the beauty of being male
(apart from not having to curl up
beside a hairy buttox at night)
is in the 14 years since
we’ve seen each other
the two years since we messed
everything up
and the five minutes it took to repair.

the beauty of being male is that
a swift blow to the face solves
all our issues. and then we’re bro’s
again.

Laughing at you,
to your face,
as you lie behind your smile,
lie through your teeth,
spreading lies with your wagging tongue,
protected by your teeth,
but what happens when your teeth start to rot?
coated with candied rumors,
they start to rot?
blackening they fall out,
one by one,
and you chew on your own teeth,
chew on your own lies,
you’ll be left with nothing but gums,
and a wagging tongue…

The phoebe and the chickadee

the whip-poor-will and jay,

I thought I heard their songs

as the sun came up today,

but then I woke and pulled my shade

to find I was alone.

My dreams were being kind and made

me dream I was at home.

The phoebe and the chickadee

the whip-poor-will and jay,

they’ll wake me from my dreaming soon,

today is not that day.

There are days I am a giant in this skin
Lost in a vessel I only some times have control over
There is a marble in this swimming pool
Trying to inflate itself to fit all this space
But more of me is water than glass

I am locked inside of this brazen bull
And yes, I get too warm sometimes
But behind all my gilded gold and horns
I forget I am bull and the man inside
I am Minotaur
Call me Minotaur
Never think I’m anything but bull and man
I am rock and glass
I am earth and wind
And I sometimes also claim to be the
Labyrinth
Not lost
I am many corridored
Not horned
But I do roar

So I pick up tiny cups with hands
Too large
Trembling mountains into desktops
Tapping holes in walls
Breaking feet with every step
Flailing bullet limbs
No you’ll never see me dancing
I break things
I break things
And I don’t clean up

And I break my back down
To hide my giant shoulders
Because you always look small
And your hands look soft
And I want to be the marble
Not the swimming pool
And curl tuck myself behind your right ear
I want to live there

Whispering my labyrinth truth to you
And figuring out how I can be soft too
Soft like
The snow on mountain tops peeking over my shoulder
The slope of your neck when it first kisses bone
The sun that rises over you
Or the hawks circling me
But the truth is
If my hand was a mountain
I would crush you

So I pull my hand back
And I never touch you
Because most days I fear
Being in this bull

And if my arm snaps back and I crack you
If my roar makes you shiver in your skin
Know I only ever meant to make myself so small
You could wear me like pearl

You could curl tuck me behind your right ear
I could roll down
Your body
With no fear of breaking you
Because some days
This body is all boulders
And goddamn do your hands look soft

I’ve been counting the cuts and scratches that I have
collected over the last several weeks and I
have come to the rather unsettling conclusion that
if all of them had happened at once I would have
bled completely out and died in just about
fourteen minutes, which seems like enough time
to do something constructive about that sort of thing
but even fast moving wouldn’t be enough to stop
them all from leaking so I’m glad at least that
these overall singularly insignificant personal
injuries are slow-to-come and that if they don’t
heal quickly at least the band-aids usually stop the
bleeding.

have we really come to this point?
is this really the best we can do?
line standing reduced to numbers
handed out on small printed papers
views from games we spent too much
of our valuable time playing now
burned in the backs of eyelids
clear as the sky when we close our eyes
when we try to sleep
when we wake and find
we’re still standing, waiting for our
number to be called and wondering
is this really the best we can do?

I reached in
and pulled out
a throbbing pink heart
and it was
delectable,
I’m sure.

I tucked it away
in a shipping
container
and hid it for years
on the top shelf
of my bookshelf.

It beats from
time to time but I
ignore it,
mostly.

Sometimes,
though,
I pull it down and I
take a peek
and I count the
beats
and smell the
putrid smell

Then I wonder
what ever happened.

Then I wonder
where you’ve gone.

He found a small pulley system
to keep his eyes from closing
in the back of a magazine,
an old-fashioned mail-away deal

He attached them post-haste
and, as far as he could tell,
never slept again his whole
long life.

His teeth chatter sometimes
and he coughs a great deal,
enough to make his tight wight
skin on his neck stretch so
it might snap

He hears voices now, too
that he never heard before
and that puts him off a bit
(though there’s no proof
they weren’t there all along)

But when he starts in to screaming
at the top of his lungs
at shadows in basements or
dark bricks walls, he dies.
Just a little.

He tried to take the pulleys off
but the ropes have come too tangled.

He can not cut them, either.
His scissors always seem to break.

for the years passed by
and the miles traveled
(even there and back again)
and the broken strings
and the flat tires
for the banged knuckles
and all the scraped knees
or the dog barking late
(I still miss letting him in,
sometimes)
and the corner store,
(used to be right next to
the card shop there)
I’ll pour one out, I think.

For the years and miles,
at least,
I’ll take a drink

there was one thing the greats had in common and it weren’t
education
height
weight
shoe size
shoe string length
love for mcdonalds
patience with children
or the location of the roll in their eyes

It is 8 oclock this morning
And we are chasing 7:30 just to see you
dragging our dirty hubcaps against this long road
And sparking poetry fragments.
Often yours, sometimes ours
Many times unspoken
These spokes wont stop turning
Until North Carolina hits us
like a sack of books in the face
But to cross every bridge back home
Carrying your signature in our pages
Is the shot of adrenaline we’re banking on
So please keep your eyes open
For three bed burning broken bodies
Bursting out of New York like
700 miles worth of bad ideas
Nicotine
And the resilience to not nod off
That only comes from knowing right now
This highway was made in the hope that someday
Three kids would take it
Just to hear poetry in North Carolina
So I’m first time marveling
At the solid brick buildings that pull
Hills out of forests
And the broken down barns that still manage
To conquer
The emptiness surrounding them
Despite the infestation of fast food rest stops
This road is stupidly beautiful
And, Buddy, I’m quoting you in every state
And finding new meaning in everything
Inside and out of your poems

I want to chase that rabbit

all around this town

I want to run forever

I want to chase it down

down below this city

down where there’s no light

away from all the hubbub

away from all the fights

I want to chase that rabbit

and see where it may go

I’ve got to chase that rabbit

or I will never know

why are you living today?
and if that doesn’t bring
you rain then why are you
looking up at all?
will the glare that you
catch every time
going up the hill to work
get you tomorrow too?
and when it does
when it does
will you look up
and will it finally rain?

i surely do see clouds
but in my years i’ve come
to not expect anything at all

—

it didn’t rain on the
president

or you

yesterday

i suppose it never will

and in the name of the
great drought
i pray

amen.

In a tenement,
surrounded by kindred spirits,
we gathered for a holy rite
in a room divided by time,
I ingested God and waited…

Shadows passed through the door,
some to eat, some to sell,
and some to buy…
All familiar faces or people from memories
people I never knew,
shadows, just shadows…

And on God’s terrace with veiled eyes,
I watched the clouds make love
and disappear.
I saw a flag flapping against the wind
and a hurricane in the trees.
On the ground more shadows,
faces and memories.
In the distance birds called softly
and before the memories rode away
they waved and laughed one final time…

Going for a walk in the streets

It was a flash in the mist
that brought me in to the rain.

Now I am sopping wet
but I am vigilant.

Now at least
my eyes are open.

The camera is recording,
too.

I’ve had this headache now
For 3 days
The doctor
-who was British, and therefore trustable-
told me
It was probably not
a tumor And
I should try physical therapy
Which I talked about for a few weeks
Before letting that too fall off the face of the earth
The dentist told me to see an orthodontist
So I did
And when I got braces
God damn it I choose the bright turquoise rubber bands
Looking like I had first exchanged my teeth for scrap metal
And then massacred a neon blueberry pie. When I
was younger
I bought attention not spent on me
My eye doctor said I didn’t need glasses
Which had been my last hope for
An easy answer
Now I take guesses
And fear as much as I morbidly hope
I need a specialist
To prescribe me a 3 times daily regimen
Of medicine
To fight off the invisible monkey
Clinging on to me for dear life and death
Biting vice grips into my temples
You know sometimes
Everybody wants to feel like they’re special
So for one day
I told my brother yes it was
a tumor
Went to a second eye doctor
And stopped wearing my retainer
Because if these headaches were the worst thing in the world
I would be a hero for my strength
And for all that
I still take pain killers every day
It turns out
That being a hero
Didn’t make these headaches go away
So I wait
As the brass balloon in my head inflates towards
Gargantuan
When I die
I expect to be preceded by
A faint pop
Alternately
Sometimes I get bad headaches
And sometimes I take myself too seriously

i thought i’d try and tell you
about what might be going down
around here these days but
weird things always seem to get
in the way of what i mean.

we don’t have to live this way.

the only thing I don’t want
is getting to the end of this life
and regretting I didn’t speak loud enough

Teeth cut deep to soul
not to flesh
I am unaware

The lights are running past
I know one thing
I hear air escaping

And now unstrapped
And now upright
The air escapes again
There is more this time

Louder

The brakes catch all at once
A sudden jerk
No one is moving
Everyone is moved

The air sucks back in I think
The lights are running past
and again

I think

I am unaware