The praying mantis never
puts out on the first date.

Lucifer has two white horses
the stallion is the fastest
but in the masculinity of my struggle
he promised me the mare

sock drawer

Euchre on a card table in the living room.

Men had beards and women wore dresses.

Dusk came in through the kitchen drapes.

They were playing an open hand, to show her the rules,

“I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.”

When they talked about it,

They spoke in whispers.

In school, it was the mini-skirts.

The soft fold of the knee, with legs crossed.

A nylon stocking, coarse to the touch.

I don't like it when they run.

I am not tormented by emotionality.

A shuffling of sheets,

Heard through a locked door.

An everyday whimper.

When they talked about it,

They spoke in whispers.

I have to look, but they can't catch me.

“What are you looking at?”

All those girls with laser-beam eyes,

I had to be careful.

I liked it when they were beautiful,

When they kissed each other in magazines.

White lace and perfect skin,
If only I could hold them down,
Without touching them.

first time

southern comfort was the drink.
woody harrelson was the bartender.

"I'm bored, wanna fuck?" she said,
she spit gum into her hand,
and stuck it to the barstool.

a rickety futon and a patchwork of blankets.
she hogtied me, knees to chest.
her mouth tasted like pennies.

we reeked of bourbon.
of lemon-drops.
of earthworms.

“I wish you were inside me forever,” she said.

another day

my bedroom has stopped bathing
laundry hangs in its eyes

to stop the itching
my elbow is snorting prednisone again
it won't tell the doctor about it's habit

that's why the cough isn't going away

a noose is embedded in my shoulder-blade
the skin has started to grow over it
like barbed wire swallowed by a tree

I polish gravestones with a goat-hair brush

I am the mosquito
I am the gap-toothed scarecrow

misanthrope

this brown paper bag
graying with age
crumpled with use

two bare eye-holes
cut from its face
stains where the mouth should be

compost snowman
has a moldy pumpkin for a head

in the stench of vegetable matter
life rises from the dead

a crack in the wall
like an opening of lips

we attack with white flowers
that turn yellow as we itch

first date

I cut the top of my hand with a razor
to stop the erection

I hid in the backseat

with a condom and a bottle of chloroform

at the moment of orgasm

I gutted her like a pig

fleur de lis

a doctor, a painter, and a monk,
walk into a bar.

they kill the duck and eat his eyeballs.
they fuck the horse and steal his wallet.

tides

a pile of driftwood
a desiccated bird-tooth
salt bleaches the land

control

I lost my spanner.

I think the machine is running hot,

But I can't ask the controller for a new tool.

I've recently been written up,
For my lack of candor.

Dali at Massanutten

A crucifix in her breakfast cereal,
Everyone worshiped the I of her palm.
A piano pounded out night terrors,
and crowded the edge of her panties.

"It's not normal", she said.
"Am I doing something wrong?"

When I realized I was the messiah,
I wouldn't eat anything green.
I pinned my eyelids back with roach clips.
I wore a turtle neck to cover the bite marks.

I climbed and climbed looking for the father.
Angry and potmarked, he knew all about telephones.
In the end, all I got was a Styrofoam airplane,
(lost to the clouds) and this lousy Phantom t-shirt.

On the way home,
Pinned between minivan seats,
We stared at the moon for a long time,
until I caught her blinking.

I'm embarrassed to say,
I started screaming.

Chicago

in our marauding,
with a bent clothes-hanger
he snagged some beer
from the balcony below.
I held his feet.

I slept in the closet.
I was comfortable in my suitcase.

I love my girlfriend.
I yelled at her for not packing the soap.
She knows I get cross.

I remember contempt;
She wore a skirt that day.
She's a dancer.

first dance

I had a date for homecoming dance
but I don't remember any music.

I wore a straight-jacket to prom
the doctors tell me, my choice was sound.

blood shed

red wine raises blood pressure
nosebleed on a magenta sock
the crying isn't helping
the sock is saturated
the nearest towel, maroon
probably with a high fiber count
and cotton, made in India
one of the ones Jenn bought
already stained scarlet with blood

chased

"I'm uncomfortable."
"Me too."
(beat)

"We don't have to."
"Oh, thank God."
(beat)

"I love you."
"I love you too."
(close scene)

first kiss

at the monster truck rally,
by a pretzel stand,
he asked, "will you go out with me?"

she wasn't pretty.

her hair looked desperate.

her tongue was coarse, like a cat's.

Bsamhu Song

Ophelia in a prom dress
watched thunder through four inch plexiglass
passed time with foosball and tetris

daddy hated her black boyfriend
her legs would never be the same
because she wasn't thin enough

some kids like gum and toys
some kids process divorce
with a handgun at school

dirty hair and white teeth
she was in for snorting gasoline
some guy said she'd get high

"this cookie, it is my son", she said
she devoured it in a single bite
and called it art

first love

I feared the water

so you taught me how to drown

cut-off jeans

the frayed ends rolled up
like a vice holding the skin

you smelled like Pert Plus and leather
you dressed as a cat
you sent me to 7-11 to buy your coke
you killed a puppy with a brick

two jails

i pushed you in the dirt
grinding into blood

the vanity of your cheek
the police lights wept

in orange jump suits
a cot is the perfection of shame

you don't sit with spics
you hang with us

someone stole my toothbrush
she said, "now you can never leave"

dukkha

“You get in these moods,

when I've tried so hard
to make you happy.”

baby

flopping on the tile like an infant
covered in red wine and broken glass

he grabbed my throat

and taught my arm,

the all-father of cold.

unspoken vows

are broken silently

vasectomy

a child is the byproduct
of noise and mercury

in the flush and fervor of our poverty
we rush to forget ourselves

chemicals suspend disbelief
and warp into abortion

Peter Quince

Bottom:
When my cue comes, call me,
and I will answer: my next is, 'Most fair Pyramus.'
Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! God's my life,
stolen hence, and left me asleep!

I have had a most rare vision.
I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was:
man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream.
Methought I was—there is no man can tell what.
Methought I was,—and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool,
if he will offer to say what methought I had.

The eye of man hath not heard,
the ear of man hath not seen,
man's hand is not able to taste,
his tongue to conceive,
nor his heart to report,
what my dream was.

I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream:
it shall be called Bottom's Dream,
because it hath no bottom;
and I will sing it in the latter end of a play,
before the duke: peradventure,
to make it the more gracious, I shall
sing it at her death. [ws]

Pepper

a foldable steel cage
rusted in the corners
a tray beneath the grate
a worn blanket
a water dish

dirt caked on the tile floor
the smell of dog and fabric softener
the waaaawumph of the water heater
sunlight through a marred door
and a filthy window

Callisto

Jupiter's miniature giant space hamster
he didn't bite me, like those fucking gerbils

when he died,
I made a pyre of rosewood and gasoline
and burned him in the yard

I thought there would be a sterile and uniform ash
that I could spread in the marigold and geranium

but his flesh peeled away
leaving only a husk

a wad of pink and blackened flesh
for the garbage can

meriones unguiculatus

the girl at the pet store said they were females but the gerbils became a faceless mass of tooth and genital clawed warriors bred violently into the multi-colored curl of modular tunnels and with no food they ate cedar chips and with no water they went cannibal even the bent and blind babies were eaten and the room smelled of blood and bog for weeks in the smallest and most insignificant genocide imaginable.

life seeks only
the silent advantage
of propagation

fear

i don't want to go into the basement
where the unfolded laundry lives

hope

when I was five years old
I broke a ceramic vase
of great sentimental value

the bits of shattered clay
lie hidden in the grass and mud
for thirty years

until under a crescent moon,
just before sunrise, she said,
"I'm not in love with you anymore"

dawn broke and the sky opened
throwing all beings,
into the kiln of the sun.

shame

mouth bound with duct-tape
I kick a dog.

three wounds

I spit gum into a wineglass

boiling water splashed
in a graceful arc onto
wrist and shoulder

I moved downhill
through dark thorn bushes
the water just in view
pant-legs became a zodiac of blood

muse

her song seems distant

from the deep end of the pool

a rotting pear on the desk
pepsi in a glass, mold coating its meniscus

we descend into a mycelium of regret