i’d give away your smile
to rid of your stupid ass
if only i could stand it.

i can’t write beautiful words with you
my beautiful
looking over my shoulder.
i’m sorry but it’s true. your eyes of judgement bear down on my every letter and i feel small. as insignificant as i truly am in the midst of your presence.
and frankly i need delusions of grandeur to write.

trees absent in this barren land
i don new lack of shoes and grip
every bump, splash every puddle,
grinning as when i was a boy

I only hope
the truth of life is
not so divine
that I won’t understand it

I see you’ve got the look down
and I smell you’ve got the smell down
(ain’t showered in weeks I reckon)
and with the nonchallantness of your grin
and the way that perfect Ibanez shines
in the late afternoon sun, I would almost
see you hopping trains right out of here.

No worries, no stress, everything in the
little hand-sewn bag that you’ve slung over
the one shoulder, just right. Absolutely picturesque.
I would almost bet the money that you’d
had to run from railroad bulls, especially
when that hobo tune comes ’round
on that guitar again.

Everything checks out
but that one little thing:
That Ibanez is just too damn clean.

I hope that there’s a baggage claim
at the end of all of this.
Some grand processing system
to sort through all the things we brought.

Hopefully it is an improved system.
Hopefully it only returns the things
that are worth a damn.

I fear we are not so lucky,
and that the processing was, well,
you know,
sort of our responsibility.

But if there is a baggage claim,
whatever the modifications,
I’m taking someone else’s bags
and hoping that they packed
a little better

i don’t know if i mentioned about the time when in sixth grade i excused myself from mr. stage’s classroom and proceeded across the thinly carpeted windowless hallway to the mens toilet. where i peed. in the urinal. while staring off into something like space i managed to find in the divider between stalls.

then as if in slow motion my hand moved to towards the flusher and as i pulled, the ‘american standard’ pulled itself
away from the wall.

now i remember quite vividly the feeling of shock and horror i felt as i pulled my first urinal clear off its piping and watched as water gushed from the pipes behind it. i also remember the feeling of excitement i felt as i opened the door back into my classroom and returned to “social studies” which apparently is just a word for “history” and doesn’t address even basic sociology.

the next day when i returned to school i found the urinal safely fastened to wall as if it were all a dream.

then my shock and horror turned to pride. i pulled a urinal off the wall. i am awesome.

i try to recall the park that night
(beneath a sea of stars?):
how we walked around the pond (twice?)
our hands brushed (by accident?) as we
sat upon the cold (wooden?) bench,
how you looked wearing my (grey?) hat
with your (silver?) hoop earrings
as you slipped off your (shoes?)
and i tried not to shiver.

the details are foggy,
elusive approaching fictitious,
but what remains are two things: that
feeling that something
really fucking great
was about to happen
and the taste of the scent of the leaves.

Inundated.

Sentances dripping from mouths
dampening collared shirts
only making necks below
uncomfortable

Unimaginable.
‘I miss you’

Unfathomable.
‘Come home’

Those tracks
are out of service.
They’ll be torn for scrap
eventually.

Inundated
with the world watching
the world watching
the world.

Problems hardly fix themselves
dripping from mouths to
collars.

Please come home

For the first time I really wanted to be alive, and so I was alive jumping up on my bed on a terrible rock song I said to myself the universe and the burning chaos ” let me stay alive.” 
It was beautiful pain and I was afraid of feeling it and losing it, the glow my feet on the ground, and all surfacing realities. And so I called my mother and said ” I died today,” she cried a soft cry. The wound was already there, I won’t seek forgiveness.
From my parents I was born, without intentions of gentleness or devotion. I took and took without merit or malice. They were gods and I was a restless child.
I was born, but never really alive.  And now that I am finally alive, I feel like I am dying for the first time.  

Last I heard
you were trying
to get your face on the dollar bill
and as absurd
as it strikes me
there’s every chance you will
but first you’ll
have to learn just how
to catalog your kills
and hide the bad ones
in a torrid sea of
paperwork.

I got creative
when the Amtrack
bartender heard ‘gin’
instead of ‘Jim’.

The tonic’s fizz lifted
my head and thrashed it
like a believer speaking
in tongues and possessed
by the spirit’s flame.

Creative like the guy
who thought of the
cup that held my
clear bubbled elixir.

He decided to make
cups out of plants
and now the earth is getting
saved – and not just on Sundays –
but everyday,

One disposable
cup-made-out-of-plants
at a time.

i took a needle to my ear
to declare my undying love for you
i grew the hole in width
in breadth
and filled it with a fish tank for you

the goldfish in my left lobe
swims for me
the chinese fighting fish in the
right floats upside down
the way i always pictured you

Footprints left behind
as if on the moon, untouched
by even solar winds

What a breeze to catch,
perhaps a shame to miss

There’s a spirit lost inside a body
floating for what seems to be
eternity,
eternity,
but I will cast it out

like a fever with no temperature
i wake with sweats then shivers
every minute worse than the last
then morning brings a headache
in response to the lack of sleep
and i find myself wondering why
i’m waiting.

The books and papers say
we’re animals and
I suppose that makes for some kind
of half-there excuse
but 50 percent is a failing grade
and I’ve never heard of rabbits
and chickadees
grading any papers anyway.

Leave my lineage out of this
because when I kick you, I
mean to kick you,
especially when you’re
on the bottom,
shins or ass or teeth
or the shit right out of you.

but you cried before then,
plain as day and sure as anything
and when I heard I did not
weep or run or smile and lean closer.
The fingers held tight as hands
and there was solid truth amongst
your self-prescribed chaos.

now breathe.
And clarify with these next breaths
what you really mean to say
when you tell me
that we’re animals.

A fat chunk of moon
Spat out like a sour lolly
Soft and almost lilac
Illuminates the young hands
Silvery, piano-agile, darting
Floating gestures by the light of
The moon
As light and wispy as the yellow
Summer pollen that falls nearby
Unseen
Just another secret in the night
The satisfying ‘thowck’ of snapped metal
Sends a murmur across taut lips
Ricochets from letterbox to fence
To lonely backyard kennel
And back again
They squeeze him through,
The big wooly giant, acquiescent
Prehistoric in size
Silent as a grave
Silent as their worn, highschool sneakers
On the manicured neighborhood pavement
Then out!
Out and shaky into the night
He trots off, absorbed quickly by darkness
But not unheard
As jovial ‘baaaas’ bounce across
A tin and brick suburbia
Leaving late night thinkers perplexed.