there is something fertile in 20 west

something Here

in the rusting hydrants waiting for their fire

and the lights that are hanging

hanging themselves from the wires

i dream

i am masturbating

in the middle of a hotel room

standing between two beds

sleeping friends occupy them both

i am limp and want so bad to come

but someone turns over in their sleep

and i am gone

i dreamt

of having viscious sex with you

you were eight months pregnant

and i don't know why

i dreamt

of creating a landscape painting

with a deep purple sun set

and blurry black animals in the foreground

with white stitching eyes

i dreamt

of drawing a self portrait

with an erratic and vague outline

of my soft body

but an intricately shaded image of my nose

it was meant to represent smell

and the clarity it brings

to memory

straight edge

carved into a rusting bridge

in a weed filled town

in my new jagged home

oh i

eighty on ninety four

your cracking tar is the fragile branch

for my timid little claws to inch out on

do you sway so easily?

do the whistling winds bend your western reach?

or will weighty water drips tip your

end into an early earthen bed?

no, you grow and flow towards the east

a sense of the sun's subtle warmth

a blooming expansion outward

oh i

eighty on ninety

little feathered wings in a whirling flurry

do they ever tire?

where do i land?

a mobile upload

of my grandfathers grave stone

a ghostly glowing

filling up my room

and spilling out my window

into summer air

moonless sky tonight

black except for your orange blaze

minneapolis

i wanted to connect the poetry

of the swooping birds on the interstate

and the depression of excessive masturbation

their graceful arcs that caught the winds

of speeding speeding trucks

tossing fragile bodies away in gusts

while the runts watched from the ditch

but there weren't any dead runts in the wavering distances

the brave games of birds stole my libido

or was it their directionless nature

or was it the pointlessness of their movement

which really wasn't movement at all

and i spent two weeks in the west without coming

back in the plains i keep my window open at night

and every little breeze carries her scent

or her scent

or her scent

or her scent

and i am hard again

and i am soft again

and i am still here again

nevermind

i don't want to feel guilty

for holding you at arms length

while i have some time to myself

all my friends

are tiny little crescent moons

at three in the morning

and something about me

is like boys finding a mound of dirt

and riding their bikes over it

in a lazy loop

stubby cracked fingers

no

they're not

elegant and calming

unearthly connections

ten tiny wells

what flows through you?

what do you channel?

create through lead

through wood and paper

create through the flesh

little muscles focused

around the circumference of a pencil

something exotic

in the wild wild strands of hair

little muscles focused

around me

what do you channel through me?

what flows into me?

let my body

be a canvas

for ten slender brushes

send my color

flowing out across the page

across your sheets

a history of lines

across my back

and in my mouth

megan is in the hills

that follow me out to the east

flowing force of earth

swimming up and around rock and river

they're the arc of your back

and the rivulet of your spine

under a waxing moonlight

i can only feel the comfort of your calves

the hills are something boiling

something tumbling beneath the skin

and oh my flaming head against the window of the greyhound

a holy circle of frost around my bowing head

i was praying for something beautiful to happen

the way back west

soft earth and moon replaced

a painful solar gaze and a stretch of dead field

it was the morning's first invasive light

grown into the size of a week

and it was foreshadowing to me even then

in your basement after dark

my hands are spiderwebs

clinging lightly to every corner of your body

and in the dark we both pulse

we ebb and flow

between finger tensed lip biting tongue shoving leg gripping throat moaning sweat dripping jean straining neck sucking breath stealing muscle aching back arching thigh pulling hip thrusting

passion

into

th

e

calmmmmmm

wide

wide

eyes

deep

..

black

whispers whispers

what we are afraid of most

whispers

whispers

..

black

whispers

what time is it

but the black whispers us back into each other

and the black crushes me back into you

let me put all my color into you

can i show you my deepest reds?

my pinkest pinks?

whispers

..

an unseen black heart beats now

bangs out of pace now

something primal that swallows us both

it's in your eyes

and i hope it's in my eyes too

and i hope we're both caught in the black's bloodstream

swept up into clothe tearing wrist holding hard kissing hair tossing mouth gaping teeth sinking back scratching nail digging rhythmic pounding dragging grinding throbbing breathy heaving gasping

love

the first storm was this morning

rain at my window, thunder in the walls

but it was you that woke me

and all day a fog hung around the streetlamps

and all day a fog hung around my head

taking in abstract resistance

the shadow that's the darkest side of us

pulling me down

and 52 neatly packaged messages

of genital mutilation and rape filled up my eyes

bloated out my head

and i don't quite to know what to say

when you ask me what i thought

with your earnestly inquisitive eyes searching out the recesses in mine

and it's foggy in my mind, can i touch you

when we're sitting in a dark room watching burning photographs?

i guess there's something in the way

that you run fingers through your hair

and it's foggy in my mind, can i touch you

when we're sitting on a bench listening to local artists

i guess there's something in the way

that you kick your legs when you laugh

and it's foggy in my mind, can i kiss you

when we're parked in my car in your driveway in light rain?

i guess there's something in the way

that the streetlights fill up your eyes

and i guess it makes perfect sense that the drive home was through a thick fog

Dream Journal 14

i was with alec and we were on a soccer team but we were playing against a british team so the rules were really different. in the game you could use your hands and toss the ball around and pick it up and run with it. so i guess it was more like rugby. the game was a charity event to raise money for some disease, or veterans, or something.

a bunch of other people were on the team; kody, megan, ben, and others i don't remember. i wasn't on the starting team and neither was megan. on the bench she was talking with my brother and ignoring me. while i watched the game our team was not playing well, we kept doing all these extravagant and pointless moves and not just scoring easy goals. we kept missing shots by just a few inches.

then it started to rain and the field got muddy. megan was still ignoring me until i made a joke about how maybe everyone in the game actually had diseases which is why we never scored. she laughed at that. after i said that they played a video of a helicopter crashing and the pilot dying on the stadium big screen. i guess we were playing for him.

next it is after the game and i am putting on my clothes at home. that day i had gotten a new bra in the mail and so i go to put it out, but it's more of a sports bra that will leave me looking flat. this upsets me a lot. so i take off the bra i am wearing and put on the new one and then the rest of my uncomfortable clothes. i look at myself in the mirror for a long time and wonder why i never noticed that i wore women's clothes before.

then i woke up

so out of place

so absolutely in the only place i could be

listening to josiah

listening to flicking lighters

my quiet humming and your fingertaps

the fading winter wind no longer bellowing

the sounds of us both living in your car

so out of place

so absolutely in the only place that i could be

in your basement on the couch

feeling each other dully through thick comforters

feeling the sun and the hours and windows

slipping away

lusting to escape the growing springtime light

into the dark

so out of place

so out of sync with the way that we were

when you ask me kindly to go

so you can get some sleep

and i never worked up the courage

to try and touch you

so childish so childish

i drive home waiting for a message from you

swaying like distant heat in the summer

feeling like a child

meeting at a central location on bicycles

bare knees and bare feet

whispering beneath a plastic slide

when we speak in these wild open tones

it feels exciting

i hope i'm not placing too much hope

on your slender little frame

it's so exotic to have another body

inside this car

empty for miles and hours

escaping and returning to looming shadows of skyscrapes

i hope i'm not placing too much pressure

on your slender fingers

writing out each lengthy message

about color palettes of paintings

or the ways that vonnegut has affected ourselves

so selfishly waiting on your overflowing response

getting hard at everything that you say

i hope i'm not placing too much of me

inside of you

needing to tell you my anxiety at 3 am

today i liked

sitting in a theater filled with people we didn't know

and some we did

i mean some that she did

and watching a terrible movie and laughing out loud

at all the same awful parts

and none of the little strangers making a sound

i liked megan's voice

and how it was so much lighter than i thought it would be

so much lighter than anything i had heard before

if i'm writing poorly it is like a whisper on winter winds

it is something forgotten, a moment shrouded in nostalgia from childhood

something like a million little ants on the sidewalk

something like being alone in a forest outside my grandparents house

if i'm writing truthfully it is soft and delicate

fragile, no not fragile, but crystalline

and her eyes that looked so unafraid into mine

and i was always the first to look away

and i will always be the first to look away

the drive home was fast and i was light

and it was a moment of pleasure that i should hold on to

like the tralfamadorians do

and it will just as pleasant to take medicine and fall asleep

to Daniel Johnston screaming about Satan in the woods

and how some things take a life time

and i wish i were a better writer when i am

sick and/or happy

i promise to start writing in the first person more often

and using names of the people in my life

in attempt to be more truthful

whatever that means

i've been obsessing over the brains chemical cycle

and how it rockets and dives in bright violence

every time we orgasm

and how i pile these peaks and valleys on one another

creating a jagged landscape in my mind

rocky harrowing heights for a synapse to climb

and then a 500 meter drop off for my thoughts to falter off

off

off

off

and so it makes it feel all the worse when i get off in the shower

my stomach glowing red and little beads of sweat gathering

at the edge of where my forehead meets hair

and i can't quite remember if i said your name out loud when i climaxed

to feel the chemicals drag me down the drain

to watch half myself go down the drain

every time i get off

off

off

off

megan makes me wonder what it means to get this off my chest

and where all my anxities go when i pour them out onto paper or through keys

does she absorb me when she reads me? does whitney still cry?

does my mom have this page bookmarked as a way to try and get close to me?

how come i can only write about women? i need to turn my libido off

off

off

off

i guess this is me trailing off

i miss jackson and his slender frame and awkward elbows

and the way he made me feel like a central character in anything

and he was a cronie and a sidekick and more trustworthy and reliable then i ever

allowed him to be

nostalgia for a seattle summer and walking down to the fishery building

for creative writing and then loud laughs on the walk home

how often did i split off

off

off

off

guess i am trailing off now

sometimes i wake up

and my eyebrows are falling out

and the hair on my stomach is cemented down

held hard in unnatural bends

sometimes i wake up

and my arm is asleep and heavy heavy dead

cells spark up the feeling eventually

and i can rub the sleep from both eyes

sometimes i wake up

and my throat is full of mucus and i can't breathe

it hurts like i have been crying hard

or that i should have been

what do i choke back in my dreams?

sometimes i wake up

fetal and alone with a phantom body pressed to mine

i think about all the pretty pretty girls i am awful to

and how i won't be calling anyone today

Dream Journal 13

i was with Ryan walking around a hotel and a little kid came up to us and asked us if we wanted to see magic trick. we said sure and the kid told ryan to take the gum he was chewing and split it into three parts and put it into this bowl he was holding that had three separate segments in it. ryan did this and then the kid told him to hold up his middle three fingers and point them up in the sky, and when ryan looked back down his gum was in one piece again. we said it was a good magic trick and then ryan started to tell the kid how magic wasn't real and that was just an illusion or trick and it started to make the kid cry.

so we left in a hurry and went to the bathroom where i took a piss. the toilet was a huge room that sloped down to a drain in the middle and you just pissed into this empty room, and there was a mirror across from me and when i looked at it i looked like my dad. i was too tall for the mirror so i couldnt see my face, so i bent my knees to see it and then i was back to looking like myself again. i realized i was pissing all over my hands but i didn't really care.

then i was in a car with two women who i don't remember. i was crossdressing in a small black dress and high heels. we were walking around the outside of a giant mall at night and i kept asking if my bus station was in there but the women i was with were too drunk to answer me so i just followed them around.

i hope you will know this soon

that when he jerks off in your bed

after you've tried giving him head

he won't be thinking of you

no he won't be thinking of you

he won't be thinking of you

la la la la la la

and when i've gone soft in the shower

with my stomach skin glowing red

and the water pounding on my praying pregnant head

i will be thinking of you (la la la la la)

yeah i'll be thinking of you (la la la la la)

i will be thinking of you!

la la la la la la

you are the songs that i listen to (you're kevin's lyrics or yoni's q)

you're the pages i get lost into (you're lady ashley through and through)

you're the road and the highway home (and little snow blown haunting ghosts)

you're the stillness in my room (my blackened shadowed hollow womb)

la la la la la la

la la la la la la

i want slender shoulders pressed

and little rippling back muscles under pale skin

a graceful bow running smooth to hips

and parted lips

and slowly parted thighs so so so..

fevered frenzied searching finding fingertips tensed

gripping grabbing choking out the feeling

chests pulsing rising falling falling falling

turning toppling twisting moaning MOANING

breathing heavy breathing heavy heavy breathing

breathing beating heating leading on

to saline slippery skin with sinking teeth into

swelling sin and suckle harshly hardly break the skin

of straining necks moistened splattered by dripping sweat

running sliding off tender nubile flesh

with each concession with each little press

growing gaining losing consciousness and aching sense

pounding loudening meaningful motions find us

coming to a rest

i was going to write about how perverse it is

to have all your sexuality channeled

through a cell phone in 140 character limits

and to have something so foreign

play host to what you find most intimate

to things you should out loud when you're alone

or on pen to paper

or from mouth to mouth

not with dull fingers

not with calloused tips

but with a dexterous tongue

catching and rebounding off hard white teeth

that grip and pull of fleshy lips

i was going to write about how my language has been strangled

beaten back down into brief little thoughts

afraid to venture outside of a sensible sentence

and how envious i am of megan

her words spilling out and bursting seams

flowing over edges with abandon

they are wild wild sentences

they are stallions on open plains

it would be wrong to capture them

to break and tame them

i was going to write about how surreal it feels

to know that they will read this

you're high and texting me now

words pulled taught over limited characters

straining to say what we want

words pulsing

how sexually intense we can get

the things we do to each other at times when no one's looking

but you're mapping out your love letters now

research and structure

research and structure

and i am masturbating with no climax now

first hard then soft

first hard then soft

someone told me a dream about an elevator

is me trying to escape from you

that you are the towering buildings

all hard edges and glass

that you are the looming skyscraper

tearing a seam in a bruised orange and black sky

and i am inside of you

and i'm lost

and i am inside of you

and i'm lost

tracing my steps up through back staircases

and long darkened halls

my fingers reach out dumbly to get a baring on your walls

where is your exit?

where is my exit?

why does your soft steel bend and restrain me?

why do you bind my soft wrists down to your walls?

and when you fall asleep when i say that i love you

i realize i'm drying cement after all

Dream Journal 12

i don't remember most of my dream but what i do recall is this:

galileo is in a room sitting before an organ made completely of glass and crystals and it is connected to a telescope. right before he begins to play he says something really grand and epic which i forget now, but it had something to do with while he plays music the gods below and above weep or something. so he starts to play this really abrasive haunting music that powers the telescope so that he can see every distant planet

then it was this really great montage of the planets in our solar system spinning to this incredible music and as the music picked up and got more intense the planets began spinning faster and faster until it all sort of just ended in noise

there was also a part of my dream about bathrooms and showers, but that's all i remember.

lost outside your window

a milky film is resting over everything tonight

the fog lays low and swallows distant trees

and the dripping moon light

all the streetlights are washed out

their colors flooding the air

orange blends with a purple sky

the air looked so bruised

when you spark the lighter

and i catch my face in the mirror

snap back to you

thick glass is all our lips touch now

all our tongues secretly touch

we get lost in avey and noah

i don't know any of the words but you do now

you never used to buy albums

but at least you don't carry cigarettes with you anymore

and your face is freckling

i wonder what bruises your jeans are hiding

your body is everything unreal to me

religious symbols and holy holy artifacts

a dripping painting of a mother

another spark and i'm back

we're at your place

and i'm heading home again

minneapolis

what are you?

what do you want from me

or what do i want from you?

will you haunt me like these street spirits

these little snow ghosts

that weave between my tires

do you inspire me?

i wish i could get into your skin

sleep soft in your grey womb

buses and snowstorms swell in utero

but i still pull right and watch you dip

under a horizon

you don't mar the sky

but you don't decimate me either

you are not the sublime monument of mount ranier

a whispering stranger behind the fog

but now rock is replaced by gloss

rock is replaced by gloss

rock is replaced by gloss

is this what you're telling me

minneapolis

it feels so selfish to cry
a slight swerve into the side of the road
iced and solid
so strong packed down hard into the ground
my chest heaves into the wheel
all i can see is the fleshy white
of your breasts
and imagine soft nipples in my mouth
it feels so selfish to get hard
pulling quietly to the side of the road
short breaths
short breaths
the car is cold and
i am hanging in the air in front of me
clinging to the windshield
left blinker clicking in the silence
pulling back onto the road
it feels so selfish to be writing this down

im not ready to write anything

until i cry

im not ready to write anything

until i cry

im not ready to write anything

until i cry

im not ready to write anything

until i cry

because until then i am a fucking fake

who has never felt anything deeply enough

and i have never experienced anything

meaningful

and i shouldnt keep lying in everything i write

its more self deception than charlatanism

i feel minneapolis watch me

when i pull off the highway onto your street

my honda civic idling in front of your apartment

fingers idling with a box of condoms

i try to hold my breath between the car

and the front door

i guess i am ashamed of my breath

a weird premonition

something about it shouts sex and death

its so unreal to joke about suicide with you

why are you still here

and am i in your latest creation

what makes an artist

can i bite on your lip rings

when did we start watching this

what are we drinking

do you like to be here with me?

hard orange lights push in through windows

slipping between tiny cracks in the blinds

penetrating deep into our privacy

what do you taste like

how do you make it through a day

will you ever let me...

can i bite on your lip rings

let me stay in your bed

alright

alright

i can feel minneapolis gazing down at me

a snowstorms clouds hanging low

add a depth to the city that makes everything

frighteningly real

its really weird to see you do whatever it is you think you do

you take photographs of yourself and edit them in ways that

highlight really weird truths. like what you hear in pop songs

and you are really attractive in all these incredibly superficial ways

so every guy you know just lusts after you in awful ugly ways

but i think you are honestly trying to bring some sort of enlightenment

to your life and to the lives around you

but it wont ever quite work out that way because you are far too tan

and your tits are too big and your eyes are too big

and no one will really be able to look at your art

maybe you don't want that though and you just want their eyes on you

but its very depressing all the same

and sometimes im thankful to be ugly

because maybe i can be an artist

yeah let's get fucked up

and go for a drive

we're so young

and only a little corrupted

how many nights have i

avoided drunk drivers by chance

yeah let's get fucked up tonight

and drive your car up the road

and all those pretty songs

with all those pretty words

and all their pretty meanings

that got thrown into me

are now rotting in me

because i am a landfill

and i am compost

piled hot and wet on the ground

something

you fall asleep on your floor

and i am lying on the couch where every major

sexual experience of my life has taken place

and i wonder if thats what you think of when

we go to the basement to watch television shows

not that everything we are has to be sexual

because right now i dont want you i just want to talk

about every little problem in our lives

and make ironic racist jokes and talk about Cunt

and laugh about your family and all the customers we deal with

and all the songs we listen to and why we love them

and i'll get jealous of how much you love yoni

and feel a little like you've stolen something precious to me

but i won't say anything because who else could i talk to

so i would just smile and laugh and feel self conscious about my eyes

but you are asleep on the floor

so i grab my keys and phone and leave

your cat is at the door

i wonder if you think anything different of me because she likes me

i really hope so but maybe thats artificial

so i head home

the roads are wet and gleaming

and minneapolis is drowned in fog

and when i get home all i can do is text sydney

and play around with the words of how terrified with her i am

and my other friends want to go to uptown

and sydney is the only one i could make a joke with about that

that really disguises how upset i can be with everyone

and whitney is the only one i can tell about that

and rich is the only one i can tell about that

and he is with cassie for every weekend now

and i work all week

i wish my grandfather were here

i finish my poems on every dirt stained

cracked wall spreading out in the

city in all directions

with thick white tongued brushes

or slender splintering chalk

fingernails dug deep into crumbling complexions

lit up by street lamps or passing drunk drivers

hummed by the drone of traffic

and sung by every passing pedestrian

a choir in round pounding

loud sound in the town

a choir in round pounding

loud sound in the town

how to handle anxiety during minnesota winters

on the salt stained highway

hard crusted snow slips off the backs of semis

a violent splash and spin

little crystals splatter in the wind

let it bring a little smile to your cracked lips

see every driver rest heavy on the brakes

cautious for the ice

cautious for the light

is fading faster than a week ago

and fading faster than a century ago

turn up the radio

let the noise carry you home

white rhythms on the road hypnotize

your fingers lose their warmth on the wheel now

no longer finding her thigh

or the firm muscle on the back of her neck

miss your exit

drive to somewhere foreign in the dark

and nervously flick on your lights

be blinded by the semis around you

and the fog that clings to the inside of your windshield

a memory's warm vapor haunts your backseat

until you can't even see anymore

turn around when you find an entrance

the gas is waning

watch your headlights lose their power as you enter the city again

drowned out by the powerful streetlamps

that glow heavy and large in your dirty windshield

dried salt kicked up from the highways rivulets

pull on to the one way frontage road that never gets plowed

feel the tires slide into grooves left by larger vehicles

lose control on the ice on the turn

into a quiet apartment

where you go to sleep alone

and the trains ramble by every hour

sending vibrations into your dreams

of course not with fingers so dumb

of course not with a tongue so dumb

could i ever make you come

and i know it is probably

what will keep us apart

failure

the last two times that we've had sex i have failed

when you pressed my slender wrists down

back against your cool metal head board

and slide so meaningfully onto me

and in that moment i felt everything sexual and meaningful we were

and i was overcome

and i came too soon and was

limp

and then you were on the phone with your ex

and i was

limp

and now we find each other with candles around us

and wine and vodka and tequila

i hope you weren't bracing yourself for the inevitable

was it a protective thing?

did i push you into drinking more and more?

i know i kissed you first

and i know i looked at you with a sexual hunger first

why can't i see anything less? or is it more?

and then we're in your bed

you're asking me such sobering things

"what happens in the morning"

"what about him?"

and i honestly don't remember what i answer

but i make it sound good

and i give you head

and i dont make you come

and i finger you and rub your clit

and i dont make you come

and i slide inside of you

and i dont make you come

and you make me come

and i am limp

and i fall asleep in your bed

as you vomit uncontrollably in your mother's room

and i wake up alone

limp