Of all the headaches I have had
this might taste cleanest yet

Not of vodka and not by wine
But hangover through my coldest eyes

Getting used to the rhythm of the dripping - here, have a look

My ceiling is still leaking. For a while the watering was spread over five pots and a skillet, but now it's concentrated over a single pot, dripping at such a rate that the pot's filled every five hours. I'm too anxious to sleep soundly because I keep imagining it soaking through the wooden floor and crashing onto the little Russian family below me - have you ever had the nightmare where you fall backwards off a ladder? I thought for a while about bundling up all of those emotions into a little rain-themed poem, but then I realized how tarded that was. Close call. For now we'll just stay with general concentrated-but-afraid-to-be-disintereted angst.

On the plus side, my articles with moscow's english-language magazine, element, are coming along nicely. They've even given me my own photo in the spread so what it lacks in monetary gains it makes up for in vanity.

Above are three identical pictures of my ceiling, which seemed more artistic than just one.

My roof is leaking in about 5 places, the pots and pans and cookie sheets are ringing and I have a headache

You won’t let

me watch you

dress,


I actually

prefer

it that way,

I am a little hollow man
made out of bits and floor salt

I don’t want to feel it so far,
so far in from my grit

a ringing, through rags, as I
imagine not having answered,

Or filling her up with flame

The babies would be beautiful,
and then I could run

I write a little poem because I
have nothing better to do,

and it seems like something
when something’s done,

And we can name it preparing,
because the future is always ,

when we arrive.

And I, hollow little mince,
and, jitter little that,

Maybe I like a scoop at my innards,
weak of the night-time wait,

To give in,

And there are so many things
that you can do with skin

And it’s all far worse, this
promised to be something whole.

Slushy in Moscow Today

Is all

we have

a Name?


And Then

what

if They

look

Too comfortable


Saying It -

She doesn't handle
my eccentricities,
at all,
using words like perfect
when she touches my face
and all that smiling!
all that smiling!
it's one thing that
she expects stanza after stanza
and line after line
--we sang like that in her car
It smelled so much like
car and what you should do in a car

I promise, it worries me that she
bores me
a conversation over lunch today didn't
change anything I'm still
all heat and pressure
that I can't locate
and she doesn't even need
to listen anymore

Lovers trade tokens / when they part / a sign of the mind

To - touch the touch

That graced - that - Glue


Because I have - her past

As clear as - a photo


That very - one spins -

All our - tomorrows


Because - I told her - again

I haven't forgot -


Used to - Talking

To - the ghosts in their heads

the advil hasn't kicked in, the beer was warm

It still smells like you

All these reams
of paper

I trace over
the words

over the blue
ink you used

[insert poetic nothings
about physical form of
the letters here]

covering them
all in black

Just to tell you
about it later

clocks dressed in rags and robes in the
enormous house neither hill nor legend when
daylight feels like wind on the windows
that are always closed behind thin
curtain at midnight there is a-
stirring in the dusty closets, the smoke
enamored toilets a little more still there
buzzes--interrupted--in foreign symbols
the note of finality, raw metals on metals, yet the movement
changes--on tops of rusted stove tops
thick with oil and blackened grain the
uneaten soup is dangerously contemplating
a push on the grotesque bottled merlot
the squid sized ants plan their meticulous
lives draw maps with their throat-long
antennae to cookie burnings and cotton swallowing
predicts the future with the plain
frayed cards and look for stars in the twirling
heat of rainy incessant dusk tell jokes about the
bodies vertical on beds in beer halls and churches
- they teeter and swell with every vertical-body-heave -
No one lives in
the enormous house or visits even or lingers in
gazes at the drooping balconies breathes into
the stagnance that will sleep through
the morning, you will sleep through every
morning--your eyes so much older dreams
of burbling butter chokes envy, you are distracted
only unwrapped in sheets
and tattered wallpaper
counting away the summer

Of course, there are the internal organs and there are the external organs, nothing ever hurt without a push.

Stick me through with metal

And try to pull the brains

Made the hands responding right

Give those legs some wind

especially, in Circles, as If You had to Live it Over

Make peace with it

It will never have

gone better