blastedgoat

Feet pound erratically on uneven stairs that I take at top speed, flashing a jagged key, twisting an oval knob, heart racing past a pile of summer shoes. I bolt the door behind me. This reminds me of a recurring dream I had when my window overlooked Broadway and the train tracks. The creature was snarling with black matted fur and cold eyes. I pushed my brother inside and saw it going for my mother. Her foot caught on a stair and she fell forward. Someone inside slammed and locked the door. I stared through glass and screen. I saw my mother’s eye disappear down the dog’s throat. I tried to scream and move. I tried to shake the bed. I saw the ceiling and heard a familiar voice.

The wooden floor is hard against my head. Colored lights
crawl across the wall warping in the cob-webbed corners.
In the next room ending credits play. The babysitter opens
the screen door. I hear my mother’s voice but not
what she says. I’m pretending to be asleep.

pomegranate thoughts drip from

my mouth to the ears of a provolone-ly

moon-faced man with gaping

wisdom-tooth-sized-cavities

(with roots deep in impracticalities)

like the inevitable nature of  sleep,

and dreams. my pillow sours, a flushed

cheek turns cool wondering at the thing

(the monster lurking near the drinking

glass) a tinge of a dream that singed a lash

as it fluttered fully open…

i slid in the mud–voices on t.v. floated out the window, my owww

an unnoticed howel to the hungry hangnail-moon.

AIM yrs l8ter: OMG WTF EVER HAPPENED 2 BRIAN HALL?

but that night broken glass was embedded in my foot. a long deep cut,

bloody foot gushing on wet blades of grass…he chased me

around the house in circles, we rode out bikes with0ut touching handlebars.

we picked up broken window-shield glass, pretending the shards were priceless diamonds.

we pulled hairs from giant green men, single strands at a time or in chunks connected to roots

and dirt. once i broke a branch off a tiny tree his dad had just planted, i grabbed it

and put my full 60lbs into a swing, landing hand in hand with wrinkled leaf and bending limb.

i am envious of the lens that saw him moments before he died–

he smiled. kids rolled down hills, their screams were the things of dreams…

i tumble and feel wet grass, growing around his gravestone, a place that marks

the letter sealed inside. words eaten long ago by worms–scorched on a sidewalk,

split in half for the world to see what’s inside him and inside me.

nothing feels right

until i watch this tape.

i can’t be sure how many times i have been half expecting to see him

turn a corner.

instead he floats further down river…

i never saw him, i wasn’t there when they pulled him from underneath a bridge

after days of searching and seeing dated photographs

on the channel 7 news. i didn’t see his smile, we never kissed at all…

a picture someone gave me after your funeral makes my fiance jealous,

jealous of bones and a seven-year-old-conversation late in to the night

one summer i spent the night at home alone.

feeling like a fish

with a skeleton grin

smelly and wise,

many rivers i’ve swam

hair tangles in wet knots

around my bony spine,

i hate dead socket eyes

staring at me-but

in the mirror

they’re mine…

trees bend and wave, flowers remind me of running

through bushes with purple bunches, floral and lush until

the snap–a swing-set unmovable-cemented haphazardly

in the backyard with all its knobby trees and rotten leaves.

apple-core eyes are smokey and coiling under an invisible

chain-link fence for dogs, cutting the bandit’s neck staining

bare feet like crab-apples–ghostly presence in the long

shady patches of lawn… a black cat crosses a toe-headed boy.

he stretches his stubby fat fingers and yawns as a woodpile

splinters, sparks, and burns to the ground.

there were girls standing all around me in a clearing, there was a huge fire.

it felt like the ending of a film, just before the isle lights flicker on.

they sing a theme-song that haunts me in the moments between

lights-out and first light. a haze is cast over an emptying stadium.

fluttering patterns are really blackened-blue fireflies trampled by sneakers.

i keep on walking. howling at the moon, i feel close to my home tonight…

lying still in the morning before the other girls wake up,

i stair at a sleeping friend, admire her freckled nose.

she remains unaware that, while spending summers

sharing rooms with me most mornings were spent exactly like this…

locked in a fog of confusing boundaries between

your hairbrush

my comforter

your perfume

my shoes

your diary

my stuffed animals…

that is the lie my friends, i could never lie to you…

most of you don’t even care that i talk the way i do

or that i write the words i write for you. if you knew

how i stress each letter, that i stress over every line

maybe you wouldn’t just walk or click on by.

i am in the mood for talking nonsense,

which is a wonderful sense to have.

i always used to write about my day

but the only one who ever read about it

is no longer my best friend. he has a little wife,

i was invited to the wedding. it was strange,

his fiance has celiacs  just like my ex-fiance,

but he never sticks to his diet.

i know too many people in this town

but i don’t recognize any of it at all,

its all totally different now.

i drove by my old house today,

the house i lived in when i was six.

it was tiny and grimy, just like i remembered.

i only remember moments my mom took pictures of…

and maybe a bad dream, looking over at the bars

of my brother’s crib and asking one of dad’s friends

(i think it was brad) to draw a star for a school assignment.

i remember cutting my hair at the base of my neck,

listening to the neighbor boy who liked to swear,

kissing my dog on the mouth in the yard,

bits and pieces of a swing set, and climbing trees

with a friend who oddly enough i don’t remember at all.

all these things happened when i was six

before we started and ended our life together

as a family in a new house, a big house,

a house most people know by sight if they

had ever driven down Broadway.

i used to be so proud as i squinted in the distance,

“look you can see our house from here.”

i used to look in the side-view mirror or my mother’s

beat up blue pickup truck pretending i was the star of all

my own movies that played only in my head.

each new “home” was just another set…
another setting for my next book…

it’s shit-tastic remembering all these things,

what have i lost? what was i worrying about

when i was six and when did all these things became

the past? what will today be when tomorrow

is long-fucking gone? will i ever be an old woman

shriveling in her recliner…or can i live on forever

in these moments if i am willing to write them down?

I say this, but to you it means that or worse, nothing.

A tree obscures a power-line, fried potatoes tower
over trembling pieces of yellow corn. Tassels grab
clouds that rip. Contents pour, orange juice scum
lingers on the lips of a tall glass. Stringy pulp tastes
a bit like the dream I had after falling asleep to the radio:

A boy I adore lies beside me on a floral couch,
leaning in as his girlfriend watches television.
He tries to hold my hand where she can’t see
before we kiss I hear a buzz and am sucked into

another scene… I wander hallways wondering
where everyone went. I find them being served
hot meals behind open stall doors of a crumbling
elementary school bathroom: chewing in unison,
flushing between bites. It is only now that I realize
I have lost all ability to tell time. Stop. Before you fall

and break your concentration, straining for understanding,
teetering on a rickety step-stool somewhere near the Z’s…

I find myself reading this back wondering where it all went wrong…

I unholster my gun
to become my hero
and his hero
and his hero’s hero—

Pull the trigger
and write another fucking poem.