I cast my jacket to the ground
and walked on in the warmth
of the setting sun

When his thermometer read
each of those seventy-four degrees
it was disparity

His man had sworn it
not a notch past sixty-five;
his universe shattered

When I was 14 there were
a few small pieces of paper
that were everything and
it was phone numbers mostly
and one of them had those ideas
for that film I’d like to make
and then a list of singles
that I would try to download
as time allowed
through one of three peer-
to-peer file sharing networks
(fingers crossed they were clean)
and now it’s almost a decade
and almost the same amount of paper
but instead of folded neatly in
a corner of my wallet or wedged
in the back of a spiral notebook,
they’re all tucked away in Washington
and Goodness willing they’ll
stay that way and Goodness willing
this time next decade they’ll still
mean
something

bitter
sour
rotten
like your breath
like your skin
like your attitude
towards your friends
towards your family
towards your partners
in business
in school projects
in crime
against your neighbors
against your enemies
against
humanity
a concept you misunderstood
years ago.

in the midst of the air
being sucked out
of the room, i dropped a pin
just to see if we could hear it.

lain and folded
a plaid without a home
bends in all the wrong places.
and creases. oh how it creases,
though lain, and folded.
a plaid, void of a home.

And I say to you,
with the cloths tied in your unkempt hair
and your smug smile and your foul lips
and the swagger you seem to reserve for
every waking momen
and the lack of cash to fund you
and the lack of food to feed you
and the fact that these two truths stem
from a lacking in other parts,
I say,
What gives you the right?

i have a warm bed
but my feet hang off the edge
sometimes i hear the distance cry
like some tainted lullaby
and it hurts.

i’m at a train station
playing tug-of-war with impatience
sometimes i hear it coming
but it’s probably just storming
and it hurts.

December 13th, 2007 at 02:23:06 PM

This murder sits as a beggar’s banquet
waiting to be fed by those
who would give all of their love
If they had it to give

But I have fed these foul crows before
and though my coffers are full
These will get no charity from me;

My coffers are full but my patience
for animals,
for simpletons alike,
Has run as dry as Giza,
In it’s later years

i’m so vain
i totally wrote this whole
song about me.
i’m so vaaaaiiiiin…..

there’s a sad song playing on the
radio in my head, and it unfortunately
does not fit the mood.

in fact it’s ruining my experience
here at the pub entirely. the sports
on the television would be great if this
dumb violin would stop being so effing
brilliant. and the beer in my hand
would taste much better if that trumpet
could just shut up for a while, why
must he jam so long, so righteously?

why must the music that never shuts
up play so clearly? so beautifully? so
wonderfully in all the right ways, but at
all the wrong times?

blanket pulled
up over my shoulders and wrapped behind
my neck as i climb in to the perfect
position and hold myself
steady trying desperately
to think of anything other
than the itch on my nose.
anything.
until sleep comes.

their dowry is composed of stinging plants
and biting insects because these things are
all that they can feel in this world, really.

They scratch ’til they bleed most every night
and hope that everyone notices and scream
if anyone looks for too long or tries to suggest
that scratching was a bad decision.

They hold their bloodied bandages aloft in
the centers of busy shopping malls and they
announce that everyone is wrong because
it isn’t supposed to hurt when you scratch
that much.

And when nobody listens, they know
that they hare vindicated.

And God Forbid you recommend a different
sort of dowry.

Then again, at least their plants and insects
are readily available these days, else
these private martyrs would never have dowries
at all.

If you can’t think of the last time it’s happened there are two feasible reasons. The first is that you’re losing your mind and therein your ability to remember simple things. The second is that it’s been so long perhaps it’s time to try again. The third is that you’re doing it right now and on some seriously mind-altering drugs that are confusing the hell out of you. Given that none of the above are particularly likely, perhaps it’s time for a brief review.

can’t write for shit stop
too busy smoking stop
drinking stop
hand discolored stop
love? stop

I’ve been kept up at night
with thoughts of Cairo,
such beautiful despair.
So far in nature from your
Egyptian namesake;
so quiet and so bare.

So tonight I won’t sleep
in honor of Cairo,
a town that’s slept too hard.
And blanket my body
in vines and rubble,
and lay out in the yard.

And if I grow old
I will grow old like Cairo,
so far from its own birth.
I’ll break down my buildings
and re-grow my weeds,
and sink back to the earth.

her hair wasn’t right
and her pants didn’t fit.

the glasses she wore slightly
too low on her nose and it was clear
her eyebrows had not been plucked
in months.

he shoes made her feet look
enormous like aircraft carriers
supporting the Old Colossus.

shoulder pads were definitely
present in her dress, something a few
decades behind at the least.

and everything was wrong except…

she wore stripes. glorious stripes.

the smoke slowly flows
from the tip of the
pipe as i read a
(er… THE)
book and walk in to the
presence of the one
who makes me freak
the crap out.

the first man
who wore a tie on the bus
was young but
dressed in a different era.
his white shirt
partitioned by thin blue lines
was yellowed
at the collar as if he
had been nervous
in this shirt many times before.
in his abstract print tie
(all pastels)
and impeccably shaped hair at
the nape of his neck
and back of his ears
I watched him fill forms out
and snack,
the whole bus ride
on raw

lettuce.