Why is it so awkward?
I didn’t make it awkward.
You did.
Because every time I ask, something inside you says,
“I should, I should, it’s right.”
But you say, “no.”
Something squeezes at your intestines,
getting caught like a moth halfway up your esophagus before you swallow.
But it’s there.
Something says, I’m rejecting it.
Something says, I’m spitting in his face.
But we’ll unravel miles of colored yarn balls
Longer than a curious kitten
With this and that
With this and that
With this and that
Yes, we could take a ride on this carousel and believe me,
there’s more than enough rope,
and there’s a horse with your name on it.
We can go around and around and around
so by the time we’re done, it will be hard to tell who’s who anyway-
Impossible to wrap it back up, present it as truth-
These gnarled, knotted strings become tripwires,
tripping us up
letting us give way to pretense- pulling the pin on explosions-
Messes that we couldn’t possibly seek to unwind and glue back together.
And there in the middle of it all you’ll say, “see, I told you so.”
But if you told me so, then why is it still awkward?
So let each be his own spinster
Pick the thread that best suits him
And let him trace it to his own sense of truth, you’ll say.
This, after all, is the road I’m on, and what right do you have to tell me that I have to pick one?
That only one is the right one?
Tumbling over tripwires, stumbling into traps you’ve laid,
bumbling backwards into the nets you’ve created with our words-
Your tongue twisted trails leading to no where but back to your own entrails stretched
as lifeline markers to navigate our return trip through the rabbit holes and loopholes you’ve crawled-
When you’ve finally found yourself and found there’s nothing to be found in yourself-
When you’ve willingly pulled every last organ out-
What will your whimsical words have wound?
I know the answer.
So you can spin it any way you want.
But why is it so awkward?
Is it awkward because you’re wrong?

i’m just saying
i might do it
you know this whole thing
is so grandiose
and there are so many reasons
so many possibilities
and
i’m JUST SAYING, man
I MIGHT DO IT

the feeling in my wrists is dulled
by the scraping of shirt-cuffs
but the feeling is dulled
so it is no matter at least
until they start to sting
again

you know you’ve got it bad
when you’re standing in a plate
shop imagining yourself smashing
every piece of porcelain in the place
and you’re not a bull so you know you
weren’t born wired this way but you cant
help but identify with said bull and his
love for china.
in small pieces.

the very point of this suggestion
was to relieve the stress I’ve had of late
but the result is not at all what I anticipated.
and now I’m standing in the lobby
of the hospital in my white briefs
staring at the visitors staring at me
wondering why I ran screaming from that room
what could have possibly possessed me to tear the IV from my arm
and sprint
weren’t there folks chasing me or something?

anything?

are they not all the same?

twisted in some way

not morally equal

yet identically created

a magnum opus of one artist

to judge only as yourself

in the end just the same,

like a million random ghosts

and so many of them confused

am i really that confused?

there are folks here visiting
from france and their accents
sound fake but are decidedly
real despite what you might think.

their opinion of cheese is that
it belongs not on a cracker but
inside a pancake and that’s a real
thing.

– you fucked up
you really did
do you know how you’re
going to fix it?

he paused and looked at me.

– no.

i responded completely honestly.

– good.

he said in wisdom.

until slowly the words i used to express my thoughts lost their poetry
and the things that replaced them weren’t words at all but mere ideas
composted in my head and rotting away in some miserably non-poetic way
and that was just life for a while.

i’m still disappointed the rot wasn’t beautiful.

Every crooner on the planet
is dead and buried and
a stack of all their favorite records
is in the closet of every second-hand
store in the United States
(though they fetch a fine price
in some parts of Europe)

For all their words and melodies,
all the crooners have to teach
in the end, is that crooning
doesn’t get you anywhere
but dead and buried.

I tossed a coin in a fountain one time
and watched it’s quick decent to the bottom
where it settled on a stack of other people’s wishes
and it was a metaphor for the work I do

I considered that
every night
for years

So, I found another body of water –
an aquarium this time around –
where I can swim with the fishes rather
than lounge on cast-off change

Someday,
I hope to dig myself a pool

when conclusions were reached
(of the life-changing variety)
we held our noses and trudged
on through the shit piled around
our feet, ankles, and up to our
knees.

and we sprinted for the door
to escape the disease, smell,
and flammability.

immediately upon making the decision
we wondered how we were previously
so unaware of the smell. and
why no one else was leaving.

A finger presses MUTE

sun glare silhouettes
a dying plant
streetlight
stop sign
leafless sycamore
empty mailbox
canadian geese in file
a leashed dog dragging its owner
two runners with white earbuds
momentary vehicles broadcasting phosphorescent joists
as reflections play life on the windowpane
and all the world is stuck inside two centimeters

pickle – silly/endearing
potato – silly/endearing
monkey – insulting
fat pig – inappropriate
peanut – cute
bowling ball butt – 2nd grade
poodle – loving

like many children do
while they are still soft headed and tender,
I once watched the world from my wet-toothless mouth
and lovingly slobbered the sensory beauty of all new things,
while tracing contours with my curious tongue
and probing names into walls.

Before I was taught the correct routes to seek knowledge,
I drunkenly learned, this way,
how the world is shaped.
But, in my unappeasable gigantic appetite for new wonders,
I blindly swallowed whole
something larger still than I exist
and, at too young of an age, got it violently stuck
in between my lungs and my throat. Now I choke
on my attempts to cough out simple truths and
have adopted meditation instead of saying anything,;
honesty
is more than I can chew.

Before they break surface,
the silk web you can see starting right
behind my tongue
catches full sentences and slows their forced movement
to the deliberate desperation of the last drop of tooth paste in a
four person bathroom. I
gasp through straws pointed straight at the sky
for the strength to say more than my silent internal can imply. Maybe I
am both the eye and the storm.

If that is indeed possible.
If not
why can’t I get this thunder out?

It snow matter.
Just the bellowing beneath me,
before I learn to speak.

the sun is rising in the
east and the clouds
are moving in from the west.
as the rain pours and the
sun still pierces the sky
i’ve a brief glimpse of
the promised-to-come;
that place where the cleansing
rain is paired perfectly
with the revealing and life-giving
sun shine.

You say “Yes”, I say “No”.
You say “Stop” and I say “Go, go, go”.
Oh no.
You say “Goodbye” and I say “Hell no, hell no, hell no”.
I don’t know why you say “Goodbye”, I say “Hell no, hell no, hell no”.
I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hell no.

there are no parents anymore
and here we are passed out
on street corners with
canada house strewn in grass
and when we wake up smelling
rolling over and on one another
there will be no scowls of disapproval
we will drunkenly disrobe
and dive into dispassion
numbly injecting happiness junky style
as if nothing even mattered at all.

how lucky we are, those
of us who get to watch
sunrises, especially those
of us who watch them
through the blazing frame
of recently cleaned windows
mounted daringly on top of
the world, or maybe just
on the 12th floor of a
building which clings like a
mother to midnight shifts
and claws late moons to half
dreamed ribbon and fills its
nest in this way. The sun

cut right through me today.