Keyboard mashing

I wrote a text message with my toes

and sent it to my lab partner from freshmen year.

It read "aanfgls."

Their reply ("Who is this?")

came as no surprise.

It just wasn't the same after I spilled

the bottle of diluted acetic acid

on their lab coat.

The Prostate Poems Part 5

The Prostate Poems I-XXVI

XXVII.

the first pains of inexperience

give way to excitement

only returning on the morrow

XXVIII.

You did it right

You did it slow

Now do it once more

XXIX.

it’s right there,

so often ignored

found with purpose

by knowing hands,

exploring hands

XXX.

blessing to the sodomites

for finding their source

XXXI.

I press

a thumbprint scanner

of biological design

the beep-beep reaction

music to my ears

XXXII.

screams ripped

from somewhere deeper

than your throat

XXXIII.

Churning makes this cream into butter

molecules excited

rearranging into new patterns

Towel count

It's endless, mindless.
Folding half, in half, in half again.
But there's something soothing
about 200 towels
fluffy and white.
Sweat.
They make you sweat
and then collect it into
the very fabric of their being.
Fresh, their static shock becomes
a lover's kiss
from the dimension of missing socks;
their warmth a hug
from kling-klang wombs.
Their ivory towers
built in Pisa
mock gravity before succumbing
to the allure of bodies in motion.

The Prostate Poems Part 4

Prostate Poems I-XVII

XVIII.

the build

to contraction

travels ever outward

XIX.

there is no pull internal

except that which focuses

and obliterates

XX.

velvet-tickled tissue

constitutes the barrier wall

the most direct access

never sees the light of day

XXI.

the silent child

in adulthood bears

to distant grounds

seeds

XXII.

urethral envelopment

in advanced growth

restricts passage

XXIII.

let’s not dance around the opening

and instead delve head-first

for the sweet spot

XXIV.

accessory organ

bound in supporting fascia

unchained in bliss

XXV.

in the space before

where only after effects are known

attention draws

XXVI.

feel me, fools

for I am resplendent

in your pleasure

502

Decomposing into couches

we’ve entered a true state of vegetation,

the interlocking smoke rings a green chain hanging.

Warped by the reality of 300 years of history

whose chains won't go away;

they’re melted and reworked

into handguns and zip ties,

metal bars and handcuffs.

This green has a history of its own,

a history of demonization.

It is a mythology laced with invisible truths

with something more chronic than short term memory loss.

These victories capitalize on a luxury

ignorant of the years of tireless action behind it.

This victory has deeper satisfactions than

the slowing inhale off a freshly loaded bowl.

The voice you’re hearing is complicit, stoned in solidarity

from the comfortable privilege of collegiate vice.

Once locked in this couch by complacency,

now freed by the voices clamoring for justice.

So yes, initiative is an apt word

though motivations might be suspect

and information, it frees your mind

when all we’re ever told was meant to keep us docile.

The Prostate Poems Part 3

Prostate Poems I-XII

XIII.
just one, just one
but oh what a good one it is

XIV.
one way only?
someone just changed the sign

XV.
it's deceiving on the diagram
so pressingly close
wrapped in tissue
forgotten until activated

XVI.
one who stands before
sitting in lightless entrances for centuries
releases armies through the gate

XVII.
secretions of changing viscosity
propelled by smooth innervations
in exultant paroxysm alight
toward absolution and damnation

A Physics of Hearts (first draft)

hardened hearts break under stress,

when shear forces cut carats off those diamonds in the rough

the crystalline structures shatter under expectations unfulfilled

bend them over backwards, sideways and forwards

testing the malleability of affection, the elasticity of love

reconfigure molecular bonds to dissolve this construction

like pillars of salt in oceans of plasma

it’s protection. it’s a prison.

but this deflection only works so long as no cracks can be seen

no space for heartstring vibrations to sing out the praises

of each passing beauty with saltwater shouts

that thickened skin is hard, as it was meant to be,

and maybe hard is what’s needed right now

but sometimes strength can be found in softness

embracing stresses and enveloping tension

experiencing the full spectrum of pain and anger in order to move on

overflowing fullness stretches, resilience rebounds

growth fills the space created when things are no longer the same

hardened hearts break under stress

but hearts of flesh were not created hard

Experiment

Miracle of the Dixie cup
Granny Smith green leaves two
Sprouting out of burnt umber
A child's care manifest
_________________________
This one almost feels like a haiku it's so short and choppy.

Marionette

I'm a puppet, baby, pinocchio

and the puppeteer's dropped the rod

the strings are tangled

and I"m the fly caught in this spider's web

I'd sever the ties

but it's not my choice

see, I'm a puppet

and the puppeteer's dropped the rod.

_________________________________

I honestly have no idea where I was going with this one, though I think there's some good potential here.

Aspiration for aperture

Comfortable in bed, I begin to close my eyes

shutterspeed set to an hour.

My aperture's way too high.

It won't turn out,

but I'm trying to catch the last light

of a summer memory:

a glint of windswept copper,

the smiles of close friends,

an East Side campus afternoon.

Now: the first red leaves have fallen

and school's begun again

as daylight fades, so does this

a moment in the camera of my mind

_______________________________

I remember this one was kind of about my friend Ashley. Or at least the idea she represented to me at the time. 

Alexipharmic (or, Now that's a little cynicism for you)

I pour my heart out like

a pitcher made of flesh

and it spills onto these pages

a stain made of ink, spread by word of mouth

I don't really mind

the mess,

the Chaos wrapped in bedlam inside disorder

or the push the woke shove

tipping an already wobbled Weeble.

It's the moth's effect

once the butterfly flies away

that damn resolution to talk it out

the make-up/break-up not quite donenesss

everything that goes into cleaning, goes into

cleansing the soul of hurt's dark humor

or the stubborn confetti of joy's party.

It's all the same:

a hangover from being punch-drunk on emotion

and in the end

it all winds up being bottled up again.

_____________________________

This one was actually published in Emerald Ridge High School's literary arts magazine ascent (Vol.7, 2007) under the title "now that's a little cynicism for you". I have no idea why, though I think the retitle helps mitigate some of the misgivings I now have about the opening/closing lines.

Coloring Book

I'm such a rebel

and I'm only nine

Here I am sitting

drawing outside the line

 - for Sandy Lempka

To Kill With Kindness

Why aren't you dead?

I smile at you every day

I call you my friend

We share laughs

It doesn't work

No matter how much

I shower you with love

or cover you in hugs

you're still alive.

Maybe there's a better way

than to try to

kill with kindness

______________________________

And so, dear readers, we start in on a series of poems I wrote in high school.

Culicidae

Zzzzzzzzzzz--

the electric whine

of a tiny blood-sucking mother

ends abruptly,

halted by a hand

that stares down

at her crumpled body

with unexpected remorse.

Careful fingers

pluck her tiny form from the sheets,

examining her brittle frame

and wondering what pond or puddle

brought her life.

She’s silent now,

segmented limbs still twitching

with the release of calcium stores

or perhaps it’s dying thoughts

(if insects are capable of thoughts)

as her life flashes before her compound eyes.

The Prostate Poems Part 2

VIII.
a poke. a prod.
entrance granted with copious lubrication.
again. again.
no more. please more

IX.
This tingle radiates upward
ascending the order of functions
until it shakes the faculties loose
and returns them to seminal roots

X.
Wearing pink rings two, three fingers wide
reaching for treasures to be found inside
grasping at sheets, lost to submission
gifted with a plentiful emission

XI.
beneath a shower of silvery suds
white foam sprays upward
at the press of a hidden button

XII.
this gayest pleasure
misunderstands the appeal of pegging
though similar sensations abide

Bellingham

You can tell a lot about a city from the myriad slices of life found in their pictures. Those icons and memories perfectly preserved in digital amber for the tapping of keys and clicking of mice to unlock. Bellingham is no exception.

You see his local businesses discretely advertising to a niche audience; the landmarks and parks made popular by word of mouth and essential experiences. You get to see the voices and poetry of the personalities that inhabit him. All those defined characteristics that make a list of the essential visual and lived experience peppered across this city’s landscape, crystallized and collected through the thousand perspectives of everyone passing through.

Bellingham wears the faces of profile pictures some familiar, some unknown, and with bodies of news articles and skies (always the skies). His limbs are landscapes gently jagged in their rolling hills and curved around bays and mountains. Houses and sidewalks sprinkled with the idiosyncrasies and windfall of life bloom across the city’s curves like circus personalities with microbrews.

His seasons and sunsets, evident in exclamations of disbelief and outrage beside sighs of joy paint a picture of the various neighborhoods circling the city’s heart. With subdued excitement there’s life in these streets. Ghosts of a gridline overlayed in concrete, lined with homes, once tall, now a specter of forgotten memories, these streets pulsate with the warmth of a star eight minutes in the past. It’s not just the life on the streets, it’s the life in them, the sovereignty of silence and the cold, hard life of stones.

Snapshots of first meetings and last farewells, the starting of many an epic journey, all captured perfectly in the flow of his parade with an unintentional honesty, bookend the stories of his existence. His alleyways and neon profile capture the heady, lingering scent of old piss, stale beer and cheap green before the ever-present threat of sudden rainfall washes it away again.

Phone Tag Redux

I want to be someone you want to talk to,

someone you sit staring

with the chat window open for an hour,

wishing I would initiate conversation

so you didn’t have to,

typing three different messages on the theme:

“I want to talk to you so bad right now”

before deleting them to start all over again

because the first one sounded just a little too desperate

and the second just a little too abrupt,

but still not sending the third draft

for fear I might take you seriously.

I want you to know what it must have felt like in the 90s

when you waited by the phone for hours

hoping it would ring,

practicing how to say hello

and make it sound nonchalant and cool and breathless

like you had to run all the way from across the house,

but still sound surprised

because no-you-weren’t-waiting-by-the-phone-why-am-I-calling?

I want that Pavlovian response

every time you see that green notification by my name

as you hover with indecision,

torn between clicking open the status bar

and deleting me from your friends

just so you aren’t racked with temptation

every time you see I’m online.

But I guess it’s worked the other way around,

unless you’re playing this game too

and maybe, just maybe, I should make your day.

Sunday has become a day of bread

Increasingly, I find myself accountable to yeast.
I'm kneaded and folded by hands too tired to rest on the keyboard.
Honey oat and vegan avocado call to me with a voice that sounds like home,
but that was never my home.
The wafts of freshly baked embraces are a cultural memory
implanted by the white picket fences I've yet to see in person.
So I substitute,
I darn over the holes of missing traditions with
weekly practice in homely creation.
It's a glutenous trap of the homemade variety.

The Prostate Poems

I.
Oh spot of pleasure
hidden from view between
twin buns of steel.
Teach men your secrets

II.
Two rings stand sentry
before the passageway of the Prince
relaxing only to grant entrance
to the ambassador of a foreign body

III.
The sweet plum unattainable
convulses beneath prying fingers
and expels its seed from
the base of a newly grown stalk
as if to say
please swallow this again

IV.
internal walnut
only light stroking pressure
clipped fingernails please

V.
Greek protector of Exocrine origin
your contractions invoke Dionysian fits
drink now of the alkaline secretions therein

VI.
never a massage did produce
fluids so copious
or pleasure so shaking
as this assault on my prostate
even memories arouse erections

VII.
This pulsing thief of reason
entranced by the crown jewels
forgets what he is carrying
and drops a bag of pearls

Pavement

It starts with a heartbeat.

Tha-thump tha-thump tha-thump

This is the pounding you're used to.

It's mutual need fueled by

hot and quivering thighs

in sync with pumping arms.

Breath,

torn in gasps by the little death of achievement,

rants ragged in protest.

You will never finish this marathon life

without sparking fire-fomenting rebellion

inside every mitochondrial membrane.

That heartbeat? It gets frenetic

Tha-thumptha-thumptha-thumptha-thump

amped up on adrenaline and cortisol.

gotta go, gotta finish, gotta win, gotta love

mariposa stomachs doing backflips and barrel rolls

while the mind surges upward into an abyss.

Evolution is an arms race.

Combine and separate;

adapt to every shitty hand life throws your way

and overcome.

This, this was never a prurient goal,

so wipe the sweat from your brow.

Feel the heat of the afterglow,

the  flush of accomplishment.

Sit up straight.

Relax your jaw.

Wash yourself of the salted remnants

of an hour well spent

Tha-thump tha-thump tha-thump

It ends with a heartbeat

The above piece was my submission to Labyrinth, the feminist and literary arts journal of Western Washington University.