Holding Myself for Ransom

I have no lungs
 
I breathe by 
opening and 
closing my fists
 
*

I can throw a pumpkin full of explosives 
into the kitchen.

I can crush a cube of frozen paint thinner in my hand, 
lay down on a domino the size of a mattress.

I can rip apart the garden shears 
like a wishbone--

angels bouncing between spark plugs,
smoke doing its rain dance around the room:

no one will notice.
The sun is a junkie’s eyeball and 
 
elephants stampede through the neighborhood.  
I play chess against myself.

Every black pawn I take
I have to swallow.

*

It takes years to write one report days to write one word seconds to write one life story.
 
I make up all my memories--
a blizzard of stars swallowing every weatherman 
not armed with an umbrella.  Which beers 

taste less bad?  How do I pry 
the inner-squirrel from my finger and 
who sent this arresting bouquet 
of snorkels? Death?

The grandfather clock 
sinks deep into the floor, 
its white roots gripping the pipes 
like an octopus.  I break 
 
and un-break the dishes. 
  
*

My coffee tastes like piss
and my piss tastes like coffee. 
It’s the same every morning: 
the house folds itself up like a map when I leave it, 
static infecting the radio. 
  
I wake the avocado not a real avocado 
one from the garden where our ghosts hide. 
 
I’m bored with my eyes,  
I close them open them pull off my lips kiss my own nose, 
the salad tongs in my hand. 







Oneirology

1.
The window is open, just enough 
to let the wind come in, 
toss some old receipts on the floor, 
chase the cat from the bedroom, 
turn on the TV.  The rest of the house 
 
is asleep, a dream passing from room 
to room like a swarm of ghost bees.  
It’s a sad dream, one that’s survived 
hundreds of years, feeding on dead mice 
and the occasional lost tennis shoe.

Every wall is a different shade of static.


 2.
Sleep provides energy for the day’s undertakings 
such as shopping for a new spice rack 
or chiseling cat mucus off the kitchen floor with a butter knife,
but come nightfall that energy funnels down the cosmic drain 
into a dimension where we are all statues 
and our voices are red birds that fly from our mouths.
I sit alone in my cave trying to write poetry but 
all that comes from my brain is 
nonsense: a white bib forgetting 
its own tragic lullaby, some shiny butter snails, 
a villa sketched by madmen 
pounded into a small cube, then one night 
a bright slit appears in the sky 
and out spew the stars 
followed by pink clouds of dust
inside which angels are born like 
corn popping in the microwave.
 
 
3.
Is this how the world ends, angels inside us 
multiplying like viruses, microwaving our bones?  

We burn our inner-children, feed our laundry to the moon, 
die asleep on memory foam. No one remembers.

You press the up button, the elevator never arrives. 
Is the lobby all that exists 
 
or is there a malfunction in the heavens, 
a hand-shaped weed poking up through the sidewalk?  

Pain rises from deep inside the earth.  
Mirrors shatter, reading glasses on the floor 

like stepped-on grasshoppers. So what’s 
an old book to do? Swallow a hurricane?  

If one writes a book on this side of the mirror 
on the other side there must exist the opposite of that book--

a book you can read in the dark, a book 
made of snow.  The roller coasters untangle  themselves.
 
 
4.
I can’t sleep; I’m becoming 
an owl, an owl with moon-eyes, 
an owl who eats pizza for breakfast, 
cold pizza with mushrooms of blood.

I disassemble the cuckoo clock 
in its nest of brass twigs.

Ghosts piss my name in the snow.


  
 
 
The Angel in the Phone Line 

swims backwards.  I’ve un-dreamt my life: half dead, half drunk.  One morning I’m a cloud in
my father’s belly; the next a ghost, a spray of cologne. The scent of the moon making love to
the sea. The scent of two storms making love on the beach. I can’t decide.  The angel swims
forwards, backwards at the speed of darkness. The more I drink, the louder the dial tone.


 
 
 
 
Ruins
 
1.
The moon plays a fragile 
piano of tears

at its feet lie smiles 
in a pool of silver blood

wind with transparent feathers
swoops down 

begins to eat them


2.
The sky is dead
wrapped in a blanket of daffodils 
with no seeds 
in the glass cubes of its teeth

an endless landscape of hiccups 
the occasional iceberg 
of sunlight taps on the window

oh blank dance of clouds!
the porch is on fire 
the milk strings of your guitar 

shatter on the roof


3.
Wind with its halo of voices 
escapes from the stone--
heart of the woods 
deer skeletons roam at night

I cannot sleep 
I stand naked at the window 
looking out on dunes 
of moonlit snow

 
4.
Time is a wall of faces 
black snow 
falling in the eyes
burying scattered shards of light


5.
The moon’s ghost looms 
over a glistening forest of echoes

In the opposite sky--
the pink glow of snowcaps at sunrise

Locked inside the mountains 
wind gathers ice tears into tiny piles 
 

6.
Your face shines bright 
  
even as the moon passes 
through a wreath of dead moths 
even as blood snow 
melts on the light bulbs

but some stars fall like 
unborn bears into the woods 
 
listen to their cries


 
 
 
 
 
Ticker Tape

The future is broken
Fighter jets disguised as geese assume their checkmark formation
The clouds sink like battleships into the grass
O say can you pee, laughs my inner-child, peeing
Not so funny to the outer-child, prostate swollen, back hair gathering
frost
A rose of butter hardens
The beehives die the snails ask questions

*

My eye isn’t naked it wears tiny shoes it dances all night in a puddle of merlot the stone
with quartz teeth wants to eat it

*

I hate rain.  I sink through 
hours of darkness, passing only 
the occasional neon jellyfish.  
My bed lands on the moon, 
the moon lands on my bed.  
It doesn’t matter.  A cloud 
coughs down the door.
I weep, pull a dark quilt 
of porn over my eyes.  
The dog eats me.  Showers 
melt the town I grew up in: 
the idiot weatherman, his umbrella 
opening, closing itself at will

*

It’s still December, still July.
I don’t own a calendar, 
a long line of yesterdays.
My hands fall off, 
I put them back on.
My head falls off, 
I warm it in the oven.
It’s cold in the microwave.
I sleep on the lawn