He pulls tired eyes from the sideview mirror
Watching headlights chase dark highway
They skim to the rearview and dashboard

And he, the road’s only passenger
As miles bleed into an unaltered scenery
With tree walls that hedge him on either side

Faint premonition settles in his seat
It stares quietly at the back of his head
Enticing his mind to wander more than he would like

Prompting solitary introspection
Until a gleam of twin stars a half mile behind
Appears and gradually erodes their distance

For the length of a breath both cars drive parallel
Their engines sharing a thrum as though
They were two halves of a much larger machine

But his neighbor slides into the lead
Breaking their momentary bond
Once white headlights, now red

Driving off the pace at three hundred yards
Eased, he shifts behind the new leader
Knowing that he has found someone to follow
And the road cannot end without his knowing:
The one who goes before will be able to tell him that

Night inks out dormantly, absorbing their exchange
His exit magnifies and he takes the overpass
Counter-crossing the expressway from below

Arriving at budding sidewalks and civilization
He brakes to the stoplight to face opposing cars
And as the signal climbs down to its green perch

For a moment, he may not have remembered if asked,
He wonders, not so much where they will go, but instead
When they enter the empty parkway, who will they follow?

a twinge of relief
followed by a sudden
sense that this win
will be long lived
but only enjoyed
shortly as the sore
ness in back and neck
give way to fever and
then throat pain
in a way Tylenol just
cant relieve

but a win is still a
win in casablanca

Even when the tough stuff happens
it’s only tough until it softens up

i don’t care what the recipe
called for my dear.

i heard you just fine
and i am thrilled with what
we’ve added to the cookies

what a futile world,

man constructs for himself

staring intensely into

the garden

all to dissolve

and leave behind

not much else

than he came

with.

where terror turns to terroir
and wind and waves to
calm, peaceful, fishing with a beer
and a good virginia tobacco
in your pipe.

there. right after the change,
i’m flying high as the smoke thereof

Thoughts are so very different
they have no boundaries, need
no explaining; they are words
and pictures but totally unlike
either
A picture still needs words to
animate it
Words are still needed to
describe a picture but a thought
has use for both, but is never
dependent on either
A thought is already alive where
commentary is cumbersome, it is
the wordless movie we have seen
so many times, we already know
the score
And expending one-millionth of
the time to think then the time to
explain—and even when we do
explain, the colors aren’t vivid
enough, the expressions aren’t
genuine enough, not quite how
we’d like them, the proportions
are off.

As she stands in the entrance
of the sanctuary, every sense
taking in the chatter, the perfume,
the palette, the cool air on her
bare forearms, the acrid residue
of a breathmint and still cannot
ascertain the beauty which is not
sight, and the voice which is
not words, which he says
to her

Enjoy, my daughter! Look
what I have done.

Your breath is staggered, no doubt,s
from the liquid coursing through
your veins.

Your little pump
coos and chirps like a mother hen
and even though your breath comes
so sharp and shallow
it feels alright

At least tonight your eyes
are closed, and the man screaming
two doors over is screaming just
a bit less.

You smiled a lot today,
and there was color in your cheeks.

things still hurt, sure,
because that’s how things go
before they get better.

The noose around your throat, though,
that’s been cut and tossed aside.

And you smiled a lot today,
and that’s the main thing anyway.

as space opens in the recesses of my mind
my back decides it’s time to give my ass
a rest. releases the muscles. relaxes.
i can bend and flex in new and interesting
ways.
thinking of things i haven’t pondered in years.
possibilites re-emerge.

Your great great grandad was a cannibal
in a cave in the mountains of Africa
and he might have eaten my great great
grandad when he came down, many years ago
to take your great great grandad back
with him.

Now you’re yelling and I’m yelling and
we’re both on the same side more or less
and fighting the same fight kind-of sort-of
and isn’t it a wonder of the modern age!?

Time heals all wounds, I heard,
and George said that all things must pass
and that’s true;

even with everything going down the way
it might have, all those years ago,
nobody has to eat anybody anymore, and
I’m sure as shit not taking you home
with me.

i cannot stop the ants
that crawl on my desk
through the day night
i know of their general
origin but cannot find
their home
if they have one
if they’re real
maybe they’ve followed me
for like eight years
maybe they’re inside of me
and more of a part now than
ever and are now running
across my eyelids
as a real physical metaphor
a real hallucination
the real power of the mind
in the dark
crawling around your throat
telling me to leave you,
while you sleep
because i’ve always been
the lonely type.

I keep drawing strawmen
sketched, smoldering somewhere on the backburner

my consciousness registers the faulty pitch and swings
right from contact I know it’s a knockout

shredding the stuffing out of scarecrows
stepping on a rake I already knew was there

lurching up like figures of target training
where I’ve been waiting to fire away

every argument wide with holes big enough
to light on fire and cartwheel between

but could we stop before another round
I’ve tired of this charade

and you would never say something like that
so shut up because I’m tired of arguing with you

holy ethiopian palm sunday.
it’s…. finally…. over.

praise the Lord.

Blessed be the LORD,
for he has wondrously shown his
steadfast love to me

Senses fail me
when I dangle myself from
the second story of our
red and brown house

Could this be when
everything comes out?
Worms with bats and
wicked little smiles
pummeling my mass with
joy(?)
As I swing on a line like
an empty pinata?

Your protection comes
you think
from your sticks in hand
and my feet off the ground

But be sure:
When I climb down I
I climb down to my feet.
You, contrarily, will
crawl back to your favorite
holes, again.

the bed holds you
like it did your grandfather
it helped take his leg, too
because you sleep with your enemies
so i now lie awake staring
worriedly at my leg
surrounded by my vices
who want to eat me alive
i must move or do
something.

Yesterday I cut myself on a piece of paper

But what a fool I was to forgo a bandage

I never should have stained blood
on your pretty white dress

Sometimes I wander to a river
rife with acids and oils
from refineries and other such
machinations and I sit and
watch the fishes float
and the sickly fawns
and coughing foxes lap
begrudgingly from its murky
surface and they choke it down
because it is all they know
and they ignore the taste
of the acids and oils
and sometimes the high-floating
fish is a low-hanging fruit
but in truth this is naught
but poison and given enough of it
every single one of you
will die without hardly living
at all.

The difference between agony and suffering is the subject of the pain.
Suffering is when you’re the one in pain.
Agony is when the one you love is suffering before your eyes

and you’re helpless to intervene.