is it the poet’s purpose
to deliver doses of truth
that awake sleepers and set
fires in their bellies
or
should the poet
sculpt beauty from the empty
space of a blank page
leaving no trace?
truth and beauty
revolution or aesthetics
prophecy or pilgrimage?
we huddle in to
each-other-warm
where one body wont suffice
gather round tables
as though to worship
a lazy susan
plow food into our faces with
sticks and laugh at
failed attempts to evangelize
reminisce the future
leadership, change, adjustment
as i sit with
prophet,
businessman,
preacher,
manager,
pastor,
researcher,
sharing table, susan, bowl, meat, bite
and love(mixed)jokes(dreams)
tomorrow i’ll leave this behind
them behind
to pick up where i set down
two days from now
i’ll wish it was two days from then
and that i could be back here
in my drab, too small cubicle
eavesdropping on my co-workers’
impotent, constant complaints
because anything is better
than watching a mother
whose lost her only son;
whose lost her future grandchild;
whose lost her hope
in her loss of everything;
everything that matters;
everything that gets her out of bed;
everything that gives her purpose
to face a day in which she will know
that she’ll never again
talkseetouchhugkiss
her son again
and that she’ll never have
another chance.
The world has a way with itself, sometimes
and in that way the rest of us get
trampled
left for dead under the stamping feet
of the universe
Years pile on years pile on age and all
the lyrics in the world can’t
STOP
the sun from spinning out in space
and us spinning around it
And for the life of me I just can’t
put my finger on the reason
that we all eventually get out of bed
every morning
But we do
And maybe that’s just it.
Maybe that’s the truth that keeps concepts
of emptiness at bay. I
want to live. You
want to live. We
will live together,
on this rock, we will rock
And every morning we will roll on to
the floor of our bedroom, alarm clock be
Damned.
We will step out of the front door
from a hot shower and a cold bagel
and we will go where we will be
and when we finally get home
too late to crank the stereo too loudly
there won’t be anything keeping us up at night,
because here we are.
Let’s do it.
Dirt in the mouth.
Each grain that grinds over
The tongue
Tastes oddly identifiable,
Each mineral familiar.
Pick oneself up and
Beat the dust from jeans.
Rub the dirt away and
Yet deeper into pores
Savor
Flecks of bone calcium and
Iron that dissolves,
Sticking to gums like blood,
Tannins of wine and
Earthy tea,
Charred granules of
Carbon burnt meat,
Copper, nitrogen, and manganese linger and
Slick the pearled teeth
Hands finely gloved
In dirt that sinks
Low into the furrows
Of grated palms.
Rubbing eyes with bits of aluminum and
Deposits of sulfur
My gaze starts where my feet are
Planted and
Jumps up to
Meet the horizon
I breath deep and
Run ahead with
Mud and spit and sun
Spackled across my face.
today i drank to beauty
i poured one out for her
i romanced her mind because
she’s in love with another
the words for city streets
are many, from colorful
explitives to dark and
malodorous concepts that
chill the soul, to beauty
and it’s life and light and
beauty
but when
the spaces aren’t really
there (oh fire hydrants)
the only words that come
to mind on these old gothic
streets is the beauty
of their beauty.
Fuck this city,
I’m going home.
heroin spoons
ice glazed in
grass
cat piss white
t-shirts
from
smoothing edges
to
running
from
police
notes to yourself
reminding yourself
that you are not
being
your self
perplexed by
that concept
you ignore your
old friend
stems
giving up by
sitting down
a man made of
mist and a man
made of stone are
yelling at eachother
on your television,
you cannot
turn
it
off.
There wasn’t much to say
Because there wasn’t anything we could do.
Wanting to, but knowing,
Asking ourselves why
We would waste feeble words on deaf ears.
An unbending anxiety, bending our insides
Pleading—lying in wait to riot
A cacophony of flame, of sound, and disbelief.
But a shapeless hand like shadows holds fast,
Even a shudder and it may overtake me.
Yes, this fear will outlive us all.
It was then I realized I was scarcely breathing.
i guess you never had much of a chance
to live a happy, normal life,
growing up in your house,
filled with tension,
filled with strife:
from the mother whose pain
was still all too present,
and the reminder you were
each and every day
of the father who lived
a few towns away
but never had the time
to come see you
because he had started a new life,
with a new family,
and new kids that weren’t you.
and that is how i remember you,
subsuming the rest of your life
into your childhood,
reading your life like a book
in which the ending is foreshadowed,
inevitable;
and even though i now realize
that i never really knew you,
cousin though you were,
I still think that i know
what made you tick,
what made you go away:
running away from your past,
running away from your pain.
one of the ways i know you will forgive me
when i tell you i have dirt on you you cant
afford to ever let get out in the open for
all to see just how strange you are despite
your best attempts at masking the feelings
you have for the people around you and
even though it seems childish almost like
you’re back in high school hanging out in
the mall near the orange julius because that
just happened to be where the cool people
hung out and you were always one of the cool
kids even among the crowd of losers that’s one
of things people say they liked about you
telling me about that one time you used a pillow
to do the unspeakable (but apparently others
have tried the same thing with more success
than you admitted) till late in the evening
probably around 3 when i pressed if you really
wanted us to leave or if you’d prefer we stayed
and you said you enjoyed our presence and
that we were therefore welcome to stay as
long as we’d like and that was when we knew
we were going to be good buddies that it would
last despite you being somewhere all the way
across the globe and i know it’s only 3 in the
morning there but you’d want me to stay if
i were there.
Age and Guile
may beat
youth and a bad
hair cut
but,
youth and guile
is just a
mutherfucker,
ain’t it?
in a town not so far away
and for the first time
in my not so long life,
I was not constrained;
and sitting on a not made bed
that was not quite yet mine
in a room with a phone
that I could not work,
I realized that I was free
to do,
to be,
to destroy
what i wanted,
and as i sat on the not made bed,
not sleeping,
i was not afraid;
i was terrified.
I saw at my foot footprints, en-
cased in muted mud, mid-step mire set silently within
A topography of time, a grey ground frozen
The echoes of shoes–seemingly size ten–a lasting last impression
A patch work of paw prints, wildly weaves widely again and again
The bike tire’s vast, violent arc cuts with impatient determination
Across orphan patches of untouched earth. My eyes enliven
This sculpted ground–shadows casting imagination!
Marvelous movements of time and space, run, ride, reel, and hark!
See the life that lives on lunar land: when you think
the play’s performed, this spectral stage stirs the heart!
This makes me wonder: what traces of invisible ink
You left upon the blue-blank pages of that air afar;
And should I see could I read or would I–sink?
the sieve and the sand 