sweet nothing, genial doll, gentle calf, speak nothing. rolling waves, an inch-by-inch golden sand, fool’s time. with a creek’s heart, a swerving absence in begotten– serrated buck-teeth, serenading his mom, the forest, with his little trees, little “timber," small flares. gargantuan limbs–all eight.
become something that stirs the cosmos one inch.
belong in your creatures.
Hopeless
I’ve been made so hopeless by you, hopeless until I cannot walk. my back covered with roses, a crease of us in black foraging, a muddled sound of insubordinate “ka-ka-ka.” with the trees beneath me, there is no ulterior motive. be gone. become something worth the effort, like a nut or a morsel of very good “tell me again.”
start flying with yourself.
die a little bit.
A ruining
Be cast aside for love, a little bit and piece of you. let romance decompose in a fairy circle, a little grandiose, a short reaching thing--- a wide lattice, a word with you. according to indexes, I’ve never lost so much, never tried so much as a nymph tries to tell you with something small.
there’s a maze that disconnects, start-to-finish.
a little bit of hell is in you, too.
Marching
There’s a part of you that died.
a frowning thing, a loathsome, enchanted night gown crawls in two pieces to me. I haven’t been able to want you for days and days. I haven’t the faintest clue how toes can keep us a secret, how blue cans of paint wretch at a blue-taped doorframe, and how a mountain carries me, too. let everything that’s bending break end-to-end and top to bottom.
be a little more ingrained at the thought of a horse.
I’m weeping for home
I’m weeping now, weeping now to not weep later. I’m praying that the words, “shame on you.” are the harshest words that our children ever hear us say to each other.
Spices
Stealing spices, things I wouldn’t have with $48.60 in my checking account. things wet eyes losing a $20 bill I have enough cash to take you out to dinner tonight, just tonight, just tonight.
Winter
Warm streets, who am I? where am I? I’m staring at a sandwich in the corner store I’m walking to Mt. Sanai I left my green card on the counter
Numbers
I couldn’t read numbers they couldn’t read numbers beaten out of me by my mother twenty-some years before
Tea
Tea, I took so much tea so much of anything I took so many tea-bags if I could only have so much of anything
Heart
His heart was giving out smoke this, he said he was trying, trying to have a heart attack the first time he tried to die , smoke this , smoke this ,
Holding cell
I was in jail the holding cell , doing pushups , sit-ups , , tears , doing breathe sit-ups
breathe it in , exhale he brought it in inhale
inhale
Last line
A kid saw me saw a kid his las-t line his last my first
347-869-
I got it on credit what credit no idea iPad with my brother’s AIM screenname for a phone number
‘ brothers , full-metal alchemist on a month free sub
homeless give a homeless guy an iPad give every soul a number I watched it three times every day next to my brother , dying he was my brother too, sharing the room awake and dead blues skin so blue
Seance
In the shelter, he sat on his bed feet on the floor needle in his hand sticking it into his soul (my mother laid in bed with my brother) his head , waist waving possessed (my mother laid in bed with him , cradled him while he shot up)
Fish sticks
The fish was worse than the malt liquor , I’d leave a little bit for the poor
The corner
I’d go to the corner steak knife they gave me a steak knife in my pocket to be nice to the new guy protection , never threatened a person until they chased me with a baseball bat
Heartfelt
Smoking the rock he said his girlfriend broke up with him left him to the shelter I don’t blame he gave me some loaned him $40 he never came back so I put a smile on , slapped him in the face
, I’d cry again watching children , playing , and you thought I was dangerous , you thought I was homeless I kept the same Starbucks mug that I found , at the playground
A warm summer
No a/c for me or for the kids playing from the projects in the open fire hydrant
, I’d walk the water jail sandals
Very
Very cold
evenings , very cold nights come forward collect , pennies and starlight,
down jackets jealousy
, correctional
Begin
Drink something red and white , begin to sing see colors very cute of you mister , mystery boy , come closer , if you , marry Mars , mistakes were made a lot more, a lot more I hear you , politely , tersely disagree. . .
I am a ghost
Streets, walking streets, forgetting names, , forgetting the name of my highschool best friend. forgetting my father’s face.
Mania
If it is a neurosis of the ego ,
it can keep you alive.
Dyslexia
Dyslexia with numbers. $12 was $21 , or $210.
Grocery stores
I am sorry to self-checkouts , the worst was 3 32oz ribeyes 14 lobster tails skewers , mushrooms, peppers, pineapple it’s not me, , it’s the entire universe
scallops ,
Delusions
, Prison , chomo , if I ended my life in the bedroom , I’d get there sooner , when I went to wake him up, his skin was devil-red .
I was scared // I broke his jaw in two places , went to the rooftop 40 floors I believed I’d wake up , in his handcuffs
I didn’t know anything until he was arrested three years later.
Butterfly
It was ‘ 15 feet across both lanes I followed it , to Port St. Lucie from Alabama , ‘ trees burning, burning black and white fire.
Don’t forget the Taco-Bell sauce
/ Do not forget the sauce or I’ll break the door in , grab 6 fire, 6 hot, 6 diablo
Blood
Drinking someone’s blood , on accident time slowed down heart rate blood pressure low
Elephant
Covered with a blanket , something you missed , something ,
I want to be your child
, do you want to be mind , do you wish , we missed Christmas together , it was only you
A cross in the living room
, wood, bread, wine and things, // a good bunch of terrible two’s together
It’s sex
The cross is sex , . i’m lost on you, do you want to give anything, everything something you’re giving.
Signature
I don’t want to , have sex with you, , I want your cum on paper
I haven’t wanted sex in years
. they broke me , rape allegations temperance , when you’re unwilling
dinner is at 6pm sex it at 11pm , once a week
Memories
I forgot // my mother’s face I’d forget my only debit card (no bank) in the store , , every week
Know how it feels
Know . you wish you could say it to me too little, fever dreaming , tears and all // come home flowers , gangrene
There’s someone in town
. I know she’d never , she’d never had the
change // chance be careful dive bar .
woo and shout cry to the pages \\ arranging
Cremation //
There’s a little // dove . she’s dead . she cried to // beginning cry to him , babydoll
burying someone me, //without regret I wish you had // a spade
Be care\\less
Be wise, a little shovel and turpentine, ,a little munchkin and more a little more, , I wish I could tell you something very cute , ,handsomeness
Be
Never //again
Dangerous
To tell time\\without maps upside down . s to be caring\\without people knowing something . n marriage//mirage . w nobody cares\\nobody knows . e
Codename: mirage
//it’s inside me//what is me \\it told me twice// . the cursor is multiple flavors . red is best , I put the spaces , //until the color is at least purple or orange green is space// that amount is blackpurple
I did see//I did
A Julliard //blackpurple floutist D# //purpleblue butbecauseItoldyoumystomachhurts it was electric-blue//the chord, her favorite chord
Presidential
Shadows , four and a quarter //a four-pronged staff and an angle at madness
Your gifts
Blanket in the living room , , the only room waiting for someone . big feet can’t take them back .
On steps
Still smoking , depressed as hell //asked for what I needed //asked for what I needed . need nothing
Count the letters
//each one means something //count the letters . they mean something , , tears tears , ,
Espionage \\
Loyal faces, , creature comforts, magic (shapeshifter, poison bugs) they come through your computer , , grab your suffering \\\ feelers
(collective memory, trees, uplink)
Two movies \\ mindful coordinates,, memories
What do you say
“thank you” no . this was all for you . I had no choice. ,
Wolfmurder
You slaughtered me , I’m dead , , I wept for you to watch // invited you upstairs and I \\ back off untilyoursalivadoesn’treachme
Signs
I wrote for you \\ for a one in a billion we’re at stdev 6 and you don’t understand statistics.
nofuture
I don’t see a future with you // one where you don’t try to ( __________ by hurting me repeatedly)
I'm going to add an index at the back of our book:
, = one tear , , = many tears " " = happy eyebrows // = overcomes this-a way \\ = overcomes thatta way
Pipe
He dropped his pipe // the man sleeping, (head under a blanket), outside my building , // do you know how much pain every smile gives him he numbs it . instead of eating the veteran , he walked past reeking of alcohol
Swollen
Be careful , your hands will swell up , . turn purple your last words to your brother might be, “ “I guess this is goodbye
Better place
I’m in a better place, ,now paper towels are a luxury I stare at them on amazon
Someone I don’t want to meet
Who thinks I have some kind of infinite wellspring who thinks I am invincible who believes that I am trapped , (I felt trapped) someone who doesn’t want to listen to me , , how many letters did I write to ask I’d like to read your poetry, but I don’t want to meet a person who hasn’t already given it to me.
05.25.25. when you're crushing me?
Mathematics
Think about going above and beyond , , or else my heart looks for another one that will //
Dry eyes//sympathies
I could have used your sympathies//psychosis living with my mother drunk every day , , screaming do you know how strong every poem //every day
Bandages
\\\ picture everything masturbate to my pain because . it means I love you
Unbecoming
// your goal . sex, ,princess
starts with a sorry.
When to forgive yourself
//beautiful , , when I see you as beautiful again.
Forgive myself
For hating , no . for hurting , yes
this isn’t my best work , but what’s my word worth, it’s not a flower
Open-hearted
This makes me sick, , I wanted to be open-hearted // but I want for nothing // spit in my mouth spit in your eye, ,
I need something from your heart
“ “ “ “ “ “ " " no apologies . " "
I’m dirt ,
I know I’m dirt you treat me like
I’m sorry for everything
That’s the thirteenth time . , ,that I’ve said it
The context
, how Ryan used to text me ,
. I thought, “how classless.”
I accept this
, “ when I’m in a mood , he’s going to leave me .
Ctrl f
It’s after you’ve , , said sorry //twelve times
I’ll take a “fuck you.”
Demonize me
I wrote it all down ‘ ‘ can you be that humble
you will be , , at times\\ or you won’t be with me.
Feel me crying
When you’re crying // know that you read “ “ what you can read now and continued.
Feel me writing
When you’re writing “ “ know I pretended , , suicidally
“ “ to keep my head up , jokingly and put my tears to paper , , at the same time
I wish I could know what you’re screaming
I bet it’s pride \\ I have none left , you can pick the bones
Hope
, , do you know “ “what gave me hope not you, GOD. a sign. call it what you like to.
Anger when you’re told you’re in the wrong
// is pride I’ve been in the wrong , and I’m sorry
Nobody gets me //
I should write it in prose.
Bed-bug spray
A new bite on my little finger, my ankle // covered in a scab can’t afford it
Can’t afford a new mattress
Been pissed on six times\\ by a kitten that you unspeakable the breeder drove from Idaho (owed $1600, $1300 in my bank account)
I wish you could walk in my shoes
You can’t, , you’re probably done crying already you’re going to send a letter \\ or you’re not
I just wish you would cry all alone
\\ until you apologize for crying
Old trees
I cried a little bit to an old forest , for the trees and an animal brought me here yellow dunce cap, brunette hair waving a little bit too---too shabbish. dancing buffoons //there’s a tune very close to home
two animals , handstands and there’s regret //closeness \\ for all our sakes there’s closeness. an alien came down, I wonder where from his green skin sold me, he speaks like music . he speaks like angels. a little jumpy\\smart tune a little in between start and finish, 6 ways to Heaven , capitalized I know the difference, a clown with balloons a platter and sparklers\\more noise than a kittens ears know what to do with. and there’s music. I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish I could listen to it.
Driveway
Tears // kings small kings waiting for their mother my dog and I, a few minutes from I-5 she drinks, I stare at energy demons in the driveway // safer outside he works nights and mornings makes every game, a good light—belief in short childhoods belief in churchgoing \\ children smoke cigarettes in the bathroom brothers work up courage to use the step-ladder, grab the star lights on the roof until February , until the screaming seems quieter and the bottles are behind the mirrors
I know you hate too
Sun
The sun is hotter now // than it used to be my Uncle said that, now call the police the ants all cower at a certain bowl will do it a certain lens from up here, 3.5 feet high \\ my nose isn’t broken, somehow it’s never been broken. running into tar trucks, breaking bottle-rockets wide open, mixing, taping roman candle wars. my hair never caught fire. . . that’s $200/hr
Heart mixture
Cry away every time someone’s ever lied when they said, “I love you.” catch your tears. put them in a bottle with my tears. top with a cork. mix.
Replaceable
The universe lied when it hatched you, it told you you’re just a shell, a fragile, hopeless element. you reach out, sometimes, and she reaches back. do you see her eyes, I see her eyes when I look at your eyes.
What is stronger than the soul which dies and dies and still lives
The lessons your soul teaches you can pain your heart for years and years.
For my soulmate, I will walk to the dying of the light. that will isn’t mine it isn’t mine it isn’t mine evening creeps and crawls and motions all of each of us, the whole that we do not know
God is all the pain you've ever felt in your life.
Welcome a love who makes you whole again
You are the maker who gives all of herself
pull me, do you pull me, the best of me. . . take the child, the child in me in your arms. remind him how you will raise his children
love will touch you, something deeper than you are, something greater than who you are something in you grander than you think you're going to be
I’d be lying if I told you that you take my breath away you make me breathe so hard, I can’t catch my breath.
I forgot my name today it sounds kinda impossible you said it so many times last night
Love is a dog from hell
I woke up cradling twelve empty cans of 8% beer and an empty fifth of hard liquor the morning after you hit the road. Bukowski taught me how to drink after I read three of his books so that you'd love me.
I know I should be better I should have better reasons but have you seen her when the moon kisses her eyes
I do not need the kind of love that pushes away I need someone who holds me
You were beautiful so beautiful I could not have asked for more but I’m asking you to be more
She should feel like your first sweater the first thing that kept you warm
It’s simple to love the best parts of each other but the deepest love lives inside our darkest places.
I thought I missed my chance I ran to the waters, the still lake, the still shore, and begged the moon to make you love me
You don’t need to suffer like I have you need a space the size of a seed in your heart
The magician
I wanted to fight God, or so I suppose that’s how he heard my roar when my only watch left stopped when my card declined on a steak at Ruth’s Chris.
I chose the family jewels being beaten, broken, broken and still bitching. they made easy work of my face. when I finally quit bitching, I offered them my favorite watch, and they didn’t take it. (though they took the rings).
You don’t need to suffer as I have you need a space the size of a seed in your heart
You remember it too, how the cross turned upside-down how you howled how I howled across the city. we counted footsteps, one by one like it was all we knew how to do
To say “I love you” only when I love you is the easiest way to tell you that I won’t always love you tomorrow
Tonight I told the sun what I’d do for you
When your voice is bright as autumn leaves, I quiver and you give your colors
Eye contact when you’re down there famished so I know it’s for me
I’ll tear up when I hear you read The Little Prince out loud, imagine he finds a home and it’s ours
I am hoping that time heals their mistakes, my mistakes. . . I wear my stars on my chest, she drew a line from one to another, and she drew another one, and she drew one more until the constellation of my heart led me to you
If your hair were any more beautiful the butterflies would forget their favorite flowers and come to you
what is it with you and jems, she asked
they remind me of the colors of your heart, and this one is the most beautiful, you have so much of it inside you it had to be seen in your eyes
Fate is a ring, and the universe gives you a locket with the picture of what you will become
You placed your lips to my fingtertips before I bit my nails you placed your lips to my nose before I picked it your little doodles looked so amazing in my first eyes I couldn’t tell how you could draw so beautifully.
we practice nightly write something for me write it now down here in your widow speak,
Mask
My mask, I hate pink lipstick for the rest of my life, you have to say it for me.
Moon
If the moon showed the stars how to walk across the sky, she’d catch every one that is light enough to fall
My favorite thing about you is your eyes they look like the spring leaves of the most beautiful willow tree, the most magical, their roots reach something in the deepest places of my heart
I look to your long, flowing hair and the braids that your small faces make to your roots with the sunrise, and I carry that scent from the kiss after our morning shower
what am I to you she asks you are every wish I’ve ever made
There’s a mirror who looks back at you yesterday and pauses because you didn’t say, “you’re beautiful.”
You smile does to me what spring does to flowers
When you are empty and I am full you are the moon
Wrap your voice around my wrist around my hand I am bound by your sweetest words, your smallest self
It was as though certain pages weren’t meant to be written again and again
There’s a beauty I haven’t seen in a while, a beauty that sees herself and laughs, a beauty that rings as if her truth waits on the other end of the line
You’ll lose everything when you don’t know how to love, when your sacred eyes close to the pain you caused this pain you know, you caused this pain that you see and you’ll lose the world to the pain it feels when you caused it, you caused it all
You are the whole universe looking upon itself looking into your eyes I see more of them more of you more of what I’ve always wanted
I make good coffee every morning, you whisper sweetened lavender into every sip.
All your gorgeous gleaming at me, every surreptitious, frightful glance. all the while my spell is weakening, every lightful molting chance, (so wear my skin. . .)
Very murderous, how murderous of me. . . in paltry towns, a Great Gatsby. . . worn in sleep, a sundry town, a simple step from what was bound.
God could take it all and we’d build our Heaven in our hearts with our hands and our bones.
And some day He will have us find me, remember that look in my eyes
He took less than He has given back, and not a wish has gone unnoticed.
Snowflake
God was cutting snowflakes when he made us, and he didn’t know that he cut the paper clean in two pieces. he didn’t realize it until he opened his snowflake up and the paper came in half. is there any other way he could make two people who fit so perfectly together? he dropped us from heaven side by side so that when we found each other, we’d never stop falling.
I want you to burn a piece of paper all crumpled up. inside of it, you’ve written everything you know about love.
The universe took time to give you every single note in our song written on your skin, and they hurt like a child’s tears on ivory keys, they hurt like magic, like God hurts.
If I could spend the rest of my life with you, I could spend the rest of my life with myself, too.
My words each day to my soulmate with every bit of sleep brushed from my eyes,
I look to the east and say, “I will.”
with the rained out crows feet at sundown,
I look to the west and say, “I will.”
Say the words, the words that make my eyes close.
If you could see me as a young boy, if you could hold this little boy’s hand, make the rain go away, reach so far into me with the eyes I prayed were my mother’s, the hands that I wished would love me, the waters that washed over my soul.
Tomorrow is the first time I’ll memorize the lines of your face– of your eyes, your nose, the crinkle in your nose. it’s the last time you’ll realize that God ugly cries, smiles, laughs, melts, remembers and dies. he dies.
Prisoner
I’ll be in prison tomorrow, today is worse they said, “cut it off.” the voices of record of record and the queen, he crushes and destroys in columns
He sweetened me for a black hard mask he penciled in paper my divisionless master
I’ll find a good feeling I’ll be ready to write it down with a warrant in a hellhouse people smashing their bodies on the walls and the floors to the sounds of the bells. won’t you help me in hell how can I be a man they asked me to bring you flowers after “don’t come back to this building” the trainers told me to bring you flowers after I cried and cried and cried at the shame of all of the love I’ve ever had and given dying, tortured, loving you
I’ve never called a woman I’ve never called a girl I’ve never wasted a word, I’m stoic $zacharypbrill and I’ll never be a man I’m floating away Ishtar, care, bless with the grandmother of my soul you are I need a place to live a soul tortured by crushing and gnashing here’s the meth addict with MS that they forced me to beat down with more knocks
I don’t ever want to show my sorrow’s face in your building, my love and if you call me a man, take the picture down before we get there.
Yes, a friend that only fails you when your heart fails I’ve known a friend took him to the gym made him throw up on the sidewalk back to the homeless shelter
Poor man tap taps on himself and the floor, we’re all on the floor we died already simmering, bloody mud he, at the whistles they murder you they murder you and a mask is placed dutifully he wasn’t supposed to tell [maybe GOD has a heart and it ticks as well, so maybe he’ll have a little home with a little backyard and some wedding bells.]
Ro
I’m learning your middle name again and again on my seventh death, my seventh in a little box, a little cage with plexiglass,
Start with the heart
Dictating poor man’s gambit for sweet, sweet poetry, we read it and weep different colors of every light.
No, you are mine he said at 81 years old
Wings, hoofbeats on water and mist two pegasus and once she neighs he is dead galloping, dead galloping, a creature of gnarl and smolder has leeched into bone and cry, pegasus dry in torsion following chirps of his half-kind calling, calling for his birdie
Cry for me they won’t let us cry testicular torsions fallopian tube simulation my ovaries your ovaries cry if you can cry cry for Lillia, her little highland cow cry for Maggie, her hand-sewn plushie from Ukraine cry for a white rose, her magpies in frame— our white rose, our white rose.
Don’t cry, we can’t cry we can’t cry to even an ant, to even a mite, to even a worm to even a sunset, or a tree, or a nest who’s chirping carries tears. so throw sharp stones into oneself or into the innocent. Unmake these souls by letting go these two set to love let go of tears they fall or else hardened and hateful
Accommodations
Relaxed niggers corrupt in-systemic juice be pretend, soft pig meat in mediatry COME, come throw up your juices teach them how to swim upstream in porterhouse guest maybe a small planet
I’m goosey flaccid at the thought of asking you for money for food for cigarettes for a hotel room at the Nines where I hollered, “FBI” to three hundred people in my former favorite writing room “look at these hands, these are hands of a great man.”
Indigenous lilac music of sympathy love for a broken human who needs fatherhood
mother, why don’t you see something small in the tallest man hear from the tear catchers hung from your earlobes
