viscid ingenue

there are canny tests --
the data is slavering.

     it's not what you can make
     but what you can bear.

built a fourteen-ton typewriter out of
soak rags and car parts,
             -- you can use it but i can't
be here all day to help you key hop
                your recipe for a napalm sugarboil.

to avoid getting pinched
drink glass marbles in milk,
disguise self as a semicolon,
                       or, demurely, demi-.
stay under the gossamer tarpaulin.
tape those nipples --
perma slick.
 
nestle in Lt ripley's heaving ribs,
tongue battery temple,
                         bob for apple sacs.
apropos our scopophiliac
                        less mirror! -- more mirage!

this black casing

i'm careful
cher got me drunk
this time but not too
wasted
i only lost a few hours

i toss my phone down and
it accidentally plays one of your
screaming messages from last week
threatening suiciide and i go whoa
paw at then it
vibrates once like barking

and i remember nights
and nights and nights and nights
and laughing laughing laughing
skin important/utmost

jonny poem

my best bastard
sprung from
devil town

saw you a
baby nest eagle
in cedar

when beatrice sunk into
the graphite of our
bone pencils

grown-ass now and howl
proud pale sequin eyed
screams like laughter
and blue grass hustle

the rivers
the rivers
the slide fiddle rivers
of shitty liquor and
rogue shadow medicine dust
dismantled the other kids
left us to leave and return and leave
the corroded rodeo junkyard junction
so sad you could just write a song
about how it feels to be
lighter and heavier and alive
grinning bigger than the sky

hey sturdy fencepost i love you
i'll keep tracking your miles
and you keep clocking my luck cause
blood never made a truer brother

& i ain't a fuckin mind reader

i walk and walk and

come in smelling of ozone
like my sister always did after playing outside
i don't know why but the smell often
enraged me, filled me
with some slow fire like jealousy

like she was a little animal i had to attack
for being somehow wholly freer
than i could

we were all and still are little animals
i can't even shut up about it
i work very hard

and i never was
here to hurt
no body

lode/vigil

i started dreaming again
mostly i'm in houses
demanding information from
smiling people

how did i get like this
which of my actions
matter

did you
feel like you were better
at flying off mountains
than climbing them

was listening to buddy holly and realized
i've never been in love with brown eyes
someone who had them, i mean

just a bunch of seas and snakes
and frank o'hara skies
i guess, sorry bud

lesson 1: stay in the saddle

lesson 1.5: be true be true be true

in high school we got keychains
i didn't do drugs
but i had a buddy holly keychain
and put safety pins through my wrist skin
and i once stood on a table at lunch
just stood
until the principal demanded me down,
told my parents i was on drugs

and i was like where's my fucking breakfast club

we like haik us

pull the strings apart
muse a sad ukulele
do we lie to us

~

stay and you can sha ke/me
things that suck about knowing:
lick your wolf head clean

~

stomping dark circles
i like how you pronounce it
can we hear again

ars amatoria

when i think about loving some people i think about holding them strongly

when i think about loving some people i think about them holding me strongly

when i think about some people loving me i think about them holding me lightly while i shake with sobs
             and how that's pretty weird, i'm not used to touching my friends because i'm
sensitive
             but i did kiss mand at 12 on new year's, that was a fun small thing
             remember when we all were kissing that one time
             and i kept telling kan                                       you're so beautiful

and did you know my fingers type your name compulsively like 50 times a day

i have future voodoo chants

champion tendons

dormant oases

o boy