your life at two feet six inches
all for a curable disease at 1
your legs fold now like jello
in half across a board you use
in a wheelchair-unfriendly home
raising your child
(you were lucky enough to bear)
in hopes he walks straight
through every day
Boy, do you realize how crooked your table is?
When I entered the kitchen, it was the first thing I noticed.
Not the Everest of smoking hot classics
Or the expensive gin, although it did look tempting.
We sat at that landslide-waiting-to-happen for forty minutes
While the cat watched nearby, its glassy eyes diverted
One eye on us and one fixed on the wobbly leg,
Waiting for a downpour of cutlery, tail set and ready to run.
A year later, I bet that poor table is still holding on.
Under salt and pepper, books, red wine and elbows.
Wondering, with all its splinters and tomato sauce stains
How someone so shrewd, could be so damn neglectful.
and i will not repent
my enjoyment found in
the sight of your leaving,
relishing the view
of your backside
metaphorically walking away
out of my life for good,
never to be met again
on this side of eternity
or on the other,
allowing heaven
to be heaven still,
secure in the knowledge
that you won’t be there.
will walks tight rope
will is kept in cage
is lying, all the time
doesn’t get payed much
spends spare cash
owes cage owners
limbs, sleep
(debt like quicksand)
will walks tight rope
again again again again
will is losing himself
and
one day will thin
and float away on a breeze.
I saw three men standing
in the shadows by a swimming pool
in rags and coats from the
previous season, breathing
heavy fingers fighting open
pop-top beer cans whiskers
shaking under the wind’s slight
duress and I stopped.
there they stood by the pool
forlorn considerations of
jumping right in, cans and coats
be damned. Of course they
chose to stand and eye instead.
Only a fool leaps and leaves it
all behind, they said. Yet there they
were, with nothing but coats and
cans and rags and whiskers and
the opulent gall to say anything.
They did not jump. They only drank
and stood and eyed and sighed.
But I will enjoy this swimming pool,
for I left my coats and rags
in someone else’s town
When I said,
“God this is yours, I’m giving it all to you,”
You turned my world upside down.
Starting in my toes they tingled
To sensations ambling in my ankles
That tightened in my shins—
Taut Charlie Horse’s without pain
Pushing past my tensioned thighs
Swirling to the tip of my spine
Splashing into my tottering stomach
Surging around my quivering lungs
Ascending beyond my pulsating heart
Catching in my straining esophagus
Lifting my buoyant arms skyward
Pressure coursing to my startled eyes
And finally, though it only took a moment
Through my head you compressed
The last remnant of my resistance
And poured all of me out.
I like to watch people
As they’re walking down the street
But I never see their faces
Cause’ I’m always looking
At their feet
Incessantly making
working sound
light flashing
on/off/on/off/on/off
keys lagging
mistakes everywhere
windows not loading
windows appearing
half loaded
unusable
cursor jumping
now you see it
now you don’t
gotta love pc
It’s hard to hate the messenger
even when he only carries lies
and lies and
bullshit in a shoulder-bag
Perhaps that’s the real message,
or the one worth hearing anyway.
In any case, I’ll try not to hate
the messenger.
But I will wait for him
to bring me some good news
i drove this rusty bucket down
what apparently was the wrong
way on a one way street, i noticed
because all of the ladies with their
children were dropping their jaws
i grinned because they look funny
with their mouths wide, waiting
my grin says be prepared
i was having a wicked conversation
that stuttered and stopped like
my old jalopy, i’d keep going
over the same lines driving
the wrong way and eventually
they’d get me (i knew)
i had the gumption but not
the guts to just gas it when they
pulled up behind me screaming,
waving their batons talking
about one way streets and
their directional nonsense
behind bars i dream of driving,
still.
lunate, you say, holding my wrist
between your practiced thumb and forefinger
ulna, radius, humerus, your light brown hand sliding
eloquently up my arm
clavicle, gliding up then down, scapula, resting now
vertebrae C1 through T5, your hand descending
like my eyelids
–
gloved hands held
we step down into the station
flakes of snow, finite emissaries,
clinging to your coat’s black wool
a man on a bench
plays the ehru to no one—
a string snaps
i lay my head on your shoulder
breathe in the scent of winters passed
–
bundled on the boat’s stern
we’ve been watching for hours
shielding your eyes from the sun and peering into the waves
you say, nobody’s there
a pelican, the sky’s sole occupant,
disappears over the horizon
and lingers in my thoughts
as i sip loudly from the juice box you packed
i wonder
what monsoons he’s seen
i silently bid him Godspeed
–there, you say, pointing
i struggle to see; but then see
sprays of water, fins slicing crests and troughs,
elemental black bodies
lifting and dipping in slow sequence
–
i am writing the last line:
the cat dives
across the page
i pick her up and replace her
on a window sill overlooking a red oak budding
find you in our bed still sleeping
kiss you on the forehead, return to my desk
brush hairs from the page
whose blank space now feels antarctic
The line between crying in front of
-One Hundred-
people and inciting a dance pit is
negligible, at best
But the difference between your father
saying -’man’-
instead of -’son’-
when he grabs you by the shoulder on
your way off stage is
-about-
a million miles
This world is not a decimal system.
Our measures do not skew the same.
So, not so bad a thing
that my ruler has been broken
all this time
grabbing spoon from drawer
and thrusting forth in practiced
choreographed high school weight-training-class lunges
i threaten eye gouging
i challenge you and your muscles
with fierce revealing of my canines
i turn spoon in hand back and forth
intimidation is my game
blunt object is my weapon
i will win you with my grammar
i will attack at your jugular
if i can remember my junior high school anatomy
you stumble back in fear as
i attack in glory
Standing over you
Watching you sleep
In then out
In then out
Unaware of my presence
Unaware of anything
Safely resting
Completely without fear
Perhaps because you know
That I would be here
If you needed me
So there is no fear
that you will ever need me
I often wonder if talking to a dead man
is considered dialogue or soliloquy.
But I guess you’re not really
around to tell me anyway, and
therein probably lies the answer.
One day I’ll die and we
can continue that conversation
that we started a hundred times.
Until then, I suppose,
I’ll just keep talking to myself.
Who am I kidding?
It’s impossible to keep contained
Or rather, the containers empty?
My fingers too busy to type keys
Of stanzas and enjambment
and end-stopped.
No inspiration?
Motivation?
Stimulation?
Where’s it all gone?
Lies.
Who am I kidding,
I’m just a lazy sob story
Preferring to sleep
And complain
Pretending there’s better things to do
than write.
And it should be noted:
by sob, I mean the acronym
tomorrow as i sit and try to prove
my proficiency in a subject at which
i’ll never approach proficiency i’ll
think of you sitting on the couch and
doing nothing
and
be jealous
for jealousy is all i have to give
when my mental power is being completely
drained by trying to fill in the appropriate
mother fathering bubbles.
He was just a boy when he bought his wooden
sword, and shield made out of plastic,
from a kiosk at a carnival.
Was a priceless prize, that weapon and it’s partner.
Security against every wolf and monster
and beggar and vagabond.
Life and livelihood assured.
He was a warrior then.
But time passes and, often cruelly.
The sword has broke, the shield
to small to strap. Was never seen fit
to buy another.
Defenseless.
Ripped apart by wolves and monsters.
Taken, by the vagabonds, for all he’s got.
Wretched and shameful.
Wretched,
and shameful,
and to top it all,
his car won’t start.
God Damn It.
walking along,
feeling alone
in the lost land
of American Idol fans,
constructing a generation of
lounge singer heroes,
reliving the glories
of innovative artists
who have now passed into
the general mediocrity
of the past:
free to be groped;
free to be grabbed;
free to be destroyed.
and so i sit here,
listening to my indie music,
looking down my nose,
secure in my intellectual superiority,
evidenced by my musical selections.
Our fate was sealed standing there that night
Like macadam, bolted down and tar heavy
Months later my thoughts are still there,
Standing like little urchins outside that same pub,
Sipping ale, wearing moth-eaten black coats and
Smoking charcoal cigarettes while glaring at strangers.
They go back there only on weekends now,
Looking for a sign- my thoughts do,
Looking for a logic-god in a white Mercedes Benz
To pull up by the side of the road and
Tell them to go home, that “it all makes
Sense now”. But you’ve got a spare set of arms
To body- double with and so do I. So for now,
And since I know you don’t read my poems,
How about we just leave this thing in the storeroom.
we pitched our tents on wind carved
sand pits and fought with ants the
size of mice. we woke and ran along
dolphins jumping just off shore as
curious at us as were of them.
salsa. oh… the salsa.
we took directions from crazy
ladies driven to their insanity
by their taste-buds after years of ingesting
the salsa. oh… the salsa
fish taco after fish taco we turned
right through a field on a dirt path
through mountains and passed in
twelve hours only one other moving
vehicle.
stopping for tacos in a village so small
the only restaurant was a hole in a kitchen
where 50 cents buys two grease balls
we stood on peaks no one should ever
have to leave and bathed under
blue skies, a sun anyone would have
worshipped had they not known better.
and then came day 3.
We floated in
Warm muddy water
Calm and lapping on the
Gummy sandbars
Woke earlier in the night for
Reasons that I don’t know or
Reasons I forgot
Dark night scatter-lit
From above and we marched out
To catch the receding tide
Heels sucking in Mexican clay
I’m pretty sure
Cortez was an asshole
But I didn’t know the guy
His sea, though, is just
The kind of adventure that pulls
Some kids from far away
We floated in
black and starlight
and I can’t remember what
we talked about or
if we talked at all
but that night I was sure that
mystery was real and that
life was a stunning gift
it rolled over me in
tides of curling diamonds –
phosphorescence that
I hope Cortez saw too
All along the highway
suddenly wildflowers spring,
red and yellow,
blue and violet,
camouflaging the trash,
naturalizing the road,
beautifying the pavement,
if only for just this moment.
something must have happened
but with all the noise from under that hood
and all the screaming siren lights
and all the airplanes overhead
you sounded great tonight
record spinning is smooth
in its necessity for analog
you’re hard, gritty, pixelated,
a little digital for my tastes
only when lonely men
howl at the impostors
does the world spin justly
and thrustly it shall be
when on nights like this
i swerve and weave
through the traffic claim
a mailbox or two on this
evening of leaving and
solitude
thinking of leaving mount
pleasant, soon.
at night i rise to grip her
thighs the dark’s supple
trouble stirring my coffee
and ready to fornicate
with this nighttime i am
holding and riding the
best that i can like a madman
howling away at impostors
making the world spin
proper.
A fat cram of color in front of us
Screaming like a flat footed baby
For attention. Or worse, appreciation.
You muttering something about
The brush strokes, as if they were
Exotic birds no one had named yet.
And me embracing the smell of oil,
Freshly polished brass, coffee, someone’s
Over-applied day-out perfume,
And the comforting muttering of
Museum voices, pressing their backs
Lightly against walls and pushing off
Again, to rest in softly lit corners,
Beside the gallery attendant, a
Mysterious beekeeper. A wise man.
You had found something on the
Seventh wall, something that itched
And amused in the way only a close-friend
Can. So I walked over to get a closer look.
There it was. A painting of the very gallery
We stood in, one hundred years before us.
So we took it in. Savored the snap-shot
In time. A chrysalis around us for just
A few moments. Until the bell rang
For closing and we left through the
Royal roof-scraping doors.
Overdue sweet smells-
Lylac and budding tree leaves
Refresh Kensington.
reality as perception defines,
and even more, we’ve come
to expect;
on the mondays when we go to
work,
along the sweat and blood
highways.
