i-pod wars

until you stood in front of the house
and announced to the whole world that "I'm crazy"
you just convinced em that you not just
some girl we see on the news
until you only seem to wake up
too early in the morning
even on the weekends if you are
just a little bit confused

save yourself
first of last
one less thing

right when the full length of my arm is about the same
as the whole length of your body
that would go a very long way
if you're talking to us
until you only seem to wake up
too early in the morning
even on the weekends if you had
the day off from work

that's it
I'm not moving
we're not gonna be
anywhere
anytime too soon

"in front of the house and look who you're talking to"
by human television

inwards

when I fell that day I was outside this kid’s room. charlie, I knew him a bit from my time there. one night when his parents weren’t there they had to recycle his blood completely. they had him on this strange machine pumping his blood out for new blood going in. I was walking the halls. I went and sat with him. something opens in me now that brings this back. the way he was older than me from being sick all his life. then outside the room where the hallway and my balance went to disappear. reappearing I was half ground and half wall, i.v. bleeding more than it should from my arm. wow, look at that. charlie standing over me saying “you’ve made a mess of things you know”.

from my time there

an ugly colored hotel bedspread. her clothes on one side of the bed, yours on the other. when she falls asleep you follow her down like a map. you hold it up to the crack in the curtains and turn it like a kaleidoscope. you don’t recognize the city from here. you don’t know who might have called. who is out playing games. what bombs have dropped. what people are saying in places you could be right now. you crawl back into bed and see the city from the overhead view you have in your head. then you use your hands to see her.

ugly colored hotel bedspreads

upright walkers are computer keyboard characters

once a week bus money

they all

they so much all

a day and a half is a long way from shore

is an good itch inside your ear

what she wore to leave your apartment

a smell contained in her blue collared shirt

you put your face in like a group of crowded things

a murmur of many

cloth next to her chest a sleepy phone call

late afternoon skin

her pretend

I’ve got some work to do

jeans coming off her waist

one-handed horizontal maneuvers

rush to a rush

another blue breath in

the druggy odor still there

two or three nights on

the first republic bank

red 76 gas station ball

dodger stadium

vin scully summer on the radio

that view seemed a view of everything

her clothes pushing to the floor

going with her own sideways look

owner of a low-cut cleavage resignation

metal hanger wrist wrap

here, put your hand in my side

hair down, profile collide

sometimes she’d move it away

sometimes you would

casual flip measures an eye color avenue

a lack of sleep since the incisions of 1985

another off-kilter groove between legs