uses for the hexagon 

build the comb in the hive.
break out of the basement
using only the shape,
a spoon, & a casserole dish.
carved into pupil. a puppet 
in a graveyard. burrying 
the dessert plates along with 
finger foods. filling 
your mouth with honey
until no more words
reach through gold. have you ever
tried to tell the most important 
story of your life in metaphors?
i am a liar. i stay up all night
weaving cataracts 
for me & all the selves that will
spill out by morning. i do not want
to be a real boy. i do not want to be
geometrical but here i find myself 
& all my angles. measured & 
measured for precision. tell me,
did your body ask to be a strawberry?
mine begged. begged in a confessional 
the shape of a hexagon. 
eight priests. disciples 
of the gospel of mary. it always 
pulls me back into an altar.
breaking the tomb into bite sized pieces.
any circle can be made into
a home. that is why i cast like this.
one side for every way i've died.
nine lives for any cat. i fall from 
tall buildings. i pluck out my eyes
to roll them as dice. you stand
& watch. i wish i could see 
if you're smiling & if you teeth
are hexagons too. 

a study of triangles 

pythagoras took out my teeth
to find the river. he said,
"a child is a measurement."
how happy are your bees? how many
grandparents have you used
as firewood? we take a plane
& cross over the bermuda triangle.
you say, "you know we are going
to grow gills?" that is the last thing
i hear before the plane becomes 
a sea monster. a whale
once beached itself in my bedroom.
i used my end table water glass
to try & pour enough to keep her alive.
she died like a suitecase full of shoes.
i am a catapult keeper. take one
for a walk around the block.
the neighbors warn me that
you need a permit for that.
i do not have a permit. pythagoras
feeds me grapes & tries to get me
to do math. i laugh & tell him,
"there is no such thing as a number."
all the numbers are offended but you know
someone has to tell the truth.
isn't a zero just an emptied egg?
if you've ever blow the yolk out of
an egg through a little hole
you'll know exactly what i mean.
taking a wrong turn & ending up
at the feet of the pyramids. they laugh
because this is all very funny
how an angle can meet another
& name itself. pythagoras shouts
with discvoery, "this is how we are going
to whittle down the moon." 

honeysuckle lions

we went into the sugar
to be caramelized as martyrs.
my shoes on the merri-go-round
& my face painted on the back
of a beetle. the bush grows 
like a dead man's beard.
wild rush. all the life of 
last year, sweet & seeping. 
i remember feeding you my tongue.
did it taste like rain? we plucked 
ticks from behind each other's ears.
purses of blood. who comes 
to your stream to drink?
i am flowing & flowering away.
at night i hear the bushes.
they growl like a coloseum.
like they are begging for more 
sacrifices. greedy plant with 
her throat caught up in all 
her lies. no i am not a boy today.
no you cannot pluck off my hands
to use as love poems. i remember
how easy it was to gather
the humming birds & say 
listen, there are not enough ways
to explain i am losing myself in you.
their beaks in my ears. call me 
a seraph with unrly several faces
& no god left to harbor.
harvest me. tell your friends i am wild
& i will let the worms know 
exactly where my hair lives now. 

vacant bird house

i don't know how to be a ghost anymore.
your mouth spills sand into the living room
& i come with a box of tissues.
please, tell me when i get to go home.
the birds are carrying suitecases out
of a hole in the wall. anything
can be a bird house with enough doors.
a shoe box. a crawl space. my skull.
feathers in my mouth. you are always saying
you make your model cities for me.
i am so tired of pronouns & how they beg me
to enter sentences  against my will.
i want to be a ball of clay. i want to be
a bird feeder. seed in my eyes. 
the blue jays kill squirrels & steal 
their acorns. the birds make sure to say,
"that's not us." blame is a lovely
little halo. well maybe more like 
a hula hoop. what do you want to do 
with it? i want to point fingers 
at every little swallow i see. it's all your fault
that i am sad & angry & never feel rest.
the swallows laugh. they know they
are going to fill their next house 
with marble busts. i used to think
i wanted a yard & now it winks at me
& says, "i am full of dead birds."
of course, the bird were going to die
just like we all are going to die. i just wasn't
expecting to have to build tiny coffins for them.
lower each hollow body into the dirt
like a dictionary page. goodbye i say
& the birds empty their loved one's house
of its plastic shoes & compact mirrors. 

jesus billboard 

come & take off your face.
my o my you could be a good
telephone. do you carry your head
like a purse? does your wallet
open like a bleating lamb?
sometimes i stare out
at the cars & i think 
"all of these people in their
sheepskin coats." call this number
& find me on the other side of the line.
jesus speaking in bird calls. jesus
speaking in credit card numbers.
a tithe is required to be saved.
so is a sacrifice. what of your life
are you willing to drive
eight more hours towards?
rubber & road. i once was 
a motorcycle. then, in the morning
flocks of geese. i have seen people
pull over & weep. i have seen 
my face as a bumper sticker.
no one knows anything 
about worship, do they? to worship
is to fill yourself with firewood
& go looking hungrily for the match.
it is not enough to beg. you must also
stop at the gas station 
& convert the clerk into a believer.
trust me when i tell you 
i see a dart board in you. if you are
not careful you will spend your life
against the wall falling in love
with missiles. jesus is talking about
natural disasters. about tornado warnings
& the instructions that float like veils.
i see thousands a day & not one was 
like you. take the steering wheel
& toss it into the gasping woods.
i am ready for you. for each
of your knocking bones 
& for all of your tongues that journey 
like worms the morning after 
a drenching rain. i am asking you
are you tired of fighting?
i am your only way home.

ash tray

have you seen my crystal organ?
i need a place to desintegrate gracefully.
rubbing the white ash between
my two fingers. i taste dead fish 
on the air. the wind is holding
a knife. the neighbors pull thier blinds shut.
do not ask for help but if you do 
make sure you know where all 
your jewels are. bargaining again
with a passing angel, i say,
"have you heard the one 
about the lost daughter?"
we enter the room of smoke.
cats flicking butts from their cigarettes.
my grandmother is often an outline
in a doorway. her old apartment complex
with the duck fountain that never worked.
instead, it gathered rain water
in its belly. crystal ash tray 
on her little porch. she would often
lose a finger. i saw it turn to dust. 
i know this is what is becoming of me.
o vessel. gather me up. make me 
into a morsel of carrying. i do not want
to be scattered yet. instead, i want to lurk
like the scent of tobacco years later
still sewn into her clothe gloves.
a haunting the size of a tongue.
birds sitting in their ash trays 
in the trees. an ash tray 
between my ribs. bear trap. bird cage.
all of it, waiting for the knife 
to cut them loose. 

graveyard for trees

i bury my hands. shovel in my teeth.
the graveyard is full of televisions
playing reruns of the superbowl. 
i still don't know how to play football
& i'm uninterested in learning.
trees die in rainfalls. one limb
at a time. they stand & watch a hand 
fall to the earth & become the home
of mushrooms & little bugs.
i too know what it's like to mourn
the body piecemeal. i said
no freaking way & that's why 
i'm doing the taking apart myself.
a little headstone for each hand. 
mourners come. other hands of all 
my friends & former lovers. the trees
are not like this. they do not mourn
their dead. instead, they wait for
them to become part of the soil.
years from today they know
the loved one will glimmer behind their eyes.
my hands were mischiveous agents.
always picking another apple & 
shoving it into my mouth. i wanted to
let them run rampant. let them
strangle as many dandelions as they pleased.
i could not see them wither. i am not a tree.
the trees say, "this is a graveyard."
we are standing in a parking lot
& then in a mall bathroom & then 
in an arcade. i think a graveyard is
an onion. one petal for every species.
goodbye previous galaxy. goodbye 
old rotting moons. ours is fresh 
& shiny. i often push rolled up notes
into the ground for my hands to read,
"i'm sorry" i say. they don't respond.
the trees lay down sideways beneath 
every broken strip mall cathedral.
i leave flowers for them. the tree ghosts
spit them out & say, "we are not dead."
i say, "i know. i want to join you."  

bicycles for the trees

escape is a state of being.
escape the telephone. escape the holiday
escape the bone structure. escape 
your father's tongue. escape
the teeth of the bear who lurks
by the telephone poll desert.
i tell the tree, "you should 
run way with me." a forest on foot.
they say, "roots roots roots."
always an excuse for not 
flowering in the deep knots 
of the wild land. of course i do
the same thing. i say, "not today"
over & over until my body is nothing
but a windchime. the trees have dreams
of living inside an ice cream parlor
& having an adolscense. i have dreams of
swallowing so much dirt i do not
remember being a piece of chewing gum
in the mouth of a wingless system.
everything here is meant to make us
into escapees. exit signs 
line either side of my days. a boat
with a beating heart i could ride
into the sea monster lands at the edges
of the map. i mean screw it 
maybe i'm a flat earther now. maybe
i need to find a fairy ring 
& pull it apart. incur the appropriate 
wrath of the magical beasts.
i shake the sapling at the edge 
of the creek i say, "there is still time
for you!" the tree stands up & gets on
her bike & rides away towards 
the supermarket. she is going to buy
as much ice cream as she can eat.
i kneel down to touch 
the warm earth where she was. 

altar clothe

i saw god in a stock photo.
we were walking through the goodwill
seeking refuge in all kinds
of beautiful nonsense. there he was
with a linen scented face. i was looking
for altar tools. it was a cordless november.
all i wanted was to be a human again
but that always feels like something
i'm reaching for. do other people 
see the mirror & think "almost there"?
i brush my teeth with a paint brush.
mouth full of trees. i've learned
to fill every empty space with a knickknack.
in between my ribs are snowglobes 
& that portrat of god which i purchased
& he quickly vacated the frame. a coward.
always running from containment.
if i were god i would first turn all landlords 
into fireflies. there, they too can learn
to try talking to lovers with only
the light of their own bodies. power out.
summer's talons. we sweat & quickly ate
the melting ice cream cones from the freezer.
when you get fired from a place
i'm told you put all your desk things
into a little box. mostly, i stumble through
the day like this. all my little needs in a box.
god could show himself any time
but he is afraid. he knows he's 
royally fucked up for the most part.
i bought an altar clothe with 
little bird knit into the doilie. i bought
some lost candles to make into a crown.
i am a winter-is-alway-coming kind of person.
the cockroaches playing their keyboards
beneath fridge. all i wanted 
was a holy moon to slice at the counter.
sitting with sugar dripping down 
our chests. a bookend. a chalice.
the checkout line, a glorious little purgatory. 

steel wool blanket

the crickets come to the window
to promise i can be more clean.
beneath skin. beneath bone.
beneath chicken flesh & guts 
there is a tissue paper garland.
one thought biting the tail 
of another. that is where my teeth
are gift wrapped. that is where
my skull glows full of cave worms.
i sit in the kitchen sink with 
a duck call & a gun in my lap.
in this country anyone could have
a gun in their lap & so i have one too.
i name the gun "honesty"
& pet her like a dog. i  just wanted
to shin like the glass cabinet 
full of plates we cannot eat off of.
skin comes off like a tasty-cake wrapper.
tell me the cream is right. tell me
i am as soft as you hoped i would be.
you aren't a man until another man
takes you completely into his mouth.
cuts his gums on your sharpness.
delight is a blimp i once saw burn
on the front lawn. we put on sunglasses.
we took out lawn chairs. tell me,
are you going to sleep in the guest room
or on my forehead? i have space.
the blood was always alarming
after sleeping in such a device. 
but, i've gotten used to it.
to seeing the wreckage & learning
i still need to call it my body. 
tell me, when were you last
comnfortable? i think i was four.
i stood naked in a thunderstorm.
washed. raw. electric.