[cainsbook]

the bone collector

dirt under fingernails,

slowly lifting up from the skin

the bell tolls for no one

they whisper instead

she’s digging up graves again

in the dirt are tally marks,

splinters, blood, coagulation,

septic love

calcified collector

you’ll never break earth

staring up from the bottom

[cainsbook]

stingers

the scorpion, the wasp

my comrades, my confidants

it would have been easier if

i was born with venom

in my canines

and not my heart

palpitations, cpr,

begged god for a release

and he gave me more scars

so i packed my holster with stingers

and shrug

and live

from a poisoned claw

[cainsbook]

the duel

the stingers did the job

but in the blue light

I saw something

flicker on the rug

something smaller than

something sharper than

a paper cut

a little boneless thing

with toothpicks for claws

turns out,

the scorpion is

a pincher bug

[cainsbook]

crosstrek

crash dummy, don’t lose your grip,

crash dummy why you losing blood

in your fingertips?

on the black box it reads,

objects in the mirror are?

objects, plastic, high melting point

fragments

you drive with amputated hands

still reaching,

as far as the chains will stretch

headed straight for the cliff

head tilted back like it’s

funny? you’re gonna need this

an orange bottle or a bodybag

crash dummy your only mistake

was chewing

the shrapnel on the mannnequin

you can’t love what never lands

and I can hear your breath

right before it hits cement

[cainsbook]

ashes

he said the poems are pressure

a diamond into coal

once

left the window

unlocked

now I

hold the gavel

and the stone

once his voice was the rhythm of the Atlantic,

now a scratch on the gramophone

baby’s never held smoke between his fingers

but tried to touch the stove,

could’ve been my manifesto,

guess now he’ll never know

[cainsbook]

Parking Lots & Pushpins

asphalt veins,

fingernails filed the roads

does it frighten you if

I mapped your moles?

in case I needed

to find my way back home

(when I was little I had a plan to jump out the window and wander the streets, street lamps and stops sign would be the only witness and this is much better than the dark//better than the weeds, she had a Barbie car, the plastic kind with the electric motor but she forgot, and I waited, how I waited for you)

please

please

please

let this be true

I’ve never held anything soft

that didn’t

wither

rot

the fire broke loose, it said on the news

the ashes are in a cardboard box, that’ll cost more

(why did they put ashes in a cardboard box?)

please

let it be true

when I’m locked in your arms

I’m finally

free

[cainsbook]

what's your writing process??

I have an image stuck in my head, usually something mundane I see out in the world, and that is the jumping off point to a poem

[cainsbook]

rituals

gentle hands can’t undo a chokehold

sweet nothings won’t erase

the violence in a memory

locked in a bottle, recycled waste

come a little closer

walk on coals, eat the pain

the match is useless here

if you can’t stand to feel the flames

[cainsbook]

the sand timer snarls at me

minutes louder than the marching band

call it a saxophone or ecstasy

call me

the langolier of poor impulse control

they say “let go, the war is over”

I grip tighter

like it’s the only thread left dangling

praying to the bigger hand

call it a noose or destiny

[cainsbook]

intake form

nutrition for the darkest parts,

the inherited bits,

a blister where a scar should be

the bottle reads:

will he hold my hair back when I throw up?

he calls it silky,

a grocery bag in the Santa Ana wind,

he calls himself a vitamin

I answer in

dependencies:

dime baggies,

nicotine,

gore on the tv screen,

isolation, losing my key

locked inside 2014

“healthy now,” they said,

the food pyramid or

antifreeze?

[cainsbook]

water water sun

the coal dancer, the knife swallower, the prophet

I see a flesh wound and raise my bet

you see a scab and call the ambulance

built different, a cathedral of dread

built different, we once laughed

we once dug up the dead

gave me the shovel, I leant you my hand

the dumpster fire, the asbestos, the lead

which one of us knows how this ends?

[cainsbook]

the ordinary, a terror, an autopsy

a backbone made of jelly beans

left stale from Easter brunch

don’t fuck with a poet

I eat your trauma for my lunch

chew it up, digest it for a couplet

got guts made of steel

you are exactly who they said you were

and only one of us is real

got a mirror where a scalpel should be

tell me how does it feel?

[cainsbook]

the ordinary, a terror, a longing

my dog in front of the heater

my students in the morning

snow and no work that day

the skylight when it’s pouring

he is

everything

I was sure didn’t exist

or only existed

in tiny fragments

between me and my

melancholy

[cainsbook]

homecoming song

this jar is tempered, bullet proof

crushed

they dropped it before and complained it

cut

you sweep up the pieces, soak up blood, collect all the edges, don’t patch me up

put me back on the mantle,

where the picture frame was

the ghosts and demons,

we bottle them up

the jar wiped clean,

you turn the night light on

[cainsbook]

29 Palms

the tree limbs reach like fingers here

they don’t touch, they lacerate

they don’t bring peace to John Muir

they visit in a night terror,

and whisper of illegal fires

bodies lost & left to wither

posters rotting/faces on the news

it’s different here

sun bleached people turn to lizards

they know when the mothership returns

the people with the manicures

they don’t touch, they steal

they dance with the tree fingers and

bitch when they need stitches

but the desert it is always watching

the desert will consume

[cainsbook]

stingers

the scorpion, the wasp

my comrades, my confidants

it would have been easier if

i was born with venom

in my canines

and not my heart

palpitations, cpr,

begged god for a release

and he gave me more scars

so i packed my holster with stingers

and shrug

and live

from a poisoned claw

[cainsbook]

the blisters under the tape

speak of prophecy and

waste

a pot of boiling water

spills like over me like

fate

meanwhile you think

all you have to do is wait

no no no

I’m not the moon I’m not the stars

no no no

I’m peanut shells at the bar

yes yes yes

I’ll probably fixate

But I will suture my old wounds

And all this mess I acknowledge

All this mess I create

[cainsbook]

the curtains torn open,

gasp at the bastard

who sewed them tight

he who stitches and mends

wrangles the seam ripper

like a weapon

buried in daylight

praise be the morning!

all sins purged,

he who holds the hair back

holds the thread

like a penance

a daybreak draft

forged from moonlight

deleted by daylight