poem thing

i'm struggling to understand my own existence
in the poem, where there is no poem

metal wall, pressing my face against it
to feel the cold move from no skin to skin

teeth become magnetized to what should be said
in the poem, where there is no poem

and questions are mouth moves i don't understand
because my tongue parts won’t stop talking

things fall from things thinging, and scared me
in the poem, where there is no poem

then lightning, then thunder
wind, wind, and the storm forming

thoughts on the night when there is no storm
in the poem, where there is no poem

the three longest rivers on earth

the Mississippi river is long but very poor--
a road of mud that floods & worships Abraham’s god.

the Amazon river is long & full of sharp things--
spends half the year still while small birds walk across.

the Nile is a long river & goes past some pyramids
that were built by aliens several thousands of years ago.



mind poem

plummet comes to mind
or the inevitable rhyming of mind
my attempts to impress
with diving
and fine dining
or acting like I’m a brilliant actor

the time i said nothing instead of singing
for a king and i audition
when i could speak French in Mississippi
and beat my dad at chess
or jogging jog like a jogger does
at all hours of the night

hold me under a Canadian ocean
i will time a century by just walking it
slow like children can
because they can
with enough cat tranquilizers
to make ten cats sleep for awhile

utility

we take our flashlights with us
to the bathroom
when we pee

not because we’re scared—
are you

a question i should have asked
before blind walking into pitched squalor

bladder full
oh this madness

we being children
we being poor


house of, etc.

my range of movement is restricted
by your shoulder in my shoulder,

i am eating this formerly frozen food
that i have recently unfrozen to eat.

the temptations of being eager for this,
& then you avoid telling people things.

naked is not necessarily an advantage
with you smiling at me and my body.

you come to a room in your own house
that you don't remember being there,
& paint it w/ colors that already were.

sweater poem

i bought this sweater because i
am in love with you
it cost me 70$
& does not even keep me warm
unless i wear it
in the summer.

kind of pricey

did i tell you i haven't showered today
did i tell you how happy-scared i am

your face looking at my face
becoming a face of it

read you Christmas poems at the back bar
in one hundred degree heat

the liquor makes me sing more
makes me less of a secret

or maybe i'll chain smoke for breakfast
stand where ever you want to see me

heaven
for Iowa

a small box the size of Iowa
but let’s not mix the gods
w/ baseball

there is no gay marriage in heaven
because there is no heaven
there is only Iowa

Iowa
for heaven

stretch across a belly flat or
could i say it in a much more boring way
drive slow
so you don’t miss the largest truck stop in the world
with enough parking space for the entire state
to park
their semis

to Chicago

a whim & the fog
rolls, i can say what the fog is. where smart cats keep breeding
w/o consequence, & then the kissing words--

knew the sun would return even when there is no sun for miles
or if it took months of walking
so on & a great distance that i can push back
behind your ear

or do i dare city rain to touch us
with house taps--
scare the dog, drops

a letter
written with small bumps only on my arm
often confused with your arms

you will read to me words like hung, & hair lip, push me
back against the wall & i
watch your mouth

then know my hand is now your hand
lost in the land of your hand parts.
hidden by limited vision, & there
people are

& then a reality filled w/ real things such as
people eat, or
can i see pictures of your ugly foot before they changed it.
walking on
hand pads for the feet to rest, i could walk like this for days

w/ you telling me, don't be so silly
my boy hands. hold—soft

maybe more of a man w/ man hands than i want to be
measured by the silence
between the air-conditioning unit click ons and offs

but you don't look where you're going
& pass the nature walk, say blind spot
Iowa rest stops
greener as temporary, as green can be for the garden or
just a damn lucky guy going for the turn-around
& walk back towards the greenless things
that we can talk about
when we talk about

or do i know what i'm doing, with it
said
‘i know why fog is here.’
now, you're softest when the rain hasn't stopped
& a small line can be curved into something
like the dirt of me,
mud spittle
my mouth runs hungry over your collar bone

coffea

gone from where i saw you
or is where i saw you there.

staining things on my hands
now stain the pant legs of my pants.

shower when you might come by;
i do not shower often.

the rich wet dirt you want
is under the hard dry earth.

you put this seed over here, over here
& cherries grow out of me.

fresh fruit

gobble going gets tough
where i leave my skin to skin

in the sun's weather weathered,
leather under where i sun my shaded self

selfish to hide. breeze i can find
seldom despite a shiftless center--

horizon i noticed, the trees are no trees,
but the trees are still planted

i grab you by this neck & this neck
so they tell you the neck is detachable


pioneers

counting bruises oh, are we
apples
sail upon trampled fields
of water wheat
you grow gold w/ your soiled hands
she
drinks & i
drink redberry-wine cold
behind trails of bison bur & Indian grass,
smelling in barberry or
may-apple maybe, we
wait for it
to get dark for
our skin to hide

nest

wild horses draw the head off
you, razor-legs show me
skin of your bite bones
or where the fir trees grow
down to the night-time-water-body, so
i can be a romantic man
talk generic about the places of you:

the off-path covered wagon,
dirt boat
my beard dangling w/ twigs
& prairie flower.
arranged to remind you

visiting

scumming for a like soul
can i breathe your ocean air, Nebraska
cold is colder than your Nebraska.

your copper hair blondes me, gum
your plumb neck. plump my lips from the cement--
i can bite you, modern world, with my fakest face.

the slope of your back with the back hair
goads my hand to nick-it,
can you reach for me.
take away my cape.

fragile in the sense that a man is,
or why i get nerves in my belly when i see you,
a beauty.

call me for a second; call me while i am sleeping.

call me a word like darling
so my fur jumps
& the coats that warm my shaved shoulders
hide great plains from the belly i said.

more, there is an ocean under here,
you can listen
for the train coming. breathe
the air for me,
the jewel of cattle beds.


bone-chew

does your god know i
don't exist

the dollars of your can
feed it

who doesn't collect
shark teeth on the beaches of Florida

the flattest place
on earth

even the alligator in the canal wouldn’t
eat
my mother.


re-application

use the feet for function
all the ground being tight-rope
damp in romantic

because socks are for sandals
here, rotting wood pile
a poem about trees

tall living soulless, is
nose stubs, bent up branch
run my licked thumb over your eyebrow

girl thing
bite at the air passing between
your arm and ribcage, skinned

and jacketed
covered in water, can you
stop thinking

you are such a forest, moving
toward the moon
the top of your head breaking clouds

fish jaw

i will talk
under a mouth bone
artificial structure added
but unable to chew

through, thumbs for teeth
plucked at the joints or
cherry picker

will i talk
nice words about you and your
pretty bacteria
unseen on my swinging

knees bent in unmovable buck,
hip tall boots
grabbing at river darts

show me your true talk
over in the shallow
where the river moves slow


beard poem

the jaw angle hangs fat

do you still believe in ten
commandments?

were my hands any stronger
i could hurt you easy by saying it

look up words
to say

say, the part of me that hurts is
every part

so i eat less--

heroin is nothing to me, me.
unless i want to 'come in my pants'

and i told you about this
train, i said you took

but you took absolutely
nothing from me, the haves

my dirty underwear maybe
my loneliness

or the spit
on my hands

to grip the grip tighter
to nail it

to leave my face
at home.


station

so you faked the sad parts, my arms
cry big boat-
load the shoulder, making turn
after turn, after

you notice my lack of ampersands
and teeth
the venom kind, kind of like
poetry is not.

sand on the cement for slip
controlled behavior
in the lost pit of Midwest territories

cabin fever'd and
name yourself log-hands

cry, and cry until your brain fizz'z
interlock
knuckle bones
mention to me more about this secret
world you got


drive after we

your phone thing walk-
talkies to my phone thing,

using phone words
hey, and um

breathing, but the shoes don't get used
or the snow works like rain on them

finding plants with names
pretend we know

i wait for your pillow to say
face, you are lovely

or i just whisper this in a poem
about the interstate hours

be dead air for awhile
pretend we know that too

hear sounds others make
bathing and washing off travel

go home
maybe, for the speed in my ankle turn

let it be anywhere
back in a small room with a smaller bed

feel occupation

is what you said or to feel
as if its fur on me
and sounds like rain drops or
all these boys,
always a boy there
grabbing little marshmallow-hands
at a nip,
or things that sparkle,
singular as you
nest at the end of a bar, fully clothed
just
make it work,
the boy says sometime later on
as if words will do

on the slope of Nebraska

in me, Nebraska
shaped the way i see you
just waking on your front side

write you a letter
in my mind
say, i saw you once and remember it

cross the Missouri River again
i always look down
to see what is floating

every thought, you think
i could pretend
not to know what i knew of you

mist, over sand hills
where the cranes
make it back

all this silly travel,
talking about our day jobs
listening to the same sounds

your chin i think,
where the Indian caves are

there to go

i bought you a waterbed said
it was not an ocean
but i still surf

when i was naked
you smiled

i still am
laying naked on the driveway

i wished for a window to sneak away with my smoking
or all sky
for my space travel

find
moons everywhere

slow walk apocalypse

holding a body—
sometimes i am an asshole

the eye’s slits
cum in the clean jeans

trapped by environment
look like a baby

whole lives
ahead of us like ground water

drown your body rubbed soft
red at the nubs or trying lungs

even with a second body,
in case there is no one tomorrow

quiet you, quit--
squint at the sun. say sun.

i’m not dancing, i'm blind,
i’m not ready for the swing--

deck me,
break all my fine china

digging a hole through earth
to china, easy does

the other side, the other
Chinese lives, where.

so the body
keeps growing

does it shit,
we wait to see--

or ass, or bottom
of a beautiful barrel, apples

slice things with knives
ask why i always carry knives

“there are a lot of stabbings
in Grand Island.”

so scary, so wounds cut,
chop noise from cat alley

the sun is increasing in size
night slowly, paw.

am i right,
can you see the dust settle

watch the echo,
bouncing space debris off

past lovers, a fuck
reflections of people you think

talk to yourself
with this new body you found

looking alone with her
wrapped around you.

forgot the words, or
only remembered poems

about falling space dust
ricocheting off some body

turning over and over in your awake
sleep, pretty when you

no, snoring is love,
no this unattractive pile is love

my love, dark as space between
another sun

dust on emptiness, you
you, and the grass growing

under the snow
the beard with all twigs

being afraid of people leaving
or wanting to

lost in a world like china,
not unlike the attractive middle of Nebraska

the arms don’t know their chest
well, imploding

she thinks it’s useless to talk to them
but still talks to them.

nature poem

laugh at the thought of my voice being sunshine
or picture me gentle
holding baby animals in my uncoarse arm ends
wearing the darkest sunglasses ever made
wishing everyone was doing that

self medicate

this isn't easy
the constant shock of shock therapy

your lake face
bright rash red scale

the picture still smiles when you go crazy
it's the water watering

the grass, grass, and the grass growing
take a look at my hands they aren't melting

they aren't fake
you can sell me your happy waves

your moon
controlling my ocean

damn tide even shaping my eyes, which way
i never knew the wind

would carry the clippings
turning brown quickly without water

hiding the lights from dimming
electrocution is not an idea forming.

Spicer

that marvelous finger
he gave it
after being asked to take back comments made
on ted Williams’ contribution to the bosox
i was there he said
i was there when he gave it
but it wasn't worth a goddamn thing
if you want to win the pennant
and my poetry does