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.