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i lent out my words out kindly. i have none left for my miserable poetry now that they've all been walked off with. what is there to say about the wretched two of you who would take turns at wedding guest as if the mariner's gnarled grip compulsed them to therapy? not much, except for this.

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who are you is a fun question to be asked at parties

if all it takes to care about someone

is one or the other: looks, or the other,

because by the time the question leaves your lips

i know i am already considered a sloppy second--

oh! but you are considered. oh, but i am considered,

oh, i say, i am considered.

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Untitled Poems Are For Suckers And Hacks And This One Was Rewritten Thrice Over For Your Class

You told me once that to be broken

is something that is earned, deserved

and in my mind i hear your drone

as it drums merciless upon the syllable of the earth,

gently caresses its favorites

few and far between the markings that you

saw fit to cut across my eyes one day.

For exactly forty-four minutes you spoke in endless

stompings of your foot on the graygreen of the garbage

carpet that will never be replaced, and you saw

me, dripping, artless taps against a desk 

to be made into a lesson.

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kaij.u movie

it's stupid, you say, that cloverfiel.d doesnt let you see the monster. just once, a strong silhouette, an outline against the bright sky. i nod along with the camera until the movie ends. Disappointing, right? Yes, of course. By the time you see it it's too late, you blink once and then it's gone for good.

i remember the way it started, when i pushed you gently and you pushed me back and we went down the stairs and almost killed the lamp. you could have beaten me, i think, if i hadn't thought this was flirting-- stupid. i missed the lead, an innocuous did you get in her pants yet from your best friend on your flip phone. i could have known.

on top of me. you pinned my wrists to the ground and blinkinkinkinked-- are you okay, i asked, instead of, get off me. you could have beaten me if you were not afraid i would spit into your eyes. you were scared, but i was smiling, told you that cheating would ruin the fun.

You're right, you said, the lights right above making a halo of your hair, you're right.

[balatron]

words are the only thing that mean. imagine if between us the memory was enough to hold, if i could reach through time and strangle the treachery out of your wrists before it had the chance to bleed from your fingers. i can see it so clearly. imagine me shoving myself out of the equation, driving through a blizzard to get home an us that does not include a you. me, dripping hot sauce into my own august ears because i know now it would hurt less. imagine that, you must imagine that, because words mean and now another empty idea will not leave you. relish it. hear my echoes forever, be as haunted by this as i am by you. be grateful. if memory meant, i could tear you from your shadowplay barehanded and really give you something to cry about, the end of my rope that you were always so afraid to find.

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Maybe I would be beautiful if my teeth were straight

but you were so polite when you said it,

“Maybe I’ll see you,” 

because the laundry would have caught me

long before I had the chance to widen my tooth gap

against the floor, the corner of the dryer. No. The linens,

half-folded, smelling like warm, would have stopped

the world from spinning to black doublehandledly

cluching. I look down, at the stains I am

leaving on the linens, my socks, fuck,

I missed some and now I’ll have to mop up the prints down

the whole goddamn hallway from the laundry to the maw

that will run the forgotten set of clothes,

still wet with showerwater from my last visit here.

Maybe I would be beautiful if I could do the clothes right.

[balatron]

grow tired with the comparison of people and animals

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someday this will be over forever and you'll pretend that you miss it, the back and forth that's really just surge and retreat, she's scared of you. she's. she was. someday this will be over for ever and i wont be able to stop you anymore.

[balatron]

and what do we do with the larks except have them for dinner in their disgusting velour best?

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man awed by the immaculately conceived (dec. 1997)

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my granny calls.

the bullet hits the next octogenarian in line

and it's the indignity of it-- living

alone, forgotten almost, independence

outlasting attention. we know the feeling

in the seams of our child-fused bones.

fragility scares us. aging scares us.

loss scares us. i take notes

for a girl whose grandmother died

(devastating, i am so sorry)

dead twothree days in her lonesome

but it's the living that are selfish and

the bullet hit her and not my own heart,

where my dementiarian granny lives

alone

hammering the phone.

[balatron]

poetry hard

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i confuse these often

paraguas and palabras

but all i blunder into

is the gentle patter

upon your canvas.

perhaps this wasn't a mistake after all.

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written in a stress fueled preperation for whats to come

youre self absorbed enough to tranquilize a fucking horse much less the rest of us who are the focus of your attention and yet i strove to meet you until i could not

which wasnt when i was on vacation on the corpus christi couches and wasnt when i needed to get up in the morning and was never when you needed me but instead now

upon the brink of a shared death that, despite YOU being The Other in this poem, despite this letter being addressed to you, has not a fucking lick of y o u in it. this was and should have been and is about me, or it was until you got hold of it

just like coming out just like my vacation in pieces just like

and the real kicker is that i was always happy to do it! until i wasnt, and i looked long into myself and decided i couldnt even as i make my excuses gold plated with the good intention once again

even though that also backfired upon me like a gun to the temple, you nearly twice, nearly a thousand times,

and maybe we can do this again when i am again the wounded bull in the ring, a handicap for whatever matador stands in your stadium for the night that i will overcome, wild animated victory over the demons

blood runs in the streets and people write poetry about it, gloria, gloria, triumph of the idiot,

and it will be cruel and i will be a mixture of passive acceptance and rage against the dying of the light but not you, you, you again, to whom this is dedicated. perhaps i will return here, i think

until you again open your fucking mouth and i can no longer hear over the rush of blood that i mistook long for affection, but that's a lie too, it simply is not anymore, i dont think

and i am tired. because you don't know what ive been up to, and it sure as hell is not about you.

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the vatica..n would see la s..ant..a m..uer..te burn

They clutch their pearls when my sister passes in the street, her savage bescythed finery,

familiar teeth strike fear unto them as the flashes of silver upon my cloak sweep over them

votive jangling banishment of her empty eyes, and they have forgotten in their decades

the head that wears no crown is light enough as I am heavy with immaculate one and unheavy with the rest, plucked from me

one by one, december roses. They coughed themselves to infant death alone

but I am allowed to be with them no longer, even as the faded jade betrays me as theirs,

She Who Is Here, Who Is Their Mother, the story that everybody has worn as well as their crosses,

not mine, never mine. I haunt a house my sister is barred from, the hard edge of her hand kissing the door in greeting

of those by her side, cast out to the edge of consecration and fidgeting in their church clothes until it is time to return,

dress the altars in her colors, long, sweeping redsblackswhites, the glint of safe passage in the night, as it has always been, as it will always be

without me. My sister waves when we pass in the street and I am tired of not being her sister, as it always had been, the flesh unto her gleaming bones,

and they dare call her jealous, as if death is picky, no, she only misses me, as though I stand in the clutches, she is irrevocable,

Mictēcacihuā..tl waits on Tonantz..in, still.

[balatron]

our fists gain a dripping respect

mouth, nose, knuckles

as the grudges bloom before our eyes

so does the blood applaud

clapping to the ground

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im a little drunk and think im hot shit because i understand thermodynamics (2 vers. unfinished)

rule one is that rule one isn’t rule one. if you think we’re starting with the first, you’re an idiot. “that doesn’t make a lick of sense!” you might think, but put a sock in it. listen. law zero of the universe, babe: things that are the same is the same are the same. if this is that and that is that other thing then this is also that other thing— immutable as death, dead is dead is just as dead. next question. you didn’t ask, but im telling you anyway, cause you’re stuck.

the first law is that we’re all fuckin. stuck. energy isn’t created or destroyed, even when your head turns out to be empty for real the flashes of hell in your eyes go elsewhere. yeah, those. stop it, im trying to explain. closed systems. energy is heat and work together, broken a/c tango. if youre hot and moving, it’s all still good, cause you and me are closed systems in a closed system. perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible. you don’t get something for nothing. everything gets cold. don’t ask me that.

now. things are always bound to suck worse, irrevocably so. entropy is how messy all that decides to be at a given time, and none of us fucking demons ever pick up after anything. socks on the floor forever to drown in. it’s that, who, fuckin…. virgil. optima dies…prima fugit. good days go first, gone forever, lost in the socks. don’t look at me like that. perpetual motion machines of the second kind are also impossible. it takes too much work to transfer heat like that, can’t undo what’s been done. don’t look at me like that. you’re making this suck worse.

stop it. or don’t stop it, i guess, it’s whatever. third law: the only way to make entropy stop is to be a frigid bitch. zero degrees kelvin, baby, and we’ve got miles to go before we leave temperate—what do you think im doing here in this shithole otherwise? serve me on the fuckin rocks.

 ----

rule one is that rule one isn’t rule one. listen close.

 rule two, which comes first: we are all fuckin’ stuck, and someday,

when the flashes of hell leave the eyes leave your empty head

i’ll feel them still from your ghost, the amount of effort expended

to bring them fresh from downstairs equaling out in the end.

energy is not created nor destroyed. don’t look at me like that.

it’s heat plus work. perpetual motion defies the first law. everything gets cold and

 things are bound to suck. we promised not to party in this sitting house

but in the end we watch the door fly open and shut. demons, the lot.

even if we weren’t, entropy will always increase, irrevocable,

unknowable stains on the white couches. who raised us, honestly

is a question i would ask, if perpetual motion didn’t defy the second law.

raising us would have taken too much effort. everything is hard, you say

i do not reply-- more effort than it’s worth--

 i apologize. the first and the second wind into the third,

which requires of me to be a frigid bitch. we serve ourselves

on the rocks, sit still on the borders, pretend to not hear

the brown note until it’s true and to physics itself we are momentarily

deaf.

we find it, the door, make our grand escape into zero degrees kelvin

(temporary; predicted; thought experiment edge)

where entropy cannot stain the snow even with vacant gazes.

a night’s vacation from remembering:

 rule one is that rule one is rule zero: if this is that

is the other thing then dead is dead is also dead

no matter how much i try to forget it.