Sometimes I roll a die
and a number comes up
and that’s my number
and I have to deal with that
for good or ill
and sometimes I lose the game
and sometimes I just lose
everything
but I have to deal with that
and if there’s one thing
that I have learned in my years,
sir,
it’s that if someone hands you dice
and you don’t know them
and they ask you to roll those bones,
why,
it’s time to head home,
to your friends and family,
and make yourself a sure bet

i hide my face
from the eyes
of the passerby’s
looking down
from the bridge
i’m on at the crowded
street on the
fourth sunday
since we said
we’d meet. i came
again, but
i know you haven’t been waiting for me.

My feet get gold
even through my boots
but I wear them anyway
because at least they don’ get wet
and dry feet are important
every day of your life
and there isn’t any reason
not to wear those boots
unless I don’t care about
wet feet no more
but the lady likes them
so there really isn’t
any good reason
at all

as the snow comes back a
subconcious picture of you
burnt in the screen
a microscopic mostly-
see-through-bug on my
eyeball
wriggles around all day
and my friends never liked you
except the ones who loved you

i wonder what you’re doing now
loving someone else like i am?
or wriggling around

or falling to the ground

as the snow that comes back
to michigan.

I want to lay down with you
the way the shadow of the cloud
lays down on the mountain. Gentle
as a sigh. The moon is bright, tonight,
brighter than I’ve ever caught it,
like a circle ripped out of the sky,
might it be that it shines to remind me
that you are shining, like always,
lighting my way to the sky.

i could not drink the monster’s cup
but i could stand amidst his fury
i would not claim to be a hero
i just like to prove that i won’t fold
the monster lashed out at his daughter
and i thought i’d rather die
than see honesty destroyed over
drunken sunset tired ineffable anger from
her father the big white monster drinking
vodka from a cup
he called it eggnog
i called it vodka milk and icecubes
he looked at me and then he smirked
he should have rapped me once at least
one real fucking good one on my thinker
for i am 5’9 and have the fight of a
newborn baby bird flapping violently
plunging t’wards the parking
lot.

I wrote one about a fighter
with a big date coming up
and he was on top of the world
and that purse was going to
retire him
and partner, he couldn’t be
any happier

And the date was rigged but
nobody told John that
the other guy, he was going
to switch gloves in the
fourth round, and those gloves
were filled with birdshot

so John got hit and in the face
and hard, too. He went down
fast in the fourth round, and
it looked like he would never,
ever,
fight again

And I didn’t write a
come-back story,
so he never, ever did.

i know the crickets sounds
will grow with time
and overwhelm the beating
of my heart
in the grass near my
head as they inch
out towards my nose
and my toes grow further
numb buried in the sand
below me.

can’t press this
duh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh, bump bump
can’t press this
duh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh, bump bump

yo i’ve been around the world
from san fran to LA
and everywhere i travel,
wordpress and various copyright restrictions always say

can’t press this
duh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh, bump bump
can’t press this
duh nuh nuh nuh, nuh nuh, bump bump

the pipe drain down
which i shove my productivity
has been clogged with
bits of banana and carrot
peelings which i’ve been
using to make juice in an effort
to get more vitamins in a
time where i feel deplete
every morning, noon, and 3am
when i wake to tremors and fears
this will never happen,
then i take a banana and
shove it directly in the drain
to clog the pipe so productivity
can stop at my will instead
of indirectly so that for
once in seven months
i can actually be in control
of something in my life.

If I had been thinking 
straight out of my mother's womb
I would have dedicated myself 
to the art of judging others
and would have started myself
an award company 
so I would never have to achieve
and only tell others that they
arbitrarily
had struck some sort of 

line

and were better than everyone else
who's arbitrary 

line

had not quite been crossed
or perhaps just not crossed 
hard enough

and I would make my way 
in this world not by standing
on the shoulders of giants,
but by tricking giants in to thinking
that most of them just
aren't big enough

the greats are chosen by lottery
among a group of statistically
identical beings
and the draw is about time
and place and circumstance
and the baselessness is harolded
around far and wide as a great
intellectual romance
between society and fate
a ritual bathed in carbon
a steeple of inhumanity
a legal type of thievery
of opportunity for a pure soul
whom has no value
anymore.

being quiet all the time
does not make you more profound
by necessity
and the very fact
that you find yourself so
important that you
won’t speak shows
that you are not at all,

so all your silences are just
boring and awkward to me
even if i make an ass of myself
telling you so.

Who the fuck are you
with your old books
and your bachelor’s degree
and you’ve never kissed
a girl
or a man
or anything
and I mean
who the fuck are you
anyway?

Do you know what love is?
You cradle someone
all night
when they’re sick and you
pick them up from work
and buy them the junkfood
they’d never buy themselves

and sometimes
when no one else is around
you share a moment
that makes the world
stop

You don’t know what love is.
You’ve never even kissed
a girl
or a man
or anything
and your book is a piece
of shit and your
degree is all of
nothing

and who the fuck do you
even think you are?

i wasn’t ready for hannah or
how at our winter formal she
toyed with me next to my date

i exploded with ambition but
she saw the smoke from miles away

oh
how easy it must have been
to take me out and shut me down
but the real miracle was that
the last time i called her she
scolded me with a thousand insights
on what i could do better
like we’d been together for years
and i told her that hearing
all my flaws from her in such detail
after only knowing her shortly
turned me on
and she hung up

and i guess i never would be
ready for hannah
for now she’s married and hiking in utah
and i’m just single and sitting in nowhere
ready now but never to.

the way he moves
he is no ordinary man
he is male
from glossy magazines
air brushed topless perfection
ignominous beauty
he is a top chart pop song
catchy sexy
and like a radio tune,
he is on constant replay
he is got the appeal of a high on demand commodity and
the confidence of a high price tag-
he is a wave of heat
brainwashed and out of control,
i want to buy naughty lingerie
and master the complex art of classy slutterie-
his eyes, his cheeky smile have me screaming for his name,
Abs?Brad?Carnal?Daniel?Etc…
my nails turn into claws
for a night or two
on his altar, i will lay the gifts
of my body,
and if he wants to i’ll throw in
my heart soul and pride
i just want to be closer
and if he be cloud, i’d be rain
i want to see
his machinery at work, give it a running
my skin is already ablaze
i am a decadent pretty pretty please
but who made up the rules
we are on opposite shores
if he’d just close his eyes, there is nothing we
couldn’t do-
i’d be the award in his hand at the VMA-
his acceptance speech and
his afternight party

In a not so different space
under a blinding light
we revealed ourselves with ease
we hummed our truths about God’s plan
and raised our glasses to an incandescent bond
that we knew could go out any time

night after night
we’d meet to share the hurt, the happy, the ugly in our minds
we’d light up, flicker, and light up again
we’d dust ashes off our faces and make choices:
to live unquestioning or rekindled
night after night
we were born and born again

we swore off
regret
despair
doubt
confusion
loathing

be it in a pond or the big sea
we swore we would swim a beautiful swim
we wouldn’t live small lives
floundering pitfully drearily
and when the going gets tough
we wouldn’t run the way robbers and murders do;
without looking back-
we’d give all we have to give
and let it be

we may lose few more hair, gray the rest and
grow dizzy with loneliness
we’d still hold onto our souls and
quietly stand in his warm light

back then
thinking of God was our happiness
but as we lived life
our grace wore off, and one day
we found ourselves at an insurmountable distance away from God
i bewildered with a gradual fear of Him,
and you, my friend, unraveling and feeling
too small, too resentful to stand in his presence,
we each found reasons and excuses
why couldn’t be what he had hoped we’d be

yet a part of us lingers on
hopelessly searching
through the winding alleys of our past
for the God we knew
but perhaps if we had accepted who
we were becoming,
imperfect shadowy puerile and messy
we would have found God still
unchanged and accessible

i haven’t the time
for words to flow.
i’ve filled it with
flowing other things.
i’ven’t the time
for poetry
and whatsitmake me
to be a guy withn’t
the time to poet?

Once I crawled through the depths
of a long, dark cave
and when you turned out the lights
you could hear the planet breathing
and though it was cold and damp
it was proper I think
and I felt closer to God then
than I ever have up top
I think
and sometimes I’m tired and I’m
just a little off but then
I remember that time when once
I crawled through the depths
of a long, dark cave
and it was peaceful I think
even if it scared me
every inch of the way

and so i’ll be boarding a plane
in no time really
and heading to africa
because it’s time to start being
a dad to my boys
and i’ll be away from my family
for christmas.
well 1/2 my family anyhow,
but that was unavoidable
as the shit has been hitting
the fan in a steady stream for
some time now and the fan is starting
to slow.
and so i’ll be boarding a plane
in no time really
because before that fan stops
i want to stop saying goodbye.