a) I am as beautiful a person
as any person can be beautiful

b) living on this planet is like
trying to rearrange organize sand.

c) A man is a scream the same
as a woman is a scream,
perhaps one should stop calling one the other
and yell for help about the fire.

d) this poem is a response to
the letter you sent me. I've waited
to slip the hand of my words
into the glove of yours
flexing around the closed throat of...

e) there's never right words
just heavy ones
that you clench your teeth with
on your shoulder like science-fiction bombs

f) the only thing I know how to do is wretch
my fingers are pencils

g) but the paper blows away like
all the vomit on the streets
unstudied and undignified
unceremoniously.

h) sometimes I think
I was born with one eye less
and one that sees and argues
. that must be why I'm losing my job.

i) some sounds echo back at you.

j) this planet collects wrinkles like human skin
they wait to spread open
to open us like presents
to find the word
that powers hearts.

k) i will stew here.
I am the pot that should have been a soldier.
Yes Sir.

l) the idea of gender
got here before me, catching the eye of the Earth
before it was blinded by the sun

m) Human sexuality is obtuse.

n) Eliminate the threat. Softly
or loudly, with the sound of The Tilled Fields
in the background, fed through a phonograph.
I assume they would eat surrealist art.

o) All the beautiful English has already been written.
Years later, boys wanted to be girls
and stoners wanted to be artists. They have an inbox
and an outbox to go unread and
they are undressed, all of the meaning sliding through
like melted butter. I saw Dali paint a Heaven and Hell
out of butter. This man grew to hate straight lines
leaning like giants
like a Spanish pianist in 2011
and the stoners listening to the random clicks
coming through in
diminished returns.

p) All of the poetry is written for a cosmos
that is, frankly,
rather busy.

q) I did this to myself.
I am always doing me.

r) the world shivers like the mind shivers
constantly, in five colors
that want to escape enough to see one another.

s) ask us to paint a dark nook in a room
or in a breadbowl with linen, leaning open
like a neck above a red collar,
all the sprites are far too excited about their necks.

t) is this what all the fighting is for?

u) poetry is a foul skin to be rolled up inside of
when the bombs fall

v) I am the only one left who listens to Spanish pianists.

w) and women with words living between pale pink lips
wanting to emerge like clams from wet sand
heavy as anvils.

x) we could all be so airheaded and empty
voices scraping against the dark cervix of a doorway
trying to entice someone special to pass into our lives.

y) i will never have my own beautiful thing.

z) what do you write
into a world that can only read itself
in dark light
, squinting.