there are no words for when
things are a-okay
and you’re a man in the sun
on a raft in a bay
and you couldn’t care what
the moving mouths say
every thing be damned
if just for today
they are impermanent
and pass like a wave
there are no words
when things are okay.

Bodies like barbie dolls, void
of all nature, all feeling, all
joy and splendor.
Ken dolls, all of ‘em-
stupid bulge spots as if
there’s something there to hope for.
They’re all the same plastic,
inorganic lumps waiting
to try and rub against
whatever kind of senseless parts
I don’t possess. Me,
I’m one of them-
the lifeless, the shapeless, the
unpleasurable mockery of all
which is holy. I am unfit to fulfill my duties.
And, well, this whole world’s a joke.

Sometimes I
fucking hate a Hammond Organ
but that’s an off-day
mostly

An average human being
can spend
without food
(as long as he
remains hydrated)
approximately
forty-five days
if the weather is
alright,
before his body
runs out of
muscle
to absorb
and starts in
on the organs and
such, then the
brain, when he
will probably
suffer
irreversible
brain damage

An average human being
does not need
to experience
this for any
reason

For Tara

Before you,
and before this,
I was a wool sock
full of lead bricks
in a clenched fist
I was
stone.
My favorite books;
those love stories whose quotes
I had once etched into my
eyelids
had moved
to the bottom of the stack
had
slipped under the carpet
my eyelids
were erased
and replacing these quotes
were notes to myself
saying
Keep these lids closed.
You can’t miss what you pretend
you’ve never seen.
So I spent one month
this past summer
sleeping on the floor
And I always locked the door
and I never bought a bed
Instead
I focused on
turning myself in to bread
With the hope
that enough people could
pull pieces from me
as to make me feel needed
I needed that.
Meanwhile
I laughed
as I gracefully slipped in to cynicism
like a robe made of glass
It’s a lot easier to
say you may never fall asleep
beside anything but the wall
if while you do, you laugh. I
wish you knew
how few things I believed in
before I believed in you.

But I could already feel
these fists unclench
the night we met
I changed my pillow cases.
I didn’t need to erase
my eyelids again. They’re
wide open now
I can only barely remember
what they once said.
The robes I wore
are burnt and
forgotten
The first time I got dressed
after meeting you
it was all linen. Soft
like I had forgotten how to know.

I was writing poems to
pray that you existed
before I ever knew you or
knew this
I knew I was looking for your eyes against mine.
I just didn’t know
what they would look like.
And I don’t believe in resurrection
but I do believe in redemption
and you pulled out of me
the man who needed to be saved.
So I renamed love after you
It’s a small thankfulness
for reminding me
that it existed.

i wrote a poem twenty lines long
with repetition, alliteration,
and a few other fancy elements.

but then in a move so poetic,
my words can’t describe

i erased it because it sucked
and saved you the pain of reading rubbish.

You can cut a man’s throat
and he’ll feel it for
the rest of his life and
you can stab him and
he’ll bleed until he stops
and he’ll never forget it

You can cut a mans’ soul
and he may never know
it and those cuts are
deeper than anything and
maybe he doesn’t bleed
or die but maybe he does

Maybe he’s never the same
again.

And while one cuts with one’s
knife and one does one’s
work so perfectly, another
makes the mark with song or
sonnet and maybe he slips
a time or two, and maybe that
is half the point somehow

That a man can break and
stand on both feet is
astounding

That a man can endure
and never move again:
double that,
and easily.

For Tara

A man once climbed
the world’s tallest mountain
just to prove
that the air there did not
smell like his love’s perfume.
When he got to the top
he realized
it does not work that way.

The whole mountains itself
looked like her smiling face.

it’s about what you think
and how it drips out of your
forehead in confident drops
and tip-toes down your face
too small for you to feel

and it’s about what they think
and about how they smile when
they think it
and as their smiles grow there
are a million grating shreaks
growing, too and it sounds
like pulling a rusty rake across
a rusty tractor
in an aluminum barn

it’s about caring

it’s about how you’re all wrong

and i’ve stopped offering corrections

stopped giving out tours

to the lake from which to drink
only
if you’ve learned what direction

we took to get there

no one has ever made it
there and back

except
for those of us with coke-
bottle eyes
then

then

everything is far too clear
and there is water everywhere
everywhere
that you are not

For Tara

In first grade
Everyone drew the sun
as a big yellow cookie with
orange triangle arms.
I picked so many fights
over how incorrect that was.
But I have the same problem
when trying to describe love

My love
wears the face of worry
Which manifests as
I hear your voice around
every corner
and see your face
in places I know you are not
My butterflies are cannonballs
playing hopscotch in my stomach
I swallow rocks
sometimes
to keep all this emotion
down.
And how
many pages were torn
for me to get this book tongued
for me to get this binding spine
This is a true story
of a young man who loved
so hard
he could quote Shakespeare at you
and mean it.

There comes a time
when my words are not enough.
Some days I lick newspaper
and eat sentences right out
of my close friends’ mouths
just
to make use
and make language
like paint
I mix words
just to make sense. You
send my senses
to the base of my stomach. You
are the penny in my dryer.
I would have to
swallow rocks
if I ever thought
I wanted quiet.
If I ever wanted to quell the riot
you’ve got going
in my body. I’m
not blinking so much
to shut
you out
That’s my eyes
fighting to give you a
standing ovation.
If I turn sideways
I’m not looking at anyone else
that’s my ears trying to hear you
loud enough
That when you’ve gone away
I can still hit replay
But I’ve got to be careful of
what my mouth does. Listen
you should know this
I have spoken love
so hard
I might have broken love
before
This is a warning:
I am typewriter fingered
and I talk
a lot
I know you know this.
If you notice
that I repeat myself
I apologize
in advance
Sometimes my heart beats quicker
than my mouth can move
So when I run out of ways to say “love”
please
don’t think that means anything about you

I’m trying to teach myself silence
I’m not great at it
I know you know that too.
If I ever get it right
it’s just practice
I still have the world to say to you.
And when I get it wrong,
on the days
that you want
to tell me
to shut up
and I keep name-dropping “love”
That’s because
I stopped eating those rocks.
I want to feel this.

In first grade
I was asked to describe the sun.
So I stared directly at it
And when my teacher asked what it looked like
I said ouch
It’s really bright
I can’t see anything right now
Talking about love
or you
is the same thing
Blinding in all your bright
I still don’t ever miss the night

Some pictures are valueless
some less or more than average
and the adage only makes the rule
for one picture, anyway

Some pictures can cost you dear
and leave you broke and homeless
or alone in the world, at least

Some pictures are worth it
just to stretch with silly-putty
and laugh at on a rainy day

some pictures are priceless,
though,
and maybe those few on your pinboard
need not be appraised just
yet.

nothing of note
just a few thoughts
you shared i wrote
down because of their
poetic nature.
your speech was beautiful.
your main points?
not so much.

yea this old thing?
this napkin from the diner
where we sat to discuss
life but really you just ranted
against your friends,
politics, and everyone else
you blame.

just a napkin with some
scribbles.
nothing of note.
just a few thoughts
you shared and their
poetic nature.

If and when
i die I hope i’m laughing,
god knows i’ve seen my share of sadness.
i say if and when, because
i’m not really certain.
it’s all confusing to me,
how things work and why they do,
so i don’t really know what’s going on.
i just try to laugh, but lately,
lately that laughter doesn’t come,
and that’s not me, no not me.
i would hold a candle in vigil,
vigil for me,
but where am i?
i’m still looking, hey! still looking.
hide and seek with my soul.
all i know,
is that i’ll find me where the laughter is.
in the future, or
in the past.
i can’t die, not until then.

For Tara

Beauty exists
under blankets. This
moment
is punctuated
by bare skin.

The sun peaked in
this morning
and found us
still talking
about
our childhoods.

Every word
actually meant

love.

And when
I actually said
“love,”
that meant
“You are the reason the sun rises each day.”

Dozens of minutes
millions of miles of cable
half that in free-air
bit by bit
and yet
you elude
like the tiniest mouse
in the largest game of Mousetrap
and the cage never falls right
anyway

a brief interlude
(a break if you will)
will now be taken
to give the actors
a break for a few moments
as they re-adjust to
life outside of their
character.
to kiss their girlfriends
instead of their in-play
wives.
to use the bathroom facilities
because opera with the
tension of diarrhea is less
than enjoyable for the singer.
thus the interlude.
we apologize for the break.

I fished a ticket from my pocket
but the numbers were all wrong
agian and I guess I mean when it’s
tickets
I can never win.

It is a collection of broken fingers
scratching helplessly on locked doors
legal documents flying everywhere as
a briefcase had been thrown. It was
just your personal failures again.

The door clicks with misgivings as
it rocks in its frame, but gives no
ground. The bolt is fast and true.
The nob won’t help you either, no
matter how loose the latch.

Another finger breaks and falls as
helpless as its brothers and sisters.
It scratches, too, just like it was
taught those years ago. Keep scratching
and something might give. Except the
bolt is fast and true. And the nob
won’t help you either, latch be damned.

the pens in my room
are like dry ice
and my bed the
softest coffin

i lay down among
the velvet and
stare longingly
at my desk
and feel the cold
reach at me

and when the sun
touches the floor
it even is cold at
first,
but you brought me
lunch

your smiling face

i started to feel
the warmth again
and the velvet
went back
to cotton.

it’s that time of night
where the night before
you didn’t really sleep
worth beans
and you’re still up
because of that thing
you don’t need to do
but have no power over
yourself to keep yourself
from doing it
and you’re dreaming of
writing something long
and valuable and worthy
of your fingers hitting
the keyboard
but you know it’s too
late for coherent beautiful
words and so you settle
for something much much
less. something like a
rant where your sole
goal is a column of words
nearly uniform in size
but even that you
fail at in several
lines. but seeing your
comfort in failure you
resign yourself to bed.
and sleep comes, but much
too slowly.