pi day

the youtube meditation voice

says

unclasp your hands

i do as the video says

and feel the skin of my palms

alone

because everything else is logos

and monetary moments

as in

what are you learning

what are you producing

are you productive

are you prolific

are you coming or 

are you going

down

get up 

get over

the shoulder is for breakdowns

tears in the lane i don’t know what to do with

while everything else is night

already but

still afraid of sunsetting myself

before noon

climate change will mean moving up north

where the days will be so short

and our basements will be flood zones

rich with toxic silt

we could grow mushrooms by accident

strips of paper

for fortunes 

in shinto shrines

are called omikuji

i am missing some nuance

when i make my little

tick boxes

for the things

day after day that

transfer from one list to the next

a calendar on carbon paper

a fortune told

and sometimes met

tie everything on so you can see it

there is the cotton string burrowing

winter thoughts are the cache

of summer 

why are you still digging

what are you preserving

in this late winter

veering into early spring

you are almost thirty and a half

and halfway dead

and halfway employed

and halfway serious

and halfway honest

and halfway home

do you turn around

or do you keep going

the dumb blonde joke

says turn around

but did she know she was almost there

the only way to find god // is to google how to do it // and then do it.

google ai highlights its words for me

like i am receiving visions 

in my own digestive tract

aspartame i beams

building out scaffolding

with nothing inside

clanging boards and aluminum struts

pressing down town

and on the third day

god set

let there be diet coke

man hadn’t made regular coke yet

sex is the exchange of genetic material

i pass you my diet coke qr code

as in we fuck

like god intended

all ornate mechanisms

and goo

slime and structure

meaning and nothing

like the math ungirding

calorie counting

and the infinite expansion of the universe

ashes to ashes

dust to dust

the city fills its own belly button

with each of us

filthy inside

the wheels are falling off

and we keep putting them back on

flat and slashed

tires going flub flub flub

down the tarmac

ant poem

there are no slugs

slow enough 

to slither backwards

the shining mucus is just

a bed a mess of sheets and laundry

the brink of extinction

the false start

the late morning

the wet sky

nothing in the poem

rattles around

deposit the check

engine light

to see in the dark

please put out the random fires

that don’t need to be lit

the sun isn’t yellow

isn’t up

but is around and around

we go

gravity gets so heavy

when you try to hold it alone

but control is delicious

like gelatin

the world jiggles

the form stays

leakage is sopped up 

by the caretaker

fingering the absolute

an arm’s length away

stretching leather

for a new hole

belt tightening power gut

button burnished

by brunt weight

dead lift every day

the same thing

and nothing will happen

any different

five and five makes ten

times it’s all foundational

bad form repeated over and over

weakens the tendons

push it harder

bond with the needs

of an anthill

the little shining bodies

feeling it all out

get reincarnated faster

found out faster

grasshopper dead

eaten in the stomach

find your cousin

eat him again

the queen is 

bulbous

and sexy

ant music sounds like rain

ant music is very fast

because their lives are so condensed

like milk in a can

pure cream pure fat

all work and all play

either way

doesn’t matter

to the ant gods

heaven is filled with ants

that did anthood so perfect

no nieces or nephews felt neglect

god parent good parent

baptismal abysmal little

doily lace outfit

save it in the ant trunk

made of cedar

antithetical to termite

might last more life times

going to the ant beat

beauty queen.

oh dumpster fire garbage compactor 

let me just be something

after the long winter

and whining about it all

splinter into different tasks

check box tic tac toe

masks the glut

slow descent rapidly accelerates

but a burning planet

burns faster with the winds of spinning

regret is a fossil record

vestigial limbs lost in rock

sword in the stone

cock blocked by the earth between

alone and lonely

spinning tighter now

proud of nothing new 

cue the copper ring

spring from the pipe

over ripe unbroken skin

mansion of rot

cot of cotton yellow rotten

ill-begotten forgot

spot the outlier

plier it out without remorse

coarse fingered and rough

bluff a plumed chest

test the waters

daughters into a new century

blurry outline

feline and fecund

moribund social circle

percolate the grounds

bounds to become an oval

rove all over the city 

literally failing 

trailing receipt papers

capers too mild 

unwild and quiet

tie it up with a thread

bed before dusk

tusking the frozen dirt

shirt stinks 

thinks about life

wifing with new wifi

deify the pedestal

appall the apostle 

pestle the mortar

border the scene

queen the crown

gown of squeaking silk

milk of honey

money all special treats

beats food and rent

bent beliefs 

thiefs for a loaf

autotroph anyway

stay another round

found out it’s fine

pine or birch

search the coffin

soften the velvet

covet thy neighbor

savor the feeling

reeling in the new spins

rinse cycle the thoughts

snots blown 

flown down to the shore

gore dropped crab

collab with gravity

brevity only sweetens

deepens the unknown

thrown a light

might glimpse shadow

endow the dark

mark missed means

sistines all over again

when adams reach

peach it fuzzes

buzzes up the brain

grain of truth

tooth of gum

from the mouth

south global warming

charming winter snow flake

slake off the cold

hold no one high

try to put in

tin the writing

biting salt

fault unto empire

umpire the big game

shame the oil

recoil the recall

small and sole

foal in the glen

when will it run

gun it from the heat

bleat it from the lamb

damn the others

smothers the embers

remembers the stove

love on the back burner

earn earner earnest earnestest

best not to be late

wait for good things

sings the kettle

there is nothing so complicated

four butts nestled across the bony structure and pleather,

we broke the couch then fixed the couch

we screwed in the crumpled plastic leg tight now– 

then listened in the pleasure of being a carton of eggs sitting quietly–

and right now

it is all sweat and c4 and things i can’t afford

but it somehow works out

that i find five dollars in my pocket

rolled up like a little rug

for me to lie upon its elaborate green design

everything i’ve ever wanted….

and anyway the expensive gas station pineapple was so good

while we sloughed miles

passed month eleven

as the first temperature drops slit across the window

a sharp silver sliver 

while chunks of blue sky twisted 

and compressed.

there is nothing so complicated about what I want:

to rest my head on your calf

to press my fingers into the rungs of your back

to knead the tough dough corded with connective tissues,

to massage life into place,

its juices stinging the infected slit in my thumb where

everything is taut and tender at once

like a switch blade’s safety snap;

to press love out of dead flies between sheer curtains 

               love out of a cast iron skillet

               love out of chains from ace hardware in sacramento

               love out of miles and miles of
              love out of amtrak

               love out of plastic wrapped food items

               love out of sidewalk karaoke

               love out of cracked phones 

               love out of muscles 

               sore from exertion sore from disuse sore from unstretched

               sore from love 

               love from stretching acls and it bands and whatever all the parts are called the parts that make up a city where

        love in the hot sheets of summer the humidity of all our breath beads up together;

i want to hold the back of your neck where it meets your skull 

i want to tip your life face to face with mine

i want to touch our tongue tips together across open space like giant gods caressing each other’s Sistine Adams 

i want to be a little too intimate so that i am a little disgusted by the strangeness of your saliva and the feel of the bumps of your tongue

i want to touch the part that ingests the part that nourishes the part that macerates 

the tongue is not the strongest muscle in the body but eight speechless and flattened muscles pressed against mine disgustingly vulnerable too naked too raw and too factual.

bummer poem

bummer lamb bums milk off

random teats

sticking its head up

between the crooks

of thighs

its toothless mouth

is soft and pink and hungry

bummer lamb gets bumped off

big moms

unshorn ewes with sharp hooves

don’t want to know where you came from

bummer lamb

are you dumber than

your brothers and sisters

or will you become wily

and make milk from nothing given

only taken

bummer lamb

have you heard of a bummer poem

the ones about death and disappointment

bummer poems abandoned by

bummer writers

wilting in their seats

bummer poem sticks its own

wooly head between different thighs

bummer poem’s snout snuffling

in crotches and crooks

for something good

bummer poem gets dumped

and born on the screen

bummer poem

knows how to be obscene

bummer poem thinks

sucking on something

anything

is better than nothing

bummer poem wants milk

bummer poem wants snuggles

bummer poem wants to run and jump

and buck with the other poems

the whole lot of them clomping up and down

the nursery paddock

where all the little poems and lambs grow stocky

bummer poem gets its balls banded 

with a tight rubber ring

bummer poem eventually loses its balls

they fall off, shriveled and preserved and fuzzy

like a lucky rabbit’s foot

bummer poem 

leaves bummer testes somewhere in the baby field

and bummer dog

missing leftover placenta

finds all the bummer balls

and eats them where bummer boss can’t kick him.

bummer poem grows big bellied

on its own words

at night bummer poem is like all the other poems

curled in corners piled up bodies limbs longing

what happens to the bummer poem

after all the bummer lambs die

first bummer was Hungry Girl with her little white collar

a scrawny bummer of a bummer

needed help even stealing

three times a day

she grew so slow

that one morning

after all the non-bummer lambs scattered away

her suffocated squished body still lay still

bummer tongue poking out above 

newly breached bottom teeth

bummer lambs get tossed to into birdy wash

and the ravens get fat and silky.

or bummer Hungry Boy

jumped up legs like a dog

curled into arms like a baby

gets big on sneaking fresh milk

then gets weaned like the rest

gets on with the other lambs

bummed brotherhood in the fields

only to get lured into the big truck trailer

by a flake of alfalfa tossed

deep into its metal body

little lamb hooves all clomp the same

in a feeding frenzy

while we folded up the back gate.

bummer lamb became bummer meat.

but what about bummer poem? 

bummer poem dangles motherless

from bummer lips

bummer poem builds its own home

between the bodies of other lambs

they share wool and warmth

bummer poem

gets borne from 

budding breaths

bummer poem finds milk

in the kindness of others

and in alcohol and in weed

and in mixing them a little bit

but not too much

because bummer poem has a 

proclivity for blacking out

and bummer poem needs to get home

bummer poem

grows up to get eaten

just like all the other poems

bummer poem might not be a very good poem

but at least bummer poem learned 

to bum enough to get by

bummer poem is still giving it a try

bummer poem still didn’t die

bummer poem becomes bummer sheep

because bummer poem learned to eat.