Before I became the best,
villainy was kind of a boy’s club,
and the club
was kind of lame.

Magneto wears a bucket on his head.

Pinky or the Brain?
I’m still not sure who was the idiot.

Hannibal Lecter wants to eat my… dust,
and Professor Moriarity only had to outsmart
Sherlock Holmes,
but there are generations of gumshoes
who cut their teeth trying to
track me down.
Everyone wants to know,
where IS

Carmen Sandiego?

The short answer is,
I am anywhere I want to be.
If you aren’t rich or sexy,

there are people in this world who will tell you
all about the beautiful experiences
they deem you unworthy of,
like value is created by anything better than a brain.

Once I learned
that every great monument seems to look better
with my name on it,

it was then that I knew
I was priceless,
because it was then that I said
I was priceless.
I was a catapult
that would direct its own trajectory.
I didn’t need anyone’s permission
to be surrounded
by greatness.

My mother used to tell me,
Mi viajera,
be in charge of your own momentum.
Mi pájara,
you are the only thing in your way,
and now,
I am the CEO of the Villains International League of Evil.
I am the most successful detective and thief
ACME has ever seen.
I have stolen the bulls from Pamplona,
the salt from the Dead Sea,
the whole Mekong River,
and every last drop of salsa in the world,
but still,
I find myself needing more and feeling restless.

My henchmen are always whining,
Carmen,
we ain’t makin’ any money stealin’
the Strait of Magellan,
but they won’t get it through their thick skulls,
the best part of taking is the challenge,
is knowing this thing that everyone wants
was least of all supposed to be mine
but I have it anyway.
The only actual thing I have ever craved
was the ability to do what I want.
Power is the ability to do
what you want.
They don’t give power to little poor girls,
we have to learn to steal it.
When I believed what the world told me I was,
I was set for a life of never getting what I wanted,
but things are changing.
I’m taking charge of the adventure,
absconding with the things you find most sacred,
most necessary and celebrated,
leaving you to ask only,
where
in the world
did she go?

i am her heartbeat
i am th flower n her hair
i am lunch trays on packed snowhill
four lokos under th spider branch dandruff pine
three graves at home w two teenagers lying softly
melting snow to reach th dead below .

i am cold heartbeat
dead flower on yr grave
i am lunch tray splattered apple sauce
we’re getting drunk off four lokos
hanging warm perspiration from our noses dripping
K E R PLUNK on yr deadman’s stone rock face .

i am littering th snow yellow &
i am staring up at th digital blips that bloom blossom n nanoseconds
surprising me
making me feel ultra human small
i wonder how u must feel underneath
with the maggots
crushing softened bone
i bet the coffin hasnt preserved yr face
can u feel yr arms rest at th head of th table ?

i wonder where yr power went –
memory of yr slurring drunken powerstance spitting hypocritical wisdom
at my reluctant face during th 2012 superbowl,
motley crue shirt waving over my trembling bony body
underneath th prime rib meat muscle you

god i need to drink more milk
itll make me stronger than u
ill throw it up
but maybe my heart will beat happier than yours –
memory of u laughing at th dancing elephant on tv
because “how often do u see a dancing elephant ?”

i dont want to drain my mothers breast –
she got implants to hide her inability –
id rather pull ur work from underneath her
putting her down there
with you
to lie forever weakening by th hour while this girl and i sit on top and drink yr wine
sinking closer speaking of the stars (w th shining sky coins u rightfully earned now jingling n my pocket )
staring at that dripping freezing regrettable deathsign –
a snotrocket on yr headstone

in between two graves i ask her if shes ever stolen money before
and she says no
th unsurprising innocence n her voice. .

this selfish resentment, this uncharacteristic nihilism
it’s all just me screaming at yr grave
“I MISS YOU
I WANT TO FEEL YOU AGAIN . “

O god would i kiss u n yr tomb.

this girl i lay above u with,
id take all her fathers money & spend it on my deadly habits
just to save the rest of our family from going down under w You .

More then likely the neighborhood is still
– dreaming
– anticipating

the birds chatter
nature’s alarm clock
disturbing the slumber of thousands
they mock the sleepers

taking flight from rooftop to rooftop
flying high and low,
living their lives on the wind’s roller coaster
higher and higher and higher
until they plunge to an untimely death
inches from the ground they swoop up
at the last moment
adrenaline pumping through their little veins
do they even have adrenaline?
if so, they’d be junkies
high on life

grounded and flightless
the herd of people
gather their coffee and newspapers
plug in their ipods, iphones, and radios
each one stumbling to wake up
wondering,
is this still a dream?

each one is a collage of memories
strung together into unconsciousness
while the dreamer is wrenched, unwilling
to the lands of reality

work becomes a monotony
numbers chase spaces and dance across the page
taunting us,
we’re zombies – eating our own brains
on computer screens
“Can you hold? For just a minute”
the voice prattles into your ear
as you watch the clock
tick…
tick…
tick…
tick…
tick…
pass the minutes by as it
tickssssssssssssssss

you’re on the phone – indefinitely,
just waiting
waiting
and waiting some more
the blaring classical music doesn’t help
and yet you still wait.

WHY?
what are you waiting for?
it occurs to you
that THIS is your life,
RIGHT NOW
you’re living in this exact moment,
and you’re spending it – Waiting?

you hang up the phone
even though you’ve been waiting for an hour
its done.
you’re not waiting, just existing.
and in that moment, where you existed
it suddenly all becomes clear
THIS
is the present moment.

as air fills your nostrils you can feel the weight
of it ALL drop off
it drops off you like leaves from a tree
swaying slowly and moving precariously through the air
until it lands gently on the ground

you’re free now,
as free as the birds
mocking those still grounded
you take a running start
and jump out the window

what co-workers will later describe as the most graceful
suicide attempt they’ve ever seen
you know this is not the end
because instead of plunging to your inevitable death
you sprout wings and lift up into the sky
free
high on life
adrenaline pumping through your little veins

It was perfect. It was everything.

It was a one night stand between genius and concussion.

It was the final and best draft of an anticipated eulogy.

It was the profound epoch of the personal ad renaissance.

It was conceived in a half-dream and written down before it faded.

It was the only reason she went home with him.

It was an eviction notice from a humanist, bathroom wall literature, a perfectly understandable suicide note, the last testament of will.

It was a letter to the fucking editor.

It was guaranteed tenure.

It was to be the greatest speech ever given for an Academy Award for color correction.

It was the great American email.

It was the ratified constitution of a love triangle.

It was the combat journalism of family court.

It was the money ticket, the gravy train, the sweet life, the big payoff.

It had spunk, nerve, moxie, guts, horse-sense, get up and go; it picked up the pace.

It was punctuation kamikaze, a syntax bitch-slap, a stiff kick in the nouns.

It was going to save the orphanage, feed the hungry, forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones.

It was God’s own justification for all the shit he’s pulled.

It was everything. It was perfect and it probably still is,

it was just misplaced in the mail, washed in the jeans, lost in the move, or given away like all priceless gifts are,

or maybe it fell out of your pocket when you pulled out your keys and was left to drift into the storm drain, where it waits for you still,

lonely and floating, holding tightly with the other debris,

terrified of the coming flood.

my birthday is in 57 days and isn’t that remarkable
i hope my mother sends me a book on taxidermy
because it’s always amazed me how something can seem
alive or not alive
depending on how realistic
the glass eyes are
like wow
I want this one:
“The Complete Guide to Small Game Taxidermy:
How to Work with Squirrels, Varmints, and Predators”
over cake I’ll read about
how to make something dead
look threatening again
then that night, in bed alone, I’ll
skin myself and
push stuffing into
my carcass
press glass into
my face

our skin glows amber in the room
of the boy with hair that has remained untrimmed
for too many months and the speckled chin
with orange wisps like fireflies if fireflies
hid in dark bushes while the children were playing.

His bed is bigger than yours, like an ocean
you cannot understand the scope of because
nothing is blinking on the horizon. You
don’t know what to do with all the room.

He spreads his body out and you try to fill
the empty spaces because that’s what you’ve
always thought you should do with him.

When the both of you fall asleep, you curl into
one tangled mess of sheets and elbows.

You call this making continents, he calls it love.

What woman doesn’t wear the name of her god
somewhere below her waistline, hidden in the abyss

borne by the enveloping grin of her funerary skirts?
What woman waits around for a man to name a thing

instead of stitching the very grit of it into her tendons
and reveling in the rich vulgarity of ownership?

The dead travel fast, but the stench of them
even faster. Who tied those lilies to your ankles?

Who tried to hide you away? I remember
a time when buzzard tongue was all I had to offer,

when tender pulp genetics dulled my head and heart,
but now I don wig and gown and am feminine

skull parade, a creation myth masquerade,
Mother Tartare on a death-stained plate.

It isn’t surrender if the swarm ripens
in time for the labor pains. It isn’t theft

when this necropolis isn’t good enough for the two of us.

A grave looks like a womb if you squint hard enough.

What better place is there for a birth?

When I opened the sodden lid of you,
a thousand hungry flies nestled

deep in my hair, a thousand hungry dark-eyed children
warning me that at a moment’s notice,

that with one collective twitch
they could move me where they pleased –

out of the maw – or into the forge –
or into the heart of the god

whose name I had long ago tucked
between my legs so I would no longer

suffer the passive over-my-dead-bodyism
of creator-in-a-cage, of muted displeasure.

My meatling hymn fell on deaf ears as I dug and dug and dug
but never tired because we, the dead, are patient, aren’t we?

We, the dead, are so, so patient, our innate maker’s brutality

but an inadequate salve for our sorry past, a past that handed
us wires and fucked us into a different kind of decay.

In that history, it was never our kind of dead
who received broad-shouldered boastments,

never our kind of dead who benefited from rosy-hipped
revisionism. We looked too sickly under that halo light.

Our bodies too referential for their liking.

So with a grin I rouge our hunger, and I powder our regret,
because what woman hasn’t wanted to roll the sleeves

of her bridal shroud all the way up to her elbows
and be the reddest at the ball, made live again

using only what she could find
rotting within herself. All we have

is this scavenging – we are hand over hand
with this waking. We scour ourselves with formaldehyde,

our Wondrous Death Fake-Out,
our Great Youth Heist a blinking marquee

under a sad bloated moon. Our Knell of Revitalization,
Our Collective Undeath, Our Lady of Virgin Tissue Donation.

Baby’s First Steady Purpose
served rare on a platter of bones.

Rise. Can’t you hear the opening chords of the revival song,
the death has taken vein and the chorus is ascending.

Creation is a woman’s wound,
and the stitches are all in rupture.

From the porch you can see the encroaching wildness
coming over the fence in our backyard.
Some of the verdant wads are Virginia creeper, honeysuckle, blackberry,
poison ivy, poison oak,
some is
no-freaking idea but may still break the fence boards with its heft.
It’s beyond trimming back.
I can hack at this thicket wall and try to tame it, but it’s always there
coming through the cracks between the boards.

We had this fence put up the first week we lived here,
erected by a handier friend and his brother.
We planted the fence within a property easement
that we were supposed
to maintain and keep clear.
It’s basically an overgrown ditch that stays full of standing water year-round
and is home to untold flesh-eating bacteria and mosquito larvae.

It’s a jungle, the heart of darkness,
and from our first enhancement as property owners,
we violated the deed
and our neglect and oversight allowed this
habitat to
flourish.

With the fence, we try to keep things in and out.
Wild critters big and small come to the tall, factory-treated wooden border
and try to vault over, hoping to sink their teeth
and pincers and mandibles into
the sweet spoiled hides of our dogs
who charge the fence when we let them out and bark madly
at the alien noises coming from the other side.

I quit drinking for 14 months
to feel the straight and narrow…
built a fence of sobriety and beat back my own issues
that were coming over the
edge.
I eventually got tired of it and dipped back in,
feeling finally in control.
The first buzz brought back the inner voice,
the dirty dark self that seems to float up on a high booze tide,
and
my horse-whispered, domestic side welcomed him home.

Beyond the woods is the highway.
It brings weary commuters and vacationers to and from
sun blasted beach homes that are anchored temporarily
into the shifting dunes of vanishing islands.
From our yard
you can hear the faint thrum
of the traffic and it always gives
any sedentary moment
a nimbus of motion, a blur,
a reminder that this too is impermanent
and that the highway beyond
the mowed yard and the fence and the patch of woods
will be beachfront in a dozen generations.

I find that I look best
under dim dive bar lighting
with two plastic cups
of cheap red wine
swimming through my intestines
and a rush of endorphins
making it hard to discern
my intoxication from my lust

I’m texting everyone
to tell them that I love them

In reality
I only
texted
you

I have been reading
over your answer
again and again
for the past 72 hours

I’m sitting on the g train
and I’m late to work again
I just spilled coffee
all over my chin and neck
I should have gotten it black because now there
is an alarming amount of bees
licking the glucose off my bare skin
I wonder how they
will react to the caffeine?
I think one just stung me
this bee was so offended
by my inability
to be held accountable
for my actions
that it killed itself
just to spite me

I’m holding a funeral
for this bee
under a blossoming
magnolia tree
at the cemetery
five blocks away
from my apartment

I invited all my friends
in reality I only invited you

We are burying the bee
and I am wearing tyrian
my hands are
covered in dirt
and I am laughing

I kern my neck
all the way back
and you are gone

It is
raining
and
you
were
never
here

The scar the bee
left above
my cupids bow
is pulsing

I am
alone
and
it is
more
noticeable
now

The tape is jubilant at first, as the beginning of the night replays
Laura, who insisted that her name was Desdemona
and I, bite into crackers, cackling at the sound of them,
between our teeth.

After we use up the glitter glue,
after we eat all the pizza and the barbecue potato chips—
after I break out the glow sticks,and we talk about our clothes
and then about our dreams,
recorded history becomes another ball of yarn for our dumb drug-disoriented minds
to tangle themselves in—

and I remember it. Being high. Excited about everything. Laughing like our lungs
were helium balloons. At some point, 18 year-old me says, thanks for listening,
me-in-the-future, I love you!
and I want to die, a little.

Who, cloaked up as I was, in hallucinations of the future,
bright shoed, and impermeable, could concieve
of coming down, and landing as I did, like this? Teenage Sean is mocking me.
I want to slap him.

You don’t love me, you little shit. You never did. That’s why I’m here.
Sitting at this desk crying while you bring up inside jokes from 13 years ago,
as if I will remember them.

Later Desdemona falls asleep, and I’m whispering into the microphone,

All my friends seem like a memory, I miss my room at home.
I’m afraid to sleep here.
My roommates think I’m crazy.

My webpage is so awesome.