Where do we stay in the city when it rains?

The usual pavilon.

Where do the women go when there is nothing to eat?

For the hickory residue in the back-lapped steam.

What will holy sound like after time has swallowed us whole?

Like he did, lugging in the warm cartons from the front stoop.

What if we're discovered?

Never sing with your hand.


....this was a crazy collaborative creative writing excersize....

I grow old, I grow old, I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled


Age is lovely. The story in the handfuls of passed decades, the wholeness of life almost ripely lived. I want to know everything about them. Yet even this dignity has it has its brinks. I am visiting my grandmother in her nursing home. It's goodbye, I think. It's always goodbye, though. Here is this place where people can't get up anymore, who aren't anymore. The room should have been steeped with knowing but this woman was crying, "It's terrible to be old and helpless" as if we didn't realize. Her venom was forgot as she was changed, clean, and blank again.

It's as though they ceased to age but rather every moment did, strong for several seconds, then unwound, lost and tremblingly resuscitated: the cocoon of focus birthed dying and withered so closely knit the joy of being drowned in the forgetfulness and frustration that vitaliy is spent in the detached, unreachable past

I sat by one woman and her conversation ran in tight, two circle sentences, released and wrapped--"I'm from Lufkin, do you know where that is?" Yes, we did, because that's where we were. That and "hurry up and wait". A visitor indulged her and they all began laughing, the tremor of a cocked syringe, "hurry up and wait" she kept forgetting she had said it and instead of a roasted, full-bodied smell of what they were it was Lysol--fiber-enriched, picture only book, infomercial, artificial flower Lysol, "hurry up and wait" Lysol, lemon fresh Lysol.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may


Next quarter I plan to live out every steriotypical dream of occupying the back of locally owned coffee shops brooding over Celtic looking journals and facing the binding of Thus Spake Zarathustra conspicuously out. Walks, I think, will be in order. PS: healthy living, a good movie, light butter popcorn. I will become ambidextrious. I will apply to study abroad. I'll write letters. Finally read Mere Christianity and actually apply myself to learning Italian. Keywords: meditate, vegetables, postcards. toast. Rock climb? Hike. Paint? Look at paintings. Oragami? Hardly. But the rest of it. Really.

Folded animal, my loneliness: all winter planished by your trespass


The problem with sadness is anything short of bizarre, figurative language is stale air. "I hurt" pencils no mmmm of understanding, it spoons out an old paste of older reaction. Sometimes I wonder why the click of a gasoline lever does not turn your head, and sometimes I realize it's because though the curve of your foot arches and tingles in its insole you are trained to deny the instinctual knowledge "I know you're there".

And, whatever end actually means whatever the last wax drop over an uneven candle lip whyever you did it and know you did it and you are sorry (whoever sorry is)

It's early yet to realign your spine.

The half seashell compact had been stolen from his mother, round silver ribs protruding around the palm sized looking glass. It was the bulge in his pocket as he mimicked sleep, the baseball glove printed comforter drawn under one arm to his left earlobe. Feigned deep breath was the only response to a cooed, muted, “Goodnight darling.” and the dragged click of a collapsed, closed door hinge.

One, two, three, the self-propelled increase of his heartbeat, three matched flickers of opening eyes, three raps of branches on the rain gutter outside his window. The room was ardently quiet, inky blue nightshades revolving in the nightlight. He denigned the dinosaur slippers as his feet suspended over shag carpet, lightly stepping over the under-the-bed shadows. He knew the black holes of night navigation. A side step by the dresser, the longer but illuminated route around the closet, quick aversions of the moving wind chimes hanging automobiles and airplanes. By the window he halted, drawing back the sheer, blue blinds to glimpse the outside and the lawn.

“One, two, three.” Three bright blinks of mirror caught in flashlight. The shell was out, a gauzy layer of powder settling around it’s opening, the glass showing his neighborhood and quiet street. He had settled his signal into the huge blank aisle of city space, and waited. Minutes passes, until a glimmer caught from the south east edge of his vision. Hand fumbling for a tube made telescope, he leaned out the window squinting through spiraled cardboard. The light puckered again in the distance. His tense, terse breath evened as it flickered a final time. The boy drew the drapes in decided accomplishment, ambling expertly through the flecked dark and lightness, burying himself once more in blankets, leaning his weight on the compact encased in skin and mattress.

The next communion I arrange I plan to smear
grape juice on the inside of a railway.
I leave a drooping oblong puddle hosting
glass sun funeral where cheek to grain
I pay my dues to pall and radiant sobriety.

Greased in adolescent mortar I force nickels
into telescopes calibrating
Restaurant booths to sugar trays
I wish you wouldn’t call me heroic.

Terrycloth slick he’s been using my towel
Nursed spheres and octaves the dirty rain
Leads me to conceal my toothbrush

Which is how I ended up swallowing your key