Monday, August 11, 2025

already here (LA)


summer is so parking break

static, ascendant


tires bald and turned toward the red curb


watching the clock I guess

time wears hurt, fitted

to the minute hand 

it rides and still,


I want the evening to be huge

for dusk to hold


once, I never missed it

when the moon was bright and cut by phone wires

the days were full circles with meeting ends


today my exhaust pipe drags

scraping the red curbs back natural


why not diagnose the whole city?


feelings fall out my new boots

and a paper skirt shows me 

a circle of pictures that spill 

into dreams— liquid, 

federal, half legible, 

night, 


cross the border both ways

without


words, the heavy stones I roll

organic and incorrect I can’t

find sexy let alone true


so where is language in its inundation


a cup full of caution tape


an insufficient sadness


memories double exposed

with total concrete

and softening tar


how free do you think?

late June cut late July

sick, and the day 

unhooks me


the way the world looks

all its things hot

burning holes to their fine print


Wednesday, August 6, 2025

7,8,9

texting about clay pigeons

pigeons that weren't shot

feeling sick/seen

trying to access something

something older and heavier

how to explain

when the smallest amount of air on body in clothes 

and sunlight and a flavor on the breeze remind you 

of a feeling you felt once months ago and you don't 

have time to access fully now? 

a way of body being in clothes

new blemishes blooming on face

dreams of the stress variety

patience

how to write a song about faith, or from my known faith in simplicity and a rule of goodness

inherent, implicit, God-ness

folded like a question

another pair of black leather shoes that are close but not quite it

another day that is close but not quite warm

meyer lemon vapor ice. Type 1 and Type 2 fun. 

You can actually relinquish some amount of expectation because the world doesn't owe you inspiration. You are the world. 

The construction workers have built themselves a sun shelter picnic table and a grill is always there, is it chained to the fence like a dog?

the buildings are taking shape around me and less offensive than anticipated to look at. I don't want to write from a place of discontent or expectation of what is owed me because nothing is owed me, and I'm not discontent

merely alienated, from time to time

hold the image in mind, in pocket

of sunsoaked romance

I will shower, or maybe fill my tank with gas

I want to dress well, like myself, and I want to be fun, like myself

my favorite days all year have been

found something basically edible in my filing cabinet

last night a lot of teeth falling out in my dreams

admitting the things she writes in her notebook have nothing to do with realism and everything to do with compulsion and how it felt to be her as approximated by the images captured

the common denominator is always me, myself

or words to that effect

waking up earlier just means more time to get more ready for work

am I still just into the bejeweled mysterious? The Bejeweled Mysterious 

still uncomfortable with benderism

me and the construction workers in the parking lot

terrible dream of a whole middle school locked up with kids inside who couldn't get out couldn't get in but I could see mold growing on every surface it growing over in the humidity 

then I was woken and fucked

to drink or not? should eat lots of water

I want to sing my soul, the good and deep parts

write for real, talk to my soul and the world

if you wanna be my lover you gotta get with my _______

hunched over like a monday (monkey?)

trees are proud of their fruit

seashells, silver items, leather goods, what?

ask it as a question instead of saying it as a thin ice

diprima says men tossed up on my beaches

making ends meet, literally -----> <-----

convince yourself you like the sensation of the sand flies on your skin

is soul just a notion, a drug?
the human world is unified in a different way... accidentally, by technology & oppression

always good to put sand in the gears
if it even slows one cruelty, stops one minor crisis

plastic bag blown flush to the chain link and stuck there

protection not perfection

I twirl a spiral seed pod between my fingers 
it makes me dizzy

the jasmine wind
pick some and import it
to the climate controlled cubicle

working overtime
as in above it

fear of being degenerate

the things I want to do are both simple and deep and to reach their depth i must trick time and trick myself

that's it, that's all

the same construction workers parked and pulling away every time I sit here and do they recognize me

car math

setting an intention to feel good and not be annoying

thought that was a fortune on the ground it was the tear-off edge of a paystub, someone's fortune

it's 2025 I am 32 years old

how long is a minute really? long enough for everything

a warm sly voice

I've heard the mind is suggestible

so I suggest some things

every minute I am moving towards

I am taking care

loving plastic for its clarity

color or lack thereof

sealing and displaying

its sunfade

copy pasted into the cubicle 

conveying her clothing to work

music feels time, rather than keeps it

be grateful for slowed time, wherever it happens

Monday, July 28, 2025

wants to go back


the years go fast in seasons, in 4 parts

like a dollar (to a child) in quarters

a quart of milk in cups


a kid once tore his dollar in half to give me 50 cents


but our year evades perforation, sits at an angle

we make this shape with our bodies

of ascendent angels   future, italic 


it’s still a roller rink, a ring of Saturn

a slanted sculpture, the angel 

wants to go back 

and fix


my thinking pinballs and 

feelings

are shovel shaped


new myths carved in solid granite 


the contours of my fantasies 

crumble in 15 minute increments


the hours drop to flash 

flood, summer 

itself sober


at the waterfront of my dreams

my eyes adjust to the dark

and I see it's all hospital

supine, ascendent 

angels


rollerskating off

the drawing of earth


Friday, June 27, 2025

soulcore


outside in the weather
I remember when my soul slipped
inky and black like a comma
so I tied to to my toe 
like wendy's shadow 

wearing pants with a waist that exactly fits mine 
making a ring around me
my elbows on the glass table
a single black crow flies reflected across

in disobedięnce a song
about luring your soul back
with bits of black
licorice candy 
like a black bird

there is an asterisk 
next to that girl for me
am I being small, 
or instinct?
attempt to go right towards it 
in hopes it melts
generous, or strategic?
and still touch
a subtle ice there

dream in which you say
I don't even know 
what your life
really looks like!
implying
an emptiness? 


ups

zoom therapy in the living room
the sunlight lasts longer in here
but I don't want to look at this

ups driver outside listening to a radio show 
ft. a woman crying on full volume 
out the doorless truck


Thursday, May 22, 2025

edges




520dark

trying different perfumes the disorientation 
of putting on an item of clothing with a scent marker 
not quite marking anything yet

birds singing at midnight
but really
birds singing at midnight

slicing images from 24 nat geos



522dark

tonight again sit pushing images around
facing the small dark window
tonight again birds singing at midnight

in sleep paralysis realism I dreamt recently 
my room was made of drift wood held together with wire
I could see through and there was a figure 

I am the being whose tears are weather



522light

I would be a fool to
and so I am 

asking that of this



523dark

wait
baby
can you



523light

this country from which we abuse
the substance of the world




Monday, April 14, 2025

dear zero etc

 dear 0, 

the edge is not met randomly

you might remember my prayer nonlinearly, the water—

running in the opposite direction from meaning or

planting it like a tree just wondering—

a question becomes a dream with sirens 


dear 0, 


tonight i heated up a bag of collage material

and titled it how all songs are crazy 

you might remember my prayer 

for convection 


in the bag a dying 

(an) outfit coming apart


the girl at the door said tell bank 

choir style, circles, of choices

she said cancel, respond, or like       devote


i wrote gift, call, ship

exorcise, the fact of lies or

lava games, geyron, the people who

eat airplanes


i said drop the link 

and you say there’s no link

i said drop the bag then

the girl at the door said drop the joy


love you facedown

and asteroid 

love you headlamp

love you daylight

love you paid

and breakdown

love you broken








dear 0,


sometimes I sleep like idk myself

I wake up needing to learn everything all over again

I sleep like a plank of wood, unmoving and not belonging

sleep like a leaking faucet

sleep like a set of nesting dolls

we grind our teeth at night so you’ll take my jaw in your hand

you said talk, but without enthusiasm or passion


ok i said:


blue sky with cloud in dirt puddle, x

went to see the dead ram with 4 horns, xx


i'm sending you some coordinates 

because i already told everyone 

meeting you was like finding


the brutal clarity in stage direction


dream, you reaching as i walk 


the open thing in marble relief

the heart string hanging by a thread, my charger







dear 0,


the way you wanna know 

derailed by gravity, blue collapsing into green 

clouds are thumbprints and below the cops kettle a dream of your goodness

derailed but still exalted, dear 0


today I’m very sleep when I’m dead

very vitamin 

very angry bird on the inside


you know how several is so seven so cellular


love you slippage




0,


the world used to speak to me in images

and now


my password is written in shit

the broken heart in my recents, easy


today is a triangle with an exclamation point inside

language is broken into money 

I write to you chaotically

medium high, just beneath the smoke 

I write to you in basic code

dear 0


to move towards you

towards the dream

I go to write one down and it ends in image

before language

paper thin, inscrutable

language circles and a word like rose 

falls out, petals, confetti,


one time I was holding a piece of paper to my ear

with your name on it, talking into it

wondering how I was going to delete he evidence of the call

you were saying all this stuff—


a sun shower,

an earthquake


time belonged back to the elements and

the people around were becoming otherwise 

I saw your smile in a room but it wasn’t even you









the world used to speak to me in images



someone asked me how to get to phase 2 when I was sitting at the pond in the rain

watching water on water trying to write a poem for baby James



Oh, to enter reality like a boat does the night!




gather quotes on the light

moving pictures and

35% chances


the sky is broken up into patches of rain and non rain

35% slowed music from my youth the tulips drop their petals only she knows 

how open my mind is 

what if the rain had come first


dream of sledding 

a dirt hill and a deep bell

the rusty junk becoming its own surface


she says its never too late to recognize 

the clear light, it shoots across 

my minds eye as debris


the world used to speak to me in images

There were circles (moving around me)


a huge green ball (on the ground)

dangerous weather 

a narrow pass

expired stuff

I was going to have a show somewhere

I wanted to write on the walls




to make something 

from a stroke of nothing


can I show you 

an unadorned idea?

a horse video

a movie trailer

one promise of negative joy?


one bottle of freedom oil for

shame so evolved?


some people are clear actors in the explanation of benefits

I told the girl at the door that all songs are crazy 

she said tell bank

she said cancel, respond, or like       look up


I couldn’t get enough

the sky was broken into rain and non rain


dear 0, some people use language with NO WATER

oh to enter reality

like a boat does the night


haunted by the disintegrated tools of early human life


I am practicing for lifetimes beyond this one

for the ones before and after


I wont exchange the practice but

the story on papers in the sun


they peel away like a crepe 

like a sheet of dried glue

finally I can see their edges

as if separate from me,

the outfit coming apart

dreams circle a faded plot or

low resolution arrangement

delete doing something for

2 seconds, delete sleek

for 1 silver ball dear 0,

I’m beginning to love doubt


to be buffed and buffering


gestures in my periphery


to make yourself light:




There’s a small town before

The tunnel that you go through


You know you are there

When someone suddenly


Feels light in your arms

It means you are in love,


You are in love with that

I see pigeons the morning 


That it all comes to me-


My heart actually isn’t inside 

Me, its where they all are









drawing arrows towards

visions disclosed by gravity  

some fucked and boomerang, 

the edges curling

up from shadow, today,

the shape is dog

upended, independent

a friendly reverence

for death which

hangs like a 

paper chain


a v of birds


a banal openness, to the left 

all blue


to the right, a little forever


my faith goes 

underground and the whole 

park is my eye


when you cry just 

water no feeling 

the zero where 


full and empty touch


oh to enter reality 






you said it was bare open leg type weather


I said drop the link 

you say there’s no link

I said drop the joy then


love you facedown

and asteroid


I know of an airplane 

that is the flight path itself

you enter through a hole that looks too small

but it functions also as the airport, the waiting

is incorporated, narrow for time but expansive for space

rows of 5 seats on either side, weird machines

on the airplane I’m bored by everyones shock at life

the evidence of this moment’s brewing

its elongated shape and clearly labelled 

historic seed

the world used to speak to me in images

and now


I hang the heavy letters to fold soft in half

mirrored in the sky with a bird

some more fly and I record 

for a second and set it

to an image of a violin 

rubbed from a 

gravestone

I make the link with pencil

and wipe it with my hand

record it in the mirror and

you don’t recognize yourself

but see your father as a child

he is playing in the streets, you can feel 

his heart racing, he is out of breath, the time is 2:30 pm

you were born around then you step

out of the mirror and look at your hand

holding the pencil, drawing illegibly but

the intention is wholesome and the smudge

is desire crushed by dread and poised to

fail, you decide you want to fail by my 

metric and list the color palette 

for your failure In the margin which only 

exists in relationship to what is not inside 

the margin so today is pink, green, silver, and 

red like a red light, a red lit from behind




dear 0,


he used to live day to day but now he’s minute to minute

even second to second, days are enormous, extinct


the dog keeps running back

keeps redrawing herself out of deletion

I could print her on a piece of translucent paper

for the sun to shine through, or

layer it with various 

insufficient gestures

a struck match—


build something big around this attempt

quickly, use a mirror to recruit everyone

to behold the tool in pieces like

a cookie would crumble

where zero is empty and full

build something with those

rare earth magnets and words

like ribbon until spoken



dear 0, 


the way you want to know is a struck match,

today the color palette is oranges

I draw you a clock with obscure increments, 

popsicle stick hands extending beyond the face

decaying arrows pointing towards life vs. 

the undead, the slow arrow

of beauty as hesitation, as

the afterimage of silence