The mosquitoes do their very best
to cover every screaming inch and
you will never win against their numbers
and tenacity. Especially the tenacity.

It is very much a failure, but one that
is, on all counts, to be expected.
If I could stop the insects I would,
but citronella is just a brand name.
They haven’t written the superpower out yet.

I am reaching
I have not touched
stretching fingers
only aiming for the tip
but now my thumb is in your mouth
and what the fuck is up with that?
and I can feel you pulsing
breathing
everything an open
book-on-tape, and now
the little magnetic ribbon
is spooling, spurred on by the
fast-forward button on my
ancient cassette deck.

Show me all your glories
and I’ll pick them apart by way
of not giving a shit.

Though it probably means I love you.

I feel as though I’m listing
I’m sure I must seem that way
out of sorts and all
paper hat on my head
nothing written on my hands
no company to remember me
but here I am, listing
and I’ll list my way back out to sea

I disregard the sunlight on most occasions

I hope for my sake I am not a fool,
yet I persist to act foolish

These are not wounds,
simply unplugged outlets.

Let the children watch, so just maybe,
they can learn something.

I called up all my family
I called up all my friends to see
if all the little animals had
really taken off tonight
and much to my surprise, it seemed
that every cirtter inside three
square miels had grown wings
and taken flight

Well I’ve never been a betting man
and never made much money hoping
other people’s words were untrue
but I have made out to gamble some
and you can bet I’m probably done
‘cuz pigs were surely flying
after I made that bet with you

I feel so under
qualified some
times when I con
sider all the lit
tle things comp
letely wrong wi
th everything but
I must rimain st
alwart at preten
ding that I’m just
as qualified as
the next ave
rage joe who cer
tainly will weigh
their two cents in
as deep as it
will rest, and it
will rest, so rest
assured you’re
not the only one
protecting this old
wishing well. Just
try not to let
your back be
turned too of
ten

I can not tell
weather the man in the stained wife beater
and the 25 dollar sunglasses is
reading the plaque at the bottom of that fountain
or considering his entire existence at
7:45 on a Friday night in the small-business
district of a little big city’s downtown.

Perhaps he wonders where he’ll be in ten years,
when the retro furniture boutique and the
mid-city semi-exclusive jazz club will most likely be gone,

Or maybe he ponders where the time went,
he with two kids and a regular job doing
odd sorts of labor for a landscaping outfit.

He could even be counting down the days
before he finally catches up on back child support
and can relish in the full-sized checks he’s
been denied for so long.

Or,
he’s wondering what comes after
‘Dedicated in memory…’
on the worn-down part
of the fountain base

…I’m certainly not going to ask him.

Let my snotty rags left everywhere
(even in mid-summer) stand
as sufficient retribution against the
OBnoXious taptaptapping
your knee makes as it hits the bottom
of your work desk.

Let it go without saying, and perfectly
understood, that you
won’t tell me to pick them up,
and I won’t cut your leg off
at the fucking thigh

I was checking the tags in the back of my shirts
when I realized, you know,
once upon a time we were just a bunch
of dumb punk kids.

But time hasn’t once upon’d in a minute,
and we havn’t been kids
since at least back when,
so what’s our excuse this time around?

Some days it’s awful hard
writing songs about pictures
of things you havn’t seen in a long long time.

Nine days out of ten, though
it’s harder still to try and
take those pictures again.

The light never seems to hit
the same way these days.

I only hope
the truth of life is
not so divine
that I won’t understand it

I see you’ve got the look down
and I smell you’ve got the smell down
(ain’t showered in weeks I reckon)
and with the nonchallantness of your grin
and the way that perfect Ibanez shines
in the late afternoon sun, I would almost
see you hopping trains right out of here.

No worries, no stress, everything in the
little hand-sewn bag that you’ve slung over
the one shoulder, just right. Absolutely picturesque.
I would almost bet the money that you’d
had to run from railroad bulls, especially
when that hobo tune comes ’round
on that guitar again.

Everything checks out
but that one little thing:
That Ibanez is just too damn clean.

I hope that there’s a baggage claim
at the end of all of this.
Some grand processing system
to sort through all the things we brought.

Hopefully it is an improved system.
Hopefully it only returns the things
that are worth a damn.

I fear we are not so lucky,
and that the processing was, well,
you know,
sort of our responsibility.

But if there is a baggage claim,
whatever the modifications,
I’m taking someone else’s bags
and hoping that they packed
a little better

Inundated.

Sentances dripping from mouths
dampening collared shirts
only making necks below
uncomfortable

Unimaginable.
‘I miss you’

Unfathomable.
‘Come home’

Those tracks
are out of service.
They’ll be torn for scrap
eventually.

Inundated
with the world watching
the world watching
the world.

Problems hardly fix themselves
dripping from mouths to
collars.

Please come home

Last I heard
you were trying
to get your face on the dollar bill
and as absurd
as it strikes me
there’s every chance you will
but first you’ll
have to learn just how
to catalog your kills
and hide the bad ones
in a torrid sea of
paperwork.

Footprints left behind
as if on the moon, untouched
by even solar winds

What a breeze to catch,
perhaps a shame to miss

There’s a spirit lost inside a body
floating for what seems to be
eternity,
eternity,
but I will cast it out

The books and papers say
we’re animals and
I suppose that makes for some kind
of half-there excuse
but 50 percent is a failing grade
and I’ve never heard of rabbits
and chickadees
grading any papers anyway.

Leave my lineage out of this
because when I kick you, I
mean to kick you,
especially when you’re
on the bottom,
shins or ass or teeth
or the shit right out of you.

but you cried before then,
plain as day and sure as anything
and when I heard I did not
weep or run or smile and lean closer.
The fingers held tight as hands
and there was solid truth amongst
your self-prescribed chaos.

now breathe.
And clarify with these next breaths
what you really mean to say
when you tell me
that we’re animals.

I do not offer what I bring to this table
What I bring to this table is of my own concern
Do not busy yourself with my business
for we’ve far too little time to tarry
now speak

and tell me
precisely
what it means

from the effigy burning in your front yard
to the bumper sticker on your refrigerator
to the love you tried to show but
never really had to give

Speak loud and slowly
I’m hard of hearing in my years of listening
to the stereo blasting far too loud.

I always thought it funny
that you could talk shit in stereo.

Trees and the like protrude so haphazardly,
sometimes,
and I don’t know if I can stand for it.

Axe and hatchet and saw and here we
go, to lumber-jacking. Sure to
clear the forest floor of everything
even remotely forested.

After all, we don’t have time
for all this touchy-feely shit,
and the deep green hues of the
high-top foliage only
makes to block the sun.

Or more usually in this season,
shades of gray.

You don’t know what it’s like
to have to clear-cut the woods
around your existential spaces.

You don’t know what it’s like,
but you will.

let me love the breath
you used to breathe against
my window, just to
draw a little message
in the fog.

and let me love the breath
you used to breathe in to
those fires, sending flame
and smoke and ashes
to the sky

Let me love the breath
you whispered, slipping
through the branches of
the crab-apple trees
you never really dug

Let me love the breath
you used to breathe against
my window,
and I’ll try to forget
the breath you
used to say
goodbye