painted hills

oh neon sign god, shut me off.
drop me in the painted hills
of oregon where the screen saver
was born. oh water-color toilet bowl,
oh nothing-sky. grey as the undersides
of fingernails where sleep finds herself
obsolete. i amble. i oscillate
in between layers. the desert is a 
self-cleaning organ. the desert knows 
nothing of our body parts, attempts
to swallow both of my feet & succeeds.
me; an obelisk boy in the pixels.
me; afraid of sand, kick the earth
till it bleeds again, alive. i want
to feel more real. i ask what animal 
left these red bites on my calves.
scratch myself open like a clean of
peaches. what is there to eat out here?
what animal came to organize each
layer of earth? mudstone, silt-stone
shale. i count the layers like 
the throbbing heart of the red wood
we saw, cleaved open. 550 AD, she 
was thin & testing her mouth. 550 AD
i wore stockings & tore them on 
the climbing-trees in the schools yard,
hoisted myself so high that i could
look off & see all the screen-saver places,
the water; still in mid-wave-crash.
the mountain; tired & waiting to 
exhale. i knew i had to go there. 
i will never admit to laterite,
the red-scab soils that stripe 
each hill. ripple in my. inner thigh
where the blood makes rorschach tests.
what do you see? a butterfly,
a blood-clot butterfly. & so i stay 
there until the image fades. the great
american eclipse reliving itself
through a computer screen. when
you think of my body do you recognize
the volume of blood? the ability
to heal in coats. beneath are 
the bones of vertebrates. 
paleontologists flock, trow in hand,
leaning over my bed while i toss
& turn, pull the sand over myself.
the night is in oregon or so i assume.