origin room w/o you

we were chickens & then 10 eggs
& then 10 elbows. you, the original 
portal were out buying 
model army man to speckle 
the ceiling. every wall had
a smart mouth speaking about
physics & philosophy. if a egg opens
in the middle of a forest
does the egg ever open? 
an incubator was installed 
where a kitchen is supposed to be.
heat lamps licking my face clean.
you couldn't be bothered. all of us.
i took scissors to
the where-i-came-from. you don't 
have to come from anywhere,
you know? just lie & say
the town is blowing through you.
spending all my money on 
baby names. the machine asks
what i would like to be called 
& i am never sure so i settle
on "leftover." it's fitting.
i'm the part you return to 
out of necessity. delightfult silverware.
i sit in spoons like waiting rooms.
the world is using its egg tooth again
& you are watching sports.
my elbows crack from leaning.
i could have planned a bigger entrance
one with blood & yolk. instead
i took a breath through a straw.
crushing the cardboard dream.
nothing is really recycled anymore 
we are just filling a wound with rubber.
a pit of lobsters where i was promised
bathtubs. i don't know about you
but it's better sometimes to pretend
that didn't happen. what egg?
i arrived just like this with
not a single ribbon behind me.

ghost taxidermy 

we worked with our bare hands in the dark
lifting the ghost's pelt from his frame.
everyone is a balance beam until 
there is nothing but air. a cool breeze.
not alone in the house of still-life.
tails that pace back & forth. the drawer
of glass eyes. we place the finished pieces
in the hallway where everyone was passing.
sometimes, i would sit there. making a home
in the liminal is the only way through
another needle's head. all the animals. 
we'd go out to woods & fill baskets
with their souls. glossy & satin.
a rabbit & a deer & an owl. laying them out
like paper dolls to be prepared.
once i saw a bird escape his body.
plummeting skeleton. the tools we use
are simple. thread & bone. knots like
little tongue-ties. nothing left to say.
the eyes follow us. we want to be followed.
we ask each other how we'd like to be mounted
when we move on to the washing machine
in the sky. i tell my brother 
i'd like to stand at attention.
the mobiles we make of humming birds 
& geese. i stand in a crib of my own creation.
nailing a door shut. there is an animal 
still inside. the animal is me.
howling from the stairwell. the teeth
our house grows at night when 
the taxidermy wears off & we're left with
almost bodies. still, what is there to do
if we do not preserve. how much more still
can you hold yourself. we have
a breath swallowing contest. i win
& i die just long enough for you 
to sew me a statue. gasping. color returning
to all the corners of the room.
rabbits standing on the ceiling
keepunig their secrets. a deer wandering
into the living room.

zipper animals

i went to take off my humans suite
but the zipper was stuck 
on an ideal image. taking the beautiful off.
i'm not a very good person but at least
neither is anyone else. i'm getting away
with something. looking in the mirror
feeling all the sparrows that could be 
inside me. how easily i used to take off 
my body. i look out the window & wait
for a squirrel to shed himself
into a stray cat or a swarm of bees.
did you know bees just sleep all winter?
what a life. i can't ask anyone else for help 
but i want to. i want to so badly.
a suite is a thing for mothering.
i wash mine in the bathroom sink 
like fnacy lingerie. then i'm thinking
would it be so bad for my lover to see me
as i become a red-tailed hawk?
sometimes i look at her & think
"i hope she's been a snake." i don't believe
in do-overs. i think it's all happening
right now. i took one day off last october
& spent it being a opossum & 
not answering a single email. 
now i have emails under my eyelids.
all of them are nonsense or tradgedy.
i hit "reply all" to my whole species.
the lines are blurry & some monkey 
get the missive too. i buy a fishline
to hang up my body to dry.
in the meantime living as three 
parokeets. is everyone else asleep
or am i just finally on a new planet.
look what i've done. cutting 
the zipper off. haven't you ever wanted
to dig a hole & watch it close behind you?
a depth is a place measured by yearning.
i am edging towards the center of the earth
with only my feathers. 
i want you to grab me
by the neck & stuff me back inside.
rub my shoulders & say,
"this is your body." of course
that would be untrue. it's not quite.
to be a body doesn't it have to be 
just a little communal? 
if it wasn't for the zipper
i would walk all the way to the river
just to splash the water in my face. 
i see a blue bird take his body off
& become the mailman. i'm happy for him.
hope the route doesn't take too long.
i'm also trying to get back
to a branch i'm forgetting.

leather photograph

the cow was our dream of permanence.
she would wondered towards us from 
all furrows of the town. ready to step into
a framed memory of our faces.
i am forgetting every plastic lawn chair
& replacing them with window shopping.
cows in the windows & cows wearing 
prom dresses & cows sporting straw hats.
skin for skin. as a child
i ate so much meat. each time it rained
cows laid down inside me. i slept
underneath a square of orange cheese. 
grazing on shredded paper. this morsel
was a whole fist of taxes.
in my wallet i keep a condom in case
i might need it. i know this defeats the purpose.
friction can cause the apparatus to tear.
but don't we all want an inch or two
of unearned comfort. the cow does. 
she scrapes a name from a tongue 
& decides it means she won't become 
a durable pair of shoes. what do you think
of scrap booking everything
& burning the house to ash? 
more eco friendly if you ask me. 
it is totally possible to survive 
on plots of yesterday. your face 
so round & bright it could be
just a rubber ball. the cow is waiting 
on the sidewalk for someone to lead her
to her machine. archways for undoing
her muscle from bone. she says,
"i would like to be a photograph."
you lie to her & tell her that is 
exactly what she will be. preparing her skin
you try to find a sunset. flesh is flesh
is flesh. no light at all. just 
horizon seams & blood.

atomic ray gun briefcase 

i want to be a professional craver.
excavating the yard for time capsules 
i find nothing of the sort. decide 
if i am going to find the past
i will need to sell something antique.
in the meantime, we all have to defend our homes 
against the threat of delight.
i read in a magazine too much bliss can
infect a person & make them radio active.
who knows what kind of career
waits for us on the other side
of the glass. i buy a suite & hand it
on the back of the bathroom door 
so long that it grows moss & then
a personality of its own. each morning
it says, "back to the old grind"
before chuckling to itself.
there is nothing beautiful about 
pulverizing my fragments of joy 
into sugar to be eaten. i carry 
a spoon in my pocket next to my ray gun.
it doesn't shoot don't worry. it's just
a replica of what we should fear.
sometimes i worry that i am also
in a replica. that a creature hunched over
& set each corner of my world
in the hopes of showing a lover
what it could all be like. 
secretly, the brief case is empty
leaving enough room in case i pass
a deer skeleton. then i can stock up
for the next time i need to change species.
when i had no job i was thinking
"i will do anything to have a paycheck"
& now i wonder if i could carve myself
into the heart of a tree & sleep there
until the world is nothing but smoke.
click of each buckle. how long have you
let yourself shut? i walk out into the yard.
i lied just a little bit. i never tested
the ray gun so it could be a replica
or it could be the real deal. 
i'm wearing my best loafers 
in the damp muddy yard. aiming the gun
up at the clouds. a sherbert sunset
i pull the slick metal trigger.
 

heaven in the basement

we found serafin stalking the ceiling
like moths. tried to captures them
with dental floss & prayer books,
swatting at them all through the night.
their hum like whirling machines.
you can want an afterlife so bad
it starts to arrive. picture frames
emptied of all their faces.
i didn't want to go down there
where the portal was becoming
a television. static in the ait.
finger-tip length world.
i don't believe in god. this is a vacant
fissure. to step through a
window made of fingers. i want 
the other side to have tapestries
of impossible forests & a lake
as deep as i need it to be.
telling the not-god, here i am 
in all my sleep. the house condensed.
palmful of salt. i throw everything i can
over my shoulder for luck.
bicycles & forks & flowers. 
the basement is not something
that can go away. it's always there.
louder on some days compared to others.
i take a knife some nights 
& crawl on hands & knees as if
a violence could extract a heaven.
don't we all want to be told
we will arrive somewhere grand 
& bold & sugared. i am careful
of all doors & all thresholds.
a doorknob white hot. 
i have watched centipedes 
scramble down there 
& never return. i have even less legs
than them. the serafin laugh
like crinkled silver. 
i tell them i can't hear them
& they say, they can't see me.
not yet.

weddings for houseflies

do you promise each other
until tomorrow do we part
above the sleeping bananas?
a house is a dream of sugar.
does one of you think
oh you & your stain glassed wings?
teeth on the windowsill.
looking in the light for dresses.
so often i am exactly this brief.
hovering just above 
a mouthful of the world. 
instead i land where it is safe
& damp & quiet. hold my eyes 
in my hands like bowl of blackberries.
standing on the ceiling with you
where we can pretend every light
is a skateboard to the sun.
your wedding had no guests
only other dancers. how you gather 
like fingers in flocks.
i try to imagine how long 
a few days might feel 
if that would the only life 
you had. do you celebrate
the minutes? do you tell a lover
i remember when, three minutes ago
i fist witnessed your craving
for trash can syrup? i can make myself
feel guilty of just about anything.
i don't want to crush you
into your own little crumpled morgue
but i have to. thumb & forefinger.
i destroy the whole wedding party 
who once gathered like mandolin strings
near the orange fruit bowl.
gone. their memories still hovering,
moving in tiny six-legged orbits.

dark room for pictures i didn't take

when i told you i would remember
the door opened like a cascade of nowhere.
into the fade of your face.
a humid tongue to stand on.
this is my ted talk on why we shouldn't
ever be in love. picking sick from
from the thumb trees of our town.
an abandoned factory spitting bolts 
into our open hands. i would have
accepted anything. the photographs then 
hanging like moons on their strings.
soldiers in their own right.
how sometimes an image can be 
sharp enough to extract your whole life.
the times my body was a projector sheet.
dipping me in the developer. your teeth
in a line across my chest. 
will i always be swallowed? did i allow
the mouth or did the mouth allow me?
drinking with our pinkies up.
the rusted & dead driveway batteries
we have to use to turn on brocade.
pictures of feather you took 
& took as they fell from a slit.
i asked for your help but you said
you were hungry. everyone is an artist
until the hollow becomes a partner.
i carried his bag of echoes
to the creek. a bullfrog ate a bird.
a snake formed an infinity symbol
as a joke. i emptied everything
he told me about my skin. 
but the world splashed back at me.
i lost my eyebrows to this.
the photos bathes bringing them
into a future of black & white.
this is not a picture of us. this is
only a picture of me.

@ the gym i lift halos

& get my skull crushed in the process.
heavy as a teaspoon of supernova dirt.
there are cycles that were never meant for me.
the way the sun leaves halos
in your eyes if you stare too long.
going outside to cut a body 
from terryclothe. jumping rope 
while the kick boxers pretend the punching bag
is their fathers or god (what's the difference).
they say exercize is a form
of stress release. i find my heart 
is a nest of finches. i collect strings
to help them build. as if my body could ever
be made into something less transparent.
i was cocky. i thought, "maybe angel."
i found a long mirror to ask my muscles
about their topiary. a breeze threats 
to pull leaves from the sockets.
the angels go into a bee hive to train.
for me i have a sweaty bench.
watch other men's hands gripped 
around the necks of barbells.
what are they lifting? i guess 
the better questions is what do they think
they are lifting? once on a bad day
i lifted my whole family all the way back
to grandfathers. no one noticed
so i gave up. more people should give up
more often. i reccomend once a week.
i stand in the middle of the halo
as if glows like no tomorrow.
there is no tomorrow at least not for
my strength. i flex as if 
a muscle could become a home.
i do not know how to be divine
but i do know there are 
figure skaters who help inspire
the shape. they are all evaporated.
tracing the circle with a finger
just to hear it sing. my skull
in stained glass pieces.
who needs a good body after all?
the halo can belong
to someone else.

dogwood blooms w/ dogs

i was the down boy & stay stay stay
in the sickly sweet april 
of your first hikes.
the mountain didn't know 
what to do with all the faces. 
tossing them from its branches 
like tissues or travelers.
picking dogs for you
from the green. giving away
you phone number to breeders.
everything is fucking
or at least yellow. crocuses 
with their throats full
of the young boy i could have been.
a boy & his dog a dog & his boy.
us, running on the railroad tracks
until they turn into ladders.
dreams of coal that once
pulled fire from the earth.
i am rescuing the dogs or else
they are not dogs at all but
flowers who learned to run.
rearing its ugly head,
a knot forms in the tree's factory.
how i stuffed my pockets.
smelled my fingers for pink.
found a few unopened buds
which remembered me of fawn.
worried if i held them too long
they'd burst free with all 
those hooves. but instead
we have dogs enough to survive.
dogs for sleeping & dogs
for confessions. i laugh 
like only a meadow really should.
let the tree deliver 
dog after dog. forgetting all memory
of blossoms. how an old lover once say
he could see a whole dogwood tree
at the back of my throat.
tails wagging & all. it is better left
between me & the animals 
of which i am certaintly one.
i hope to grow alive like this
in the next life. swelling sensation
& then the wet april-mouthed world
stirring me until i have legs.