was never known to command respect from his peers
was known to steal his fourteen minutes in fragments
was known to sometimes allow ashes to burn on his forearms and face
while waiting patiently for them to gutter out
because at least it was something nearing proof
that he was there at all

was never known to entertain such revolutions
but the autopsy was inconclusive
as to when and why he chose to
enact such validity
[then strike in my name; these are mine to erase.]
on histories
[if the self is defined as

[/there is nothing left to enlighten

wished he'd sky-wide hands with which to grasp the world;
such moss, the old-growth, teardrops of ocean:
the cellular towers would embed themselves in his palm like fiberglass dust
as he squeezed a little too long, a little too hard,
neither burned nor blistered by the lukewarm blood.

considered himself an aggressive driver
considered himself a philosopher, a deep thinker, an author behind the wheel
considered his thoughts the best when thought while driving, while wrapped
within a ton or two of green Ford, tan interior
so aligned with the subtleties of his landship that once
just north of the Mexico exit
when the number two cylinder coil blew and his truck
resonated new harmonics across grinding metal,
he promptly took the exit,
checked the oil,
and turned around to home because his father had once fixed airplanes
in a life younger than his own.

defined himself in histories of who started hating him when.
[the places between stasis are horror.]

was known to accelerate into curves
accelerate into downslopes
into relationships
was known to fear braking.

learned eventually
learned early
learned a little too late
that locating his happiness within the
broken puzzle pieces gifted in
the hope of finding purchase in the segment
he'd long ago torn from his own viscera
only forced the disbelief of soulmates and wondered him
wandering in search of so much more than this.

he'd invented his own mathematics to explain absolutely nothing.

wished he'd a sky-wide heart with which to love the world:
[the world, to him, was always internal, never
and he'd hate cities for reasons.
sometimes pretended he could poetry,
sometimes neglected the laws that fed him,
always hated womyn,
always hated person's who couldn't tell the different between
websters plurals and possessives.

if it were possible, he'd use subjunctive.
if it were possible, he'd trade his ability to dream.

found inspiration at speeds above legal,
at acceleration,
at speeds in alternate states:
[New York drivers are so... aggressive.]
found something comforting in riding the edge,
the rumble strips calling out,
dead deer

at what point does animal
become meat
become carrion?
once took a mislabeled hamburger from the dining hall heatlamp
to find portobello: wondered then if that was the taste of
coffins, memorials, garroted friends.
he'd spit out the first bite,
but took so many more after the voices.

how much now is left of you?
the sickly fascination with unstrung vocal chords,
rotted through, never again to
sing.

was once so
twice so
always so enamored by speed and swerves that the
rearview mirror delighted hindsight with the dopplered impact
of an orange construction barrel.
water.

was known to pick targets
when boxed in by tractor trailers
when the median gave chance
for a head-on collision.
drove like he didn't care to survive.

bumper stickers warned innocents.
an army seven-million strong by the time he was ready

would be nice if once
just once
or twice
we could stop hating each other so much
to honor that time
and maybe it's not really hate
but a succession of days spent wondering
through desert life
at stars
at breath
my decision of each inhalation tempered now
with the surrenders inherent to each departure:
i must hate you.
i must unlove you
unseat you from this tangent,
exponentially tangential,
scattershot into futures apart.

was unknown in brevity,
famous in obsession and little else.

multitasked his path to mediocrity:
books, pages, digitally-versatile
stubbornness borne on
[did you know he was actually allergic to donkeys?]

i don't know who i am anymore.

never tried a drug he didn't fear,
never didn't fear You, that base addiction
concreted, secreted in a night that he put his
hand over your mouth so the neighbors wouldn't bitch.
knew then that your flicking tongue tasted yourself on his palm
from cupped foreplay: [this isn't cheating; this is friendship: beneficently extended.]

synesthetic in that he could hear your smile,
taste your release.
synesthetic in that he could live
the shadows of you and die each time he felt for your
heart-beats.

ate aspirin like breath mints.

hostaged himself to yesterdays.
to three-times-nine,
to fourteen-seven:
to morning, afternoon, evening and night smoke.
once considered working on a bison farm
because "artists" need real "jobs" to pay for cable.

[your dark exterior masks a caffeine-driven activism/]
[you'll take up a cause and you'll get ugly to advance it/]

thought that maybe if he smiled hard enough, long enough,
his face would stick that way
[such childhood threats only work for negatives]
[and no one would know].

realized long after they'd left that they were gone
long before they'd left.

stole poetry from his inbox:
Under the cheese, reconciles a breezy stain.
Dresses by drugs, transmutates the acorn to guy.
Ruined by chariots, wipes the light to guest.
Transmutating, saying, transmutating, writing, stepping.
Counter had a spill, which was not at all a gut.
Tells cowardly, wordlessly, like keys yelling, allegedly.
Seasons like rocks go slyly but angrily.

lonely man: suspensory particularist falconine boil lonely euangiotic

lonely man: wondered exactly when the future became a time
when scambots used "euangiotic" to market
cum-guzzling tranny vids and
bigger dick pills [ripper cun7 open 2nite] and
the. lowest. mortgage. rates. ever.

was never particularly falconine.

synesthetic in that
the point is, i forgive you.

synesthetic in that
he never wanted an acknowledgement,
just silences

the suicide watch was long over,
the july phone call of an angry father
and halfhearted attempts to convince him
he wouldn't walk off the roof.

sometimes swerved into traffic.
sometimes ran into snowbanks on purpose.
sometimes pretended he wasn't home.

the catalytic reaction of palm to palm,
palm to breast,
wondering which geography hearts learn first.

his madness taught him that tinnitus
ringing through from first memories sang
a perfect constant note, an S note,
inextricable from musics that dredged and
driver units, fifty millimeters spanning twenty-
five thousand hertz were the most convincing evidence
that he wasn't in fact indistinguishable from god.

wrote such worlds into existence
with maths learned in base one
four seven fifty three forty seven fourteen
made no sense to anyone beyond the periphery of
his madness: for all we know,
benton really existed somewhere dying at
quantum light x and ghosts are nothing more than
unrealized lovers.

let's disappear.

wondered if the three seconds of static from
two minutes, twenty-two seconds to
two minutes, twenty-five seconds was
intentional.

have you remembered me as
he
fucks
you?

long ago forgot the ingredients of love if ever
he'd purchased them in the first place.
substituted distance for proximity and
water for milk.
burned the mess.

learned the result of making love is often
a screaming, dying pile of flesh
more self-inscribed suffering than infant.

the morbid lock with which he fantasized
an elegant entrance to their funeral cars
and the questions whispered by strangers, of strangers:
was he?
the one?
who?

such daymares unseat the hesitant security of decades.

revised his histories to include suspicions.
revised his memories to include evidences.
revised his life to the end result of conscious constructions
of begged pities and reassurances:
we are here for you
[based on truths we can never believe].

wondered what you were doing these days
with your hairs or if maybe every reimagining of self was
nothing more than a surface attempt to become present while
underneath you knew the same battles
used the same metaphors for us
and plagiarized my hate.

surrendered more than once.

never had anyone travel so far away and come back to him.
[these things happen in threes.]

surrender
capitulation
without white flags.

put down payments on
too many others' emotional dowries;
invested too much of himself
in the gentrification of exiled landscapes:
he was the art kid they took home before
they met the safe one.

argued the non-pre-raphaelitism
of a proud antique-shop purchase and probably ruined all
chances of getting in good with mom.
[sure, it's impressionist. sure.]

waited for the other shoe to drop.
spent most days barefoot so he'd never break a heart.
was accused of ruining lives twice.
took heart in knowing that he'd not once made that accusation,
hated himself more for self-ascribing all responsibility
often broke plates and
stood on them by accident.

knew that once he began to associate music to specific humans,
they'd either die or cross the world to escape him.
never again wanted an our song,
but he did enjoy plural pronouns.

agreed with blair about ginsberg,
but still wrote this.

editor recommended the expurgation of
two shitty teenage poems from
his first book,
so he wrote a poem chapter in the third
of seven entries, all math internal.

[the lessons of the second are that i can survive,
and no matter how much you were to me,
i will use the us we were to pay the rent
if i can't use you as a pillow.]

drove in circles.

light bulbs lasted for durations of residence
because he preferred his work in the dark
and found that he couldn't proofread
when the songs had words.

rusted through most recollections
and lived as dust, wiped away more than once
but always returning, an exquisite layer
only visible under heartbeat scrutinies,
mostly shed flesh.
reserved a large percentage
of his willpower for a time when
he'd not likely need it longer.

divided and hid his past
[the electron flicker, stippled]
into convenient sub-folders
that only turned bold when someone actually needed him.

he hated bold folders.

preferred acoustic versions.

counted three grammatical errors
in his deepest inspirations.

marked his days
in the number of times
he emptied the desktop ashtray;
most days, three.
what a war mask such ash could inscribe.

marked his months
in the number of cartons, the handful
dozen career aspirations
and the nights they went to tully's;
had a specific memory of each booth.

marked his years
with ink lines on left forearm.
no. it doesn't scan.

gave more of himself up than he kept.
[it was a flawed campaign for a recalled product.]
first woke up

wondered what the end destination
for a course charted across freckles would be;
was satiated on a southern path,
and his tongue remembers.
they do leave texture:
he preferred that alternate smooth.

you don't need to know.
you don't need

wrote poems of war
in his own blood, vomit and shit.
such holographic wills are legally-binding
if properly witnessed;
i call you to bear witness.

burned all the steak-ums
and days later dreamt the gutter was filled with the war dead.

to walk across that desert to you...

convinced himself that he could pinpoint the
exact moments they'd erase him from memory:
11:11, 11:42pm, 7:41am.
he'd sometimes wake for no reason with an urgent sense of nothing.
resigned to the same status as the dead,
intangible.
wanted to write her into a book,
chose words for actions, phrases for breathing
the way she smelled at night.

hid the explosions of the midnight city
behind headphones, sirens bleeding through,
once watched them hose the blood from the street
and gasoline
after two vans danced around the corner, tangled,
the very spot the crazy man had shouted in dozens:
"Mayor Matt Driscoll is an asshole."
until sun rose, traffic drove over glass.

sat on the roof sometimes because
he loved the smell of sun on tar.
reminded him of his lung.

a spiraled coil, a field of red:
he carried within him delicious genetics
for heart disease, Alzheimer's, a predisposition
for children with inexplicable holes in their chests.
vowed that his line would end with him,
since his siblings did a good job of breeding.

reserved core terrors
for plural pronouns and the fear of substituting new names
into well-worn phrasal constructs.
felt disingenuous and watched ceilings
because he was so afraid everyone would see through his skin.

underreported the number of cartons
overreported the frequency of meals
never told anyone of the hours he'd spend lying on the floor.

once rocked forth, back, forth after lighting
a candle now long melted into the rock fabric of
a birthday gift, a monkey sculpture veiled with dozens of
dollar-store candles
[once wrote a poem]
prayed the first and only time.
[these penance years

never restarted his computer when prompted.
allowed frost to build to ice in the freezer compartment
until he hacked the tip off his one good knife
and breathed freon enough to make him sit down.
the landlord paid because he lied about the affair.
not once used his toaster oven.

wondered if cats saw ghosts when
they looked past him at nothing, attentively intent.
wondered if cats talked to his dead.

fatigued by himself
but just wanted to try something different for once
in a life filled with static days.

the downstairs neighbor ran out to the street
to help what was left of the white van driver:
he stood at the window and counted the pieces of her
as he drank milk straight from the carton:
some conveniences come solely from a life without partners.

the end result of the total mathematical extrapolation of
the designed ignition of infinity:
collapse entire, cessation,
wanted to beat that compression of
all possible heavens by a record of
twenty, thirty billion years.

the next time, that would be it
because there's only so much a person can give
before recognizing such giftings deplete the
essential desires to remain.

had the mis/fortune of being an artist
born with a brain hardwired for logics and maths;
some chapters augmented his internal mathematics of desire,
her curves and planes and volumes.

slept nightmares drawn from futures forged
of the gutted nickel cores of rock seas, unbreathing.
woke too many nights to the recurring image:
the staccato tattoo of a war
without the possibility of surrender.

jog shuttle to pause, play:
rupture, rend, rive, split, cleave:

edited a past away.

what you thought would disappear
lies
and waits:

wednesdays are the days we fight.
i'd ask you to call, but i know money's tight
the true change of that transaction
still punched through your face
i'd call every day if i could, but we can't.

january cuts a deeper distance
and sometimes i can't taste the words you type.
you often remind me of just how fragile i try not to be but am.

once you told me i was asleep when you got out of bed,
asleep but i still asked you if you were leaving and
looked so sad; i've tried dying those reflexes to departures.

i wonder if i whispered;
it feels like i would have whispered it
if asked not in sleeping, if asking awake,
if asking you to stay.

once you reached for the light switch and
in doing so, a tear fell from your cheek to mine.
i never told you that because i didn't want you to know
how close you'd come to breaking my heart with that tear.

once we didn't shout over something about dinner
but it felt like it, and i apologize for not remembering the specifics.
i wanted you to leave the room so i could pull the bones from the chicken,
and stood there listening to the hot fat silently burn my fingertips
and hoping to hear you laugh at something the television could provide.

we've fallen, and we'll stumble, still learning this
and i know the insecurities have to be exhumed and waked.
i've buried so many of my loves, and you met me
in an interesting time, i'll admit.
i don't doubt you.

smoking my last cigarette
and the snow's too deep today.

"come here."
i remember the shapes of those moments, the
Modular Calculus
we figure each time we assert.

how "I'll be right back" palimpsests
the variables with which i've measured times,
two minutes, five. thirty, after fifty-
nine, i shift to hours and trust you'll be back
eventually.

others never inspired such trust.

i think the definition of a partner is
someone you always want near, but
you aren't afraid to let them wander because
they come back.

our calculus is of additions:
cats, green radios, our bed, our house,
augmenting concepts of home with plural pronouns,
subtracting places and histories with a honed
methodological approach, methodically
approaching methods of subverting:
i'm a capitalist confused by your anarchies,
but i'll learn you through them.

i read fascination into you.
all the internal conflicts and external dissatisfactions
i learned a collection of decades ago to forget;
you reopen convenient scars and ask me to look.

it helps that you hold my hand.

i can imagine your fingertips typing, those
same fingertips i cradle with my tongue, tasting us,
those tips urging words into action, the letters a confusion
sometimes that adds to my wonder of the way
your mind works.

our mathematics-
i want to learn you and buy our cat.

paul hughes, come here.

i'd ask the same of you, but your name isn't mine;
i've had dreams that part of it will be.
i've had dreams of entering that city in conquest with you.
i've had dreams of a coastal life.
i've

because i've never been loved like this.

but

a heart can only break so many times before
you start to lose the important pieces

the nearest unsteady light
the return of books
or the brittle desire thereof
t-shirts you will never wear again
pajama pants too big for you
too big for her

thursdays are the days we fade

a fist bundle of broken glass
beating, chiming sunrises
echoing, screaming loss
each departure a new crack
each departure a new opportunity
for scar tissue to encapsulate
for the appearance of normalcy
but the grinding of the heart's edges goes on.

the nearest unsteady light
a burn barrel that wouldn't accept the flowers i bought you
the oven that ate the pumpkin pie
i've put the rest of you in a box
when are you coming?
when are you coming?

please don't ask if you don't want my answer.
please don't ask if you don't want me
because i'm assembled from memories that could be lies
missings so muches and i love you toos
and i think of you all the times.
maybe it's because you taught me how to play checkers
in bed
and i beat you the first time.

maybe only a poet could ever deserve to love you.
but i tried to learn your language
the subtleties and nuances of you
and there were great plains of you i never saw,
but i wanted to with everything i had.

which edges were lies?

that there are people who will wander the world,
never knowing the path of damage they leave behind,
always convincing themselves that it's okay to walk away.

that we are downgraded.
that he hoped that someday, someone would feel for him a fraction of the love he jettisoned into the world.
that there are people who deserve your touch more than i ever could.
that there are some trips you have to take alone.
that i am faithful to dead causes.
that there are no second chances and barely any firsts.
that we can be cheated of futures that were never ours.
that i will never forget the airport.
that i put holes in my body.
that we ran through a city and we were in love.

that i'd go around by Doney's
to see you once more.
to laugh at that.
with you.

you told me where i stood.
i fell down.

to learn that language, to speak with your tongue
i've forgotten your taste but only mostly.

you were imprinted.

you've given me a window
to count every fiber of my being,
and every one agrees:
my worth has an inverse relationship to proximity.

maybe if i were a poet,
i'd give my life for yours.
i'd walk those streets with you.

calling all certainties forth to question: think, miss, love.
the heart's sudden inability to unravel memory from lie.

we had a song.

the way a jaw works over words that won't form
the way the chest hitches as the devastation soaks in
the gasping, flailing loss underlying disbelief.

of course you'll see me again.
of course you'll see me before i go.
of course i still love you.
of course.
of course i miss you.
think about you.
dream of you.
of course you'll see me again.

of course
i've never seen any of them again.
of course.

because i would come to you
over the water
through hills and memory
i would come to you,
i promise.
through the fragile web of the distances between us
accelerating into turns
never looking back,
i would come to you.
i would run.
i would promise.
if you asked me.

i'd run alongside your code forever
girding for wars of desire without end.

was never known to command respect from his peers
was known to steal his fourteen minutes in fragments
was known to sometimes allow ashes to burn on his forearms and face
while waiting patiently for them to gutter out
because at least it was something nearing proof
that he was there at all

jog shuttle to pause, play:
rupture, rend, rive, split, cleave:

edited a past away.

what you thought would disappear
lies
and waits.

it wasn't love
but it was something as painful.