Writer's Block versus Muddle and his Amazing Insomnia

it's one thing to think thoughts, and another to think thoughts with the rain tapping on your window for the 29th hour. the grey beat of it draws words down till they collect in puddles, clean puddles in the grass, so clean you'll drink off the ground. words so clean you'll drown, and go on living drowned, breathing the fruit of the sky, to be the drowned. quick, before the oil washes over clarity in curds of color.

but just now... i was considering the expression 'you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar'. the only reason i can think to want to catch flies in the first place is to get them out of your house, in which case the pith of it is rotten anyway, that honey is a food spooned out with falsity. i wanted to test the test, to fill a mister with vinegar and see if spraying the flies didn't make them fall out of the sky just the same. can't you see? i wasn't always a mister filled with vinegar.

so the answer is to have the answer. i wanted to wait until i moved, but for the sake of to conquer my embarrassment sooner than later, to conjure my shit-eating grin and woo the unworthy world with candy-red romance, to practice proper the flattering your ass, for the sake of these

you can step with me through this, and get clean. and if you were here with me, i would hum a little song about you, and smile that your hair is getting wet and trickling down around your eyes. and i would tell you that everywhere you move you leave behind a current, and i am drawn into you.

you all taste like honey to me.

i drove five hours tonight and had a chance to break it down, but then there were debates and now it's all a muddle of does-it-even-matters. several years ago, this is when we lived in the house with the concrete driveway that the roots of trees had pushed their way through, this someone i found distasteful, a greasy person chris who had once moaned with my friend april on the floor of what had been my bedroom while i tried to sleep a few feet away, this anyway who was bringing me liquid acid to drop on a sweet tart, he struggled over the roots, and through the door pushing ahead of him an odor like sage, he asked me how i was doing -- but before i could speak answered for me "heart's still beatin' huh?" -- in answer to which i gotta spin out of control, maybe go back to start for divining my audience; that is, a funhouse mirror. an electric knife, to slice the ham, to serve on a platter to the man in the funhouse mirror. I don't believe what I perceive, necessarily. I doubt everything I believe, and I doubt everything you believe for the sake of someone should... so the major mode is antiseptic for potential zeal. maybe. may be. not exactly a recipe for self-worth, but it passes in a while, it slows down altogether, there's refuge in that words are like seeds in a rain stick, or the magic in a maraca that makes it useful for joy. God that house smelled like dead leaves. it was endless with webs. lucky, while i'm not like the rest who have learned to strut, i am like the rest who have a talent for constructing little machines designed for the prevention of blowing one's brains out. HEART. STILL. BEATING. fucker. for five hours, this. it was suggested to me once again lately that we are what we think, or we make ourselves what we want, or that our interior vision of ourselves is true, which were i feeling less hopeful would beg me to conjure an image of a snowball rolling through life picking up sticks and dirt and rocks or clean snow and shiny things depending on where and how it rolled, just for debate of course, that ultimately all we are is a snowball of our past, or maybe that all that matters is how we are perceived and remembered and pigeonholed by our acquaintances. but i don't believe that, either. rather, i believe it as well, just as much, just enough, not at all. for fuck's sake. i am of no use to myself or anyone unless i'm poking holes in holes, and still not very! and yet, like those of you who do, like you, i have my little madness of machines that i can't stop manufacturing, replicating little lifters for under my chin and arms and elevators for my sense of importance, miniature factories of rationalizations and dozers and pacemakers designed to preserve dignity throughout. none of which should suggest that i wasn't in a good place as i stepped through and around and over the roots of this day, because this day, today, i was. i was centered, and my stomach was empty and i was strong, and i could probably, if pressed, have spoken in cohesive sentences. even if put on the spot. but there was no one around to see me not apologizing to the fuckers fucking on my floor.

feeling emotional lately, hoping this doesn't make a victim out of anyone, myself included. constantly looking forward, not nearly as negative about the future as the past, and wow, awash this week in unusual feelings, they feel good, they feel comfortable, they feel like a crushing mistake, like feet dangling, eyes closed in an inner-tube, floating and a waterfall roar getting louder and louder, well my drink has an umbrella in it and the experiments let me down in not nearly so satisfying, so bones-crushed-on-the-rocks-completely as the familiar. those they left me to drift in a fucking eddy. really now, can we lie tip of head to tip of head on the floor and listen to each other's breathing as we masturbate, and another hundred cheap suggestions? it's like a movie in mind and not even through the teasers, the kiss not to come till the second act. i don't know why i believe what i believe. what feels fine is a fired off imagination. well, the beasts of my best intentions have every opportunity to impress and leave me dangling too long. the truth is i tire of it and just want cupped hands to curl up in. and hair to pull and stroke and smell. oh i know i'll keep the march going for some more months, but there's inevitability in the air, and soon it will be spring and i'll find myself both helpless and helping cast the spell. the truth is we make choices and we can change the choices we make. but in the end we like what we like, and i like what i like a lot. enough to endure it. enough to wallow in it. enough to command it. enough to create a concentric orbit with it. enough to not shut up about it. enough to be happy, for what should be a while. shallow shit, beauty worship. but wrap it in pain and confusion... it becomes textured, begging exploration... roll myself into it like sheets and blankets. warm, and safe, and sure.

I am standing in line at the convenience store, waiting to pay for a daily dose of bad habit. I'm sweating like I will when it's daylight, my shirt is stuck to me, stuck to my back from the heat of the car seat. Everyone else is in line of course dry, even migrant workers well-groomed and surprisingly soil-repellent. I would be self-conscious, except that the girl behind the counter is so perfectly ugly that everyone in the store, even the middle-aged woman in front of me, is scheming a way to win her. No one pays me any mind.

A tall Venezuelan approaches the counter, smiling a fat smile, peacocking in his electric blue shirt and clown shoes -- but speaking in tongues, as far as the girl is concerned. She seems upset with the way their attempted communication is going, her face is pinched and it takes a full three minutes for her to determine exactly what the man is after -- the lottery tickets on which he will dream his case-of-beer dreams. She looks at him blandly and I am happy to see his flirtations fail, I grin inside, rock on the balls of my feet, confident of my chances now. He walks out with head high, but he knows we saw his failure. But then again, in his mind he is already a millionaire.

The middle-aged woman takes her turn. She is smooth, flashing her credit cards, promising the counter-girl a better life, a bobbed hairdo and a closet full of crazy hats. I'm close enough now to hear the girl's accent, she's from some Eastern European country, and my confidence crumbles, middle-aged woman has a son stationed in Germany, they have the beginnings of a conversation and my chances are over. My posture drops and I almost walk out in disappointment. But wait! The European girl's brother was killed by a drunken German soldier on the Autobahn, and I am back in the game.

I ready myself while the old hag (probably younger than I) files her credit cards back into her wallet, alphabetically. She looks back at me over her shoulder, gives me a glare which I return. But when she steps away, grudgingly, I fill the space she has left too quickly, I am too eager, and realizing this, I lose the capacity to smile. Instead, I stand there staring meekly at the hideous checkout girl. She has kinky brown hair, a nose like a plum, grey eyes wide but tired. The only attractive feature she possesses are her full and seemingly naturally moist lips, but even this is not enough to ruin her.

She is staring at me. What is she thinking? She tells me what she is thinking.

"Can I help you?" she says. "Yes," I say, as slowly and smoothly as possible. What I say is "a pack of Carlton 100's please." But what I am thinking, what my eyes are telling her, what I am sending her with every pheremone my conscious mind can force my body to generate, is "touch my toes. touch them, pour liquor on them and suck them, coddle them, address them, look at my shoes they are inside there waiting for you, you must touch them. we will walk out of here right now. I live right around the corner, come home with me and let me make you dinner, and when you have eaten it you will thank my toes." She peeks up at me with eyes that says 'only gay guys smoke Ultra Lights'. As she turns to find my cigarettes, I add "Carton is Lowest." Meaning "I probably won't touch yours though because that doesn't do anything for me."

My mother's toes were cherry tomatoes. My father's were amusing, bumpy gourds. Through some mysterious accident of genetics, my toes are sweet potatoes, orange-brown and hairy. Ogreish and frightening. No one will touch my toes. No one has ever touched my toes. I cut them off but they grow back. No shoes will cover my feet, I make my own out of cardboard scraps and rubber bands. I am always learning how to walk.

One day in high school, the gym teacher orders us to stretch. Touch your toes! I am not flexible enough to do it. But if I were, I wouldn't be able to anyway because the sight of everyone else touching their toes has given me an erection. This is difficult to disguise in gym pants. I play it off by commenting on what I think the guys will consider a sexy ass, one wearing pink shorts with something written on them, I don't know what those say. I can't read those advertisements, they are on butts and I am embarrassed to read them. As usual, no one is cruel to me. This is why I still have love for my brothers and sisters.

In my basement at night, amid moths and yellow bulbs, I am constructing a machine which, when completed, will do for me things that no one will do. I love you. But soon, I will no longer need you. Don't be sad. You will all still be welcome for dinner, and the robot will be in a closet. You won't even have to think about it. But if you want me to bring it out, I will show you its many features and its soft hands.

I wake with my foot on the throat of Zeus -- I steal his thunder then pick him up with a stick like a dead animal on the side of the road. I move him to the other side of the road.

I'm staring at the coffee cup (now I don't drink coffee). It's old and its letters are faded, and observation becomes the question, is it worth moving to the sink? Consequence of a positive: I will have to move, and having moved will have moved. Also, the cup will have to be moved when otherwise it would not have been. Perhaps for a long, long time. The sink will have to make some room. The carpet will receive 13 steps worth of wear and the air will have to move aside for my effort. Butterflies and hurricanes. And not only, it goes on for a long time like this -- the coffee cup ends up shattering empires and reversing the big bang and cancelling MASH. I should summon a bolt and blast the cup and be done with it. Until I consider other applications for this bare squint of borrowed power. I could construct a lover out of clay or a bird. Make a mountain of mashed potatoes in some undernourished, underpotatoed part of the world. Design a billboard for a billboard company. Until I realize what I could have done with the time I spent thinking on it already. And the time I spend thinking on this. Power wasn't made for the considerate. Coffee cup goin' nowhere...

In a secret chamber under the archives, a greyed cleric of The Considerati slowly wipes his chin. A line of drool has taken forty years to reach his chin and which will take another ten to wipe away. His hair has grown down to his ankles, snaking around and through his legs -- it may be grey or it may be caked in dust. "Am I alone in this?" he thinks. "There may be dozens of members left, perhaps only me. Let's see, there was Martha... she never calls..."

In three thousand years The Considerati have had only two meetings. They were very well thought out events, except the one which was spoiled by rain.

I drive through the storm down orange clay roads to find the pile of Zeus. If there were an end to this it would be well reasoned and apologetic. I am leaning into the windshield to try to see through it... eyes closer to the spaces between raindrops, now driving between the raindrops. If I can hold the sun in the sky till morning, I may yet find his body in the mud...

I remember we are gathered around the table in copper light. It's an oval table, oak, there's a hanging lamp above us and though it's not relevant, outside the window, shadowy blue fish float past on shadowy currents. I don't recall the brass door handles and their finger-stained brown patches and the tongue-sized click-latch I thumbed, but the feeling of submersion stays with me.

There are players at the table, I have invited them for dinner and wine, plates and glasses are already warm and wet, the table set.

Bruce oozes Literature, he dresses the way I think that I would dress if I wore clothes, warm brown layers of everything tweed and sweater-fuzz, corduroys and unnamable, imminently huggable fabrics. well-read women want to tear through his shirts like pages of a book -- his lecherous teeth flicker, red lips blanketed in his beard, his cologne like printer's ink.

Janine is hipped with him, naturally red-hair she has shaved up the sides but allowed to grow curly on top, how she loathes herself and how proud she is of the rules she's established that keep her so unhappy, her arms mottled with freckles and moles and holes, her eyes casting 'follow me'. Off the cliff. When I die, to be buried in her skin, to make such a lovely skeleton.

Greg, the aging scenester, whose friends all grew up but who's not yet willing, he wears a holy t-shirt for an unknown band, of course, his remaining existence as tattered billboard for mediocre talent, that serves which doesn't act as mirror. He drums on the tabletop with his yellow fingertips, he never stops, he is the rhythm to which our conversation walks.

And Elise. Her beautiful nose, too large for a face, guarded by her blistering eyes, though too small. She is our mindreader of bad intent, an actress at that, professionally, let there be no thought of getting through or past her. Straight black hair I covet, sometimes pieces of it fall over her face and she puckers and blows it aside, my favorite of her well-considered mannerisms.

These are those I love enough to ask out of my thoughts into dinnertime. We have been carefully chewing little forkfuls of fish and discussing high-minded ideas for most of an hour already. Jasper has wandered out to the dining room to see what he's missing, and I have just returned him to bed and come back to my seat. At which point there is a trigger for writing.

"He's so handsome," Elise says, referring to Jasper. "Something about that Young gene,' she adds, and smiles winely.

This is open to interpretation but demands a quick response. It should be noted that Elise is not flirting with me. She long ago placed me on a shelf labeled 'You Had Your Chance that One Night at that Party', my reward for a hesitant nature. Six days after that party, as I recall, she met Joel, who wasn't the hesitating type. He didn't hesitate to strip Elise down, and she didn't hesitate to wiggle for him. They didn't hesitate to move in together, nor did she hesitate to cry on my shoulder when he failed to hesitate with the girls at the office, and left her with an empty bank account. Such are my Darlings: never can I kill them, preferring instead to zombify. Elise is that kind of friend.

If she is suggesting that Jasper is handsome because I am handsome, it is most likely because I have been paying Janine much attention this evening and Elise senses in some way that is beyond my male comprehension that Janine might be enjoying it, or, dare I hope, prepared to reward me for it. Elise has for years tried to manage my affairs, judging no one to be 'good enough' for me. In private, she is just my friend. In public, she is my friend who, when someone is potentially interested in me, reflexively radiates 'He's Mine.' I love my Elise, but it's hard enough to get laid without her help.

Or perhaps Elise is just a little buzzed and finds it fun to dig at me, since she knows I am allergic to such comments. She stares at me knowingly, well aware that my first thought will be about how ugly I am, tinged with a pathetic, tiny hope that she really thinks I am not. How do I know I'm not pretty? My friends don't say 'you're so pretty,' girls don't giggle to each other when I walk through the door, and no one wants to take my picture 'just because'.

Still, I have to say something. Bruce is waiting, Janine is watching, Greg doesn't care he's just tapping on the table (Greg is a natural at being 'just kind of there'), but Elise is almost smirking already. A brave man would with cosmic timing turn the comment back to her, compliment her with a wink and a smile... instead, my mind is racing with pictures of itself. I play with infinite variations of 'it takes beauty to recognize beauty,' but the feeling doesn't translate well to words, it's not even logical, and for certain my delivery of it would be a train wreck.

It's important to not be too witty in my response. If I am, my friends at the table will laugh, and then I will be in for a long evening -- having let slip

one good line, I will feel I'm under pressure to continue to try to be funny, at which I will fail. When my jokes fall flat (and they will fall flat), I will freeze and utter nothing of interest for the rest of the evening, instead staring intently at each person as they speak, becoming terribly involved with their every gesture, trying to prove my participation in the social experience by becoming an overactive listener.

What I SHOULD do, I think, is to gracefully accept what Elise has said as a compliment, acknowledge it but immediately turn my focus back to Janine, give off a 'yeah, I got it going on, and it's all for you, J' vibe, give Janine 'the look,' if I'm capable of that. But this assumes too much, it's quite possible that any hope I have with Janine is illusory anyway, she did, after all, arrive to dinner with Bruce, who's been to bed with everyone in the room, excepting myself. Not that he'd mind if Janine stole away with me, I imagine, he'd probably want to watch, and when his request was politely declined, would probably just lay Elise, probably on the oak dinner table, probably with Greg still sitting there tapping out a rhythm for their fuck. Now I must consider if there is a way to respond to Elise which makes Bruce disintegrate into dust forever. This seems an impossible challenge.

There is my fallback, of course, which is the truth. I feel that Jasper's beauty is in spite of my genetic contribution, not because of it, and that he owes the handsomeness he has to his mother, who despite her problems is a sexy woman. But my standard response, 'Jasper's lucky he got his mother's looks and my disposition -- and not the other way around', is tried, everyone at the table has heard it already. I tangent into how lucky I have been in my life to have been loved by beautiful women, a thought that really does make me feel that my own appearance is irrelevant, and relaxes me. And for a moment, too, I was a little boy I was beautiful too, with blue eyes and insane ringlets of long blond hair, before life happened to me.

For a moment I want to attack Elise, the part of me with claws wants to punish her for daring to put me on the spot. "You!" I think. "I'm so tired of your shit. If you would ever throw me a fucking bone in private..." But the beast is mostly impotent, and this is not his audience.

Smile and say nothing? This happens often, because while I am considering my thoughts, the conversation moves on without me. I settle on self-mockery, I

watched too many Woody Allen movies growing up and mastered deflection skills and the art of beating an insult to the punch. It's not always appropriate, but it's natural for me.

"It skips a generation," I say finally, and I think it's good enough.

But by this time the tapping has long since stopped, my guests have all gone home to their own or each others' beds, the lights are dim, the wine bottles are empty, and the fish skins and their peppered juices have dried onto their plates in front of me.

that's all the sleep i've been getting, which might be your norm but for this man's body is hours too few. i've dealt with insomnia all my life, but lately it's become ridiculous -- it's not even insomnia really, just... stubbornness? i know if i crawled into bed i'd be asleep within minutes. but instead, around 10:00, i fool myself, saying "the boy's asleep, i'll take just half an hour of 'me' time". three hours later, red-eyed and clammy, I find myself staring at a computer screen that won't stay in focus, and having cycled through all my regular sites (myspace, yahoo:literati, ebay, and half a dozen others), i'll finally stumble five feet to the bed and be asleep by the time I realize I'm there. now, i'd feel much better during the day, be more productive, a better father and citizen perhaps, if i would just go to bed when i know i should. so why can't i do it? i wonder if i'm ocd... it feels like a kind of meditation... since my day is packed, my mind convinces me that it's not over until i take my peace, and three hours in cyberspace becomes the equivalent of a sunday service. or it could be that i'm just a good little consumer, programmed after three decades to hunger for entertainment and indulgences, unable to rest until i've had my candy. or it could be my mammalian need for social nuzzling, that i'd go to bed like anyone else if i felt enough love (if there's such a thing as 'enough' love). but i'll try tonight, for real. i've had the best dreams lately, i love sleep, i do, and the idea of holding her, feeling her kisses, crawling inside her, so i will. right after a little me time, and maybe five more minutes.

"Didn't you say you were going to fix the fan?"
"Uh-huh."
"Tomorrow?"
"Uh-huh. Stupid spellcaster keeps knocking me out. I need to level up and come back."
"Yeah."
"Hey. Hey! Do you have to vacuum right now? It's ten at night. I need to concentrate here."
"The floor is filthy."
"Look, I worked all day. I just want to relax. You had the whole day off to vacuum."
"Hmph."
A bolt of lightning set him aflame and he exploded into a cloud of black dust.
"You have got to be kidding me. Now you're dusting the keyboard WHILE I'm using it? Subtle."
"Ignore it, then."
"I'm trying."
She picked up a book, sat on the couch, thought about reading. Instead, she played with her socks, rolling them up and down her legs. After a few minutes, she sauntered into the space behind his chair. She rested her chin on his shoulder and reached around to stroke his chest.
"You want some kisses?"
"Let me get saved first. I'm almost to a checkpoint. I really had planned on making some progress tonight."
"It's okay, I can just do it now. You like a challenge."
"That would be amazing."
She slapped the side of his head.
"You've barely talked to me in a week and you really think I'm going to get on the floor and suck you off while you play on the computer."
He paused his game, his eyes bulged and he puckered his lips to suppress a laugh.
"American Dream, Janine."
"Fuck you!"
"Hey! Ow!"
"I'm going out."
"Have fun."
"I will. You too. Enjoy jerking off with the other elves."
The ceiling fan creaks and clicks, it really should be fixed before it falls.
"You're still sitting on the couch. You should be getting dressed."
"Fuck you. No money."
"Fuck you too, love."

1:11 and the rain started in my bedroom, I thought it was only stucco. I was staring at the stucco. But I pat the back of my head to make sure because I have to be sure because I have to be sure, and it's wet, not sweat, and when I look up a drop catches me in the eye and yes, you'll say, you spend all that time staring into the sun! but I couldn't see it through the stucco on the other side of the world, So. Again. Definite raindrop, and that smell! It's the mildew two weeks from now, the mold that takes the bed, I've been sleeping in the mold it becomes me. That black you can't roll out of. Black in the lung or the old black worm, he's been quiet some months but in there belly, dormant, likes the taste, the black taste of mold. But we get ahead of ourselves (and that's how we get ahead). My hair wet, my hand knows, and not sweat like I sat fast or made an effort, already the carpet is puddling there can be no doubt about it, my room is upstairs and already ankle deep, my. My plan if I have one is float on the bed -- as well as I plan, I'll be crushed against the ceiling. But first pat my back, ego erect, quick-witted enough to do nothing. And lying there I think about watching storms from the back porch, when I had a back porch when if I did, and it's that same sensation, the drops will do you in, the snake that stares you down, forked lightning. Its tongue is dry, but satisfies. This! exactly, my pleasure. It rolls right off of me.

I am 24 when the woman who wants me brings me wine. Her arrival is unexpected, so when I open the door, my fingers are green and red and my shirt is dirty from painting. I am glad that she has come, I welcome her in, pour the wine, and we sit, she on the couch and I on the floor. "Give me a few minutes to get to a stopping point and I'll give you my full attention," I say. I go back to grinding pigment into paper with a stick. Before she arrived, I had been thinking about L., pushing colors around, hardly noticing what I was doing. Now, with an audience, I must make it seem as though every gesture has meaning, as though I still have some passion left after dying. Juxtaposed with an open mouth, an uneven house stands with its roof shattered. A pig with a man's face lies on its back in the grass. An uprooted tree hovers in the midground. For whatever reason, it is blue. Once in a while, a bead of sweat falls onto the paper. I try to incorporate it into the picture. "I'm sorry the air-conditioner's broken right now -- I can open the windows." "It's okay," she says. "Not afraid of a little sweat." I ask her to pick out some music, and after a few minutes, I force myself up out of my crouch and put the paper aside to dry. I refill our glasses and sit down near her on the couch. The lamplight carves shadows around her cheekbones, pops the line of her neck into full relief against the plum paint on the walls. She is wearing a printed sundress which could have been destined for no one else's frame. Her hair is black, and her socks. When I paint my fantasies, I am painting her, I wonder if she knows. Does she see herself in sketches pinned to the walls? As for me, I am wearing shorts that are three sizes too large, I have to pull them up when I stand or walk -- I lose weight between relationships. I have spoken with her three times before, and each time our conversation has grown more intimate. And she has been here once before, for a small party. Normally when I tell someone to come by anytime, they don't take me up on it. Pleasant surprise. She doesn't seem so into conversation tonight, she has something or other on her mind, but she is polite or impolite enough to ask about L. "Uh, yeah, that's history, I don't even think about her anymore." I glance over at the painting to see if it's dry. It has a sickly sheen to it still, it's lapping up the humidity. "Thing is... I got in this big long relationship right out of high school, then another one, then I met L.

and we were together like forever, right? I don't think I've ever had a chance to just date and be myself, you know? So I'm determined now, there is NO way I'm getting back into anything serious." She seems mildly disapproving of this. Scornful even, she doesn't even grant me a smile on it, so I try to change the subject. "Well, I want to focus on my work anyway, I'm getting to where I don't hate something I've done for months instead of weeks. I've got this idea for a big piece, it should..." - "Really," she says, "because me, I'm at the point that I'm looking for something serious. I'm tired of dealing with boys. Hmm," she adds, and gets up to go to the bathroom. "Drink up." In the dark in the bedroom, it seems as though we've always known how to kiss each other, soft and delicate and arousing, with interludes of deep, trustful probing. I've wanted her neck since I first saw it, I have to hold myself back from biting her, her breath a rasp. I want to have her in the dress, it seems such a part of her, but she slips out of it in one motion, sits on the edge of the mattress stroking my hair, in the halflight, still wearing the knee-length black socks. She slithers up onto the bed, her skin pale and indistinguishable from the sheets, for a moment a cut-out paper silhouette of black hair, eyes, nipples, socks and pubic hair. I hover over her and plant kisses on her breasts, slide my hand up between her legs. She teases my nipples with her fingernails. I slip into her, and we begin to move together, music encroaching from the living room. I'm flush and sweating. It runs down my nose and drips onto her neck, where I kiss it off. Her hair smells like cinnamon and gets in my eyes. It scratches, tickles my eyelashes, and I use my forearm to wipe my brow, then my eyes, and in so doing my left eye falls out of its socket and bounces from her breast into the bedsheets. I search for it with one hand, desperate and embarrassed, even hotter. She strokes my chest, gives me nibbles. One hand is holding me up while the other is groping. Has it rolled under her back? I hope she hasn't noticed but she's looking up at me with cat eyes that see everything. I lose my concentration. I am about to say 'this has never happened before', but she takes my face in her hands and tells me everything is alright. And at this moment, all I've wanted my whole life is someone to take my face in her hands and tell me everything is alright. Nothing could make me want to fuck her harder.

When her fingertips leave my face they tear at the skin. I pull her legs up into the air and hold them there, she is gasping and I am gasping, there is a moth fluttering in the doorway. In the light of the alarm clock my skin has turned black and orange, like a burning piece of cheese. Where it touches her, the color bleeds. My stain seeps out, covers the bed, the carpet. Her wetness flows down my legs and my skin goes with it, clumps of my hair become caught in her hair and tear away. The meat begins to fall loose from my bones. In the mirror I see a fuming shadow. "More," she whispers, and I become the consistency of warm tar, the dripping sweat now speckling her perfect body black. She is covered in me. All that remains of me are bones, and even they melt into black oil at her mercy. She writhes in the puddle of me. "Mine," she says, cumming. "All mine."

hah!
muse,
ya bonny darter!
allows
no trespass on a
hot property,
who
gimmicks a
string of beaded cliches
into lingual
fusilade...
you're radio reporting
bumbly falsettos,
mock guitar
part.
I'm the odd rummy. but
who loves yr achin' wings
much if any
better?
drunks want
ethereal somethings
so badly we'll
rent kisses in static
will never
know even who
we've come to you as
'til the
music's long since left the
station.

The periods of lucidity are terrible. For a week, she had been herself, or what you never stop hoping was herself, and though you should know better, you can never suppress the hope that the swings are all over, that the person you've loved and who's loved you has found her center. Good, you think, knowing better. Good for her.

She laughs spasmodically. You ask her a question, which you have to ask several times before you get her attention, at which point you ask again. Then her face is contorted into a grimace, a cartoon expression that seems hopelessly affected -- she reminds you of a twelve year old girl. And just as abruptly, she is breathing through her teeth, muttering, her anger at some stray idea blowing back the hairs on your arm.

You sit across the table from her in a country restaurant in a hot place. It's Mother's Day. No one else has thought to do anything for her. You knew no one else would. And you want to give her a good day, but you can't even bring yourself to touch her hand.

So you fork through kernels of corn and translucent leaves of cabbage, and you have nothing at all to say, nothing that would make any difference. You sit across the table from each other in silence. The waitress comes around, perhaps a little too often, to ask "Is everything okay?"

And you remember that never have you not had positioned prominently in your life someone with this mind. You have always tried to suck out the poison and you have always failed. You fail, and you will always fail.

A rationalization presents itself. "This," you say to yourself, "is why I can't form connections with anyone. This is why my loyalty is so hard-won. I've only ever learned how to love into void."

She saunters back from the buffet table, hips swinging a little too far wide, shoulders a little too square, a walk you recognize and have always dreaded. It lacks fluidity, it makes you imagine that something has crawled into her and is moving her around. She is laughing again, at nothing obvious.

You look around at families in their church clothes. They're almost invisible.

As you bite into a bland, bloated carrot, she surprises you. "Why are your eyes so sad?" she asks. But before you can decide if this is a moment of earnest innocence or of calculated cruelty, she is gone again.

As if the question had never been posed.

our hostess,
the mildewed
former hausfrau, MadamFarr.
creaks like furniture,
despite her hundred thousand
$ new upholstery. has collected
the relics of decayed
Idealists, surrounded her fingers
with shining curls. it's horrible.
that gold on grey, beautiful
as bandages. never once let the
winter in her window. wide
voiced, like slow cocoa.
I entered her eye-coins,
seeing with the edge of sight
the periphery fall away
like missed phonecalls, dangles
empty nooses at our departure.
who never dared sing
to the percussion of stacked coins.
the odor of exhumed soil, the
film of her lips, she's gracious
as an Audrey Hepburn
and also dead.

we were on the balcony of a restaurant overlooking a lake... instead of the 25 cent telescopes, there were automated laser pointers constantly scanning the water for fish, and each had a counter like a subway turnstile, registering the number of fish it had targeted in its lifetime. you wanted to swim. i wanted to be alone with you. i had to pick up jasper later, so i didn't have much time. your friends were there. two of them, but they kept changing, they weren't anybody. everytime i got close, you went off with your friends. i followed you to where you were swimming and went in. the water was green with algae, like jello, same color and consistency. we didn't have to swim to stay afloat. but when the laser pointers tried to count us we had to dive to avoid being tallied. i was huffy. i didn't want to be suspended in jello, i wanted to be hugging you. but you kept your distance. we got out of the water to go back to the car. we had to go up to the top of the restaurant and then down a winding hillside trail. i went ahead of you and your friends. you were talking about things that didn't involve me. i went fast. i had a smug image of me waiting at the car for you. "What took you guys so long, huh?" The ground turned to beach sand. miles of beach sand, covered with college students playing with baseballs on strings. they weren't very good. this was the quad for some college. the restaurant was on campus. i heard someone say "yeah, they're back there laughing at him". i didn't look back. i figured you were laughing because i was being huffy and going on ahead. i kept walking. trudging through beach sand. i started to wonder where the car was. we'd parked right by the restaurant. so i stopped to ask two guys who were playing baseball badly. i had walked eight miles in the wrong direction. no wonder you were all laughing. i had to turn around and go back in time to pick up jasper. i tried to go through the back of the restaurant. i stopped when i went by a girl and she said 'hey you!' but she ignored me. i spotted the manager. i tried to ask him whether the exit door would take me where i needed to go. he talked a lot but didn't say anything useful. i tried to interrupt. he insinuated i was rude. i explained to him that i wasn't a rude person, i was someone with somewhere to be. somehow i became disentangled from the conversation. i made my way upstairs. i saw you all at a table, having drinks. you were all

dressed up and i was sweaty and barefoot. i thought everyone would have a laugh at my expense. but it was worse. no one acknowledged that i'd even arrived and sat down. you just continued the conversation like i wasn't there. i realized i'd forgotten to pick up jasper. then i saw him sitting there. you had picked him up for me. because the daycare had called while i was away, because he was sick.

ghost crabs as the same fear
skulks as spiders
we sink into the white
white beach tonight
they dash three feet
moonly spotlighted when
I'm pretending not to see* some hour
they creep, plot
but zipping securely
into our canvas fort
I have become a good husband.

consoling, dries --
condescends, oh love,
your childish fears points
beauty, age, driftwood, presses
sleep
she did, though an hour and
a half before dawn
the silence and the cold
remembers me stories
my young brother
by the fire, the Snakeman.
the blind man who peeks. the
creatures
who grow out of the weeds.

and somewhere before she woke
this film, whose
rust-bottomed barge crashes delivering
a million black
rats unto the beachhead
while under breath
hollow I'm a disaster
waiting for darkness to enter

steam-
collapsed pocket
root deeper in the pot.
crust of fish
and grey white meats
slow slide
from bone to broth.

flaking rim of
browned bubbles
rust and iron.
cling. it's whistling. you're not even

listening.
it will always be august.
and the boiling wave
which rolled you
will never recede.

a turtle, I found myself on abandoned railroad tracks, walled in. I walked in a straight line for my entire life, always wondering if I'd chosen the right direction.

an algael soup, my happiest days, amongst myself, content with sun-worship

a songbird, I escaped from my cage and flew out your window. I lived out my life in a tree in your yard, but you never heard me. you never looked up.

a caterpillar. a wasp's eggs hatched and her young slowly consumed me from the inside, sparing my vital organs, keeping me alive enough only to search for more food to satisfy our hunger. until I could no longer move, and was of no more use.

a virus, we replicated empire in the guts of a thousand Capybara.

a coxalynth, I lived for thirty profitable years, descending from the trees by night to sift snails from the mud with my snout, bearing many healthy children in the boughs.

a calf, stillborn.

Deleterus, the God of Shadows, whose favor granted a male child, and whose kiss was proof against the pox. I walked with men for a thousand years, until my worshippers had been persecuted and finally dispersed. only one believer remained. she knelt on the dirt floor of the temple, forsaking food, until finally the candle-flame faltered and we both melted away.

a spark, the thought of life. conception. with grace i falter.

stop this, you frighten me/ you're not stoned either? stop this. the couch unfolds, shaking/ cracker crumbs from the sheets. sleepover/ atop. 's dubious. only... 's archaeological. dig? 's amusing/ to toy so with others. millions of which are disturbed. I'm this butcher / ama baad apple. your comic explosion of color 's the best of sincerity _ blush? follow/ my lighter-flame. slow/ dirge for a heartbeat. Ahem... !slaps w/ a screech/ I've abused our agreed-upon. predicant bitch -- cn preach/ an erection into applesauce; 'n' proves it.

diamond-head viper
curled around his neck
is cherished, tongue wagging in
the eye of his colorful Buddha

(ten, twelve young laughs outside the window
testing each other with streetgames
the laws of the secular
as all snakes are killers

beside the haystacks, clap of
an angry leather boot, dust rising,
rusting pitchfork hanging from a nail

thin-shelled planet imagined
in a whore's pregnant belly
squeezed slowly down the
innocent serpent's length

jaundiced mother says proudly
we will use these eggs
in our art
these are our unpainted children!

while the maid tugs on the bedsheets
sucking angry
hot breath over her bottom lip
in a snowfall of human scales)

the glint from rounded corners,
their Buddha never blinks
the viper is only one of infinite lashes --
his attendants carry tears of cotton
shine in silence

to openly want things. this might not seem like a big decision to you, but it is something that will actually take some effort on my part. don't get me wrong -- i want things... inwardly. but outwardly, i can't seem to nail down exactly what it is i do want... too busy analyzing, determining, feeling out, considering the effect on others. i have to tell myself it's okay to want all sorts of things, all together and all at once, even paradoxical things.

relationships are a good place to start. i've been telling myself i want friends first, women since my closest friends have always been female. this is proving to be harder than it should be... i thought adults would be past game playing, but it turns out that the games just change in nature. and with kids involved, there are all sorts of fences. so maybe it's time i become more specific. i want someone i can trust. i want a lover. i want someone to spend time with. i want someone who cares about me and who i can care about. i no longer want 'friends' since that term seems to mean something different for everyone who uses it, and no one else's definition seems to match mine. i'm a full-time single father and i don't get much time for me. it's time i exercised some selfishness. i don't want my time wasted. i want laughs and adventures and kisses and cuddles and sex. i pledge to stop defining what i want by what i know i don't and rather by what i do.

Start here!
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