i’d stuff you with bamboo
for with you i’d take extra care
the best of taxidermists
hang your right side on the wall
(it is your best side)
and i would not settle for mere
cotton
for with you i’d take extra care
you’re my trophy, and to prove it
i’d spend a little extra and
i’d stuff you with bamboo

In desperate times we strive,
to reach for the stars,
when we know all we can do is touch the ceiling,
touch the popcorn walls,
with buttery fingers our dreams slip,
slide,
we have no grasp,
just an idea of a dream,
a dream of an idea,
idyllic imaginations,
reach, reach,
rise, rise,
these dreams are melting,
faltering,
d
r
i
p
s
y
d
r
o
p
s
y
place my cup underneath the falls,
sip from the chalice,
and open up these walls,
a toast to dreams,
here’s to the forgotten…

I took my love, and I spoke it
And I broke it into threes
To the one that was
To the one that wasn’t
To the one that will never be

The first took my heart, and broke it
The second I just let be
The third, I heard, never thought of the word
No she never thought of me

thanks for rocking and rolling with me
while i fathered children
raised them, fathered more and began
the process of adoption.
thanks for writing with me through moves
and furloughs and job changes and
countless different degrees.
thanks for poetrizing through thick and thin
and daily (or at least sometimes daily)
giving what you got the sieve.
i grew a beard, got scruffier, meaner
and generally slightly more gruff.

but you’ve stood by… a writin’
often sans-inspiration.

thanks eh.

Celestial bodies crash unyielding
in to one another
and throw sparks
,debris
,molten crust
,and everyone on either
stone or asteroid or moon or
planet, dies.

So far our stone has gone
relatively unmolested
in the grand scheme of things.
But its rash is growing.

we’ll kill ourselves
eventually.

Or Neptune will take care of it.

There is a certain feeling
when the wind picks up
for just a moment
and the thermometer reads
just so
and even though it’s dark
and cloudy you
can still see half the sky
and it is particular
but just for a moment and
there, it’s gone
again

Every muscle you own is giving
out and especially the ones
that keep your back straight and
especially the ones that stop
your neck from sagging side-wise
and if I could help you I would
but I have enough on my plate as
it is without installing supports
for your own lack of fortitude
but Lowes is running a decent sale
on mounting hardware so maybe
you should go give them a try.

There are days I’m startled by the other person in the room
Especially
When it’s late at night
And I’m the only one here
And I forgot to turn the heat on
Again

Booze burns my dry, cracked lips,

searing down through my

innards. I make like

this is relaxation- French

Brandy, lounging-

when really I am simply

bored.

 

Where are you to help decide

my next move, as I fumble and thumb

my way through the dark brambles before me-

the final remnants of

your Rabbit Hole?

 

I hopped on to your bandwagon

myself; my demise my own.

Perhaps I should have

known you’d slashed the tires, cut the brakes,

before we’d even started.

Snowflakes have always

been my favorite muse

as they float through the skies

and melt under my shoes.

Everything’s pretty

when it’s covered in white,

and in this dark winter

they bring out the light.

I can’t help but smile

when I see the snow

it reminds me of childhood,

reminds me of my home.

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.