the never-was sailor

standing on the deck, staring out over a calm sea, like eternal pancakes running forever to four horizons; hoisting the sails to bleed white in the sunset and carry wind in their palms; aching through the long lonely isolation of that enormous blue wilderness, that alien landscape, while my beard pokes further from my face and my heart hurts with the dull shock of longing; thirst floating on an ocean of undrinkable water; a triumphant return from far lands to my wife and children, and the rise up of that blood feeling like electric eels inside of me, ecstatic, before the old itch returns and i feel the pull of the sea once more; all the things i have never felt because my legs have never left land for long enough.

the book trials

the beehive is buzzing beneath my skin. i am zippering up the last melodies to fold up and bed beneath for the winter. be a tree for me, sling your sap sticky over my tongue, stain the shadows in sweet phosphorescence, and caress the wind with your whispering needles. when i was a child, my father used to cut my hair. our kitchen turned into a barber shop those afternoons. i remember thinking what a talented dad he was, that he knew how to cut hair, but did something else for a living. my hair is wild now, uncontrollable. it is learning to sing. my girl has a body like a fire truck, like something i used to dream about. when i kiss her i become the numbers above the elevator, switching every floor, our lips touch and the doors open, and every number i am, i glow.

when the future looked like a cartoon, the bellowing was faint, but now that the future is a fist inside an anthill, the bellowing is an empty belly

when the dust settled, our guns were rusted over. the man at the bar crumbled into a pile of dirt with daisies where his grin had been. the arriving twelve o'clock train sounded like a mother in hard labor. we didn't move at all. for three hundred years we stood there. the time felt like sand on the back of my neck, grains shifting, moving, blowing in the wind. the building collapsed around us. they built an enormous city where the town used to be. we were statues in a park. everyone was under the impression that we were great works of art. but at some point i decided to move again. the people around me seemed pretty alarmed. my mouth tasted like cactus death. i sure could have used a beer. but out of nowhere a massive snarling mechanical beast came roaring by. "what in the hell is that?" i said. "it's a car," said one of the funny dressed people. well, i didn't know what a "car" was. "aren't you a statue?" said another one. "son," i said "i've ripped off a man's hand and fed it to him for less than what you just said to me." and that was the last he said about that.

my grandmother's coffin

it was lighter than i expected. like moving a dining room table. the cancer only left her skeleton and her skin.

you reach inside your heart like it's your back pocket and at the end of the day all you have is a handful of scribbles

we send ourselves out to scraped knees and the edges of buildings, knowing they will hurt, and knowing they are necessary. but we forget, when we are standing on the edge, why it is that we brought ourselves there. i can't sew a dress and i can't ride a horse. i can play a few chords on the guitar and sing a quiet song. i've been thinking, maybe we all know it is a farce, and we just have to let it be. but that's where i get caught up, i think i see through it, and i want to point my finger and say "Look!" but maybe you just have to allow for that. sure this is all an act, but maybe it is all we really have. if i'm playing a part and so are you, then we make up some whole that neither of us can see the outside of, but we know it is there, and we know what it feels like to be inside of it, and maybe that is the whole point right there. i just dont know.

the fruit that grows into a washing machine haircut

in the dreams i am naked. the sky is a drug. zeppelins rupture the air, whining like puppies. the blues man is holding his guitar like it is a marriage. he is really belting it out, and the ripples of music seem on the verge of melting all the buildings for blocks around. he is inventing rock and roll with fingers like an eggbeater, his eyes are closed doing the eternal equation that translates music into sex, where x=the rhythm of the bassline and y=the distance between two bodies. we are laying on a mattress on the roof of a building in the middle of the city. i am rubbing your back and the looks you keep giving me, mixed with the sounds you are making are turning my blood into liquid fire. the desire is thick. just as our lips touch, the sun shines in my bedroom window, right on my face. when i wake up, the fan is spinning on the ceiling, and it is stifling hot in the room, and i am so mad at existence that it was all a dream that i feel like punching it.

if i kiss you where it's sore

when they kitchen sink your back, replant the volume inside unfamiliar music, and set a pack of dogs to sleep around you like flames, there will be no loss of emotion in you. your feet have memorized the steps, even if your head cannot keep up. you are a stronghold. there is a man in the boiler room, red faced and sweating, who keeps it all moving. his fingers are the size of staplers. his chest is a cardboard box. his biceps are the bulging roots of an oak tree. he pushes and pulls, burns his hands, and billows the fires to grow mountains, to engineer car crashes, to burst a small cloud into ten thousand raindrops, to bring my thumbs up to brush away your tears. you remind me of an old song i used to know, the way you get stuck in my head. i find myself humming the melody of your lips. it's the prettiest tune i know.