i have no box

i have no box in which to place
the soft accumulating driftwood
talking gentle to my naked back
(marking each caress
with abandoned ballpoint pens)
without a warm maw to call home

she lopes gangly inside the bath,
where the tepid-sickly-sweet
laps at my chest
and the petals collect
in orbits under her spheres;
my feet caress the globe
but the pavement burns my soul
(if i had two i’d kill myself and lose one)

the ark feels soft, Noah
thinks in singsong happyhand,
but whorled queerly (blank)
in cogs and coagulations
so (lachrymose at best)
ankle-tying and agitating;
and there’s gopher wood
under my left middle fingernail

the lark wrote duets,
but the thrush easily
cut the back of her knees out
and the lark collapsed
and spun tossed
into my empty hand

so i sing with the lark sweetly:
but we both know it’s not the same.

The Mawkish Bear

The mawkish bear lies threadbare in the plain: coal button eyes staring softly past the walking, talking skeletons that people the outskirts of his visage. They’re all knocking on his iris, blurring the open gaze, but he is bat-blind to it. Each husk has a name, but someone forgot them, the slips of brown paper fell (falling falling falling) into the subtle canopy until the silence chortled with a clutch in its corpse throat.

The mawkish bear drifts askance in the sea: there’s a gull with its gullet quirking down beneath the last wave before the moon dies. Still, a parade of ocean ghosts clamor with trickling whispers, the coral elephants trumpet a sad-sorry song, the white horses dance scornfully (mournfully) because the moon-girl is dying and he cannot hear her final breathing.

The mawkish bear moves merciful  in the grass: the dreadful yawn of a smiler wheeling (dealing) stale cherry cough drops. There are children with sinking-ship cheeks across the alley, with empty bowls in shrunken hands, clasping at his fur. All he feels is the north wind’s kiss.

The mawkish bear
(not seeing)
goes silent
(not hearing)
through the earth
(not feeling)
all numb.

In the Quiet

my simple touch,
the tangible yearning
of my warm corpse
for yours.

i think of times,
of the uncertainty
of affection that is not
love.

and her paleness,
in strained nightlight
shines like the moon’s smile,
silver.

the puzzle,
pieces strewn across
pavement and dim stars,
could lean.

(like you lean into me as if the world had not changed into itself)

i am not (here),
i wish the knots
might tangle we
a little closer,
we a little nearer
that my skin would
know yours.

oh, i was

I think she is like the cast off white guitar at the foot of my bed that I never touch but still love, just not like I used to (but did I used to?) see the story always changes and what I say is a lie even if it wasn’t when I started and my self delusion finds new reaches of despair to carry on into the newness here where each fragile possibility rests like wooden splinters on the knife blade and my world is so small after all but it dreams in technicolor largeness, it swims in previous darkness that is present light like twenty twenty behind-my-head sight and I think her cheek smelled like bonfires once or twice or did I just dream that too like I dreamt that I was charming but I was never anything at all just a shadow that crept across a crack in your bedroom wall and now I realize that you were too tall or I was too short and that a hundred “no’s” were something I should have heard but all I needed was your “yes” in those hazelnut eyes that I praised so many times because you always did want blue eyes like mine to look back at you from the glass.

mr monster

mr monster
under th bed,
why are yr claws
so sharp against
my spine?

mr monster
inside my head,
why are yr words
so hard against
my heart?

mr monster
under th bed,
i’ll either die
or kill you instead

(either way there’s gonna be blood on the floor)

Gently, Gently (Down the Stream)

Life is déjà vu.

It is small parts of a script repeated over and over again with small improvisations every once in a moonlit night.

My life is hours and seconds and weeks and almost a month since we said goodbye.

But there are no moments. There are no firework nights, no inaudible music that should be there when the time is right. Just late nights where nothing moves except for the flicker of the television across the walls.

Just tedium working, its fingers gently twisting like your fingers used to twist around me and make me whole.

And when the moon smiles, it is not the madcap cat grinning while the fools dance too loudly. It is facsimile and a broken cog in this bursting machine (we are ready we hunger we thirst we need to feel alive like they told us)

Life is déjà vu.

Here it is.

So, this is my renewing of an old idea. A place to write without worrying about socializing or keeping up with the distraction of a dashboard.

I'll just be working through my collected "works" and posting some of my favorites over the next couple of weeks. I hope anyone who's reading enjoys them.

-Alex