad habits
and won’t give a shit
if you don’t bathe. I could
wonder if you’re right for me
but in the end what
does it matter?
As long as you
know what I like
and have enough
saved up tonight.
What Can We Say?
[deleted]
(bonus track) The Last Night of not knowing you [live]
i.
The swaddled nighting
says “I’m fine” or, more-
over that “I can’t stop
the thought that I am
still that which I am,
that a single night
can enrich the voices,
those voices that are
the cities of my day.
I am still that which
holds on to that thinking
and comfort repetition of
that retreat to the
random rotations
of the past.”
ii.
I hate how this beached
speaking deforms the city
as in the way that whales
of us all liken to be a
more earnest pouring
of the gallons of gall
we keep under our beds
always humming the
melody of previous nights
moans. I hate the
other animal because
of the deceit and the taking
of that which allowed me
to call this place home and
not a season called burning.
iii.
Let’s make a deal:
I’ll hold your hand
if you can just stand
there and pretend that’s
not what I am doing.
I’ll stop my drinking
if you let me breathe
and smell my own body
when we wake up, before
I shower, so I can still
remind myself how
I smell, going on six
or seven hours
of me not
touching you.
iv.
I don’t want to hear
your sounds anymore,
they make a fiction
in a too-modern style
and they make me
dig beyond deeper to
the place in my structure
that bathos built and
I don’t like it there.
I will call once I come
to terms with what you
can’t recognize and that
you call a salad. That’s
your meal, the one best
observed behind closed doors.
v.
I’ll leave it be by
taking it with me,
without a yelp, a sigh,
or any other kind of
sound emotion.
Planting down only
some of the ways understood,
so standing to be hardly seen
and of course you see me.
So I’ll keep this with me,
held like a moment
of fake magic and
memory memory memory
memory
memory.
