we don't sleep, don't need the hum

of sleep, but erupting morning
after erupting morning
volcanic and we watch the churches
and the laundromats act
like churches and laundromats
under depths of water dark
as green & blue can go
oceans drawn up
at the feet of lighthouses
whose circuit boards
pour electric tongues
down naked throats

skylights flap like epiglottis

music that pricks ozone
turns saxophone from tenor to bass
in pairs of hands that flower on insomniac
torsos that never felt the rain
without raining lower & longer
than any storm earth's skies
can provide.

uh Heart Crossed off the Charts

I'm that faggot girl
up lighted in the blackout A.M.

I'm that faggot girl
in the ballroom corner
born without a uterus
taken on a cruise to celebrate
my infertility

you're not enough to prowl
linoleum squares with me
in tow, your awful

eye make-up & underwear
decorated with bears & giraffes

foolish child in pink
pajama jumpsuit

fostering nervous breakdown
in your elder admirers

making the mascara tears
cover the manhole covers
entirely in awful purples,

& so eager to see how
eagerly you'll kiss the convenience store

trails of blueberry where

deer trot their elegance
with just a hint of violent

effort, so small you have
to put your tongue

in a hoofprint, struck hard
in dark black mud,

reminded by your ribcage on a rock
your bones balanced

there, what violence is done
among us, how barely

sweet the blueberries are.

one
wet
violet

placed

where
only
you

will
notice
it.

I look for the one who
while everyone else laughs
is scorched by the movie,

for the Eskimo on summer
sidewalks who was pushed
like a scarecrow of hailstones
out of the dinner party,

for that girl knitting condoms
of seaweed's darkest green
for her genderless friends,

I seek those whose stomachs
can never be acidic enough,
whose ulcers come to be
small bubbles on the multiverse's
bulging moldsilverblue clusters,

I look for those to whom
this message is already a waste
of time because it can't find them.

HIGHWAY THROUGH THE POND'S MIDDLE

you take the handle to start hog up
(salamanders move
their orange 'cross wet tar)
avoid their bodies with your motors tires
ribcage crunch, tiny hearts

you wish for a crash to throw you down
to the swamp or the spiders that rule the dust
on the runway's ramp where the creatures merge

the purge of sunlight from broken
radio hole

we watch on our larger cages
the orange skin
take over the tent of our frames
and coat the rotting logs
with live
lizard

a female in fashionable rags comes toward
through the ballfield hologram
of a chainlink fence to march
right into my arms. She says:
I can hear you screaming
in the hallways of this world to be
left out. The end of this tall black fence

is just a tilted little puddle
you can jump all the way storybook through

crystallized on a bicycle seat
a snail's antlers frozen salted
hurting all the eyes of the air

put forth this morning a fist in brown leather
of subnormal pitchforker
beating a drum with a severed limb
half of the crown on his head.

Mom was washing a dull golden dog
in a groaning tub, paws were kicking

the heavens were overturning all hell,
the saltshakers were upright next
to the peppers, then huge robot arms--