My knees moving without cushion
just fluid all around the knee cap
-a soft cheese gnawed by winter.

Acetone in every panted breath of
wind against my styrofoam hips:
My indestructible structure

dissolving on its way to work.

—–
He threatened to jump from the top
and the cop
s came up demanding identity.
There was a thump and then the sound of things sliding
or concussing.

“His hands were in cuffs
and his feet never touched the stairs.”
—-

Well this is an ugly green
we’ll have to clean that right up
love how the super is a drunk
and the closet is storage
and theres never been a squeaky mouse
since i started making it spic n spac
no i think you were right to out that racist
i completely agree we’re suited for one another
you’re very interesting and i’d love to pull your hair out of the drain
and this might come as a surprise, but our neighbors are very quiet
and i’m barely home at all.
—-

City Island all over again lapping the dusked
back of Dunkin Donuts where I watch the squirrel eat his boon bagel up in a tree.
The sailmakers and fire fighters are tucked into Brian Dempsy’s and the P.S. playground has latch key kids circling a wounded seagull until its dark enough for it to die.

The crossing guard has brought her dog and tied it to her Pick-up and she shifts her weight in front of the cranking and squealing body shop. Everyone is crossing against the light at dusk. They don’t need her help, just conversation about their litter of children. He wears a Jersey. She loves makeup and puppies.

Back on W Street I sit in the blue on the toilet with my head tilted forward
and my lower body forgetting what its doing here. My ears
perk up when the gunshots from the range crackle across the sound
like if there were pebbles falling from my hands. I sneak unweighted breaths before I open the door.

After I draw the shades and give out my bi-weekly spoonful
I’ll fly down the painted brick steps and onto the sleeted pavement
walking slowly towards the water.

The Sound lapped when there were whales here
and now laps the skeletons of boats.
It shushes while smoothing a metric ton of broken bottle glass

and you can see from the piecemeal coast that
we’re on the edge of the Great City and
my eyes brim every time.

1. How to handle problems.
2. What is grown up/ who is grown up?
3. Christmas shopping, or: all I got you was this intimacy problem.

1.
a. Drinking the Christmas present you got for your father that has been sitting in the trunk of your car.
b. Parking on a tree lined street at dusk, reclining your seat, crying until you run out of energy/ you realize the world will end sooner if you don’t turn the engine off and cut down on pollution.
c. Listening to a netflix instant movie (any documentary will do) while reading something internet-y/ephemeral and listening to an album that you have never listened to before (and don’t particularly like).
d. Taking an Ibuprofen and an antidepressant simultaneously while fantasizing about the two pills squaring up in your bloodstream and arguing about what real pain is.
e. Cooking a vat of chicken noodle soup, Chicken curry vindaloo, or something that tastes like the sweat of a shamed carrot.

2.
What:
a. That woman over there with a Lexus and two children who she baptized because she was free that Sunday is a grownup.
b. That woman over there that has a wallet made out of bone chips, dry skin, and the grease of an inner elbow in August is a grownup.
c. That woman over there who is no one but herself and has no one but herself and thinks of nothing but herself while she is next to you is legally able to default on her loaned life.

Who:
a. Your friends who throw up on one another may be grownups.
b. People who vocalize their problems after having seriously trying to exit out of them may be growing upwardly mobile.
c. Probably not someone who can’t care for something or someone else. If you can talk to children, you may want to consider becoming a professional grown up. The world is filled with children.

3.
a. Let me take the train to Fulton St. and look at the sprinkles of lights on BAM and feel how cold concrete can get no matter how sharp or unsharp the focus or edges of buildings. Let me enter a bank and come out with all of my money and no gift. Let me call this place the Brooklyn Flea, let me use their bathroom.
b. How about the Westchester Mall? Exit said mall and pay “exit fee” while holding blueberry pineapple smoothie from “Baby Yogurt.” Leave White Plains with no gas, no presents, and not even the consolation of a drink at Lazy Boys.
c. Perhaps you’d like to shop online? Order three tupperware containers that will not ship in time for Christmas.
d. Notice there is a sale on old-timey bubblegum at CVS. Buy eight bags of it while picking up 35mm film.
e. Buy books for children.
f. Buy kitten for boyfriend.
g. Buy expensive cards you could have made yourself if your hands weren’t glued to an endless “conversation.”
h. Walk through guts of tinsel, digesting nothing, waiting for the colors to stabilize and the brain to reset.

We have these pilly green particles of blanket that wedge themselves everywhere. I’ve got some food wedged in where my wise teeth once howled: “You know better” (they’d gripe, unheard but felt, when too many drinks drowned their nerves; making my teeth saddle up and black out).

Our present has this pleading tone to it. (Like) there’s some persuasion in the mixed bag of conversation- As if our feet were going to walk across a beach or through a museum at any given moment. Our heels (rough)hide from polished textures and the grainy surface of a Long Island planet. “You’re supposed to take your socks off before you get into bed.”

I feel dissembled. I am able to put myself back together regularly, not carefully. When I am sitting still— exposed receptor before some moody clot of sky or some angry jut of pavement, I am sure I am not just whole/undone. I am not a work in progress. I am existing, I feel that.

I am dying a little faster because I can hear my heartbeat slowly counting down. I am something not entirely real to myself, and I am not special. I can not tell if these feelings are to mend myself, relationships with others, affirm the energy that keeps slipping away (like losing light, like gaining weight).

Our mass is one of fast forward stars and

I’ve read about them ending

but when I look up they beam back burning-

I know I’ll die before I see them snuffed.

Spiced Egg Salad Sandwich:

• - Chopped red onion (amount: heart’s desire)
• -2 Hard Boiled Eggs
• -Spicy Brown Mustard
• -Chipotle Mustard
• -2 Dollops of LowFat Mayo
• -Couple of shakes of some chili powder
• STIR IT UP. PUT THAT GOO MESS ON SOME TOASTED WHOLE WHEAT. DRINK SOME SELTZER WITH IT.

Not too shabby. I’ve been a bit under the weather. Not able to finish projects/ have the energy to revise certain things. OH WELL. The winter came in October. Downed trees made my work commute of 20 minutes a really swell and scenic 55.

HAPPYHALLOWEEN!

2.
There are doors that lock on one side. No one ever knows which side is locked. No one tries to open these doors.

3.
Sometimes televisions are warm.
Pornography is the only thing that heats up a low quality TV.
High quality televisions sweat when the weather channel plays for too long.
Loop of sunshine.
Loops of clouds.
Static atmosphere like a hand touching the screen.
Dust in the stratosphere.

4.
Old televisions have ribs of color and tubes of light.
New televisions have brains made of sauce or tupperware.
(Old blistered plasma leaking onto the floor of the container store.)

5.
Televisions grow fused fingers from their amputations.

6.
Why does a dog always whine at 1AM from across the street?
All the other things that whine are sounds of erasers.
Rush of air under cars.
Light ripping through bedroom corners.
(Light’s favorite noise is humidity
or bugs blipping spectrum sonar)

7.
But eating up night is more alive and secret.
Plush feelings back down into a barking secret stomach.
Late night chainsaws move abdomens under sheets.
The microwave heats bread to mush.

8.
Bad mouth tastes are dream weather.