Notch

Notch 1/6

I’ve slept with enough – have tricks – have toys

Pother

Pother 1/5

Someone said that you were Eeyore
that your house was always in a state
of falling down

That your nonchalance was scary
was depressing that it was awful

Like Winnie-the-pooh was a fucking
ray of sunshine? Like Tigger wasn’t
some sort of psychotic?

Don’t get me started on Piglett
Piglett was a neurotic

Restorative

Restorative 1/4

I imagine myself wearing a long dark coat
standing at a rail by the ocean

It is freezing cold my hands are in pockets
the tide is beating and coming in hard

Sending mist into the air onto my glasses
my vision is droplets

I imagine that this frozen body is in process
of rebirth

The limbs need numb to shed the layers
old skin worn out thoughts

In the vision I have hair that whips about
my face and the sky is that gray monotone
that is so close to being the same blue
that circles in your eyes

I want this to be a restorative one drink
and everything changes

Some would say that I am incapable of
being truly madly deeply happy

That I put myself on that rail in that cold
horrible coat

The turn isn’t the new year but the idea
of the new year clicking in place

Sudden gears that stuck long ago making
the collective decision to move

What I forget always forget
is that the sides of the gray sky are bleeding
with that warm melon color and that there
are birds chirping along as well

Partial

Partial 1/3

See
It’s your hair
The way it’s thin
                        on top and your
                        skin is pink underneath

And your eyes

I can’t help but feel warm
                        all over

The Room

An extra poem today. This is from college. 2000 I believe.

The Room/It Is Me Thinking

Tasting salt off the back of your shoulders a wire-thick scar runs
blade to spine small white pinprick holes along the sides

I roll my tongue over the skin

This is your seam the place they pulled you open threw your batting
tried to rip your arms off

            He looked like a scarecrow when they found him
            the runner almost didn’t stop

You roll over and tell me it still hurts when it’s snowing
The same times my knee swells and I lay in bed trying not to move

You smile say that you aren’t Matthew Shepard that you were just bruised
I kissed every break

            Frozen to – tied to a fence-post and bleeding
            Crows blinking not understanding

I watch snow collect on the window frost crystals turn the world to glass

            They keep track of how long he’s been dead online
            There’s a recording of a scream – ‘listen to Phelps’

Someone left a note on my door took a marker wrote in purple ‘AIDS cures fags’
They called me told me they knew I get up early for work go into the parking lot alone

            He had blonde hair and clear blue eyes when in 1998 –

You roll over I pull you near and smell you it is warm
A sound like buzzing fills the room

It is me thinking

About tomorrow the day after and the day after the sound of a voice in my ear
whispering

            It was cold – so very cold

Pyramid

Pyramid 1/2

Megastructure – a mile out at sea
you can see it rising
out of Tokyo – a sloping beast
tsunami-proof and full of people

We are turning into ants – maybe
if you scale it out enough
everything is ants
pushing their dirt and making tunnels

The light off the glass structure
would blind anything – ziggurat eyes
and constant wind ears – salt foam
in your hair – some kind of paradise

Martingale

Martingale 1/1

I canter at the edges of the room
These guys drinking and looking

I go in the bathroom there are naked men on the walls
These guys are watching the door for me to come out

If I move forward
I feel like I come
back twelve

I look in the mirror
and I see myself as
a fifteen year old

Standing in a gas station in Pennsylvania
Looking into the eyes of a 30 year-old
for signs of my fate

I fucked him on a washing machine
These guys don’t know that

Every time I get naked I want to move that way again