steel pulleys dragged the flag
to half staff and clattered
against it in the wind
shouting like horseshoes
glancing off a spike
in a sand pit and
I wondered for a moment
about what almost counts for

It could have been
yesterday
if I had let it be
but I didn’t
and look at us
now

I’d wrap you up
if I could tonight
like a child
against the cold
and hold you
through the sunrise

at least I’d feel
a little better
then

But you’re probably
better
off

I burn my guts
with gasoline
and render them
to mush
every evening
with bright
blue lights
in my eyes

A fit of foolishness
has found them
at the bottom of
a deep dark well
and I can only hope
this fit of arrogance
will get them out again

I remember ever scratch
on my parents’ dining table

I can see if I close my eyes
the chipped veneer
on my father’s end

the puncture from a project
by my middle brother
in the summer of ’03

I can feel my quiet frustration
at the grain not aligning
in the center
when the leaf is out
and sheer annoyance
that the lines don’t match
even when it is laid in
perfectly center

Ever stacked with clean towels
government paperwork
off-brand Tupperware full
of different kinds of cookies

a bag of fresh fruit even
within a few days of the market

and wonder at the dinner
that it could have held
but for a global pandemic
and a quarantine order
from the Governor
that won’t let up ’til May

I have heard
that the changes made
to our ecosystem are
irreversible
or they will be
in a decade or two

But the seas will only boil
after all the polar ice
has melted away

‘pity me’
he whispered in a heap
sobbing on the flagstones
as she looked on
unamused

‘I do’
she responded
and her fingers snapped
and hot fire sprung forth
to engulf him

he shrieked and flailed
with all his might
but in the end
there was only ash left
as she walked back inside
and drew the blinds
behind her

I arrived unsaved
on the wide steps
of your temple
where I begged mercy
in the dark of night
and I wailed,
oh I wailed,
to all the saints
or spirits
that would listen

when I woke at dawn
covered in dew
and dust and bruises
I found my prayers
answered:
no saint had left
notice and no spirit
made its mark so
I departed unsaved
into the wilderness
wailing to the sun instead

Stasis doesn’t stop time
the earth revolving the sun
consuming its fuel ever nearing
supernova

every shop is closed
the stark contrast of meaning
is thrown in our faces
but stasis doesn’t stop time

wrestle with your annuities
and despair in the gaze of God
as the milky way spirals ever closer
to oblivion

Wash away the salt and sand
from a long hard winter
that seemed to never end

but it does
and in the cold spray
and harsh wind of early
April I know peace

Soon we will be together

And I looked in to the distance
and I was not afraid
for the sun shone as bright
as it ever had in my youth
and the darkness that came after
was no darker than I’d remembered

Everything is  50 percent perfect
in this floating point in time

but for a set of sifting proxies
we’d be more than halfway

Monumental Artifice is a cruel thing
it seems

it feeds its fear
as a child at a river
with a bag of stale bread

and we must choose to consume
and be consumed

or starve
and let die our other half

The dust from our grinded bones
would settle in neat piles
under the chutes of great machines
rattling away through the night
to distill us in to the parts
best worth consuming
and my only hope, then, would be
to take the sickness with me
through each infernal mincer
over every hellish gear, so
by the time they found infection
it would bee too late for them
and they would suffocate inside
their own retched throbbing lungs
as the world spun fast enough
to fling them in to space
to die
the rest of the way

(Today is the first day of National Poetry Month)

I stood on the top of a snow mound
at eleven, hands without gloves
cold from the climb and face red
in the late afternoon light and I
watched as three boys made their ways
to the top where we would grip one
another and try with might and leverage
to cast each other down the mound
to hold the peak for a few seconds more
until another challenger summitted and
made their case to reign supreme but
not one of us had gloves and most of us
had rides home coming but I had walked
to school that morning so I would last
until the final bus had pulled away and
I would rule a minute more until my
beet-red hands started hurting

you want to
eat the eiffel tower

you want to eat
notre dame, the grand canyon
so you can fill your
brain with images

“go outside and breathe in the crisp air
and smell the city”

but for what?

for myself to keep?

you think you live to eat
i think you live to kill
and shit

the colors are already
inverted for me
and i just have to
live like this

so that i won’t one day
find myself

in someone else’s brain
trying to tell them
what to do

I fell for you
and I think you fell
for me,
too,
maybe eleven
years
ago

we did our best
to fuck that up

and it worked
so well
that I
stopped
calling

***

You can’t answer now
even if you
ever
wanted to

but I’m sorry
I never remember
anymore
to miss you

somehow,
though,
I don’t think
you would
mind

at least i’m in wichita
and one of
maryann’s cousins can’t just
towe my car

at least i’m wichita
making over 50 thousand a year
and my mom can’t
yell at me

i’m not back home
smoking mids
behind a gas station
with some kids i went to
school with

rob’s dead
a lot of shitty things have happened
(and continue to)
but it’s fine
it’s fine

what takes me out better be
something
not like falling in the
shower
i’m too self important
for that

i want to say thanks
for the cold air
and thanks for the
moon