DADZ KLUBB (NE1 CAN JOIN)

i don't want to think about my dad
as he sits alone in that house in connecticut
burning old receipts
boxes of them
when he doesn't know why he kept them in the first place
and calling me
to ask if i want to keep my dusty, water-warped artwork from third grade
when my brother doesn't come home much
and sleeps through most of thanksgiving day
in the guest room downstairs
because he doesn't want dad to know how late he got in
the landing creaks on the way up

how often does my dad call my grandparents
who are dying an ocean away
and i don't want to think
how bitter bitter bitter my granddad sounds
when he talks about the electricity board
and never talks about why he changed our family name

if the bank forecloses on a man's house
and his wife leaves him finally
and he doesn't have a job
and his son gets ready to go off to college
and his little girl is a grown up who can't remember to phone home
like she's trying to look at the sun
but instead has to look to the side of it
then
what is a man?

"i stopped paying the mortgage last august"
he says in july
i'm screaming
"why didn't you say anything? why do you never say?"
"you're old man owes 60 thou for your schooling"
"there are so many times you could have told me"
but he's the first person i call a month later
to say
"i'm nothing nothing nothing at all"
he knows
"people have been telling you what do to do you whole life"
at 22 minutes
i think it's the longest conversation we've ever had

i hope that house was fucking worth it, you ass

tar sand sundae
choke it up then swallow back
don't push me around
i want you to push me around

it's beautiful to look when you're not looking
the flicker across your eyes
the heat that spreads across your cheeks
as they fold and open, soften and surprise
your cheeks, the only thing red in this landscape
your eyelashes the curtains for some grand spinning showcase
your tongue, a path-clearing master of dissection, now spreads silent

i say nothing so i can watch a little longer
it's just you rising in this moment
and the air hangs on you
until you descend
and everything hits still
and everything fills with weight
especially that swell in your chest
we steep in the wide eyes of that tea

i like to hear your voice in this square space
it moves even the engine
our speed is measured by the tickled jolts of your collarbone
those great oaks laugh to hear you coming

i don't know why sometimes it is pain
to even put a hand to your back
or to squeeze by you
as if i do not know your body, or at all care to
or as if it hurts to even look
as if we flea each other's gaze

i can't fix the breaks
but i like to see you free
i do know
it's beautiful to look when you're not looking

kissed by a rose on a fascist's boot

uh huh huh hunnnh caffeine you devil
"does your mommy know you're a pansexual satanist on the internet?"

it's not very "don't fucking tell me what to do"
to ask for your hand to ease me to the floor by the shoulder
right?

give me your diminutives
oh you'll stand up to me, boy?
will you?
my knees'll buckle before you even begin to raise the gun
call me, boy
call me "boy"

i read "number the stars"
before i ever saw a man stuff his fist in a woman's mouth
i forced my dolls on each other
before any one ever asked, "chocolate or vanilla?"
but i definitely, definitely learned the phrase
"i'll be good for you, i'll be so good for you"
after all that

it's not sick if you imagine that someone just happens to know what's better for you, right?

hunnnnh
god bless your ragged fingernails
praise be to st. slyvia plath and daddy bastards
send prayers for the me that is when i can't get turned on

i'll ask first, i'll always ask first
promise daddy
promise, daddy

get paid to traffick culture!

http://traffickingculture.org/news/post-doctoral-fellowship-opportunity/

inspired by "pilgrim at tinker creek"

i am escaping (and just barely)
walking free toward freedom
and not without catching the edged teeth,
the beveled scraping claws of
capitalism's predators, the reaching most-on-top of this dominant culture shitstorm
i, none of us, are exactly "okay" "unharmed," "whole," exactly
and what if wholeness was the accident near birth,
and not its fracturing?
it is hard to find an unmarked hide, they say,
an 8-legged daddy long leg, impossible,
"the scarred hides of living whales, striated with gashes as long as my body, and hilly with vast colonies of crustaceans called whale lice"
so many things are trying to live all together!

is it such a surprise that some humans would think they have to kill,
scrape scrabble step on heads to get by--
some live on blood, others on sun.
and something always dies to feed, "it is chomp or fast."
"harvest or starve," might say.
of course we the living have narrowly escaped becoming food a thousand thousand close times!
every day at least one escape!
our bodies food for trains, roadrage, bears, hungry crevasses, sustained despair, disease's fecundity, contagion's desperation,
our eyes prey for the self-immolating cold fire of TV, the endless litany of scandal and porn and the blinding consumptive brilliance of Christ or a Burning Man or a bomb's wake,
our hands feed for machines
our hearts playing dead, delectable to oh so many kinds of critter, iron beast fame-gods--

oh oh in a world ruled by these gods (which?)
(any?)
we have narrowly escaped with numbered scars hidden and showing
don't stop now
(the embroidery on our earlobes)
don't stop now

here's my question,
where did it grab you as you slipped away?
at your neck or your head, your ankle or your heart, your wings?
which part of yourself did you almost leave behind?

ohmygod you guys
did you hear?
the nytimes says we're still being v. ironic as a generation
SO CARRY ON plz

saccharine damsel
dreams in distress
the stars give me clues
but the rest seems a mess

my limbs seem to freeze
when its my turn to act
i want to turn air,
i want to twist back

my seams are still ripped,
i have not learned care
i sit on my hands
into my own eyes, i stare

fanatic kingdom

who shines for you on the teevee?
o my guh
are you eye-fucking what's on that flat screen????
tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me
o my guh
ME 2
ooo woo woo woo

heyo, danger zone cuties and wet eyed adonises
WARNING
so many somebodies want to plant big wet ones on you
and that's how you end up crushed on the grand ballroom floor
for now the leash stays on
and this can go on being a paycheck for you
but don't you wonder about the hell beasts sometimes?

ca-caw shun airy tail
she looked so nice in that turtleneck and cardi set
but she blew her idols over with not even a sneeze
now she's got like 16 degrees
and clobbering fists
and a stare that makes underwear just drop off
and a gun liscense
and a give 'em hell attitude to boot
from when she snaked their spirits out their mouths with her claws

or else the frenzy goes the way of the failed souffle
and IDK
like "guh/too much/can we just/how are you real/stop that right now"
and they stay in their bedrooms
and always call their moms

it's been a long time that i think
i've enjoyed being but a
figment
of people's imaginations

a flame in a crisp, dry field
a smirking ghost among the holly
wholly unpredictable
       and fantastically fickle
riding in on the hum of mystery
      pointing all fingers to the magic of the moment,
baring it all through the width of my eye,
and slipping away before the spell can subside.

no contact, no photograph, no proof,
or poem or postcard,
just an agent of the ethers,
a friendly reminder of the  great riddle.

i feel quite differently now though..
oh, i've visited the ocean,
i've taken to the stars,
     i've immersed myself in the invisible
and now my body wants to be right where we are.

magic is not a drink to binge
for fear of the time evading.
it's not a wildfire that knows no end
or a phantom that needs no friend.

it can be trusted and real.
it can look and smell human,
toting human technologies,
and smoking modern day cigarettes.

it can plan its day by the clock,
jog alongside the flock,
and, most importantly, it can leave its print.
it can close encounters with a firm grin. it can leave and come back again.

it can leave such big footprints that life grows from the cracks in its quake.

in the hot space between our faces closing in
breath passed back and forth
I am all like
"I'm not made of glass"
"PUSH ME"
but the truth is
when I leave this bedroom, I'm already shattering

girl born and a babbler
maybe better to drug me?
and style me oracular
sit me above the ethylene vents
I'm never getting better
so let's work with what we've got
for the betterment of all mankind

sorry i didn't show up to that thing
or reply to your emails and texts and calls
i was standing on my porch
gauging the speed of the wind by the pace of the clouds
braiding and braiding and braiding and braiding my hair