The Shambling Darkness Project

Creepy Lover

found on the internet, no longer alone
wiping saliva from your cheek

the weak ones, laboratory specimens
straining rodent arms through the cage
links in order to live it up

come back and gnaw me, and please
clean the shit off the walls.

Jelly Fish

here is a jar at the grocery store marked jelly
here is another marked fish

take them both to the bread isle
and throw them as high as you can

so that they smash together at the vector
of marble rye and discount white bread

run as fast as you can, arms outspread,
and dive chest out onto the shards of glass

stinging capsules and tentacles,
there is nothing more deadly in all the sea

Worked to Death

In the bible, Job was given lucky lotto numbers.
None of these numbers add up to whole
loves of bread. The good lord gives us rashes

and boils and we are thankful. This can result
in running wildly down the street
or juice consumption. Note: buy stock in juice.

The good lord has made yeast to ferment inside your folds
of skin like human wine despoiling from your workouts,
gymnasium labels with instructions of faith.

The good lord has made us candidates of grunting
while the jasmine blooming on the trellis hits us like a brick.
Job is coming to work to smite us with his check book.

If you pray hard, you can already feel the tenderness in your
underarm, holy fleshy joints. Behold, your Chinese food
is also made of plastic by little hands.

The Chinese word for rash is the same
as the Hebrew word for calculation. Play
the numbers. Either way, God will make you itch.

Parchment


Through the leg of love
time bends oblique
severing conventions, dogs and children arguing
driving the curve of a cello
until it is ancient and universal.
Petrarch, Threenoses


Your hand no longer a hookworm
I watched you fall from the palm tree
framed by a condo the exact shape
of a medical dictionary. What made
it strange was the sunset through
the fronds, surgical and foreign.

As an adult now you sleep on benches
and mimic the wail of subway cars.
Sometimes you sprinkle bleached flour
so no one can approach without
leaving footprints. I think

the wind was the tree’s doctor
who shook you from its intestines
before you could take hold
of her beautiful coconuts.

Immersion

foot, trench foot, jungle
rot, I lie alone

miles from ice
packing my thoughts

snow upon me like mosquitoes.

It’s my shoes.
Greenhouse, microcosm,
biodome, toe tongues

of fungus. I want to go down
there with a lantern

to look for the giant ape.

:::