a contrabiography

A lot of people tell me that I am one and that everyone is one, which to me means everyone is everything. 
But what if it's more like the opposite of the butterfly effect. 
You bump into yourself at every possible moment and it doesn't do anything. 
nothing appears to move yet you have moved everything at once, with faith so small that you don't even have it
We search hard for ways to unmultiply.  We get tired, close our eyes,
and see division occur in our dreams
two halves crash head-on as alarms go off

There is no perfect number of hellos and goodbyes
between title page and index, it doesn't matter where the hell you sign
Together we wander around aiming every way at once
time unravels us like suns or floods into a criss-crossing happy mess,
a tree branch tapping on a body of water until it calms down and finally sees itself in the mirror,
splashes cold water on its face and the sleep melts away

Sugar, when it's together in a bag, it is sugar.  When it's mixed into the eggs and butter and water, is it less sugar,
is it fragmented? 
is it cake? 
are we cake? 
are we cupcakes. 
I don't know what we are

they tell her that god
ain't in the leaves at the bottom of her cup
they'll claim he's everywhere on sunday

Too much focus on periods, islands.  A sentence is not for that, an ocean isnt either. 
They are happy accidents, a last snowstorm in spring that makes you think 'huh, i forgot it could do that.' 
And I keep on feeling free to forget,
     

They weren't stones, they were pecan shells.  They were all over the place.   Made of tree bark on the outside.  Squirrels had eaten parts of them.  And there were little holes in all the tree trunks.  I had a hell of a time figuring out that one.  Woodpeckers.  Actual real-life woodpeckers, hammering on tree trunks that were filled with bugs, I had learned.

And they weren't really skipping.  I'm up top, see, at the top of the bank.  The bank slopes down about fifteen feet I bet.  It's pretty steep and made mostly of mud, clay, and vines.  So when I throw a stone, or a shell, it don't skip, it more ker-plops.  If it's a shell it bounces back up and floats along its way.  That's the kind of science I was dealing with.

That night we got sixteen feet of snow and the whole town got to sort of glowing.  I saw an old-looking guy raking it up.  I couldn't figure out who he thought was going to pay him for that.  You can't really help but feel bad about that kind of stuff. 

The day glowed off the re-frozen snow ice.  I pulled my hat down a little lower.  My breath pushed past all the dry air up on its way to God.  "Whose are you?"  I asked a squirrel, pretending it was a dog.  It looked at me for two seconds and then ran halfway up a tree.  I walked over to the old park, with the baseball diamond, sandbox, swingset, river.  Down under the bridge and sat on a rock by a wooden beam that looked tired from lifting heavy moving things off the ground.  Snow melted and became careless, dripped down onto the gravel road and my leg.  I jumped and slid rapidly and tumbling down the dirty, rocky, honest bank.

a man without a home bicycles up in the beach's parking lot, open sores on his body.  the thing he was doing in the military was too classified for him to be able to get a job after he left.  he and his mom did not get along because he was being "kind of an alcoholic."  In november she bought a bus ticket for him to come home, for the thanksgiving holiday and for his birthday and his sister's birthday, which are both around late november.  he speaks to a wannabe materialist who gives him five dollars.

yellow light preceding liquor.  oh precious drink, to be kneeled at and prayed towards.  you heal nothing perfectly.  you are good for less than nothing. 

a line-up around the square we smile and live in, lit barely with an old browned bulb.  aged electron newspaper.  your sweet lips dissolve there, see.  they explode into little tiny miracles over our heads.  all in the living room.  a concentrated form of vitality surrounded by cavity, perpetuating the shelf-lives with time-line documents signed and dated by air, behind your neck and through your hair.  an old dying man begs for a kiss from his great granddaughter.  she lays a flower in his warped palm, the same one that, strong, held steady her great grandmother's thigh centuries ago when the moon was made of milk.  the beaches crumble under god's hand as time churns out our

new lives.  shiny ships.  a large ghost ship planted in lap.
desire moves in fireworks, you have to look away first, you need to be near a body of water. dont you understand how difficult it can be if you surround yourself with asphalt and cable television.  a scape full of reflecting rock begs to be trampled but a carpeted trampoline keeps the casual observer casual, barely bouncing around to his or her past and 100%-inaccurate future.  well im too drunk to really type much more

i started a couple children's stories a while ago and planned to finish them later.  every time i read them they sound finished though, so that must mean they are

Harris butters toast in a new way

Harris had never buttered toast this way before.
First, he put the butter on the butter knife.
Then he drove to Washington, D.C. 
Once there, he went to see the President of the United States.
He was surprised at how long the wait was!
Finally:
"Hello Mr. President."
"Hello.  What can I do for you?"
"I was wondering if


The day Kevin did not go to work

One day Kevin did not want to go to work.  "What if I just didn't go to work?" Kevin thought to himself.  "I wonder what would happen."
makes himself a breakfast.  since not in a hurry, doesnt forget any important ingredients.  sees an ant walking across the table.  the ant is shy and doesnt respond.  kevin thinks he must be too ugly to be looked at, because of his bedhead.  ant goes around the napkin.
work calls, leaves a message asking where he is.  he's glad he didnt go, they sound busy and annoyed.
he takes a walk in a forest near his house, gets home and takes a nap, possibly sees ant on ceiling.
falls asleep, dreams of flying to a star.  feels awkward/strange floating in front of silent star, flies home and jumps into leaves, brown and crinkly. 

driving around felt like home.
before water froze into crystalline caps
we were standing in the middle of a flood,
mountain-made; speeches to eons of sun
laid at our unseeing feet like a blanket,
an upside-down mirror reflecting a crescent in bright day
the future paused its timeless talking
am i closing or opening my eyes, apparition
a lighthouse of gasoline burned into my vision
so i search in every dark room
and vague cloud, illumined by vast untouchable magic,
not for a foreign soul embedded in pages of mirage-
but her body around my left arm, sharp, or a shark
hanging oceans around my neck, pounding my chest
into whatever shape fits a hundred miles of melting gold

the weather changes and we grab jackets in the early mornin while it's still dark,
walk down the street with hands in our pockets
the crickets are still talking it out

tHunder peels reeling the dress against her chest
light catches the sun in her matchbox eyes
Let's live in a matching house are we our mirrors?
I love through all this glass.
We are smaller versions of what we imagine,
bigger than this round round table,
rain finding the garden and the gutter.

"do not travel so far, my little red box of gloves," says the hungry, drunk old beggar in the street, quite unaware that anyone could now or ever hear him

deer graze in the cemetery near a bozoleum, a mausoleum with no windows.  Jerry The Legend bikes up beside us and talks about an old theory concerning communism and smurfs.  "he used to be the master of yoga way back before anybody was doin' that shit.  now they call'em 'pilates'.  that's like with 'blogs', back then they used to be called... what?  fuckin 'mathematics' and 'science' and shit."  Jerry biked away.   children eat coffee like soup at the rendezvous, where friends greet each other with welcoming stares.  perfume of the lady floods throats.  the coffee is a salt lake and spoons float on it.  "I always have a good view of that boat."

a whole mountain taking it easy
in the city, spread so thin.
skating on sandpaper.
cars love everything they can,
grainy hair

"Mommy, does Tinkerbell love me?"
Mommy has told her daughter that Tinkerbell lives inside her ear.
"Yes.  She loves you very much."
"What is she saying now mommy?"
Sometimes mommy regrets that Tinkerbell lives in her ear.
"She says it's time for you to go to bed."
"But I don't want to."
"She will keep complaining loudly in my ear until you go to bed."
"Really?"  Her daughter looks a little surprised at this.
"Yes.  It hurts mommy's eardrum."
"I'll go to bed then okay?"
"Please hurry honey."

With her daughter tucked in and virtually asleep, mom goes downstairs where her husband is reading a book.
"Whatcha got there?"
     "It's about . . . UFO's in Japan, far as I can tell."
"Wow."
     "No, no.. This came to me highly recommended."
"Well."
     "Hey, will you take a walk with me?"
"Yeah, what's up?"
     "I wanna talk to you while we're walking around the street."

They walk around for a while.
     "You know how I know I love you?  After all these years, even when we're sorta used to each other?"
"No.  But I want you to tell me please."
They sat down on the sidewalk.
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"Is that it?" she asked earnestly.
     "God yes.  It kills me daily, I never recover."
"Oh."  She paused.  "Know what it is about you?"
     "Nope."
"Well it's a lot of things."
     "Does one stand out?"
"Yeah.  The way you are with our daughter stands out.  I can tell you're thinking of me sometimes when you're with her, you say the same things you'd say to me.  I know you love her, I can feel it."
     "Yeah.  She looks like you."
"There's no doubt about that."
     "Please don't leave me."
She gave him a crooked-mouth, you're-a-dumbass look.  "Uh, I don't plan on it you idiot."
     "No I mean if you die, or if I die, please don't leave."
"Well.  Uh,"
     "Please."  The smell of rain floated down from the clouds and up from the street.
"Just c'mere.  God you're retarded."
They kissed under the black sky.  Bright colors tinted their faces.  The world stopped, and then started back up again, over and over, in waves.