1today I’m sleepy
a listing daisy
(not every feel
below ecstatic
has to be
a raincloud)
2
as I reacht
for a regal crown
of green green
broccolini
the sprinklers sparked
their mist endowed
its gentleness upon
my grateful skin
3
Emergency!
rheumy with flu
sweat and
spike
I found beauty
in delirium
(its waviness like filigree
thin cotton ER sheets
dripping broken fever,
fear
certainty
that I was
close to silence
4
ameliorate
the greyest day
a steady hand
a soft embrace
5 a mouse’s disembodied
claws
crawl along my
underskin,
surly/red
you gouge the sand:
a stubborn,
final boot-heel.
6 like blueblack shit
this crumpled tongue
starched and stuck
against itself
7Lasciviously
I look at me:
“Mr. Robbins, you’re trying
to seduce me!
…aren’t you?”
8
my hand slipt
past elastic
curly hairs
a gargled hitch
tug
and
tug
and
tug
and
tug
and
9
KABOOM
10
the slowing breath
of aftershock
a gym sock
dense with
pump
and
sigh
11
the simplest things
feel layered
beyond any measure
of chaos
complexity
12
when I think about
shooting crystal meth
my nuts crawl inside me
just a little
I quiver
like an arrow’s
through my gut
13
I quiver
like an arrow’s
through my gut
14
threadbare boot skids
shelf of shale
slipping slipping
slipping slipping
threadbare boot skids
shelf of shale
15
now we’re to
the meat
of me
16
I beseech thee:
bind me
teach me
spoil me
with your rod
17
this
hot metal noise
pierces my ears
abscess of mind
dribble dribble
on the double
18
dull toothache throb
of priapic need:
so hard I’m
so hard I’m
so rock hard
for you.
so hard I’m
so hard I’m
so rock hard
for you. OH!
19
peel away these momentary
briefs—alabaster, dust
of plaster of Paris:
interspersed with sparseness
wispy curls
20
My libido is
a bumbling saboteur
it fumbles blindly
at muggy
fleshy
hot
and skin
21
Midday’s matchless
sharpness of mind
is dulled on a chunk
of igneous rock.
What erupted yesterday
now become what I
bash my head against
until my sparkle’s
tarnished
like buried silver.
22
I lick my cold
sore. I rub it
with my canine.
23
Ennui
nebulous
take your medication
24
Fevered
with thirst
I found a door
that was neither
kicked in nor bolted
a sexless, silent figure
gave me a tall glass
of sand.
25
we are breaking
boundaries a thousand
feet per second
I wake
from my nap—
Everything seems
to be in order.
26
teeth rubbed with copper
pennies. For your thoughts
I would gladly offer
less.
27
dappled sun breaks
skin apart into
its building blocks
we are just
some toddler God’s Legos.
I—the smallest piece
of the playset, set
in my ways, clench my jaw and
try to think my way
back to feeling
28
I found my friend dead
in my tub and I
want to say how I feel
and be done with it forever.
29
I burst out the door
frantic hot pink
alarm bells screamed at traffic
adrenal with panic
I’d yanked him, a sack of wet sand
through a spot mid-back where
bright hot pain
bloomed like an angry carnation
30
It should have been prom night.
We should have been the spotlight dance.
31
He went from love
of my life to lump
of dead flesh. Just
then, across town
my bus was stalled:
an angry drunk was
ordered off, his tall
boy of cheap beer
sloshed his fist
against the air: “I’m
not gettin off this
fuckin bus.” Meanwhile
Keith was getting
off the bus.
32
I melted
his face
in a spoon
with a Bic
and forced him
through a needle
as the answer
to himself
33
Oh, Ross, let that day
rest.
Hammer its squareness
through the roundness
of stillness
that I might feel
from moment to
end without piercing
this blister
34
The finer moments
are defined
by absence
(by what I’m not
feeling)
35
some emptinesses
are noteworthy
for holding the shape
of what formed them
aspirin melting
my tongue
letting someone
fuck me
because he expects
my feet in the air
36
But it’s bedtime.
So I pull my blanket
chinward, flip on
my mental television—
it’s the after-school special:
The shooter entered
the classroom and erased
one by all
these chalkboard scratches
we call “ourselves.”
I drifted—
bloodied on the floor,
away,
and sinking through my pillow,
off to sleep.
May-June 2013
I have done my best to keep the spacing close to how it appeared in the self-published chapbook.