you're a jaw breaker (compchorea song)

look at my hands, they're shaking like a sound wave.
my lungs are collapsing like a dying sun.
i have such strange dreams every time i wake.
to sleep off last night will take me a month.

i'm treading water and there's no sign of land.
the wind and the waves sound like some sad song.
when the ship went down, you let go of my hand.
but the water's cold. i won't have to fight for long.

there's a black hole in my room and it's pulling me in
to where everything i do feels paper-thin,
to where each new sunrise is the same old dawn.
now i'm slipping further every day you're gone.

it's christmas time and my apartment is bare.
a slow-dying tree would only bring me down.
i left my friends someplace but i don't know where.
i promise you i'm fine without you around,

but i'm really just a slow-dying tree
covered in tinsel and ornaments.
that smile i give to everyone i meet
hasn't been true since god knows when.

i see carolers all around
but i can't hear a sound
everywhere i go, strings of christmas lights,
but they're not shinin' on me tonight.

there's a black hole in my room and it's pulling me in
to where everything i do feels paper-thin,
to where each new sunrise is the same old dawn.
now i'm slipping further every day you're gone.

30 minute infomercial

you can keep
the hope
that we've laughed at time and time again

you can keep
those chords
you can keep
those smiles

we said "heartbreak," and we said it again,
but really
you won't be able to stop the halves of your heart
from coming together;
each is the other's keeper
and they will not
they will not
let you fall.

there is no "now" and "then."
there is only you.

james dean and me

(the assignment was to write a poem about a personal experience with a historical figure.)

I was mopping up

one day after we'd kicked out

all the raging alcoholics with their heads

on the bar;

and then I heard someone,

some young guy, solitary, making speeches

to an empty room,

his face twisted up in circles,

his voice attacking his mouth like a mad dog —

"You're tearing me apart!"

I felt obligated to apologize.

I said hey, why don't you let me pour you a gin and tonic,

and I said hey, what's your name

and he said, "Call me Jim,"

and I asked him, hey, are you okay?

We went up to the roof and looked at the sky for a while,

and no planetarium could ever

look like that, not all raw and proud like the night sky —

and I think I fell asleep,

because when I woke up he was telling me that

the universe had ended

and I sat bolt upright,

nearly knocking over his

(newly refilled)

gin and tonic.

He said "Watch yourself," and grinned;

"The life you save might be mine!"

His words dissolved together like watercolors.

I could smell the alcohol that had dripped onto his red jacket,

like a poppy field (or an oil spill);

I asked him if maybe

he'd had a bit too much to drink

and he told me:

"We alcoholics

are the last true hopeless romantics."

I could see the shape of his ribcage beneath his sliced-up shirt.

His breathing was a slow, tormented

rise and fall.

Then he looked down and smiled and said,

"I need the gin because sometimes I don't know

what I'm doing here but when I have a glass in my hand,

I stop caring about that."

The look he gave me made me think that

if I'd touched him he would have

cracked apart right there on the roof.

We went back downstairs,

threw snowballs at passing cars,

spray-painted the side of the bar with sappy slogans

(he told me "one day these will all come true, I know it")

and we laughed for years and years

until he said he had to go

I asked him, let me read for Mr. Mineo,
and I'll be your Plato if you'll be my Jim,
and half the things I want to say
won't be in the script,

and he said,
"I've run out of time. I'm too little and it's too late."

I will tell you that when he got into his car to drive away

I had a bad feeling.

buddha

(the assignment this time was to write a villanelle. which is pretty difficult. wiki it.)
(i should probably note that this poem is about the death of the buddha, whose name was siddhartha gautama; he died from eating some rancid pork that was offered to him.)
(i should also note that i do not remember how this goes, so it may suck.)

they give you their love and their rancid meat.
they come for your words like a thief in the night.
dearest siddhartha, oh do not eat.

you finally found that universal peace.
they grab at your robes, the red and the white.
they give you their love and their rancid meat.

you are their harbor in stormy seas.
they bring their gifts to your guiding light.
dearest siddhartha, oh do not eat.

they swallow down every word you preach.
"give, do not want!" "befriend, do not fight!"
they give you their love and their rancid meat.

oh gautama, rise up and flee!
leave their offerings! take your flight!
dearest siddhartha, oh do not eat!

you are everything that they want to be.
they are proud of their hands but they covet your sight.
they give you their love and their rancid meat.
dearest siddhartha, oh do not eat.

ode to a sheet

At the end of the day
I'm all
ankles
and arms
and I don't really
see you
(the woolen comforter,
you've been overtaken,
the dark plaid that seeps
like a wine stain over
your pale face;)
but I made this bed
and I can rip
it up
and over
to find
you.

I never know the answer
for why I stay up this late
and you, unshaken,
never ask the question.

Sometimes in the night
when all my ankles and arms
get
twisted up
in your tangles,
you hold me down
hold me safe
so those devils at my heels
can't
drag me away,
not until I'm awake.

You and my
fingertips,
a bruise on my shin,
my eyelashes
and my lips
are enough
to know I'm
still beneath
the sheets,
still breathing,
still asleep.

ode to a knife

(note: i'll be posting my writing as readers homework here. the assignment this time was to write two odes to ordinary objects in the style of pablo neruda.)

O knife,
I have been warned about
you —
your innocence,
inadvertent
your accidents —
What lovely shine!
What perfect edge!
What immortal hand or eye
could really,
truly,
use you?

Sometimes when I'm
tired,
or I've been torn down,
fallen to the bottom of the ground,
you can catch me
on a knife's edge;
I am captured by the way
you slide,
smooth like a smile like
a silver tongue;
every second I am swayed
and I want to take,
wrap my hand around the
self-assured black of your handle
and see what you can do.

But I catch
my reflection (wide-eyed)
in your silver face,
o knife,
you tempt us with power
and rein us in with
reminders.

Dear blade.
Ruled by physics
(ruthless in killing),
I will leave you stuck,
magnetized,
I will leave you to hands
not so young and stupid
as mine.

alkaline trio, hamlet, metropolis, murse, spoleto (or: settle down)

a flare of fasting
last time we talked,
i really want it but
i still blanched at the thought

and when i said,
"our kids will be —"
i stopped pretty
suddenly
for obvious reasons.

all i want.
all i want is to reach in there,
maybe down my throat,
maybe plunge my hand straight through
my sternum
like i saw in a certain photograph
(except that was a child,
and it was the grim reaper pulling out all
of his insides and leaving a flap of a shell.)

reach in there,
and grab my heart

(hold that in one hand)
reach into my brain,
pluck out a body

stick the heart in the body
and i'm good to go!

i used to think of music but now all i hear is
this could be love,
(LOVE FOR FIRE)
and men with fatally gorgeous names
and fingers on a long-necked bass

i used to think of soliloquies but now all i see is
his sleazy, anorexic body, oozing sex,
oh hamlet, spit out those words,
sear that poor girl's brain;
let those guards force you to the ground

from this time forth,
my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth

ralph nader

"turned on"
apt for a punk rocker;
the guy was forty-five minutes late
so i was reading
about a punk rocker;

my mother,
gleaming,
forty years of hero worship which my dad
called a "cult of personality,"
and that sent me into echoes of
YES WE CAN

applause louder than apologies,
preceding the slow, methodic dismantling of
hope
and change
and i wondered how

my mother
was doing.

overcast, warmish and really windy had me grinning like a moron
but after torrents,
yes, torrents,
railing against the collapse of my fragile faith,
and i was thinking of how he was held up
by pillars made of credit cards and brand-new drugs,
(it was a dark and stormy night)
i said "this weather is stupid"

but then i couldn't see where i was going
(mr. obama, where are we going?)
and my umbrella
doing its best to cheer me up
flipped inside out like eight times and
i said "this umbrella is stupid"

and then i almost walked into the pond
and i started grinning like a moron.

"if you let me have my way i swear i'll tear you apart"

if i could collect all the lies you spit
like snake venom from your lips

if i could take that black hole in your throat
that makes your guilt go down so slow

if i could peel those scars from your legs
make smooth skin from the red

if i could inhale all the smoke in your mouth
when you exhale it carefully, wincingly out

then i would.

i would swallow it all down.

and then one day,
when you finally snapped,

i would give it all back

ten thirteen

all gone to my head.
images. stage lights.
this is the voice you wish you had.
take me with you,
ecstasy,
give me that tab on my tongue
i need it like i need a cancer in my lungs

gorgeous looking so
tortured up and twisted,
pretending to be cute,
but later on,
[when you're all alone again]
when you're [you'll be] naming constellations with a noose
it's only because you wanted to be missed

i almost feel sorry for what i did

the way you put your hand on my mouth,
and i'll stop struggling when you've smiled long enough,
and all those things you whisper in my ear
and all those stories you beg to hear
my dear,
it took everything i had,
but i liked it the hazier you became

sure. i'll hold you.
i'll tell you a story
and i'll tell you a promise
and i'll say "i would die too, with you"
and i would let you eat up
every empty word i said

but i had a good night.

raw and rushed.
stripped, sabled,
vicious, the victory
welling up in the depths of me

basically i'm sitting on the couch and cheering.

because revenge is a cliché
(dear hamlet, if only i could put you somewhere
that deserved your fragile, thrilling self)
but revenge + mahone will never not be awesome.

i had a bad morning.

pin me down like a butterfly.
crack open my chest.
there's a fine layer of compassion there,
thin and soft like a spiderweb;
you could yank it out easily
discard it
in the scraps by your feet;

i will not promise
that i won't fight back

to keep you from seeing past
those spiderwebs
beyond the pink and red;

hope would not sing for me
so i took it gently by the wrist
gutted it,
splattered it all over my own voice,

i sing with a hope on my voice that doesn't
feel
quite
right

but maybe to you it sounds like church bells

i am the canary
that you take into the coal mine

when i stop singing
you will drop my cage
deep underground

and run toward the light

"we prey as wolves among the sheep and slit the necks of soldiers while they sleep"

dearest son,
your mother and i
we are the ones,
the ones
who feel this love for fire,

who applaud when they run planes into towers,
god, that power,

we laughed when they shot the president
back in '63,
oswald, the mafia, and me,
and when jackie climbed over
the back of the car to grab the pieces of his brain,
god, we howled,
all that blood on her dress,
jackie darling, that's gonna leave a stain,

we vote pro-life
so that when those young girls want abortions,
they'll have to stab up their insides,
there's no more doctors, dearest daughters,
so will it be coat hangers or knives?

and we go to all those parades,
say we hate the jews and the blacks and the gays,
but really, we just like to see them all fucked over
we like to see them writhe
and all those straight christian whites
with no education
saying "thank god for damnation!"

and dearest son,
we're gonna pin it all on you,
take the blame
(it comes with the family name)
and in a decade or two
when everyone hates you
we'll be laughing at you too
because you're a decent man, dear son,
but you won't be able to take it.
no.
not those years and years and years and years
of shame.

boy with stars

sitting in the back row with
a video camera in his hand

singing out those songs with
a hope in his voice


watching the stage with
stars in his eyes


when he gets home he will watch his video
and someday he will give it to others so they can watch it
and he will give them stars
for their eyes too

young man, pick up your guitar.
we'll need your trusty chords for this war.
make sure you play those songs wherever you go.
'cause all these new bands are sleepin'
but some kids here said they wanna dance.

kick start

there is no white line

one day i will look up and notice the power
and
the glory

eastbound i can't see but for
spots of light where did you go after i
promised to drive you home but then
left you sitting on the curb with
a rip in your shirt and a half-empty bottle of bear

in those two seconds when
i'm wondering that

it would only take two seconds for me to
jerk the wheel toward the other lane
i hope they hit the side of my car
so that i am pulled toward
the other driver
who will see the dreams on my face

shards of glass on the curb

where you left your anger

and your ripped t-shirt



tomorrow is another day

push pin black holes

stable stable this is not real
the pretense of love i show her is so wrong
breakdown breakdown how would you feel
if i said i haven't told you the truth in so long?

liar liar i am the one who
feels so guilty every time i see her
empty empty i already told you
this is nothing and i am its keeper.

re: new yorker, page 128 ("the way" by albert goldbarth)

the endless blue, where you can't
tell where the sky ends and the ocean
begins, where the middleman is missing
and it's just wind and water just
wind and water for thousands and
thousands of miles;

and he was right, it's silly to name it
"the sky"
because this is what it is:
it is
the piece of everything — absolutely everything,
the entire universe, everything that exists right now —
that you see
through the trees in your backyard

where the middleman goes missing
the earth drops away and there are
years and years of light separating us
from the sun and from all the milky ways
that no one sees

i'll

never grasp it

(do the stars conspire
to kill us all with loneliness?)



i will reach up my hands and they will be
silhouettes against the sky

metamorphosis

headlights
a dark night

blood spattered
he burned
so bright

"five months"
"should have
said something"
it's a slap in the face
you can hear the sound of
that trust falling out and it
stings

daylight
(can you see clearly now? i'll
show you again, look:)

"in me"
"you don't know"
did you ever think about it that way?
i bet you didn't and now
there's a guilt surging up your spine like the bones
surging up his spine and it
stings

are kerosene and a lighter ever the right thing to do?
but look at them, isn't that exactly what you wanted
to see

and when he used to say "not alone"
it meant something and his brother
would feel like he wasn't alone
but now it sounds thin enough
to be torn in half by the breath of a child

headlights
a dark night
it's been a long couple of days.
and it still stings
they're trying to open up their wounds
expose them to the air to let
them heal but by the time this thing is over
each of them is
hurting
a little more
than they were before.

second son of joseph

grassy knoll next to a brick red [facade]
[full of] books, stacks of books -and [but]
[no glassy shine] -bubbles, could you still see if
the sun were a little bit closer?

if you reach
then maybe you can touch it

doubled down double dare
give it a try, a wink, a gold tooth
winking [in the texas sun]
the sun is [much] too warm today

if you see clearly
then maybe you can touch it

someone looked up and saw you but
it's too late. "well, it's all over now"
you said, when the ocean blue came [in]
pulled you offstage out of the sun

if your hand is steady
then maybe you can touch it

grassy knoll next to brick red [facade]
things look normal today, you know, except
a white x
in the middle of the road where

NOVEMBER 22ND, 1963

a crack
the crowd gasps
and brains spill all over
jackie's lap

if your sight is true
then maybe

(who were the ones who told you that?)

metropolis

i snapped (literally) and pretty pretty, it was aflame,
the whole goddamn building,
i told you i'm not good with precision,
and god, it howled

flames like me
they lick at my hands with their wet, hot little tongues
they run up and jump up on my legs and chest
and lick my face with their wet, bright little eyes

and they howl
not at the moon
they howl at the whole goddamn world

i like the warmth, and cold will kill me one day
(i promise you that, motherfucker the whole goddamn
building is ablaze — don't you dare tell me it's my fault.
i'm the one who's dying
in the inferno
the inferno likes me, it burns like a fever,
and when it sees me, it explodes)

i can't see the floor it's
two feet in front of my face, the heat and the blindness
smoke, sweat pouring off my back, all together now:
you're one serious fuckup, damien! now god PLEASE
GET ME OUT OF HERE.

it's so cold that i can see the mist
of my breath
in front of my face

it looks like cigarette smoke

for obvious reasons

good evening.
i'm damien.
i'm the fire man
(not the fireman)

and one day i'll stop dreaming.

(thank god for cloudy nights. the sunset is enough to break me
into a million desperate little pieces.)

castiel is not angela

when wings unfurl in shadows
and there's longing in all that you see
when your only hope is hit the ground
while necks are snapped one two three

when you're doing so well with looking so strong
but you just end up broken instead
then you know it's time to go straight back home
before your brother winds up dead.