I saw three men standing
in the shadows by a swimming pool
in rags and coats from the
previous season, breathing
heavy fingers fighting open
pop-top beer cans whiskers
shaking under the wind’s slight
duress and I stopped.

there they stood by the pool
forlorn considerations of
jumping right in, cans and coats
be damned. Of course they
chose to stand and eye instead.
Only a fool leaps and leaves it
all behind, they said. Yet there they
were, with nothing but coats and
cans and rags and whiskers and
the opulent gall to say anything.

They did not jump. They only drank
and stood and eyed and sighed.

But I will enjoy this swimming pool,
for I left my coats and rags
in someone else’s town

It’s hard to hate the messenger
even when he only carries lies
and lies and
bullshit in a shoulder-bag

Perhaps that’s the real message,
or the one worth hearing anyway.
In any case, I’ll try not to hate
the messenger.

But I will wait for him
to bring me some good news

The line between crying in front of
-One Hundred-
people and inciting a dance pit is
negligible, at best

But the difference between your father
saying -‘man’-
instead of -‘son’-
when he grabs you by the shoulder on
your way off stage is
-about-
a million miles

This world is not a decimal system.
Our measures do not skew the same.
So, not so bad a thing
that my ruler has been broken
all this time

I often wonder if talking to a dead man
is considered dialogue or soliloquy.
But I guess you’re not really
around to tell me anyway, and
therein probably lies the answer.

One day I’ll die and we
can continue that conversation
that we started a hundred times.
Until then, I suppose,
I’ll just keep talking to myself.

He was just a boy when he bought his wooden
sword, and shield made out of plastic,
from a kiosk at a carnival.

Was a priceless prize, that weapon and its partner.
Security against every wolf and monster
and beggar and vagabond.
Life and livelihood assured.

He was a warrior then.

But time passes and, often cruelly.
The sword has broke, the shield
too small to strap. Was never seen fit
to buy another.

Defenseless.

Ripped apart by wolves and monsters.
Taken, by the vagabonds, for all he’s got.
Wretched and shameful.

Wretched,
and shameful,
and to top it all,
his car won’t start.

God Damn It.

something must have happened
but with all the noise from under that hood
and all the screaming siren lights
and all the airplanes overhead
you sounded great tonight

Genuine is
leather, gold, sugar, diamonds, Kentucky bourbon,
You.

Coats need tailoring,
gold the work of practiced hands,
sugar only comes from canes
and Kentucky Bourbon is one thing only found in
Kentucky.
(check the label).

Oh, so pay the man and
buy that stamp on his degree.
Buy the gold medal on the
Barbecue sauce wrapper.

I’ll drive an hour and sit
singing loud enough to
wake the neighbors. And we
won’t say anything of substance
until we’re safely set away.

But we’ll say it.

And the only genuine I’ll pay for
is the only one I get for free.

It was never a specific night,
I don’t think.
I can not recall the moment our
deference occurred.
Perhaps,
the job a summer
(A lifetime?) ago,
where you met an
entirely new
sort of situation.

They were big plans
and long nights and
days and days and miles
and miles and miles
together,
our words still
worth a good god damn
weighed up and even,
with twenty dollars between us
and a quarter-tank of gas
if we were lucky.

But millions of screaming insects
drown even the strongest
swimmer, and even when one
puts to port, there’s
never any guarantee
of safe and greener
pastures.

The soul tends to shake
-and violently-
when suddenly ripped apart.
I’m sure you both screamed,
but trees fall every day,
and no one hardly
hears a sound in these
forests.

But deference is a fickle thing,
subject to wit and apt to whimsy.
There are a million roads
all across this great wide planet.
Some run long, others but a
zig-zag.
Maybe these paths will
jog again together.

Then again, perhaps,
we have ever and finally
Deferred.

Caught the last train to Belmont
then the expressway back to Granville

Cops in their cars and
drunks in their gutters
with the wind just cold enough
to keep the stepping lively

and the jazz was swinging all night,
I can assure you.
From the diner on Irving Park to
the Green Mill down on Broadway.

The jazz was
swinging,
I can absolutely
tell you that

Words measured carefully on digital scales
Delusional, too heavy
idiotic, too obscene
incomprehensibly repugnant, too much

Asinine. Absurd.
They weigh alright. Trim and
clean, relatively.

Oh, and they fit just right
when I look at you

You know what they told me?
They said that people die,
and they get wrapped and
dressed and burried and then
they’re gone.

Gone forever.

They said
you can’t talk to them no more,
can’t hold them no more,
all those long conversations about
nothing
only linger in the
expanses of
memory.

They drew a simple diagram
that looked a lot like a
connect-the-dots, to show
the differences between
where good people go
and where bad people go,
while omitting the
methods in place
to figure out who is which.

But the little things.
The small happenstance,
the vivaciously vivid dreams,
the picture they paint is
polished and clean and
clear as day. There are
faces looking in
through the windows.

But you know what they told me?
They told me poeple die,
They told me people
die and disappear.
And you know?
I just can’t believe them.

Overcast are the skies above our boundaries,
toeing invisible lines, locking
immovable gazes, trying
to pierce the other over naught
but a quick game
of hangman

Raindrops are scant but present,
dropping slow but dropping
nonetheless, a fool’s errand of flooding
these empty, overcrowded streets

Petulance be damned,
for none are ever the wiser

I can tell you how many steps
are on the staircase in the back,
heading up to the office.

I know every little sound that
old van makes, from the whine
of the power steering pump to
the chatter of loose paneling

I can show you the boulders in
the park down the road, and the
foundation from some old pumphouse
that’s buried under fallen trees

But acute as I am,
with all the transitive guile
intrinsic to my family ties,
I never even saw you coming.

So close to home and everything
breaks down.

So close to home.

We knew we had some work to do,
but everything was going so well…

I cut because I love you, babe.

Now bleed on me.

It may be second-guessing, but I always
tend to wonder when I’m asked to
Dance

D.J. Spinning the same six songs he’s
spun for every hitching since they started
hitching folks those years ago,
and here we are out on the dance floor

Spoken words make way for awkward
silences,
though they’re only really awkward with
our hands around eachother’s waists and
not a piece of common ground to
stand on

except,
of course,
this dance floor

My brother’s gone to gypsying I
think, but do not fear, as
all is well when he his gypsying,
I’m told, and I can hear it
twixt the twanging strings and
memories made
all around a fire, oh
my brother’s gone to gypsying
and I can only sit and be
inspired

Our minds wander
to the land of cymbals and cigarettes
oh, this land of plenty has got
everything but that, it seems

The sweet smell of the sea breeze
and the thoughts of old Byzantium so
eerily close at hand.

As we drift ever farther,
black sea starts us sinking,
the aridity compromised only
by tall bottles of sweet red wine

Yeats would be ecstatic

Oh darling
I can see you,
with your firey eyes and
your samurai smile
just like in the movies
and you’re looking this way
because you can see me
seeing you, bare teeth and
cut hair and all, squirming
in the warmer spots of sunlight
with this collared shirt unbuttoned
at the top and
All we understand is
old jazz records.

I don’t know what’s supposed to grind,
nobody does, really,
so we’ll keep greasing axles
and replacing parts ’till
hopefully
that grinding goes away

The street light is but a
stone’s throw
away from me. I can see it,
pushing back the darkness pushing
back the darkness pushing back the
terror pushing back the beauty pushing
back the night

I fear I’ll never make it,
for the stone may throw, but
it may also bounce off,
in to the great big horror that is
uncertainty

I could not be let to skip,
nor could I make to be thrown,
There is no one strong enough
to pitch me.

So I look towards the street light
while standing under another one