Of Bison, Deconstructing

I saw him in
all his indifferent glory
I looked in his coal-
black eye and
said
nothing

upon closer inspection his
eyes were brown and they gazed
aimlessly for fodder
never focusing on me

And so was the herd but
for the matriarchs who
paid me no heed yet whose
glares searched my soul, noted sins
and admonished my aims

she who would trample me for posterity

so like the mountain was he
against the pollutiful skies

I saw his winter coat
still clinging to his back
like the reluctantly melting caps on
the mountain

I watched him stand
oblivious
above the seas
beyond the tips of trees
not defiant, just unaware of

progress no
hulking reminder of past
glories, just a
relic

he had not taken on
the burden of
persistence in a
world stacked against him

he was
simply
unaware of the odds
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Tungsten

The window stands
Shut up tight
About five feet to the
Left
of me

I listen to the water
hiss
through the too-hot radiator

I swelter in the yellow glow
of tungsten

And wonder why I don't
Just let the cool blue sky
in

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22/III/06

Having constructed
a world
from backward glances

to rolling eyes
and cosmos

and mixed drinks
and company

who scoffs at love
and contemplates jazz,

who burns faster
so cannot feel the smoldering

The ones that will never
outlast the end

or wait too long
to pronounce the horse dead

He moved on to their
counterpoint and balance

and oms
and hearts

and respi-
perspi-
ration

and all things less
fleeting than graphic
fact.

For a time,
however brief it was,
we filled the space
left in the universe.

But I always knew

when it stopped expanding
it would collapse and crush

our space
between.

And so it did
And so it was

so good, and thusly gone.

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Ode to Sweet Jane

Fauxhemian
princess. You sicken me.

Patchwork and hemp
and over-indulgence.

Not nearly as chic as you
always wanted, so you
latch on
cash in
trade up
for hipper contacts.

What once was goofy is now a calculated
strike. Go
bite your wooden spoon and
dance your sari dance.
I'll thank you kindly to
leave
me be.

So I like the Dead and
you like Shellac.
We both know the edge
when we see it.

So I write my soul and
you promote
and host your little shows
you fat fucking fish,

you. Can't see the pond
scum
glass ceiling you aspire

to touch

way up on your tippity toes
way too cool to wear the shoe that would
put you in
reach.

If it fits, they say

But you won't touch
a Birkenstock

can't look like a dyke when
it's not for attention.

Can you
rationalize the changes made
or tell me it's not deliberate
believe a word you say
more than what I write
or call yourself genuine?

Pay no attention
to the fraud in the
thrift store power suit.

You don't wrestle with
the truth unless
it's sloppy with jello.

Fuck your summer of love
perceptions.
Fuck fauxhemia.

Go get trampled.

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Italic Rag

I mean to
italicize
you like you're in a
foriegn tongue

instead of right
beside or across
from me

but, rather,
across the sea
beside yourself

with grief
for the love
lost in translation.

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Untitled [fire and water]

My heart beats for you
Like and epileptic fish out of water, eyes burning
But what's any of that to a cowboy?

What're spurs and steel and engines and
Fire?
Down a long road at the end of four-thousand miles is
Nothing.
Nothing for me.

Shake off the dew and count off again:
He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me...
It's too easy with clovers... I'm too smart for puppy love I've got a
Mind, I've got figures, I've got the sense to know the odd ones work out

But nothing works out, odd or not, for the tinder boy

Forty-eight hours of sleep in seventy-two seems drastic
Seven days for nothing seems a patient wait for rain
To quench the fields' inferno

It's not that obtrusive, why put it out?

But when the rain comes it'll only put down the dust
Not the lust or desire, the mildly elusive fire
The things I've been running for, gunning for
Up late 'till all hours when I know it's no use

Time goes faster that way, though the day
Burns as long as I do and longer
And out in the fields, it persists... It's in me now
I'm immolating, I'm a wick, there's plenty of fuel from
Delusions and romance and mem'ries of her and how it could

Being nothing invasive, speaking nothing of the sort
Trying to shake off the feelings...
Having not felt like a twelve-year-old girl since being a
Twelve-year-old boy

She says she misses sex, while I miss the heat
Four nights and I'm addicted, for nights I lie
Depicted as nothing more than a footnote, I'm sure
For the rest of his natural life...

Conflagration, a minor setback, he burns the days at both ends
And primes the middle, it's prime time, you see
He can't help but pine, he's caught it now, he can't help but

Pine logs stacked, brush cleared, fields prepped for
It's planting season, and the current crop of
Agony is special bred to endure the flames of
Hell, it's tempered by them, and soon

Sewn across the burning fields of my mind
I can't help but let go of wishful thinking.

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Triptych

the first is never last but
the ending shouldn't last
this long

the tattered curtain is pulled,
shut slow as the aperture
narrows

Rotate the tryptych and set the stage as
the end comes again
as it goes

It's all just threes
beginning
middle
end
love
loss
death
faith
loss
sorrow
in
out
pause

forgive us this pause as we
chastise
those who balk at the question

the only one that matters
The panels shift as perspective
flips to the unfinished canvas inside

the unwritten alibis the
unspoken scores of lies like
I don't act
I'm your flesh
venerations and
admirations

Ugly staples and frays

count on love's delays rather
than fingers
that linger too
long at the throat

with a voice like a goat she eulogized this
coming of age as a
coming apart

the chords, cords I wish I
could wrap them about my neck
and swing like I used at

recess, recession, procession again

the in-betweens are nothing for it's
the ends in which we find
solace
chaos
rage

not in that order, never finding order

chaos
rage
grief

no relief now for any beast

art
muse
work

only the savage yield all the
muse
work
ambiguity

no flow; no go

school
work
death

cut out the middle man

whole-sale
retail
boredom

mandate a new beginning

birth
nothing
death

not in that order, never is there order

birth
death
nothing

The triptych flips around
flops down
unhinges

uncoils

uncouth


undone



redone




undone




never the same

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Three-part Discord

I.

So I walk
out
to the street

and I see her again.
She fucks up my name.

I can't understand her trouble with s's.

It was the third time
we met, I told her my name.
The fifth I first corrected her pronunciation.

By now I've given up and
I fear I'll come to like it.

She tells me she needs cigarette
She never asks.
I tell myself it's a quirk, like the French,
but she's from the States.

I shrug it off and try
to not make excuses for
making excuses for her.

My fucking God, she's beautiful.

So I fail.
I have no willpower.

She leans in and gropes my hip pocket.
It's so vulgar and so seductive that
I have to object.

She walks away my Kingstons
and I stand alone under the streetlights

with a little less self-respect.

II.

It's like a fucking game
with her
or some kind of obsession

like how many ungrateful breaths
can she take?

She takes my paycheck and my tax returns
and my dignity.

She calls me out in public and says
I'm the reason we never go out anymore.
Everyone thinks we're frigid because
I don't want to have a mortgage on the furniture?

United we stand, she preaches,
but it's only for me to
bend to her will.

I know she can't mean anything to me if
I just walk away,
find someone to treat me decent.

She even insists on living with me though
we don't even fuck anymore.
So I try to give it to her straight and
walk away, but when she calls to me
"Jazon," I turn around.

She tells me no one has ever proposed to her
and before I can say a word, she does.
Just one:

Yes.

III.

The children don't understand violence,
but they know it like a nightly ritual.

Her problem with s's is elevating.
She can't even pronounce, "citizen" anymore, and
that's a fucking c.

Now she wants me healthy, she wants me
to think she's ashamed, but I know that
secretly she'd rather have me weak.

The real problem is that the neighbors
are talking.

The walls, I find, are paper and thinning.

So she makes me work out
Early to bed
Fiber that won't dissolve and gets stuck on my
vocal cords.

I wish she'd just let me have the bitter pills,
but she says she's protecting me.

The worst is when she makes me give up
smoking.
She doesn't even know I never smoked.

I only carried them so you would notice me.
I knew you fucking loved your cigs, I yell at
the top of my mucked-up voice,
but she won't listen.

So I grab a Kingston and I light it up.
She turns and I burn through her eyeball
and it sizzles
and I like it.
I do the other and kick her in the guts for good measure.

When I finally walk away, I leave her
blind as justice and
green as liberty.

She doesn't say a word when I slam the door
and walk out onto the street again.

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To M-

I can't write about you anymore
you're not my muse
there's no use

I haven't kissed a soul in three years
how bout you?
you haven't kissed my soul in three years
how bout now?
can you miss me just for my sake?
one last favor before I fade from your mind like I faded from your heart
It's not your fault
you've done it too
I've lost you too
I've lost

somewhere in the nebulous remains of puppy love I've
Romanticized your memory your
flesh your
breasts your
breath your
scent
fabric softener and tuna
nostalgia hurts like
a knife through the skull
hewn of that which it destroys

clarinet reeds
I got my own and you gave back
my mouthpiece but kept my voice mom couldn't see you carrying that around like the
rings and lockets and ceramic
dragons and painted glass bottles
green tea that ugly beautiful
green sweater I miss you in

gym days the other bra the
sun sets on the park bench
children's games but still
we think we're adults
trying so damn hard and
failing

I'm smaller than I was or the world is bigger
I feel the absence of feeling your absence I want
to miss you I can't help
myself
me me me I I I

The box was yours, you knew it but this is
mine this isn't about
you it's about
me I can't feel
you I want to

you weren't just my friend you were more
you were less but this isn't yours
I have to purge it I'm afraid that I'll hurt you I'm afraid that I'll hurt us but us is nothing and
we is dead
this is mine this is mine this is mine this mine this mine

My head is splitting like a strip mine
a spring
it's flowing but I refuse to bleed myself the humors
aren't balanced they don't need to be
the chemicals don't need to be
chemicals clynical cynical cuckoo's nest
nest of lies bed of roses cat's meow
octopus's garden

defiling the floor with a yellow submarine and a blue ballpoint cursing the
wax
that removes and renews buffs and destroys
the past
you're gone now the cleaning crew stripped you from me and they're on my payroll

It's my fault but I had to do it

the end of an era

doors close and I'm left with windows like widows
looking back the hall of mirrors
fall of

nothing
delusions need to be abandoned for worse or worse
or worse still tomorrow comes
too fast and
someday never comes

I bite my thumb
why does everything come back to it the
year I miss more than you it
was
a mindset it was bad but good
so good
so good
I hardly believe it anymore it's
a figment
so good
so good

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Revolution

is my
revolution
borne of revolt?

am I incited
incensed
impelled?

or is it a
revolution

the way I circle
and girdle
and loop?
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Malus

Sure, it
keeps the doctor
away,

but--
when I look--
I see the first gnostic
triumph

of my true love,
Eve
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TV

Like a 13" black
and white TV I
am blind to the world's
details and incapable of
fathoming its expanse

Like a blue tarp no
longer temporary I
am a symptom no
the genuine plight

I can no more reconcile
my grief and humor than
I can shingle my injured
roofs and replace my
antiquated technologies
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IV

what would you mean
in my veins

I mean
IV

intra-

coffin lids and nails
and mirrors for the first time
and dressing for the last
and

-venously

one from me
replaced with
jello
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To T-

it will close
with an alphabetical list of first lines,
but if I have it my way
it will open with three words

next time round

and I'll tell what will be different
and I'll fear what will be
the same

I'll acknowledge your cloak and dagger deviance
I will not fear you
I will ask you a million times for the truth
I will not hear you

when all's said and done it will be so
structured as I say
ordered presuming contrast against what it isn't

this tome I'll write for you will be for your ears
it will sound from your throat
it will catch on your heart
but it is always for my eyes alone

these eyes, these holes

and for you means for you
and for you means nothing
and for you means everything
about you trapped inside it

I'll end it
with a last book
a poem or a suite

to express everything I can't say here
and everything I didn't say there

those moments I watched you speak
those impressions left on my swollen mind
sore from your cadence
knowing nothing of your speech

If I have it my way
I will end it with you
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Lockjaw

What in the face of
future meeting past am
I to do with mysef?

Shall I fell the tree
of He and me?
I, the sapling

Aye, the colt

Is it worth my name
to collapse and be
buried at the crossroads

Nails in coffins from the
Inside out that He who
treads upon me
dies of tetanus

joins my haunt
or burns in Hell

it's the choice I'm given
the choice I give you:

Live on in His way
or live on in mine

Either way we always
make it
home

Devil said
Hell or haunt

And I'll choose Hell
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01/III/06

I'm sending you away
with this letter.
With luck
You'll find a place to lay.

The feud is over but
the city's overrun

with corpses in the street.
Oh how I empathize.

Do you remember?
That was me
once
before you tore
me away from it all?
That was me

and now that's you
and countless others.

It's why
I'm sending you out.

I wish you the best
that wishes can buy
but the older I get
the more I realize that

wishes are parallel
to the way things are going.

It's a sickening superfluosity:
hope.

Still, it's what twinkles even
in dead eyes.

I won't whine too much, but
your eyelids won't shut and
your pupils are coal black,
Rose. And cold as the clay

where you've been and
where you're bound.

Where I'm sending you now.

I refuse to close
by turning up 'cause
it's too much like hope and

the truth is,
dreams are coincidental
to fate.
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