Franz Well, maybe I was away for a while longer, but I can write from there too. Things will never be alright, I'll always be in the shadow of what things should be, my gums bleeding, uncertainty growing in my sleeping cells. Tonight, I looked into the bread factory windows and watched the english muffins sift themselves along the conveyor belt, they wept like a river and I wept too, the bad ones fell into giant piles and lay forgotten all along the floor, late at night they flew along the tracks and siphoned into neat packages, my mom said she missed me and I said nothing, is it wrong to say she doesn't love me? long wept the hamburger buns sliding on the track, taking a drag and thinking of her, they slide like perfect arms. When will I be complete? When will I have nothing to say anymore? Instead of coming here to hopeless everything, sitting in the car and walking at the same time, doing nothing, standing still, watching it all end up no different. Going home alone and seeing the house transform to wrongness, my cells dividing over and over, ceaseless in the night they roll over each other, flooding in as I lie on the bed. They pile up and I stay the same. Skin over skin and it all rotates under the same teak stained ceiling, lying in this pool and waiting for them to recombine correctly this time, that maybe this time I'll say something right.

Train Yard I could work long hours at the train yard. When the sun went down I'd crawl over the busted up metal and stretch my mechanical bite to crush up rust and glass. When I chewed and spat it out the train yard would be bubbling with the screeching steel and it would carry alarms and florescence into the city sweeping sonar in the night air. Some days the wind would pick up, pulling the dirty trees that circled the yard. In their shimmering leaves I'd see something else reflected in the yellowed pane I'd watch it like a spector We'd all watch it sometimes, especially, when there was no moon, and only our yellow lights sending tendrils into the brush. Some days I would watch the big plastic clock above my desk big plastic hands that seem so different from the time, artificial, stiff night big, plastic face glowing on the wall, Saying to wake up.

Where the Night Ends waking here by bonfire flames rasp revolt the smoke climbs in haunting our lip pink throats fire lights your neck, crouching morning sun behind all bruised eyes in hillsides land calls out from our new center meet my eyes - the edge of glass stars tear 'round our circle black fields of starved prairie town skeletons dead weight in hot wind drive me out just drive me out leave me rotting in the road drive and drive but it's still here green of the dashboard light

A Strange Dream I've been feeling strange, I guess you could call it sick. Sometimes when I look at a window the glass seems to move like water. Other times I feel that if I go to sleep I will never wake up. I start to listen to my heart beat and it begins to feel unfamiliar. I worry that I am dying. Strange thoughts came last night, I was again confined to the bed - somehow unable to straighten the room that seemed to slide downward into a lifetime of this strange feeling. I opened my eyes and looked at the wood grain of the ceiling as I wondered when it would happen, that I would die. I thought about the Burnside Bridge then, a place I used to always walk to when I was feeling out-of-sorts, when I lived on that side of town. That seemed to do it, yes, I'll walk to the Burnside Bridge. Only a short walk down the hill and I came upon a figment, a man huddled over in the cold night, holding a loose blanket to his chest and leaning over the grass along the road. Of course I knew that I was meant to talk with him; Do you have a flashlight? No, but I can light something up for you. Yeah, these are definitely not Psilocybin. You're looking for mushrooms? (Laughs) I studied Mycology. I hand him a cigarette. The mushroom searcher stands in the road, his backpack on his hip, his face carved in deep grooves, all the while he is young, only 40. You ever find magic mushrooms out here? Here, no. Once I took a whole quart of cubensis, that was horrible. The whole ego death thing. I had that once, I took salvia, it was crazy, I thought I had become a letter. Oh salvia, yeah that stuff will mess you up. I took some once and died. Yeah, exactly - like you think you're fucking up the whole universe - No, not like that. I really died. I fell off the Burnside Bridge. The mushroom searcher asked me if I believed in God. 'It's half and half' I said. I don't believe in Free Will. I just do what matters to me now. I just go where I want. I screwed my whole life up, selling dope on Couch - getting shot up. But I value myself now, I like myself. It's strange you said the Burnside Bridge, I'm headed there right now. That's a long walk, you'll screw your feet up. It's okay, I probably won't make it. I have a bus pass if you want, the bus driver is a nice guy - thought I was sleeping on the streets just because I had this - I'm actually headed somewhere right now though. It's okay, I'm alright to walk. Take care of yourself. I hope to see you around. I continued down the road, then, make it to the train yards, maybe that will be my ending? The machinery and the many colored boxcars are still and silent, only the sterile lights above the yard seem to roam along the ground. The ground below the overpass is a great mud puddle, reflecting my face back to me. I keep going, until the walk has gone on much too long. At some point, long too far, I begin walking back. My feet are killing me and I see raccoons playing in the tree on Divison. I feverishly make my way up the last hill. The sky is becoming light beyond the buildings.

December The subway smells like blood and oranges I'm at my reflection again This month, I couldn't look away as I watched my fear burrowing and making a nest beneath the skin December, I crept out the door each night only the cats on the balconies saw as my body began to pull apart moving through strands of metal coils that sounded just like windchimes I couldn't help it when each minute came unlatched and the hours became like windows hanging loose on the wind

The city was bathed in rain last night draining sickness from my street streetlights rose in red waters weaving threaded sheets motioning seas of droplets fish glistening in membrane remind my skin of another time, move me back to another rain. back against the cool stone steps the weary light on every night mother willowed in the moonlit house left hollow in the windchimes father in the moldy bedroom green light flowing down his side I felt their movements through the walls, as the mist filled up our sky.

I asked if you believed in free will when I already knew the answer I am living in the space between the walls, the cold black shadow covering every room the gap, where I am always beating the same way in as out. Four years ago, I took a psychedelic and for the first time I could not numb the landscape with words in the picture when I forgot the horizon in the space I did not have time to imagine I saw the walls and walls and walls. Yesterday, in the place I knew I'd be the girl kissed me so that I did not feel her lift my earring from my unpierced ear a second more and she held it dangling offering it - like treasure in the fog and I realized why I put it there. Yesterday, or 10 years ago, when my mother crawled towards me on the floor head limp in the ecstasy of escape arching, eyes wide in the expanse I saw her mind splayed open in fibers saw that she was no more real than me. Next time I see you, or last time I saw you, I'll keep you on a string tied around the way out for I'd like to stay where I know you're never really here and never really gone.

Grow Up And Blow Away Secretly, in the quiet after a meal when the clock strikes and the house grows larger and quicker into the collapse of night splayed on the mattress, the lights from childhood, like altar candles in the dark. The sea of office windows form the rising sun, shapes and colors standing harsh and barren, high purple accelerating on blocks of shadow, the afternoon reprieve, where I hopped the fence with dad, to find the rotting railway car fields matted and melted, dead mice in the grass. The ones who made it- placing themselves in cracking pastel balconies smoking in the morning, they are not found waking and forgetting, vision fraying at the edges looking out at the horizon and seeing only empty color street lights fading forever into that great loneliness they are cruel, they are serene. And now I am there, and how rare and how excruciating to find it exactly as I hoped.

I saw something I never told you the night I drove to get you. You were waiting for me, curled up on the couch, lying next to your mom. She asked you where I was, at that point I had just crossed out of Idaho, 400 miles to Bozeman. You weren't worried, I'd called you before I left, you knew I'd really come. I can't remember most of that drive. I was so different then, pushing myself where I should not have been pressing myself into you. I never thought about why I was going. Just started driving one morning because I said I would. Nobody but you and your mom knew where I was that day. I felt like a ghost, slipping unnoticed down the highway. Of course I thought about you, about how we might fix this, about if I really loved you. I just stopped once, to get gas late at night. A few minutes down a back road and I found a gas station. Among the fields, set back from the road, ring of dark trees, light seeping into the dark country. There were just two pumps lit by a single orange bulb between them. It seemed like a dream I'd had. My car caught in the sprawling body of Montana night. Something I'd wanted was here, a thought realized. There was no sound, no wind, just the low growl of the highway in the distance. The pump took my card and spit it back out, I fumbled with the nozzle and stood against the pump, frigid, I found our constellation. 'ARE YOU SURE' scratched in the gas pump screen. the words continued, moving out of the screen and on to the metal, bending down and out of sight. 'YOU ARE REALLY HERE' I touched the scratches and felt the frozen sharp edge That's when I heard breathing, animal, and high pitched scraping on the asphalt. I turned and saw his eyes reflecting the light of the gas pump in two faint orbs, his head down, his body in shadow. the elk shrouded in blood and strange ornaments, tendrils hanging where they should not be. Antlers had formed to the first tine but then formed down, falling back and to the ground, the tines reaching out in strange branches. The beam curled like a snail shell, turned back at the ends and splitting to form the crown, three tines on one side and two on the other. They had grown inwards. The five tips piercing through the skin, dissappearing into bloody sockets that cut into his cheek, his neck. He was softly turning his head and rubbing the bottom of the antler into the asphalt, limply starting as the skin moved around the tines, they did not dislodge. His breathing labored. He scraped at the ground with his hooves and murmured, the antlers hung fluid. His eyes turned to the ground, his head down, only the wistful scraping, and the cars moving far away. He did not see me, and I did not move to help him. The tines gripped his head and neck like hands. The pump had stopped, I slowly placed it back in the cradle, watching him. I opened the car door quietly and moved inside. I couldn't see him as I drove away, just orange light floating over us both. When I got to your house that night you were already asleep. Wrapped in a blanket, all quiet, your book on the table. You took me inside, we moved my things to your room and I told you it had been such a long drive. I wondered if you could tell what I left out. But you just listened while I talked about seeing snow in the mountains. When we woke the next morning your mom made us tea. I held your hand when we drove into town that afternoon, you kissed me lightly in the car. We saw the snow laid over the fields and the sunlight coating it in orange slivers and gold. We moved softly through creaking wood and the smell of smoke, people in down coats smiling. I never tried to tell you about it, just took your hand and told you I loved you. It was already four in the afternoon when we left for Portland, too late to start that drive, too late for winter. This part I know you remember. As we drove into the pass and the snow began to pick up, the night fell, snow began to cover the windshield, the road, soon our tires started to slip the back of the car spun over and over. I was gripping the wheel with white hands you screamed as the car slid in and out, we looked out the windshield and it was only white, I didn't know where the road ended and the snow began, it was all fog. You said we should stop. But we couldn't. The snow lit with the lights of cars ahead and behind, we could only follow the long trail, sliding and correcting, my hands stuck to the wheel. That night we gave back what we owed. Driving into the bright lights of Coeur d'Alene, pulling up to the motel, we were quiet as we entered the little green room. I lay down on the bed under the framed sky and watched you silently remove your clothes. The next morning I made us coffee in the hotel room. Then we left early, the sky blue-grey, snow melted in soft piles. It was an hour before we spoke, It's not going to work. I said. I'm afraid you can't protect me.

Two steps forward, one step back. The building was gutted when we came in. Just the cold concrete and your name all over the walls, we thought everything had already been taken. It was the middle of summer then, so hot that the floor stuck to our shoes, and you thought we could get right to work. Saddle up on the hot slab and you'd just take a minute with me, just a moment of the hot summer day to touch me and tell me that things could be different. How terribly empty that old building was, cavernous, and echoing, and when my back slapped on to the ground it sizzled and rats heard us on every floor. Windows that showed us nothing, just empty white sky that just felt like another room, over and over, I gripped you to try and tell you to stay, but you always had another trick.