We hold them until the joy 
Runs out of their faces
And they give up 
Any notion of escape

Once broken
They walk around timidly 
Mouthing what we drill into them
Without too much stuttering

A few are more difficult
To break we defer to 
The more experienced amongst us
To show us the advanced techniques 

Of course we are constantly 
Monitored so any sign of sympathy
From us...

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Nudes

you insisted 

we’d visit your nudes

time ran out 

we got back to work 

they were something

you carried with you

snapshot thumbnails

looked very good 

I tried to impress you

with sculpture

you squealed something

like approval 

If we ever get back 

to that room 

where the atmosphere 

felt like freedom

lines curve throu...

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Comfortable

we live at the bottom 

of a shaky structure

it’s stable here 

winds are softer

sun shines 

over the clouds 

stress dissolves 

under water

if everyone's a winner 

then we're losers 

take off your pretensions 

get comfortable

it only hurts 

a little at first 

then you find that 

brilliant freedom 

we live outside...

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one day everyone will say
this was your best work
the images, fire
all devices worked

desperation
crept under our skin
from your mouth we heard
what we could not have dreamt

you were distraught;
violent with friends
now It all seems charming
we’ve seen other things

We think of you framed by time
the current self is a story
we don't really understand;
you're still writing

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Academia

Looking for higher ground 

None to be found

Just that rotting corpse

In the library

How you wanted fame

You'd settle for a name

Extended by letters

And small salary

Researching drinking habits 

Of that syphilis-infested idiot

You mark quality time 

With his descendants

Citing your lover's work

She won't touch you with a fork

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aw0Y9uSZ_Q

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they’ll feel overdressed 

for sure

inserting privileges 

where there aren’t any more 

a mess 

some will continue 

like they’ve always done 

in less interesting times

there’ll be those prone to act 

cosplay apocalypse 

retinues of disappointed men

shooting themselves up

as in your favorite horror movie

one will survive 

with a mixture 

of ...

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tonight

been mostly faking it

the few times I’ve been real

I think you know

I’m shocked 

by my own ignorance

as much as by 

the happiness of others

I hear the circulation in my ears 

look at the stars and wonder 

if I’ll have time to read 

all the books I’ve bought 

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this winter

in his life 
you search for meaning

in his life 
something is written

you couldn’t read
when he was breathing

in his absence 
you take the silence

wrapping it around you
like a childhood scarf

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The war on people

a big part of us
needs to know
when the shit comes down

a tiny part of us
had it so good
it'd kill out of boredom

an invisible part
feels like
It's not attached to the body

and would willingly
replace salvation
with stark appraisals

just to
feel
something new

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Dual Diagnoses

funding criteria stipulates 

two co-occurring conditions

efforts made to match 

couples based on algorithms

proven to yield results ranging from 

“satisfied” to “vaguely disappointed”

as an agency our mandate 

stipulates that we provide 

a “minimum baseline of well-being” 

interpreted as meaning providing:

a childhood wi...

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I become more difficult 

Is it the end of the world
Or am I having a bad day

There comes a point 
When things merge

And I just let things 
Trail off

With my beliefs
That much more tightly held

Occasionally 
Someone will come along

And validate 
Most of what I’ve said

But in general 
I become more difficult

It’s something 
I’ve grown to accept

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XXX

The exes come one by one
Bearing memories wrapped in the present

After a few drinks they insist on
Chronologies you can’t remember

Their eyes start to twitch as you 
Attempt to stoke dying embers

To the night they proclaim
Their judgements you were

An asshole and 
They’ll never forgive it

And then you make out 
With razor blades between your teeth

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The distant sofa

Since you’ve left
Everything’s wet

I hold my breath
As the door swings open

I swim to the fridge
Pulling the spaghetti off my chest

I pretend to have an appetite 
Downing my portion

Making it 
To the distant sofa

Hyperventilating 
Cousteau drama

I tell myself I’ll be rescued soon
Then drown in the bedroom

Rescued by an alarm
And a government job

...

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Prayers

Goddess of Monday hiding my keys
rearranging all my memories

got me counting reasons I work 
searching for quarters in a drawer

tease me with sex 
tease me with vacations 

I still can’t stand 
your fluorescence

I’ll be forever under your spell
I’ll never retire with this pension plan

you’ve got me running you’ve got me 
panting for the bx12

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https://open.spotify.com/artist/4ZT9TQV3ReO7WxL3ZkQVri

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better

everything you 

use 

eat throw away 

neglect

treat 

decide 

encounter

try 

bother 

are you better for it

does it make you 

last longer 

help more people

make someone feel 

safer

happier

beautiful 

shouldn’t that

be the measure

shouldn’t that

be what we’re all after

I look at how much 

I t...

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The Remission

At the financial district mixer 

Where the white women 

In line discuss how they 

Never have sex on the 

Second date despite

The cost of the meal 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t

Spend my evening talking

To the Dominican hustler

About end of the world 

Scenarios in Costa Rica

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When do you think you are? 

on the bed eyes on ceiling 

accountant in head flips a coin for morning 

heartbeat synchs to a bus schedule 

desires like cream in the styrofoam 

recite the mantra check the window 

porn on the phone overdraft notices 

she suggests another vacation 

a sickday dream of emigration

lunch feels a way 

to dreams clouding...

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impulse control

do you read me

impulse control

we’re going down

surrounded by sirens 

the entire mission's lost

schooled against temptation 

fighting an invisible enemy

bigger than our desires

we bow down at her feet

she’s the night 

we submit our tiny lives

for that feeling 

of certainty 

we haven’t been able to fin...

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the middle school history teacher 

feels like she’s losing her mind 

covering the state test in roomsfull

of kids who can’t see why 

we have to speak english

the president’s insane 

what’s the point of all these

meaningless names and dates

the middle school history teacher’s 

got two of her own two hours away

in the middle class suburb inherited

from the ...

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slow-motion collision

glimpse of you in the distance

signs warning of traffic conditions

swerving to avoid pedestrians

glasses hooked on the tail fin  

bodies with velocity taken

pulling at it seams like we’re children

without a seat inspection

we’re meat for vultures circling

arms reach out to trace

for something to embrace

mouths start to shake

...

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short-range missive

As the environmental
economic political
continue to deteriorate 
I mysteriously find
what I need
to maintain my emotional
stability available to me
direct with free
two-day shipping

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I don’t know what sex is

I watch the dogs jump

Their pupils tiny points

Students carve

Fertility signs on desks

Pensioners regret

Things that went unsaid

Athletes stretch

Before a competition

But I don’t know what sex is

My mind goes blank

Before running adolescent fixations

Like a GIF loop 

With strange proportions

You call my name

Like ...

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Recent Hits

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We're not here to talk
About love
Only extinction
How poetry
Makes sense of
Banalities
And seals
Our frustrations
In stasis
Validating our
Domestic arrangements
Humming along
To this beautiful
Ecocide we fit in
We’re not here
For our comfort

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they're a bunch of lazy assholes

quality control is low

they sleep on the day shift

waiting for inspiration to hit

a man pulls on a wire

and a pen descends on a line

the minimum is a page a day

now they're striking for lower wages

they say the poverty 

helps the soul

keeps their patrons 

on a roll

one guy worked a triple shift

th...

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seducing you with arrogance

walking backwards into plans

swallowing you with a laugh

here comes the leaving man

has that something else 

you just don’t understand

representing everything you hate 

that’s what draws you in 

curiosity mixed with disgust 

cracks the recipe when it’s heated up 

fatalism with a dark hand

blood and muscle un...

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Placeholder

remembering when things were great 

thanking heavens pinching yourself 

subsequent times haven't added up 

at least you've got a reference for what you lost

placeholder on the table 

dog ear in the novel

post-it on the refrigerator 

late night moan of lost love

much as you feel you can go back

each time you escape into a different ...

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as we’re burning things down to a crisp

I gotta tell you you look fantastic

vacuuming up the last chip 

wondering what you’re doing this weekend 

we could go watch the fireworks

spread all over the entire world 

arrive late to this horror show 

that started many millennia ago 

go ride the last elephant 

watch the tides rise until 

dive th...

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I look for my father in the eyes of men 

sometimes I see him everywhere

sometimes he’s hidden

behind decisions 

I don’t fully understand 

even as an adult

I feel myself move like my father

touching my belly and smiling

at people for no reason

just passing on the memetic energy 

my mother’s absence remains however 

a tear in the fa...

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We climbed together
Higher and higher 
Until the air was too thin

For heavy things
Like clothes
Attitudes and moods 

And when we reached 
The top we were
Surprised to find

Nothing
Not a drop of 
Moisture 

Both of us swallowed
By a gigantic
Whole

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Dark Matters

You just want to 
make love to Trump and May 

to take them 
into your arms

And persuade them 
there’s something better

It’s been a long struggle 
fruitless mostly

the darker part of you considers 
if things wouldn’t truly be better 

if you stared into 
the apocalypse

And met it with the presence
of a tiny death 

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closeted struggle

in the war against stuff 

we’ve lost a lot of ground 

(the poetry anthology 

doesn’t count)

three boxes came yesterday 

with nowhere to go 

that was six square feet 

excluding the cardboard

your retail therapy 

has been put on hold 

after six consecutive trips 

to the large parcel window

the post office all...

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heart don’t learn 

it can’t grow back
one dumb animal 

threatening attack

it’s slash and burn 

obvious traps
baiting mouths

tying hands

living without learning 

earning while burning 

telling ourselves

they’re losers and winners 

crying for mothers 

we’re false beginners

play things over

slow things down 

can’t get over the shock

the shock o...

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been given the wrong script
flipped to the wrong page

I’d never say those things 
situations don’t play that way

course I’m a professional
do the work I get paid

some people consider it art
more than some I’d say

but I don’t play monsters
must be a mistake 

have a heroic profile
I’m known in the biz

I don’t play monsters 
are you sure this is right

I’d like to thin...

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This next thing

I keep squeezing the app
Waiting for the world to change

Like worry beads or rosaries
I put the pressure right there

I run my thumb
Over the writers’ names

Maybe a comma will budge
And that will be the start of things

I tell myself 
I have some agency left 

I make the white man flash
when I cross the street

I console myself 
I can’t be so lonely

Imagi...

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it’s not ponies and unicorns in that moment 

she enters his dual screens

it’s the smell of months of meals in front of the tv

thirty years ago on a school trip to Italy 

nicknames thrown from dead uncles

the sound of the go-betweens

all cut under the blade of her life 

she could ponder the silence

at least until she sees him again

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I hate them 

as much as I 

resemble them

when I face them 

I make inferences 

about shining packages

micro-aggressions

suggesting mid-life 

disappointments

expectations

selective 

compassions

we take it out 

on ourselves

in inner conversations

until hostilities 

bend into furtive 

acts of public charity 

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https://dancingaboutarchitecture.info/2018/09/23/transportation-bob-gaulke-reviewed-by-dave-franklin/

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go hire a team of liars 

what we have to tell ourselves

and tell others and then repeat

for years 

just to get up to make a living 

that’s a funny phrase 

when you think about 

how much of everything 

we do isn’t much helping 

anything grow naturally 

lying is hard work 

and leads to other 

health issues 

conditions masked

and unmasked

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in the rush of senses
heat of moments
in young ambitions
on wheels of commerce

fleets of feeling
ping our sonar
pushing emotions
beyond borders  

into the happiness of others
what we discover
in looks of couples
in historical novels

in the happiness of others
pressing our desires
into shapes
we struggle to handle 

other people 
invade our dreaming
with hands and mout...

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love lies in pieces

half of it at home

big part with you

rest, out the door 

landing on billboard posters

taken with exhaust

of a fleet distribution network

interstate trailer trucks

particles on people I work with

particles with strangers in pain

molecules on pornography

quarks within the city state

what's the use of gathering it 

pu...

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he never had nervous ticks; 

he wasn’t Zizek

lately he’d been getting

into the habit of choking himself

it wasn’t a fetish; that he’d checked

rather it came after

a series of bodily warnings

that he was coming out of himself

he started pruning hairs 

in strange places 

he started to sweat 

on the top of his head

he had to shave now 

almost...

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live your life 

in a deep state of uncertainty 

nightly

slaughtered by a thousand

doubts lined up 

in artillery squadrons 

on the furrows 

of the brow 

hormones 

echo through the morning 

ricocheting 

through plumbing

search for survivors

won’t be called off for another eight hours

still time left

to get in and ou...

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what we crave

everything we make

what's baking us hungry 

minds can't stop eating

replayed again and again 

meals in miniature form

no need to explain  

know the taste when you taste it

somebody loved you too much

they couldn't get enough

an empty stomach

full of disappointments

three directions at once

always out to lunch

trinity screa...

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understand 

the nature of things

when everything is

flailing around your head

survival 

might depend

on a flashlight

loaf of bread 

arrogance of man 

splayed for all to see 

saints sinners flung toys 

on a sandless beach

tragedy feels

satisfying somehow

when we lose everything

but raw bleeding love

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cheap watches

we met on this poetry blog

her work needed work

mine didn’t stop her 

from telling me what to throw out

cutting adverbs

until we were throwing 

knapsacks 

against lamps 

pants against 

the glass

moments laid out 

in cheap watches

red lines against black

sensing satisfaction 

furtive at best 

when ...

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you play the game desperately

desperately is how you play it

with the luck of a beginner

and the fatalism of an expert

at any moment you could surprise us

with a brilliant move

at any moment you could quit

with an expression that stops us cold

we tell stories about you

we're telling them about ourselves

ripping a hole through our myths

you'...

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I wanna crawl into you

the world is too cruel

Into a ball into your fur

make that tick-tock stop for good

you’ve got a calm 

I could never achieve

I’ve got anxieties 

you’d never believe

they wait for me 

outside your door 

I could give you all

my energy 

you could take it

turn it into heat

burning through this life

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