catshipgrin [???]13

the concert thickens
apropos
of thinning
the hair from
me from
my head,
and the
thief whose
in bed

with the cat
while the shark is tied to the poet
and swimming into the ship to get
it to know it

what??? the thief
& the cat, who
said that???

the think of it!
the grin to buzz at the pollen
the sip of petals to the sip
of beez

i am trying hard to
locate my shiftiness
and quit it of smoking cigarettes

in the looming dark, or  by the shape
of a lim-lit park

it's the quack which makes it watery,

the same as when the mast
barks at the "e" tells it "get back
inside" its gruff yellowed voice
(the same yellow as my shifty
fingers) the
iris rest my case against a beam of light
beer is
disgusting! no more sad
than done made

i am i am iam
one more i am from
4 in a row.
though it takes 6 cats to row
a ship to the place i last grinned.

i know i know
.

this menagerie is beastly.
i am the softest ever,
the loud, lounge
cage.

orchestra with straw in its mouth

your eyes turn me from gargoyle
into a church vault
almost as sure as trees
almost as sure as them
sure as

made naked by elevation
the umbra collapsed
into sparks

the
islands i sought to make for you
from the bread we broke
in the morning

turned to be vibrations
or the squeak of bicycle wheels
the lowered tyre its air pushed
withered sure
washed road i think i saw
your jeans in the puddle
that the pavement
lapped at.

i say
the sun was there but it wasn't
i collected your reflection
in 500 milliliter beakers
and maybe let flowers sip

or cars crash like dominos against
the spots where i wanted you

its definitely
the same mourning
as before

when my face is outside and yours
shut in books
the crank of days slingshots me
and it is your hand

that falls loose to change,
i am the spare,

the second theme
of bowling

played by an orchestra for no one.

i-rat

i got rats in my teeth
the island is drifting
and i got rats in my tea
i am an island
a rat drank me free
ire and ireland
got the rat in between

shortcut

italics and lies, they hand each
the same-
what? some ichor perchance,
soft and slow a clingwrapped life
judged upon the shift of snow:
a claw that rakes with
morning breath.

each sound in, each out,
snores ruffling the pillow
and sounds of keys
trying to unlock the sun.

their rattle awakens only the sly
monster from his cave in the honeycomb,
his unhurried steps
keep us frightened for days.

he is 9 foot tall and like
a power tool,

i grip the wall,
bite a lemon,
squeeze a tree,
noodle sympathy.

but still the monster
lumbers on,

i
cry, my
eyes
turn to ice.

he
comes.

*

a beat,
his fists lift the roof right of its bed
and he is peering down at me, pj's;
wall-clock; little ol' me.

snarls, his breath like two trucks
of ham,
and speaks:

time to die

voice booms over the pretence of quiet,
my lying heart feigns death,
and i slump into the bedpost.

when i wake,
snow has covered my body,

cinderella

i might peak out from winter,

it has been our season, 

the one a thousand days from now 

i'll be stuck in, rethinking, revelling in. 

all that happened was i feel for you, 

fell, falling, felt. fuck, it was all so junior, 

over the covers, touch of cinderella. 

i guess i must have been happy for like one hour

and now its bolted to my neck and i am drooling 

into cups, again. 

i was sanguine, that's it. that's all. 

now i imagine you naked, 

probably cause i am curious, 

or that the burdens of being undressed 

are the same weight as 

the drowning stone

tied to my chest.

i am imagined naked 

in the spring when my cock is thawed 

and my thighs have stopped glowing

when you fix your hair

tight against a smile

and i am dressed 

back in it. 

then leave me ticking on the wall

&

wait a few seasons to the rain.

she brought home snake beans
not wet anymore, you don't punch them with water
or mistake toddlers for grown men

or hurry from the ghost with the sparks of your
father's admonishment trailing at your feet,
what was through this then?

something was easy for ruin, the colour of
jets passing over fountainheads, rose
petaled, with thorns of fire, or crisp and
well?

is this door my perfume, letting me into your senses,
or am i leaning?

stationed to the safe-word you will never dare
to say. i am at the water hole

where tomorrow comes home to me
and i am the hungry war,

i want you to write me this poem:

 i love fists
 and call
 me

the cat, your special, i can purr to that.
whatever it is that draws me to you
still bruises because love is a strong hand
squeezing when we're apart

i love it when hands call
and yours is on the first ring,
call it: answering.

wish you were here
is playing on repeat
because they are
the words i need you to hear.

ampersand gourmet

i need some red to get better,
the celery bouncing back up,
it shouldn't bend...

there are more words hiking up to breathe
down on me, short of that:

the vegetables should be hard and lusty,
i mean, well groomed and less
tumour...or fur.

i am the words tonight,
worth salt and bread,
ampersand in between the bed-
to death!

short

poems are for dorks

but pork aint for porking!

beep beep

i am just sitting waiting for breaking bad to finish downloading-
it's the first day of sun, the wind is probing at the fingers
of some spiny plant beside me, i can hear its rustle over
thelonious.

he is playing tempo jazz, keying little moods
furlongs of nothing in a mountain,
outside of room; space adjacent; greyer than
could be's.

it's cool, i am wrapped in letters, waiting for the
sun to whisper away,
go inside-

the weather's out. warping birds, tall tree
the ivory on my feet is sock fur, the beats
all matter, beats breathe, they...linger.

same as fish song- open carats, sparkles of sharpness
a box with plenty of sides,
knives all arrayed in blood type,

i am the same as writing, the less, the less led
to slow-cooking. braised on
kernels of almonds, watching the witch
masturbate to the frozen swirls
on the cut.

i am.o.no.you.are.
two tins on one string, i call
you listening:

   there's threnody here,
   u be quiet
   i aint done

   to be dead while
   been list
    ening
  the whale out

the fridge, beep,
beckoning.

there is the whisper if

the bee 

wants to whisper in

-it's her, i know it is, 

with those words and those 

eyes, the panic shaped hair, 

with legs like the warmth 

you get from a blanket-

want to get wrapped in 

them. 

i want her tongue on skin,
teeth nip lip,
her pretty hands 

entwined in mine, 

i want her to lie to me 

about love, 

i want to be lied to, 

i want to be forgotten, 

but i can't forget. 

i am a fool, a coward, 

and, i hope, she is too.

i can't whisper with this tongue 

all swollen, 

it has barrelled itself in words.

warhead

it was a thousand texts ago and you were all smiles- 

i was tongue, 

  the silo, the exhalation 

  without any 

  goddamn thought for any other 

  breath

  with the warheads all like waves 

  creaming corn 

  and pulsing the salsa. 

it was a million to one

with the clowns all painted black- well, 

i am clowning now, 

and there are pockets of you 

within me, 

but my hands exhaust themselves 

just trying to reach for yours.

it's sad.

and my tongue is 

nothing.

i can't stay mad you

because when you smile it's the warmth
of a thousand suns setting my skin on fire

but mostly that just means you have burnt me to cinder.
and how can you put a leash on my remaining cells?
all they do is squeal for you, like rutting little pigs,
i guess you want to though- lock collar,

trot me out of the barn and two-step, well, prod
me into a canter, spark the switch,
bust my flanks into a blood trail

so you'd know the way back when.
dragging my embryo into the graveyard, the barn,
the field, the candle's tail--

its all about the smoke, you love the fire
more than you love me, because you don't-
i see it in the rain, and in the silence.

i see you standing with your hands melting all over my
body, eyes of tallow; the colour of curdled milk
with flakes of yellow speckled on the remaining
stumps you'd call my bones.

i see your teethmarks on them, i pain for it,
incisors knifing into vision.

before dusty...this was chiselled.

the flowers were out pollinating your name

or it might have been the bees, you may have 

been the picking, the string of green stem 

licking at my knee.

after my glass has raised itself to the sun 

and the rain comes thick and viscous, 

a murky sludge of words like white frost 

settles over my tongue and is embedded there- 

in the rock, by the dates which freeze you in time. 

i should say it was rock,

 my lord of sad forevers- 

shaped it into stone. 

dusty -- not good or anything. forced writing at a time when i was tired and felt like shit.

i think you think my mind is a flower bed 

where you can plant your little bouquet and 

let your stone roses die. 

my eyes wave at you 

what with them knowing where you are

and wanting you to know that i adore you. 

last may when the rain came 

i was thawing out 

in the… fuck you

i want to live in secrets 

so i can be in your life

and roll myself in carpets 

till you notice how dusty my life has become.

(still) i want this over

i made myself into sadness. branded with a butter knife 

and dripping garlic on the iron carpet of my life.

its the soft shell of the bulb, the lopped off green sprout, 

i don't know, you could call it: my filleted stench. 

its purplish, the emotion. might be horse drawn 

from the hayloft where i hide my love needle. 

that stupid thing which stitched my pulse to yours. 

i should water it down with bracken water, the purplish- 

in a lilting sea of murmurs, or tsunami of catcalls 

where i avoid saying things that i shouldn't say. 

like: i want to fuck your brains out. i want to lick your feet, 

your armpit, your baby bonnet…you know, that thing 

you hide me under and go all gooey for. 

mostly your wrinkling your nose at the shit you have left me in, 

with my carcass of sad facts trailing behind that garlic fountain, 

leave me to oblivion. 

i don't want you (anymore), 

i don't need this fucked up heart

and fucked up head, 

i want you to leave. i want you gone,

i want you. 

(still.)

(best)

It was the mattress that night,
that night, that night:

consumed by the candy of hair and light
that night that night

it was the rhyme that
ate at him, the beauty

of her twinkling eye, where she winked
his shudders
and his pulsing trouser hose

frightened him from sleeping
or sand bagging his room from the tears that
the poets would weep for him

that night   that giddy
wing of black coarse no-light
cab call

no-fuck, no suck, just a blister
from kissing.

no hickey, no quicky

i wasn't ready, i was 'oping
that this would be the best night
that night that night

and it was. it was.

the cab was called, i recall before midnight
which i say

is great- it is sublime, two thumbs
kissing the upwards draft of cold air
she left behind

that night: that night,

we played rumi,
i left my dignity with games, im not sure im
the best for what the stars foretold
they don't have heart, mine was beating
out of my throat, and you could hear
it in my murmured words -
coquettish, lassoed
to little flakes
of love.

i don't how to finish this,
there are vowels and other sound outs
i could use, i could plunge my mind
into the thinking of a goldfish.

think 'i don't know how to fish...this?';
and the weeds are still growing
and the cards are on the wood shelf
by the books and the purse of my
childhood where i am standing
in cardboard clothes and am
the roy orbison of whatever night that
would have been.

i think i want to keep thinking of that night,
that night, that fucking night
and idolise it,
bank it and bank the interest i
fucking hate myself with,
will love be mine
will it?

i really suck at pinball, that's what i know
the ball just goes down between the little flippers
and i know it will:

that's my hope right there. bottled.

and bleak.

attempt at prose

It was raining hard. 

The night like stacked cans sort of faced into him with little words like "soup" or "tuna" or something like "msg free" but he wasn't hungry because of the rain, it was the couplings of lightning and thunder like poetic beasts grunting against his solemn ritual of using the window to hide from the outer world. Strange that the sounds of chaos would cause pangs, hunger and the vice of love like a thieving hand caressing the puff of cheek, the strong set jaw, the candle of dreams he lit for her. 

She wasn't there. Out the window, to his eye. He thinks he can make a room in his heart for her though and she would live in it the same as furniture lives in the dust of a room occupying the wood and the stasis of normality. He thinks she would like this room of gilded butterflies, entreated vows, of slow clocks ticking backward and in between these lurking items on the wall a nice kiss or hug. But he doesn't know that vows aren't for asking but for giving. 

He must not care for her, he knows he wants her though. I would want her too. 

She has pretty eyes, a race track of teeth, columns of eyelashes that go begging to be wished upon, if she landed awkwardly on the curb i would break my hand off and lend it to her standing. She is a white girl, a whirlwind of beauty and she isn't distracted by herself but cares for others, i think, a little too much. Her being white isn't a merit in itself, but she has golden hair and when the sun moves to high five God at His making of her the shored river of light beams into the unkempt strands that lightly mull at her plait, or when i see that she has her hair down and her fringe curls to her eyes i am beset, or bewitched. She has the same face that the moon would have if it were a little more awake.