at the sixteenth birthday party
there was
lacrosse, cheesecake
treehouse, beach-hat
and lots of board game rhetoric
nothing conversational
had yet been type-set.

implanted
was more like it.

then
fourteen in the restaurant
a bad word choice surfaced
in the icecream dish
first-time things began
as comes every beginning
but only once can they
unfold from uncreased
born again
not-knowing.
this was before anyone
had
overdose resume
intuition about
office waterfountains
and the one building we had in common
never stood up against
our unlying music.
in the place where we held on
to steam and currents
it was the edge of being able
to make ideas
into convictions
true as universe
renamed religion.

two steel baseball batteries
i hid your lust bubbles
inside the canyon mother’s
chord progression
and all the broken thunder
knocked three times
on the backdoor of your
vision.  no one answered.

nothing except
girl-mammal cry-throb
you noticed nothing
(nothing but the boombox)
and i wouldn’t forgive such trumpet noise
not in the middle
of all this wire-limb role-play run around
there are ghost eyes waiting underneath
our citybus kiss affair
dead tire bridge.

you can lie if you want to
but fish don’t
inject
without some drop dead promise contracts
and i am not willing
i am not part of
your church hideout treehouse
sex secret.
get your own storyteller mr. best friend.

volume lights your vowels
to learning
shapeless under tame.
he lost his darkness-glasses somewhere
between 43 and 50
and pissed in the handbag.
and flared
drilling bliss-stones.

cheapness in the weather
had her basking dirty
full of
mismatched bathing
suit of flowers
nothing to take home.

close-down the
blindkid
draw-up some
contracts
and i’ll tell you
what i saw.
roots struggle into
her eyes metal presents
foil all the dumpster plans
gulped hard toward revolution.
i swear i thought
this room was empty
when i smoked the last
opium
in the concrete corner.

it was either
drugs or rent
and you could bet
love and wisdom
on that decision.

some bats flew from under your bandaid
you finally got the jungle
you sat on pictures books and wished for.
but we were equal at the movies
if during the picture you noticed
(more than my selfish plot delusions)
the stranger coughing into her mittens
and with industrial joy
i followed you
into a sheepish material place
unlike heaven until
the stranger woke me up
with her breathing.

that was when we moved the loveseat
into the kitchen
in order to better our chances at
lottery tickets and pinball
it was a strategy worth reliving.
the forests are all very
similar
during the winter.

(i only go home
in defeat.)

greasy replacement wounded with flavor
being not in the way
of my hating only his
contagious unneed
brought wandered rude
into focus.

banging
i put away the canned goods
making
smoke for cat to chase.
trees mount hallucination
and there isn’t much to say upon
the sweet predicted drench
of moon seeds.

one promiscuous stump
of level envy
went fishing to get equal
and, met with squeaking
docks full of
unprotected sin,
remembered the flesh he had wagered
so many times
and lost.

dear mother nature,
at the last minute
the car wouldn’t start.
i did my best.

a kid could get greedy
smashing eyes like that around
the walls and hearts of everyroom.

i prayed for extra paper
in the fluorescent bed
where we shed smells like
lawyers tossing bath towels.

i never thought to overrule your damaged miracle.
every stable-born suck-scream
held onto the sculpt
of swift iris
and fleshy bubbles brought
mess of horizon
into foul view.

it gets the water twice as hot in the place between ketchup and china.
and i drilled straight to the fruit of it.

in the stretch i pitch and wonder
of all there is to be seized by
at least the instinct
could be beautiful.
when i am africa it will all be left up to the lizards.

headstrong, brimming
healthy with farewell i held
my knees against the salon mirror and
laughing, became wet
and misspelled things.

fibersongs foam with hysteria.
thousands seek personal freedom in agriculture.
but (not
here of course, someplace
else perhaps)
if you happen to fertilize, wellthen (and you
do
happen to)
an impossible collection will result.

if needed see
how there’s the long kid
gets mcdonalds sexy
i mean
shit
the street can eat you.
there’s a

distance between charged tissues
in every
thing a mouth, in every
mouth the
excrement of oblivion.
gone to oil your jawhinge i get
one rise
from the moanshift it takes
two full minutes (if morning ever
came again) to decide between
your ache
& mine.

crowning tufts we are
half arcs of cloudsugar.
the chewing joint,
a device for absorption, violence curling under

neath some patient race.
revolving daycost
unrescued from the wide ebb of
fact indulgence.
looking out there are bones (always)&
stowaways (often)
&(sometimes) elderlies with flags.
now supposed
a neutering (shadow
moved by light)
maybe then i’d want
them to grow me,
dark intending.

familial plague, indifference.
hands out of everything
and sill worn
must wear
cell-shavings, lithium
whitelump turns cold inside diagnosed homedeath.
(expecting the true nature of dogs&angels)
you will have to watch but
you will want to.

recognition or something equally terminal. rarely discovered
(steamfilled, the tragedy)
velocity smugglers from beyond our arm of the ocean they
twitch,
legs out, dicks dripping
what
nonsense this must seem
to those animals who got
stuck together
and lived.

(he has made me sick) i have
made him sick also.
very soon he will find it.
he will make his own plain craving to embrace and,
yowling,
seek the final brim
alone,
knowing
the silence.
knowing the silence should have gone first.

boatpaper.
by shannon baker

every
“why i am not someone else”
lifts restlessly unwanted ribs.
the rest are forced to listen.

this
lip of matter
troubles
an expected knot
of spine. fog reflection, greenish
was your father’s eye such is
certain.

bright, the budding fishfarm
neon bathtub in rebirth.

the physical world humiliates.
real people ignore themselves.

vacuum bags, aluminum,
rope hang
almost warbles.

bombs, but very
soft bombs.
also some hundred eggs of milk.

sentient outmotion,
overturned
upside&downlooking.
that is to say,
we sink.

by the last days
our sailing battery
would have saved him.
but all that wind between us
crippled lightly, locked the cage.
& the green car that lived
at the edge of my lightbulb fingertip would
not have been sacrificed but
often i would gather strips of grass stained fever-canvas
to bind (at last) his blood factory
for a time when
there were facefulls of unwimpered lunatic promises
that we swapped on both porches and
still
if in tucking sunrise you would visit
those old boneyard campfires
you could find our mouthing organs wrapped in newspapers and wilting head-leaf
remains.

nobody could remember who the president was
so we put twenty tabs of acid in a paper cup
and everyone closed their eyes to witness newly enabled star-vision.
stubborn electronic warriors smashed their genitals together one hundred times after the ending.

also,
fat-lipped tree stalks existed
and i thought i’d said the right things because
they eventually gave me medicine as we shared the broken porch swing
even though
i stole a stapler
a library card
and two nearly rotten
asian pears.

how
ever
our skulls are expanding can you
feel it can you
feel the atmosphere as it shrinks
or
understand the birds who speak
many languages but
say the same thing they all say
(again&again)
they say:
eventually
this
will be
nothing.

there is a way of discovering.
(the animal surgeon cuts apart
while
the rest only
cut open.)
by
&by
the glitter-hands of other people will
pollute your mainline and this
will inspire
a caravan of hopeless
needle-trees with wide open cavities they want
to enhance your memories
they want to give you things
you’ll realize you always wanted
once you get them.

it seemed less dangerous
but cruise-control bellybuttons in the darkfoot-friendship
always did.
and although you thought you’d be
holding tongues with a miracle face by now
that
did not coincide
with the forgetful lightbombs
glued to the sky
they
will guide us
unless
you ask questions.

we so lightly covered
with (red&kneading) fist-shaped
conversation holes
which
thrust and unthrust
all ways without
the tremble-worry
of eviction.
eventually this behavior
will catch up with us
will catch
our
careful (lie to let the love out)
brainwave milking
machines.

&&finally:
expensive cars drip
microbes from their tailpipes
because
beneath the bed
you promised
and i promised not
to take you
seriously.