IF I BREATHE A LITTLE HARDER I
THINK I CAN MAKE THE
sweat stop dripping but the
POUNDING IN MY CHEST IS QUITE
INDICATIVE OF A HARD GO
even if it wasn’t a long one
but that’s all I can really
PUT TO IT THIS TIME AROUND AND
I GUESS I’LL JUST HAVE TO
put a but more to it next time
around and then
MAYBE I CAN GUAranTEE THEre’LL
BE a TIme after THAt

(and with all the sweat
the fan feels that much softer
and with all the burn
in the throat and lungs
the water really does feel
like life in a bottle.

This must be what
Commander Keen felt like.)

these last few days have not
gone as planned.
the throbbing headache,
or maybe just the general
throbbing of pain in the
groinal regions.

three woman
holding, feeling,
ultrasounding my balls.

these last few days have not
gone as planned.

and all because the warning
pain was not headed last tuesday
in a run. and i hope my
body i still in tact, and i hope
i wake tomorrow in less pain.
and i hope at some point the
overwhelming sense of pain
subsides. oh a glorious word—
subsides.

until that day….

You fight for all the things
that make you uncomfortable
but only
when you’re alone at night
and I wonder how much
you sob

Your heart must cry out
for every little injustice done
and your fingers must
clench so tightly

How much does it hurt,
really?
Or do you simply
hurt yourself, so at least
you have something

At lest you can tell your friends
that you’re a real person.
Some of them, why,
they might even believe it

But really your pockets are full
and if your point is proved
you’ll win whatever merit badge
there is to be awarded

and when they pin it on I
hope they slip and the blood stains
just enough to be embarrassing
and I hope the medal
wears a hole in your shirt and
and I hope the next time you clench
your fist, your fingers break.

I hope you break
every single one

when the seat below
you shakes violently
and you know the ground
below is unsupported
except by wind and something
they call “airfoil” because
“they” are smarter than us.
when the seat below
you shakes violently
and you know the guy
operating this thing
definitely does not have
enough experience to be
doing this.

then.

it’s right then that a
serious panic attack
is completely acceptable
no matter what the calm
guy in the seat next to me
says.

Before the Trans-Atlantic cable
all communication was limited to
short-burst wireless
(Stevsie had an echo-box)
Man with Horse
and intercontinental tanker which
if the weather was right
only took about two weeks to connect

Now one can say ‘hi’ to one other
nearly instantaneous and half-way
around the world. Now one hardly
takes the time to pay for postage.

And even though it’s only been
so long since this sort of thing
were even possible, one can
hardly conceive of being down a day
without it.

Or maybe that’s just me, dear.
I can admit that weakness, and I
can miss you just a little bit
because of it. What I can’t do,
though,
is fathom how we used to rely
on pigeons.

Now that one that could never be, is.

When I first thought I had love
I looked for it in wax
But melting is destructive
and wicks cannot grow back

The second time I sought love
I found it in the flame
All heat, but short of substance
and quickly growing tame

And when I thirdly felt love
The smoke was where it lay
But without wick or fire
I lost it in a day

Now finally I know love
And chide my foolish soul
Not wax, nor smoke, nor fire, but
the Candle as a whole

on the black garage roof
thrust into the sky by
the black garage walls all
covered in trees was
a single black cat. Solitary
on the roof top like
the last piece of ice at
the bottom of the glass which
I left inside as I ran
out the door the moment I
heard it. A single black cat
playing with the shivers
on my spine with his
viciously sorrowful night howls.
Dear big eyes,
I saw the reflection of you
looking at me in
the flashlight. Right
at me. How did you know
how alike
we are
?

Outside, breathing in
the night air, spinning
in wide circles we’re spinning.
look up to stars,
kaleidoscoped, stop.
The world is still spinning,
spinning.
The trees are bending,
long weeping bows to the wind.
“Come, Come,” it’s as if it’s saying.
Car headlights, become earthly stars,
racing by in slowmotion.
Heads together, feet on the grass.
the blanket beneath us.
memories become giggles,
while we’re still spinning.
crickets serenading,
we’re just watching.

I stood for a moment in reverence and silence
watching the moon hang in the sky.
It’s glow was a great beacon. It curled my eyes a bit.
Continents sailed above me from one end of the universe
to places far distant, and on important duty,
I’m sure of it.

I got the car back down the road and my view became
yellow lines and glowing signs and not a star at all.
The trees are thick in most places, and always
at the tops of the hills that are big enough
to show me the sky for a moment.

When I finally stopped driving it was daylight again
and those nation-states had made their appointments.
My eyes still curled, a bit more even. The sun was bright.
I had money in my pocket for a plate at a diner and
a beer across the street. It was the best beer I’d had yet.

I’d give up that plate to know whether I’d ever see
the moon like that again. At least then I’d know
not to get my hopes up most nights.
I’d give up that beer to see
the moon like that again. Beer is such a
transient thing, anyway.

a different life source;
something from inside this
time, and i picture the kid
who just found it staring
down at his chest and thinking
“that was different.” wondering
from whence it came, and if
it plans on staying around
because there are a few fields
he can think of sprinting through
a little faster than ever
before, if this after-burner
is going to stick around.

and that bmx track? he bets
he can fly around the graded
corners a little bit different
than he has before.

and he just stands there
imagining the possibilities
(if this is going to last)
for a few minutes as the revelation
of what just happened is a bit
much to take in right now.

but that grin, as he stares down
at his chest, that grin just keeps
growing on his face and it’s
like a light has been
turned on inside.

He reached out to touch you once
but you were gone just like before
so I asked why he kept reaching

with all the sweat on his brow
and the tears in his shirt
and the holes worn in the soles
of his old Nike sneakers
he couldn’t answer

I asked what kept him going
if not the burnt black coffee
from roadside diners or the
sticky wads of deep-fried dough
and he didn’t have an answer
for that one, either

I asked him why he didn’t
just head back home, where
his recliner sat at just
the right angle so there was
never any glare on his
42 inch television, even at
4pm and even though he had
a big west-facing window

He didn’t even try to
rationalize, and instead
just started hiking for to
reach another time and so

Baby,

you’d better wait up a bit
because if that’s not love,
then there ain’t none
in this world, anyway

A happy smile,
a snappy remark,
a twinkling eye,
a firm handshake.
The things we do,
to feel accepted,
to be aknowledged,
to feel good.

We’d kill,
for you to like us.

For Tara

We sat, naked on my bed
and smoked my last two cigarettes:
The ship captain and
the Queen of France
on a raft made
of loose change and pocket lint.
You breathed the clouds out
of the rising sun’s view as I
whispered cardinal calls with
my lips pressed against your neck.
“Cling tight to the window, darling!”
I shouted, in my most hushed tone
“Morning’s ahoy”
And you laughed in the sunrise
as the light splashed through the window
so holy
I could have sworn
your voice was church bells on Sunday.
Noon struck us
like lightning molasses
too sudden
for all its slow sweetness
Only hunger
chased us, eventually, out of bed
you waltzing, and me
still tripping on my morning
baby doe legs
The sunlight
too bright for either of us
but still beautiful.

When our brief tour of
my neighborhood came to it’s
local sandwich shop conclusion
I surveyed the streets we had
just stumbled through
and promised myself to someday
promise you
all of it.

I built you a house
in my head, that day
Gigantic, at first
Then, slowly shrinking inwards
until it was the size of a room
anchored to a meadow by
a window with
no blinds. Close,
but not too close
to a sandwich shop
where we could eat breakfast
and childishly smile
at each other, each morning.

The house
the size of a bed now. Just big enough
that I could hold you and
watch your eyes herald in the morning
and mark each day holy
with your smile.

How about an invention?
A reinvention, a reimagining.
Now I know we can’t turn time,
but we can pretend.
Can’t we?
We’ll lose some weight,
get some plastic,
grow some hair
(or lose some).
Hell I could reinvent myself,
in just a day,
a second,
won’t take long.
I’ve done it before,
I can do it again.
As a snake sheds its skin,
I’ll shed myself.
We’ll become anew.
But then,
isn’t a snake still the snake?
A butterfly still the same catepillar,
with pretty new wings?

the warrior is shackled
and puts his blade
to use cutting appetizers
to sate the gluttons
and the all-gods of money
be they mystical
or real as the shackles

the cutting
lasts for 8 or more hours
a day

and then his hut for sleep

and then back again

and he might do this forever

but maybe his shackles
are made out of pride.

I live
in the dark finger of space
between two fences. One
on the formless neighbor’s side
and one on ours. In
a two sided attempt at
keeping each other out
by building
taller and taller fences
we have trapped an armpit inch to
permanently become what
no man tries to own.
So I burrow my secrets through
holes and
over the top, into the crack
and have named that spot after all
my bad habits and poor judgments.
I record my
petty lies just quiet enough they
never make it out
the other side, instead they
gather at the bottom like
broken leaves and cobwebs just
waiting
for my digressions
to burst the poor fence open
and wash away
my childhood home
in a tidal wave of hidden
personal shames
I’ve only spelt out here.
Some days
I get so goddamn remorseful
I worry all the
ants I’ve ever stepped on
have been reincarnated as bigger
ants
and are under my bed
just waiting to swarm me
in my sleep.
And the ants don’t scare me
as much as
the concept of retribution.
So I bury apologies
through the cracks in the fence
to the crack between the fences
because there is a very real possibility
that I might actually have hurt some people
that my petty lies combined
might weigh too much.
I’ve filled the fence to overflowing
with every small misdeed
that I commit
Tagged
with an excuse
and a note that says “I’m sorry”
“I’m sorry
that I hold parts of myself behind a fence
that I tuck the
ugly things
into the nothing between slats.
That I try to deny
myself humanity that way.”
I write this same apology
over and over
until my hand cramps too hard
to keep moving.
I have always
been afraid of retribution so
I wrap all my admittances in
the same silk apologies
hard knuckle pressed into fences
and forget them as strong as I can.
It’s easy for a boy to forget that he’s a man.
It’s a lot harder for him to accept it.
I’ve put this fence up
and I don’t know how to knock it down
I don’t know how
to allow myself the
most foolish pleasure of
openly wearing my flaws
It’s hard to see into this fence
And it’s hard to get out.

I walk city streets sometimes and I
understand a few things here and there
and I can see where you’re coming from
about the used-to-been’s and the
back in the days

All your clothes are kind of worn
from long, too long, spent
pulling levers and filling tanks
and counting and sorting and
you were the best, I’m sure

But I’ll tell it to you straight
as I can, and i don’t want you
to be upset, so I hope you can
take it, but
there’s never been any honor
in the scent of gasoline and
beef jerky

I wish you could walk these streets
just like I do and I wish that
here and there some things would
come together but you’re still wearing
your company jacket and still
rattling off line-counts and
pressure ratings

and the gas smell has more or less
come out of all of your slacks
but jerky, so I’ve been told,
is still two-for-one at the
Stop’N’Go on 12th street