Sleetmagazine.com

Is Roughing

walking in a distant door carrying Marine on Saint Croix sky fields as volcanic floes sunburned down my back and arms and the tops of my feet neck peeled into rust

we are all fuel and scrapes tractors stuttering our names out in exhaust fumes we gathered berried beauties bright fruits silent as frost leaves children

the last of that first summer's days cold taken from the fourth grade fall classroom to slave the first days of spring too in the in between summer comes we leave at 7am from Saint Paul out to unobserved by eyes even by those driving past the acres near a road my ages nine to fifteenth year spit there

 

In My Room

I locked myself in the picture book colors inside the lines colored in my room door noted noises that passed

outside the hallway is underwater others always echoes others

the walls were yellow I believe were yellow echoes I locked myself my room noted as noises passed my door through

outside my window the hallway underwater echoes already yellow inside my room I decided to create my own room section by section built a subterfuge titanium a mural in parts movements in music lyrics

it all became spheres of observable lines

within cerulean time

soon time will become out of itself time will become happened upon see itself consider that the lone escape ideal can cut this room out of the picture book maybe even make an escape

 

Grade

third grader crying sobbing knowing
that someone took the time to invent
the atom bomb the hydrogen bomb
how many shadows
burned into a bridge or three
a wall take measurements
measurements could be taken
from the shadows
yes
but why
we keep score of that certain angle
the radiance
how much variance
in radiation
that's right radiance
the Classics
Plutarch
Pluto
Plato
Socrates
Hawthorne
Frost
Rumi
argument
LASER becomes laser
excellent
later
read Watership Down it's a children's tale
teach yourself the truth
fundamentals
logic is theory
what makes
different infinities
different sizes
don't ask questions

years later how small
the infinity we live in

 

Promises 'N Stuff

brought on by a bobble-head life ruled by a narcissist who hates especially specifically children women faggots blacks uses the word "nigger" in church

I switch elbows and bury the rubber ball again

pressing away self blood flow image made up of cult proclaimed knowns broken homes though families are together hated flavor communal meals dinners as capture

ethereal dry drunks bleeding out broken in the place itself foreign once moved into anonymity in your city for the purpose of reestablishing a keep of almost belief

 

In Blue

every city hidden alleyways sit here backwaters histories quiet displayed three of these things belong together display\ you a package in aisles a pageant made front by front by front three of these things are kind of the same a hand-painted plaster figure an idol opinion surviving while against some religions' prescriptions do ya think?

sealed crucified plaster stained idols our idle beliefs effigies lines do break but one of these things is doing its own thing

defined versus historic purposes there should be water not blood water that wound there ages burdened you sucker side opened plaster sensation spear fingers

~

in now its time to play our game it should be science by admission water water water should be running shown flowing flesh and side flaccid sagging separation dead body blood-water we are brief words

 

Basic Child

we are all worn thin
here
threadbare

the fates even having a difficult time surviving deciding

where it is possible to snip


the weave so push-dependent on aided grief might
unravel even if that were to happen
to all ends for me for many
that would be

a kind decision

 

Left Parted

we all end up stylistic saviors insisting on
lone visions how belief is all about spells prophecies
each belief draining away the free dumbfounded-ness
miracles miracles miracles

 

Dark Ages

I shivered in the hospital this morning afraid to come out from behind the curtain I heard the screams of zombies in the halls
I know disability is tearing me like the summer a year and a half ago no one knows disappeared the way footsteps vanish when they are taken unless you note specifically who you had to step on where the atoms were that instant (they shift then everything is obsolete) how the guard let me get away I walked out the emergency room door after three hours of waiting for a doctor to meet with me in my mind it was longer days leapt by already in a white-walled wonderland-sideshow without help where maybe I had been alone for eternity even if only in my hallucinations knowing all that was on my mind now on the street telephone lines speak blipping antenna codes my feet wander a darkness where stars are only knives to bleed me of desire back-lit frames walking north home flare and flicker that is how I remember flickering outside of time stuck in visions believing all terror is housed inside of me

 

Daylight

you will always be a goat eating thorns on an eraser rubbed edge of the badlands facing the desert the only thing you own the homeless person inside you
who grows thin day to day your suicide made up of this dry tongue landscape exhaustion that ricochets confusion wrapped within the muffled bells so difficult to observe a mind always ringing out self hatred random reappearing
in the summer windows fan blades play at being shadows inter-daylight spins up unexpectedly out of the eyelashes of sleep deep wrenching through glass we all
share a look our teeth worn down too quickly and I only wish to be one breath a signal that daylight is coming
morning folding my varied skins creased by you again