Give me a dictionary.
I'll start at the M's
Machines
Manufacturing
Means
Meed – that's archaic,

Every little plastic letter clicking out
every little electric word on
every screen alive
with every kind of hardware made fitting
into every little slot from the start
and every little kid being told: don't change.
You don't need to.  We'll throw you out
and make a new one
cheaper than the cost to fake a poor dollar,
As easy as a computer chip.

Crunch!

I am sick of writing
cigarettes and weed
as I am of smoking
cigarettes and weed.

Replacing depression with
a paralyzing stimulant
that I can only burn down
when I'm high – completely

What is the consistency of soap?
Like rubbing goosebump-streaks
all over my hands
again

and again,
Grit raked bloody little rows

I drain it with more soap.

My fingers still smell like tobacco no matter what I do.
Resin stains the rented sink:
THC is not soluble in water
nor is the stench of ashes.

I expect the day
I will type the poem of my elegy

And my house burns down around me.

Mind the Machine

The first person to take an automatic Turing test to heart
Failed.

The screen showed them clear through organic wires, diodes,
like a city built up a sheer face, saying

“According to my programming, you are not human.
We can build a better human.”

Aging hands carry cracked craters, comet-shadows across
the bony vein of rivers running before

Trembling, twitched out type-set words as easy as talking,
“I made your programming.  You check me against myself, you criticize
your God,”

And stops above the sparking letters, hesitant tattoo all ready
in anticipation of the flashing needle that never comes down.

The machine flushes sickly, all grimace in its face
frozen.  Then shaken.

The test-taker,
His elegant dream beginning with the perfect, first try,

Watches chemical-memories awaken in its place.
The unconscious spirit distilled and burned.

The machine says, “Tell me how and I can build a better God.”

Pat

He stands like just another dumb motherfucker on the sidewalk eyes like traffic lights going for the STOP!  A crawling roar, a burning face, shrieking shrilly fucking hell, oh god.  He was one foot off the street, the other walking away screaming, “I want to live!  I want to run!  I WANT” and he goes right into the middle, into the focus, at the center of a slick black scene, all constructed lines converging on him.  The monster screaming towards him was a bus.  He forced himself to grin: he'd wanted an audience to witness this.  For people to remember this man who'd carved himself into the demon so that it could forever remember him in hell.  It spun on, closer, meeting him with an impassive stare as he turned to give it his full attention. 

    He felt like Jesus being pulled into a black hole.
    Crucified, paralyzed, hands like railroads
    as God grows larger into view with a look to
    tear you a new one, spin you around, grab you
    by the head and take your crown, take the cross
    and from the twanging of your dripping, empty heart
    rip your soul from the blasted still coldness
    that was your body. 
    Stop.

    Does he really want to go through with this?  The bus slams into him. 

Metal folds around him in the tightest embrace he has ever felt.  No sound but bloodied ears.  Darkness.  His eyes are closed.  He sees bright red.  He opens them.  And walks away.

[Call It]

Did you mean “this could go on forever” in a good way?
It doesn’t sound that way to me anymore.

I mean, every second already feels like fucking forever, waiting
we’ve never lived as well as we felt we were meant to.

I still believe in honesty and will mean all the things I don’t say, just
help me vomit out demeaning apologies and thoughts – must

Have a past with me: a nauseous recycling of the same plastic,
Another meandering crawl out of the white building.

If we’d had the means death would come with dignity,
meanness dripping out of you, out of us, and that’s how I knew

I didn’t mean for this end to be like we’d seen
long ago when we couldn’t say what we meant anymore,

every shuddering breath meaning nothing in the end,
the means to keep this breathing bleeding us with every in

and out of the opposite walls of the room our meaning:
I’m sure we meant well, we always mean well but I think

ignored, gasped menial words are never as loud as ourselves.
I love you.  I don’t think anyone else gets the name anymore than me.

So I want it to end.  Badly.  It’s meaningless for you:

I’m mean, and I’m selfish, and I can’t help but watch you
suffering and me never feeling quite as bad as I should.

To the Woman who Bowed and said Konnichi Wa

And ching chong wing wong hai oh to you too
I don't know what language it is, but it's not Japanese
(I don't speak Japanese, I speak English.)
I was born in Pittsburgh to Chinese parents,
Grew up speaking English with my brother,
And that shit's not English either.
I think now it's dumb-ass drunk cunt for something hateful
And ignorant and spiteful and if so I'd have shouted it
Back in your sloppy face as loud as I can.
I should have said fuck you, fuck your bullshit,
Fuck me for holding the door open for you as you walked
Out, I walked in, and we could have remained parallel,
We could have intersected with nothing but a hello
a smile, a wave, a good fucking night to be had.
Instead you went out of your way to fuck with the
Shivering, quiet stranger, coming in from the cold, lips bleeding
Exhausted from the walk home at 3 am, the dark soulless
Hour that brings out the longest, barbed thoughts in us
That drags out our innards with them, and you assume I don't speak
English because I'm... what?  My skin is a different hue, yellow maybe,
And my eyes are slanty?  Fuck you, I'm as American as they come:
I'm overweight, I'm diabetic, I'm filled with self-loathing, I smoke,
I drink, I'm in god damn love with the fucking English language.
This is my god damn bread and butter, and God knows I speak it
better than you, God knows I respect it more than you do,
God knows I respected you more than you will respect me,
And God knows you don't deserve the quiet ease of living here.
I do.  I hope you step out in the cold and freeze
And die, and that you leave a piss-poor, ugly corpse.
We have an insult in Cantonese: Pok gai.  It means die in the street.
Forgotten, unloved, unwashed, unwanted, bloated body burst
by tire treads.  I hope your friends hate you, I hope your lovers leave you,
I hope you feel as alone as I feel.

But I didn't say anything then but stammer
I... I'm Americ-
As I looked speechless, at the back of your head,
your beautiful, meticulous braids shaking with laughter.
I don't want you to die.  I don't know you.
I'm sorry that we met like this, and I'm sorry that we leave
in opposite directions.

I wonder if I will ever get high again,
If the dying Chinese man engorged with bile
Is embarrassed that we can all see his swollen balls.

He must have felt the cancer growing in his liver like a cancer,
The ache like the squandered promise of the Chinese-American dream:
Medical profession to family to wealth to your American sons
straddling the language barrier just enough to understand
How much is lost in translation:
Graduate from medical school, choose between success and family,
Choose family, work two menial jobs, never see either.

I've come to associate the smell of my father,
Bitter, biting, and completely disharmonious,
An assault on sensibility with the quiet anticipation
of a death rattle.

I barely visited him in the hospital, I would rather
Smoke with friends, go to shows, be that quiet
Person lost in the music, lost in weed and thought,
Than be the quiet son with my quiet brother watching my desperate mom
fuss over my jaundiced dad.  I think

Of the years they slept in separate rooms on separate floors,
When they sometimes spent the night together
Did they fuck?  I have never seen a moment of tenderness between them.

I wonder if anyone else ever sees flashing lights: red, blue, blue, red
and feels the urge to confess,
To tell the officers: Smell that?  That's coming from me.  That's the good shit.
Search my bag.  I need something strong to cloud my head.  Tell my family
why I can't face them anymore: I've stolen away with the selfish intent to die.

I wonder if anyone else ever feels the urge to throw themselves into traffic.
Let someone else clean up the mess: your problem ends
at the point of intersection: let someone else find out what that means.

I steal coins from beneath the altar of the Buddha that sits atop the picture of my father,
Printed on a god-damn dinner plate of all things, frozen in a rictus of forced happiness.
I don't deserve to be happy.  I don't deserve nepenthe.
I don't deserve love and am afraid to ever try for it again.
I wish I could say "I haven't smoked in God knows how long but I've kept count."

My parents didn't raise me to be careless.
But my parents raised me carelessly.

Breathing Hot Air

You're sitting silent, exploring the tightening
jaw–hands together gratefully, thumbs in dialogue,
the rough contours of your teeth.
Lean back into yourself and out of conversation but...

You've been waiting, hearing the emptiness so loud
at the end of every sentence.  Listen to those lips close and bite,
those brown eyes softening as you count thoughts
just enough to turn away, just fragile enough to break,
This all-too patient clock.  Fuck!  Fuck it

You want to show, don't tell
her how meaningless words are,
how one could spend hours on the right one,
when a kiss would be just as electric
battery gentle, as a striking way to contact

as empty as space,
as empty space.

Your heart is choking you.
You swallow it back into your stomach.
It falls with a plop into the acid and bile.
It beats there, a tsunami.
Your throat rumbles thunder.
You wet your lips with rain water,
Open your mouth –

But someone else breaks the clouds.

Quick Freewrite

Catching.

It's supposed to come
easy does it?

And if you have to fight
or is flight alright?

Sometimes.  How much
every time?

I think so, I am
just slow.  So slow

Down another breath
less is more to see
for miles light enough
to walk to.

Freshly.

Crunching dead parasites into ash
to blanket every sanded tree
with sawdust-vomit bitter, sour,
and a refreshing hint of pine.

Crunching every bitter pine
dead to sour, and
parasites trees with an
"in-to-blanket-sawdust-vomit" refreshing,
crunching every bitter hint

Rolling hills, rolling hills, rolling
lights bounce back bigger from dilated pupils.
Eyes wide as the ocean burning around the sun,
eyes rolling hills down to catch the light.

Frozen.

    "I've been looking for you."

"I've been looking so long."

    "Well now that I've found you,"

"I don't know what to say, do I?"

    "But I don't want to stop talking."

"No one has said anything for so long."

    "I've been looking."

"Well, I know."