Tonight youth blistered and burst in our callous adult hearts.

Barely 18 and starting to show symptoms of old age:
bearing couches like anchors,
                    smoking pipe tobacco,
                                             asleep at 9.
Our greatest concern,
the remote control chieftain,
stood frozen before the 21st century centerpiece, then said,

   brusquely:
           "don't work"
grunts around the room

So we took to the streets again
and walked until we fell into a groove
on the culdesacs that mapped our childhood.

We were mountain lions, pack instinct, shoulder-blades rising
and falling smoothly as morning bird's melodies

Though I remember now,
they only sing "Keep Out, No- trespassing"

Am I stupid?

To think I craved release like the lift of madness!

In vain I sought out a clear head, but the hook you used to catch my lip remains.

I swim away

I swim away

I swim away!

Line slack as the curve of your lips, still

I swim

I swim
I swim.

Red string on my finger:

El Ten Eleven and The Globes, August 25, Velvet Jones.

Itching to get back.

Isn't that what you said?

Outside, the air flushed your cheeks pink

when I asked you for the third time if you had missed home.

Maybe this is the absence of effort:

barely lucid fingers and the smoothing of hair.

---000

reminds me of one of my favorite poems by my favorite author:

Autoptic 8

Grief, do me no favors. I have grown my hair long,
as you bid me. I have learned to roll
a coin below my knuckles. I have written down now

years of dreams; much of my life has passed in writing
down these books of sleep. And so you see that I can
no longer turn only to what’s true

when I speak of my experience. Sainted men
wander in forests that have been set to rows.
And here, today, already I have found a stone

shaped like a day I passed in a life I can’t claim as my own.
The wind calls water what it wants to call it and passes
overhead. But water names wind from within,

as storms proceed in hinges, all through the captive
captive, captivated light. Therefore, I show my face boldly
in a portrait of my great-great-grandfather. In reply,

a deep breath in my lungs, and the room about me
actual as nothing can be actual. My hand is badly cut,
and I cannot say how long it has been bleeding.

And yes, I’m sorry, but that hardly matters now.

http://www.jesseball.com/

This is one to be read aloud. “But water names from within/ as storms proceed in hinges, all through the captive, captive, captivated light” sings.

Just purchased VIP tickets to the Treasure Island Music Festival in San Francisco!

500 fingernails later

In the morning my hands are quick,

jumping to the jutting of my hips, forever counting ribs.

I bend to reach my shirt (sent sailing last night)

and rise to see disappointment shroud your face.

That's why I leave you sleeping while I dress, most days.

A couple

Everything feels hectic.
Like the circles I'm running in are shrinking, and every so often I bump shoulders with myself.
Well, excuse me, didn't see you there.
If I could grab hold of something (anything!) along the way that indicates I'm heading in the right direction, maybe there would be room for a breath or a gasp or a sigh. A sign amongst hundreds.

Now I scrub at the words I've spread out to others, and wish to retain the ink for myself.
I wring the sponge, watch blackish water drip,
find safety in its silent slip away.