Haiku 4 K.X.

I'll call him K.X.
"I don't care," echo, refrain.
Recall: still a child.

Paint You

" i'd like to paint you, but there are no colours,
because there are so many in my confusion,
the tangible form of my great love."

- frida kahlo

i've lost myself today.
i've been borrowing alter ego's and someone else's words.
so i'll let frida speak for me today.
and i'll give you freja's face.

cus sometimes, other people can convey better what you feel than you yourself can...

Ego Crusher

come & get me 

i ain't afraid a no bogeyman

i is strong & can bite you back

you is all puff & no magic

& i don't believe you no more

TWELVE

In the early nineties
when I was in middle school
my mom, who had marched
on Washington the three decades earlier,
succumbing to social pressure
at her new job, bought
a Desert Shield/Desert Storm
sweatshirt from a coworker
and bestowed it upon me.
I regarded it oddly
where it hung in my closet
like a white flag with ironed-on
aircraft carriers and tanks -
the first pro-war garment
I had ever touched.
In school chorus we sang
"How many roads
must a man walk down?"
and because I wanted so badly to fit in
I sang along with Rick Faugno
and his variation on the refrain
and because I didn't understand
the meaning of the odd words
in my mouth, I proudly repeated them
when my mom drove me home that day:
"The answer, my friend,
is blow-jobbing in the wind,
the answer is blow-jobbing in the wind."

Time

The general momentum of things won't stop scratching this heat-warped record of songs we used to sing to one another under the sycamore tree that reached up to the sky out of the snow or the long grasses.


The time that passed, even in the shine of the January snowfall, even in the March melt, has never come to a pitched heat, never even a dramatic swell, but only marched relentlessly on one second-hand tick after another, with no climax and no resolution.


Billie Holiday's voice on a disc has dug out in a few tiny canyons that she circles around and around, following the sun overhead, spiralling back to the beginning as if she could visit the same place in time, ever, ever, ever.


Now even the compression of Madeleine Peyroux's mp3 points to a certain instant in time, a year that must hear everything more clearly, louder than before, blowing out the frequencies as if somehow we can mount time's momentum, as if somehow we can ride it harder and faster until it is ready to drop, and finally, our weary songs can sleep.


But the songs keep existing forever, slipping deeper into the past, falling forward helplessly into the future.

And time won't pick up its step one bit, even if we sing until it tears our throats.

Things Explained To Me

Pen on paper helps
To keep what’s told
Inside your brain ( I never wrote that down, til now)

That’s the thing
That’s the thing about –

I’ve got brain, but
Particulars slips quick

Tamara told me her Dad was in the military.
“I knew every rank, you bet.”

I should probably know something by now

Have you ever seen somebody die?
Have you ever felt it?

Jolts and chimes across all time.

Affirmation 4

Here I mean to firmly affirm, and not mope around any more.
I'm tired of stressing and obsessing. It doesn't matter what people do.
It seems like there's a lot of drifting apart in a lot of these poems,
and everyone knowing one another less well. I'm going to know people
more. I'm going to start to feel tougher. Winter won't be
kicking my shins this time around. Once I feel tougher,
I'll be tougher. I'll wrest my life from the hands of depression.
I'll clean my humidifier and keep my room nice.
Once I'm tougher, I'll find some people, and I'll get to know them.
Then I'll find the people I already knew, and I'll know them more,
too. These are not resolutions. Resolutions are what you break.
This is just some stuff that's going to happen.

I'll bake kouign amann, and the butter won't crack the dough
when I'm rolling it out and folding it. Some of the people I know
and I will draw comics together. Some of the people I know
and I will keep our eyes on the police. In the morning
I will warm up my lower register, and then I will find the courage
to fearlessly summon the tenor, even though everyone
at the bus stop below my window can hear me.

Love-Poem

Twenty ten? Two-thousand ten.
The extra syllable is ours for the taking.

Outside is reverse Hell.
I'm so cold it feels like my phone is vibrating.

But we need art supplies...
like food.

Napkins, plastic bags, styrofoam,
Strange snowflakes.

I wish I had wool skin.
That we were watching the Amazing Race,

How sweet the sound.

Sneezing

Care about me.
Turniquet, honeybee.

I have known you before.
Parapet, omnivore.

Only you.
Caribou.

SEVEN

The lighthouse sits aloof
far up the beach
from where my sister
and I and two friends act out
the story of Stone Soup
for our parents. The beach
is dark stones deposited thick
like forgetfulness though I cannot
think this yet, and next I am skipping
from trembling stone to stone
in the shallow water wearing
a red t-shirt that says,
"I didn't come here by accident -
I came here on porpoise"
which I got on this trip to Maine.
I want to see two eyes
and a slick mammal head
pop up from the yawning Atlantic
and lead me further
from New Jersey, further from
third grade than I ever dreamed
possible, into the lighthouse
where every day
I will climb the spiral steps
with a bucket of fresh fish
and crabs and where
I'll cast black stones
like wishes from the top of the tower
into the sea.

come seek us where our voices sound

we cannot sing above the ground

(sweat hot
growing undergrowth
we tumble through thickets while my baby sleeps under the snow
cold and bleeding
my mother: give me morphium!
sister sweetly holds my fathers hand in the hospital
his last breath full of sawdust
(the leaves will change
the snow will play upon
(the common room windows
(who knows
(speeding up
(speeding up
like the music
our lives are speeding up

hermione!
we get married!

your life

your decision, your future, your words.

you’re there,

your choice.

I am trying to separate this --

the I from the you

(the you seems fine).

I am trying to tidy this up,

sweep out the corners,

review my mistakes,

check under the bed.

I am tracing the last two years.

I am trying to see this coming.

I do not.

After the day at 6 flags

I wanted to peel off your sunburnt skin.

Save it all in the ash tray,

coral colored.

As it dried and shriveled with passing days

I'd remember how I'd shucked off the day gone wrong.

Back then I didn't know you well enough to touch you.

Now I know you less.

allen 003

flecks on a slab

lap it up, chug

it's suppertime

Visitation

From inside the phone a terrible thing!
like a wave of cellophane with a GOAL!

I wasn't going to tell anyone

To bed crushingly late and the circumstances unclear
terrified of sleeping too late also not at all it moved in covered first my mouth
then my nose

teased my ears it was a little sexy that part
the sun creeping up i wouldn't know it though
when the air left my chest it was exquisite sorrow
when nothing lungy could go it was imitating heartache-y
and that was kind of nice, i don't do that otherwise

glad it's over, though

twenty-five twenty-ten/minus eighteen, not to be read aloud

Fat-burn, pat-down, motorcycle, carpet bag,
stopping at this kid would really be too good to be true.

We still need the bergamot but our joints are all buttered into their sockets now, not trying so much to "BOY BANDIT HAS PIZZAS DELIVERED TO EDGE OF FOREST!"

Still in love with all the old whistles, just a little less embarrassed by it now, I'm sorry I said you were tough.

tv on the internet

tilt the screen down
so i can see it better
sometimes we run out of things to say
we scrounge the internet like raccoons
for anything we can digest

tilt the screen down!
when i'm hungry and tired
i'll put on your sweats
and we'll fall asleep
watching some dumb shit

you cancel thought

Jerkers

Ireland gobbles up an economic cancer,
waits ten years, then craps a crab.

Boys wearing pants with patched knees
push down the same girl, then ten years later

line up in front of her ruler.
Eat right and your baby won't decide its own fate,

Draw great pictures and the water won't get sucked back into the earth
and leave a thin climate, and umbrellas punched full of holes.

last night my friend flopped onto her bed and said to me,
"I don't know how you plan to be straight and expect

anyone to keep up with you."
Maybe if she knew that I march out in short brown hair,

darting eyes and a banner smile,
holding one hand over my hard-earned Wendy.

Day Three

'...he laughed when I asked him how he felt...'
"Heavy," he whispered.
"Heavy and dry."

These are merely words on screen,
delivered by the veins of light.
The bottle, shattered and repieced,
the message never unmade.

I stole their voices as well,
stilled in the unknown soup.
Some uttered missives for the time
when no one can speak.

The noise won't filter,
life doesn't like to be clean.
It leaves our moments
dirty and dear.

When we have written & read
every flapping page.
We can close our hands,
and let the story happen.

cold fusion

You feel like ice
Your hands send chills through me when you grasp my hips
Bitter cold brushes against my skin with your touch
Put your frigid hands in mine
It heats up

You taste like combustion
Your lips burn when they press against mine
Smoldering and yet I want more
Pour some water on the flames
It only aggravates

You stink of smoke
Your breath smothers me
Can’t see through the dirty clouds
Can’t breathe through the thick haze
Open a window

The air clears
I am alone.