stole your lonely.
memorized the time the sun sat
like it had never sat before

the same way it sat, every day.

your time naked
staring nowhere
cloning wrong thoughts,
in all the right places

you sold my voice
forgot the only time
the moon fell behind the mountainside

the same place it slid every night.

nobody ever told you
that you'd have to remember
so that we could know too,

because the most important way
you can make somebody feel
is ever
at all.

something begs me,

"spend entire seconds alone
spend entire seconds alone"

I don't know.


something is begging me,
"build your hurt into statues;
build your hurt into statues!
and then
take a bat
to their whet stone;
slip and
live
deep inside their cracks"


do you remember when it felt
like the waves
were singing for us?
changing their shape to set us free?
now the shore
cleanses itself
for our farewell.

and your private crooked mouth-

"imagine! if we swam away entirely!
dear wife, if you only knew how long ago my atlas flipped it's page!
my sharp knife flew away!"

the sprinkler system tearing on schedule
blades of green awaken
playing melodies that don't
need
you
anymore;

what was it
that tricked you
into thinking
you deserved a home?

there is nothing that might make this sullen house your home.

i used to be here and
our father
used to be here
and
I used to be here
but

now you can only
see
a ghost
but now you can only
hear a ghost
and now you can only
feel
a ghost.

and when the snow hides our green traces,
so shall the sun come down
to reflect our within;

and when the rain finally comes
to bring out the bugs,
let every single one of them
kiss my skin.

the grown-ups are weeping for their childhood again.

"so much time in the kitchen!",
preparing meals for the children
whose names they still confuse
so often.

the garden outside the window playing muse,
a revolving machine,
a planet whose gravity you wish you held,
fostering and changing in ways you've only prayed to.

is it your skin now that plants itself?
clouds sun and worm moving within you,
would you expect to sprout wings?
is that what haunts your dreams?

your spine spilling it's soil across the counter-top,
sparks peeling from your fingertips,
the answering machine itching to tear your heart out,
your tongue closing it's eyes,
swelling
sweating
spinning
spitting,

the calender blending into your reflection
refrigerated finger-paintings slipping from their flippant position,
the skylight becoming your jail and the mirror of escape,

head up
eyes closed
nose toward the sun,

you can find you can find you can find you can find you.

If it were socially acceptable I would crawl underneath the table to my right and lie down and think.

I would think as if I were in a cabin, and I would be that way right now.

I would think that being in a cabin is a nice and good thing and feel good for knowing that and feeling that way.

I would think that the snow outside is like the snow outside my cabin, and inside here, I am under this table and there are other people’s legs and they remind me of my parents or my cousins or aunts uncles and dogs.

There’s an attic and I go in there and its red and dark and broken and its always been there and it will always be there.

When I go inside there’s a trunk of stuff for me to look through so I can act disinterested;

it’s not cold, but it’s not especially comfortable
and Amanda used to be here,
and I used to be here,
and now I see only
a ghost
outside the window.

(we've been looking for new ways to ask our fathers not to bring their mask to the dinner table)

did life's dark impress prey itself positive upon ya', kid?
now where are you and where is your precious home?
are you somewhere between the difference
of the distance of you finishing dialing on the landline
and the phone starting to ring?

and so you dig--
inner-dialogue and all.

what was the dream you had, you had that one time?
when you still had dreams?
that one where you'd run away from the night and into the white and unfocus your eyes so you could see underneath your bed where
you would hide with the bugs?

where have you gone? are you still underneath your bed
with all of the ways
you wish you could have been?-

-a better sibling
a better son-

dear vessel;
your poetry is melting inside of me
inside of you
playing fossil
can you tell
you stranded vessel?

why can't you watch nature without feeling awkward?
you dirty voyeur!
just imagine you are an acorn!
a stubborn suburban substitute with clenched palms in the parking lot
feeding traffic and weather
through a colander
to hangmen
on the eights.


what was that mess
that was set
deep inside of you
as a kid?



and so I dig.

some years ago
we would wait
at the bus stop
in the cold
and the snow

and when it would come
I would feel lucky
to sit next to somebody
and imagine tangible
the warmth
they shared me.


then I would sit
in the library
and stare out
into the white,
close my eyes
and wish
that i might die.

(NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR NO I AM NO NUMBER NO YOU KNOW I AM A COLOR)

and so you dig.
inner-dialogue and all,
wading through your know-better, past worm and forgotten pipe to find an old telephone line lain so long ago that not so much a well-placed wink would connect.
your own roots forgetting the difference between themselves and this copper,
each breath entangled further,
your thirsty threatening toward accidental bridges,
the clockwise world finally trapping you and swearing to set you straight.

deep within you, set far across your sadness,
five words ring out in endless and unreal haunt

YOU WERE BORN A NUMBER

some words just have to, left with little choice,
like glowing maps set somewhere along some far away burnt horizon,
post the little-red-knee-tops you want to bring them,
the surface seething and breathing, beckoning your language to step suddenly and completely,
to come help empty the forever cornered compass of its implied divine meaning-

"who put me here?", it wonders across the stuck land;

"dig me up!", it cries;

"BREATH ME OUT!"

a glow reflects off the soft broken glass sky sending snakes through your spine,
the naked and still night speaking in shallow past-tense, some sort of wicked reverse to lead you, or melt you, or remind you the single simple and undeniable truth that the only secret
any human ever keeps
is their own mortality.

clothed in the blackboard backs of your sleepless eyelids
even half-truths feel fact, indistinguishable in the dark, threatening you with what you need to move on,
but are you not so safe in your middle place?

when the sun finally wakes and breaks your flesh back open,
a new sense of direction itching in your pores,
you tip-toe forward and leave your eyes closed only to prove to yourself it's not your eyes that know the hell between your ears
can't tell either but instead something that can hardly be thought or felt let alone held or made home points ever so slightly as you make your way painting nostalgias in your wake.

it isn't until you are almost too far entirely that the glowing map, a rusty italic figment of some concept you once had or held briefly between dreams snickers wildly,
the compass buried alive somewhere within your blood, breathing You out, carefully
completely,
whispering for you to take your steps back
so that you may take your steps tiredly,
softly,
finally,
within.

tomorrow you wake up and there's a ladder your eyes climb straight down without even trying;
you're not sure why, but it feels like the bottom's been waiting like a starting line.

just a few steps in there's a faded green sign that seems to imply a sense of direction,
your parent's noses side-by-side, facing forward,
and in it's reflection there isn't so much a list,
as a set,
of three things:

I bet you,

the perpetual lost voice
the growing cherry eyes
the you who learned how not to try

will never find out why.

chiseled it's way through wet amino chains and
found itself set conspicuously aside whatever it is
that's been making your decisions as of late.

"I found me", you dream to yourself.

"The first time you get lost, you are almost there", I dream back.


Tomorrow you wake up and remember you can do anything.

watching our parents grow old, sitting on the fence
pick a side
any side

grass is there
a bug is there
hair falls from my sister's tongue
and I know it's mine so I smile

then our parents watch us grow up, fall off the fence
my insides choose their sides
my sister cries and
for a second I almost admit that I closed my eyes in the thick

but

when we let our milky fingers
find their own,
they never let us down,
and they never take us home.

there is a home
in my mouth,
tick-tock, tongue
tick, tock, hum.

hello toothache. you know how I moan?
I moan for me, toothache.
I would be the only one.

Every way you feel
Hey, it’s okay
Be glad you feel at all,
Okay?

There’s a woman with high heels
And a man in a quick walk
He must know where he’s going
And she must be so tall
Taller than me, I guess

If you have to pretend,
I won’t bother you
And if you’re running out of time,
That’s all right too
But I’ve been floating upright for some time now,
I just haven’t noticed yet;

In fact I still can’t tell.

You were almost always a sunset;
this way, you could look like you knew where you were going.

if you disconnect less than a 56k modem, that should leave you with room to feel chosen
by a set of spacey cta eyes searching around subconsciously
under the guise of needing to be validated externally
but not being able to bring oneself to admit this reality
leaving almost every second of every day near-death empty
as if eye contact or a brush on the arm would manifest itself internally
could sink right past your tongue and plop wet into your belly
taking a vacant seat somewhere in between your insecurity
making itself at home until another missed opportunity.

I'm still here.
Wandering my curses
Tossing stones between feeling far too much or barely ever at all
Backstroking ambivalence
to prove I still am
I go
Run after my breath
Catch me where you can’t.