poetry

The Ceiling Fan Is On

poetry

As much as I love each waking day
there’s a laying night to match
often empty and these days
clouded with not a star to see

would that I could trade in
all these laying nights for
all the waking nights that
had come before instead

I think we’d both be happier
or I think we’d both be
a little less sad,
at least

And you were ready for me this time

poetry

But your smile and laugh
were as sweet as my memory
had ever over-exaggerated

You were the bullet-point
at the beginning of the word
‘beauty’

You shined bright enough
for me to shade my eyes
but not so bright to blind me

And You were ready to say
what you had to say
when I did just the same

And I’m not sure
that I’ll ever be ready for you

yours is a selfish war

poetry

you rush forward
in simple straight lines
bayonets readied to
receive the deathly gasps
of your fellow country-men
of your enemy
and after
you close your eyes
and bury it sharply
into their chest
you look back
desperately for some type of
approval and see nothing
but a general
atop a horse
yawning

Sometimes blue, Sometimes green

poetry

I can’t stop thinking about your eyes

I only want to stare at them forever

or at least until I am trapped inside of them

then I will rest easily and eternally

I will know what the word ‘peace’ really means

but I am toiling now for certain

I am only pausing some of the time

and in each of these fleeting stolen moments

I can’t stop thinking about your eyes

on wichita, ks

poetry

wichita is a pretty crack whore
who was cool in high school, once
but now an addict
selling her self and begging

as i sit with her on a street corner
before the winter when kansas
has warm fall breezes that travel
far across the empty plains
we talk sarcastically about
old inside jokes shared between
normal high school friends
but i won’t leave here without her crying
and begging me for change
and if i refuse
offering to sell me ass

it’s the oil running through
her veins that makes her cheap
and desperate

Monster

poetry

There is a monster inside of you
and inside of me, too
and it is the same monster
because this monster is omnipresent
like a God, or like an Elder God
with wrapping tentacles
with venomous teeth
and it does not feed so much as consume
and it poisons us with dark dreams
with horrible sadnesses and imagined perils
it’s toxin will teach us to fear everything we’ve ever loved
there is no medicine to bring us back to health
and even reason and good faith can do little to assuage its infection

This monster will go eventually
but only after feasting to it’s content
after we are left white and meek and beaten
We will lay in our own sick
and wretch over our hopes and dreams
but if we remain resolute
and only let our disease get the best of us sometimes
we will be able to stand eventually
and the tightness will leave our chest
the aches will leave our beleaguered muscles
and we will walk again nearly as assured as before

Then we will be as we have always been
but for the monster that we know to be lurking
everywhere and anywhere at once

Sunday Afternoon (Is This What Dying Feels Like)

poetry

The Sun is warm
as it reveals the world
to those who would discover it

It casts shadows, too;
it creates mirages
when it burns too bright

It blisters skin,
it boils out moistures,
it saps all fight from a man

And I am thankful for its light
And I am fearful of its shadows
And I wonder, is this what dying feels like?

Would that I could find an answer
But only the dead have it
And the dead I know don’t say a word

Nobody Tells You How Long It Takes

poetry

Every now and then it hits me
like a kick in the teeth

The stinging will pass, sure enough
but the ache and soreness eeks on
for hours afterward

then I’ll go a week, let’s say,
and everything will be just as good
as it could be, considering

but then the truth, like a startled mule
will stop suddenly in front of me
and out its hind leg will spring

Luckily my lip never seems to split
nor does anything seem to pop loose

But my jaw has been consistently stiffer,
these days,
and my gums are stinging real bad now,
that’s for sure

Diatonic Fourths

poetry

My fingers struggle to process input
from eyes that struggle to remember
how to interpret dots and marks
in such a way as to associate them
with a letter, and in some cases
a modifier that when read together
make up the pieces of what would
in the modern parlance be called
a ‘universal language’

it sounds awful as I stumble over
notes that don’t go together the way
that I think they should, but really
these intervals are new to me, or
at least they are as an exercise
in movement, but I have been assured
that even as the tones clash and
cluster, and even though my muscles
feel as dumb as they have ever felt,
I will be better off when these
sounds are under my fingers

I am not sure that I believe them
but I will stay in this woodshed
just the same

the ballad of the penguin and the polar bear

poetry

you’ve got the heart
of a bird
that can’t fly
but you want
to be
the mighty bear

you gather your strength
in numbers
sharing your warmth
and empathy

he’s got the heart
and the skin
for the blistering cold
and all alone
though he longs
to share

he sings his sad songs
into the wind
longing for warmth
and empathy

when the world is a giant iceburg
you see what you think you need
floating among
the shards of ice in this vast ocean
the missing puzzle pieces to
a heart that doesn’t bleed

you swim for it
and you find it
but they don’t fit

some foreign things
are foreign
for a reason

some opposites
repel
too hard to touch

you find it’s the things
that make you different
that keep you apart

no matter how you dream

Most Nights Now

poetry

‘let’s not do anything too drastic’
I say to myself most nights now
and instead of venturing forth
into the darkness with a gun
on my hip and cheap whiskey
in my gullet I swaddle myself
in the folds of a blanket that
radiates with memories so warm
they quickly overwhelm me
and as I lay with half-closed eyes
staring at the wall while
a sad old record hums through
the speakers of my stereo
I wonder if perhaps a spot of
hot hooch and some adventure
isn’t actually drastic enough

Pipeline

poetry

Every forty minutes or so
It happens

Liquid starts to swell
Behind the corners of my eyelids
And begins to push outward
Threatening to escape
In front of everyone

I have never been such an avid blinker

But the blinking only partially belays
The sad parts leaking out. Hell,
it doesn’t even really stop the water

And even though this only happens
Every forty minutes,
The water is always bubbling up