i can’t write beautiful words with you
my beautiful
looking over my shoulder.
i’m sorry but it’s true. your eyes of judgement bear down on my every letter and i feel small. as insignificant as i truly am in the midst of your presence.
and frankly i need delusions of grandeur to write.

trees absent in this barren land
i don new lack of shoes and grip
every bump, splash every puddle,
grinning as when i was a boy

i don’t know if i mentioned about the time when in sixth grade i excused myself from mr. stage’s classroom and proceeded across the thinly carpeted windowless hallway to the mens toilet. where i peed. in the urinal. while staring off into something like space i managed to find in the divider between stalls.

then as if in slow motion my hand moved to towards the flusher and as i pulled, the ‘american standard’ pulled itself
away from the wall.

now i remember quite vividly the feeling of shock and horror i felt as i pulled my first urinal clear off its piping and watched as water gushed from the pipes behind it. i also remember the feeling of excitement i felt as i opened the door back into my classroom and returned to “social studies” which apparently is just a word for “history” and doesn’t address even basic sociology.

the next day when i returned to school i found the urinal safely fastened to wall as if it were all a dream.

then my shock and horror turned to pride. i pulled a urinal off the wall. i am awesome.

i took a needle to my ear
to declare my undying love for you
i grew the hole in width
in breadth
and filled it with a fish tank for you

the goldfish in my left lobe
swims for me
the chinese fighting fish in the
right floats upside down
the way i always pictured you

like a fever with no temperature
i wake with sweats then shivers
every minute worse than the last
then morning brings a headache
in response to the lack of sleep
and i find myself wondering why
i’m waiting.

i cant stand in the presence
of the awe with which you
just filled the room

oh this morning was filled with disappointments
i awoke too late to have the house to myself
found myself without cereal and therefore
the need to settle for sharing gruel (oatmeal)
with my kid as she ate.

i sweetened it with brown sugar but that
doesn’t hold a candle to my lightly frosted shredded
wheats and therefore pulling myself from
bed becomes a larger chore.

later i was listening to pandora while pouring
myself my third cup of tea (in preparation for my
morning movement of bowel) and apparently
found i’d won 100 free big cigars from some
company called vistaprint.

later i come to find i was being offered free
business cards and for some reason that
just didn’t do the same thing for me.

oh this morning was filled with disappointments
and i would have killed to see the sun.
alas.

search out the spot on my pants
throw it in the trash
empty said trash.

dont like that friendship?
just open the filesystem,
navigate to “personality”
find the folder labelled “grating”
hit the recycle bin.

whatever your preferred operating
system or analogy
you can agree with me when i say

it’d be nice to delete that about
you. me. this place.

(open wallet, find “empty”, right
click, “create new” -> “benjamins”)

win.

and when your troops land
on dry ground expecting
to find something of worth
remember i was here first
building cities and generally
doing everything awesome
you hoped to do but without
your preparation, years of
hard work, and drained investments
because i,
(invincible me)
am just that good

i bashed in heads
apparently my preferred weapon is a baseball bat.
i ran through abandoned suburbs
on sunny days chasing flesh eating
former humans.

i fled to the safety zone again and again
but throughout my dream
(and this is where it crossed into reality)
i left the safety zone repeatedly
to hit the grocery store.

wanting cheetoes (the organic puffy kind)
seeking runts and nerds and french baguettes
and donuts.
beer.
always more zombies for beer.

they crowd in the rotten produce isles
if you enter just right you can escape without notice.

last night i had my first zombie dream.
it wasn’t scary at all.
but now i’m more fearful of an outbreak.
the reality of my unwillingness to stay safe
without beer
is terrifying.

i wonder what it would be like to
pop something like peyote for the
night and entertain myself with
thoughts a little less mundane.

i wonder and find the thought
different enough i’m willing to
settle for having partaken of the
inquisition, and lacked the drug

pen in hand she screams the nonsense
she’s drawing
narrating her every picture

two years old. an artist. a narrator.
i cant wait to understand the story

on sweaty nights after a concert
where we wore sweat pants to
challenge the social norms
and wandered back on silent
roads made even more so by the
faint ringing in our ears turned
slow buzz in recovery from standing
in the front row hoping for a better
view of the band.

the stars were always out in
majesty on those
nights

hit the alarm clock like it’s a cockroach
approaching my child and
snooooooooze
just to wake up still far too early
to have a moment where the house is my
own, where i’m the king of the castle.
if i’m lucky, breakfast proceeds this way.
take my kids out. wrestle. feed. wrestle.
run out the door by 9 and school followed
by lunch with folk. spicy. often painfully
so. but diarrhea was part of the job description
i knew when i signed on. tea. not british
pansy crap. real fantastic, chest hair growing
tea. with people. anyone really. are you willing
to talk? yea I’m american. please don’t ask me
about politics.
i don’t carry a business card. no i can’t tell you
what i do. you want to die? you wanna go to
prison for a very long time? i thought not.
more school. a book here. maybe one there.
home. wrestle, tickle, wrestle the two year old
hit the streets with a double stroller.
i’m a family man.
dinner down your face, down your throat,
NEXT.
and hit the couch with reason.
television numbs some pain. books do too
but unless it’s harry potter i’ve read too much all
day. yea, it’s english this time, but come on.
then beer (if it’s the weekend). and bed….
prepare to whack the cockroach, tomorrow
looks the same.
from here the view is fantastic. holy crap
i get paid to do this?

on the last day before i’m the father of a two year old
(a title you never get back)
i feel i should commemorate

sure i’ll remember this day as day four without
a solid stool
or i’ll remember it as 29 days since i was
the brunt of a well played ‘fool”s joke’

but will i remember the night before sheer
terror? the first of its kind until the night
before i’m the father of a teenager

have i fallen so fast? college was yesterday
and high school last week, wasn’t it?

on this, the last day before i’m the father of a two year old
i feel i should commemorate

with a song

“oh kid you bring me joy
i know there are better words
but i cannot find them to employ
oh kid, my lovely kid, you bring me joy”

flares are amazing tools to light the way in darkness. like a flashlight they bring light, but unique to a flare is the fact that you can throw it ahead of you. throw it into water and bring light to not just damp but wet places (should said flare be oxidized of course).

i lack the language to bring illumination
the darkness you bring to the table needs
a special light my AA batteries cannot
tackle. one i can pull from my back pocket
and show you page by page. but don’t get
too close, it burns like a flare

you waste your words as breath as though
you’ve an infinite supply waiting on your
every subconscious as though you could write
in your sleep (unless you have a cold of course
in which case you’d need vicks vapo rub or
something to aid the writing so you don’t get
clogged up) unintentionally coughing up
masterpieces but you’re full of it i tell you
you’re absolutely full of it