ashellessmind

If I believe in God sometimes he sends me wings from his stomach’s hungerous pit & allows me to limn sublimity. Or if each is living oblivious to each I’ll wake in fright sometimes & limn the flightlessness of that night’s unbelief.

This quiet night I rescind belief in ampersands. Their patient meaning collapses from forceful impatience. Make an allowance for all virtuosity to conclude. Single nouns must now be governed by single adjectives. Stubborn staccato. A reflection of my own singleness, a reflection upon my own lack of governance. Their meaning of unity I have reproved. Their meaning of incessance I have begged to cease. Please, let there be no remnant to be found remaining. Please, let there be no more anymore. Of endings, I foresee only one: a period upon a too long period a plague upon a man who couldn't wait.

The insinuation of soft salt-rose-petaled rain pelting the window whistles into these too changeable ears until 24 years, seized with overbearing yearning, pour into a single glass. The year I became Christian, which is the year you drowned me in a reign of love, whisks castaway among a torrent of lingering & malingering & my engulfment is recast as you lifting me dripping to the surface. Soon the self I had perceived hardly seems to be, but for a faint rattling like that of train tracks being racked upon my brainwaves & although stronger metallurgy leads to more pristine machinery, so does the warping of the rack lead to both a wander

U can’t write no poems outta rape words they get inside yo mouth & won’t let ne good thing come out push inside yo mind & suck yo thoughts dry press against yo chest & suffocate w/e wantz 2 b expressd 4eva they swim around inside ya curse ya shove ya blind ya cry cry cry cry rape words Y

Dreaming of Cameron Morse     after Du Fu This, then, is how I will position myself at last, as you are leaving me, labeling you the wild one, & myself the Confucian. I, here remain: confined by my own conscience, & you: as wandering as the wildebeest you narrate, that river merchant of your own envisioning. How ironic, then, that we who mixed Xanax with alcohol, whose roommates fled, going insane would do nothing more at your Bachelor’s party than remember the other crazy nights and hold a discussion with our fiances present! The truth is we have both mellowed with age, & you, being older, perhaps have mellowed even more th

Go ahead, fake another lapse of pulse: your fingers working further into my skin while you bite your own lip, & draw blood from us both. Your freckled face, your Morpheus hair, your heart- too-large, you compulsive liar. Tedious poetry argument afternoons, cheating, liquor bottle breaking evenings, moral absence, whole bed-ridden weekends, & a slapdash blasphemous Alaska-bound wedding plan: your ecstatic longing for tundra, for leaving me a grieving newlywed widow. Frozen October midnights in Grand Rapids: walking to stranger's homes & pissing on their verandas, screaming in their front yards trying to wake up the w

Koan "If you meet the Buddha on your path, kill him." —Linji Yixuan I met the Buddha on a path. I didn't kill him. Now he is following me, everywhere, even into the bathroom & causing me intense psychological discomfort. I met the Buddha on a path. I killed him. Now I stand trial for involuntary manslaughter. My only defense? "If you meet the Buddha on your path, kill him," according to Linji Yixuan! The jury? Out & has been out for days. One man won't cooperate, beginning every sentence with, & I quote, "As a black man, I think…." Another juror remains unconvinced mainly because of the material witness: "The perp had th

The Birth of Nicodemus "And Nicodemus said to him, 'How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?'" — John 3:4 A gusty day. Somewhere a child crying, Eloi, Eloi. This city is ancient, sinful, unliftable & I want to tear out my heart. For wouldn't he feel its beating as I climb back inside of my Father's womb?

On this side of the world where warriors are warring, soon they will erect a long wall. But I am alive here, now, & before that. The only barriers are our own barriers; our hearts are overpopulated; outwardly, emptiness is consumptive. If anyone should ask me for something, I will give it to them, & after all I suppose I do have this little book. Nevertheless, I am going to the other side of that non-existent greatness into the Taklamakan. Whatever could belong to me must be there.

This is the first brick in the wall. This is the last brick in the wall. This is a graveyard. My world is a graveyard. A small world of corpses measured in stones, & plastered with gray. I know there aren't any women here so I don't think about women here. I know there aren't children here so I don't ask about children. What I want is not a woman, & isn't a child. I want an anteater.  With a long, gray throat to swallow all the thoraxes & spindly legs, which compose my world.