summum bonum

 and so and so what

that one foot will always be

planted where nobody can see.

i want to tell you a story             about

the first time tom robbins did acid,

about this book i read where there's a lion made of flame

who bounds over desert sand and each dune is a different color,

or about how things are                 complicated,

and enduringly ambiguous,

i am at once so many ticks on a spectral lattice

my genes maybe too distilled from that inborn unrest

up the branches on both sides of the tree,

i worry i might
i might be "actually crazy"
am ecstatically lucid
need to be better
i am not my father
my poetry sucks
and is whiny
i'm cruel
nothing hurts
i am brr serk
the kindest
i am like 1/4 gay
is it okay to say
that i am so good
i can do every
thing feels too much
i am rapturous
furious god
it hurts do you
like me i
want to hide

all of this radiates

from my animus in widening deep-throb circles

like elephants calling to each other across miles

in tones too low to hear, like

the earth itself is sighing

i love

everything

i read this french book about a woman

who kept turning into a sow -

i am number

today i think it is

just one & how nice to be

curled in the brain basket

dreaming softly of

the shape of time

over great bounding arcs

tree poem

i am never lighter than when i hold tight onto a tree,
press my head close and feel the strong fiber circles
plunge down
deep; syrupy wet cellulose. 
it can be still and safe then.
pull smooth green bark twigs to my lips; consider
quietly with my tongue;
whisper hi, hi, hi, hi,
                                        tell me about being

all the mom voices on the phone are almost crying,
want to be crying but won't, i absorb them
into my black hole of holding
whatever hurts.

pack it up

every ginger door
splinter sore slams
                           o-shit structural damnage
blow grit out
orbiting tinny feedback loops
nuzzle all the rubble

i can't carry:
this
                  all of it i
mean       i'm going to kansas city
with a rocket for a spine.

& die because my giving floats astray
                               i miss cigarettes
miss my dragon drug
want my fucking
CIGARETTES CIGARETTES CIGARETTES CIG-
ARRETS

but i don't write much about things i used to do.

& don't worry i'm used
to it like i'm used to feeling used to feeling             my own tits.

a team of kind spiders
is already weaving my new hide,
                       built-in acid panels
solar self-soothing                    
                         
but allow me to wish for
                                     just one body
                                     i could trust
to be wiser than i:
because i find i'm often kind of fucking dumb

artifice of cold

i wonder if i failed you because
my distress signals emerged as sarcastic gestures.
i should definitely not have made the jerk-off motion,
or tongued the cleft of my finger-v,
or flipped you the stiff double bird over my shoulders
all those times i fled down the stairs
to antarctica.

it is quiet here and the rope muscles
ache along my spine
but the wind feels nice
on my dumb puppy skin.
i don't miss the internet
kind of. i can play all this hot tv
in my head           i do miss feeling like
there was a second where i could have
slipped out the side door unnoticed,
kneaded the smudge of me from the ether,
stepped slyly from frontier to shining frontier.
instead now i'm
spear hunting                 or forever
wandering sad distant whiteout circles,

i'm so alone and i wish i
could have gathered with me from my spam folder
all the sweetly pining fake russian women,
                                                             whisper you are safe, i love, you are safe.
over the next few months they metamorph
into dark-furred huskies, my vyki, my nika;
at the cusp of perma-night
in our glow tent they curl with smile eyes
in tight knots against me

cessation

i will not read

the comment section of

the daily sun the article about

my dad's "retirement"

i will not let a sudden train blast

make me cry

i will not crumble and seethe

a little, inside

when coworkers gossip about

their nanny's eating disorder

i will not play with magic

i will not tear the delicate

origami leash on my

white throat

i

any poem

[Richard Brautigan]