We can not fathom
what we do not know
of the things that we
dedicate our
entire
be
ing
to mastering.

And that truth
and that terror
is glorious.

I spend a lot of time driving.
In that time, the music blasts
and everything is perfect
even weighed against the ice
that builds up on unheated
windows in the winter time.

The accident in the street
may as well be the front yard
with all the bright lights
flashing
filling my
windows
tearing my
eyes to midnight shreds
as they’re not so used to
blues,
at so late an hour

The cruisers running block
after block
all around
my sweet, sweet
sanctuary.
Enough,
to drive someone
insane

But,
my soul is filled with birdsong
and other sweet music,
and my eyes will close
to better listen to it,
and midnight blues
are not so blue again.

It has not been so long.
It has not been so taxing.
The days pass as they
always have.

Strange that
every day we’re apart
feels like a missed connection.

Well that seven chord makes my
hand feel funny
and every other part feel right as rain

and the barre might hurt but I’m
jammin’ now, so
I’ll bash right on through the pain

There is death in that water
I can smell it.
It reeks its odorous presence
through to my soul and there it
sits,

grabs hold,
just around the thinner parts
that aren’t so staunch
against the
creeping
terrors all about

Questions.
What if
questions are just
questions, nothing
more? but soon the
questions turn to
worries turn to
terror turns to
I-can’t leave-the-
house-any-more

But those are just the
little parts,
so I still drink that water.

And here I sit
breathing death
with every waking
instant

every piece
of packing tape
comes peeling off
the bits
it’s meant
to hold together

Packing tape
as substitute
for roofing gun
and superglue?
Never.

Everyone
gets just one
first mistake
however.

I have tasted it
putting my whole
in to everything
and hoping someone,
just one someone,
gets it

I’l never get that taste
out of my mouth.

When they jingle their keys
and the music plays in their heads
do they listen?

Do they roll around on beds so
soft and big and lonely all night
just to prove they can
because god damn it, they pay
the fucking rent?

What happens when they
leave their different city
for the same city they left
for the different city because
the different city was so much
better?

Where did all those long years go?

I breathe
oh, but hardly it seems
this new lung so unusual

The brass is the same brass
the growl is the same growl
but I breathe
I can’t breathe
I breathe
oh, but hardly

And it sings!
The song not so strong
but will get stronger
lungs pushing against lungs
pushing against valves pushing
against tiny metal springs
as I breathe, oh,
but hardly.

You have been selected
as the best we have to offer
with your little golden statue
and your perfect princess smile.

When visitors from elsewhere come
and set their ships flying above
we’ll bring you out to meet them
and you’ll save us from their tractor beams

You have been selected as
the Best
we have to offer.
Please keep practicing that smile.

“The thought processes run
so violently this time of season
and of course there’s never
reason to the rhyming, all ignored
with every sore wide open, every
bled-out wound bleeding again
and everybody looking for a friend
what’s so important? let me
tell you. It’s those madnesses,
the little ones, that everyone
plays off as someone else’s
problem. Let them deal with
what they’ll deal with, and the
rest I’ll leave for someone else
to bother with, I’m sick of this,
I’m leaving.”

It was the arthritis,
he said,
as he handed me his
envelope.

But he used to have
a name for himself.
A hundred dollar ad
in a local paper.

Must have sold him
about sixteen of ’em
just from that one ad,
he said as he pulled out
his pictures.

That was the biggest,
but I only did that one
once. Hard working in
a shop with no heat,
arthritis and all.

But he used to have
a name for himself.

Doghouse Jim.

A hundred dollar ad
in a local paper.

I watch you shadow-boxing
and I wonder why you even
bothered
calling me up to spar with you.

I see you fighting yourself,
beating yourself,
overcoming every obstacle
except for the ones that
would really weigh you out

But that’s comfort, and them’s
the breaks for the rest of us,
waiting
hopefully
quietly
for someone that’s not afraid
to throw a punch and
maybe get his ass kicked.
Maybe.

The measure of a man is immeasurable,
as it is the measure of his measure of
when to say ‘I ought to put some away’
and when to say ‘It’s only money.’

I wish there were a breathless maw
that I could clamor in to.
And with closed eyes and
thoughtful resignation I
could lay within the
belly of that beast.

I would liquefy and
digest, ending floating,
just the way I started
all those long years ago.
The aftermath would yield
my undoing as my self
was fully absorbed in to
my new something else.

This is for the rest of you.
For without that maw
to completely devour me,
I will have no way to change.
I have not found the beast.
Nor have I found a reason.

A soft breeze blows by an
old sales receipt. Coupons
on the back and complicated
jabber on the front, I’d wager.

It pulls the whole place into
perspective: Seedy men and
women wandering just behind
the seedless building fronts,
through back-alleys no-one
remembers and sharp turns
no-one takes for fear of
drowning.

I won’t pick up that sales
receipt, or walk through
any alleys, though. I won’t
be taking stunt-jumps at
an icy river’s crossing.

I will walk inside a shop
and throw my money
down. I will shout for
all the things I’d like
and receive only some
of the things I do
need. I’ll call for blood
and be denied, again
being forced out to
wander like just another
sales receipt

Today,
I slid down an icy hill
in a van, with two
bald tires.

In that instant I
considered,
for just an instant,
the metaphor therein.

And then,
I thought of all those
people that I know,
you know?

Only come home once
in a great long while.
Though I suppose we
always
(always?)
(Always.)
have that common ground
to stand on,
Or slide down.

It’s that sinking
feeling
when you see someone you know
and your heart just hits your stomach
and you damn trip all over yourself
scurrying to reach them
and it’s
not quite the them
you thought it was.

That same sinking
feeling
when I ventured just to touch you
and you weren’t really there after all.
Instead, you were precisely half
a world away and staying there.

I don’t see you
I don’t feel you
I can’t touch you
but there’s that sinking
feeling
to remind me you
were there.

Even though the martyrs shoo him
for he doesn’t like to martyr right
he is tremendous. He does not flex
or take his punishment so easily.
He does not bend, he does not waiver.
His death comes at the cost of
most of those that would kill him,
but he get’s the job done, all things
considered. He is tremendous, and
there’s not much anyone can do.