I just saw a middle-aged man with a blue t-shirt and khaki shorts with glasses and a bald spot pass my house on a black mountain bike with a rack on the back, followed very closely by a middle-aged man with a blue t-shirt and khaki shorts with glasses and a bald spot on a black mountain bike with a rack on the back. I have to sit down.

Unfinished Prose

Oh baby.  The Earth is old and I am young, what should we do? 

Damn.   Eat everything.  All of the things. 

Curve space until we can fit into five manifolds.

Steal things from an old person who will be forgotten, and love those things with more force than they even deserve, just to keep a vestige of another human alive for one moment longer.

I don’t suppose I’m dreaming when I see you kiss yourself, I know you are more than one.  If both of you would hold me but for a moment I could perhaps see into the void again, Kerouac’s Void that reflects only the most pure parts of the self.  Don’t think about anything that isn’t life-affirming or death-affirming, it doesn’t matter.  Man oh man when those stars come up over this city I see incomprehensible distances but not nearly as far as when I look into your eyes because that is deeper than the distance to Orion’s silver garter and more blue than Andromeda flying over to meet us. Look around; there is no one else here today.  I mean that real pretty, like when you step into a room it’s not that everyone disappears, it’s that they were never there to begin with.  It’s just you today.  And don’t forget to wear clean underwear, ‘cause you’re going to crash pretty hard into something big something sinister and it will consume that sparkle in your toes and the wood in your pants while birds fall screaming from the sky all around, things getting dark and gray but red oh so red and one man in black approaches and loads one chamber in his shotgun and says “this is all, and all was never one but for you” and points it right to your face where the “click” of the hammer signifies nothing but a joke, and eternity vanishes then and there except for the hummingbird that dreamt every moment, and now beats its wings a hundred times per human heartbeat and flies to its nest of newspaper and candy bars and hummingsex to finish what it started.

Sledding Drunk

The trees are white tonight

and moan a little

dust from a house being recreated

paintings falling down into the snow

drops of red in the wash

  he cut his face on god knows what

traveling fast down a slope

and the whiskey made the blood flow out

all around

and it took time for those surrounding to notice

that the ground was changing

a puddle getting lower

a path forms, following the drunk and the dumb

  everyone needs to leave, they say

it isn’t safe, pathogens rising from the earth

like dust from a pillow

don’t breathe so much, they say

it is airborne

and your breath will not save you

  the people listen and find their families

go to coffee and smiles

or back to where ever they were trying to escape

  but those ones that don’t leave

hang on the outskirts and come back

breathing deeply

knowing that it won’t save them

and that that is the point

and it feels good to be dying sometimes

and the trees whisper stories

and nobody listens

From Winter 2014

It is white now

snow coming down from whoever is dropping it

i think about all the things I could be

I still could be those things

but choosing is all

and it’s not so arbitrary as I sometimes tell myself

  I don’t have other people’s stories to tell

I have my own but I don’t know what they mean

my own body has a history it has lived

it has felt

my bones are an artwork through time and space

the path taken an elaborate dance

unchoreographed

as it will continue to be

Text:

Cleverly walking so

fucking clever but

the trees are falling and

the waves choose to drag

seaweed and

poisonous fish

onto the shore

and the dog steps in it and

your face is suddenly

wet but then the 

sun goes

out

and the quiet is so peaceful

When Samael and Sofía found each other among the toys and and fur and blood and pictures and fossils, she took the eyes from her host and lifelong friend, laying still in the rubble, that she may see the world as he did and that he may enjoy the earthly sights for another thousand years. She traded her left for his and realized that to look out of two different eyes created a resonance, one which grew stronger with every moment, and she quickly had to cover one lest her teeth come loose and burn through the dry soil. She fashioned a patch from a sapling and turned to her brother. 

A Story About Teeth

Short love stories, some unrequited

I don’t really want to give up the

feeling of your side lightly touching mine

as we walk to the gas station

even if it means

that’s all that will ever touch

twenty-seven now (exercises in general relativity)

I asked her at the train

right on schedule

for thirty years time

to grow and to understand

and readiness would come

    I could not hear her answer though,

the train was too loud,

and as she spoke her reply

her coat caught on the train

and she was carried away

    Seeing her

receding, I proceeded

to extend my arm to mend

the distance, but in that

stationary second I traveled

a hundred miles away

     but no more,

and we traveled together

still facing one another

    And though we are a hundred miles apart,

we are only that

and no more

 and as the train draws closer

to that photon it has been chasing

     we’ll draw closer and closer

and she’ll whisper her answer in my ear

just before it all stops,

for that brief eternity when we are one

                          And when this train finally slows

we will find ourselves once again

 one hundred miles gone

still facing each other, just like that day

 so long ago

when we promised thirty years

      a date come and gone on earth,

         us still teenage lovers

                        light-years from our past,

     fifty miles from home

Warm Beer

A passing man sees two young lovers embraced in

ungrateful lock. Jealousy takes his hand

when the leaving girl, out of sight

of her lover is suddenly gun-faced, the man

behind the arm trying brave-face

but failing, is so scared himself, that the

situation escalates and a shot will soon be fired but

the passing voyeur notices a flaw in the scared person’s

plan, his footing is poor and one swift movement from this jealous man

could throw the scared one off his feet and

save the day.  Jealousy steps in and says

“It’s your move, friend.  But being held at gunpoint is

more than you will be held tonight.  Call her lucky.”

  He fixes himself dinner, the beer is

bad and the ringing fades

quicker than he thought.

I saw a girl from my past,

but not from much of it.

She still works in the same pet-supply store

stacking tuna on cardboard

but her hair is straighter now

and she’s studying chemistry

at the local community college.

I can tell her head is full of dreams

because she always tells me about the

next thing she plans on doing,

and it’s never too crazy but

just enough to make me think

her actual plans are much more insane

and wonderful than she

would ever want anyone to know.

  She stacks the cat-food, three at a time,

the bearded dragon strokes its chin.