First Part

I've begun writing a loose mixed poetry "novel." I don't know how many parts it will be at the moment, or if I might go back and change anything for the finished work. For now, here are the parts in the order I intend them to be read, as I make them. I know what it's about, but I'm not telling.

--- 

1. "How I Got Here"

If I remember clearly
Sometime before all this
I was writing something

Now, it's just
Old moss growing on
Dead dreams
But it was a slow and boring
Decomposition

The spokes on the tires
Of that bicycle I got
When I was
Fourteen
Were rusty and started to
Detach
From the wheel

It's funny now
But at the time
The helmet may have saved me
But the headache
Still hurt
Like hell

And I just laid there
(Lied there?)
And looked at the sky
And the grass
And I felt my head pounding
And I waited for the warm jets
To come streaming down my brow
the hot and thick stuff
the red reminders running off my skin
And none of it was there
And I felt okay

My outside was fine
But inside I was like that bicycle
Twisted and bent
Snapped and rusty
Run far beyond its lifespan

The axel came loose as we
Crossed the threshold
Between expectation
And reality

And I flew over the handlebars
And I landed in your lap

But you were cold
And you didn't want me
And so I lied
(Layed?)
In throes of lament
For sexual resolution
I clawed at your skirt
And I tore at your blouse
To ravish you
And fit my teeth over everything
That I knew I was custom-built for

But you did not want me
You found no allure in my twisted frame
My mottled paint, torn and peeling
My wheels misshapen and angular
My muted bell
with mud caked thick around the clapper
My inverted brakes
bent outward like a flailing bird
My chin buried deep in the dirt

I saw no scratches
No bruises
No red skin to speak of
But you looked deeper
And you saw my lacerated heart
And my liver so aged and hardened
And I begged like some paper bag drifter
On his knees before a torch singing goddess
I wanted you to have me
Make me whole
But you pushed me away
Away from your lap
your home
your love
your life

So here I am
I limped back to the crash site
My bike still in homage
To some freakish doctor's foliage
All cartoon lines and wild color

I am alone
But that's how I got here.

I've got smoke in my lungs

And a past life in the trunk

---

“willfully throw my body to the flames and dress my skin in gasoline” (2012)

let this conflagration leave me fallow

this self-immolation, this towering billow of scorched flesh

is my monument to renewal, to catharsis, to regeneration

this hallowed form I assume, with arms spread christlike

is my monument to sin, to repentance, to ascendance

this body curls in the flame, with all its tears and gushing veins

washed out from within me, I can step proudly from behind my shadow

and walk freely into eternity

Someone must console these lonesome daughters

No written word or ballad will appease them

---

“anxiety” (2012)

subdermal

the ice that shifts beneath my skin

fiery fingers crawl like spiders from my veins

licking at the air in wide gasps through a garish, gaping maw

in in more more

until a vacuum surrounds me

and the pressure pushes my soul from my every pore

it filters through my skin and disperses like spores

like a disease; sperm careening like hellhounds for the wincing ovum

announcing itself like a pestilence

like a foul blister on the heel of the world

awaiting the miscarriage, awaiting the perversion

so thick, running through the fingers of a mourning Lord

pooling at the feet of the One True God

who put His faith in me

and delivered me

to suicide.

I know that God is in the radio

Check, checkin' the stations.

---

"Listening" (2012)

That purest of ecstasies
Cascading from the stereo system
Washes over every part of me
It kneads its rounded palms
And sharped knuckles
Into my temples
It pulls at my limbs
So I may better receive
The holy vibrations
The glorious resonance
I feel these waves breaking into me
Crashing against my skull
I am in love

Creep down the alleyway

For you.

---

"and the music swells" (2012)

this love
is profound
like the sun
brimming
over the
horizon.

a cosmic
moment
so unfathomably
encompassing
you cannot
help but
be enveloped
in its warmth
and be
blinded
by its
brilliance.

my heart
is filled
with your
spirit.

my eyes
shimmer
with your
delicate
being.

my soul
is alight
with the
fire of
the sun;
a love
so intense
that it grows
with every
moment.

I am
enlightened
by you
as you
are enlightened
by the earth.

There's no one to stop you

You can do what you want to, whenever you want to.

---

"Against the Membrane, Pushing" (2012)

Waiting for a sweetheart
Fingers scrape the bottom of the barrel
Feel the grooves of the grain
The wood soaked with fermented grapes
The wavy winding signals bend the past into a circle that spins in place and shakes off the water spraying all over the kitchen
Palm pressed firmly on the hot plate
Lay my head against the gunshot wound
I want to hear your heartbeat
I want to know you're there
I want to sink into your life

Follow me down to the Rose Parade

Lonely moments yield strange and intimate art.

---


"The Spoken Word" (2012)

Here I am
Covered in cat hair
Maybe in love
Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror

I take the glasses off
The artist unfulfilled
The spoken word
The cynic

My hair
Tousled, dusty, black
My face
Contours receding as my stomach shies away

I spend the night alone
Watching dreams float past my eyelids
Looking in the bathroom mirror
In someone else's house
I see the man and not the teenager
The man who sleeps alone