poetry

potential for greatness, but the ideas, as they flowed from my head to my fingers, met some serious resistance and the outcome was near disastrous.

poetry

for want of a pant line he had hip injections
for want of a butt crack he trained to be a plumber
for want of reason he played sudoku
then for want of friends
he purchased gift cards to his wonderful hip-injection doctor gave them to his acquaintances
then for want of acquaintances he moved, ran for president, and claimed stupidity

The Man with Plutonium Skin

poetry

He is a simple man on the inside
and a martyr and a legend
and he loves the people that reject him
but he does not touch them, for fear
that they’ll melt
and he’s got enough messes to clean
I swear

He moves with impunity
down any city street he chooses
and he does not show his passport
and he has no homeland, at least
not in this universe,
but he wanders among us and he
wonders at us anyway

He speaks to children, sometimes
he whispers in their ears to tell them
all the things that their moms
and dads are doing wrong
and sometimes the children listen
so they try to do the right thing
but sometimes they
just run

And maybe you would to, I mean
he did kill all those people
all those years ago.

Trash Day

poetry

Sunday evenings before football I contemplate life most.
Trash day is tomorrow, and the red draw strings constrict through my fingers like excavated veins that seal in the stench of my so-called day-to-day living.
The autumn air, the herald of Winter, reawakens my lungs from their Sabbath slumber and there’s something magnetic in the atmosphere.
A static that heightens my senses, spurns hibernation, tastes the tension of a minute hand trembling across the numerals of an hour, makes it matter.
Where has it gone?
Heaving the bundle of paper and plastic product necessities from three yards out – the point after – delegating possession to tomorrow’s trash men.
Will they ask the same questions when their shift ends or only wake up to punch the clock again?
On most nights, I still meander back inside, flat tire my shoes and peel them off, wondering whether the Eagles will cover the spread.
Besides creating more garbage have I done, and am I doing anything with what I’ve been given, or am I just throwing it all away?

Rewrite. Celine you should be proud.

poetry

Near,
And in addition to near also far,
Really, wherever you might be at all,
It is compatible with my belief system that the heart doth persevere,
And then one more time,
You unlock and then open the door,
And you will find yourself here inside of this dwelling place I call my heart (please do not intervene with the blood flow, it is surprisingly essential to my ability to live)
And my heart will persevere and then persevere some more.

Whew.

atrophy my mind

poetry

the lack of direction
the lack of focus
the lack of meaning
the lack of answers
the lack of a definite timeline
the lack of vision
the lack of relationships
the lack of a good book to read
the lack of decent jazz
the lack of piano
the lack of meaningful information
the lack of stress
the lack of focus
the lack of direction
thelackofmeaning

thoughts in my last few weeks, vomited like a bird feeding its young for your consumption pleasure

poetry

third graders gather on the floor and ask about toilets and school uniforms in a land they cannot fathom and who am i to introduce them to it? i’ve brought pictures to say the things my words cannot, and speaking of eating dog, rabbit head, or pig lung, may inspire exactly the wrong kind of awe, i fear, but do my best as they gaze in bleary wonder knowing all this time one or two may be moved to drop their lives and leave a world where a child must have 100 crayons if they’re to be expected to color, where three simply would not do. sewage runs through streets in images i’ve taken of places where the scent overwhems any bad feeling one might have from the way things look, and it’s been five of my six months and all i can think of the whole time i’m showing these pictures is how much i miss home, and the “grind” and being on the winning team. to know the work i’m a part of ultimately wins when i feel like away, i’m more of a bump on a log than an addition to society, and snow is not near as romantic as i remember it, and consumerism literally makes me want to vomit in these cities where people are virtually strangling their children, choosing to suck the life out of them so they can have a swimming pool in their back yard, and while i’m not foolish enough to believe this is the case everywhere in this great country, i nonetheless catch a glimpse of the vastness of the nationwide epidemic as i get reports from the “bud light sports desk” during the “coors light half time show” where you spend the whole day in awe that infinite jest had this thing figured out years ago and it seems like only a few years ago i read that book (part of that book) and

laughed at the absurdity of the extremity of it all

Come Out and Play

poetry

Old friend.
You’re back in town.
At my door

Asking
Inviting
Begging

To hang out
Catch up
Spend some time together.

It’s been too long, you say.
It’s been so long, I say.

And I want to.
I want to unlatch the screen door
Welcome you in
Come out and join you.

Something feels brittle.
Cold.
Hot?

Come out and play, you say
My fists ball around jeans.
I don’t think I can, I say.
I promised.

It won’t be like that this time, you say
You lick your lips.
You’re lying.

You said the same thing last time.
The time before.
Every time.

You used me.
Blamed me.
Left me holding the guilt.

I could offer you my soul.
You would take it.
Scrub it over a cheese shredder
Returning the heap of curdled curlicues
Gumming together like orange juice pulp.
Leave me empty and throbbing again.

Here, you would say
If only I would say yes.

i’m a shareholder in words, i have rights, power, OWNERSHIP

poetry

i like woids
and the way they’re formed
with building blocks called
shletters
gwammer is awesome when proper
and in large blocks we complete
ideas in cent-instances
if we master the basics we’re given some freedom to destroy convention and set out on our own (or so they said in college)
so we form our own conjunctivitises like hithertothereforewithoutwhich
and stream together brilliance in zombie movels.
because our English linguine-age is incredi-malleable
we raise our noses and look down them at morons without.

i am a student

poetry

gandhi may speak to me
however those things may be pronounced
tolstoy, probably
the buddha, too
but one thing i can’t quite understand
is how to forgive one for his ignorance

when this ignorance takes shape
of fist
or otherwise
t’wards me
or otherwise
and then yet when his fist
has been planted
and the light shine on him
so he may reckognize the
err in his step
or
otherwise

and yet a second is thrown
or otherwise

i must ask you
why forgive?

Whiskey

poetry

Fella’s been drinking whiskey half the night
the other half spent counting coins for the trip
down the road to the liquor store and his taste
is rather extravagant but desperate times call
for lower standards and fella’s okay with it even
if he has to mix his medicine with Cherry Coke
just to make it palatable but when the only cash
you’ve got to your name is tied up in a bottle corner
the mixer is the lesat of a fella’s problems, yeah?

nonethewiser

poetry

Ingredients:
Mixed grains, milled cane sugar, textured soy protein, french fried eyeballs swimming in a pool of blood, brown rice syrup, chicory root fiber, partially hydrogenated corn oil, and less than 2% of the following: elmer’s glue, stainless steel staples, gopher guts, tocopherols (vitamin E to maintain freshness)

Stranger at Mecca

poetry

His mouth moves but no words come out
and I am accountable for not comprehending

but the dictum thus passed down is lost
as he is lost for words it would seem,
though I can make out some mumbling
if I listen very closely.

And when his flesh starts to rot from
his pearly white bones and sloughs off
on to the floor of his pantry,
I will be held accountable for his woes.

And when I refuse to accept the dictum
thus passed down, I will be slotted
to burn with the rest, but at least
my meat will stay virile and fresh,
and stuck to my skeleton until
the moment just before it is
burned away.

No Class

poetry

I told this guy a story of lost love
and heartbreak so he’d know
what kind of lines to use
when he had to present his list of lies
to the class the next day
but the professor wasn’t feeling it
and it was an unceremonious
‘that’s enough’ that finally
put the fella down and I
wish he’d listened a bit closer
to my story ‘cuz maybe if he had
he wouldn’t have enrolled
in that difficult of a class
in the first place.

a sigh for today

poetry

before i knew not
to love you
winter was our
season

not by design

it just seemed to
amplify
every
situation

so now when winter
rolls around
it reminds me most
of just down the street

ps2 and coffee
and the gentle tugging
on my shirt
every time
i took a corner
too fast
in
the
snow

none of this was by design

but this year i wont
be searching for drugs in my own car
or biking to work
in the cold of mount pleasant
michigan
finding out the car just
won’t start
i don’t think i will feel
lost
or like i need to take a walk

and that’s why i
am glad i learned not
to love you

or, you could say
thankful.

(i just wrote a thanksgiving day poem)

Fell Down Sideways

poetry

A kid I knew
dug some old
music out
from a box
he found under
a bed in
the spare room
that his mother
always sort of
hoped he
wouldn’t poke
around in.

It was two tapes
and a record
and he dusted
off the family
stereo and he
spun the albums
one by one while
his dear old
mother held her
bible close
to her heart.

Ten years or so
gone by now
and he still spins
those three
albums and
his mother
is dead but
she died a
Good Christian
and even
though it was
the Devil’s
music he plays
every song
when he grabs
his guitar
for her.