[{(underscored and set aflame)}]
my teeth have turned to sand
my teeth have turned to sand
These are the most recent things i've writ that make me want to explode
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i've never felt so free as i have
________________falling from atop the
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Trapeze
======and i let out a [scream]
-----------------------------------------that hovered
____________________________over
..................................................................me
for just a moment
}}}}}}}}}}}}and broke
>>>>>>>>like a soapbubble
```````and sprinkled over everything
!!!while I layed there in the net
********slowly
~~~~~~~~~~~bouncing
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I feel them pushing their hands
pressing from the inside piercing
my belly and breast
to pull back the flesh and crawl out
8 blushing babies with pink putty bodies
and wide eyed wild smiles
dancing in circles with their
nobby fat fingers all woven together
and singing something only fresh babies could know
8 hot little hand grenades
exploding inside me dividing,
dividing. filling a sky with
their baby fat wings
they're trying so hard just to see
the outside of me. just for the chance
to pop and to bleed
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tracing a pitted pavement vein so familiar
candle wax invades the air that smells to me
faintly of snow, though it is neither cold enough
nor far enough away from here to flake
and fall all white all over us
today, at least, it feels like a fall
and i'm looking for leaves to pile and scatter
to hide under hoping to be
invisible but thought about
and nowhere near to hearing you
call my attention
I want to be aquarium
and let all these things swim in me
for you to see, to tap at, and wonder
write stories about and draw pictures
so i can see those pieces and begin
to understand what crawls inside me
a performance piece entitled:
failure: a study of wasting
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shattering glass finds
velocity that >>>tears
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> tears
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> tears
accidentally flung by the infliction
................................ of my feet
scuttling along the alleyway
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crawling all night
burning the hell out of
every dumb gland that ever pressed
it's will against the shift of my hips
pushing air with a violence
pronounced loudly and not at all
i keep pressing the pen
through my hand
pulling all the wires from inside me
trying to know how this fading exhausts
how i'm left all out of affection
and pounding my heel on the floor
the succession of angers building
crumble from the top and
cover me cold & hot & fuming
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if you are cold i'll light myself afire
and form a pile of ash at your feet
all crumbling misery
soon enough forgotten
expiring in use
all used and exhausted
all bitter and angry
all fuming and fighting
invisible
all this to make you say:
"what an epic waste of time"
"what a sorry sort of mess
he left here on the floor"
and somewhere i am
still adding up ciphers
hoping they will somehow fill the room
knowing all this is useless
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I thought it appropriate to post something for the anniversary of the most shocking event I've experienced in my young life. I remember waking up on September 11th 2001 to my ringing cell phone. My roommate Justin was calling from work to tell me that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers. I immediately turned on the television news to watch in disbelief as the first tower poured thick dark smoke into the air. Moments later I watched live as the second plane dispeared into the other tower. I will never forget that day.
I decided that I would post a couple of things I wrote that were inspired by these events. Actually, the first piece is something that I wrote well before (July 2001). I wasn't really writing about anything I was just putting things down as they came to me. Some time after 9/11 I came accross this and it was kind of eerie. It seemed somewhat pertinant after the fact. The other piece is one that I wrote after the events of 9/11 occurred and were inspired by them.
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the beginning of a war (July 2001)
I'll tell you now, though i know you're not listening
the beginning of a war is at the very door
and no one will be left to stand
no guard will be left undropped
no vessel of blood and water unburst
no nightmare unrepeated
every triad overturned and balancing on the point tentatively
eyes have filled the room but no room for ears
to gather attentively to lips with torn out tongues
I tell you there is a war
and hell, mouth open wide, inhales
try and throw your stones, but harder than that
a dent or a scratch is hardly noticed
but a mile gets further and further to walk, further to run
thick gray smoke puts its hands over your eyes
puts its fingers to the back of your throat to scratch
there is lead in the bloodstream forming a candlestick
to hold a shaft of wax without a candlewick
there is nothing incandescent to campare to the expiring moon
and the thinness of the air is a brilliant strategy
the placement of the sun, obtrusive and defensive,
an advertisement for light
my turniquet loosed, the blood rushed, the concrete gasped for air
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9:11 a.m. (nothing but a sterile page of paper)
Oct. 2nd, 2001
the four frames
holding the earth in place
are twisting in commotion
earth separating from ocean
and land becoming sea
a worthless worry
why my hands can't
stop my eyes from bleeding
leaving salty stains to mark this
separation
(of matter, of mind, of spirit)
my thoughts, quieted enough,
most resemble this image of you
in the kitchen, at the table
staring through the saline
at my picture
i laid up for days
with nothing but a sterile page of paper
and a broken pencil
trying to write a letter
and it's been hell and five days of waiting
to find you (named as a survivor,
i waited in hell for five days
just to know if i could write her)
under a blind focus
and blistering heat
the city's bones upon my back
a melting earth beneath my feet
my sinews twisting on the rack
and silence
the air as still as the broken ocean
for days, for hours, then...it ends
memory ripples in
sends you through me in a shiver
makes waves follow wave
and back again
brings me to you like a whisper and
spills onto me like the rain
you are the strength still remaining in my diaphragm
and the air its pulling in
the ground beneath my blisters
splits and separates
under the wave of wings still beating
and this incredible climb is like
a lifetime chasing after the light of the new moon
in the whites of your bloodshot eyes
just keep singing and
i will find you by the breeze
the body heals and the heart is a compass
pointing home
where you, in the kitchen, at the table
still set a place for me
+
whisper-whale
she was a sound bounced off a cloud
into my palm (shut tight)
my ears thin in your teeth and my teeth
present and separate and counting
i am ticking away moments like bird seed
meal to meal to meal
hand to foot to heart
cripple
i ache like the stars in the black, blue-white
i ache like the stars
like a pen scratching without ink
against a wall
i am the empty, echoing against
sky and smoke
you are the unswallowable night
she wore pink lipstick and blue eyes
and smiled like christmas lights
i can’t help but feel a victim to this new view
she was only a scratch and now a cancer
growing in me by rapid multiplication
i feel more than a little moved
a little depressed because a crush
never becomes an affair
i only become a little more a recluse
she wore a sleeve over my heart
and laughed like shattered crystal
as i shatter here just remembering
i am a little like stale bread
as crusty inside as i am outside
and laying still on this abandoned dish
on this thin glass plate awaiting butter
or maybe gravy
wondering how gravity allowed these
invisible things
to leave me brittle
and white
i’m wondering when my life will
come to a sputtering halt or if
this is just the moment where everything
slows down just before taking off
every day i forget 100 essential things
every night i dream a dozen
meaningless dreams
and sleep becomes less and less appealing
i tried to catch your scent on the breeze
lifting off the lake
i caught nothing
the breeze was too weak
off the evaporating pond and
barely brushed the cracking earth
i slept and dreamt of a thousand locked doors
and a hundred useless keys
and at least a dozen reasons
why it didn’t matter anyway
i just wanted to smell you on the breeze
and paint a picture of it
i heard sirens
tonight
laying here
unsleeping in my
bed with this
emergency feeling
no need to stop at any lights
if you’re coming here
tonight. i’ll clear
the roads before you and light your path
with burning branches
and strong flowers and
shake here anxious on my back
stretching past my skin after you
with prayers written
on my lips, on my hands, on my knees
pulsing like a lightning rod as i wait
for you to arrive
in a fast car and flashing lights
just in time
to save my life
it’s the sabbath
after a long night of
breeding regret and
strange dreams
i wake to invent
new promises to break
and resolutions too weak
to keep my back straight
but i feel a calm
knowing this morning
is not last night
and my face is not the same
rinsed off and holy i
could be
but dressed again and
perfumed i board
the N in the direction of water
and watch as a man,
sporting a gold chain
and a mustache, performs
chin-ups
and a woman with
arms packed full of bags
and baskets refuses to sit down
in the dog park a rottweiler
gnaws a femur
and occasionally i close
my eyes
i am much too
relaxed for a sinner
much to calm for a chronic
procrastinator, depressed
obsessor, obstructed creator,
empty handed procurer
if it weren’t for dog food commercials
i might not know what marrow
was, and yet i depend on
it. filling the space in my
bones, building up blood cells
i depend on a lot of
things i can’t see
i’ve built a life around it
but built another life besides
like a cancer, like a growing
black mole somewhere under
my clothes (a dependency on things)
and all of this blood and all of
these magnets pulling and pooling
draw these lethargic flies around me
tiny sentinels, vomiting
scavengers. yet still, in this place i grow closer
to understanding God.
our bodies
move in circles and
answer eachothereachothereachother
while we
go on unknowing
still trying
to ask for names
when
our lungs have
found a unison
our hearts are still
chasing
meanwhile. . .
our minds are still noticing the circles
and
not the fact
that our cells
are leaping
at eachothereachothereachother
still not too tired
to type this; write this; or send smoke signals
but too tired to remember this tomorrow
so, don’t remind me
just how cute and small I am, trying
to say these ordinary things in morethan-
ordinary ways
if you really must respond, please
let the words lay on your lips
I want only to know that moment
Just before the sentence lifts
And I hear air
A certain hour of the night slows me
down to single notes . . . long tones. . .
that pull my eyes in semi-circles.
just lying here, the hour folds me
like a paper fan. still, I just lie
here crimped along the bedsheet
naming the spots on the wall after
my regrets, for the ashes I am,
on crowded mantles.
A certain hour of the night
I dedicate to arson;
my several attempts to set myself on fire
(same place and time tomorrow).
Too many letters, too many words,
too many pictures with the faces blurred.
And what if I wasn’t thinking?
What if I wasn’t trailing off
(like words I don’t want you to hear)?
What if this match was real and
this bed was gasoline and I actually went to sleep?
my hands are curtains drawn
to block the sun. my eyes,
already scorched and hot,
like smoking guns, looking
for your icewater tall silhouette,
rocking chair body. To feel you
baby cradle rocking . . . rocking . . . rocking
Mes mains sont des rideaux dessin�s pour bloquer le soleil mes yeux,
d�j� roussi et chaud, comme les pistolets de tabagisme, recherchant
votre silhouette grande de l'eau de glace, basculant le corps de
chaise. Pour vous sentir basculer de berceau de b�b�. . . basculer.
. . basculer
My hands are curtains drawn to block the sun my eyes, already turned
russet and hot, like the guns of nicotinism, seeking your large
silhouette of the water of ice, rocking the body of chair. To feel you
to rock of cradle of baby. . to rock. . to rock
Mes mains sont des rideaux dessin�s pour bloquer le soleil mes yeux,
d�j� tourn� roux et chaud, comme les pistolets du nicotinism,
recherchant votre grande silhouette de l'eau de la glace, basculant le
corps de la chaise. Pour vous sentir � la roche du berceau du b�b�.
� la roche. � la roche
My hands are curtains drawn to block the sun my eyes, already turned
russet-red and hot, like the guns of the nicotinism, seeking your
large silhouette of the water of the ice, rocking the body of the
chair. To feel you with the rock of the cradle of the baby. with the
rock. with the rock
Mes mains sont des rideaux dessin�s pour bloquer le soleil mes yeux,
d�j� tourn� reinette-rouge et chaud, comme les pistolets du
nicotinism, recherchant votre grande silhouette de l'eau de la glace,
basculant le corps de la chaise. Pour vous sentir avec la roche du
berceau du b�b� avec la roche avec la roche
My hands are curtains drawn to block the sun my eyes, already turned
rennet-red and heat, like the guns of the nicotinism, seeking your
large silhouette of the water of the ice, rocking the body of the
chair. To feel you with the rock of the cradle of the baby with the
rock with the rock
Original words by Brendan (copyright: automaton publishing); translations by Sherlock�