poetry

Trespassing

poetry

Like thieves, we stole through the night.
We waited for the last pair of taillights to pass
and then crossed the street in the vacuous silence of their wake.
You were several steps ahead,
familiar with the way.

The school was immutable in its brick slumber.
We pressed our faces to cold glass and peered
into darkened classrooms populated by slouched shadows.
Emergency exit signs reflected gently in waxen linoleum,
lingering like lipstick.

We continued to the back of the building,
half carried on rebellion’s breeze,
half scared we’d see the principal or a cop or my mom.
Our steps scraped echoes from the parking lot pavement,
we exhaled momentary contrails into the autumn air.

This is it, you said, as if to God,
in front of a tall conglomeration of metal vents and conduits,
set in gravel, surrounded by chain link fence.
You began to climb and I followed,
the delinquent rattle of our ascent shaking the evening calm.

The rooftop surprised our feet with skull-sized stones.
The deep knocks of their shifting gave our steps new meaning
as we moved across the sky.
You sat confidently on the ledge,
took a cigarette from your front coat pocket and lit it.

It was then I nearly pushed you,
my head flashing with lightning rage–but it passed.
I sat a few feet from your oblivious form,
requested a cigarette, and surveyed the sleeping town
from those three stories
that seemed like thirty that night.

naught box

poetry

on confrontation today i fled to my nothing box. a small place inside of me where i keep nothing. and to where i retreat when what i desire is nothing. in said box i find nothing at all. i’d say it brings rest but that would be something and altogether more than i’m seeking when i seek nothing in my nothing box.

Training Seminar

poetry

There are a thousand words to say
over and over and over and over and
over again, but truths still exist.

Your friend is dead and buried

There’s a dark spot on the radar,
right between the low-flying planes
and the weather balloons, that gets
reserved for all the little things that
nobody can see coming

(this is a glitch in the system
and it’s been there for years)

Like all things worth doing, though,
there’s a trick to the method:
Just pay real close attention
to the things passing into darkness,
and you may just have a good idea
on where they’ll be coming out

Oh Goodness, I hope they end up coming out.

Scavenger

poetry

I saw a soccer ball deflated
near a fencepost. It was
covered
with dirt and mud and moss
and it didn’t look like it had been
kicked
in a great many years

So!

I moved to take the soccer ball
and plucked it from it’s rest,
down in the muck and earthy-scented
earth
and home I went, where
I threw it on the back sidewalk
and left it.

A few days passed, and so did
the memory of my new soccer ball.
It lay in back
the dog did not attack it
nor did anyone bother with the thing

Until

I stepped out back one day
and there it was.
There was nothing else to do,
particularly,
so I took that ball and
I ran it under hot water,
and I took a pump to it
and filled it with air

Now

that ol’ ball plays just as good
as it ever did. But soccer balls
are the only things so
patient

A Year Ago

poetry

I was alone, standing at a crossroads
Examining with an unknown urgency
A wooden post with interdigitated directions.
My hand brimmed over a red horizon:
“Desire,” the tattered caption said.
With resiliently gritted teeth I turned away.
“Now,” another bold carving proclaimed.
“Happiness,” a third pleaded.
“Lust,” “Power,” “This,” they shrieked.

The ax swung in panicked disregard.
The wood moaned in splintering cracks.
The blade slid wrathfully through.
The slanting bough pulling apart from itself
Finally collapsing to the ashen earth
A writhing then suddenly still corpse.

A hissing match pirouetted to the remains.
Expanding and dancing an orange ballet.
Wind cycloned arid hurricanes then ceased.
Dust settled and the small voice spoke:
“Follow,” it said, “I know the way.”
Lifting the flame blackened vestige
To rest like a yoke on my shoulders
I turned away from myself and followed.
The signposts to my past have been burned.
There is no turning back.

Healing

poetry

Whisper me those fighting words
I’ll tell you what I think of them
and you can never say I never
did nothing for nobody

Speak me clean your inner truth
I’ll weigh your thoughts against my own
and then perhaps we’ll find out
just exactly what’s inside of me

but don’t dare speak a cutting word
or lash your tongue against the thing
We’ve barely got all of our own
how could we ever pay that fee?

Picture Of A Medium-Sized Town’s Park At Night

poetry

There was a gentleman

He was sitting on a park bench
not too far from the edge of the
busiest road in the whole city.

The sun was low in the evening
sky and there were vagrants near,
if I recall correctly, scratching for change
and drinking out of little brown bags.

There was a wind that picked up
and it pushed on everybody, tugging
on hair and clothes and bags and
everything, even if it was just a little bit.

Suddenly, that man’s hat was plucked
right from his crown, and in the flash of
an instant, the wind had carried it under
the uncaring tread of a passing car,
flattening it to the brim.

There was a sigh
and the man stood from his park bench,
ignoring the vagrants and turning away
from the red-orange bulb hovering just
above the buildingtops.

He started walking then, perhaps
towards his home, or perhaps to purchase
a new cap.
At least it didn’t rain that night.

Seize the day, they say; why is it the day seized me?

poetry

What time collects may be a trivial dissection of my erratic life- but there is no coincidence to the second or to the leaching misery it disburses- stingy and slow- that I may not even scream a havoc or claim outlandish horror. 
Sum up the hours and bear the loathsome sight- the big picture is a crash scene. Count and check if we can assess and gather our lives under a same disheartening label; a human experience ?
Heaven or hell who cares? The worm is a coming, yet all I can do is eat my boots and the laces too. I should have just latched onto the void of inexistence, but nobody said it was going to be this way…
 

loveless (or call the dogs off, jesus)

poetry

nothing can be more appealing
to me than the beauty of a woman;
i see in her figure, and in her form,
(or what she shows me of it)
the chesapeake, the rockies,
the sky.

however, much unlike a good book,
or an album,
the insides of a human are
much less appealing than the
outside. i venture to say:
this anomaly is not found
outside of our personal
shared condition.
the slow and painful stuttering
dive of disinterest that forms
once cracking open the spine
of one of these most
appealing vixens.

i hear the retorts of a million
dead poets in my ears, the
sheepish cry of billions
of single-celled
omnivorous,
monogamous,
thoughtless populi screaming:
but for love!
oh, i hear you all,
all of you shape-shifting spineless
oafs,
willing to subject yourself to
untold ignorances under the
name of some vague emotional
and societal ploy.

i say,
we have multiplied
many times over,
jesus,
now call the dogs off.
i am loveless.

Upon realizing the lies will continue

poetry

The thought hit me like a
Fist to the neck
So I rolled over, gently
And let the sheet fall
From off one shoulder
A small wave, lapping at my side

Your lips met my back like
Little sea babies, drenched
And salty, pressing their
Bodies into the sand
To dry off
To cover something up

There are only so many words
Available to us now
And I’ve used them all up
They’re washed up on the
Twilight shore
Rotting away like whales.