LOSS MACHINE
A snake swallows a tooth while dreaming of an egg.
So much
is not
god’s.
EXODUS MACHINE
Shape’s
false
amnesia.
God’s last life.
Angels unforgettably conscious.
ALCOHOL MACHINE
Death gathers info for the bomb. A baby
is the childhood
of a line break.
I have bones
in my sleep. I have babies
in yours. Pregnant
in hell
one is like
a sore
thumb
tracking
the genders
of angels. This movie
is a crier.
Time and god are both the god that swallowed time.
ATTRACTION MACHINE
A kiss trapped in a fingernail
A phobia of nothingness
My cornfields
have me burning
with others
waist down
No storytellers, no gods
Repeat
a thing
better
LONELINESS MACHINE
The pill that makes you god is made by god
There’s no
decay
machine
SKIN MACHINE
After the remaining machines
are skinned
a firecracker
fishes
for itself
on land…
It’s my last
last
idea
DECAY MACHINE
I haven’t lived here long enough to live here.
Two sisters die from drinking
the same water
but god
only pays
for twins.
Prove
that you meant
decoy
ALCOHOL MACHINE REPRISE
‘loving the dying is like tattooing the water’ – misremembered or fully remembered quote by Brian Dawson
The machine is fooled by the future into making a future. The machine is out of our hands. People watch a movie then post videos of themselves stumbling around. If the videos are sexy enough, they can buy an arm and a leg and ask my sick son about the clumsiness of god. My son bites his mother. My son scratches his mother. I don’t believe in being specific. We think our son is laughing. Our son was laughing. I google laughing and then google seizure and the poem puts every dead kid near a spraycan. God is bombmaker-on-the-moon lonely.
HOAX MACHINE
You can’t
behead
an owl.
Snakes
don’t dream.
We throw eggs at the sun
but it’s a world
of eggs. Touch
is spotlight’s
last meal
BLACK MOUSE MACHINE
for Mark Lanegan
Snow grief
and star
grief
so rarely
die
during the removal
of thunder’s
stomach
that I thought
twice
and killed
with no help
from god
a red
fly
on a blue
train
NEARNESS MACHINE
for Mark Lanegan
Ohio is prose
bruised
roadkill
and Ohio
is the tugged-at
insides
of a videocassette
and Ohio
has one
good wrist
and one
blood-shy
nose
And there are lakes
in Ohio
that dream
their fish
and the fish
still die
But it’s okay, dream
dream it’s
okay
Don’t
provoke
longing
NOTIFICATION MACHINE
nothing
finds nothing
to adore
adores
it all
BODY MACHINE
Angels choose ghosts for god. I’m lonely when you’re here and not when you’re not. For emphasis, don’t read this if you’re not my brother. If you are, don’t read this aloud. I’ve never been to a strange place. My son writes a story about a cannibal eating the mother of the antichrist. I want to fix the devil. The story goes deeper than I want it to. I drink all day. My sons are alive. My sons tell me they can be alive in their sleep. I want to test god. I give a pill to Adam and he waits for my signal. When Adam dies, he dies thinking his stomach is where it should be. My longing isn’t ready.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE VOID MACHINE
No one can dream about god. Water can’t be touched. Time makes itself into a seed that grief never plants. Death fails as a garden but not as death. Cheekbone, ransom, kneecap. I was sick for awhile and now want to love things.
HOPE MACHINE
You liked
a song
and people
died.
Art doesn't exist.
The world's
not old.
BELONGING MACHINE
God
up late
with silent
babies
FIRST MACHINE
I seashell myself into the wreckage of the angel’s elbow. Death’s memory and god’s memory are switched at birth. I lie to my mom. There’s a pill that makes me not take pills.
SECOND MACHINE
I watch movies naked and lightning tattoos god into becoming an addict.
MACHINE MACHINE
The wings didn’t grow.
My stomach
tried to help.
The back of my throat
whitened
its tender
cross.
There was a loose hammer
in the backseat
for years
before I stopped
for that hoary
bat
long nailed
to a skateboard.
The back of your mother’s head
is safe.
Heaven. Hell. We go to both.
MISSING MACHINE
for Erik, Dylan, and Faith
In a touching move, the dream stops three times for the homesick creator’s dead god. Hunger is a day of the week. In Ohio, laundromats eat nothing and disappear. Beauty calls distance from the body, but the body does all the work. Every poem about pain is long.
LISTENING MACHINE
Water
with its broken blue bones.
The most
private
newborn.
Teeth whitener
and god.
The dryer’s ribs.
HUMILIATION MACHINE
Two naked swimmers pretend to hold their breath forever. An invisible mouse distracts a stone. I delete the shroud machine. Why two? The afterlife is unbearable.
SUICIDE MACHINE
The sleepwalker’s
peaceful death
stopped
so few of us
in our tracks
that god
with a sheepish
violence
said animal
animal
animal
SHAPE MACHINE
A dead
window.
A hole
kept in a dark
minded
fly.
The school
where you held
and dropped
your first
gun.
Shy
anthills
from the no
museum.
MONDAY FEELS LIKE SUNDAY MACHINE
The future helps me die.
EARLY MACHINE
I weigh four pounds and scream like a hand. My mother dreams of a fly and my father dreams of a fly made from teeth and hair. An Ohio frog is crying over my legs. Nothing hurts, but I can’t unbring myself. Angels haze the ghost of god.
PERFECT MACHINE
Lightning’s
last
roach
near god’s
overdose
WRITING MACHINE
Thought
god
would
notice
FOREGONE MACHINE
I can be sick in two dreams at once.
Eating is a violence.
You can’t
hear the bomb
if you listen.
I die and still
god is closer
to death.
ADDICTION MACHINE
Single-use loneliness.
An arsonist’s mother
in her birthday suit
ah goodbye
to the last
of the salt.
White bruises.
OHIO ETC MACHINE
In Ohio you can choose the violence you want to see. God is a very long commercial for death. Death gets you nowhere. The slow crawling that my skin fakes keeps my ghost awake. I keep forgetting the future.
LAST OHIO MACHINE
The deer is an arsonist with bones of golden weeping. The horse is a worried god with two eyes made of salt. Ohio is the attic where my sister would name mountains after mountains no one knew of. The angel is a mistake, seen twice, like a breast or a footprint. Hell is where we pretend the devil is the oldest thing in hell. I write myself cut. Blood says the age of the blood I was born with.
FIRST OHIO MACHINE
Do not love me. Wear, suddenly, clothes. Restore on a lake of ice the groundhog to its ghost. Moan my fingerprint through a drughouse stork. Flee the young museum or the youngest that turns you on. Eventually there will be a church and your balls will drop. It’s a joke, of course. Not quite insect art. But def a tornado’s bones.
SAFE MACHINE
This uniform allows this unmarked man to call discovered those who’ve been overly printed by phantoms of touch. My word is crow and your word is bruise. Dying is not a dream but dying dreams on a beach of dust. Entry is the ghost muscle of arrival. Memory
the last joke that god told to no creature with a name. I wasn’t born, but wanted you miss me. How else. How so.
LOST CHILD MACHINE
Lost
lost child
machine
LONG MACHINE
You can take
it with you
how well
god held onto
being the oldest
thing
we remember.
Sound
loses only
its past.
Sometimes
there is nothing
sudden.
My mouth thinks a baby
has in my body
turned
to salt.
Don’t have kids
you can save.
MIRROR MACHINE
A frog forgets the size it needs to be
for god
to leave
it alone.
Your silver
absence
lives
on the skin
of white-haired
infants.
They say
over a bomb
good
bomb.
Wind and hair
grow
in the blood
of loneliness.
MANIA MACHINE
It gets passed around and we are told not to be careful with the grief-mask because if we are careful with the grief-mask the grief-mask will know.
It’s possible god is real but has no power here.
I cough blood into my blindfold. Paw after a grape. Eat the rolling loss of mom’s eye.
-
I see a face in what your face has done
GOD MACHINE
Well you can’t eat it now.
It’s not afraid.
IS MACHINE
is your body
terrified
you can be
on tv
moaning
in a bug suit
then attend
the big
bug suit
burning
of the year
things were made
by god
FOOTAGE MACHINE
no matter
the hurt
I do not
deepen
there is
one ghost
that pretended
to dream
and in
that dream
we ate
so slowly
that we slowly
invented
sleep
god isn’t
here
to know
we’re here
NOT EVERYWHERE MACHINE
Grief redirects the simulation.
Old
heavens.
DISTANCE MACHINE
as both
we thought it said
performance poverty
also
all those years
I was kind
I was tired
YEAR OF THE YEAR MACHINE
Six months without seeing a spider, Eight dreams where I am strangled in the same house. Transition isn’t the right word, but it is exact. Pain isn’t pain until it wants children. Suicide is god learning to walk. Every bomb is imperfect. The wrong people live under brevity’s brief star. I love my body but at some point I am sold on soap. Look fucker. The human body is a paused magic. My son is dying and what matters is that three angels livestream surgery techniques from inside a tattoo shop vandalized by proverbs. There are stories you’ll have to tell death. Practice on wildlife.
MIDWESTERN MACHINE
Desperation catches a mouse that’s never moved.
Eyes
die
in open
space.
If your body is the body it came in
fuck
off. Nothing
changes my life.
PROGNOSIS MACHINE
Distance in its little house
longer
than expected
RESTRAINT MACHINE
Time starts in the brain
where it doesn’t
pass.
I warn god
of the images
you’re about
to see.
Ohio
is part
gasp.
In the dream, my son’s foot
comes off
with his sock.
We keep him clothed.
Grieve theft.
VEIN MACHINE
touch
has to be kind
twice
or else
nothing happens
to an earache
idk
pill
in a pawn shop
I’ve
all day
NOSTALGIA MACHINE
It’s over.
God
gets a message
from god.
DYING BOY MACHINE
Gone
is the food
I imagined
for your brother’s
hallucinations.
Adam is body, Eve is time.
Animals tell god everything.
All the future
in the world
is in
the world.
MALE GUT MACHINE
It’s not hungry.
I’m allowed to smoke.
I’m losing
weight
for two.
The rabbit of the void
and the rabbit
of the abyss
compare
dark
starvations.
The body doesn’t want what it wants.
I eat
and quit.
And that’s my life.
WRONG MACHINE
I came
to be noticed
but then
I was born
Seashells
dream
of milk
WRONG AFTERLIFE MACHINE
I do a search for images of babies born without ribs and I don’t see what I want. An article scares me in 1983. Saying that thirst is hunger’s blue ghost is the same as wanting thunderstorm to be a strong password. I’m not on fire but my son is sick all the time. In my nightmare of plenty, sea creatures for the skinning of god pretend they’ve kept god young. A dead angel weighs more the more the news of its death is shared. Is this a love song? Sexting in the sex shop, no two phones can cry like me. Vexations pin the ghost spot where you cloned a sighing bee. Touch touches its exile and my stomach slurs like speech. Positionless you dial theft bereft of any thief. Yes and no. Yes and no. The angel is dead. Dead over here.
NO CONTACT MACHINE
The children pro-lone their longliness.
I wash my son
Write whatever
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SIMPLE GOD EXITS CHILDHOOD
Lightning and earthquake feuding in an untouched doom where two angels, birthmark and bitemark, still dream of killing their tattooed sons.
I know this place. Place is a bomb that other bombs find.
~
The tattooed sons are in love. Son bitemark doesn’t have a tongue; birthmark does all the ironing. Their dead child speaks to them through a fishhook that is always hot.
~
Faith is an eating disorder. Mothers faint in threes.
I teach my brothers to suck in their stomachs and a junkyard refrigerator becomes our clock. We smell like a dead child. We smell blank. We search online for images of hands and for the word missingness. Flies made of wind and glass show us to our food.
Our eyes go without.
~
Our invaders had no language. Your mother was suicidal until she told you how moved she was by her own birth. The needle had its moment of recognition. A fetus opened its mouth in a paint can.
Replacement can be a city. But here it’s a form destroyed for being described.
~
So many dead bodies, and no one has died.
City of the predicted present.
The sons count hoofprints left on a whale.
~
Under the moon of a flat earth, they’re putting pills in baseballs. We’ve our choice of police siren. My Ohio horse could be your Ohio deer. We could be resurrected more than once to identify a child’s body. There is a language image does not know. Words sound different in hell.
~
I hate this city and its two sold houses. Every third angel is just a baby eating paper and being healthy for too long. Pain has a doorbell that turns blue when touched and another that turns blue when not. The last time you had sex this caterpillar had a ribcage. I don't always die. Sleep is the ghost of waiting.
~
Image is nothing more than the memory that our destroyers strip to.
I had an animal
that was naked
in dog years.
Bitemark speaks birthmark.
Keep amnesia young.
~
Ask
the dark
the outside
gets nothing
Mad about bread
I broke
my birthmark
There was no bomb
A paper doll was shopping online
for a free
spider’s web
Our perfect blood perfect
bomb
weather
~
Bats lose their teeth over sister bitemark.
Blue
here and there
skips
an apple. The bird
can’t get out
of the lake.
~
A thunderstorm turns on the microwave. We call it fixed and then listen all night to the bird in the broken dryer. We don’t blink for a year after a hand gets caught in a hand. We know it’s been a month since angel was on day two of having a ghost. Beyond that, the neighbor’s baby chooses one television over another. I can’t remember who I want to stop looking like.
~
Birthmark and bitemark go as footprints into the dream of an Ohio bullet-hole. I want sisters but none of them remember being born. Sometimes when I turn off the oven
tooth and pill have the same ghost.
I can’t say who death thinks it is. A swimmer distracted by water.
~
I drop my mother’s cup of fake blood as my father tries to find the movie scene that will give him his age. My thumb breaks in a past death. The mumbling of its break speaks a moral thing to the smallest body ever to be vividly isolated. I am hearing all of this through an eggshell that mom says belongs to the angel best known for keeping quiet about skin. Under my brother’s shirt there crawls a wasp that smells like god. None of the blood can be saved.
~
A ballerina bites my ear. I play dead but am not recognized doing so on land by a swimmer. I started writing because people didn’t watch the movies I recommended. Being kind to your children won’t work. Give god hair. Tell god it’s human for tattoo. A ballerina bites my ear because a ballerina cannot scream. In every Eden, a set of false teeth.
~
Real teeth, too, in Eden. I skip a rock and know it. Overhear with you how that baby isn’t going to shoot itself. Also overhear how terrible people often go to the bathroom more. Boy alone holds a dead rabbit over a junkyard toilet. Girl alone thinks it’s about to be alive. They’ll share almost nothing. A quick birth in a bitten place.
~
I speak the names of my brothers into the book of bitemarks. I have more arms and they more muscles and they more issues with their legs. I am so poor that my work does all the work. My tongue does nothing. It’s not possible to be obsessed with sex. With death. You’re born with a mask that no one saves. Everything makes god sick. Stop being alone.
~
I can’t imagine
knowing
my kids
are alive.
Ask the angel of birthmarks
if god
is cruel.
kingsoftrain 
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