funereal anticipation

poetry

two days from now
i’ll wish it was two days from then
and that i could be back here
in my drab, too small cubicle
eavesdropping on my co-workers’
impotent, constant complaints
because anything is better
than watching a mother
whose lost her only son;
whose lost her future grandchild;
whose lost her hope
in her loss of everything;
everything that matters;
everything that gets her out of bed;
everything that gives her purpose
to face a day in which she will know
that she’ll never again
talkseetouchhugkiss
her son again
and that she’ll never have
another chance.

Maybe that’s the secret

poetry

The world has a way with itself, sometimes
and in that way the rest of us get
trampled
left for dead under the stamping feet
of the universe

Years pile on years pile on age and all
the lyrics in the world can’t
STOP
the sun from spinning out in space
and us spinning around it

And for the life of me I just can’t
put my finger on the reason
that we all eventually get out of bed
every morning

But we do

And maybe that’s just it.
Maybe that’s the truth that keeps concepts
of emptiness at bay. I
want to live. You
want to live. We
will live together,
on this rock, we will rock

And every morning we will roll on to
the floor of our bedroom, alarm clock be
Damned.

We will step out of the front door
from a hot shower and a cold bagel
and we will go where we will be
and when we finally get home
too late to crank the stereo too loudly
there won’t be anything keeping us up at night,
because here we are.
Let’s do it.

Earth and Me

poetry

Dirt in the mouth.
Each grain that grinds over
The tongue
Tastes oddly identifiable,
Each mineral familiar.

Pick oneself up and
Beat the dust from jeans.
Rub the dirt away and
Yet deeper into pores

Savor
Flecks of bone calcium and
Iron that dissolves,
Sticking to gums like blood,
Tannins of wine and
Earthy tea,
Charred granules of
Carbon burnt meat,

Copper, nitrogen, and manganese linger and
Slick the pearled teeth

Hands finely gloved
In dirt that sinks
Low into the furrows
Of grated palms.
Rubbing eyes with bits of aluminum and
Deposits of sulfur

My gaze starts where my feet are
Planted and
Jumps up to
Meet the horizon

I breath deep and
Run ahead with
Mud and spit and sun
Spackled across my face.

Visitations

poetry

the words for city streets
are many, from colorful
explitives to dark and
malodorous concepts that
chill the soul, to beauty
and it’s life and light and
beauty

but when
the spaces aren’t really
there (oh fire hydrants)
the only words that come
to mind on these old gothic
streets is the beauty
of their beauty.
Fuck this city,
I’m going home.

heroin spoons

poetry

heroin spoons

ice glazed in
grass

cat piss white
t-shirts

from
smoothing edges
to
running
from
police

notes to yourself
reminding yourself
that you are not
being
your self

perplexed by
that concept
you ignore your
old friend

stems

giving up by
sitting down

a man made of
mist and a man
made of stone are
yelling at eachother
on your television,
you cannot
turn
it
off.

Viewing

poetry

There wasn’t much to say
Because there wasn’t anything we could do.
Wanting to, but knowing,
Asking ourselves why
We would waste feeble words on deaf ears.
An unbending anxiety, bending our insides
Pleading—lying in wait to riot
A cacophony of flame, of sound, and disbelief.
But a shapeless hand like shadows holds fast,
Even a shudder and it may overtake me.
Yes, this fear will outlive us all.
It was then I realized I was scarcely breathing.

PJP

poetry

i guess you never had much of a chance
to live a happy, normal life,
growing up in your house,
filled with tension,
filled with strife:
from the mother whose pain
was still all too present,
and the reminder you were
each and every day
of the father who lived
a few towns away
but never had the time
to come see you
because he had started a new life,
with a new family,
and new kids that weren’t you.

and that is how i remember you,
subsuming the rest of your life
into your childhood,
reading your life like a book
in which the ending is foreshadowed,
inevitable;
and even though i now realize
that i never really knew you,
cousin though you were,
I still think that i know
what made you tick,
what made you go away:
running away from your past,
running away from your pain.

a short description seems more appropriate to the situation than to drag it out

poetry

one of the ways i know you will forgive me
when i tell you i have dirt on you you cant
afford to ever let get out in the open for
all to see just how strange you are despite
your best attempts at masking the feelings
you have for the people around you and
even though it seems childish almost like
you’re back in high school hanging out in
the mall near the orange julius because that
just happened to be where the cool people
hung out and you were always one of the cool
kids even among the crowd of losers that’s one
of things people say they liked about you
telling me about that one time you used a pillow
to do the unspeakable (but apparently others
have tried the same thing with more success
than you admitted) till late in the evening
probably around 3 when i pressed if you really
wanted us to leave or if you’d prefer we stayed
and you said you enjoyed our presence and
that we were therefore welcome to stay as
long as we’d like and that was when we knew
we were going to be good buddies that it would
last despite you being somewhere all the way
across the globe and i know it’s only 3 in the
morning there but you’d want me to stay if
i were there.

it was not so very long ago,

poetry

in a town not so far away
and for the first time
in my not so long life,
I was not constrained;
and sitting on a not made bed
that was not quite yet mine
in a room with a phone
that I could not work,
I realized that I was free
to do,
to be,
to destroy
what i wanted,
and as i sat on the not made bed,
not sleeping,
i was not afraid;
i was terrified.

The Frozen Mud

poetry

I saw at my foot footprints, en-
cased in muted mud, mid-step mire set silently within
A topography of time, a grey ground frozen
The echoes of shoes–seemingly size ten–a lasting last impression
A patch work of paw prints, wildly weaves widely again and again
The bike tire’s vast, violent arc cuts with impatient determination
Across orphan patches of untouched earth. My eyes enliven
This sculpted ground–shadows casting imagination!

Marvelous movements of time and space, run, ride, reel, and hark!
See the life that lives on lunar land: when you think
the play’s performed, this spectral stage stirs the heart!

This makes me wonder: what traces of invisible ink
You left upon the blue-blank pages of that air afar;
And should I see could I read or would I–sink?

passive-aggressive

poetry

sitting in your little
room,
shaking,
pressing playPRESSINGSTOP,
you grin.

you continue shaking.

you breathe a sigh of
relief,
“at least no one knows”
you think to yourself,
sating your nerves with
positivity.

your eyes see a bathroom
on your computer screen,
brought to you by apple
inc. and your girlfriend
is sleeping in the other room
and noticing this you get up
and walk what seems miles
to hear her loudly snoring and
you thinkSHITILEFTITON
and you hurry back and
you realize that you’re shaking
again and this sigh stutters
out of your mouth and falls
to the pit of your stomach

again you press play

you skip past the part
where you set up the
camera,
past the part where you
leave,
past the part where she
uses the bathroom

again you press play

the shakes come on
hard,
real hard,
you smile
grin
you smile and grin
i see you smiling
and grinning
cheesing
pressing play
i see your white teeth
through your smile
i see and i know i smelled
it on you,
i smelled it on your breath
trailing every word that
you said,
i wont forget that smell
and i wont let you live
with that.

not with that smile.

Speak to me, Ms. Universe

poetry

Your contours are just
right
but when your plastic pieces
break
how will your body bring
your fetid mind to bear
against the daunting task
of teaching it

I suppose you’ll learn
the hard way
what the choice of
beautiful vapidity
can do to a girl.

Or,
more likely,
you just won’t
learn at all.

do not associate the focus of this poem with any type of pre-existing ideal or concept that exists within your brain unless, of course, you’re right

poetry

you have shown me how
to get things done
you have shown me what
emotions can do
i have seen how you let
random entities bounce
chaotically off of each-other
for eternity

you have shown me how
i can be fooled
i have witnessed the steadfast
nature of your creations and
i have listened to old men
talk,
old men who really had it;
i listened and understood

i have seen men beating
their heads against walls
until they bled out into the
streets,
i have seen how little
communication exists between
people,
i have heard how much
you have to say–
i have listened when i could,
i am afraid i have not understood
much;
i am also afraid that there is not
much to understand

i cannot tell you how life is
across the universe
but i can hazard a guess that
will come very close

i can still not understand people,
i cannot believe;
which is why i cannot understand
you,
or much of what you say,
however loud you say it

i can never let the ink dry
before i throw away today’s
draft,
because i wake up with the sun
and see it erase the meaning
of all that i had imagined that
very day with it’s waning
over the horizon like white-out
over a dissertation written by
humanity,
who, collectively, is unsure
when exactly the paper is due.

Mr. Pierce

poetry

Mr. Pierce was a
Mechanic. In the
Second Big War, he
worked on tanks and
trucks and jeeps
and other things
that mechanics might
work on in war.

His hands were sort
of a dark gray,
from all the grease
and oil and years
and years, his
fingernails the only
clean spot on those
hard used, elder
hands. Oh, they’ll
never come clean.

He killed a man,
he said. Those
dirtied hands had
pulled the trigger
on a rifle, aimed
at some poor fool
with a different
patch on his
uniform.

He washes his hands
after every meal,
and he doesn’t
even change his own
oil these days,
but his hands
are still that gray
color, and oh,
they’ll never come
clean.

He says that blood
and oil run a
different sort
of color, but
it all stains the
hands the same.
He washes his hands
after every meal,
but oh, they’ll
never come clean.

To My Lovesick Cactus

poetry

I could travel from your heart to mine, engross myself in a decadent passion, even learn how to flatter and tickle your little heart already dressed up for a flirt stroll. Smother and disappoint you over and over.
Love comes over me like a disease, so run before I get to you. I bring with me a deluge. Spit and let go, i am already on the ground. Rabid souls scream to the wind their rage, but I lay my fury at your feet- leave before it buries you. 
Do not cry or laugh as you go, I am not so humble or stupid. I know I am not the only one. You can always run with the herd or join the pack. I envy the space they give to lies; i can’t mimic a moo or show you shinny fangs. I can only fall with raindrops.

    

i’d give you a reason to grieve but my mind, she keeps running loops around my words. i reel her in for not.

poetry

in modest times
we wore our faces
full of beards we could
not bear to bare in public
before audiences of
both men and the ladies
to whom we preached
the awkward lies
of global cooling
to soothe those of
weaker consciousness
the ones our mothers
told us we should include
on the playground
but despite our good
intentions we dared not
approach their leper
like social status

alpha

poetry

back in the
d
a
y
we used to ride the dead
leaves through the hellish
michigan winters
all shady hazed and listless

and my blue car was nervous
around college girls

we made it out like kings of
a shit-hill-made-of-gold,
crowns reflected in our
bloodshot eyes

and we forgot all the names
of the days and the places

now, between stints in county
lock-up and governmental fines
we breath in deep and waste
our time waiting;
because they always catch the
fire but they never catch the
fireworks.