Three Rules About Snakes

always be cautious of people
that have pet snakes. inviting you
over to see them eat but they’re watching you
watching it creep through
a fake plastic jungle with a single rock for heat.
Jeffery Dahmer made his friends watch home movies too.

on my twelfth birthday I got a snake from a snake man,
also known as:
a guy my mom worked with that told me three rules about snakes
* feed it mice
* kill the mice first
* never feed it after midnight

I killed a lot of mice when I was twelve
I wanted to watch it eat
breaking their bodies on the dresser’s edge
by their little tails and
I never swung hard enough the first time.
I was waiting for someone to stop me
from creating death songs for small animals.

I stopped asking friends to see it eat,
scared that they were watching me,
in violence — all of us wondering,
the second rule was a lie.

when I was thirteen I changed my mind and
fed the mice alive
so they would have a chance to look into
the open mouth. float
down to the deadlights,
while I looked
into the mouth and found
forgiveness.

Ryan said the trees were calling

Ryan said the trees were calling out so many times that I wanted to believe him wondering what their voices sound like and was it just the stump gnome throwing tricks into our camplight stirring at the edge of the fire with little tongues forked & flamed incessantly licking the wind in protest. if the trees are calling, shut them out as sentinels earning the cracks into curiosities wide awake since the first time I opened an eye. The Great God Pan is psilocybin smiling in a divorced moms bathroom mirror locked away for transfiguration becoming a werewolf. the door is open the door is wide there are trees on the other side there are trees in my eyes and my brother poised for an entrance his body black against the deeper black blurring two voids into the sound of a voice tethered to the sound of my voice falling into a spell watching the fire.

I've Been Writing About Angels

the backyard is full of trains heavier than air
moving speeds without time
screeching new fears from new mouths
in a vacuum of gravity stealing my breath
and singing it back in songs across the fence

self-destruction from the stump of a dead fire ring
reading graffiti with urgent leisure looking for
the colorful wisdom that floats your gut for the rest of your life
like expeditionary banners in bathroom stalls
for a good time call…
everyone on Kunsan knows that
John Wayne died for our sins

letters home on fugitive stationery
from angels on the rail bleeding out aerosols in beauty marks
against the industrial service scars of America
and we all sleep unsettled
and I am scared five times a day being reminded of my heartbeat
thrumming on the ground with Sal out west
becoming the sunset in a
desert I haven’t seen

Terroir

Next of Kin, I’m nervous
about being small
while you’ve become big
saving your seat, only tasting my drink
bent against outrunning future conversations
the last gin on the shelf, juniper dirt Terroir
tastes like 6-months ago in my mind
skipping a few beats to bring back the dead
you were glowing
and that beam of breaking light from your mouth
is a story, liberating other mouths
in deliverance from big quiet secrets
and reminders to leave offerings
of honey for gods in the yard
standing vigil until a limb falls at your feet

Unedited 2

high speed staring out my window with the bravado of someone that believes there is a difference between wet black and jet black while the asphalt eats everything it touches, you could fall into both face first, you can only lose yourself in one. mending old wounds on the floor kicking fire into shoeshine eyes, lucid pupils eating planets burning time. I’ve never lost control only wished someone could do it for me, never lost hold of the things I fold into my chest, white knuckle fighting.

Petal Gospel

what would it take to hop a train from the backyard and disappear night after day into the modern boxcar king millennial sold out for a buck a bottle and a kiss on the mouth devouring scenery with wine soaked minds, true planet eaters, true angels sweating bullets in high desert skies, true religions asking nothing tithed but cactus flowers at man-height left to prickle your eyes with the promise of petal gospels. true angels in the sun eyes closed angel deathwish, holy water on the streets. two wheels on the ground sixty speed in the wind, electric temples on the side roads buzzing angel lights til we all come home rubbing bright into lines on our faces, dirt in our pockets and dusty angel minds. dreaming of longer roads, dreaming that two planets collide like a cosmic ouroboros like planets eating time.

Whiteboarding

lightning head
thunder head
three coffees before 10

freight train before bed
throwing axes in the backyard
plinking shots at empty cans
six-star pattern, shoot til you miss

five points for five points
my only aim
as world record holder
is impressing the smug
railroad fox

kitsune trickster
in the back of the house
blink back / Adderall
whiteboarding corporate structure
with mandatory spirit
and merchant taxes
 
charged for daydreaming
a small coffin in the margin
or a crystal ball emoji
entertaining office characters
and becoming one
small talk about Tesla
with dead pennies in the bank

no free electric future
its cross-threaded stars
with heart static perpetually
zoned out, low time is no time

Unedited 1

end of summer seasonal ego death, the end of earth eating itself whole for hibernation stasis while all us little planet eaters eat seventy-year servings of entropy after spending half your life spitting sharp diatribes at the weather weakening your bones and denounce all sunlight after 7pm because you’re tired of the need to be endlessly productive. daylight belongs to bees all the angels retreat while everything before dark disappears I’m looking in my mouth for a flood gate switch open for alms from everything I’ve ever skipped because I was scared when my eyes were closed.

Alt Cinema 9

I watched a man die on the concrete pad behind a house vining its own history in conversational ivy a few minutes after her mouths wet lace dried on my cock in a stained-glass pattern with the afterglow of effervescent violence. he fell handing me a dream and stared up flat with understanding that the blood pooling slick under his head was a permanent exit and I thought about breaking a rib with compressions but I thought about her curves profiled in the doorway silhouette across the street as I walked away.
his last breath spilled into my distraction
fucking a perfect face like my faith depended on it.

Unsolved Mysteries

there is an eclipse coming and everyone can sit on lawn chairs in backyards watching two
celestial bodies devour all the light in our eyes,
planet eaters in protective glasses, private screenings at the doomlight drive-in,
end of summer and October eats the whole world while I’m learning how to get lost.
I want to disappear into the forest like a case on Unsolved Mysteries--lost in the frame of a 1999 camcorder, immortalized in impenetrable black like the saints of found footage
staring at the screen with unfortunate solitude so people wonder if I stepped into a portal between two birch trees because I had to investigate the bare white bark shining at night.
I’m looking for something deconstructed in two ways
mental desolation
  paired playfully
with environmental dissonance
served in alternating chaos by a Cenobite with an interdimensional puzzle on a platter in the shape of a cube hiding the shape of a star, creating a form so unrecognizable that after six seasons the audience believes that everyone on the island is already dead because purgatory is a more distinguished form of disappearing for American households believing that the afterlife might be a tropical island with menacing corporate overlords and a formless cloud terrorizing the extras.

ScreenTime

angel fire evening
watching clouds clear
the softest spot in the sky
draping moonsmoke velvet over
halo-hanging earth
I brush screen time from my eyes for repatriation,
and forgiveness for not being part of every thing asked of me.
masking would be a better term if it meant that I
loved Halloween and not that every new person makes me feel under siege.
pounding afternoon war drums in echo on a daylight coffee date
and I’m smoking again. the ballad of bad habits like a moth in the light
because I’m still wondering if my mom liked me when I was a kid.
I was paralyzed by endings that I couldn’t recognize a beginning.

looking for a love like hallelujah in the dark
and hearing the heartless sex of bodies sweating bodies
(infatuated) everyone ending on different days of the week.
asleep—I dreamt of Death sauntering grey snow and TV static, scrolling left to right like Nintendo at the end of the world—I hung him in my arm between myself and my younger self, a trio of time belted by corporeal boundaries.
this scene, this small room sanctioned all light,
seeking alms for Death in a dream lamenting colorless landscapes with the backbite of remorse.

something like a door opens in the middle of the night.
robe to the floor and I wake up twice
miniature suns unfurl
like morning ferns
something like a door has opened in the middle of the night.

Hot Rain

Lightning bug summers exploding stars from our baseball bats.
Lining the porch steps with mason jar prisons like forever homes in hot rain 1994 with glass museums of over exposed yellows and tired greens.
Fireflies remember--outback by the dumpster, picking up secrets for nighttime listeners.
July thunder thinks through something bigger than itself,
and it’s wetter than I remember.
Walking old summers, before the infinite suicides of being loved on the inside
/before/
I wanted to run into something dark and permanent and breathless.
Some endless green like Annihilation, shimmering, a song soft enough to break and remediate.

Barista

the barista looks just like my aunt
get out of my head
some things should stay unsaid
I hate being informed of a twin--suddenly, a copy
wondering if they have the same cracks and the same crooked eye
from an incident that could’ve been avoided at 22
the walls around me are
impenetrable forces of separation
characters sharing dreams in daemonic chorus
if you collect enough lives the end boss enters the scene
and it’s you, shining without armor

Remade

the burning season leaves my body like the shape of the sound of a name. coming around every three years to seek and destroy in the spirit of formlessness, soft to be remade. making efforts to look at old pictures of myself and only recognize the background geography. heavy every day wondering why can’t I exist in accumulation, stuck on small time aberrations looking for the skeletal glyphs of a conspiracy conceived in the junk drawer. time is a circle, the circle is a snake, the snake is the ouroboros eating the head at the mouth. every third-year drips with decided expiration and I walk away on fire in self-righteous immolation too fast but too slow. holding on to sharp objects that cut self-affirming slices of once rendered feelings into a patchwork of scant ribbons. the aftermath looks like things I cared for but was too afraid to care more and the snake aimed to swallow something vital between my shoulder blades. I am left on the couch pretending not to know who killed Laura Palmer again in a non-existent mystery of shedding skin and the demons of misperception. transforming slow enough for distant viewing, like substance without direction in a series of low light vignettes to be seen and not shouldered.

Atlantic City

the first time I went to Atlantic City was a Tuesday afternoon
no one told me Atlantic City was not a Tuesday afternoon place
daylight casinos for desperate money
there hasn’t been a tourist here since 1987
star-eyed ages, cocaine glitterati turned greatest hits
seeing slot machines from space after 10pm
the preacher lady on the bench is the town historian
delivering a pigeon sermon to the flock of fleeting locals
with pizza communion on the boardwalk
throwing ten-dollar darts at a balloon inflated six days ago and showing
the Ferris wheel feigns beachfront dominance
from empty baskets whispering post-apocalyptic secrets
sign of the times
I didn’t brave the end of the boards
that I might wander out of space
into Virgil’s open hand to abandon hope
all ye who exit this Jersey Shore sanctuary