"Fogland" Here is you unclean shirt With unclean money pocket In the pocket Money Pocket Here is total destiny My hot is money with air With how I till a room Unfurnished Feel led alive in my palms Here’s notice Here’s grace The astronauts are never coming We’re never coming The pocket in the green green Capital of vast mountain country Small bordering land New questions go He doesn’t member any Dreams just fog and scream Just flog and seem complete member I don’t know What I’m trying to answer but We may say After New York, we went to Baltimore To fear no eye The feastly go on with feasting Hear you unclean shirt Hear you total density Sometimes stare out a window Until nothing left fog scream Walk around card stock five days Finally no word just get on It doesn’t feel like a bomb went off It doesn’t feel like a produce chamber Splatter channeling points to cure Points to hard heard nothings in rubber shoes What ever bounces off of You get the idea We can’t see them coming Tanker ships sent into A great misunderstanding Spanked with champagne ----------------------------- "Fogland" I stare into a gigantic cat skull Nowhere seems to park exactly without a fever A fever is not the exact excuse for a meter The gigantic cat skull tells me I won’t stay here very long I tell the gigantic cat skull I will I tell it go blind a worm’s hole Go smash your beauty parasol into the sea The fever has cake bread for dirt But I grow in an alternative multiverse The plans grow more distant each time they come flying I’m smashed off a thousand tiny rocks It seems right in the fervor, the knife labeling A meter is about what happens, outside its regular I’m a bag of fluid and I eat a lot of salt My fluid is cut and shipped around; it glows Bright lights my little Suzy, sing! Bright lights my little Suzy, sing! Suzy is my ship Orange juice near midnight So very near held midnight I keep flipping through with gigantic paws And like a pony I ride so fanged, a graveyard fruit bowl Hardly do I sing without feeling a little dust handed On my knees and unseeing in a bright room glued With bright walls and no windows Just a clutter landscape and cutlery noise manufacturing Just long slide into hum that turns factory stupid All the machines launching themselves from highest window O! I could launch too! could call you sweet muffin But only if it’s real the way being tired is real, explosive Or the way one might walk into the public market with a parade strapped to chest I go on shaking like a century in damned heat I wear my sunglasses to signal the new riot begins _

"Anna Well-Mannered" Anna pounds on her walls. I am meat. I am a real meat girl. Half asleep, hears a faint knock-knocking back, hammered into her dream-Anna life. Anna sends out wantings on lanterns and birds, drowns them in ponds. Folds down her bed sheets, hands-and-knees scrubs scuffs off tiled floor. Anna says You’re welcome to the carpet, to where window meets sill. Writes Thank You on paper she stuffs down sink’s drain. Anna digs open scabs, reads trickles of blood replying. She’s asleep in the shower again. Her thoughts a frozen lake, not thawing. ----------------------------- "What’s Inside of Anna" Anna is the ground beef lining my skull, the bad milk inside my muscles. Anna’s burnt clay I throw to the river, she’s softening to silt. What even makes an Anna girl? Intestines tangled around more intestines, or words, her small supply which bloats her. Birdseed, her sifting sand, compactness/constipation. She bulges when we tip her head back, funnel down her throat. If air, she deflates, she slouches. The beetles pull her this way and that. She chokes down what she wants to shape herself around, she swallows what I give her. ----------------------------- "Anna Does the Gardening" I’m sorry I’ve made her sick again. Will leave her tending to the flowerbeds. Send bees to slip through her humid greenhouse hair. Clouds refuse to shake their weight loose on her Anna-home. She’s puddled vomit in the beansprouts, slumps and sleeps herself against the cabbage. Open mouth to dirt. Sylys pulls the rain down, covers her in arms and hands, in pony hair. What musky earth, bat fur and moth smell. Chicken plucked and boiling. Through her overheating, hears Someone-Sylys saying plain, I love you, your nose and finger bones. Each nightmare that ghosts inside you, Anna, you can overthrow, you know? _

"Miserere #19" Don’t you worry about me I’ve laid down in the grass and thought about shit I have wretched up the worm a time or so, if I may say I have melted into carpets My head in my hands like the cover to that Creed album I’ve been funny about it of course Some of the most fun times of my life have happened during the Denial phase It is nothing, I know, but time that tightens It is what you leave in your wake that defines you I know We’d like to believe it’s the things you’ve made but it’s just all the shit you can never go back on, I know I hereby renounce my ferocity I got you this aptitude for retention—nono, I don’t need it I bought a calico cat, I got a job I put five dollars in a jukebox today, played every song I’d shown you, went home and fucking lost it Just a bit more Depressed, Then Acceptance, says the book Just a couple more breath exercises In the beginning was the Word and The Light Not theirs, but somebody else’s In the beginning was the Word and The Light I am trying to remember what it was like I’m spending hours and hours and hours at work Getting Back You see what I’m saying about category? You see how, if the spark of light can come as a surprise, How it could just up and die just as well? Ain’t nothing down these streets for you, baby boy Ain’t nothing you could find of much use Only dastardly ruination Helpless disgust Your head on your mom’s breast A Sweet smell on the days dad would give out the belt Your pleasure there with your head jammed in the bedframe A porno you found in the snow That winter when we all got concussions Your hand shifting in the crook of your thighs The day in the closet she said, “Feel Me” I am trying to get my shit correct I am just a Bottle of volition these days And I’m sorry, Anthony, for the gum in your hair I’m sorry I lied on the Bible I didn’t know I didn’t know that it would stick like that I never knew all that about Sleep and then Death I never knew how Hate was the Daughter of Love I just thought You love a thing And then you stop Our hero was born on a Tuesday A little boy with misshapen legs He likes to skin his knees, just a little, on the asphalt He likes the color of his blood _

"Some Rules in Which to Bro By" You should, at any point in time, be able to the recite the specs of any Mercedes S-Class off the top of your head— if not, memorize the monologues of at least seven mob movies. Do not try to argue with anyone who says that Goodfellas is the best movie ever made — that’s fucking gay, bro. Do not go longer than three days without running a lawnmower over the space between your eyebrows—that’s fucking gay, bro. Never call someone’s car “sick” if he isn’t someone you’d chirp on a Friday night—that’s fucking gay, bro. Always call it chirping, not clicking, unless you actually are from Brooklyn—and if so, the fucking horse you rode in on. If your father’s from The Bronx, root for The Yankees; if your father’s from Bay Ridge, root for him to spontaneously burst into flames while working on a power box on Atlantic Avenue, because that’s the only way you’re going to convince one of those public school girls to give you a hand job. If you live amongst the brick mailboxes and M-classes of the South Shore, tell people that your father is an old-school goomba from Gravesend; if you live on the Mid-Shore, tell people that you run racks at Cue Time on New Dorp Lane, even if you are too afraid to walk past the brothers busting spades outside of the high school in the afternoon; if you live on the North Shore, tell people that Method Man showed you his penis in the bathroom of Brother’s Pizzeria. Only date girls who’ve never dated guys that have worked at Brother’s Pizzeria. If you can’t break up with your girlfriend, go away to school, and make it somewhere far, like Oneonta or Westchester. If you go away to school and you meet someone from Staten Island, pretend that no one ever taught you how to read a map. _

"a kevorkian weekend or mercy beyond the veil" hair ran quietly through fingers last saturday night as you spoke to the stranger on the telephone denying him your euthanasia hand rummaging through your closet full of needles and carbon monoxide masks you pulled out an american flag the corner a swastika where stars should be get out the oil paints creation: assisted suicide in reverse turn up the bach its time to party _

"Right There in Kansas City" My friend enters my apartment, takes off his shirt, and accuses me of being a brown recluse spider. He senses my desire to devour him in the dark of my living room. He'll shake out his clothes from now on to make sure I'm not lurking inside. "It's a hot den of iniquity in here," he says. I call it a nest. I don't believe in air conditioning. I've torn the stuffing from the couch cushions and made a bed in the corner. The light fixtures don't have bulbs. I smile to survey it, which is a mistake because of my teeth. My friend has it in his head I have fangs. My canines are long. All parts of me are long. My face has been the real joke. I went as a happy crescent moon for Halloween for many years. That was during my social phase. My medicine phase. Now I never go outside. I buy cereal on the Internet. I have a full-length mirror I pretend is a window into the neighbor's place. "Do something," I say to my reflection in the mirror. "Do me," my friend says. He's part blind from where his pet tarantula flicked irritating hairs into his eyes. They are grey and opaque as raw almond milk. He can discern shapes and make do with the fuzzed aura of a new outfit, but he never knows if his hair is saying what he wants it to say. "I want to silence my hair," he says. "Get it shorn completely. Will you do that for me?" I say I consider shearing hair an erotic act, and I won't have any involvement in it. "You used to be so horny and homosexual," he says. I tell him I found sword fighting to be a violent pursuit, and I have abhorred violence since my terrifying birth. I'm only now starting to grow into my mangled parts. My head could be the bullet God used to kill the dinosaurs. All the better for my friend. He favors unique shapes. He tries to kiss me, and I recoil out of habit, not disgust. "You don't deserve my gay rights," he says. We move to the front door frame of my apartment. My friend steps outside. He puts his shirt back on. "Let's go get wasted," he says. He has dressed to lure me. His shorts are small as they come. A scant nod to decorum in that they cover his penis but not his thighs. I'm good to stand back and admire in the shadows. My friend pulls my arms. I push my friend. He bends back at the knees. He's been standing with his legs crossed, posing as a tall vase. As he falls, the skin of his legs separates on clean and invisible perforations. The sound is a thumb sliding into an envelope and tearing. My friend's calf skin sinks down to his ankles. The colors of undergore are the same as a slice of pizza without cheese. I don't cross the threshold. I've memorized the number to Domino's. It's the only place I can think to call. I don't even pull out my phone. My friend screams. I scream. I hear the neighbor's door open, and I hear the neighbor scream. I close my door and press my eye to the peephole. I flatten my body into the pretend wood. I wish to merge with the industrial fiber. I wish it on my friend's exposed kneecaps. The neighbor calls 911 and uses gator clips to secure my friend's skin for the short term. My friend is experiencing shock. I was once shocked to learn he loved me. "If you ever tease me," he said, "about my love for you, I'll kill myself with the worst tool. Something with glitter suspended in its clear plastic handle." The skeleton out there won't say anything like that again. He'll have only two words for me. "Fuck you," he'll say from his recovery bed. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you," he'll repeat until all he can do is slowly mouth the letter F. Sometime later, when my friend is back in one piece and all is forgiven, he calls to say that the spontaneous appearance of cuts on his arms, legs, and trunk was not, as he once believed, the work of ghosts haunting his duplex. "It's a skin condition," he says, adding that he doesn't believe in ghosts anymore. He asks if I still cling to macabre fantasies. I close my eyes, and there they are--his two pale legs rolled down like socks. I say it's hard to cling to anything but. _

"Eat It by Weird Al" Written and Recorded by: Ben Latimer Editor's Note: Ben is one of my all-time closest friends in this world. I've been able to play music with him for years, and he's one of the coolest dudes I know. While he was recording this song for me, he sent me a text that said he had tracked it all and was feeling iffy about it. He asked if doing a cover would be okay. I said yes, of course, and he said he was doing "Eat it" by Weird Al. Then he sent me this song. _

"King and Captive" Written and Recorded by Wilderness Alive. Wilderness Alive is: Peyton Rodeffer, Blake Andress, and Sean Jensen. More, HERE: www.wildernessalive.com From the band: This song was written about Nai Khanom Tom. He was a Muay Boran who defeated the Burmese King's best fighters to win his freedom and return home to his country. He returned a hero. _