what infertile soil
could grow such twisted shocks?
and with such plain days as
this to grow!
i too grow, but confused
as i sit and think
it has poisoned its
own roots!
like an invasive weed
on a new island
tarry i, still
among the pathways
yet ingrained
in my fibers
i’d not tend to these abominations
by choice!
they say nothing
but a dead star
lies
round the horizon
they are wrong
though
cuz i can see
it shining
1.
it was unseasonably warm that day
and the day before, too,
and it was windy. I remember that much,
and the sun in my eyes
on the patio
through the plate glass
on the short drives
here to there and here to there
while our friends traveled through Germany
for the sixth or seventh time
there was nothing but time then
drinking black coffee in jackets
with the traffic hustling by
whispering about ‘forever’ at 20
and I remember meaning what I said out there
and I remember the look in her eyes
2.
Time has a way of stopping sometimes
with a phone call for example
in a tacky Chinese restaurant
surrounded by our people
while the sun set just outside
and I told the people what I heard
after I pressed the End Call button
while our hearts all stopped beating
forever, I think,
for just a moment
3.
I drove to her in darkness
and she was all alone
when she let me in to her sitting room
There were no lights on
but she could see me
and she hated every word
I don’t know if I’d leave her now
but I left her then,
nine years ago
4.
We sat in a cafe
in silence
for what couldn’t have been
forever
and my tea got cold
as the weather had
that night
we talked about your boots
not in detail
but we did
5.
I remember you
Warmth in March
sun in the afternoon
I remember you
black coffee
downtown patio
friends in rooms
and cars
and futures
and that goddamn
cul-de-sac
I remember you
and I miss you
boots and all
i eat even when i’m not hungry
and i want you to suffer
you’ll kill yourself if
you don’t change
but you’re always changing
and you’ll always die
the balance will always be
as constant as passing energy
off onto everything you touch
and oh what you’ll do with
all of your power
enough to notice
not enough to care
let your mind trip you up
the path is just a wheel
anyway
and you’ll try and love,
love
the rush of drugs swirling round
your bones
but i’m always hungry
there could always be more
all these sharp cubes are boring
let’s go back to the
sphere
while standing in
the shade a strong
hand took you
and although
i would share
a million sunlit
hours with you
at that moment
i was so weak
i could not even
look your way
i ran
and i ran
and felt remorseful
but never did i cry
which is just what weak men do
—
standing in the doorway
with the light bouncing
off kitchen linoleum
i lock eyes with Lal
it’s an eerily quiet
afternoon in wichita
i turn as i smell
a hint of freedom
in the air
i spend a moment with
what is left of you
inside me
it’s an awkward moment
because i am ashamed
and i finally cry
for you
You are dead and gone
and I still do not know
what that means
In eighth grade we were seated
at a table in a corner
in an art class
and I don’t why that was enough
We talked every day
and sometimes we walked home
together
One day in the summer
you and your neighbor came over
unannounced
so we walked a long time
and found another friend
from that art class
Then I was in high school
and you were there too
so we memorized each-other’s
home phone numbers
We played games
every weekend
our junior year
The next step we planned together;
community college until
both of us slept through
the bus to our second
semester finals
We drove a lot that year
Then we found jobs
and you worked until you didn’t
so you moved away
while I stayed
but you came back
I was a manager then
so I hired you
and we did what we always had
but sometimes you got things wrong
that you never had before
Then Matt died and you left again
and I blamed you for a long time
but I forgave you when you came back
when you told me you were schizophrenic
when you showed up at a show to scream
when we fought in the parking lot
when you sped away drunk
when you messaged me angrily
I forgave you
but I never called your phone again
Then it was Christmastime 2 years ago
you were sick, you were tired
you were sorry – you swore you were sorry
you were dying from bone cancer
in a broken arm
I told you that I loved you then
and I meant it and I still mean it
I told you that you’d be OK
and I’m sorry that wasn’t true
When they took your arm you said
all you wanted was a life
When it didn’t work you told me
you just didn’t wan’t to die alone
I’m sorry.
I met you on a Wednesday night
you were twenty one years old
Your flight to school in the Netherlands
was only two days away
We left the bar to play music
and your drumming was perfect
for all the tunes he called
and I saw you smile at him
when you caught him smiling at you
You were bright as a beacon
at the center of a starless desert
You were going to be a neurologist.
He will miss you every day.
We walked from the east forever ago
dragging our belongings in burlap bags
You were with me then
with a smile that stretched as far
as your eyes tended to wander
and I should have known
that you couldn’t stay
When we reached a strong, shallow river
I said I’d take your load
but you swore you couldn’t swim
So you headed south
when I waded in
Rosie was eleven years old
she told us, as the overweight bulldog
began to wheeze near her feet
while a television program murmured
in the living room
A tree had fallen on the property line
so now she was all alone
except for old Rosie here
He was driving their big-wheel tractor
with the mower deck running off PTO
maintaining 28 acres on an August afternoon
when suddenly he succumbed
to a massive skull fracture
She warmed the other’s coffees
but she didn’t need both her mugs anymore
so she sent one out with me
‘No more air piano,’ she said
trying her best to smile
As we bid farewell to Rosie
and left them both
with the upright grand we’d come with
Suddenly
there was a shrill sound
cutting through the autumn air
as triumphant as it was discordant
summoning in me an unease
I had not often felt
in the comfort of my father’s home
I rushed to the doorway
and flung the storm wide
to the fire and horror
to the siren sounding louder
to the smoke a mile away
They were flashing over head
a half-dozen at a time
less a swarm than a saber
slicing and buzzing
and bringing bright lights
and I stood like a statue
on the front lawn
of my father’s home
as the roof fell to the foundation
as the bright lights overcame me
as sulfur filled the air
rainbow swimming badges
and sunlit freckles
passionate glances
during reveille
tiny pebbles skip across
a glacial lake
in backwoods michigan
(won’t you keep me,
broken memory?)
the sun never sets just
the same
as on a kayak race
to an island
that you never seem to reach
take on heat and
pay in sweat
long for the cold so
you can help build
another cabin
learn of kindling
and the fire
(you can only do this once
you are going to fuck this up)
shrug it off
take it hard
watch butterfly
migrations.
i dreamed i was an ohian farmer
thinkin affront a mechanical breeze
my taut muscles and hard callouses
rotting within my hands and shoulders
and gasping for air like old flames
i sat atop a great machine
like a giant chugging black tar
emitting a putrid smell and noise
among otherwise silent fields
from each coast, a million giants wide
we each had taken plots of land
and bought guns, and put up walls
flattened hills and forests
squeezed the dirt while crying and praying
it was a crime of passion
and i was paid a healthy salary
it was insured against poor production
to grown corn, and nothing more
we let a lot go sour in the silos
but the government man never cared
long as our ballots fell to him each year
my son died from pancreatic cancer
he had worked the land every day since
he was strong enough to lift a till
and as good as any man
at pulling richness from the soil
i was told it was two years
since a sickness had changed his basic chemistry
and i thought on how the devil convinced men
that it was will power that kept them alive
but i saw the red ink ledger lines at the end
and all debts will be reined in
I dreamed I was a Bangladeshi shipbreaker
toiling in the tropical salt air
with taut muscles and hard callouses
with cuts on hands and shoulders
with burns from oxy-acetylene flames
I worked on the deck of a broken ship
a behemoth with no back half
like a tuna with its tail removed
floating dead in the shallows
in a harbor with a hundred ships like it
on a sandy coast with no end
There were thousands of us working
stretching our rice-fed bodies in the heat
flattening tanks with mallets
taking torch to hull
glancing at the sea a hundred feet below
I was paid in cash each week
enough to buy a bit to eat
and pay for my worker’s flat
a room in a building off the dockyard
where the company provided one bed each
for only two-thirds a month’s wages
My brother died the week before
he was working a few ships down from me
tearing pipe from a plumbing run
pulling copper from rusted conduit
loading pump parts on a limping wagon
I was told it was eleven PM
that a chain had wrapped his ankle
that the other three men faltered
and dropped the bilgepump engine block
off a deck that had no railing
it had long been cut away
the shower’s a warm blanket
but the cold lives in my spine
if only i could see
then i wouldn’t be so blind
tell me i’m not fine
tell me not to cry
the president’s a virus
and my family is the host
they pull all of their pants down
to get lashed by the holy ghost
castigate my mind
tell me that i lie
my father is a rapist
and my mother cries all day
the sun dances in the window
but has nothing much to say
i’m starting to unwind
i’ve nothing but the time
let up
lift off
holding everything I can see so
loosely it could all fall out of my hands
and loose enough I would be okay with that
just standing here. arms full. barely holding on
because gripping too tight is too big a commitment for things so unsure
a few thing here, in this pile, look so shiny, I’d love to pocket them
but that would be to assume they won’t eat through my pockets and fall to the ground when I’m not looking
no
I need to hold it so loosely it could all fall out of my hands
zen. I tell myself.
fucking zen.
the hardest thing about knowing too much
is understanding the impact it may have on
those you’ve worked your ass off to support
but you push through because you also
know that often you don’t have all the info and there have been doezens of times thus
far where you knew what was coming
the doom
and it never came.
the hardest part about knowing too much
is dealing with the pain you will someday
inevitably cause
there is a positive outcome for everyone if we just push long enough, hard enough, and don’t give the fuck up.
can I hang in there and not give the fuck up?
We wandered through hard-luck places
exchanging change for bits of candy
at corner stores and chasing them
with peach soda under burned out letters
in the humid summer dusk
We’d found a couple couches
and dragged them in to the garage
so most of us could sit comfortably
as we passed the microphone around
putting stupid jokes to worn-out tape
for posterity
the snack food would run out eventually
and quiet would come just before the birds
with bodies snoring softly on every floor
dreaming of promises and plans
that never came when the morning did
One at a time we would come to
pouring 7 kinds of bowls of ceral
gathering in the living room
kicking children’s toys around
waiting for the van to park outside
I left Surprise the following spring
tying shoes and trying my best
not to forget my coat in the warm
my strap on the old classical
my CD in the system near the television
I never went back
When the memories of me
become harder to find
I hope that you notice
and I hope that you mind
I would look for frogs near rotting stumps
in the summer evenings of my younger days
collecting them in jars for a few hours
until I set them free
or cast them against the pavement
to be fed to baby snapping turtles
else be let in the tank for the corn snake
to have her way, at her leisure
I was a cruel god then,
my subjects kept nourished
with the blood that I saw fit to spill
Woe are the frogs of the summer evenings
of my younger days, flailing in clenched jaws
or stunned and rent to shreds
I was a cruel god then
Frog that I am now,
I pray my god finds mercy.
be wary those that are born
into this prison
and straighten your spine
and look forward
for all eyes belong
to the great gods of hell
who filled walls
with your dead brethren
and covered them in
the faces of their family
eat love and pray
under their holiness, I say
although
it may pick at your soul
to do so
the sun will shine on
endlessly
but men can
block your view.
