For Max

If such a foolish thing as love exists
It has hidden itself in a deli
And has slyly winked at only me
While simultaneously being the most explosively obnoxious force
two people can muster
Ordering a pastrami sandwhich
has never looked so much slow dancing
And in case you two are wondering, No
this is not an appropriate place to slow dance
But instead of making aliens of yourselves
you’ve somehow hung lanterns from fluorescent light fixtures
And turned this mess
into a banquet hall
I swear
The waiter yelling at me in Spanish is wearing a tuxedo right now
And this
This might be what love looks like
Like
A child who eats only with his hands
makes a mess of everything
and crudely draws dogs on the walls with his fingers and ketchup
And just because he forgets to draw tails
Doesn’t mean they aren’t dogs
This love
doesn’t care about details
Not tonight
Not details like
The old man next to you in line
Or the worried woman in front of you
Or the lollipop sucking cashier behind the counter
And I’m astounded
at how much more beautiful all of these people look in your light
Tonight
Don’t be afraid to sing along with the subway music
This song is yours
The next one will be too
So will the silence
And the sound of the wheels on the train tracks
Tonight
If I could take a sip
Of the single breath that exists between your hands
I’d have a lot less questions
No more answers
(I know those exist in my third and fourth palms)
But
A lot less questions

I’ve seen a man try to stay safe
walking just so through just these
quiet, home-grown neighborhoods
but between guns and drugs and
hoes an hustlers, in every little
city this big, every street you
stand on gets to the wrong side
of town, so it’s best to walk
the main roads, where at least
you can watch if they take me down.

you place foot in front of foot
on stone stairs and proceed
slowly to the rooftop restaurant
and order cardboard pizza and
water without lemon (and it comes
with lemon in it anyhow) and the
pizza tastes nothing like cardboard.

in fact it’s delicious.

Irony runs wild most times.

I am apt to fall victim, though I am vigilant.

I have seen him coming and I have failed to move.

Or I have stepped just barely to the left.

Or I have ignored him.

But I think I see him now.

Well, I think I’ll sit and smile.

(Ironically.)

You are an undulating vermin
with no spine and no soul
and you are always tired
and hungry

You speak when asked not to
your spit flies in flecks
and berates your latest victims
who are anything but helpless

Though none have the heart –
or the lack of it –
to crush such a vermin

If only you knew the words
the world has written for you,
left to be unsent in any number
of Gmail ‘Drafts’ Folders.

You would be crushed all the same.

I’m sure that in another decade
yours was the touch that could
reach out and sway the soul

I’m glad for your previous jaunt
in to the education of younger people
on the intricacies of music

But my hat is full of paper
and my pocket full of coin
and m’am, if you can’t ‘feel it’
perhaps you should reconsider
the numbing properties of
all of those cigarettes

Kiss me.
kiss me.
kiss me here, underneath this blanketed sky
reflecting
all the lights from the streets
around us.

Multitudes all swarming
the city in drunken fervor.
kiss me here, let it be known
our eyes, our lips, our soul
locked
frozen.
all this is ours
so tell me you want it-
I’ll tell death to wait, kick his shins-
this is ours.
so kiss me.

kiss me here,
kiss me in the streets,
kiss me on the mouth,
open your eyes
let me look into you.

kiss me.
let me smile.

And He is jealous from me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

why He wants anything at all to do with me is rather a mystery.
but i am a tree being battered by the rain drops i know
were carried inland from the ocean, and the salt stings
and beats against my face (leaves right?) and what can
i do but fold? that’s what they did on seeing glory
(2 Chron 7:1-3), why should i stand.

When all of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions
Eclipsed by glory and I realize just how beautiful You are
And how great Your affections are for me

if for some reason i was ever to expect eventually
understanding it would have been foolish of me. instead
i’m overwhelmed and become comfortable in the feeling
of the loss of control, my lack of control. like you’re
a stalker and i give up ever shaking you, except a stalker
must be the wrong picture for we seem to not like those
whereas none who’ve seen you could possibly not like you.

And oh, how He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves us all

i cannot claim to understand
i cannot claim to understand

And we are His portion and He is our prize
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes
If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking

running like lemmings into the ocean except
we didn’t just begin to sink, we’ve been drowning
and people watch from the outside and think it must
hurt, yet this choking, this lack of oxygen, is not
fear inducing. the water surrounding is of another
substance of some sort and we’re hundreds of feet down
to where the light has begun to fade and everything
is blue. the reds long gone, the greens fading fast
and we’re all sinking.

And heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets
When I think about the way…

an unforeseen kiss, how it causes you to startle,
but yet is something delightful. something like
a donut you figured was just a donut because you didn’t
realize it was filled with boston cream, and when
your tongue and teeth make contact you’re startled
but delighted.
frustrated suddenly you ever ate anything else
you ever settled for something else. but without
time to feel frustration you turn instead to continuing
forward, swimming in your delight because…

He loves us, oh
Oh, how He loves us, how He loves all

How He loves
Yeah, He loves us, oh, how He loves us

Oh, how He loves us, oh how He loves
Oh, I love
Yeah, He loves us, yeah, He loves us
How He loves us, oh, how He loves us all

this feeling brings overwhelming clarity that
the words i have to express myself are frail compared
to what i’m feeling. others watch me compose poetry
to my true love and laugh at the seeming worthlessness of
what i feel. but how do you express something that makes
you feel like a child? free? you don’t. you dance and look
like a fool and then give up and decide repetition will have
to serve it’s purpose — truth — again and again in place
of a better expressed thought. because He loves us.

Sometimes your day
washes down like
a bad bottle of coke
or like
a bottom shelf whiskey

Sometimes the mud is
ankle deep,
sometimes it’s up
to the
knees

Even my finest snow
shoes are useless to me
now

I only have dollars
and the soda machine wants
exact change

Get your grease off my wheels,
Woman.

I’m moving fast enough as is

einstein was right you know
about both time and relativity.

what’s five minutes, you might say,
well it’s a lifetime for a popsicle in
in the sun

and i’ve been waiting here a lifetime
or two, if you consider the span of time
a gnat tends to survive when born in a
frog infested pond

and frankly 2 minutes again is asking too
much. maybe you don’t value our relationship
always showing up five minutes late.

or maybe you just value our friendship relatively

While out walking in the woods,
I stumbled into a silken web,
soon I became entangled in all my finery,
not a damn thing I could do in my suit,
my entrapment made worse by my thrashing,
only until I tired did I fully realize what this meant,
trapped, in a giant web,
where did this come from,
oh please lord please,
tell me this can’t be real…

and then my nightmares became reality,
and then did my horror begin to rise,
the fear crept over me, inch by inch,
Ensnared by a giant killer queen,
and I froze as I stared into its many eyes

It’s great jaws gnashing in hungry delight,
the hairs on it’s bulbous body bristled,
and it’s fangs glistened brightly, deadly.

All my life I’ve been terrified
by spiders.
All my life I’ve been afraid
of their killing principles.
And I’ve fallen into her trap,
fallen into her web.
But now,
I cannot fight.

5:

Every time you think of me
I imagine it makes my skin
pull itself tight in embarrassment

If you smile it pulls
tighter still, and my hands
start to have trouble
opening all the way

There’s a smell that follows you
and it haunts me most of the time.
It was burned oil and old smoke.
Now it’s just that chapstick.

And if I must I’ll make that drive
and sit and watch the stars shine
and the trucks run north to south
all night

And I’ll drive that much further
to keep you smiling, even
if it makes it hard to
let go of the wheel.

4:

I was happy for the chase.
But you never could outrun
that old Bonneville,
in the end.

liars, every one of them.
but then we all are.
so there’s that.

an oil pool on a corner 5 feet from
the sewage drain.

a rat running alongside the curb,
scurrying for food into your favorite
small “restaurant”.

the sun breaking through the corner
of the building behind yours, shining
on the table in the courtyard from
2:32-3:34 approximately (but you’re not
counting).

life’s like this. and you’re thankful for
the promise of a new heavens and
a new earth?

The pigmented dribble from my onyx back’s

Slow drizzle,

Would have you all for breakfast, if you only

Cared a little.

I can’t for the life of me
remember your name but I’ll
write it down this time, I
think, and maybe then I’ll
at least have a concept, or
more likely I’ll just shuffle
that business card to the
bottom of a junk drawer or
a pile of ‘important papers’
on my desk. Who’s kidding who?
We’ll never know each-other at
this rate.

If you were to ask him about his port-wine stain
He would tell you it was a burn

And if you were to ask him how he got that burn 
He would tell you he was a hero in his hometown 

And if you inquired further
He would tell you his hometown
Was nestled in the crevice between two large breasted mountains

And then
he would not be lying

He was breastfeed 
And his mother’s name means “Queen”
And she always taught him she was as much

If you watch him in the rain 
And notice that it looks like he’s shaking fire off his hands
He’ll tell you he was only dancing

Don’t believe him

He does set fire to his arms sometimes
Especially when it’s raining
If only to see if he can defy the clouds long enough 
To mark his skin just a little

His mother always taught him she was a queen 
And so he touches women so delicately
They never notice until he’s painted flowers 
All over them

Then he burns his arms
So they’ll tend to him
And pay attention more to those marks
Than his port-wine stain
Or the weeds he’s watering on their backs

If you take him back to bed

Do not comment 
On his port wine stain

Always thank him 
For the weeds on your back 

Even as those tendrils tangle 
Tell him 
He’s getting things right
Don’t say “for once
Do not say 
“for once”

When you finally decide to remove the weeds from your back
Do not do it with a rake
Do not attack them 
Do not mistake them for malicious 
Think of them as dandelions 

Sometimes 
The beauty just spreads too quickly 

If you take him to bed after removing the weeds
You’ve made a mistake 
He will notice
And it will break him

Then he will go out into the rain 
Without 
Setting fire to his arms 
Instead 
He will notice puddles for the first time
And reflections 
And his port wine stain