america

poetry

i thank sc johnson
for the clean smelling shirt
as i fly over the yellow sea
with munitions to erase
the human mind
and lucky me that
my prayers kept the cancer
(colon, esophageal, pancreatic, et al)
at bay, long enough
and at least for these few more hours
to reflect on where
romance lives, far away
probably, with the pain
that started all of this

131

poetry

I have a terrible day-dream
and I am speeding down a highway
but the day-dream has me
so I hardly notice the cars
that beg to merge
into a southbound lane

and we are on a great golden cloud
flying over the Andes
or the Himalayas
or the Ural
or perhaps even the Appalachians
and the air is so cold and perfect
and cold
and we are gliding forth
impossibly

Look! There’s God! you say
when suddenly we arrive
on the highest peak on the range
and the great golden cloud
evaporates

We are just below the apex point
a hundred yards or so
but we can not see the top
God’s up there! you say and wave
and point and wave
the air is thin for us I think
but not for God I guess
as you start to climb

When you notice that I do not follow
you stop and turn and shout
Do you refuse to meet God?
This can not be god, I say.
God does not simply fetch you
up the mountain. How could you come
to know God, without the climb?

you shout again as I turn and leap away
in to a dark chasm down below
and I consider my fate as I fall
for what seems like a lifetime
as your voice echoes away
Better to perish in real darkness,
I think, than incinerate in some false light

and perhaps I die then, but I never know
for the awful day-dream always seems to end
as the fuel light chimes on

Outside

poetry

The rain is coming harder, now,
surging the storm drains useless
rattling the roof apart, it sounds like
and the power has flickered twice

so you keep packing your clothes
rolling and stuffing in to that ratty duffle

Modest Mouse is blaring on your stereo

and I am standing under the vestibule
glad for the cool that the storm pulled through
until the humidity kicks up
but I’m dry enough now looking in

and you fold your plastic poncho in half
so it will just fit in the side pocket
the rain will be gone soon, I guess

there’s the drip though, sneaking down
from some thin crack in the vestibule
to tap me on the bicep now and now
and Modest Mouse is blaring on your stereo
and I guess I’m dry enough

basest creatures

poetry

name it and give it rules
so that in the future you can replicate
something similar, but not the same
a soulless and shallow masked figure
with just you underneath
you

you you you

reify, hyperbolize, generalize
trick your god into believing
that you love him
so you can make it a part of
you

you you you

i am driven but not driving

poetry

i am driven by something foreign
like an alien-human body
stumbling around target

i am driven by a 2.5 litre 4-cylinder
engine made by toyota across
a bridge built in the early 1960s

where it smells like death
when the air gets stale
next to the garbage plant
of course it does

of course it does
dead dinosaur bones pile up
by the side of the road
and no one picks them up

Perhaps We Fucked This Up

poetry

Perhaps I am a vampire
but I have always been this way
he said
as sunlight poured through
the open curtains

You can stake me thorugh
and that will slow me down
and I will not fly from you
as a rabid little bat
or simply float out as gas

and he cackled when the door flew wide
and the whole of creation
lit our sitting room

I have sucked your wretched blood
and savored your filty scabbing throats
and when the time comes
I will eat your rotting hearts
in front of everyone

and you were panting in the entryway
a perfect silouette in the dawn
but he just kept laughing
that awful laugh

Perhaps I am a vampire
but that daytime shit
was just in old movies
and when it comes down to it
maybe you’re vampires too

All In

poetry

They are carpet-bombing the Holy Land
as if there were only one

and I am laying in bed
typing at my computer
trying to figure out
what I can do to convince you
that things just aren’t
as bad as they seem

but the bodies keep piling up
in Congo and Palestine
and Burkina Faso and Venezuela

and I dreamed my brother fell
off of a ship in the Indian Ocean
and he dreamed his son died from cancer
in Ohio in a hospital
so I guess even dreams are bad now

and I am laying in bed
typing at my computer
while the power grid flickers in Tbilisi
wondering if I should even bother
getting back up
when the alarm goes off

a final act of floundering greatly

poetry

if i knew
what shallow pools i swam
what otherwise,
a sunny day i
would forever love
yet after god had
banished me
for months without rain
i find myself dying,
here

and shallow still
are their eyes
as i lie gasping for air,
even
they are uneasy to stay
because the school moves on

it is hard for those
who are fleeting
and flittering away
wasting away
and not resting, at all
not resting even a bit
to not see the last
moments as the longest

and their closests friends
more greatly scared to share them
than their love extends
because the school
moves on

i wrote a song with a computer that kind of stank but the bridge was good though

poetry

and the history i’m listening to on
japanese war tactics during world
war two is depressing as hell even
though there are some good things
to be learned from the chaos. nuance
is hard to hear or learn tho from a
sufficiently bad situation so instead
we write it off completely which feels
better morally

so i go back to work and i put my
shit back together and i
bumble along till something
happens to what i own but cant
make go
make it go for forks sake

hospice

poetry

the cat birds have moved on without me
of course
now replaced by the house finch

i’d hoped to be here waiting
alive still, with the oak tree
whatever shape we were both in

but i sense the inevitable
snapping back of the rubber band of time
closer, now

can i make peace with them going on
without me?
if for no other reason than
to make myself feel better

as is all that man, and cat birds, and house finches,
and all we can all ever do

riding the back of some big thing
smiling
scared
excited
crying

ourobrotherbrorealis

poetry

the underbelly of the crushing
machine is a beautiful red
from the blood of its enemies
as the miasmic soup of reasons
that people stand in the way
are mixed together with the cacophony
of screams just like their bones and
blood and reasons are mixed together
creating the beautiful red

oh brother, brother
aurora borealis
ouroboros

a leaf, exactly

poetry

i receive the cat birds that frequent the oak
tree in the alley between greylock
and 49th as friends although i am
not theirs, and can never be

their friend is the flimsy oak
which stretches and groans with
every new perch
because it is dying
and the city is killing it
which is my city

my every greeting falls on deaf ears
not only because we don’t speak
the same language but also
the big city birds don’t have
the same fondness for the people
of the city as they do in the country

the city is killing everything
they love
i am lucky they do not
attack me

and it goes on and on like this
my romantic and naive love
blowing away in the cold january wind
exactly like a leaf

there is no we there is only me

poetry

look at what you’ve done

now florida is dissolving into
the atlantic ocean

why don’t you take a long look
at my father’s mirror?

and look upon your sinful heart
whose desires were so strong

that we simply had to divide up
the middle east into irreconcilable parts

and we had to fill your blood with
sugar and plastic

because we are just so giving
to our brothers and sisters

who are fatty little piggies who
eat eat eat and get fat

look at what you’ve done

if you shut the fuck up
i’ll make an offer you
can’t afford

lest you work for the rest of your days

i will make a machine that will
filter your blood
because i am so kind, and wise

and if you give me, say
half of your things
i will levy the ocean-side
and save the resorts and
sea-side villas

i will do this in spite of your
fat filled piggy heart
who dreams of fairy tales
and sugary piggy pies
sleeping standing up
in piles of shit
before the hammer gun
shatters your spinal cord

that is what i have done

If Time Could Travel Backwards Part 8

poetry

time cannot travel
backwards

and that deserves
repeating

the sins of the Father
are naught but Holy Ghosts

but the plastic in your blood
is real

and your tired bones
don’t get better
at being tired

wrap your legs
for surety

lash down the mainsail
tight

but forge on
and fearlessly!

for God is out
on these shifting seas

Impatient
but still waiting

time cannot
travel backwards

and that deserves
repeating

I See You In My Dreams Some Nights

poetry

its been five in the morning
for many nights now
struggling to find the darkness
in the vibrating glow of you
but all the lamps are unplugged
and the window is cracked
and you could always just leave

yet you haunt the black corners
just beyond closed eyes
and then the foundation shakes
the queen bed lurching
as the hot and the red comes up
through the fissures in the floor

so now I am descending
pulled by reaching tendrils
down from the Great Below
and I see your smile in the dim
and I feel your sparkling eyes
and you cold always just leave
but you didn’t
did you

Untitled Unfinished 2/11/22

poetry

I thought about the time
you and I got whiskey drunk
and drove to North point Beach
in Van Buren
at 11:00 p.m.
because you didn’t believe me

the cell phone flash
walked us through the secret path
and our drunken feet
climbed the back of the dune
and we watched Lake Micihgan
in a fever pitch
capitulate in the cold
for hours