Month: March 2012

real life sometimes demands ugly things. like breaks. too bad they’re not as easy to take as they are in on-stage performances.

poetry

a brief interlude
(a break if you will)
will now be taken
to give the actors
a break for a few moments
as they re-adjust to
life outside of their
character.
to kiss their girlfriends
instead of their in-play
wives.
to use the bathroom facilities
because opera with the
tension of diarrhea is less
than enjoyable for the singer.
thus the interlude.
we apologize for the break.

Step back and reassess. Perhaps then you will see.

poetry

It is a collection of broken fingers
scratching helplessly on locked doors
legal documents flying everywhere as
a briefcase had been thrown. It was
just your personal failures again.

The door clicks with misgivings as
it rocks in its frame, but gives no
ground. The bolt is fast and true.
The nob won’t help you either, no
matter how loose the latch.

Another finger breaks and falls as
helpless as its brothers and sisters.
It scratches, too, just like it was
taught those years ago. Keep scratching
and something might give. Except the
bolt is fast and true. And the nob
won’t help you either, latch be damned.

i don’t rant often enough. hereby resolved: rant if you can (but don’t make any extra effort, certainly do not promise you’ll rant more often. what if, after all, you forget to rant tomorrow or throughout the whole week and it turns out you resolved to do something you would fail at? what then? well, i learned a long time ago never to make promises in writing unless i was absolutely certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that i was 100% likely to keep said promise. but such promises are extremely-awkwardly rare. so i settle instead to resolve things in my head instead of writing and then when i succeed i say, “hey me, good job. i’m proud of you”, and then i pat myself on the back — physically, not mentally, and continue my life slightly more satisfied with myself than i was a moment earlier, which is to say, extremely satisfied as the amount which i find myself satisfied with myself is probably sickening to most people). whew.

poetry

it’s that time of night
where the night before
you didn’t really sleep
worth beans
and you’re still up
because of that thing
you don’t need to do
but have no power over
yourself to keep yourself
from doing it
and you’re dreaming of
writing something long
and valuable and worthy
of your fingers hitting
the keyboard
but you know it’s too
late for coherent beautiful
words and so you settle
for something much much
less. something like a
rant where your sole
goal is a column of words
nearly uniform in size
but even that you
fail at in several
lines. but seeing your
comfort in failure you
resign yourself to bed.
and sleep comes, but much
too slowly.

Tin Can and String

poetry

For Tara

We don’t have
tin cans or string

Sometimes
we don’t even
know how to speak.
Still

there is something
connecting
the two of us
Causing constant
revolutions
around each other

You speak to me
before either of us
ever know it
I’m

tied to something
that’s tied to you
and nothing
can cut through this

Even when the tin cans
are rocks. And
the string stretches for miles
Just pick up.

I am always
on the other side

Station

poetry

it’s the early nights that kill
sometimes
with the curtains down
long shapes on the wall
short devils out the window
a stink permeating

Reached but did not reach
no softness beneath fingers
icy wind and bite
though spring it be
the world is silent
sometimes

Signals sent though
no correspondence returned
transmitter on full
bottom can’t be reached
sometimes

Laura

poetry

I saw you standing
watching five folks push a stalled car
from one side of the street to
another and your clothes
were baggier than I remember
and I bet you haven’t eaten much
these past few years
and I never knew you well
but I guess nobody did really
and I understand
why sometimes
it’s easier to pretend
that some folks are just
dead.

Love can only be defined by metaphor

poetry

For Tara

If these arms
were yarn
I would unravel them
just to wrap them around you
that much tighter

If my poems were stars
I would rearrange them nightly
Just so you
would always have something new to point to
and say
“That,
That is all mine”

I want to dedicate other people’s books to you

I want to rename time
after you
so when I wear a watch
I can say
“I’ve always got
the time”

The small of your back is the island
that my shipwrecked hands
have been swimming to find.
It’s been years
in the ocean
To be honest
I stopped believing in land
for a long time.
So I’m sorry if I
still carry
wilderness, This
body
is still a little bit bark
But you

are the artist who
I’ve been praying
would come carve poems
into me.

I’ve never been a door before
but if I were
my hinges would creak out
your name.
I’m wide open now
This key
is all yours and
The arch way is just high enough
to echo
each time you speak. To be honest,
I thought I was a wall
It turns out it isn’t that at all
I’m four
walls
With windows and doors
and I am also hardwood floor
But you
are the all important roof
that makes me
a home

There is life
in here now
The bark’s broken
right open
I am green leaves in spring
taller than Manhattan
I am
one
big nest
I am twigs from all over
But you gathered them.

And I could only become
a tree
I could only believe in
an excess of life in this vessel
I’m exhaling branches

Because you are the sun

Leavings Behind

poetry

Took a ride to South Bend
last February
to see ’em

Was a looter and a killer
most days
but a lover
some of the rest
and a fighter
every waking moment

Was a monster sometimes,
too

Got down round seven
on a Tuesday and
had an hour
to spend
inside

Never came back out again,
though

Still there,
probably

our lovely government

poetry

idea swapping
behind every vaulted wall
but that’s where it ends.
they all got here with lofty
goals, dreams of change.
but they stay after selling
their souls, minds, hearts,
for power, prestige, foolish
green sheets of paper which
bring them no joy. no peace.
no change.

Invisible Children

poetry

With only Skeleton Man at my side;
I waited,
and waited and
waited,
thinking maybe, just, maybe,
you would be
there, at my ready, here
for me.

But never, of course, but only
to sit,
and wait, and
wait
some more.

So to hell with all of
those, the crummy, decrepit
sex-in-a-jar types who mere-
ly lie out, palms open,
to receive what they had
wanted. Right there
for them when they need it.

Ah fuck ’em.

i took a drive to clear my head although it never works

poetry

the mcdonald’s man talks to you
but he doesn’t want to be
your friend
and neither i, his
because fuck the mcdonald’s man
and every dream he’s ever had
and for that matter
fuck me too
his paycheck lies behind
handing me my plastic
and my satisfaction lies behind
this transaction going flawlessly
so i can put it in gear
and get down the road
and foreget his face
and he mine.

we’re forgettable people,
i and the mcdonald’s man

we are seen yet unseen
or relativly anonymous

we are unimportance personified
with no books or pictures
in our names
and i am uncertain
if that will ever hold any weight
at all.

In another life.

poetry

Forever a child, owner of the biggest smile.

Saddled down with the same sadness,

Marked with age, acne scars and warts.

We’ve all felt it.

He feels it.

In another life

He lived with me,

In an apartment by some park.

I can feel it.

We used to sit around and smoke cigarettes

And drink, till the night returned.

“Fuck!” he’d yell and slam back another one.

Always smiling so damn big,

Would make you laugh just to see it,

Light up the whole room, calling the ships to safety.

One night, beer cans strewn, smoke saturated air,

I asked him, “what’s your fucking secret?”

“Fuck!” he yelled.

“Shit, what secret?

You wanna tip, here it’s yours keep it,

I rub one out in the shower each morning…”

Fuck…

It’s the same in this life…