KENDALL

Yesterday was
a Tuesday day
but also today is still
sniffing backward
towards Christmas day
or another day
that means more
than this missing day.
Then if that is so
today is a wishing day
or it will be
that it was a washing day
a watching day
from my own life
I say to everyone,
"Watch me play
alone in my sand
see how my face gets
blasted with day-
ness. See my dad-
ness overwhelm me.
See me say about
what batters
my hatches."
I don't drink
but I rub dogs who say
nothing. I move to rub.
To say,
"Support
my mouth and ears.
P l e a s e,
k  e  e  p   t  h  e  m."

BROTHER HOUNDS

Today was
a Loving birth:
blind triplets sniffing ea other
and the day in general.
Some holiday.

Then I went back to my own home.
I said
to someone I’m living with,
“Sand my problems off the face
of the icon that I am.  Batten my hatches
or I’ll make you a dad.”
I don’t move
to dine or drink.
But I rub. “Send me a cadre of dogs
to escort me and a parachute to support
my mouth and ears and to keep them aright.

PLEASE, don't widen the eyes."

Domestically Boring

Today was another birthday of some holiday.

I say, “Loving someone is learning to live with them.”

You say, “Then sniff and sniff and sniff.”

I say I don’t want another dinner-movie-drink-date.

I say send me a small dog I can carry in my shoulder bag in Chicago. 

Send me on the Coney Island Parachute Drop.

I have eggs hatch out of my mouth or teeth or ears.

Dad, help my problem, jeans hurt my body, they rub, help make them softer with sandpaper. 

Dot my “I”s for me, dad. 

WHEN I WAS YOUR AGE Chris Webber WAS STILL A PLANET

was i dumbed for berry hands
shaking puppy dog dry

my juicy pulp when you bite
is only a mixture of other tasteless things

log my trunk rings into song
sped up much faster to a whistle

i stopped growing several years ago
but i still change size

in and
out of my skull

swelling under snow soak
my teeth bones jiggle loose in melt

i slimy or i can always do more
i ooze and keep secrets of mutation

call my brain a wet hound
then sniff and sniff and sniff

your glass eye meets my tongue
i said i would swallow darkness

i said i would remove my jaw
to fit your head safely inside me

why am i still smelling vanilla
body spray or when will you erase

my life is a tree full of fruit
and sometimes it has no fruit

i was not ready and i am scared
that all the buildings i have been in

will be torn down before i die
it's nothing right

it's nothing to read about Buddha preaching
it's nothing to be afraid of nothing

or i am everything
or there is a void inside of my head

is why i am really making an effort
to stop calling zeros os

and to think having anything is only nothing
and hope or terror or the next day

with a great big moon on my face
i poem
i listen
i will breathe and then not breathe

LIST NUMBER THREE

JUSTIN
KELSEY
AMANDA
PAUL
SARAH
MATTHEW
DYLAN
JOY
REGGICIDE
RUTH
JASON
JOEL
TOM
RACHAEL
JESSICA
JENNY
ANTLER
KYLE
CHARLES

I'm Slimy or I Can't or I Can't Do More

A stem or

a pile of them

piling in-

to each other.

My face meets

every ex-

patriate

mentioning

that leaving

& feels

freezing a-

gain. My stem

on strike

scouring sky

in the throat I've puked.

I take this mouth

to say

just let me touch

that one part

of shame

to feel touching

touching touching.

I touch

this ground

to do anything

but nothing.

But my spade

is just one part

of the party

that breaks

the stems'

stems.

The jagged

glassing of it

as we weigh

the dirt we move

I am empty

loving

the poetry of sky

in a strange

blind box

made of every-

one's thumbs.

There's still

ice inside

our cratered field.

Floor washing floor.

Sky cutting sky.

I, without mirrors,

a broken wall–a child's

mother, rolling ahead.

Barton's Gin or Don't Steal Our Dog or I've Broken So Many Things

Sick of sticky

wickets, you've

eaten the last of.

How “this bag

was full!” can shame

the hunger right

back in. Mention

what means again

to send my yawn

over to another's.

Just let me touch

that one part of

the party to thieve

my way into an inner.

Slave the sky into

your mouth more to say

say say. I take

up this spade to do any

-thing but work the

ground. My spade.

Folding the field

is our job, shepherds.

To be without.

To mean without.

To say without.

To love without.

A dirty window's

apprentice. A broken

mirror still one

broken mirror.

Me, then,

or I, a door

without walls—child

of a rolling head.

THIS IS WHAT COLLEGE IS LIKE

meaningless is
our universe
cozy i am
on the other hand
more than the sun

i wrote this poem
for digesting
or my brain
gets sad

a little boy in a small town
throwing rocks
to see the universe

my skull without glasses
could call me four eyes
and who knows

if my dad would shout
i am shouting
far from every heavened
spirit

in the forest
i look like
my own voice
about to die

but unlove
or be built
for the rest of time
i am trying to party

I WAS AT THIS PARTY IN WEST OMAHA WHILE I WAS IN COLLEGE AND I REMEMBER THINKING THAT THIS IS WHAT COLLEGE IS LIKE

a door is
meaningless without walls
a door is
only a door when it can be opened
and walls are only used to make our universe
more cozy
on one hand
i am freezing
on the other hand
it is more than likely the same temp
unless you have one hand
in the oven
or on the sun
or is the devil
or your arms are miles long experiencing different climates

i wrote this poem
about blowing smoke
out of my brain

my brain is for digesting
or my brain thinks it knows what love is
or gets sad when love stops being
what it thought love was

and then there is the me laughing
and there is the me who knows things
and there is the me who wishes he was still
a little boy in a small town throwing rocks
in the alley at cans and things that sound like cans

and i want to be so rich
and i want to see the entire universe
and i want to scoop out my skull like rainbow sherbert

one
color
at
a time

and without these glasses
my eyes wont slowly get worse
and without these glasses
i wont break my glasses
and without these glasses
nobody could ever call me four eyes

and if they did

i would not understand why

anyone would ever
want to hurt
me

so i hide in a closet
or just shut doors in my brain
turn off all the lights
and it gets cold
or warm
who knows

i shave my beard sometimes
i remember the first time
i shaved my beard
i went out into the living room
to see if my dad
would
notice

LISTEN:

i shout
or i am shouting
in distant galaxy far from every heavened spirit
can you hear
my falling
in the forest

i look like an aging human
so lost in my own voice
to forget that i am about to die

time is
ahead of us

who cares if your husband is honest
YOU ARE NOT YOUR HUSBAND

but one day
everything will unlove
and the walls will fall down
or be built
or think about an axe chopping wood
for the rest of time
like
there are all these
trees
that exist

and i am trying to understand
nothing
and when there is no more me
there will be no party
there will be no walls
no heat
no freezing
no doors
no gates
no pits
no fire
no gold

i am a noise
i am a whimper
i am a gust of wind
i am the no wind
still as an actors chest
when they are acting
dead
for the funeral

like kevin coster
in the BIG CHILL.

ryestain

without these glasses,
I can only move 19 inches
between fadeouts

listen: you can't keep turning everything into a movie called
every 30 seconds

& echo locating in a vacuum
echo locating in a noise jar
how sound travels: unfold a warm body

your husband is honest
one day, I will unlove you

run a marathon
it's easy: forget about stopping

don't abuse your past
beautiful words need the truth

all sound travels on four legs
& unfolds space
into bodies

we were at a party at my house
are you leaving soon?

Turn off the lights
& shut the door
& heat up

LETTER TO THE DEBITOR

your clink.
your wobble job.
my head is leaking heat, go on though.
you reap what you eat.

your name on a grain of rice.
your name in a fortune teller
pretelling, botched luck
slapping around her memory.

"i was sitting with the wives
of geniuses while my wife sat
with the geniuses"
this is how you learn to
unlucky your tissue enjoyments.
it is all Flex and Plunge.

year in a car, year in a car,
season on ventilation.

don't go to bed
sulky like that. don't go
at all. get in my pool.
assuming our
temperatures match,
you won't freeze dead.

i may make you make noises.

JELLY BELLY THUNDER THIGHS

I’m dedicating songs
to you. I’m dedicating
orgasms. I used to think
of my English teacher that way.

I used to know Pippi
Longstocking’s entire name
by heart. Now I could probably
just Google it. Remember

the bicycle gang
we created? It was cold out.
I used to be badass. Now
I’m just bad-about-responding.

I like my dreamland
Even when witches are after me.
I don’t think
you have a disease.

And I don’t have
to be fat. I don’t have to kill myself.
But I might
have to be dumb.

When I dream about your body it’s wrong
like a specific Picasso.
You should
Wikipedia that shit.

SHOOT SASS & TWIST ONE UP

Slicing it up

for response, there is so much spitting

in the eye with these

brief missives.          I want more

wringing out.

                     Depiction of action

                     not the actual

           elimination or reduction

less winging off

a page in the ugly dark

like its coming

between you and sleep

Pull another 

day and don’t

blink 

when a sun sings in through, like night’s wrecking

ball. 

                     In the building’s

                     upper floors, vined in above 

                     the walking, remembering too,

                     a tea, glazed glass

                     binoculars and the leaves

                     a new clarity on the prehistoric fronds

                     an infinity of green ovals lit 

by the breezes. My eye reads 

the scratches on the lenses

like an old PlayStation game and if I applied

lotion like that, could it somehow be

buffed

to sheen? Could the irreverence be eschewed

like a prayer but point them out

instead of skyward. Phone, fax, email

or text your requests, just as you would 

cordon up the dough. None 

of this amounts to anything more
than a little reality 

television. You’ve got this, tiger. 

this is my missive:

bright page flipped or a rip

this is what happens: ugly dark

a poem without eyes or muscles

night's hymnal uses sun's light

to sing to witness

and this is its prayer

but I can't see anymore

fuck these stars

fuck that bloated moon

there are only pages

and this is how I say "I miss you"

One Right Thing:

I don’t wake with intentions,

those that caused

you to make tri-level

houses possible,

with blankets and

pillows on every chair,

sofa, and bed.  You may

be licked by fire, but I’m

touched and tasted

by things far more

real—

on the chairs, sofas,

and beds.  I don’t intend

to ever lay beside you.

But I shoot spit

at you, skyward.

outer senshi

stuck in a super slow golden eclipse

i'm a calm bone-whittler, full of bruisy calamity,

i'm the hardest softest hardest softest

all my correspondences back to earth

use the phrase:
let me know
let me
    know, think of a gentler request;
i've been up against and grinding
since there were sharps enough to cut,
my spatial interruptions
getting blunter, blunting my blunts til they're a twist
of remembered edges
                the essences escape still
i'm a wad of bluffs
i'm a buffalo gal, i will come all over
then expand, merge, bifurcate,
ox-bow around a little

forgive therefore this loyal telescoping;
pardon these plain quakes,

the sound you hear that's like 

twenty hungry guitars circling,

                                           i got taught 

to be careful of a steady winnow, forgot,

i did rupture.

my wavelengths bear no sheist particles,

when i find a hill i got to roll down;

remember grass, climb

 

can i be expected not to remember too 

a tongue
that was sun-colored,
a clutch to be impressed upon,
a real stand-out 

son of someone

you probably don't wake with intentions

in cold empty wind space out here,

say without alarm i wish

every moment from now on to be
the marrow your thoughts gnaw,
and the sweet star-dew they lick
when they wake from fits and 

stray to dreaming