two shirts are missing–
t-shirts, old like a hippie
still attempting love and peace
in red and blue, not quite
as bright as young, but fits
well and tight like summer sun.

these shirts could be your favorite
if the sleeves were an inch longer
or your belly didn’t push the middle
…or if they weren’t missing.

they could be your lucky shirts
if you believed is such a notion,
but you can’t now. what
could be the consequences of losing a lucky shirt?
you daren’t think.

you remember when you found the shirts,
that old black garbage bag shoved down
in a water-worn cardboard box–
your father’s box. he hadn’t been
in this room for years, though
his room was one room away,
and with every rustle of plastic and cloth
you swore he heard you disturbing his relics
preserved in must and dust.

and you found them
scrawled with some ancient lettering
from what you’d like to think as a “simpler time”–
an illusion, you know, but still…
you set aside the shirts,
gave them a home with laundry,
all those trendy things trying to prove their worth,
but old shirts will tumble like all shirts,
they need not explain to anyone.

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teeth like ice with crunch and drip,
shirtless from the sun-burn,
goose bumps, and scented oils,
and night-time summer breezes
well into the swirl of apathy and healing.

prehistoric stars meet contrived incandescence,
but dark-
ness tickles evil erogenous,
temptings for unknowable, a lust to
black and white, but better black.

soak up the mouth and gnash a drink with lemon
twist and twist and flavor of gods
hiding the burnt star among the powerful blue,
burned by vanity and the calm,
control of light and addiction,
games of ‘i love you more’
with the naked monster reflection
flexing shine and horn
to complement the lack of internal organs,
but ears listening to the rotations of worlds–
not this world, never this
currency of reality, the other only
it must be, a shock
to gray a shock to flowing red.

monster reflects (upon)
leaving the looker looking
into the negative silver.

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A seed, size of a walnut,
not as dense as reality,
oblong, a valentine heart
rounded to shape by eons
of cosmic wind, glowing
from outside in like a
supernatural pearl with
indigo overtones tracing
spikes of fluid
brilliance in reverse.

No trails like a comet
as it goes to where it needs,
slight pulse -
but only to keen sight (if
that’s what you can call it) -
landing gently home,
a new home now, forgetting
the old, rippling a wave
in this cosmic pond,
tinting the water
to its pearly-indigo color
in all directions from center,
no interference, no dissipation,
never behaving
as a photon – no need
to glow for only one.

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she’s a washed out shade of magenta,
          and i know her like the girlfriend
          of someone i love but never visit.
i pretend she sends me letters, a few
sentences at a time, lack of punctuation,
          run-on, no caps-
a bit of ingenuity to reconstruct meaning
which i’m more than pleased
          to flatter myself about.

and perhaps i wish her to reveal
          in one of those mangled run-ons
          some deep hidden love for me,
          that i am her vibrant cyan.
or perhaps i’ll read from a distance
          as she artfully tries
          to make her mundane seem more… impressive,
          but my sadness only begs melodramatic.

i never respond to the letters, i keep them
ordered nicely enough
in a manila folder buried deep in a cardboard box
centered on the coffee table.

and she doesn’t write anymore.
          they broke up,
          her friend died,
          lesbian now,
          something-anything
to send her letters some place else.

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I open the window of my bedroom,
the one immediately beside my pillow,
to the everything I hate and
let the everything cascade unfiltered,
like the songs of morning birds
that I curse with each repetitive
melody and chirp and melody and chirp
and annoying beauty forced upon me,
the relentless disrespect of personal space
by creatures who think themselves
a bit better than me, higher in the trees,
deliberately disturbing my half of sleep,
thinking that this world is for everybody.

I wish to find them, to
collect them all and embrace them,
their tiny fragile bird bodies with
their tiny fragile bird bones and
I would hold them near their breast
and with a lovingly firm squeeze
around their precious bird necks
I would inflate their precious bird heads
until they choke on the silence
of their gaping bird beaks
and each head goes POP!
and I would do this for every
bird who wishes to sing to me
these stupid songs
every day at 5AM.

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hovering over the ocean, i-
 slightly arrowing the water, blue
  like diamonds, airy and flowing-
   the way it absorbs and shines. i
   see floating formations of
    majestic rocks connected to
    the seas in the shape of men, giants,
   backs down, legs up, and
   they crack free and kick forth
  and propel quickly, arcing
 in slow motion, and fly like
rocks never have or ever will.

passing, i
 see rock men alive
  always hovering and falling
   to the ocean
    always cracking and shattering
     free from rock
      always in slow motion.
and i pass by.

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haunted houses, buildings, never
people, themselves, but
we are, I think, haunted.
I, or you, with ghosts
of this world, never
saying much, no
oOoOoohs or aAaAaahs or
clanking chains in fogs
that we see, no
bedsheets draped
on dusty chairs
in dusty rooms
lined with creaky floor boards.

      just us as we are -
      a bit… oblivious
      to us as we are.

and like all good ghosts
they dwell and scare
away those that come to visit.

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Leviathan commands the frog people -
not they are people, they are really just
kinda-smart frogs – and tells them
to convert all waters to swamp and
live in soaked trees. Kick out the owls
if you have to. Their ability to predict
the past has long since been useless.
Tell the fish they better grow feet
and one might add that we’re stealing
their oxygen as well, so I guess
so much for those gills. So sorry
you spend all those years
evolving so.
And tell the deer to prance away.
They will be more than pleased
to flee from any sight or sound
and we can’t have their precious
deer hooves getting all covered
in mushy dirt.

There’s no room left for the specifics,
for the aquatic people in the water and
the earthen people on the land, it’s time
for both, it’s the Time of Frogs,
of shallow water and mushy soil
and swampy grass and clammy
frog sweat in cool, foggy
frog marshes.

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exactly fifty five minutes of sleep
left on red LED, i’ll add it
to the running total of hours
i’ve missed since birth, since before,
since the womb, ever hazy-eyed,
awake. seeing light didn’t change
a thing, or breathing air or tasting
on tongue instead of injected
through belly.

i’d trade taste
away if i had to choose a sense
to loose. everything tastes
like a begging for antacid, so
let us skip the charade
and plug me back in to safety.

no more games of the tongue,
the hidden meanings in the hidden
meanings, no more feigned passion
with strangers, no more ill-perceived
words of solace to those once
considered a friend, in a time
of need with children wielding
bigger hearts and bigger knives – for
plunging in one another, but only
killing the mothers on how
they all went wrong and how
washing out with soap never stopped
anyone from cursing this place,
only leaving a proper sting
on the tongue to be useful later,
mostly in the morning while
i add to my running total.

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They have long, odd fish heads
for heads, made of dirty bronze
like clay pots that can break
in chunks and shapes, with bodies
also made of bronze fish head,
confused as to why there are two
of them in one in different parts.

The (new) first head breaks-
struck by the invisible,
the body takes the broken head
high up to a stone-cut window
deep in sunlight, to the other
broken fish pots, to where they fit
again slighly perfect on their sill
not waiting long for other heads
and bodies to crack open and join
in the green glow of the sun
erroding further the bluing bronze
and melding a wall to
absorb all the green sun rays.

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