i was found but now i’m lost
on the sidewalk by the corner
and there are super-men in the streets
with their batmobiles and money
and suddenly lost i am sitting
the world now so foreboding
on the sidewalk by the corner thinking
about how much i owe and have yet
to earn or pay and work and starve
for
i’m almost fucking 24
and my mother came to remind me that
standing is for the impoverished.

Shadows at night are scare enough
but night seems to do just as well when
hiding we miscreants and faltering ones

So does occupancy to the life’s direction
So does distortion on the guitar’s scream

I have walked a mile the wrong way
and it made me want to stop and
never walk again.

I hope I have not lived the wrong way
(too far, at least).

I have not wont for settling
(so far, at least).

Daylight breeds shadows as cesspools breed
insects, but they are few and far between
and a boon, not a burden,
comparatively. Particularly in this
heat.

And best to be occupied than occupying
And best to at least be playing

And when I walked the mile back
to the start of the whole thing I
was refreshed and renewed.

I have been living, so far
(and that’s enough for now)

But still, I won’t be settling

Earlier this evening I happened past the lake
where I learned you were deathly afraid
of seaweed
but we both waded in anyway
and I think that’s sort of
the whole thing in a nutshell
except
seaweed can’t hurt you
most of the time
(but I guess the snappers can)

For Tara

When I have finally peeled myself
off your back
And slip my arms from
under yours and
back in to shirt sleeves
And prepare myself
for the impossible task
of leaving you
In those moments
while my body wakes up and remembers:
it did function without you before and
can again
It is then
you can hear the breath sucked in
by the space between us
which we have spent the night
smothering. Space which,
as I push my feet into their shoes,
balloons outward; between
me and you.
So I stop moving
and inhale what is left of
our breath
And stain my eyes with
your smile
And turn the doorknob
which always feels like ice
Look, I’ve memorized
the feeling of your hand in mine
Though there are mornings
when I will have to leave you early
It will never mean goodbye.

I found you, my treasure, in the dark,
the rain pounding, falling in streams
down our faces.

I found you, light and curious,
beneath the cherry blossoms, bathing
as we wandered defiantly in Spring.

I found you, the wind
at our backs, the world before us
as we pressed on gracefully, down
whichever road we thought best.

I found you, mine, when
you were not mine to find.

I never knew you had a thing for scalping your favorite patrons
or feeding the crackhead on the street
and I certainly never took you for a fighter
though goodness knows you could never be the bigger man

put the front glass down
and don protective eye-ware
then cruise these streets
like a badass in a badass
car.
foldable front windshields
don’t win the favor of the ladies,
but leather flying helmets
and bottle-cap glasses earn
the envy of the idiots
(your target audience).

put the front glass down
and don protective eye-ware
in the rain like you own
this street. smile like
the cold doesn’t chill you to
your bones because you’re already
much too cold inside.

cruise these streets like
a badass in a badass car
because the shops are closed,
your friends are all at home
but your pipe is firmly
planted between your teeth
and you own this street

like when standing in the eye of the
tornado is silent
in a deceptive way.
deceptive like a woman with it’s beauty
and seductive powers.

i wrote and wrote
with eyes i wrote
scientifically

and left the only
footprints in the
cave of the troglophiles

how could you know
how much i love you?
the knee-prints can’t
the hand-prints can’t
the finger-prints can’t
tell

even if they followed
the new lines in their
opaque world
no guess could be had
at me

even if my breath
reached any nape
no energy would pass

(even if it did
i can’t put a
blind lizard in
a prom dress)

i wrote and wrote
but only those with
eyes ever saw it.

As people some hide
in the nebulous nature
of most things

They are protected
by the general failure
of those around them

And so long as the bar
is not set too high
why, there’s no need to
jump
if you can just lift your leg
a little

Most people would do better
as dogs, I think

When dogs lift their legs
they mean it,
at least

there are no words for when
things are a-okay
and you’re a man in the sun
on a raft in a bay
and you couldn’t care what
the moving mouths say
every thing be damned
if just for today
they are impermanent
and pass like a wave
there are no words
when things are okay.

Bodies like barbie dolls, void
of all nature, all feeling, all
joy and splendor.
Ken dolls, all of ‘em-
stupid bulge spots as if
there’s something there to hope for.
They’re all the same plastic,
inorganic lumps waiting
to try and rub against
whatever kind of senseless parts
I don’t possess. Me,
I’m one of them-
the lifeless, the shapeless, the
unpleasurable mockery of all
which is holy. I am unfit to fulfill my duties.
And, well, this whole world’s a joke.

Sometimes I
fucking hate a Hammond Organ
but that’s an off-day
mostly

An average human being
can spend
without food
(as long as he
remains hydrated)
approximately
forty-five days
if the weather is
alright,
before his body
runs out of
muscle
to absorb
and starts in
on the organs and
such, then the
brain, when he
will probably
suffer
irreversible
brain damage

An average human being
does not need
to experience
this for any
reason

For Tara

Before you,
and before this,
I was a wool sock
full of lead bricks
in a clenched fist
I was
stone.
My favorite books;
those love stories whose quotes
I had once etched into my
eyelids
had moved
to the bottom of the stack
had
slipped under the carpet
my eyelids
were erased
and replacing these quotes
were notes to myself
saying
Keep these lids closed.
You can’t miss what you pretend
you’ve never seen.
So I spent one month
this past summer
sleeping on the floor
And I always locked the door
and I never bought a bed
Instead
I focused on
turning myself in to bread
With the hope
that enough people could
pull pieces from me
as to make me feel needed
I needed that.
Meanwhile
I laughed
as I gracefully slipped in to cynicism
like a robe made of glass
It’s a lot easier to
say you may never fall asleep
beside anything but the wall
if while you do, you laugh. I
wish you knew
how few things I believed in
before I believed in you.

But I could already feel
these fists unclench
the night we met
I changed my pillow cases.
I didn’t need to erase
my eyelids again. They’re
wide open now
I can only barely remember
what they once said.
The robes I wore
are burnt and
forgotten
The first time I got dressed
after meeting you
it was all linen. Soft
like I had forgotten how to know.

I was writing poems to
pray that you existed
before I ever knew you or
knew this
I knew I was looking for your eyes against mine.
I just didn’t know
what they would look like.
And I don’t believe in resurrection
but I do believe in redemption
and you pulled out of me
the man who needed to be saved.
So I renamed love after you
It’s a small thankfulness
for reminding me
that it existed.

i wrote a poem twenty lines long
with repetition, alliteration,
and a few other fancy elements.

but then in a move so poetic,
my words can’t describe

i erased it because it sucked
and saved you the pain of reading rubbish.

You can cut a man’s throat
and he’ll feel it for
the rest of his life and
you can stab him and
he’ll bleed until he stops
and he’ll never forget it

You can cut a mans’ soul
and he may never know
it and those cuts are
deeper than anything and
maybe he doesn’t bleed
or die but maybe he does

Maybe he’s never the same
again.

And while one cuts with one’s
knife and one does one’s
work so perfectly, another
makes the mark with song or
sonnet and maybe he slips
a time or two, and maybe that
is half the point somehow

That a man can break and
stand on both feet is
astounding

That a man can endure
and never move again:
double that,
and easily.

For Tara

A man once climbed
the world’s tallest mountain
just to prove
that the air there did not
smell like his love’s perfume.
When he got to the top
he realized
it does not work that way.

The whole mountains itself
looked like her smiling face.

it’s about what you think
and how it drips out of your
forehead in confident drops
and tip-toes down your face
too small for you to feel

and it’s about what they think
and about how they smile when
they think it
and as their smiles grow there
are a million grating shreaks
growing, too and it sounds
like pulling a rusty rake across
a rusty tractor
in an aluminum barn

it’s about caring

it’s about how you’re all wrong

and i’ve stopped offering corrections

stopped giving out tours

to the lake from which to drink
only
if you’ve learned what direction

we took to get there

no one has ever made it
there and back

except
for those of us with coke-
bottle eyes
then

then

everything is far too clear
and there is water everywhere
everywhere
that you are not