The bear has no insides

11/25-27

You could be the rivers of the world

and I would watch you slink into the dark green banks

as they slosh with mud on humid autumn afternoons.

Moss flanks all your sides, and at once

you are softened in this light.

I am awake in this light.

I am told that everything I have touched is

a weapon. But I am told that by nobody but myself.

Today, I am awake but there is no light.

When my eyes are burning, there should be 

a bright sun beaming through.

Today, my face has fizzled out through the cracks

in the digital dotted matrix.

I have been shivering through hot showers and

endless hallways and 

people staring through and around me.

You are stagnant at the edge of the forest, waiting

for the inexplicable tidal wave of comfort

that will never arrive.

We are all spineless

but the bear has no insides.

Imagined New England

10/10 on the Amtrak from New York to Providence

Sun glinted water

Touched by laboring fishermen

In the midday

Pushing curvature

Vigorously across plains towards vacated motels and cold factory chimneys

In every graveyard the students pass through admiring the ornate inscriptions

An elderly loner stands tall

Overshadowing trees with his presence

Hands placed neatly on hips

Or folded and crossed by the chest

Tossing shouts from his cracked mouth

Pointing his sawdust caked fingers

To go

out!

out!

out of here!

Lectures on Organic(ic) Failure

painting june 13 2024, writing october 6 2025

"We were together for twelve years and he still left me out of the will"

Chanting the pains of a civilization,

of a burdened society filled with witches and grotesque figures,

clamoring at stop lights and overturned orange buckets.

Can you describe the last time you felt an external movement?

Do any images appear to you in your sleep?

Will you answer me, "yes", or "no"?

When the questions stop

so will his heart.

And it is nobody's fault,

but I will feel it too.

fourfold limerence

 always beaming towards the sky

and shedding shame

from the forgotten feelings of hope

that bind my arms together

It's really awesome that you can ""publish"" whatever you want nowadays due to the advent of the internet

Are you still writing songs

about Jesus Christ and other subjects you know nearly nothing about?

An entire generation that has never felt the atmosphere closing in on them but they have been told their whole life that it is bound to happen,

                     , approaches the event horizon with such indifference.

At home everything is spinning in perfect [opposite] unison

counterclockwise and clockwise and every which way your mind has designated itself to spin.

Time is merciless but it will always remind you of that.

At least I had a few chances to pause

before the clocks disintegrated all their parts

each gear

unlocked from interlocking.

Even in your succinct &breathless ways

I was dissipating endlessly into the grand consciousness.

No longer complicit in aural atrophy

or using words such as "you" or "I"

or brushing hair

or thinking before speaking

or a reversal of the two

or remembering which parts of the machine are sharp and hot.

It is possible to live without these things and the time that enables them.

A Poem about Humans and Birds that I do not think ever had a title

We stare at each other as kids in a novelty wax museum

The birds put constellations in the sky to remind us our skin is a disguise

We burn our vision through each other as the blue flames on your gas stove flicker

Moving through an apathetic suburban hellscape, the stars have no purpose anymore

We touch each other's smooth shoulders as two dolls with their heads ripped off

There are streetlights to guide the masses and the birds keep flocking to higher branches

We peer into each other's glazed-over eyes with pseudo-saccharic smiles

The birds put constellations in the sky and we tricked ourselves into control

excerpt from dinner after 9, march 2024

IN THE SPIRIT OF MODIFICATION:

Nobody grows up or grows old

They wake up on a sodden mattress deep in the July night from a dream they swore they've had before

They climb through a double-sided mirror to their mother's rom

They fall out through a storm drain after thirty minutes' rest

It comes out to a grocery store where the shopping carts have faces

They draw with their red fingertips on the frosted windows

They look down to see blood in the toothpaste washing down the sink

I would give myself to the Earth if it meant to see a fervent change in the parts of me that are unwilling to leave.

excerpt from dinner after 9, march 2024