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.

if i had a paintbrush
i make splotches on your
face and claim i used
a sponge but it wouldn’t
have been a sponge. instead
it would have just been
a paintbrush because thats
how i feel about you.
i feel like defacing you,
defaming you, and then lying
about it.

no matter what generation we disavow
youth is a terrifying tide of a thousand light years of turpitude
prowling and laughing
crying and whining

from pier to anchor
electric lamps to small towns
we’re full of imperfect ideas
into a tunnel we stare at shadows
dreaming of the day, we’ll wake up into
a light, worship and be true

Out of harms way
we’ll empty our cups and welcome the flow of the universe
we’ll not settle scores and further spread ourselves thin
or thicken ourselves with selfish pursuits

The world will not grate on our spirits or oversee our minds-
we’ll not revere in delusion
we’ll reach out to the love watering our roots

We’re ageing children, the feathers on our wings keep falling out
but we’ll be what we were meant to be
at the end of our lines
we will billow into the sky and soak up the warm light

staring at the wall
paralyzed

some people call it
second-guessing

i feel disinterest
in even moving

there’s a leap of
faith in walking
like you’ve got
somewhere to go to
but that place is
just a different one
to repeat the same
tradition in

until you’re staring
at a wall

infinitely second-
guessing

wondering what you
should do.

There are mountaintops
that I am sure I’ll never even consider
summiting. Vast oceans
I may never cross. I have yet
to see a Tundra, let alone
wander it as hopelessly
as so many have before me,
and I know not how it feels
to be a tiny yapping dog
in ‘Gator country
in the spring. What I do, though,
I do with fervor, and when
the day is done and all
the money has been counted,
it will be clear as a silver bell:
the saxophones, I don’t just own
for decoration

the calm
before the chaos
settled by
almonds
and eggs
because protein
somehow eases
he nerves
before the
crazy crazy.

Amidst increasing hordes
of number faced suits who
can calculate at the speed
of sound and are ticker taken
by the handful and swallowed
or rejected by monolithic
buildings stacked on top of
each other, stacked on top of
each other in cities that more
and more look like and function
as circuit boards only
lighting up less and dimming down
more and more until each
city becomes another defunct
gigantic ATM, it has become
increasingly important to notice
rabbit tracks, and wonder
if snow hurts when it falls.

So I stepped by
and scarcely had I drawn out
my pocket knife
(for to carve a simple glyph
for to find my way again)
than did a Disciple come forth
with black cloths waving
and a smile on
and a great, firey sword
and when he spake,
it was of heresies and
how-dare-Is and
when he hefted his blade aloft
it was slow and unwieldly
and with naught but a pocket knife
I struck with speed,
and the disciple –
black cloths and all –
fell face down and expired,
for even the biggest
firey sword has no business
being hefted
by an idiot

sometimes smoke
perfectly thickens
drainage at the back
of my throat to a
pleasing consistency
removable by
cough.