sit tight. give me fifteen. fifteen-­hour lifetimes by the thousands i almost didn't accept true community before you in all shades of gray & the holes of arlington i am with us

the taxi was shared three­-ways between me, the tuba, and the driver who said he found god in two places: music and the smile of his son I think the sex of Detroit is actually texture porn, even the smells are tactile and, if here, I think you'd lose your mind in your dick in your hand in your nose in your mouth remains as real to me as all the broken windows

so much depends upon broken glass in tall grass & the spaces in between like burning perimeter stakes guarding old detroit house holes waiting on robocop anyone in a three­-way with you & your horn will quickly invoke a deity the places where your clothes lip your body (sometimes pulled by the strap) are like pubic shorelines that feathering rivers thread i have buried my i in the thousand highway wildflowers of your hair

the king of small flowers is full grown in Detroit where the sidewalk cement is creamed butter and sugar is stone shards roughly cleaved is crumbs of white bread felled by tool and smooth hand. when small flowers get big and reach hands feet upwards towards the urban sun, feet fall. my i is buried in a thing you said once years ago, when we were still just two humans lovingly aloof beneath the tiny bumps on your back which i have laid hands on but never eyes upon with the things i didn't say and haven't still because the time passed and my mind forgot in the pores of the skin along your collarbone, some, and the rest pressed by tongue and tastebud into the soft space between your upper lip and the boundary between tooth and gum it has been scattered by chance and not­chance, god and not­god to places from which i hope never to retrieve it

from days of awkward boys running with water pistols through dirt hills too alive with lusty brown bugs to ever trust again of snow delays playing empire strikes back deep in the barren ice field certain that a tauntaun would come of girls & women who always fucking blinked who made eyes but not pomes made gestures & rules & beds & death letters but not eternalities not jumping always into freak beams of the dead of endless aisles of print & sound & screens & fields of learning how to fit of travels & inner space of kicking against the pricks of absolute now when my whole history all rampant i's spinning & enfolding fall like stained nail clippings in some oily mixture that reads: all just proving ground for her

all brave heretics, heel! imaginary creatures, dead lovers, all! friends of the mission, foes of the status quo! imaginative reconceivers and loud, lost undertakers! every man without breath or against all odds! there is a beard with three hands and a smile like a Great Lake! with a lost look that skims the surface when the love organ takes hold! when the exaltation of lock­-step heart­-breath opens lungs like a bellows stoking the flames! like a goddamn arson! soul­-stroking lip­-licking brain­-borrower, come! hold every part just so and no thing just because! be free with every fiber­-sinew­-radiant­-outpouring­-of-­humanity! find the lost bits and bear witness! like a missing kitten, tongue the milk becoming warm like wet tissues in the afternoon sun!

i woke from a dead sleep at exactly 1:16am this morning & checked my silent phone. a night! another lifetime lived! another granular wind rushed over water into my eyes onto my nodules from seepages from undercurrent swarths from far off shores unseen until your perfect wrists streamed the wake forth again

i like rode C's perfect bike for 22 miles today mostly in the rain to see the kids boy's bike lightweight hybrid seat adjusted perfect like your wrists & brain & behind & a heap of other parts (my god your parts) it was like running barefoot tasting metallic ice like knowing you even more but like 11 miles in leaving my old house shaking my head i found myself careening down the steepest straightdown road's end headed for a barrier in the wetness i bit smash drag smash hashtag & my elbow & your favorite back part absorbed the pound luckily it scraped off like 17 mosquito bites but the ecstasy remained intact & the first thought that came to me after i fell on my knees from faint below the sidewalk was your deep reservoir of the unspoken like ten thousand bits of kindness done without voice like waves that know no shore i love you.

imagine the tragedy of light at dusk filtered through thirty seven billion leaves­­oblong, cordate, reniform, asymmetrical­­until the moment the sunset comes hard and orange and glowing in one ecstatic now through the cool, humid wood with water like air and air like water and you not there to bear witness imagine the tragedy of fireflies like floaters in the eyes' periphery, like glaucoma and god and green like there is no tomorrow­­or at least there might not be­­and this erratic glow is all there is or ever was, save you, of course, forever and ever, amen imagine the tragedy of the banjo strummed and frailed like a locomotive, from all directions, at all hours, and for all definitions of 'good,' to ten thousand tunes and each giving way to the next as one barefoot to another pass along the path home to a tent still wet with the presence of you i don't miss you; it's just i wish you could know the sawing serenades of the cicada trapped between the rainflap and the roof the scratchy sound of soul in bowed horse hair rubbed over ribbed steel the wet squelch of last nights rain bubbled up between bare toes like mud and molasses the sound of a gospel chorus swelling as the thunder approaches and the battle to be heard against god comes in a dead tie or even just the memory of every piece of you on every breath

sometimes when you're loud when you're on a rant & ecstatic & go duffy go your hands thrust to a splay wrists like mothwings diffracting light innercheeks gathering foam like bends of a stormswelled city glen i think about deserve sometimes when you're loud i feel like all the unused rooms of the swollen houses in arlington will finally be filled with the right stuff enclosures mortally pierced denials gusted from their black undusted sticking places & jellyfish housewomen will drop their flummery & not scream will run full speed towards walls will burn footlockers of their sinful knickknackery will begin latching themselves to the readyline of peripatetic ritual sometimes when you're loud spheres of knowing collapse into one plane of knowing & all the unordained particles & molecular s ubstructures & trillions upon trillions of random disconnected constructs start to simmer the fuck down like the porcelain fat that eventually gathers on the bottoms of prepared meats until samesies sometimes when you're loud all those colliding caravans of smashing infinities beyond human count create a place context time reality way on a plane when randomness stops when deserve begins when symbols die & fences uproot when faces are in charge again when there is no trajedy when the shifting meanings & thickets of experience seize me bit upon bit sometimes when you're loud the world just slips screaming down a muddy crevasse & i look around for the commotion but the only thing i can see is the quiet you the sounds of your back freckles & the brush of your hairbun the taste of your lips & mouth like some sweet tisane steeped perfectly in a universe of deserve

to crush you: palms to ears, arms wrapped round ribs, head to toes to blind you: scooping your eyes out with long spoons, served up as tiny portions on large plates to memorize you: fingers tracing lines from mole to mark like skin­bound constellations to eat you: good thing i never sharpened the incisors to follow you: every scene experience person machination love of your 37 years is a path to knowing to know you: is to love you to breathe you: the regions of scent across the map of your body is a new kind of cartography to punch you: just once, with abandon to lift you: over my shoulder, in my hands, on my back, whichever way to share the lightness of being you bring to enter you: through the mouth, the chest, the back, the bald space directly behind the ears, the ears, the eyelids half closed and fluttering, the belly, the recess made below the ribs when lying on the right side, in bits through the space between atoms, conceptually, intellectually, artistically, all GREASY COAT @ MIDNIGHT SQUARE DANCE

i want to ride a shaky bicycle spokes rattling wrists crackling through steep burrowing drops deep into new hampshire byways where memory waits i want to ride with you so fast so free wheels bursting into wildflower cuneiform meadows cobbled with lively stones & screaming pink puffers i want to ride with you right over the side of mass ave bridge clapping hands on our faces falling back as to a picnic blanket in goddamned ecstacy i want to ride with you until far from now when i am taken not­-taken into the nothingness void where i won't be able to know you ever again i want to ride with you til we reach such a place of awareness that no other synonyms for god could maintain in the space of our shared lifewish i want to ride with you because there is no fucking way these feelings this constant sleepkicking could ever be typed into just words

on a cosmic timescale you are less than a blink you are approximating nothing, an almost infinite number of zeroes following the decimal point like space rocks circling dust and debris, the detritus of genesis like, "let there be..." still, on a cardiovascular timescale you are the million heartbeats an organism gets before it dies, tissues left to fungal decay, eyes eaten from the sockets by still­-hungry maggots and ok, yes, I know I am prone to fits of exaggeration but you are brand new, every idea I had I've tossed aside and now there is only the real exempli gratia: I used to think, I should assume some level of asynchronous in love but when you spoke the unspoken rule about freedom and me, I just about died right there, sitting silent in the passenger seat our mantra­mission starting sprout was "to help people define their own standards of happiness and pursue them unfettered" I almost got it tattooed on my body until I decided never to put a word on my skin, since language is mediated meaning, a representation of the real, but not the real itself id est: I used to think, I can only know one thing in relation to another but no thing truly on its own some metaphysical manifestation of neuroplasticity, like we are all just walking on the eraser of a giant's scribbling pencil wind a frustrated sigh, but you are a meteor come down in the middle of my meadow as if all ignorance really does toboggan into know confer: I used to think, I fall in love slowly, taking my time savoring each piece, like Mary Maclane proclaiming "go hang yourself, you who have never been comfortably seated and eating an olive" but with you I knew in an instant, like ramen or coffee's crystalline lattice or immediate and complete death by dfw's absolute ultimate and complete video rental so, on a more correct timescale there is just now and no cross­referencing, only a point, compressed from the line, moving through space and time which I can only hope will pass through bicycles beds train­ pressed pennies ghettoized records horror movies in the rain on Sunday afternoons cassavetes lathe­cuts western mass catholic mass rye berries early morning face flush floss sharing toothbrushes walking barefoot up rocky riverbeds moving and packing all eggs banjo brine north carolina moms dads melting smiles and shoulder shudders and at least a million more goodbyes from which each time you leave me throbbing

normally is a funny word like a deathpattern a concrete rut a coerced memory built to flatter some flubby occupant who prefers the lie but normally i read a friend's writing or almost anyone's & wrestling ensues & i want to rip words & break sections like a red pipe wrench scotching windshields normally when someone hands me music twenty years into this blackhole it can't happen that i'm then adrift seeing all stars and no shorelines normally when someone projects a future an invasion starts & that species shortly grows overtop what's good & smothers the small animals first normally the better i get to know someone the less i want to know them my temples don't want to explode with joy 273 x a day normally when i ask a person about about job (alone but almost on a stage) i don't compulsively reach to their shoulders nor feel a resulting shutter in us both normally i don't have someone's maybe flossed teeth burned into my purpose like an unfunded mandate with deep roots planted beneath pedals like a joe brainard normally i'm not willing to admit anything normally i don't i'm not i won't poet normally my red spots go unnoticed normally i don't think everything someone says will be written out in some future faraway gospel normally i'm not destroyed each time i get an email poem look smile touch scent from or half glance at a woman but i guess normally just doesn't apply to the good witch of somerville

at the edge of Pittsburg, we left continental humid for subtropical regional­­-- climate change by number by geography by latitude and degree the subtropics seem untamed, like jungles with no needles or soil acid, where moisture condenses­­-- suspended in air, rising like balloons not tied by mothers to toddlers' tiny wrists wild rhododendrons seem farcical, like feral tulips or rowdy rosebushes who by any other name are still­­ roses! are roses! are a sweet smelling obligation the woods doesn't owe anyone the lichen seem sensual, like moist, fleshy folds against rock faces, but I was wrong­­-- we don't kill them by the touch of our oils, though they do grow just one tiny millimeter each year the gorges seem infinite, like an embrace of soil­flesh along every meridian of all­-earth--­­ if I could choose only one organism for symbiosis, you are no contest, even if you versus corpse plant WATERBOUND BY BEADLE & FRIENDS

when it was chilly last night i reached for you

everything i say i forget everything you say will be written out of future gospels

when rashied ali drummed speeding through the finishline way way beyond the applause on ogunde at john coltrane's last recorded show april 23rd 1967 his rolls like vietnam machineguns like world trade center fire jumpers like a massed chittering subterranean armadillidiidae conglobation i forgot you for a second when AP stamped tantrum feet right left right left right left at 7:28 a.m. malden massachusetts 02148 like prayer for more words prayer for “god help us if we attain” prayer for parthenogenic voodoo rainbeams & also more fingerbooks please i forgot you for a second when a human twirlybirded arms out spinning spinning preparing to helicopter away & his head crashed curbside boylston st copley sq boston under slow slow police * just trying to go higher than before just ignoring pedestrians placed like thoughtless words like hitchcock's birds just searching god through collapsing guitar overload fast circle skyscribbles i forgot you for a second when david e's yacht blue & white named chopin goaded me gently in the sun amid bauhaus­-selfies boston harborside oppo our trimmed sunset eastie dreamboy jetty while somehow he napped while somehow televised united nations inspectors cried for gaza while somehow can's mushroom assailed from a nearby oceanborn egopod i somehow forgot you for a second * sebastian (“ze wife of richard dreyfus...she her has own problems”) visiting from paris said, "should we call CBS news?"

just this morning in a poem that you forget everything you say, but lucky for you & Every Fucking Human that I remember it all­­or most­­like daisy dukes and carney and radical personhood and scenes, zones, spaces, places which all together with the unspoken have become my atlas to existence in a sitting position at South Station and again, in another way, in another poem, that you are a new you with me & Jesus Fucking Christ me too, I mean, I can't be sure, but I think you're in love with the me I aspire to be and that is just magic upon magic, like I can share all the things and still can't wait to see where the tension comes in an email to which I never responded that Market Basket people are your people & George Fucking Bailey but the concept of My People was loaded for me, cocked and pulled like maybe I was missing out on something essentially human until you made culture and community distinct that someday this will be normal as if any new state we entered into might be less than now & K Fucking P just imagine how thrilling normal will become with us in it, how very fresh and new with sick, dope samesies crunk on the high we induce in eachother ETHEREAL BANJO

each day i like like you more than before

Since I left, the poem I want to send each day has not changed. It goes the same way, but I embellish it a little here, a little there. Starting from the same base, the words flex and flow, becoming others. The original goes something like, "I love/you I love you I/love you" but still I embellish.

my neighbors must know how back in boston both my muscles & molecules roused themselves remotely & unknowing to accompany your early morning tantrums & shoe tyings across towns & now states when just knowing is everything & nearly enough 6AM SUNRISE JAM

my intended love pome today were pushed shoved into several other forms most specifically when A's looks & tones shifted to themes undeniable when at the closing house her head rested on my collar in front of an anna lindemannnnn polaroid her hand rested on my back a little too long her eyes rested on my eyes like days gone bye my intended love pome today of words placed just so on keyboards here & there to respond to your gooseflesh MAGIC need to be replaced by time for noodles time for drink so i could tell our secret to someone that really didn't want to hear someone that had put on a fresh & new dress that maintained grace & a straight face through – well i won't speculate the maximum but through at minimum hearing that yet another person is deep off the market after no time on it & she is five years in she is fucking five years in now three know: C the other day said we all knew when you would talk about her even back when she first started did you hear what she said?! i would look at A and he would shake his head we just knew that you were in love with her K the other day said you're an idiot A just today said after smart warnings of carrying baggage & keeping close watches on things & making sure alone time was happening & masking sadness behind telling the right truth A just today said she knew this was coming because of how we are around one another A just today said i really think the two of you without question were meant to be together

midnight stroke & I am key stroke sending priceless poems through the star­filled sky. three & I curl fetal and shivering into sleeping bag pod with cheek to chuckanucka and eyes to screen, sent to sleep by a brief burst of late­night love. six & banjos raise the sun like roosters with a swelling sound throbbing like three years' yearning bottled again so three days seems like nothing or everything or maybe just three days. nine & a man from Florida pours me coffee, which you never drink, god bless your every bit, but for me is ritual, hedonism, dunkins, warmth. twelve & I fall into sleep dep­induced hysteria and spite with Peter, laughing til tears about the vapid souls who play so many meaningless notes with Buchak saying, "Without a personal quest, you learn the skills without the why," and I think, "KP!" three & Beadle leads me through the same woods I've come to know alone each morning and finally to a new frigid pool whose submersion pulls the breath from the lungs like death or a dead punch or maybe just a cold, cold wind, him placing me just so beneath the falls to feel the look­no­hands­just­water massage. six & on the elated hike back this same boy from Birmingham with the whooping holler, dancing legs, fiddle fingers, curly­early­greying beard says, "You know, I'm trying to let go of expectations which seem to be, like, the source of all suffering," and I think again, "KPR!" nine & square dancing and bodies and hands and spinning, stopping, stomping, jumping, smiling, twirling and face flush, sweat, fiddles and loud calls, eye contact of every variety, an ecstatic, collective body high, sure, but I remember the high of just laying eyes so let's get real, P. midnight again & our harmonies legit hit heaven, touching the stars in ways that make the reserved blush and the alive come, touched by the vibrations of voices originating at the ridgeline from mouths sharing food and whiskey and ancient words of love, death, murder, chickens, trains, god, but actually, somehow, each one turns out to be about you. SAY OLD MAN, CAN YOU PLAY THE FIDDLE

this feels like we will never stop happening

because the way you say pome is it's own sweet song

in my universe of deserve I wonder why I am the lucky bitch to whom you said meet me at the pond so I can kiss you rather than I'm sorry & any other thing

as i rest on your pillow having just awoken from a most amazing dream mare about being pranked by you four minutes that felt like four hours i cannot shake like i cannot shake when i first walked up to the pond when you stood backlit & came in close after a hug i touched your back like a coda & you gave a rapid glance like a microshudder of expectation or anticipation that look alone was a dream i will not shake

seth the first person to hire me in boston who refused to read ezra pound because anti­semite who gave up a law practice to start a jazz record store in 1978 whose nosehairs could catch dismember & consume flies who at the first classical concert of his life following decade upon decade of jazz shows stood & jumped & applauded & yelped after being particularly impressed with a mid­piece massed crescendo his thirty year girlfriend librarian trying to stop him the rest of the hall perfunctorily silent audience & even performers shaking their heads this is how i love you i needed to learn how to be happy there was a child went forth every day how to jump with arms how to be eyes alive how to read with lips & voice that it was a choice one after another after another danny's attempt started while confused in love at a party & how couldn't he be behind twenty beers a dozen mixed shots two michelles he punched me punched brick walls & when we shoehorned him into a backseat punched black vinyl & punched our heads & kicked windows & screamed the unspeakable until on arrival he passed out & we absconded bj the fourteen year old man cried like a fourteen year old locked out on a deck we heard the car door slam down & around we ran through branches gravel doors rooms up stairs tackling him shotgun in mouth shells falling barrels silent silent we hugged our hysterical brother tightly for hours through the night this is how i love you i needed to learn long ago how to bike shimmy shimmy coco pop shimmy shimmy ra but now it has been made new again riding down steep hills riding in midnight city potholes riding on thunderdown faded whites that it was a choice one after another after another hawaii 1994 want to say february junior year day ten or eleven booked a helicopter so we could vibrate loudly over volcanoes vibrate loudly like magnum p.i. vibrate loudly over igneous boulders that transformed toddler drew into hercules when we landed for fuel on some other island & the second family's hidden infant pulled from under mother's shirt suckling to help calm the violent vibrations had suffocated to absolute still death blue & purple & no pink my stepmom performed cardiopulmonary code sande intaking & spitting out breastmilk like gray thrush pus after each pump she would not yield this is how i love you i needed to learn long ago how to love if tomorrow wasn't such a long time i would lie in my bed once again pining for A veiga whose father was a mailman pining for some hairful beat beauty pining for one who would just know & accept that it was a choice one after another after another clown christ memory of some woodenbuilding religious camp in the evening of which my dad has no recollection but stands one of my earliest projected by camera onto a white bedsheet in front of fifteen or thirty people in what maybe was a short budget regional xian film definitely black & white about a pointy white hatted & baggy white costumed clown in clown nose that was a clear metaphor for christ some kind of crying near a large nail cross some kind of holy unchaplin sad christian conflation magic silent but i remember the flitting tick ticking cinema & flowing sheet folding chair audience the shimmering lights & like a higher & lower fellini street march of no sound & dancing flickering filaments this is how i love you i needed to learn you could exist three years ago rolling apples fall like meteors of light almost to the day but i am so so keen so dying to see you to see you in so many new lights situations shades scenarios responses to see what else your faces do to see you to see you to see you know how i love you that it was a choice one after another after another

first five minutes meeting C's seventy four year old father bill: have you met C's mother? i call her the piranha mean old bitch you see my dog air? twelve years old big labs like at only live to be ten twelve used to have a pit bull i'll tell you why C's mother is afraid to death ofm so one day about december twelfth C's mother decides to bring over some christmas presents for the kids and i get a call about twelve minutes before she's set to arrive you see i don't like that so i pick up a bottle of wine & a cigar about this big & go sit out on the porch when she pulls up she screams why do ya have that thing! i say i bought this pit bull ta keep people i don't like off my lawn well she rolled the winda down about that much pushed all the presents through it right out onto the driveway & lit out i sat right there with my dog & my wine & finished my cigar

before leaving for WV I told Kate, who is a deep­-feeler like me and not at all like me, about you, the ethereal other because my world has not had the pleasure of being colonized by your you, meaning everyone is deeply deprived but also that there will likely be no heart­-break noodle­-shares and the meetings will be mostly uncomplicated expansions of loved one's worlds to make space for the exaltation I have kept close­-closeted and under­-wraps for so long I told her how I'd never first­-kissed someone I was already busting­-my-­gut in love with and about jetty­-swagger vulnerability­-boy on eastie piers, to which her eyes widened and she said the exact phrase you'd used the day before, that those with whom she 'saw the world with the same eyes' were the most profound humans in her fold but that they always unfolded because they saw­-same together but also wept­-yelled-­raged-­mistrusted-­hurt­-same and then eventually everything unraveled in Detroit Maggie and I were in bed together the moment I received a price­-pome and buried my head in my pillow like an ostrich in the sand and she also isn't dumb so she heard the whole thing and is in love with the love I have for you or whatever it is she took from the tongues I spoke in my elated state days before when I told him, Alec, like a good friend and himself, asked what I loved about you and after listening said, 'wow, shaunalynn, that sounds seriously special' and also, maybe­-joking, 'not to be a downer, but you told me you wanted to stay single for a while after Kevin' while you were in Paris, Rosalie and I ate mussels and drank wheat beers and talked about Kevin­-and-­Edison and change, childhoods, loyalty, and obligation I told her about the way people were everything or nothing to me, how I was all­-in or all­-out and wasn't in the habit of hiding it how I once told Aaron that if he ever got any capital­-i ideas he had to fucking call me, wake me from a dead sleep, in the middle of the night, get me fired, anything, I'd come if he just said the word and the word became a no­-reason-­call so when he'd call just to say, 'hey!' I'd jump­-run-­cab-­t-­fucking­-freakbeam myself to his body and sometimes he really was just saying hey and we'd look at eachother dumb and dry I didn't tell her how we both knew it couldn't work if the moment really came and how I wonder still if his last email was a no­reason­call I never returned, reading, 'Unfortunately the corn muffin situation in this city is pretty dreadful. Txt me when you get here?' instead I went to the bathroom and came out and said, 'look­-bitch,' and under strictest confidence told her I was losing myself to the tide of your existence and it was probably actually­-nothing but it wasn't nothing­-to-­me which of course she already knew and I told her how the last person who asked me to take a silence had died first and she said, 'just­-wait' before Paris, I tentatively told my mom who gave me the three golden rules I told you in a lookout tower: leave the wife­-house, love the kids, trust the magic DUELING BANJOS & SLEEP SOUNDS

my thumb this screen you are everything

that moment almost fallen back asleep after waking in a perfect dawn but then some stretch or thrust as bliss peace shoots towards you at all the ends

northward priceward away from the land of thumbs and screens

come you traveler come home to me come exhausted & refreshed come in on a wing & a prayer i need you so! let's blow kisses again at whitey's blacklist roll your tent so we might roll our i's at the world walk run ride from high on a mountain burned by stars opened by clouds across a thousand fields & a dozen pluming highways come with empty palms come with burning hues come with whatever is new bring your songs of ages bring your wrists eyes lips bring your mud & dampness & marks & crackling fire smells come as you are just get here home to me

you! yes! you, yes you! all you! now you! why not now you? the one you! the min and max you! the all you! why not yet you? pls god pls, him! him who? fuq you! the all him hot lot! the one man! the him for she! her him! her boo! the him she put off for now! the him she can not see how! how can she see him? how can she not see? how can the man see? let the two get one who! hey, man! why not you yet? ask the god for ear and eye and toe! ask the god for one man and two! ask her god and his! ask the all god for the all man now! ask for her! ask for him! ask for our who! ask now for our all own two! PEG AND AWL

i wrote this line before you even left like i could get a head start on missing like the tarmac ain't exactly the same as Tijuana ain't exactly the same as the tiny space ever present between our closest molecules, repulsed by the charge so nothing ever touches like leaving space for the holy ghost 'til dad and Father have no tongues or voices and Adam's apple just sit still i wrote this line before you even left like i could get a head start on leaving like pulling away first would make the space between us smaller so i could see you in the crevasse or across the ocean or along the vibrating wing of an eventual two­-way, transcontinental flight like soon was more now than then was i wrote this line before you even left like i could get a head start on loving like every polymer in my body, every ounce of my being wouldn't be lobbing pomes at you like punches and spittle or kisses and headbutts and teaspoons like i wasn't sure it was actually real and in your absence might discover all feeling evaporated into nothingness and i was a walker wheezing sad sounds through rotten teeth with no memory of the life i once lived with arms and lips intact i wrote this line before you even left like i could get a head start on coming back like there aren't laws governing such things and i could talk my own truth into being, bring you back before your leaving, love the idea of your living like i was hiding when i closed my eyes and you couldn't see behind the lids like i'd ever even want to not be seen

(nov.18, 2014, 11:30 am ­ 12:00 pm gmt) tender shaunalynn, thank you for touching me with tender hips when you are happy & sad, with beautiful wrists, such a pure touch it was hope surrendered, you are today, in the east, gentle & not gentle – you showed me your endlessness/kindness/beginning three years ago before we lay trembling at one another's breasts arms around our necks, – together in a cluttered room on 5 tennyson. listening to gray aluminum lossy, with eyes wide open eternal redness of upper cheeks lamped below fluttering lashes at linda sharrock's teen screaming, prophetic honk of cariñito, bands chosen for names, slurf song to zombie apocalypse – the buildings're insubstantial ­­ holy somerville vision linus outside raindrop windows where telephones are avoided & telephone poles are heaven & since spy pond our perfect visions focus­pulled eternal ice cream parlor, is this our lives? i could talk to you forever, the pleasure inexhaustible, discourse of all­-you & all­-me, oh my stars oh my god i love you

you are my fist fight zone my zone of absolute totality and surprised red spots on thighs calves smalls of backs and buttocks as if they were two you are my one and only no one else exists you have colonized my me my seeing my memory my dreaming my every moment spent without you spent thinking of you and every turn and trinket of you like the thin cream­-colored spine scar or the translucent beige bump and its single hair and then there is the all every stubble of electric fuzz under arms between thighs over eyes you are my manifestation being blind­-folded, blind­-sided deaf­-dumb­-blinded by your miles upon miles of smile dental floss and head hairs held by water drops in towel texture let loose by brisk shaking into downward drain which one after another end to end might circle the earth entire except for everything is energy and nothing is real

los angeles is nice, home of how may we help?? 1,000,000,000 year contracts HERE WAIT freeways like the arms of comic book villains sounds of d u d e, d u e l i n g b a n j o s starting route to ven to ra boo le vard (a woman in the lounge hotel amarano burbank california studio 2014 sad her bracelet that electronically tracks how active she is doesn't celebrate her enough her other app sings happy birthday) it's my best friend (a los angeles man in logan softly explaining to his ex wife that he is not able to stop their son from his drunkenness from his smashing of her property from his theft & abuse as his new wife sat beside him without comment or expression) he's 18. i cannot help you. i'm at the airport. call the police. he's 18. no i cannot come over right now. i don't have any answers for you. call the police. los angeles is nice but take me to your mountains new hampshire babbles harley's GLGLGLGLGLing by our legs throbbing take me to your waters 1,000,000,000 mosquitos 3 + 10 + 20 years longing for this us you take me to your bed gray purple white cum sheets windowsill circles icedwater rings take me to sounds of (your face mine field of dimples closing lashes washing wind like soundblasts over dunes one foot on its ball one hand on one hip hot butter air) you are a fucking douchebag los angeles is nice but you are my home i love you

you are everything except here lollipops and ghosts cheek bones and toes I love every ounce of you I love every breath I love every crevice I love each bit of flesh eggplants and praying hands explosions and starry spans you are everywhere except this

i stepped out of class to write you BE HERE NOW pome & this appeared from "now" we are together alone we are we are we are i live you i love you all now every forevery

there is the worst where there where the hills sing & the smiles are forever where your hips sit beside open flames boxed banjos & ugly dolls there on the radio & in the classroom by the phone & on your own there is the worst where there where time stretches & time contracts where the waters are warm & the sun shines yellow not winter grey steel on hard top black where friends fly like birds with magnet brains there is the worst where there where the air & the land defer where your here and mine deter there where the turns of phrase are lady slippers & the worst part's how everyone's bested out there where the all out west is

the baby upstairs is wailing the futility of life the pain of being she must know you are away silence now suddenly she must have found a doll or a finger or the whole fucking world

funder speaks you car honks you clouds cast you teenagers teenage you you are the every all center middle out

all you every moment every breath i exalt you every finger every neck

you i don't know what to say anymore for anymore you are everything let all fears drop away from you goodbye sunny coyotes & face/off marijuana you pile yr hair & roll yr socks i'm coming home to you

for KP with the large teeth: when you leave my bed, i wake. when you leave the state, i sleepwalk. when you whisper into the atlantic, i breathe your breath back and forth forever and ever until sleep, death, comatose. for C’s short man and his titanium rods: when you sing under your breath without pitches, i follow your melody. when you squat on tendons and ankles with back exactly linear, i am stiff with your bones. when you roll your eyes three sixty and hide behind the lids, i roll my eyes over your face like tongues over popsicles, tooth enamel, thighs. for chatty kathy chad and the piano man: when you pick pomegranate seeds one at a time like guitar strings, i wait for the flick of your finger. when you pull the spoon from your lips with the finality of an aeroplane taking off, i land with my wheels still up. when you speak the tongues of your children, i melt like ice cream over top of fingers wrapped loosely round the base of a soggy cone. for the rider of frogs and bunny totems: when you lose your place in your own words, i find myself. when you draw the last human thread from a conversation like a heart string, i want your all-you inside my all-me. when you never say i love you too, i love you i love you i love you too too too.

in New England people go double paned for purposes pragmatic, frugalic, because the winter beats the goddamned door down and the windows barely hold their salt, their weight, their amorphous fluidics against the wintry mix. it's like a man never breathed the white residue of exhalation onto school bus rectangles nor then pressed the butts of his hands against the wets of his mouths to make feet, like babies pitter pattering, like Dali up the walls and windows against rhyme, reason, gravity, time. at forty thousand feet, however and needless to say, it's about more than just money, more than the climate deniers are willing to not not say, it's a simple matter of life and death, where the alien ray shining through those two glass sheets, the air trapped between in a vacuum like space where no one can hear you scream and even if they did, there were nine. minutes. lost. between those panes, the stakes are higher, the fall longer, the temperature lower, the what ifs not so easily remedied by butt snuggles under blankets because the comforters of the sky are cloud coffins, feather dusters clearing out every cobweb and corner if I lost you.

The horizontal rain, bang bang, and the buildings vertical, pow, and the elderly men, then, Southeast Asian beside motorcycles and smoking cigarettes, leaned against leather banana seats with mirrors tilted and smoky breaths pooling in the still heat. The dense clouds have mass, their edges distinct, blown slow against wind and breath both moving more quickly, dragging their feet, heels heavy, molecules slow mixing at the edges, blurring where the tar and taint meet, where the rubber meets the road, where you can't have one without the other.

The long necked cranes' metal teeth break ground like tarama with truffle, asphalt soft and shapely like the cityscape was meant to be molded by machines, hard as steel, sheared like glass or granite, micah or quartz, rosy behind the early morning haze, drifting south from Malaysia with love. The chronic grinding sounds of progress move like clouds of dust more or less here or there but present like a Zen master making manifest the unity of all things, the duality of subject and object, the non-existent I. The streams of cars like time-lapsed head lamps with wide right hands, the multi-lane streets stretched arm upon arm to the concrete other side, where the light blinks, where the fences break, where the sidewalks end, where the pedestrian overpasses bloom and the underpasses hide below nondescript signs hawking walking paths with felony record alternatives. The city is all above and equally below, multi-tiered, high-rise, underground, but mostly in malls, with shivering back drafts and patient, breathy steps. The escalators move faster and stay flatter longer. The overcast skies squint eyelids as if mirages lie in wait, making shady moments tense and furrowed like the asymmetrical crevice of my true love's brow, one deep dent like a magical scar, one line carved out whether angry, skeptical, or proud. In a country whose national bird is a metal giraffe, a construction crane, my heart's head, like an ostrich, snuggles into the sandy earth until the sun rises, the world spins, the date line dances backward underfoot, until my baby's babies run circles round the bed we sleep circles round all night long, all night long, until the rising and setting of the sun return to the rote rhythm of our rotating sphere, with the ebbing tides and circadian sundials, and the cells screaming out to sleep all night long, all night long, all night