LOOKED LIKE LAUGHING

too many roots clinging to life 
                through the cracks 
                in cranial concrete       

too many gift horse mouths 
                washed away 
                by Nashville floods

too many green Americanos 
                in cups stamped and labeled 
                not for human consumption

too many delegates at the convention 
                voting for g-d knows what 
                or who or why or how 

too many parking meters begging for blood 

not enough leopard print jackets 
                   clashing with denim skirts 
                   for “haute couture” writers

not enough souls to save 
                   with gluten-free flapjacks 
                   in the daylight hours 

not enough quarters in a day 
                   foam in a latte 
                   rhythm in the streets

not enough surface area 
                   to turn a profit 
                   for “investors” 

and the parking meters continue to demand satisfaction 

let’s get our father’s faces
emblazoned on our suck skin
peel anchors through our bloody
babies and make it on every
surface of every sun times ten
making sacrifice to my pearl
on your flesh to kneel beneath
unbroken bloodlines that spat us
into the fire and wilted us with
earth saying fight or fuck eat
her hair like air and howl a
hemorrhage into each other. 

Roof like Mersault sun
I saw Vishnus moving in
swirling glass sand
and my life flashing
phantasm like in the
cavernous bark of a dog.
 
Hard to hold a bandana
full of your belongings
in a champagne Crown Victoria
watching the past drip
down the cool leather seats
with all you’d left 
at the beach.

like a sorcerer with his sleeves too long
casting from his sprightly wand notes of love
tripping over his velvet robe, unraveling himself to me
with a mangled bouquet of casablanca lilies —
four cheeks pink and cool in the imminent solstice’s crisp

like a calf in the woods, dear,
stumbling — the hooves on his tiny, narrow feet
sounding with full force the heartstrings of the old
Romantics, their blessings as old and tired
as this meaningful, expensive earth

with legs splayed, almond hair cascaded over,
a delicious mouth left deceived, a bottom lip
welcoming more in spite of the dirt floor odds

like so I hold his ears, hoping I can borrow
st. Billie Holiday’s voice for a few moments —
like the obedient traveler returning home,
darting through the endless corridors of the FLL terminal:

I wrap my limbs around this man
kiss him wholly until he is no more
and like so, as you are my witness, our love affair repeats

I’ve seen orbits in your eyes
when they wipe wide and cannon
shock ear-kissing smiles that
 
fuck me into doubled-overs
grinning and in microscopes
filling three-stacks miles
 
with binding blinding love
makes maps make sense and
city glinted moons shift
 
dancing cross-continental
nickly giggling at silly
myths like the existence
 
of distance like when my lids
lift to brow and how you’re
standing here now-
 
you are
everywhere you are always
there.

watching a muted television 
lacking of shadow masks 
and aperture grilles 

dusted sunlight seeps in 
through fractured windows

i continue to get drunk off 
ripping nickels off 
little old ladies 

(an orgasmic intoxication 
i can’t say no to) 

the wild turkeys gobble in harmony 
turn sour in the sunlight 
as i purge my bank account 
of its last eight dollars 
and seventy-three cents 

in the silence 
the welfare checks drip 
drop often as rain on the Salton 
and just as out of reach 

i refuse to speak 
in a language 
people conjugate 

i just throw punches 
at my own face 
to see
what time
it really is

blood
rains down 
on my poor poor
mealy skin 

the only rain i’ll see for decades

blood 
is tears 
is hope 
is fire 
is dreams 

i wipe it all away 
with the handkerchief 
i keep
folded in a spiral
near my ass 

it might stain 
the cotton square, 
but
WHO CARES 
about a little blood
these days

i certainly don’t 
anymore 

it’s three and one-half
hours beyond noon, 
and i am still
clenching my fingers
tight, 
waiting for the deluge

The lyrics to “Oh Yoko!”
are so so silly
but I want to sing them
to you repeatedly
I decide, walking
wildly and weightless 
in the silver sun.
 
I dream out loud,
and in daytime quicker,
of a chugging cherry-picker
with strawberry-brown hair
in cackling ribbons of rust.
 
And yes this miniscule
moment striking spike
has cracked me wide open,
this Wednesday on Hyperion,
tonguing your name while 
spilling shimmering rainbow 
videotape from my happy gut;
piling at my feet a glossy pyramid
raising me to tangle stratospheres
before the green lights pixelate and
the engines charge forward obligatorily
continuing this magical and normal day.

those cathode ray tubes again
those blue pixels, now brighter
than the glare of a smooth sheet
of aluminum under the Zapotec sun,
the grains smaller than salt blown across
watercolors, than a celery stalk glib
and tight, it’s almost offensive

I hadn’t seen your face for weeks
I saw the black fold-up table where we
would shove tortellini into our mouths
and wash down with a glass of red Powerade;
see there the manmade brass items like grinders
and keys arranged prettily around ribboned
grass and astronaut ice cream wrappers,
items belonging to a space cowboy
such as yourself, charolastras be us

rubbing the blunt end of a pencil
onto my temple, I see that solid, Moorish
nose and big teeth hiding behind bigger lips
and the thick hairs of your golden beard
interrupt the air like blades of sawgrass

these things we keep in the absence
of the other, of trust and boiling bodies
god, I missed all of these things —
so I choked up, and my cheeks
puckered and tasted like the tannin
planes where the Everglades meets the Gulf

Dust yourself you rakish fuck
and curb your craggy clamor
keep your magic in your mouth
champagne pathetic pallor.

Crumbly boy who loves too much
matchstruck skidded red and
coughing sideways always
wondering with want
will wash.

Wash into blues and go limbless
spread into airy thinness birds
bite caw sideways and die.

But this is washless and manifest
you perfect and brave heaving
coal engine chest- I want you
ocean-sized and thrashing
you particle protecter- spark-plugs
in your hair, your eyes, your skin,
your caves all champagne and brave.
 

the-new-library:

There you are.

The New Library is a community literary blog. We are hungry and eager to read and publish your short fiction, poetry, and essays. We want to showcase internet writing that is freshly coughed, earnestly hammered, and threaded in honest substance. We want you to share with us a perspective that is unique and also unifying. We want you to eschew listicles and easy metaphors and stock criticisms of writing in your 20’s and tell us something we won’t forget with the opening of a new tab.

We’re looking for submissions that are fearless, thoughtful, without gimmick, honest, sharp, and heartfelt. Here are some previous gems we’ve been beaming-gleaming-and-proud to publish:

The Aneurism of O. Patricia Holden, a poem by Annie Werner

The Birthday Letter, an essay by Erika Marie Paget

All Things, a short story by Cynthia Shaffer

Let us add you to the roster.

Visit our site and familiarize yourself with the content we’ve already published. Here are our submission guidelines and contact information.

Fellow writers and fans of creative writing: please reblog this post. Share this with anyone who may be interesting or interested. The larger our community, the finer our library.

Thank you and welcome.

Allow me to bring attention to a Looked Like Laughing founder’s literary blog that has already featured LLL writers Emma Iocovozzi and Sylvia Simioni. I believe it’s safe to say that fans of LLL will find a comfortable yet different home there. Thank you and this post will soon destruct.

-Alan

when
he was
asleep i
checked that
he was breathing

(all the time)