gray interval—elsewhere

i cared for it—
the gap—even as it left
for the factory

the sun—a punch-clock
forced into its hand—				 						
i wait moonward

the gray ghost—again whose
limbs crack walnuts while
the worker labors elsewhere

barking sickness
at the pristine ghost— 							
disengaged—without remainder

my impatience
ferments—stench-lit                                            							 
looks only where i am struck								                     

by the locus in front of me                                    						  
a foot—
an inch— 											        

depending on the pretense—                                 						
i cannot                                                           							
cross

pop your hood

is this plausible? 
tell me if this tracks— 

(heavy blocks moving inside)

how does meaning build momentum? 
through residue? 

(we’ll get to know you as you watch)

i’m gonna try my luck
on the outside— 

(orange water / orange sky) 

the grass is light brown— 
withholding assent 

for a song

working with unbearable 
nostalgia—turning it off 
aggressively when its
haunting melody cuts

& throws upon you the 
image of the world as a 
little town 

it doesn’t bring you down
but lifts you too high up on 
a pole through dark clouds

where you see a lonely man
on the roof of a church

using you to measure 
the worth of each hymn

balustrades

winter wind & stars
appear like balustrades
when i look & start to
wonder 

i see a dozen trios in the
formation of snowmen—
some have eaten many
carrots

others have been more
careful with repetition—
but this won’t keep the 
wind from 

eating away at them—
their flesh & blood skirting
down all stairways
in unison

psychogenic fugue

i am drifting away down
the metal rainbow that
cuts through a scape of
dirt & windows where

a spiral appears through
a dark stroke—showing
things that can’t be shared
but must try regardless—

beneath the rosebush—ants
crawl through worlds that
keep confusion intact until
a blank lapse beckons a

yielded ghost—open 
handed & eager for its first
time doing anything—yet
is prepared to be lied to

To Make a Movie

If all days have left you wanting,
like holding a candle to something and
other things you never do,
do not despair,
says my voice and not-my voice.
What they have done in the past,
in the fragment of less than the past,
in a still from a movie
depicting hands holding what you don’t,
is only the finest cloth,
horsehair under a crinoline.
Their days were much more ample, really
whether skirts full or slender, they are like you,
and they too are remembering

You know it is human to have hands that hold
such an object,
So your cheeks know to be wet for
what is lean in your life

A dream coupled,
what is another word for past,
that is not but a meager wound?
A dream coupled has a better chance,
time links to time
like arms strewn through elbows.
A dream on the chainlink of time
is a many-handed forthcoming.
What is another word for future
but a beloved weeping,
our precious injury?

The Nihilist

the weather channel hums
in the nail salon
a human footprint fossilizes
in the sidewalk
the bugatti in the window, sparkling
i punch the fashionable couple in the face
on the street
one face for the two of them
how much square footage for
my unbearable feelings?
there’s ire in the
dough
i’m not a nihilist,
that’s why i punched them

Miroloi Poem

Your daughter closest to the flute
Plays her airs
Heiress of your temper
Where does she sleep?

Folded in an Epirotic lull

After Heaving with a Flu-like illness, Good Posture

I woke with new eyes
The cough on the train did not frighten me
veils of cloud were fresh upon
This future
landscape of bits of
Earth, hardened
To glass and spire
Mirrors going up and up
Reflecting only sky and
Pigeon
Biting into a broken apple

a Wedding

a mediator was sent
to talk about the ceremony
your eyelids are riveting in
the morning
quarterly lull
in our lover’s quarrel

impotent morning
hyena memorabilia
i look and still see what i think i know
i lift the veil for a crimson mouth
i knew to be pale pink
altered under dusty taffeta

Demon seed

I met a beautiful poet who had been
my age once and he said you have a face
for a raindrop
to enter my personal machine zone from
which any labor is easy
 
I need to sit at silver vanity with my legs
crossed properly and breathe in
the aroma of petroleum jelly
ahh superheaven double-up
the crease blue light on a white wall
a balloon in the arch of my foot
 
A healthy palm
culantro spraying through a crack in
the savings bank a meteor
mushroom cloud but pink and
immaterial a fossil of ten 
different animals in inter-coitus beautiful
 
And true forever changes every slide
these are paradise braid train overground
sunsets a great big person in a shirt
reading HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH YET no
i could grow new mouths for punishment
can you hear my name amber
 
Is a euphemism for the offal blackhead
from a whale in reality
linen smells like spinach
but wonder airs the glass out
the synthesized mutilation of a deer
how could people enjoy anything in heaven
 
With their noses rotted off and their ears full
of crud and pests, and no cheeks,
and no hands to lay on cheeks?
i am just like you now
i see a thick baddie with eyelashes
god felt so bad about throwing man out of the garden
 
He felt so awful so he opened
an app with shame in his heart
i was talking
today about the high cost of my
own productivity trying to apologize
for being a dickhead so he gave us the chicken
 
Which gave us the egg which
gave us violence irony and photorealistic oil painting
god couldn't surprise me and now i
am punished with a thick thought
bubble and a wide tongue to find
home sweet perfect less like
 
A biome and more of a biome my
music sounds horrific in the hudson valley
like i’m sawing through sand stoned
i can’t stop telling the french theatre
company joke i have outgrown both
their sekaikan and its underappreciation
 
Martini dupe alert i buy six
dollar saltwater from the butcher shop
and gorge myself thirsty it’s not real
but it’s photo-real how does everyone know 
that it’s gonna rain

Brick garden

I don’t remember
the last time i ate 
a plum only the exact
number of seats
in the civil war
opera house 

Only different names
for prepared pianos 
i grew up
needing and now
body go crazy
an elevator designed

For this
building or its key’s
magnetic signature i
swallowed up
the legend was lost
in my twisting

Inner chambers
but still endured
there is a good
vein
on the other side
the writing is clearer

But backwards
was artifacted
my lovers all know
different methods
my future was
incumbent

My lonesome-
liness existed
without its pandemic
shapes cut into
this continuity
a film i directed

That’s just an eyeball
in real time
a train passing without stopping
a blue blur where
my handmade cap touched
and dried my eye

Sublime slub cotton
subliminal sublingual
a thread of flesh pitched
toward incompatible
futures incompatible nostalgias
too i saw them huge and naked
baby bird

On the sidewalk
pressed flat
oscillation of hostilities
hostilities all lovey-
dovey all cross-
eyed and fuzzy

In my lap wait
that’s a pet
cat named cubby he couldn’t
hurt me on purpose i fell
slow asleep in my belly
tee hottest girl
in my city for one
blink
of alternativelessness 

whale fall

more and more 
an uncoupling of external interest
from the self 

give me a job 
opening doors 

bursting

a pillowy fruit
between my tongue and the roof of my mouth
i think of you and feel joy

my belly full of little cushions

bursting pt 2

a river or
an ouroboros 
my rancid maw
your tangled roots 

bursting pt 3

the days grow teeth and church breath

like breaking down cardboard boxes
is gutting an animal 

drop down menu beverly hills

i just got here
i’m wearing nylon

nothing cute about it

the princess and the pea? 
just the heiress to the mattress factory 
& she's always been 
happy!
she just wanted regular sized oranges. 

gap

huffing ethylene thru the straw at the bottom of a mcdonald's cup 
sucking on my lucky
teeth
in a litter box zen garden 
people can say all kinds of 
shit they don't mean

TODAY THE EXPENSE

was the fence
was the rent

ROBOT OPERATED VACUUM CLEANER

SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR

STRATEGIC DIALOGUE

HI EVERYONE

NO REPLY

OFFICIAL LOOKING UNOFFICIAL VEST

TRUE ZERO WASTED IDEA

SHOW QUOTED CONTENT

THANK FOR PAYMENT

VERY INTERESTING POPSICLE

SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT

from Consent Manager

Untitled

Artisanal fleshwork
Like a hornet caught behind the pristine glass window
Of a brand new fucking craft brewery is how I feel
Thrashing at the sun
No, you’re a burger
Stop trying to get to the point
Everything is a waste of time, you dumb idiot
And I’m a violent piece of shit just like every other one of me
Plebes and thank you
Turkey burger

Untitled

Smell the house in heat

Sunglower

Fatal birch

Pottage

Pleasure is mutable

Art is cloud storage

When you kissed me I became something

What I am imaginary of

Thought of your accordion

Post-happiness

Emphatic drainage

Saw my masculine haunch

It’s just some like little bit of scum

I am the Greg of production

In a fresh pair of cutoff Jeffs

Untitled

I despise my reading of the text

Helmet off and multiple flags down

Fingers in the margins

Bypass coconut

I kind of learned a lot today

New strategy

Cheap beers only

Untitled

May thy soups be ever tasting

Have a stroke and die high

I am trying not to sink

My sorrows into such very bad things

Microphone blossom

Soybean milkpad

FACE AND NECK REMOVER

THIS IS THAT SNAIL STUFF

ENGLISH HOW TO USE

Library bong

With one fing x’d

Massive geomagnetic storm just now in the territories

How about a directional equals sign

Untitled

Personalized tragedy

Reward for walking through rain

Way gone went with

Incredible steaming

Crisp abasement

Golden parlays

A visual crumb

The city glasses out of

All your heroes

Worked for the government

Untitled

Using science, I have discovered a new kind of sadness

You know, you’re really fucking with daddy’s workflow

Here’s a yogurt I found

Still Life

Brief easel

Pain of can’t

All along I rode.a

At the next greek calends
When all the world will be content
And you will be your own
Heir. I mean this unironically
You will be your own air. John
Said you have to hear the air
As if every one of them were
Your vibrations cold train. A
Young mask does not care to
Do chores I easily perceive
How much. I chair it anyhow
Weathering it out under an
Umbral umbrella it is neither
Shabby nor hot wheat comes
Here like cabbies where you
Are. I don’t miss the city where
Being is fundament, is agricultural
I think we are turnips, and as
I’ve gotten grayer my eyebrows
Smile nonsense as you once
As we once spoke on holidays
The correction is absence
Is a peasant’s leave of stay
Sliding out suddenly from
The compound gentry.

Nuclear potash as veteran benefit...

nuclear potash as veteran benefit
in volume finding deep magnates
this is weeping reduction as trace
no longer the liver is noon now
this ostensively rect spits bones
copious wave water re-gills
spiral terminologies of geocholeras
worms become fish as they snuggle
in to umbral alexandria angles meet
me at the next exit this is not an
entrance to mealiness this is rubric
to lunar plexus a sybil shipwright in
sun substitution it grazes me often
how the light is so razor charlie

In a Motel

If they could chart up all the sex we had on a big graph,
If you could just walk around, here and not laugh
If you could emanate a blue light, a blue light not squeamishly pixelated
the technical project would be technically completed,
and we ourselves suddenly
would blast off
for vacation in Manila.

Spell semiotic

I wanted to

I wanted to erm

Lol so awkward to say it

Even the lols were

Even they were gallop polls

Vaulted holes? Surrendered koan

I mean coal surrendered born I

Meant burned I said that again the

King

Fishing the forest copulating as they

Say under the moon and out of

Fear we had the sudden remembrance

Of the printed grotto its images of

Jove, and his multiplicity, always positive

Lies. To the philologists I send

Lies. I come to my senses

Or was that a true proposition,

The explanation of nest never interesting.

Geriatric Mississippi Cruise

The most silent of all lamps

This long passage through song a short cut

I blare my horn twenty time so all the dogs get shorn once

This is a geese festival for twenty HAM radio-hours the load is good it is cerebral

xenotherapy

can you ejaculate an imagining immediately as if that had no concern for me here?
burn up to the tune of the nine therapies for strangers
Yo tambien había hablado mucho
Perhaps no sabe donde está la niñita
via earphones veritably distance airplaces
the rapport between one and another translucent mirrors
Suddenly being watched in the information surplus party
ignorance being distributed in three distinct piles
the first the horse or the vacuum of phases
then reminiscences of court
fifth count of the candle’s inconstant cauldron
finally skip only in zip-ties
until antlers grow tarnlike into the thinking
alleyway of a peace-jacket
so resolve the pointillism under your eyelids into sundered weaving tutorials
tarry where money is attended: non-offending baseball games
wherein he wept ambiently
holding nothing’s hand, it wasn’t easy to navigate yandex to call in the damn ecce homo
I had no idea you ran an online mobile
I simply had to empty my empire
I hardly stepped aside to disguise my orphans
where is the war mainly?
there shuttlecocks under oceans of new turnstiles watch
for just the right moment throwing jade knucklebones
my fleet watches the right stereo die and smile
I can teach you no more young proteus
so sorry I gave you that entelechy
so here are the wires, understand you can’t now go finally
without soldering.

Yes that was the

yes that was the first film
mystic river balcony bar
with that olive tapenade
that could make you go
musical
universal aristocracy of everyone involved
here here
let’s get some applause for these criminals condemned to taxes
and what else
never mind a phrase
i learned of an onion
man in inland croatia
has just come to me
spoken into a church wall
where the Id slops.

Brittle

The philological spasm was on my lips O.D. Brodie
I tried to time the prophecy but there were augers there
Were more, there were much more northern than pirates, viking horse-
Heads and drunk for 3 days in thousands of designations
Of insight. Of course you were there and around there
Always I saw your swim-tights compound trill. Neither
Bound and both gosh: neither bound and both got
Feeler-down I couldn’t. Gosh fuck I couldn’t life you
Down so suddenly and keep going northerly.

Lecture

There seemed to be three options.
The first, contraction, in which the system would, before or after or at the same time as it deadlined or almost deadlined or began to deadline, balloon in on itself, like a deflated football, slough off its skin or its mass in real time in a way that would have been incredible or either really sad or really incredibly sad to see, and sink into its deadlock, its bare bones pulsating with the marrow-heart which had always been held too close or too much at a distance for any respectable kenning or reportable presentation or at the least, at the very least scientific measurement: and perhaps something then, at last, would begin to speak.

The second was expansion, in a proliferation of itself the system would pass over the obstacles, merely empirical at the end of the day, and become more than we ever imagined. Within this option lay a two-fold danger: that it would accelerate beyond comprehension, and become a sort of trinitarian mystery without even the schema, triadic or otherwise, which we have always applied or been able to even the greatest enormities. This was not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the system kept its peace. What would an expansive peace look like? An endless rocketing in every direction? Of fire but the heart of silence in it? But what if the heart was too silent? What if this heat bred a work so cold that the system would dilate in fever, we ourselves sucked into the vacuum cleaner? At any rate, expansion seemed good, seemed the upward path even if in reality it was omnidirectional, or of infinite scope, perhaps it would give us, dialectically, an inner eye on what the first would reveal only apocalyptically: what if we could represent the heart indirectly, as though through laser-proof sunglasses, and toast our marshmallowing champaign glasses or Marlboros, as in a circle without a center whose circumference was everywhere, and all laugh heartily?

There seemed to be a third: rectified equilibrium. This would be a kind of Confucian stabilization of the nodes, a revoking of both the instabilities necessary for setting off contraction and continuing the growth of the upward path or reddening spiralisation of the connective-disconnective edges. This would curve both the downward and the upward spirals into the figure of an open sphere, or circle, cooling the babbling magma or ossified chaosmos that is speculated by the first and second options to be at the heart of it all, respectively, and walking the middle road of peace respectably, like the Anglican church, we would stroll or bathe between two extremes which both in their execution posed potentially final solutions of barbarism or annihilation or even barbaric annihilation. Could we scan the surfaces of the system, then, in a detached topology provided we had a fireproof method for reciprocal and friendly (I mean distant and sea-like) observation: the rectification of heart-names? Would we then write a final haiku always or something? It’s hard to imagine it without relaxing a bit, like the idea of going to a sauna. At any rate, these are the three, or were they really, appearing on the screen just now, and we wanted to know, like kids at a candy store, if you pardon it all, couldn’t  we have all three and in that case who’s papa?

WAKING UP TO A TEXT FROM SISTER ASKING IF I’M AWAKE

waking up to a text from sister 
asking are you awake? 
freaks me out 

i scan through 
scenario 
to possible scenario

imagine the worst 
like a blanketed ninny
waiting up for their teenager

i saw my mom do that
or a mom in a movie

under the warmth of crocheted granny squares
i face plant the pillow
for another hour or at least until the sun comes up

she most likely just wants to vent 
about our cousin’s zionist inlaws

it wouldn’t be the first time

MY BABY KEEPS BANGING HER FACE INTO MY CHEEK

i think she thinks she’s kissing me

STILL A HOTEL GUEST

i've got eyes the size of saucers
the kind that spin boardwalk magic teacups
light up with amusement when i think of coney island
and i think of coney island so i can think of you
and that subway
and those sirens
whirring like my bad whistle whirring
the only sirens here are false fire alarms

some pigeons
not the kind that lure you like, all demure
their filthy eyes don't spin like eating acid

bonfires explode outside 
and i shiver with the fervor 
of a radiator that never turns off

catch me squatting
call me little tramp

i'm trying to see you but i'm bad with directions
which way where to look

TRAIL OF BUGS

There’s this trail of bugs you can imagine if you look at the molding. The way 18 musicians sound driving west in the south, compared to Michigan in a snowstorm. I don’t know the difference in my body but I can dream of it. That trail of bugs you can imagine appraising dots of coffee drops become mocha, which streak when you scratch them, and the dust. To clean the floors, to make the floor weep coffee. The difference of 18 musicians, the only one way you can feel in your body I can only dream.

COWPOKE

The Buddha talks to everyone, you just have to listen for when the Buddha speaks. Everyone can be a Buddha in the temple, but can you be a cowpoke broke but free, switched from steak to beans, lonesome but happy, because anyone can be a Buddha in the temple but can you hear the Buddha when the Buddha speaks, can you be a cowpoke lonesome but happy, because everybody doesn’t have a dime in their old worn out jeans, and the Buddha talks to everyone if you listen for when the Buddha speaks.

MARCH MADNESS

The college basketball coach and his parents who come to every one of his games still. His father is kind of different, he looks like what you could imagine is the same age as his father. His leather hair his still sallow skin his shined hair is like sparkly leather. These are people who like going out, even though the father could just be the son I mean the son could just as well be the father, the way he looks like what you could imagine is the same age as his father.

METROPOLITAN

Charlton Heston on a horse, with a good-looking blonde riding with him, seeing the arm of the Statue of Liberty, thinking he had not been on earth. Mario Cuomo at the Arena, sitting up the beach on a beach chair, thinking should have gone before coming here, thinking all his friends are gone. Exhales mist of oceans, a structure at the end of the world. It’s like a whole new world extracted from the traffic of the old one, these walks of late are so secluded, so constructive, so—from one perspective—suppressive, a stranger on the outskirts at the end of his run. It would be such power to belong to that, the practice not any less at this moment unimaginable, not any less a reason to experiment with prose. Exhales vents of zones belonging in corners of the city much more like home. Walks of late are so secluded, so constructive, so—from one perspective—suppressive, a stranger on the outskirts at the end of his run. It would be such power to belong to that, the practice not any less at this moment unimaginable, not any less a reason to experiment with prose. Charlton Heston on a horse, he said, and Mario Cuomo at the end of his run, all alone.

HARE KRISHNA

Besides when they are eating the Hare Krishna band plays every day all day every day in Union Square. I meet them inside restriction, when I am looking for my cousin, when I meet them. When I meet them inside restriction, when I am looking for my cousin, I meet the Hare Krishna band—the Hare Krishna band that plays every day all day every day in Union Square besides when they are eating. Beside the Hare Krishna band, granite constancies of fountains, marble constancies of commas, anthems. Anthemic sound of sinning everything they don’t play, everything I don’t translate, of satisfaction found in not finding, first experiments in prose.

*

Sometimes the opposite is of sadness

of sadness produces liveness produces

sadness that entails

pear last long enough to be an encounter

hunger producing thighs…

bakery—a hunger’s striving

returns eyes to have a friend

stare in which the desire to defeat the stare was founded

again: the Hare Krishna band

*

Besides when they are eating the Hare Krishna band plays all day every day in Union Square when I meet them. I meet them inside restriction, when I am looking for my cousin, my cousin lives in Spain. First experiments in prose, I am longing for enjambment, to say nothing of translation, first experiments in prose. I meet the Hare Krishna band in my restriction, dream return to Arthur Ave. Life you cannot have muffled, rumbling inside. Beside granite constancies of fountains, marble constancies of commas, empty space. I meet the Hare Krishna band on Arthur Ave. with my cousin, besides when they are eating, my cousin is in Spain. All day every day all day, Hare Krishna. Furtive finishing of sin sound, finished eating before 5 PM.

LATER HATER

Speeding down the I95 texting poems.

It’s raining. This is how I die, being a dumbass

that can’t wait, phone in one hand and a large iced coffee in the other.

I’m late to therapy. My girlfriend is late with her period.

I text her congratulations and a poem about peaches

that is not about peaches. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

Today is for haters only. I’m hungry.

Don’t listen to me. Open your mouth.

I STABBED ENRIQUE WITH A CORN SKEWER

when he finally admitted
to cheating on me
while he was on molly
at a Christmas party
he said I didn't use a condom
baby baby I’m so sorry
and I moved instinctively
how absurd he looked howling
bitch you stabbed me
with a plastic ear of corn
stuck to his bleeding chest
and his mother came
yanked it out quick and said
that's what you get, Quique
that's what you get

WHILE WE SIT IN THE TRUCK SMOKING WEED, HIS MOTHER CALLS

Son I have to tell you something
I’m getting married again
to Ned? You know, Ned?
Oh, don’t be so dramatic
he holds my hand now in public
and he doesn’t care who sees
Quit going on about how he did me
He’s leaving his wife by Christmas
I know we're both politicians but I swear
we’re keeping it on the down low
You don't have to use that tone with me
considering you’re divorced now, too
Come back to Vegas in December
and don't give me that attitude
How about you use that new job money
to pay back what you owe me?
Who’s that in the background?
Who’s coughing? Who are you with?
You’re on a date?
And here I am going on
Well shit
Sweetie, it’s so nice to meet you
we’ll have to do drinks sometime
He really needs a girlfriend so thank God
Oh, this is your first date?
Well I tell you what honey, count yourself lucky
what my son got below the belt
came from his mother’s side of the family

DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

I remember when we lived
in a shack with a broken window
and the always cold shower
we turned on with a wrench
we slept in a twin bed with
scorch marks from the radiator
below the window where
we'd taped a sun protector from my car,
which stopped not even the weakest breeze.
We were so cold, so mad happy, so stoned, so
everything and everything to each other. You
with those eyes that widened with animal snap.
With your belts and your fear of even a blindfold.
You with your control. Your hand on my throat
asking do you love me my heart bursting yes, yes, yes, whole.
Your pacing. Lunging to test. My foot embedded
in the heater. Your howl YES, my hand on your neck.
Me with my control. Swift red,
we whirled in decaying orbit. Somewhere,
silk ribbons whoosh and snap. I want to be
close to you even as I hurt you.
We have moaned our complacency. Now you choose
the manner of my scars.
Come, I'm waving this flag for you.

NEIGHBORS II

What a picture, the sun daggered
through this storm, a rainbow bold and
gold crowns on the maple trees. The street.
A river. The neighbor's man parked
his car to throw trash in her can. Soaked
through his hoodie. Even garbage costs
money. With every slammed bag he says
goddamn bitch goddamn. I watch with my bong
out my window. Forgo hey yo you want a hit
because the rain in New England fucking ruins.
But he raised his head to the arc, water marked
by sunlight. Miracle of light and refraction.
And gone to grey mist in a moment. Fuckin’ whatever,
he said. Drove over the garbage can on the way out.

RECESSION INDICATOR

Less need
for recreational
degradation

Obliterate me
some gentler way

PRAXIS

Field sparrows perform a shorter,
more discreet song at night
to indicate they’d like to fuck,
not mate. The pawpaw
is pollinated by carrion insects,
who take it for decomposing meat.
Some flowers don’t even bother
with petals, sex junk all hanging out.

My favorite sort of Knowledge
isn’t useful for much, but aligns
with my sense of the universe

& all its little tchotchkes.

LE BONHEUR DE VIVRE

Take the afternoon
off to paint toenails
green & have real
European emotions
in the presence
of a security guard

Who left this
flower garland
at the sinkhole?

When will they
let a weary,
stoned woman
take over
for a change?

LIFESTYLE BRAND

A woman on HGTV is plotting her dream kitchen—
Statement backsplash 
Natural stones
Integrated smart appliances

I’d go for a spacious, light-filled, mouseless
kitchen where the power doesn’t cut out if more than
two small appliances are used, but I don’t
expect to ever own one, so the thought exercise
makes me a little cranky

At least there’s a dignity in not
being giddy about talking consumer electronics
that offer recognition of our desires,
which should be irregular & surprising
often, as a form of psychospiritual maintenance

Meanwhile, on the Travel channel,
these guys are hoping to have a paranormal encounter
in someone’s house, & I get that—

take what getaways we can afford

Bob Dylan is entering the twilight of his life. Bob Dylan knows the hourglass is running thin.
Bob Dylan is at the crossroads. Bob Dylan misses his old friends.
Bob Dylan is reminiscing on the American life. Bob Dylan knows that time will have its say.
Bob Dylan is posting on Instagram. Bob Dylan knows there will be an end.

January 29th 2024- a video appears on Instagram that appears to be posted from the Bob Dylan official account. It’s a video from 1988 of Eddie Van Halen playing “Hot for Teacher” for the great guitar builder Les Paul. This causes widespread confusion in the Dylan fan community.
Who posted this? Did someone hack into Bob Dylan’s account? Why was it posted?
- top comment “Bobby using internet dope as fuck”
next comment “ Only one man can make a post of Van Halen seem cryptic”
next comment “I just imagine Bob sitting by his computer right now. Listening to tunes in his slippers.”
next comment “Bob what kind of shit you on rn”

Later that day- another post from the official Bob Dylan account- a video of 1950s rockabilly singer Ricky Nelson playing “Believe What You Say” posted from the official Bob Dylan account. The top comment “Don’t let them take that iPad from you Bob. It’s your account and you can post whatever you want”

Later that day- a clip from the film noir Clash By Night starring Marilyn Monroe where Robert Ryan’s character makes a joke about a husband beating his wife in which Marilyn’s character dares him to try and which they both start play fighting, but the struggle turns into a real fight, and Robert plants a kiss on Marilyn and then she scratches his face. At the bottom of the clip, you can see the bottom outline that shows on a Youtube video when you turn your device sideways.
Top Comment- “Who taught Bob how to screen record”
Next Comment- “They littered three times in one shot”

Later that day- a clip of the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Again later that day- a clip of Tony Rice playing “Church Street Blues”

Dylan heads watching Dylan’s page start to notice clips being uploaded and deleted. Rumors start to swirl. Who is running this page now? Who’s posting? Who’s deleting the posts? Is Bob’s management telling him to delete these? Is he deleting them? Does Bob have an assistant that he’s directing to post these for him? Is he telling his assistant to delete them? Message boards speculate into the night.

Feb 1st - The posts are all still up. There are two new posts. John Ford singing “Skip to My Lou” in the 1956 film “The Searchers” . and a clip of Dylan’s former backing group “The Band” playing “Willy and the Hand Jive” in 1983.

Feb 2nd- Early in the morning many people claim that Bob posted a video of himself singing a song with the Band from the 70s with a caption reminiscing about old times with the group and Garth Hudson the Band’s key player who had just passed in January. The post was not up for long. No one got a recording or screenshot. He seemed to have deleted it, and many questioned why this was. His Twitter still showed his original tribute to Garth though “Sorry to Hear the news about Garth Hudson. He was a beautiful guy and the real driving force behind the Band. Just listen to the original recording of the Weight and you’ll see.”

Later people claimed they saw several posts being uploaded by what appeared to be someone else. People speculate that his managers were trying to post more Dylan content to disguise his erratic posts. These obviously-not Bob posts were deleted.

Later that day- a clip of the Mae West and Cary Grant film “She Done Him Wrong” from 1933 where Mae says the famous line “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me”
Top comments- “Who gave Bob his iPad back”
“Bob got his iPad back”
“Him deleting the manager’s post is sending me”
“Bob likes those saucy dames”

Feb 3rd- The Bob account makes an official post announcing tour dates for 2025. The “Rough and Rowdy Ways tour” penned after his new album was thought to have ended in 2024 when one poster from his website showed the words “2020-2024” . Some went so far as to speculate that Bob Dylan had played his final tour. This was not to be the case. The tour graphic first used in 2020 promotional material does contain a skeleton in a tuxedo tipping his hat to the audience. A wink to the obvious and impending mortality of Dylan. Even though Dylan claims the infamous Never Ending tour ended in the 90s, the tours have never ended. Dylan heads still call it the Never Ending Tour; the general consensus being that Dylan will play until he can’t or until he finally becomes the skeleton himself.
Top comments “It’s only been 17 hours but I miss Bob”
“Give Bob his iPad back”
all caps “GIVE HIM BACK HIS ACCOUNT heartbreak emoji heartbreak emoji heartbreak emoji”

Feb 3rd- Bob posts a clip from the final moments of the classic “Twlight Zone” episode “To Serve Mankind” where Patty pleads with Mr. Chambers who’s walking up the steps of the spaceship bound to leave Earth— not to get on that ship that “To Serve Men” “it’s a cookbook”.
Top comments “Bob forgot his password for a few hours”
“Bob can you post a grwm”
“You gotta serve somebody” – a reference to Dylan’s gospel song from 1979’s Slow Train Coming album.

Bob continues to only post clips and tour announcements. He is firmly in control. He posts old movie clips – Burt Lancaster, and Audrey Hepburn in the 1956 film Rainmaker, Hoagy Carmichael playing “Lazy River” on the piano in the 1946 film “The Best Years of Our Lives”

Then things take a turn.
February 26th- On the official Bob Dylan page, a 15 minute video of an AI narrator reading the Autobiography of Frank James- Confederate soldier and guerilla fighter, post-war outlaw and brother to the infamous outlaw Jesse James titled “The Last Testament of Frank James” quote “A man does what he must to survive the times he’s given”

Things take another turn later that day.
February 26th- Posted from the official Bob Dylan Instagram account, a clip of famous white boy rapper turned rock star Machine Gun Kelly also known as MGK giving an in store performance at a small record store in Park Ave, FL.

And Quote “Still I go to the basement, put Vice City in the Playstation / Get away from stress, keep J’s rotatin / Dab rings and a bad bitch naked, I just wanna live Let me smoke my weed in public /eat this In-N-Out burger / Can I live ? Sleep in til mothafuckin’ noon and fuck my bitch / You know what I’m saying? / That’s my perfect world right there / What if I don’t wanna work? / For a boss I don’t get along with / Name tag on a shirt / I’d rather be at home doing bong rips / I’m just being real”

Top comments “I’ve been saying this for years”
“You know what Bob? Hell yeah”
“ Mom Boby Dylan has the iPad again”
“Lots of old Dylan fans getting mad like when he went electric. He shared a rapper whose writing is on point. Cope”
Next comment posted from the official blue check mark MGK Instagram account “You having a phone is rad”

March 4th- AI Andrew Jackson giving one of his final speeches 29 minutes 59 seconds.

March 25th– Bob Dylan posts a video of bluegrass group the Johnson Mountain Boys playing a Gospel song “I Can Tell The Time” from 1994.

That night Dylan plays his first show of 2025 in Tulsa Oklahoma. This marks the 37th year of what he penned The Never Ending tour which started in 1988 when Dylan was 47. He played just blocks away from the Bob Dylan Center—a museum and cultural art installation based on Dylan’s life. The museum houses almost every piece of paper Dylan wrote on. Visitors claim that every true Dylan fan must make the pilgrimage.

March 26th– Bob posts a video of an AI Edgar Allen Poe telling his drunken life story titled “Edgar Allan Poe speaks from the grave” 35 minutes and 29 seconds.

April 26th– Bob posts the song “Kurt Cobain” by Detroit rapper Proof from the album Searching for Jerry Garcia. Intro Quote “This my last letter right here / Fuck this world / Let’s get the fuck outta here” Verse quote “ I put my soul through the ink / Bless a pad with thoughts, add my faults, before I grow extinct / My back-bone disowned my zone / While roamin’, called home—but now on, I’m all alone” Chorus quote “ It’s stil me dawg, no change with change / It’s strange, when it pours it rains, I take it back / I wish I could take it back / I wish I could take it back, but it’s too late”

April 28th- AI Scarface Al Capone- his life in his own words Part 1 of 3. 17 minutes long.

May 2nd, 2002- Rotterdam, Netherlands Bob sings “I Threw It All Away” for the last time.

May 13th– The Louvin Brothers sing “Lorene I was thinking about you”.
There is no public record of Bob Dylan and the Louvin Brothers ever crossing paths, but many believe that during the Bob goes country period of the Nashvile Skyline album-that Dylan’s new vocal style is directly inspired by the brothers’ nasal voicings. If Dylan reads anymore, he would have picked up Satan Is Real the autobiography by Charlie Louvin, and learned the story of the persimmon tree. Once the eldest brother Ira convinced his younger brother Charlie to help him cut down his fathers’ persimmon tree that he relied on for food in the wintertime. They ate the unripe persimmons till they were sick, and as soon as their father saw the tree only propped up by a spare wooden board, beat Ira within an inch of his life. Charlie would go on to say that his father believed it was good for a dog to run an animal up a tree every once in a while-that it needed to kill something every now and again. It needed to be rewarded for the hunt.

May 20th– AI A Capone Part 2 of 3 . 23 minutes long.

May 23rd– Bob posts a video of the Shang-ri-la’s singing “Out In the Streets “

Things have been quiet since then, but Dylan heads still speculate on the official Bob account. One of the most compelling arguments for Bob running his own account is his sporadic story posting.

One story showed a photo of jazz drummer Chick Web with caption “Happy birthday Chick Webb!” in typewriter font with a Chick Web song attached from Spotify. Chick Web was born in 1905 and died in 1939-two years before Dylan was even born.

One story showed a photo of bluegrass banjo player and singer Dock Boggs with the caption “Dock! You’d be turning 126 today. So Happy Birthday… We only met once, I still remember it like it was yesterday”

One story showed a photo of renowned drummer Hal Blaine from the famous 60’s and 70’s California session group the Wrecking Crew. The caption in strong font read “Hal, miss ya buddy. Miss those long talks we used to have.”

Bob turned 84 years old on May 24th .

Bob Dylan is entering the twilight of his life. Bob Dylan knows the hourglass is running thin.
Bob Dylan is at the crossroads. Bob Dylan misses his old friends.
Bob Dylan is reminiscing on the American life. Bob Dylan knows that time will have its say.
Bob Dylan is posting on Instagram. Bob Dylan knows there will be an end.

1
Dracula picks up his graveyard shift at the Spencer’s in the mall. Whenever beautiful girls walk through the entrance, he plays “Hurt” by Johnny Cash, loud. He sends DMs behind the bondage tape when his manager’s not looking, passing sight unseen within the reflective alien-shaped bongs. Sex dice roll freely along his avian digits: BLOW ME with CLOTHES ON. Frito dust powders the counter from dusk until dawn. Legend has it that Stephanie walked through the entrance of this Spencer’s back in 1998, and people say she just vanished, like, right into thin air? People still say that happened. Dracula always turns the music way down once the babes leave his store. He can hear very well and doesn’t believe in headphones.

2
Dracula hits a matinee screening on a Sunday afternoon while the mortals stay at home to watch the big game. He stows a video camera within his inkblot cape as he floats toward concessions. He hypnotizes the xaned-out teenager behind the counter into giving him his own commemorative Deadpool cup. Dracula will piss in the cup to make sure he doesn’t miss the movie. Sitting in the back and surrounded by shadow, Dracula giggles to himself as he records the movie before him, a documentary about the Quebecois singer Celine Dion, an unwilling victim of a rare disorder. Dracula watches her stammer and shake through his camera’s viewfinder. Dracula takes comfort in knowing he doesn’t have to worry about that sort of thing anymore. Celine Dion may not live forever, but Dracula will. He pisses in the Deadpool cup and knocks it over with his cape as he exits the theater. He sells the footage to a Russian gambling site and uses the money to buy more blood.

3
Dracula drives through his neighborhood late at night, wheeling small variations on the same suburban route that he can navigate with his eyes closed. The floor of the passenger side is covered in empty vape boxes and white chocolate bar wrappers. Dracula drowns out his children of the night with INXS’s greatest hits, freebasing the midnight oil as he scans the streets for solitary figures. Wandering souls of the night. Dracula remembers the lyrics of the song halfway through each line, singing the words as they come to him. He picks a couple drifters and eats them after they tell him their life-stories, which are a lot more similar to one another than they are unique. Dracula doesn’t tell the vagrants that, though. He just hears what they have to say and then he turns up the INXS and he looks into their eyes and they take off their seatbelts, and they lean over towards the Count and they present their craned necks to him at red lights and at stop signs. Dracula drinks their blood but keeps his eyes on the road. Dracula almost hits a raccoon but then he doesn’t.

4
Chaperone Dracula surveys the punch bowl with his ancient eyes, noting the plasmic consistencies of the simmering fruit punch. Everyone in attendance could agree that something at the junior prom smelled dead. Adele showed up to perform her timeless ballad “Someone Like You” and she was also dead. Sweat drops off the petals of corsages the way drool can fall from a bloodhound’s jowls. The ectosheen from green laser lights blasts harsh off strands of foil that blow in the dying breaths of the high school’s megafan, set on low so as not to upstage the very dead Adele. The field hockey coach kneels behind, gnawing on Zyns like she lost a bet. Dracula thinks hard about the first time he made it, in the back of a carriage at the Frosh-Soph Mixer in 1642. How he hadn’t been ready at the time to meet his body on its own terms like that.

5
Dracula sits in the office of the gastroenterologist next to a man with a bag of shit strapped to his hip. It sounds as though the man (who Dracula can smell and thinks smells bad) is softly purring underneath the hum of the fluorescent lighting that sings along to an ersatz cover of “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. Dracula touches his own hip to feel the bag of shit that isn’t there, rattling the mini-bottles of Smirnoff that gather in a pocket of his cape. Dracula lies about his age on the patient intake forms. When he gets to the examination room, Dracula has to sit there with a nurse because the doctor will be looking at Dracula’s asshole. The nurse is there to make sure Dracula stays safe. She tells Dracula about how she and her husband love to party, that they’re installing a jacuzzi in their basement this winter. Dracula can tell her blood tastes bad so he doesn’t say anything and nods politely. When the doctor comes in to examine Dracula, he puts two fingers inside Dracula’s butt without warning him. Humiliated by the sudden intrusion, Dracula imagines the gastroenterologist in a puddle of his own viscera, but before he knows it, the doctor is gone. Hungry for blood and suddenly willing to settle, Dracula tries to look the party nurse in the eye. She absently stares at her smartphone and does not engage.

6
Dracula goes into the city to attend a cool poetry reading. He sits four rows from the microphone, almost flush with the back wall of the yoga studio turned performance space. The yoga studio moonlights as a karaoke; its moisture-wicking black vinyl floors, casually familiar with the asses of the wealthy, now reflect the blue and purple overheads in this after-hours oasis. Dracula isn’t familiar with any of four poets reading tonight, and if you asked him today, he couldn’t recall for you what any of their deals were. Or what they meant when they said what they said. And Dracula isn’t sure that any of the other silent and polite people there could either. No, the words being said just don’t seem to make that much sense. But then the last poet of the night has a line that mentions Britney Spears, and the crowd comes alive like never before, nodding en masse, laughing en masse, clapping en masse, standing en masse, cheering en masse, embracing en masse, waving en masse, departing en masse. The acme of the evening has been reached, and as they all have important Zoom meetings very early in the morning, these contemporary lovers of contemporary poetry head for their very personal exits. On the way out, Dracula hears a woman from the audience say to the last poet: That poem about Britney Spears was so good, I wish I had written that. The poet does not tell the woman that their poem wasn’t about Britney Spears, thanking her instead: It’s so great to know you liked them, I hardly ever get any feedback on my poems. The woman quickens her stride, sneering with sarcasm: Oh yeah, sure you don’t.

7
Dracula in the drama section of the video store by his mom’s house. Dracula dropping the kids off at the local day-camp. Dracula at the neighborhood Costco, following the stench of virgin blood. Dracula in the voting booth making informed decisions. Dracula in a diner ordering mozzarella sticks. Dracula counting money in the backseat of a car. Dracula at the fire hall, boiling hot dogs with the auxiliary. Dracula at the bank applying for a loan. Dracula hiding inside the trash can at a remote rest stop. Dracula writing expletives on the wall of the little girl’s room. Dracula biding his time in the waiting room of the ER. Dracula ripping a bong during the Microsoft Teams conference call. Dracula pawning off someone else’s PlayStation 2. Dracula at the Barnes and Noble, tearing the covers off trade paperbacks. Dracula drinking water from the backyard sprinkler. Dracula face-first in the twilight’s dewed grass.

8
Sometimes, Dracula’s thoughts keep him awake all day. When he closes his eyes to beckon his dreadful slumber, all he can picture are six glowing angels, all six of them standing around his upright coffin. All of the angels are boys and they are all naked and they are definitely jerking off. He swears he can see all of their faces through the wood, all twelve of their eyes cut in shadow by the light of whatever. “Time is an elegant circle,” they whisper to him. “This building is still on fire, like it always has been.” Dracula opens his mouth and prepaid credit cards fall out. Their debit scrapes the sides of the inside of his coffin, snapping at his feet as they each fall in fashion.

9
On a Wednesday night, Dracula visits his local library to use the toilets there. He hypnotizes the pink millennial working the reference desk into letting him peruse their lost-and-found. In a box locked away under a catalog computer, his nine-inch nails come across an abandoned Princess Di beanie baby. He squeezes the purple bear, hears the hiss of the beads within. Dracula looks into the black button eyes of the memorial plushie and feels an ancient longing filled with dirt. He takes the totem home with him. In the backyard, Dracula beats Princess flat with a hammer until she splits open in the cedar November grass. Plastic beads blowing into muddy knolls. He stares at the carnage and he thinks of Florida. How he could spend eternity there if the warm clime suited him.

10
Your biological father and Dracula are looking at an album of photos from when you were a baby. They can’t believe how small you used to be. Dracula stares hungrily at the folds in your newborn skin, taken aback by the way the light bounces off of them in the shots of you bathing in the kitchen sink. Your biological father gets misty-eyed when he talks about how you were as a baby, how happy you were then, how well you slept. He misses that version of you and resents you for destroying it. Dracula doesn’t really think about you like that. After several beers, your biological father asks Dracula if he’s ever fucked Elvira. He tells Dracula that Elvira is hot, and that he’d like to be trapped in a coffin with her, forced to rub up against her enormous bust. Dracula tells your biological father that Elvira is a lesbian and, disturbed by his proclivities, bites your biological father in the face, draining all of the blood from his already failing body. You never hear from him or Dracula ever again.

RECOGNITION No. 7

Praisemaker gather up sparagmoid limbs
Spin rivers to a cord stretched oceanward
Crimson split the blue to green originend
Ride tightropewalkinghorse so gentle am
I the praisemaker see you the fatefearful
People not my people but my people are
Among you fatefearbound to great resent
The careless turning wheel providing all
Enjoyment and suffering of the animals
The careless turning wheel providing for
Needlegrass feathergrass bloodpetals all
The careless turning wheel providing us
Measures sobdenied and yet expressing
Achievement of the Sunrise and turning
Stars within allotted seasons reach down
Heatkissing the Earth at holocaust angles
Intelligence reduced from tyrant down to
Sweet abundant nothing of the open sky
With cloudofsmoke personages making
Praise to the careless turning wheel now
Did you hear the sooth to soothe you so
Let your throat rest from complaint then
Join me as a praisemaker if you are able
Some of you are able and others are not
Instead they live caught in a pulsingweb
Driven to mad froth below an opticwhip
Hand around reins around throat around
Breathwastingwoe struggles they cry out
“O! My stolen attention! My so precious
Commodity of groaning infant columns
On which my neocortex strains without
Air to breathe! O desecrate community!
Must I live bereft among suburban asps
Without the bosom of family to smother
& deny me deep breath of rarefied cold
Fear & pains of the man alone?” Weep
My eye, weep for a would be right hand
Until tears stop and look to the apposite
Direction of the lonesome west promise
Of birthplace which the careless turning
Wheel provided for us and make praise
To the empty space indicated here [ ]

RECOGNITION No. 3

Mongrel seme evokes the worldcriminal
Race to the conscious mind
Hungry all ways & precipitate
Pearlescent tip of white
Twisted line opening red to see it
In my eyelids, in my two eyes
One being black & one colorless
Window reveal my howling
Vacancy of wind at last
Glacial maximum

Chocolate

Teeth in constellation of sand
Foxes dancing to Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire
Dress me all in white and grease
Paint my face comedic servant and do as said
Have you considered revising
Choice of words, choice of flies, ointment etc?
My lotion is a wooden dog, yours
A metal horse characterized by windows, doors
Open to the breezes carrying
Smoke into my unguent coffin near the hour
Of sleep, of flies, ointment, etc.
Dinner sugar bread I slacken then release
You from red wax and ambergris
Into the fugue of wastelands and the absent
Clockwork sky once so musicful

Lunch poem

Floss the untried gums
To bleed to extract
Gristle vein, fennel seed

too blue to last

You, my little housefly – forever to swarm popcorn ceilings
I greet, antique obsessions with you watching
where the dead outduels the living

We wander the familiar streets as a breathing song

Bouquet in my back pocket, torn away from grace
Inadequacy is a cracked sidewalk, 
                           December has wrinkled its skin
While we all wait for the salt of this 	beautiful lie

that comforts in winter —to eradicate is to leave space
Remember how to be touched so harshly red
Darling, the unexpected figure to walk carelessly
with unbelievably bad luck
There’s a loss in responding with pills
                            that go down easier than rain

I am too blue to last — swimming in headaches all day
Too unemployed to call out sick
Darling, the unexpected lover to fill the bed
now laid upon the floor, lip-locked in stasis

i’m not an (effigy)

passive in peace, I will talk
myself in circles to be
confusing without purpose
I will ask when your stories
undo or end so I can stop
but you look so beautiful
there dressed in all my guilt
and crippling debt
flushed with fantasy, careless!
immediate release spruced
on our cocktails and plates
I will rummage through
our forever (never long enough)
with scrawny chopstick fingers
and I won’t bring up the car ride home
or how your head felt on my lap
my mouth speeding past yours, I said
I’m afraid I’m too far gone
as if I didn’t already know
as if it wasn’t too late

bunny room

To just be here now, A man fumbles a cigarette
somewhere on the corner of Tavern.
It’s so late that it’s early, I’m awake nonetheless.
All of this home echoes.
The streets shut me out.
Medication stops meaning booze
and I think of you sparingly
as a firetruck goes by, or definitely
like matches in a box,
		shriveled into black hooks.
I’ve realized, 
that I’ve walked into a room
without memory or purpose. But,
I’m here now,
so I should sit awhile.

Going to Work

A group of bald people is gathered outside of the hospital in their gowns, protesting what must be abusive treatment from the staff, among other poor conditions. If the cause is good enough, my boss should understand why my joining will make me late to work. I take off my headphones so I can hear exactly what they are chanting:

“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.”

At Work

I am making out with the sphinx hole at the mini golf course. Everyone is horny about it, but no one understands. My pierced tongue is scraping contemporary wisdom into the ancient plastic mouth. My lawyer says I can't do my community service at the mall. I give birth to my chihuahua in the fitting room and she says thank you. The mall will fly its flag half-mast when I die. The cremation/burial binary is so boring, I want to be served as a rump roast at my funeral. When I eat my yogurt, I think about bas-relief sculpture, large phalluses, and fighting for sport. Some bacteria is really good for you. The doom of libido is exhausting, like why do I wanna fill my womb up like a shopping cart? My wish list never ends, it ouroboroses. "Everything happens for a reason" is bedazzled on the ass of my jeans, I sit on the sentiment in the movie theater. Today is the most important day of my life. My manager gives my body a “meets expectations,” which isn’t good and isn’t bad enough to be interesting. I spit boba pearls at customers like bullets. The esthetician gives me meat and the fry cook gives me facials. I just love it when everyone has fun! In this environment, you can’t have a game plan. If I could fondle a calorie, I would. I hold my chihuahua’s hand while she gets her ears pierced. My chihuahua is in my purse and my purse is the world.

Mani Pedi with Mom

Girth-wise, I want more. A sexy vibe at the end of a gang plank. I am a very open book. What I mean is size matters. The oranges will be bred to grow unpeeled, no more pith and rind marinating under a French-manicured acrylic nail. Does anyone have a sharp object on their person? I don’t need to know anything else about lifespans. When you take your decongestant, that’s living. Give a woman a quarter-pound of emotional symmetry and she’ll feed her grandchildren with it. The genetic lottery prioritizes logic over feeling.

On a Date

What I’m doing is questionable. What I’m doing is stuffing each of my pores with pimento like my face is the world’s holiest cocktail olive. I feel so American when my ass spills over the seat of a barstool. I’m trying to have an opinion on television. I lick ketchup off my white shirt. The woman who waxes my eyebrows says “I’m gonna make this quick and as painless as possible.” Do you think you’ve experienced real suffering? I tell all of my boyfriends I’ve never felt this way before.

Untitled #5

I am guilty
of knowing only need

I can see the appeal
of licking a frozen pole

the inevitable heat death of the universe
means nothing to me

we all deserve
to live in reality

but I reject any attempt
to police its borders

if I were a baby
I would probably think god
was the ceiling fan

if you’re looking for me,
you’ll find eternally on my tip toes

arms outstretched
trying to touch the sun

the cutting edge of problem invention

on a crowded train in january
no one wants to be here
everyone’s calling out to someone
everyone’s yelling “hey miss!”
no one’s looking over shoulder
so as to not be taken for a mark

and yet the world as I experience it
is mine and mine alone
everything a surrealist parody of itself

something’s pulling at my strings
plays me like a fiddle
a terrible sound, loud enough
for the heavens to hear
but they just tune it out

an angel came to me in a dream
to tell me something I already know:
that the world’s deepest, darkest, smallest hole
was made just for me

I say “yes!” to the apocalypse

I never trust my own instinct,
and this is reinforced constantly.

I undercook the rice,
it’s motherless behavior.

we are sinking rapidly.
I don’t want to see any more pictures.

elephants communicate through the vibrations in the earth
made their by massive bodies.

somewhere in another room,
a cat is throwing up.

I am addicted to being loved,
which is not a respectable quality.

you know what they say,
never kiss a gift horse on the mouth.

If you crack the world open like an egg,
what you see won’t be a surprise.

the guy who is covered in white paint very statuesque and paints with his penis and the rest of his body and he has someone with gloves and a tall hat painting him covering him in this paste including his penis which is very luxurious says one commentator, just two strokes along the shaft but very luxurious and also with the size of this guy’s dick very luxurious and a lot of ground to cover do you think people with larger genitals have bigger clusters of nerves

Steve characteristic ally/beta type like another loser who could invite me to things or that I could beat up one time I left a spider welt in his eye bloodshot which he carried around. Literally broke a blood vessel in his eye. Best days of my life are violent violent even if it’s consensual and later Steve got punched in the street by a bro and George hit a woman who grabbed his arm he was so sensitive to touch because he was probably post-sexual dyslexic autistic guy, knife guy who always carries a knife around JERRY oh man immmigration lawyer now dating the friend of one of his clients after trying to date a client after leaving his pregnant wife and child comes up to me with his new girlfriend, a gilf he says and he calls my ex crazy after trying to fuck her after employing her and not paying her and she needs money sometimes because she loses employment because she is disabled, really, I think we all are really trying to avoid full time employment and that was the class I wanted to live in was these people who couldnt hold down a job or became consultants never starting anything says Kevin O’Leary Harvard business graduates setting down to a life of luxury and travel digital nomads

do your friends ever act badly or is it like a social standard cherub situation? I know y ou have your circle of weedy queer storyteller small time play producer good people but they’ve got these neuroses which are very delicate— speaking of there is almost always some poly chick willing to fuck me some poly cat some gender neutral ass tender queer who looks up to me with soft eyes in a flirty way that I powering down on, literally revealing too much of myself to the spice girls gossip girl circle of power that fits around my neck like a cirque.

Like how about fighting games you’ve heard of street fighter but we are fighting in a street in a way that is much more imposing much more beautiful I tear your hair you jab my eye and we’re into it bruises and blood in public in a city which is not well policed or policied. It is good it is consensual BDSM to put on the ski mask and follow the guy home from work to try to encite that momentary contact which for you has become a vigilante type after school extracurricular better than drugs like is popularly shown on tv, breaking bad: better call saul mike starts a fight with street toughs breaks their arm in that judo behind the back way to gain control of his emotions following a freewrite session where he decides he doesn’t really love his niece anymore yeah what if breaking bad was about writers instead of lawyers? This is my prompt for you all street violence the violence in our lives with men and boys and girls and wo-men and the gender neutral fighting in the street in the bad way in the good way blood under your finger nails I love y ou gorgeous in the ephemeral never enacted way that is floating in Philadelphia really desperate you know to cope? Like this coping is going to kill us a bit but only in that leap between lovers to the street, the gated way apartments work who has access who is invited over and admittedly awkward frenetic and violent little encounters on a dirty table in my cathedral ceilings studio… in the darkness of my ten hour retreat basically horrible sex coping opportunity through the radiator how could you admit? The curling and uncurling around something dark which is enlightening which is conforming and unconforming around you like a vagus nerve… like your sweet client vagus nerve and hair sprouting from it. So my idea is I’ll blindfold you and I’ll be anonymized somehow like a glory hole but I reach my fingers through and feel your vagus nerve

hairs sprouting from it gripping it with dusted sweated fingers picking up this doll-like back of the head and somehow intercepting the gut like my lower half of my body has been anesthetized somehow through this hole my foremouth like a horse eager desperate enjailed or just all the sensory pickings like an orangutan trying to get you to flit through your bag and show me the phone show me various pictures on the phone could freeze me in time cryogenically kill me at that moment before the endocrine system produces all these warning signals travelling up my body to my stomach anesthetized with cocaine like in the popular tv show The Knick when Clive Owen sticks a needle through a canal into the spine… of a character actor who was also in Paul Thomas anderson’s most important movie of all time There Will be Blood… the spine is important, the spine is the whole thing… I can isolate all of this to the spine… the spine… my spine… which is curled, tense, it is tense all day… my jaw… is like being about being inside of a giant dyiing person… I feel like I’m dying all day… i feel like the tension of a dying, strained person, and then it begins to release like in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Melancholia… ”life isn’t short, it’s long!”… just that one segment of the movie overall contained contained in the spine… guts like a clothes line straight and narrow hung… on the tense cloth the retreat of my parent’s range of motion from the backyard where my father caught finches… into the dining room where the family would gather… into the living room where the men would sit awkwardly… into her bedroom where the wigs would hang… where no one was allowed…

We’ll have performances by active Philly poet Myene Yanou, Sophia Tempest of Discount Guillotine and Giallo Lit fame, the notorious and deeply underrated Peter Webb (who we are publishing shortly), and PJ Lombardo de Baltimore, MD. That said (traveling act), please consider coming preparing to donate kash, green or virtual, to our readers. All good if not, you’re still more than welcome, poetry is about sharing. Would love to see any and all of you!

Unfortunately DVAA is not ramp accessible, and the restroom is on the second floor. It is located at 704 Catherine St, South Philly, not far from downtown.

Apology

yanked lavender
out body map

proof of speech,
a cloud etching

same night, same walk
street of tree roots

time fails to remind me
of my own happening

swollen memory, swelling

Potencies

tears in reverse, an
unslammed door, unending – a
smudge, a yellow haze

the unsent email
sits, my words
of backward meaning

my answers
in silent moments, in
a soft yellow light

my words unwinding
relief as an end
as fate forced hands, it is time
cut the dead leaves now

Everyone Looks At Me With The Eyes Of A Cult Leader

My childless body
craves
filet mignon,
a glance
from my
voyeur neighbor.

I retrace
my memories,
a bilateral light.

An unknown
meadow
calls out to me,
seven times
each day.

Agency

To calm myself, I repeat myself. I feel calm in the discard, the drought. I am grateful
for technologies like kettles, humidifiers, tea. I soak my body in Epsom and breathe
filament, crystal. The words I use to build my world. I am not trapped.