last night { } the moon appeared to have a crack in it [2012]

black mold is the door to where I am handheld standing
inward in ankle deep performance ice     and an
uncertain smile is the cause of a stench     a stamp

standing in a vocabulary of abstract black
two children flickered as handheld planets diminished
the distance between empathies     and mysteries

handheld mortar is made manifest as a stoppage
or a crack     and the occasional straining of
a grandmother's stare is black     and lit from behind

walking will soon be a fabric of the past     or
handheld snapshots of landings are slapping tinctures from
tabula rasas     and black is a collision

last is like clockwork on this moon of separate legs

first love [2010]

until then
all that had been known
was a drained
dry pubescence
stoned and smashed
as empties were
lined along the retainer

  she
was Rachel Dugan
a lusting blonde cheerleader
with a powder-blue Escort
meticulous tan
spirited hips
and absent RV parents

we
were awkward eighth-graders
chubby and bespectacled
more taken by D & D
than t & a
but confused curious 
and observant

she
was lonely next door
inviting with evening calls
and accommodating of
frequent visitors
victorious athletes
eager to score again

we
were over the fence
like anxious virgin ninjas
and up to her cracked
bedroom window
with a steaming hormone breath    
and fear of errant headlights

she

was teen swollen 
above her stripped Vanderbilts
and grinning dumb
doling out desperate
handjobs
to the hulking varsity squad

we
were witness to eleven
harsh ejaculations
and her careful makeup smearing
from cum
and a soiled washrag
and tears

finished
the Offense (and we) ran off
ignorant and chortling
into our wiping night

afterward
we kicked around change
alone
behind Wonderland Lanes
nursing single bottles of Blatz
and an inebriated distortion
of first love

someone said
something forgotten

and as we leaned empty
against the retainer
we were smashed

HERMIT artwork: "Boo-Boo and Beauregard" [2015]

Occupy Sonnets, 11-15 [2011]

torches

WE NEVER FORGET     (thin arms crossed in an "x")
though we recognize that every voice is equal
who's wondering anymore     (right and unjust
a binary vote is not that unlike consensus
(some townsfolk wielded pitchforks     some waved torches)
what is being discussed is very serious

these patriotic stilts probably did hurt him
(who could stand on flames)     (suffering is moral
one the individual is asked to address
there are many     atheists and agnostics
and costumes     this is democratic process
(the monster is howling beyond our dull lamplight)

consensus is reached in favor of     burning
and thousands of others approached the tight circle

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

others

procedural verbiage makes for dialogue
and others exhale smoke     (protecting the youth
future silence cannot be a priority
(looking for hunger     I found a small kitchen)
it's becoming rapidly apparent     (loss 
I don't think we need     an overnight presence

awake over 48 hours     crying
into the laps of strangers wearing corduroy
I see so few people out here     objecting
face-to-face     and learning to work together
no matter the choking want     talk the smokescreen
and they come here after every spent paycheck

they are the 99%     (retractions
(no afternoon protesters     or activists)

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

notches

into a civil war you'd better be     carved
the election reform proposed ignores causes
upon a bark bench)     the sword or the dollar
overlords wave like the media     smiling
choosing to call themselves whomever     system
stifling them     no matter what situation

we call for students and teachers to act alone
then you must be one of us)     corporations
crane     raising dozens of crudely conceived flags
it's freedom     (the hamstrung movement as a whole
isn't it about time that we     (sad cowards
count the notches in our belts     and gunstocks

C-H-A-N-G-E     is a correction
freedom has been largely taken from the dollar

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

traces

but even though the idea of election
monitoring     income that vanished with time
the Occupy movement seems outside     (the past
simply put     consumers have had enough of
all possible worlds     legitimizing
the result is a quiet creep of new charges

it seems to us that you have taken     (long-term
over the remaining     99%
to play the game)     occupied your parks and homes
the ruling junta's     seizure of the process
regardless of how one stands     traces of snow
it should be neither our job nor our desire

as people)     committed to serious change
forcibly bundled into higher monthly fees

❊     ❊     ❊     ❊     ❊

charts

rather than listing demands     (outright horselaugh
we need to recognize that the crises we face
up in your sheltered     comfy little attics
(direct US military intervention)
might not let you babies keep your iPhones     (though
subordinating the developing world

this is garbage)     self-destructive spectacle
the failures of this imperial policy
by Woodstock-era nostalgia     putrid false
assumptions     failure is the light at the end
and this enemy of mine     (not popular
predatory corporate capitalism

an article of faith charts the invisible
or better yet     enlist for the real thing

Squeeze [2015]

I have been wanting to write something in an autobiographical vein, but the temperature, and dozens of sudden, unexpected bouts of masturbation, have kept me from instituting any sort of observational mechanism, or experiencing what one might call a "comparative revelation", and I remain unperceptive, and crusted in dried secretions, to this very second. 

Unforeseen circumstances, wretched and withdrawn into constellations, pose threats, strike stances toward the pregnant belly of my knowledge, while congruently, invisible conglomerates, responsible for pitching hope to the pad and the digits, manufacture another type of revelation, and facilitate the metamorphosis, the transubstantiation, of an everlasting colloquialist phoneme.  It is a challenge to grip this, to squeeze it all.

discontinuity [2012]

upon an ellipsis
  (a stage)
time is personal

[                    ]

synchronization

[                    ]

falling out of a window
  (perception of time?)
the ground is mine

this is an interruption

To which animal am I speaking in the following length of sentence? [2013]

"___1___  ___2___  __3__  ____4____,  __5__  ___6___  _7_  _8_  ___9___  ____10____."

1.  Why does he toddle away, as if frightened by the syringe or me?

2.  Where might he be if he were not this young and at home?

3.  When might he be found in fat places wrestling dandelions?

4.  Might his be as distinguished as a possum's arabesque?

5.  Who is he when he is not the mayor, or George Clooney's foe?

6.  Is it possible for him to have a civil relationship with the bulldog?

7.  Might one feature him as a southern dandy or an armchair quarterback?

8.  Why might he prefer it flat, especially when the moons are bountiful?

9.  What is to be dipped into the peanut butter of his panorama?

10. Is there not a second through which one might thread him?

[The answer reveals as one observes the rollback arch brindling buck iris thump.]