if time could travel backwards part one

poetry

i thought if someone asked me right now
i would start over at that beach

and maybe i would do everything differently
or maybe i would try and keep it the same
but i would know if someone came to take me

back to floribama
instantly

my mind spends time there
sometimes
i freeze as i peer out
to the part of the beach that
curves around to just more
ocean on the other side
like we had reached the
end of the land
sun beating down my face
ocean breeze whipping around
right before the first love
that i had known since loss
crumbled in my hands

and maybe i would watch it crumble
or maybe i would stop to save it
i can’t know now
but i would know, instantly
if someone came
to take me.

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit

poetry

I’m growing up slowly
step by step bits by bits
i’m getting a better grasp of what it is to be alive
though my heart is still immature
though my mind has yet to focus my thoughts
on what’s good –
and desires to conquer and win blurry my sight
Though sadness like a 5th season comes with
a flurry of despair,
i will not yield to or lapse into darkness
there is so much beauty left in this world
I will gather courage and borrow some of God’s strength
Surely, i too can bloom
with sunshine
i can bear good fruit:
“Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and
Self-control”

urinal bug

poetry

you don’t know that you are

the bug in a urinal

 

standing by your broken car

on romence when the great flood

comes

 

even in hollywood

they will all scurry

with no horns playing

to add to the suspense

 

just bug screams

and the loudest sound you

ever heard

as the water come down

it’s poetry, baby

poetry

i come to you an oversized
ball of pretense
you think flies may be following me
my falling weight is just too
much for your bed springs
you can smell that i am drunk on
hormones
i burpingly lean to you
cold outside but cowering within
and vomit to you my innermost desires
of things that just cannot be
i talk to you like i am actually hunched
over a toilet
sometimes as my spine curls
it’s just thin air
and others it’s what i’ve ate
often you see blood come out

i know,
i don’t know why
you can’t stop
letting me in

i bring my head up and groan and you catch for a moment a shadow that looks healthy and young kind of like what i looked like before but then i waver and fall upon you mouth wide sucking on your skin sloppy drunk and smelling now of a mixture of disgusting neglected emotions and you know now that i am after that waterfall of validation that lies between your blank white pages

when i am sated
and i roll off you
you count the seconds
until i am asleep
and relish in the silence
who loved you before
and loves you still.

ground bone

poetry

now i sit
breathing and shitting still
staring at
a door with a plastic
wooden facade

boxed in
trying to keep quiet

while the world of thoughts
whirlwind around me
laying their judgements down
silently upon this
“bath
room”

and my eyes stare down
into the marble looking
composite-vinyl
and see an odd reflection
of myself

fat, tired
eyes
faded,
grey

what awful tricks the mind plays.

Don’t Stop Believing

poetry

I bleed like everyone,
of this I am certain,
and I am glad it is true;
I know that some rules
that apply to every other
man to come before me
also apply to myself

I know, as such, that time
is constant and that
life is finite and that
some things don’t work out
and that good men die sometimes
and bad ones run forever

and I know that I
will soon run out of days
to say I am a young man

And that’s not so bad
but it also means I’m
running out of days
for every other thing
too

the deer behind stryker off centre

poetry

i spill my soda onto
the grass
as i sit and watch
fawns play around
metal factory fences
the geese hate me
the ducks, too

these blotches of
grass used to be
marshland
and realizing this
i too conlcude that

these are the factories
of squatters

i stand up and the
deer take notice
a plane flies
overhead
they look away
like
i am not a threat

i am, though

still reflecting

poetry

for the times i wrote
a brilliant thought
in my head when my paper
was just a bit too far
away in my back pocket

i’m sorry you were left
behind for only my mind
to enjoy. i’d remember you
but really, i only remember
the memory of having you.

as wonderful as you were

i’ve lost my shit

poetry

and i can’t find it
despite my best efforts
it’s been months, and nearly
years since it was misplaced
and this bus across this
bridge over this river
to this mountain seem
largely insufficient to help
me find it.

maybe you think you’re better
than this, like there is little
need to go find shit when it’s
been misplaced as most people
would just flush such shit
anyhow, but this is my shit
and i can go looking for it if
i want to and there is little
you can do to stop me from
seeking after it when a ticket from
houston to here is as
much as it is.

so i’ll giggle at you while
you laugh at me for seeking
so earnestly after my misplaced shit

Sleight of Hand, or, How Everything played on television is bought and paid for at some point by somebody and so none of it can be neutral really because by gum if your story is encouraging folks to negatively interact with my multinational corporation then I don’t really want it run on any of the seventy-four networks that I own now do I?

poetry

There are stories
every so often
of men of some repute perpetrating
activities of some high measure
with a bit of money spent here
and pomp applied here
and circumstance ignored
or embraced or talked up or
so on or so forth so that
the meek and bewildered
keep their eyes wide
at all that money
and all that pomp
and fail to fathom that
circumstances here are
just not the same in China,
the oil in their rivers, though,
will reach our seas eventually

feelings

poetry

you just want to fall down wherever you like you think the tears from your bruised knee should stop traffic you think fair for you is fair for everyone you think your mental boulders are real you think it makes me cold-hearted that i think you’re wrong you are crushed beneath the weight of a boulder and you are lying there with no strength to lift it you will spend hours wondering whether your time being offended at other people’s lifestyles helped you in any way move that boulder but it has no feelings to manipulate and you are powerless to move the objective things with no subjective ones around you are an individual worm who all along felt it was more.

Abject

poetry
Higher on a shelf
going crazy
getting rotten
pulling on a thread
of a fragile woven world-
slowly coming apart
By my hands, i will make it shed
i will cover it in stains
the way it did me
watch it struggle 
gasp for air
when it cajoles, pleads or puts
on airs 
i will yield, bide my time
watch it grow, expand
radiate joy and hope 
and just as it made me something sadder
i will rob its light, enthusiastic energy
twist its beauty
turn its gifts into a curse
fill its days with doubts, worry,
fear and unbearable pain
days thick-sown with irrepressible will to live
enough to want to stick around:
suffer when suffering comes
-sadness for ever looming – 
breathe, cry or laugh

Inside the butcher shop

poetry

Inside their cages
the rabbits
shit on the ducks shit
on the chickens.
The butchers
are all attractive women,
less blood stained than one would guess,
wearing their white coats too well.

The stench reaches the other side of the street,
mixing with that of a nearby deli
where meat is roasting on a stick.

A young girl raps on the window
and waves to a rabbit.

She probably thinks of it
as a “bunny.”

Surreptitious

poetry

The most common use of surreptitious is with the -ly suffix: Surreptitiously.
But to use it as a noun, “He is surreptitious” is surely loquacious behavior.
However, I’ve been more interested in the root: Surrep-
which can sound like syrup depending on how you pronounce it.
Although there’s always been something unsavory (no pun intended) about syrup.
It lacks couth, where molasses, with similar viscosity, seems able to maintain integrity.
Syrup, or especially surrep- owns decidedly clandestine attributes.
I stole the idea of molasses, it seems to say, replacing it with an imposter.
And perhaps you aren’t even aware of the difference.

Crisp

poetry

According to etymology crisp is defined as meaning
“to become brittle”
though the use of brittle, I attest, would have to be its pejorative form.
Brittle’s connotations suggest something less desirable
as though calling a potato chip “brittle” would be an insult,
which is the highest of inconsistencies,
since I doubt anyone would want their chip soggy or leastways, malleable.
It is not a mistake that Chips and Crisp are nearly identical and easily mistaken in their spatial relationships:
The isss sounds with no ‘Z’ and the hard ‘P’ defends its case with its own onomatopoeia;
the sound of a chip crisply snapped;
or breaded and fried chicken crunching in my mouth;
or a hard pretzel crumbling over molars;
or glacial mountains thundering with a splash into the ocean;
or the popping of meat over a fire; edges browning, blackening until carbon laces the steak in gristle.

Crisp’s associations with brisk are prevalent.
A winter morning is both crisp, and brisk.
And the proximity of both words in tandem is utterly delicious.
Say it, you’ll see. Crisp. Brisk. Mmm.
The crisp briskness is a crisply aural sound;
the hard sucking of teeth in response to pain or in sympathy to it;
the crust of the snow that has melted and refrozen atop the powder;
the temporal slate that squirrels skitter over unimpeded by the snow’s depth.
My own boots, for a moment look like they will walk on water before crashing inward;
Snapping like a crisp chip, salt particles flinging into the air.

God is Calling

poetry

The backlight is lit and flashing.
The phone is rattling in my hand.
But I wonder if I will answer?

I see him in a hole in my sock.
His peach-colored handiwork swirls
Peek out into a fabric-less world
Where my footprint is his fingerprint.

The words you have said—
I am the door
I am the living bread
I am the light of the world
I am the good shepherd
I am the resurrection
I am the true vine
I am the way
I am the truth
I am the life
I am Jesus
—can I believe that?
Why have you made such a fragile me?

I’m masquerading false humility.
What good is it?
If I got turned inside out
And saw the way I really am
What would I think of me then?

Not intestines, entrails and organs.
But abstractions and presumptions.
I am dead while I breath.
This is fodder to feed my fears
And proof that problems
Never go away by ignoring them.

Hello? I say.
It’s me, he says.
I know.

Whitewater

poetry

On the sand it all makes sense:
Lay flat, balance, position is important.
Feet at the end of the stick, paddle out
And paddle through the whitewater.

I’ve got to go outside.
I’ve got to go to the unbroken waves.
I keep staying in the whitewater.

Go straight out through the oncoming whitewater—
You’ve always told me
Take that surfboard straight through the waves—
But I’m stuck in the whitewater.

You tell me to trust you.
You tell me to take courage.
That you will keep me afloat.
That you will save me.
Can’t I stay in the whitewater?

Why must I be Peter?
Wasn’t he enough?
I am content, so don’t call to me.
That’s a lie.
I’m in the whitewater.

But don’t call to me.
It’s churning and I could never—Come
Haven’t I come far enough? Can’t you come to me?
But I have
You’re beyond the whitewater.

When will I stand up?
I must kneel first.
Will I ever kneel first?
I’ve got to go through the whitewater.