fried
at least
my mind
once crisp
delicious
now stale
soggy
not worthy
of your last
ketchup
packet

you said
free
we praised you
but begged you’d
let us keep our chains

i chose you

i knew
the sacrifice
i would not settle
you did not disappoint

sometimes i forget
the choice
but i never
(even for a moment)
wish i’d chosen
otherwise

i wouldn’t give you up
for the world.

i say ‘airplane’
and you plant your chest
on my feet
flying and smiling
and giggling whispering
“again”

and i know it was all more than
worth it.

love shattered
(always hurts worse the first time)
followed by friendship
you pried from my fingers
and i’m thinking

this happens to chicks
but we’re dudes dude
and you pry and pry

“i don’t like you, nobody likes you”
chicks say that
but we’re dudes dude

but brilliance calls
(right on cue as murphy would have it)
i moved to the country side
of hongkong

saw slaves. met gangs
killers, dealers, and smugglers
the worst of the bad missing
limbs life and hips

achen
born into a family of millionaires
you squandered every penny
on heroin and more
losing family, heart, and then
your mind

akau
leaving wife you finally broke down
‘i’ll see you in four years when
if i’m healthy enough some day to
truly love you’
though we could not share words
we shared tears

i shook hands and shared bathrooms
with killer after killer
and silence endured
i could say hello.

till i broke
really simply wordlessly
tearfully broke
longing for a hug from anyone
from a murderer? not so lucky

that end of wits where there is only
*shudder* for strength alludes you

and

as if noticing for the first time
the fallibility of man
i cried out “he should have been
there for me” but he wasn’t

and that was my friend

since then i’ve never been attached
at the hip.

in teaching me what love is not
you taught me how to love

the most vivid recollection
was in line for the drinking fountain
(we lived in a desert after all)
i was all of 14

you punched because i was white
pounded my back and just like
every day it was a fight to keep
from falling to tears at the constant
abuse
over my skin color
over my smile

and i learned
“revenge is the Lord’s”
and i prayed
“Lord I accept because your
wrath is bigger than my fist”

oppression on ever corner
next to every locker
every shoulder bump and push
i’m american and clearly i do not
belong. meaning this is your
leg room not mine

over my skin color
over my smile

and i prayed
“revenge Lord
revenge”

because i knew first your
arms as they held me at nights
and i fought over whether you
were truly worth it, or even truly were.

because i knew your arms of love
long before i knew your grace

i prayed
“revenge Lord
take your fiery eternal
damning revenge”

forgetting the grace that saved me
was no more deserved than theirs.

because i knew first your arms
before i understood that i first knew
your grace

we forgot we were in a battle so
instead of fighting against the advances
of the enemy

we cowered the corner
forgetting we were cowering
settling for complacency
all the while

the battle rages for that which
outlasts this generation this
technology
these nations
these civilizations

the battle rages over
eternity

yours and mine

and hello to the tens
(and what will soon be the teens)
in typical fashion

asleep. unaware. careless.
as though i myself

had dropped the ball

your father died abruptly
(as though death
-though inevitable-
is ever expected)
and you’re stuck wondering floundering
in debt up to your ears
supporting the woman
you never dreamed about

oh and your mother

they may have had one thing right
we don’t get there through
having

i spend my life
grasping for dreams
just within my reach
fearing for all my
wits they’ll slip and leave
me out on the streets

christmas reminds
christ is God all powerful
you alone worthy of my life

never lost this twinge of mine
preceding an evening i know’ll
include cloves or a hookah
stale couches and a twoehyim
call to some delivery joint for
what inevitably isn’t muchies
but something like it
not quite high

we called it being ‘tall’

never lost that feeling i got
before i joined my friends for
a walk across the top of the
world owning every minute
spraying candles with squirt
guns and making stale couches

yea thats right i rode my
twenty year old bike built
by your commie forefathers
to your commie car dealership

yea thats right the guard
to your gate makes a commie
ten dollars a day and you
drive a commie bmw

you red bastard

tonight i await 12:20 for
their arrival
perhaps 1 before i rest

i cannot help but wonder
how as a college whippersnapper
i regularly made 4 with little problem

at 7 my peejays slip on
by 8 i’ve opened a beer
9 comes and i’ve gone
10 is only just in the way most nights

so the thought of staying awake
3 hours further
makes me want to rest

clogged up 20 hours into
a 36 hour trip they re-routed
you for 36 more hours testing
the very limits of mental sanity
because this is a quality
dutch airline and thats the way
they see customer service

its time to clean out our trash
baggage we love for
others carry the weight

its time for renewal of some
spiritually refined sort
water to wash and renew

these pews are getting dusty
(a generous description of the
one remaining in the pulpit)

destroyed by fire. tried by starvation
parents eating their own children
hoping hunched backs of malnourishment
somehow beat death

its time to clean out our trash
wearing your old shoes isn’t bringing
back the glory days you never had

you never had

the greats they had
books and
therefore had to guess
and second guess themselves
lacking the luxury of
publishing every little
(later terrifyingly deserving
of regret)
naked thought in all
its
never looked in the mirror
to examine its beard
glory

yesterday you could not speak
nor hold a spoon

today you learned to airplane
on my feet
you couldn’t get enough
i got tired

and then you learned to body slam

i’m so proud of my little girl.

its harder now
though you’ve not been gone so long
i know you wont return
and i miss your touch

i took your skin for granted
too seldom gazed into your eyes
held you as often as i could
still it proved to little

its harder now
i know you wont return
and i miss your you

and the smoking hot package in which you came

16 and probly still innocent
by most accounts
upon showering i discovered a
track of land (if you will)
about 5 centimeters long
perhaps 3 wide
and crusty as can be

14 years (if we discount those
in diapers) of build up can
leave quite the impression
(i remember to this day after-all)

when soap first met your crusty
surface and you were wiped clean
you were as fingers after a 14 year
venture through the hot tub

and i don’t know who to blame for
failing to teach me my own anatomy
if the public school system or my
own creative-less imagination is responsible

for a memory i’d entrust to words
a decade later.