Citizen's Arrest

His soles played the broken glass settling in her 

screamless back alley like wind-chimes, 

leg halfway over the first fence 

before my feet could part their lips. 

I’ve only ever caught three thieves. 

The first was an Italian gypsy, 

but the second wears all my same clothes;

so when I saw this one, I knew People only run like ghosts 

to finish what they shouldn’t have time to do, 

I followed stallion, galloping, forty yards, thirty yards,

leaving a wake of scattered trash cans, shadows, and bad advice.

By this time, the dogs had robed into fire alarm chorus.

I wondered if anyone had been surprised enough to call the police. 

He didn’t look like he was slowing down, and I was gasping, 

legs drunk on adrenaline, blurring into their own confession of love, until,

he turned at the trail through the park you can beat taking 15th,

And I got him.

As he pushed against my jail bars, I told him I might let go 

if he emptied his jacket’s elephant skin first.

From his pocket he pulled a vagina, 

barked “she gave it to me, OK?”

I yelled “Where’s the rest of her?” 

His eyes crumbling beach fires, sirens singing in the distance,

shards of innocence biting his tongue, he coughed

“Listen, that’s it, she promised.”

the mountain

I wonder at the busyness of man.
We crawl like fire ants beneath the god of flame,
handing our blood to the masses like it was the very mist
off our punctuated words. The deflated tunnels within drape
themselves over our bones as if for a nap,
but they stay, and I forget. 

Their slumber settles into a glaze over our eyes,
and before long, appear to be hammocks.

I am slow to wake. For years have not looked twice
at the pillow for my weary back, whose ghost is given up,
the slung up boa constrictor, these rolled fishing nets,
this comfort I take in lack.

A doctor evaluates his patient not unlike a mechanic.
If I need a new engine, will I save money going to a mechanic?
Would he order me a new caffeine pill? Perhaps a day planner?
or would he sell me for parts?

The west was won on the backs of respect.
Must we all deathbed altar to the god of progress
after an oxen’s life, siphoning our oil,
the world on our shoulders?
How to wield this extra pair of legs?

lake washington

Lately, lust is a drought in my skin.

The way the ground buckles in the dry
forms the kind of Sahara cracks that

wedding rings roll down to pawnshop shelves.

In summer, the heat is a closet monster that keeps me outside.
My neck hits adolescence, growing wiser than his scarves by the day,
living out of the bag that’s been packed and in the trunk since Winter
looked like he was moving in with mom, and I am marooned by my desire.  

If there’s one thing I learned in school, 

it’s summer is the season for forgetting.  

Swimming, I forgot desks, 

traveling, I forgot home,
and this vacation still makes me forget my history,
especially on the beach, where a sturdy handrail and plaque
would almost make a good zoo.
My neck spends all his money on gas to get here,
because here, I want to do and not remember,
and it is summer.

This time of year, in the Sahara, herds live leaving.
I imagine I might have a rhinoceros on each arm, and a pack 

of giraffes on my back. The gazelles’ migration impresses wings 

into my legs: all of them swirling,
beating out their basest angst for survival, 

for fear of the lions resting in the shade of my mouth, 

always a sentence away 

from preying on the weak.

How can my neck be so naïve,

that girls in summer have faces,
that my voice box is slave to his bedridden angst,
that I speak with the tongues of lions?

How did I forget my face, 

become so hopelessly reckless,
when beneath the ground,

I am an empty wallet.
I am backpack of dirty clothes.

23/289

It's been one week since the storm
near New Zealand pounded its fists in the Pacific,
and here, on a Washington coast, the ocean finds
final resolution from the bloodrush.

My eyes tell me I am currently the only one
on this beach to congratulate the ocean.
This is not true, for here, the ocean and I lay
down our guns for an audience of One.

What is it about skin that makes us forget
our first loves?

Jesus, the sand must be your punctuation.
I hear your words in the echo.
So, here, like a sea of turbulence, I crash.
Here, I give you my storms, as my body pulls
back to the landless coasts it still calls home.

22/289

To the right of my bathroom mirror,
quiet as a painting, a moth.

Moths are misunderstood.

To the left of my bathroom mirror,
raised as a gavel, a switch.

Moths are martyrs for light.

A well-nested reflex in my arm,
a thought about clothes, a towel.

To the right of a moth,
wide as morning, a window.

Under a failed parachute, a moth
flaps one wing, pushes with half legs.

In the eyes my bathroom mirror,
guilty as truth, a thief.

He won’t last the day.

God, please forgive
me of my waste.

21/289

In a restaurant, the word, corner, is the waiter's
only protection against cacophony.

Without it, the dotted lines flowing from his
and hers orders intersect in explosion of beer

and what's left of plants and animals whose whole
existence has centered around people mouths.

Even still a young man, I have done a lot of waiting.
I have rounded many corners walking too fast

to hear any voice of reason protecting the food,
already paid for, in their hands.

The restaurant has been too busy to service any question
or regret with the detail my smile claims. But I try. Really.

I yell corner! on hopes they'll turn and run, to keep from breaking
things glue can't fix, to keep from wasting the purpose of their hands

on a cheap mixer of beer, confusion, and sometimes awkward glances,
like the one time a table of ten watched me total their entrees and
two desserts

like it was my job. I told them I was new. And sorry. My manager
comped the whole thing, but I'd never earn it back.

The trust of a co-worker is irreparable. As time goes on,
I can't help but notice more and more changing shifts.

In training, they don't tell you about gates, or how eyelids
can be weaved into chain link by careless steps.

Broken plates on the floor look like continents.
So I've started kneeling on the floor, I'm trying.

I'm charting a route to sail away from self-hate,
away from this man who knows failure like a paycheck.

I'm thinking if I look busy, I can stay down here. Maybe
someone will trip over me, see the dotted lines

where porcelain dust has brushed off with my finger,
and stay, to help clean this mess I've circled as many times

as a restaurant parking lot.

20/289

This everyday thing is difficult. If it's worth anything, I've been working on past rough drafts and freewrites, but that's not much for the everyday. Here's a new one from today!

Harmony, a love poem

Dear harmony,

I am looking at you,

right now. Don't worry.

When you've finished reading, cloud watch a minute,
let your walls flatten into fields, forget the color blue,
and you will see me, too. I have combed my arm hair
out into wings with wishing and set my feet onto airplanes
like the stepstools they are to vacation,
in space.

Don't worry, on Sunday, I was the dissonant one.
My last words to you would be full of flowers.
If this letter is the last time you hold me,
imagine my hands around yours in the snow,

It is the only thing I could not have done, and

cannot do until my return.

The first reason I have left earth

is to test the spacial limits of eye contact.
Record the number of shooting stars between now
and when you see me next. They are
prayers mirrored on earth's eyelid.

The second is to try out the gills I've grown
chasing what everyone says is nothing.
Pray they're working. Thirdly,
the last I can think of-ly,
to see how much missing it takes to pull a body
closer than orbit. Sometimes, I admit, you look like

a manila envelope. In grade school, the word manila
by itself, was enough to make me think of retirement
homes - not the inside souls, but the place where
certainty's only friends are sterilization and death;
it's the skin color we know by comparison doesn't exist or
only has hands for privilege. To the eyes,

you look like all I know,
which is why I even mentioned retirement,
but I forget that envelopes are the perfect
mistakable-for-nothing-at-all width to hold heaven poems.
I have gone in search of these. Of the beauty

I can't see with well fed eyes.
Of remembrance.

Proper perspective.
I think the planets have always had it right,
keeping their admirers at enough distance to wear want
like an appointment. Where I'm going, there's nothing

to breathe but homesickness. Pray
my lungs grow heavy enough
to drop me back to earth before my body loses hope.

In a Glossary of Star-Strucking, orbit is a state of despair.
I guess the planets had it wrong.
They will never know the crash of being loved.
They will never know the sound of themselves
played back through a dusty speaker
pushed and pulled
by forces he did not set in motion.

19/289

Between the three cups of coffee,

brie that looked like the wedge

star of The Missing Piece,

grown up grape juice birthed on a ring

of wooden benches in South France,

a yeast flower sponge to sop it up,

and an entire tomato probably-fake cheese

well greased wheel from Pizza Hut,

my intestines have a lot to talk about.

The room is less than pleasant.

They have not opened up like this in a long time.

I'm flattening into a damp kleenex,

tears dropping atop it from two clouds.

One, a sucker for conversation.

The other, a realist.

18/289

that man.

that man
sitting over there
thinks he can get away
get away with that BIG BEARD.
what will his employer say!
there's a room i don't
want to fly-on-the-wall!
heh, get it out of yer system
now buddy cause its never
gonna last! beards don't say
i'm efficient
i'm productive
i'm goal-oriented
i'm proactive
i'm prodonut well i guess they might say that hah!
i'm going to push this company
i care about my image

not beards that big sure don't!
to think you might have
looked in the mirror this morning!
disaster!
move to the woods silly moss beard!

heh, to think! this is 2009!

17/289 reduces to 1/17

Today a cloud candelebra knocks at my window.

I see past their blanket disguise

and draw the shades,

followed by a second more permanently in my head set

of shades, but the candle air ghost fingers pull them

like a small hungry dog.

Like a monster stretching passionate

from a blacked out open door on the

filmy pages of a movie I regret seeing, if only for how I am

burning morning cloud cover onto the same reel,

they tug relentless at my eyelash heels.

This is painful. The red marks, definitely forming.

People will surely ask what kind of abuse I've received.

What kind of live-ins are devilish enough,

have small enough hands?

They will ask. You can't let the kids mistake eyelashes

for rope swings They will say. Did your fingers

go terribly amiss while shaving?

They will shudder. To keep hyberbole out of the room,

I will have to interject. No, I will say,

the glowy clouds poked pores in my window,

said I needed to breathe,

tried to tell me I can fly today, tried

to see what a trapped universe looks like, tried

to make me talk about all the life swirling in even

one retina, tried to make me look at them

like a crown or expensive painting,

Succeeded

dragging me from the room where I dream. The room

full of paintbrushes, swingsets, and women with better names

than my hands have given them.

16/289

The wake of eternity
will push a love song
across shores who prior
did not know how to
have a name.

they will be called
Empty Room, the air
thinning with each
saltwater mouthful,

as the current etches them
like a trailside tree with
the name of Jesus.

15/289

I saw
a bear.

It was brown, and very large.

My friend tried to go find it for a minute, but his wife
and I stopped him with our words,
because bears,
especially big brown bears,
can kill you.

Brown bear, will you give me a hug?
Maybe we can have tea
at my house
tomorrow
at noon.
I will give
you a
fresh
fish,
and
per
ha
ps
a
haircut.

14/289

Xerxes,

You would have clothed yourself with your sons
to slow enemy arrows, had the measure of your slaves
not mirrored the desert seas in your heart.
You might have looked upon each soldier,
blacksmith, cook, and prostitute like a coffin
volume enough for a sand dune, but
the thousands slain before you, in their escape,
rebelled against the ground, slit open, and
spilled out the crowning glory of your empire.
This refuse of their souls,
they did have souls,
declare you masochist.

You Icarus.
You bleeding hand.

Standing upon a mountain of dead,
did the stench remind you of gold?
Did it remind you of how your arms
splintered beneath the wealth of nations?

When you cracked like a sarcophagus,
the world and the world over
rushed to fatten their pockets.

I hope their feet kiss the dead farewell
soaring on wings of something of truth,
I hope they fall before the desert finds its way out.

13/289

Ode to the Butterfly


Astronaut,

when you lay weightless in my hand,
wind brushes your presence hush
under my skin and draws goosebumps;
sound falls awestruck out my ears like a starcatcher out to sea.

Among the creatures of leg and leaf,
who cast our flying dreams into the air
as heavy questions for clouds, your
body decides its ship.
And you go.

Up there, way up there,
you look like stars. Your burn roar
lays captive inside the voice boxes of worlds between us,
but as you return, the atmosphere fire of reconciling
paints itself upon your fragile wings

And in the smokesignals a departed sailor
discerns your journey. For all the orbits
written into your feet, when I pull his message
from its salty green bottle, it sounds
like flowers whispering.

12/279

If there is anything our history books have shown us,

it is the gap between should and is.

That there is something out that door waiting

at the curb who snuck a backdoor, asking

us to smash our mirrors into cash and coin,

rebel against our bodies,

do soul violence.

We poets stack envelopes into planks,

we're stringing them up and we're making a bridge,

from is.

Throwing paper airplanes at should.

Telling should to come closer.

I tell should, should, my arm doesn't

know how to work a pen like that.

teach me

or come closer.

but should is a distant relative of isn't,

who is 3 for 4 on doesn't,

and should doesn't.

my finger gymnasts have stretched,

felt the opposite cliff's edge breathing heavy.

I have even rested my palm upon it

like a white candle in a crowded room.
But from here, the ledge appears a court report
of slap craters, or the graves gymnasts thought into being
when their muscles were brought to knees.
Most of my poems look like that row of marks, and
How it feels to daredevil across God, stuffing an alarm clock
into my parachute bag.

I have woken up every day since birth,
with five exceptions on a short list called coma.
Every one of them my brain hissed into a liferaft
inhaling all talking room
yelling commands like a gagged
blind closet-locked officer
to dormant soldiers beyond enemy walls,
or camping across a canyon.
That circus of nervous tissue looked
hopeless on every absent face,
seeing fish wire never laced
to pull them back into the room.
No scream can pull fingers
from a trigger's bed.
All the animals and carnies remembered something
about history that first morning, perhaps it was
the fact about hands.

Perhaps they remembered their first fall,
and the concrete hard as a math book,
or maybe how Rome was truly
conquered, and many men have chased
storybooks at the bottoms of graves.
The ringleader may have imagined
their headstones to read
men should instead love
their families,
and,
one should be thankful
for the ground under
one's feet.

but when he removed his dream sized spectacles
he felt two lines singed into the folds of the tent,

bridges are eroded by history's torrent, and
gods is a four letter word.

11/279

"Welcome to Washington!" I said to my friends.
The city rumbled beneath us.
"I am Seattle, how dare you call me Washington! 

I am nothing like the east! or even Tacoma!"
"Oh," I replied, "welcome to Seattle, a quite 

different place from the rest of Washington."

"This is my dog." I said to the woman.
She, the dog, lept, pushed her paws into my chest
like index fingers and barked,
"I am a golden retriever, canis familiaris, 

how dare you rope me in with the likes of wolves!"
"Oh," I replied, "this is my canis familiaris, an altogether 

friendlier and different creature than a wolf."

"That cat across the street guards its owners house like a soldier."
The cat skipped like a stone across the pavement to my feet and hissed,
"I am a felis cattus. Guard I may, but I am no savage. Watch your language."
"Oh," I replied, "I quite like your demeanor." and turned to my friend, 

"excuse me, this felis cattus is dutiful, but is not like a tiger or lion 

or any other more savage cat."

Introducing a student to a new teacher, 

providing some scene for the interaction,
"Max is a bright student. He likes music."
Max quickly retorted, "I like punk rock, 

and classical from the 18th century,
and some dance music."
"Oh," I replied, "what I mean is, Max likes listening 

to punk rock music, and only some classical, 

and also some dance, 

but is less inclined to listen to other kinds of music."

The shovel in my hand twisted back, 

staring contested my doubt, and professed,

"You know, I am also a fantastic paperweight, and if 

swung hard enough, you may even wield me as a formidable axe."

"Oh," I replied, "shovel these had not surfaced 

in my mind, for you are such a fine shovel,

but I will respect your request. Forgive me,

shovel-fantastic-paperweight-but-also-formidable-axe,

when swung hard enough."

At the end of the day, I asked my friend

how he was feeling. Assuming he was tired,

I let daggers be daggers as he told me

there wasn't any way I'd understand.

So canis familiaris, felis cattus, 

Max likes punk rock music only 

some classical but also some dance, shovel 

fantastic paperweight but also 

potentially formidable axe, 

and friend too different to comprehend 

existed within ourselves,

oil rigs in the Atlantic,

in a city quite different from

its roots,

our mouths too full of words

to see into any one of our souls.

10/279

there limps a shorn mane 

between my upper lip

and nose,

a fu manchu 

with a perm.

but the truth is

I cannot see it,

for lions have yet

to let their glory

be worn as a

sleeved heart.

9/279 sick day, and decidedly behind

When the rooster crowed this morning, 

he had a rooster in his throat. 

This sick rooster felt a suffocating 

humidity around his neck. 

The sun lifted its baton and made that tense 

fake-smiled face orchestras know  to say, like we practiced. 

The rooster fumbled with me just minutes 

to downbeat, I didn't feel right in his hands. 

I couldn't open my eyes to see his anxious fingers 

much less the batons torpedoing through the blinds. 

He had pulled me from the case an hour before, 

alarmed at how frog I looked. 

An hour of confused persuasion is hardly enough 

to change me back into a bird. 

Panicked, the rooster recalled a fairy tale he'd heard, 

or been in once, and kissed me, but his beak tore 

a day-sized hole in my ribbit so I couldn't even explain 

what to tell the conductor. His ruffled feathers let any good 

excuse spill out onto the floor, but after the sun had glared 

a few minutes, he smiled warm and said, 

take the day off, 

today will go on without you, and we will try again tomorrow.

8/279 if we would speak.

At the yard’s edge,
abuse’s foundry heats
a house the size of an instant,
too tedious for maps,
too elusive to trap with tongue and teeth.
Smoke of virus rises
slow slow slow rise slips
betwixt passerby nostril pores,
grows whisper voice box,
feeds any at ease nerves.
A microscope can split the soot
wolf from sheep;
the brain is too nervous
to say anything.
And so, hands take up their treason.

7/279

Listening comes in a paper bird.

He floats down like manna to nest
in weary hands, facing their Weaver
agape, their question mark
confessions rising like smoke.

Gnawing the bit, my young full
of friction fingers look at him
like coal. Like gift wrapped vinegar
upon the floor of a thirsty mouth.

Sometimes I think in landfills,
packrat disdain for each bird
too delicate to bear my burdens,
and from a hollowed trailer,

shake my fist at their silence.
But a cupped palm incarnates
the cloud overhead and slow
unison moves toward the coast.
when I stop to look,

thousands, dressed in scraps,
as though with purple royalty
robe, push upward
into an able sky.

Only for exhale do I manage
thank you, and pray you be miles
west by the time I set fire,
messengers
from a purer pasture.