The Delusion of Happiness

Fifteen years ago I melted
mini Lego faces with sunlight and a magnifier.

Ten years ago I traced the textures on my walls
with black pen, and found images of sex.
I slept beneath women taking
the deepest breaths through mouths like ghosts.

Five years ago I realized that the eye
is a portal through which we
believe madness.

Yesterday I realized the human mind is
a sparsely written program that generates
feelings and functions less efficiently
than a melody hummed into a paper cup.
So I re-wrote it.

Yet, I still find faces
where there are no faces.

Evolution of the American Psyche

If I could hear your thoughts,
the use for speech—poor shephards at best—
would wither in minutes into white on mountains.
But the sound of snowfall isn't a metaphor
for the sound of a word falling.

The reflection of beauty in chaos
is a fist through an eye socket for the first time;
a scalding cauldron of soup teaching lessons
by almost-death; a white pixel that glows
because it is surrounded by everything it is not.

Fishing

I fail at catching

fish. In every metaphorical sense.

In the hours spent creeping around my house, creeping

around the walls

in complete darkness

I can let go

my fingertips and listen to them feel textured

lyrics traced there, penned in ebony with sharpie on spackle, singing:

And if my hands find themselves

another body, well

you can't blame them

for trying to keep warm.

The finding is not about sex

if warmth is meaning.

Though I've never met him, I expect

my grandfather would agree and explain why

the only way to catch a pike is neck-deep

and with your bare hands. In every metaphorical sense.

A Long Time I've Wanted To Say Something

I dream of waking up one day and forgetting twenty-two years of memories.

The word “dimension” is an escape from reality.

The word “entertainment” makes me lonely.

Jesus Christ never existed.

God is an alien.

Any turtle can dance.

Everything we see is an outline.

There are so many empty

spaces...

Some Self-Indulgent Statements

I am nothing like {

        when adrenaline gives the shakes;

        a prophet; a lord; a savior like the one who rode his glory-

            ous raptor through cities—clearly am not—definitely not;

        my father;

        bees if their sacks of pollen throw

            tears like storms and violins;

        the creatine-cretins who fill their lives with tossing testicles;

        everything I will, one day, be {

                the one to cut off his hands

                    (to give a stranger

                    twice a day);

                a son who always calls, despite his own dreams;

                the one with the truth

                    (about everything and happiness);

                the one who will never stop-

        }

        a ruined life;

}

At The Desk Of Someone Normal

A fleet of dying pages floats a glass desk and

their symbols simmer under a warm, wet pen.

The name Rebekah unties itself with scissors

while the rest drift south into isolation—into

a void on the page in the trash by the desk.

I stare intently into the slice of paper. An audience

might expect me to do anything with it, but

I'm stuck in the inbetween.

I think about how tiny islands of dust float inside

our skulls like spaceships docking

while electrons rip holes and tell us how to be.

The Effect Fleeing From Large Dogs Has On Young Children

White grass

tips crunched under

cherry heels. Prickly-pear

paws pursued

four-legged-fast

under a moon-jaw grinbark barking
hey slow down!

I kept running, beating faster

then tumbled, slipped

slapped

slid.

Fluffy boredom met my horror

like through a door in a picket fence

to say hellow.

My breathed escaped in thick

white laces

when I learned how to run away

at age five.

Talking to Daisies

Have you ever sat on a bench in
a large store and waited for someone?
Have you walked up to a stranger on a bench
and told them to spend more time exercising
their happy muscles?

Try selling a smile for some chamomile seeds
and planting them.
Sing to them. Gently
massage the fur on their stems—
just behind the ears. Then drink
them when they are down and think about how
your body is now feeding off something you once loved.
Do this, and sit on a bench in a store and wait
for someone.

Wavelengths

The truth is we really don't know
if the color green to me is the same
color you saw when your mother died.
I don't think it is.
Though,
if I could see into the ultra—
violet I might be able to bring you some memories
of her you missed while thinking
about where plants go when they die—probably
inside of the dinosaurs our machines
now use to burn to fly.

A Kind Of Escape

Turtles are amazing beings not
because they strut like a conqueror of fruits and
small arachnids and
wisdom
but
because I look at them and see a beast that, maybe, once, held itself with great wings
and breathed fire on mankind.

This Would Have Happened In The Daylight

i was on a bus
a woman sitting next to me
began to unbutton her pink blouse
and purrr
not at me
i smelled body spray but did not gag yet
though it reminisced of
a prostitute's
finger

the man wearing the prostitute's
finger spray dragged his swagger and
scooped the woman's breast

a bovine breathed thick with lactation and I stared
at them, and tried not to note their emptiness

Today's Letter

T  H  E  O
n e
n  am
  e d Scot
c(h)h 
     a 
       n
        g
         e
         d
m y ( l i f e )