1__

I spring back
I am falling for
a bad bathroom excuse

I jackpine for seascape
I crackpot the bluest rose
I mohawk the leopard print
ripoffs of the avenue
I cross myself in my dream and
I goddamn a devilock

I bulldoze in doorways
I pull off the covers
I understand to be smashed
by waves
I muster I mustn’t

I tie a tie
I leave a leaf on the hall floor

I put a poptart down
I hitchup the canalway
creekbed
I speedboat back down aways
I dentaldam the rushing water
smiling
I pick it up hot
and juggle

I drivetrain my hands

to stop shaking
I so bruise the purple strip
under a lone duck’s wing

I am airing my hairball complaints

2__

I stress the body pedestrian
I heavylid my paycheck

I guardrail against the missing
government
I tear Squibbs lesson plan
in half
I carry uneven stacks of the Grapes of Wrath
I flask copies on to desks
I ask you not to throw it out the window
I fake like jumping out
a window

I birdchirp true
a real request
I need you to be the quietest class
I mean it for fifteen minutes

I leaffloat down the vertical hallway
I marinade you a gift from scratch
I leapfrog from room
to room
I ostracize I

I shoulderread your tweets

I acrostisize to speak in codes
for hour or sos
I code and decode the morality
of sick days

I loon in and out

3__

I stonesthrow away
a pizza kitchen coupon
I domino I’ll die one day

I megabus to states unknown
I am bananapeeling out

I meganslaw your name
your name
I duncecap his frosted tips
I sheepdog girls at the DDR

I deter
I defer
I denounce
I delice,
or delouse?

I unleash highbrow
analysis

I lamontagne my composure
somehow
I elbowcatch a sneeze a minute

I vamoose morosely

4__

I bittorrent a couch cushion
I am function
I fengshui

I centerline up to the fucking tunnel
I hardscrabble the wrong word
I reason I burn third degree

I wordwall my enemies in
I downdraft an ok fantasy
tennis team

I shotgunwed this spit to the street
I cabaret your bangs up off your face
I woodpeck your first kiss shallowness
I am shallowest

Once a spider bit my tongue
It felt so weird and made it num
I drank some water and chewed on gum
But it did not work and it was still num

Hi, kids! I got a garden in my penny.
I’m the creepy crawly mayor
popular since spoiling.
I teethe exit signs.
Noxious puddings swim in me.
Such uber-magnetized defoliants glide
my conjecture like moons we can’t share.
We are glued to our oldness
and smiling through crowds.
I found all of you in a hamper.
Now we share one throat.
Good thing I ejaculated a coffin
inside your testimony.
There’d be none of you left.

greg sestero cooked dinner alone in his apartment

greg sestero accidentally put a little too much garlic in his pasta sauce

greg sestero tweeted about watching ‘the wolf of wall street’ last night

greg sestero put the finishing touches on his caprese salad for one

greg sestero gets a blowout at a salon 3 blocks from his house every 3rd sunday

greg sestero stared at his macbook screen until his eyes watered

greg sestero pets his golden retriever absently

greg sestero ate his dinner while watching softcore pornorgraphy from 1999

greg sestero refreshed his twitter feed repeatedly

greg sestero refreshed his facebook feed repeatedly

greg sestero refreshed his tumblr feed once

greg sestero contemplated suicide daily, usually

greg sestero believes swallowing 30+ ambien would be the most advantageous suicide method

greg sestero thinks burning in a vat of acid is a close second

greg sestero has an infp personality type

greg sestero hasn’t seen or spoken to his parents in 10 months

greg sestero hates the baha men

greg sestero drinks at least 3 bottles of diet coke daily

greg sestero believes in ghosts

greg sestero wants to become a freelance graphic designer

greg sestero can’t masturbate without wearing velvet gloves

greg sestero cried during ‘blue is the warmest colour’

The moment that gets cut off, like
“I’ve heard so much about you,” she almost finished saying
The moment stretches on, like
“It’s good to finally meet you”

On the swing set under the bridge
Where the gravel grays the scene
“Love again,” she almost finished saying

Like, did you wonder what it meant for him to say those nice things
About you and your shoes
And the Superman curl of your hair
He doubted it just like you might have doubted it but he never said it
Not out loud, not like you would have said
And, like, is it, like, a crime, or whatever?
To be interesting, or whatever?
And a new voice calls out when you are not sure
Whether you are listening or longing or limping along
But is it, like, authentic?

Or whatever?

No authentic response to false metal
Death to false meddling
Space case finished speaking subpar sublimations
Polysyllabic pock marked text or subtext
Like the text like the text like the text like, becomes?
The subtext? Or whatever?

Do you read?

That’s a funny thing to ask at a place like this
At a time like now

Or whenever

I left my blanket in the backseat of your car.
I left my feather in gate 2B of the airport.
I left my nail polish in your mouth,
my sewing machine in the mall—
I left my bobby pins on the pier.
Left my willpower on your sweating neck,
my collarbone on the front porch—
earrings in the tire swing,
I left my seashell in your armpit.
I left my nightmares in Ohio.
I left my long hair in the cave,
my hammer in your glovebox
I left my eyelashes in the ashtray
my lung in a—somewhere…
I left my jacket in the shower.
I left my thigh beneath your pillow,
left my molars in the freezer,
fire in the basement—
loneliness in the top dresser drawer.
I left my heartache in the French press,
fingers on a city bus,
I left my missing on a stone beach,
my memory in the long grass.

on my way to work today i ran into a mailbox
nobody saw but i am still embarrassed
i have been trying to exist autonomously
mostly that just means i exist millions of miles away
there are people who believe that every second an infinite number of alternate/parallel universes is born as a result of slight or great variations in one or several people’s actions
at any given moment my head may exist in one or several of these alternate/parallel universes
i’ve been going through this workbook for ‘survivors of child sexual abuse’
the workbook lists ‘fantasy’ as a coping mechanism that has both positive and negative aspects
there is red nail polish in the crevices of my fingernails
i tried to take it off with nail polish remover but it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere
from far away i probably look like i killed somebody and there is blood in the crevices of my fingernails
my hands are freezing and my fingers are all falling off
i don’t think it is as cold as it was yesterday but it is cold

“I want to kill myself,”
I mumbled in the soft suicide
Aisle of the CVS.
Lay’s are half off, 2 for 1
Off myself in half the time, I suppose?
And look at these great, fan
crafted flavors.
Open-casket. Elliott-Smith-ending.
I opted for the He-had-so-much-potential
and a bag of Ruffles.
I’m a sucker for those ridges.
At the checkout,
I fell in love with the girl
before me. She had denim sleeves,
a voice that baltered, and,
hair like—
I know this is a cliché in poems but her hair really was like straw, all saffron and dried by the sinking September sun, it was so much like straw that when she turned around, we fell in love. And when she introduced herself, we fell in love and when I told her that I would never remember her name we fell in love and I said Well I’ll just call you Scarecrow How about that, she was okay with that and we traveled to Rome and fucked for the first time on the steps to some ancient tourist trap and I howled Oh Scarecrow, oh Scarecrow and she was so silent I almost forgot she was there until she thanked me after with this quivering voice, a quivering Grazie that came spilling out her nose, drowned me in heavy ecstacy like I was on opiates again and that, that I will never forget. When we came back stateside and rented a ramshackle apartment on the southside (the southside of where, I’m still unsure), years passed. We got married and fucked and had children and fucked still, but never let our children know that their parents loved each other for fear they’d be teased by those with no-longer-in-love parents. Years passed, again. We built a life in that checkout lane. Did she fall out of love with me when I told her that I didn’t have time anymore? I had to eat this bag of He-had-so-much-potential and if she wanted to share them with me, she could, I would never die if she shared them with me, though we’d both be in agony for an eternity. I waited for her response. The cashier prattled on, I can help whoever’s next I can help whoever’s next I can— Her friend clap-clapped the toes of her flats against the market tile. Scarecrow looked at her and then to me and I looked at Rome, our children, those first months as empty nesters when we kept doors to the kids’ rooms closed, Scarecrow and me sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N- her mother’s death, burned casseroles, the dead smeared across the highway and the hood of our car, and all of those times I was pissing at the toilet and I looked down at my penis, lacquered in goo, and the cold knockout of knowing it had just been inside her. When I looked back to Scarecrow, well, she hadn’t looked away. She said I have class tomorrow and I said But it’s Friday. Can’t you just play hookie, but I guess there was some big standardized test or something that would make or break the rest of her life and, sorry, but she really couldn’t miss it.
So,
I walked home.
Crossed the street,
saw a small man in the street
crossing the other way
and he looked into the car headlights
the way Scarecrow looked at me
and the way I’m looking
at the last
of the Lay’s. There
is noir powder
now coating the
dimples of my finger
tips, sable salt
under my
nails and I’m
licking them
raw.

Someone handed me
the key to the earth once.
In three days,
it was a smoldering wasteland.

I couldn’t be bothered
to keep it spinning—
used my power to try
to get Firefly back
on the air, instead.

Another bad decision
to pencil into the star chart
my body’s become.

This pound of fat
is all the cheeseburgers
I didn’t need.
This pound of fat
is when the couch
swallowed me up
for a day.
This pound of fat
is when the beer flowed freely
from sunset to sunrise.
So was this one
and that one
and that one.

Someone handed me
the key his house once.
In three days,
it was a smoldering wasteland.

I couldn’t be bothered
to keep his goldfish alive—
but the fish in his freezer
found a nice home in my belly.
People used to hand me
lots of things,
but I think they wanted
more for their investment
than a wasteland.

My father came from a wasteland
and promised to hand me
everything he never had.

And I got it.

Now it’s my turn
to promise my children
everything I already had.

Seems less noble
when you put it like that.

Rebecca, sweet dandelion seed, tell me
where us girls can go when we get tired. The sun
is butter-cold and thin today, touching the crown
of your yellow hair. The woods are quiet.
We play pretend with red berries
smeared on rosy cheeks. I will always be your prince
because I’m taller: the tall girl who doesn’t know how
to pray your rosary. Soon your mother will tuck you back inside
with all your porcelain dolls. Soon your father
will tell you don’t cry, silence is
what god intended for little girls.

Rebecca, its nightfall and I’m too small
to scale your trellis. Rebecca, I’m no good
at hearing you swallow your sobs.

You ask St. Christopher for help
when our pink Barbie shoes go missing. Lately
we run into the woods as soon as we get home—
the breathing green making
shadow puppets on our shoulders.
Avoiding the belt-buckle snap
behind us, I can pray your bruises with my fingertips
like pink plastic beads.

Under the gnarled branches you rest your head
soft on my shoulder—tuck each breath into my neckline
like a little confession. Rebecca,
if you get tired we can always stay here.
I promise you St. Christopher won’t find us.