the love of

We were pendulums for a while, only I was ready to fall through the floor.
Your ears swallowed cemetery soil into their pouting mouths as usual and
I don't know what the top of my lungs has to do with screaming but
They were wearing steel wool sweaters in August.
I was lost in a cornfield, except there was no sun and even the wind hurt the surface of my skin.
Familiarity flushed out with all the color in the sky when the air chilled considerably.

Feelings are the only things I can hold onto.
I want to be in love, I want you to be in love, I don't even care if we love each other.
Because the only comforting words I've heard in months tell me
"It's alright, alright to see your ghost."

They say you can't see heaven from down here,
and i hate to be a poet
But I see a black coat thrown over the shoulders of the cold world
and the intensity of its love poked holes in the fabric
Though your arms are the only thing holding me together
I've never wrapped up in them
Even so, I look at those stars, knowing;
It's alright to see a ghost.

a face on the water

days inundated in each other stopped
taking medicine wasted lives whittle
down in smoke gourds of blood
hell's pomegranates throwing splashes
into broken words swearing at
a tilting ground the ceiling
goes on forever can't love
for dying alone always love
who I thought you were dead
knives peeling away the fabric
of nothing is ever so simple as
the hardest things to do

high art

Subsisting on smoke shrouds afloat in
black and white films
Adorning pasty white breasts and glaring nipples

Breathing in cubist paintings and
holding that breath
Adjoining claws to lacquered

Wax masterpieces broken feces shredded
beating/ beehive full of
Nasty psychopathic mirage-stakes

Couldn't be higher;
tension-rising from right to left,
A train plows through the never was

Preordained slingshot sounds
off clockwork tongues and
Chutes an apple off her head

Exhaling smoke shrouds gloom tossed
inabucketofliversagreenedcoppercoin
That's fucking hilarious/

"Walls of sound"
,I'm hungry,
said the meal on the plate spinning
Lights spinning, over exposure
,my whole life,

Puppets hanging down, woodwinds pointing up
Legs dangling, string ran around
Flat and wind pressed smoke shrouds,
laughing laughing

found chesnut

I,M BILL CHESNUT
SURVIVD DARN NEAR EVERYTHING IN LIFE ,
BURNED A HOLE IN MY HEAD
STILL HAVE A CAVITY THERE
TWO YEARS LATTER I FELL SIX FEET AND LANDED ON MY HEAD
MY SISTER HIT ME IN THE HEAD WITH A HOE
A CYCLONE HIT OUR HOME
I HAD PNEUMONIA & TYPHOID FEVER AT THE SAME TIME

MOM,S PRAYERS AND JESUS BOTH WENT BAT FOR ME AND I CAME OUT OF IT

I WAS THROWN SEVERAL TIMES FROM LIVE STOCK
ACROSS COUNTRY MULES AND WHEN WE GOT APP

I WAS RUNNED OVER BY WAR TANK,S

I WAS IN SEVERAL EARTH QUAKES
34 MONTH,S IN THE MILITARY
BOXED IN THE RING AND I WAS NEVER KNOCKED DOWN
,ME AND A EXPERT JUDO INSTRUCTED CHAMP PUT ON A SHOW AND I WON
I COULD PUT 150 POUND,S OVER MY HEAD,WITH ONE HAND

15 CAR AND TRUCK WRECK,S
SHOT AT SEVERAL TIMES KY STATE POLICE

I WAS A FIREMAN FIRE,S ARE A BAD THING ALSO

MISSING BODIES I WAS THE CHARMNOF THE BOARD

MY DAD DROVE THE WAGON INTO 5 & 6 FEET OF WATER THE WAGON BED TRYINY TO FLOAT AWAY BUT HE GOT US THROUGH IT, OK,WE HAD HORSES WEIGHED 1500 LB,S AND I COULD LIFT THEIR FRONT OF THEM OFF THE GROUND

IN JR HIGH SCHOOL I WON THREE SPELLING B,S

I HAD A STROKE AND A FOUR BYPASS AND EACH SIDE OF MY NECK OPERATED ON,
ARTERY,S I ALSO HAD MY ESOPHAGUS WORKED ON

NEARLY DROWNED

I,M DOING PRETTY GOOD

I APPRPVE THIS MESSAGE

I,M BILL CHESNUT

mimicking and flarf

ghazal

Knave grasping at a cold, soldered dream
Inside out-sideswiped by thickets of one dream

Chains dragging a lake across a twisted face
A smiling wound, a deeper dream

Moribund salt slick-down paternoster
Chains dragging down a twisted dream

Graves littered with used condoms in October
Bony hands lustily tugging skirts, sweet dream

Picaresque risks of pikes penetrating ribs
Skeletons wrapped up in crosses, dreamless

lawn jury

Flutter those colors, Greg Penders,
[a] Bird Falls Near Chinese Garbage
and-the-saxophone-breaks-and

knocked Down By Law, God is God,
-Shake that gun, lounge lizard
"It is a river to me,"
as tears of Lyme

fuck, I skip, I skip on down
to the bridges of Minneapolis
in my
head
stroke, lift, dab
dabble
...scares me

fruit unraveling stars

There is a fruit unraveling stars and light
In the putrefaction of pitted sores.
While the streets and trees curl up at night,

A blind woman wails into sheets of white
While on her branch of open doors.
There is a fruit unraveling stars and light...

In toes, blades of grass of awful blight,
A broken sand from empty glass pours,
While the streets and trees curl up at night;

Hairs whispering lamentations and delight,
Emanating from the chaste head in scores -
There is a fruit unraveling stars and light,

And she plucks it from her sight,
Distracted. Flower stems, a bondage of moors -
While the streets and trees curl up at night -

She's tied down by a lack of foresight,
Rights, and the misleading heads of boars.
There is a fruit unraveling stars and light,
While the streets and trees curl up at night.

dust

going around in circles
fascinated with the metalanguage of self-reference
and jejune metapoetry
I can't take you out of the
not even thinking of you or
whatever cult you show up in dreams
and quotes
I need footnotes
Can I believe them?
I'll confess, I don't believe in art.
precocious checks and balances negate each other

wet black bow down, one by one on the el,
wrinkled drapes on metacarpals
on rails, waiting for the weight to bring dust
back to dust
i tack it on

i bring dust back to dust