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.

EXODUS MACHINE

Shape’s
false
amnesia.

God’s last life.

Angels unforgettably conscious.

ORDER POEM

We’re seven babies away from god finding out that no one has heard the ocean. I say pain has an angel and you say it has a ghost. We eat for the last time. Some blank grief that not even a mother would save from a staring contest. I eat like a devil. You like a devil on a skateboard crying over the death of a ribless boy. Poverty is neither dream nor transport. I step on a nail in my scarecrow puberty and you bend yourself to rabbit, grocery cart, wheelchair. I run the shower and say things about your body into a coffee can. Birth is wrong about people.

DEATH POEM FOLLOWED BY A POEM ABOUT DEATH

We play rock paper scissors to see who gets the gun. I’ve already pointed my hand at your stomach and I’ve already apologized like a fever for saying that your prophets needed headache medicine. Jesus was looking for his sister. He was on the cross and his father got the day wrong. The problem with pain is that it knows when to stop. A friend lifts the baby and says I don’t know what you’ve been feeding this thing. It has more memories than god.

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

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.

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.