A gun is all you need
and you’ll be whole again
and ready
to do what must be done.

You’ll fight the good fight
and send them marching home.
You’ll explode characteristically
and run yourself ragged.

You have no spirit
but a beautiful soul
and I met it once in a bowling alley.
It rolled perfect spares.

When I asked you what you wanted
you didn’t have an answer
only a shopping list
and a phone book with
numbers circled here
and here
and there.

When I gave you what you needed
you shied away and I thought
that you might cry but you didn’t.
You ate your greens and you
worked your shift and damn it
you took your medicine.

If you plan it right
your coffers will never run dry
but that gun isn’t loaded
and your pantry’s still empty
and I don’t know who the hell ‘Amy’ is,
but she’s not calling you tomorrow,
that’s for sure.

sleep was supposed to come and instead
i got a racing heart
like when cheese was suppose to satisfy
and instead i got a rapacious fart

at times my mind feels akin to driftwood
and good words like the tide
washing up the sand to touch me
alas, again, not today.

just a few days at home on kid duty
and my brain has begun to atrophy
if i have to change one more “kid duty”
i may resort to blasphemy

i envy these men who dodged cannon balls
and bullets for their faith living every day
on the edge in the places they weren’t
allowed to go speaking to people who feared
them for the color of their skin, and while
i was born for this time here and now and have
come to the same place, these people are
no savages, and they respect me for the color
of my skin. and i can’t help but think my
choice in a very old and ugly vehicle for
transportation is not at all equal to a cannon
ball flying inches away from my head.

it does not require or yield the same kind of
faith. i labor every day wondering if i’m doing
what’s right rather than wondering how i’ll live
through tomorrow, and with my family this seems
wiser, but that part of me deep inside – that part
all of us men cannot seem to shake – that part
of me just wishes for a little more excitement
sometimes. all the while wishing my wishes don’t
come true.

I fished a nickel from underneath the couch
it was a buffalo nickel. It was worth five cents
and I threw it in my nickel bottle.

I got downtown at 8pm and wandered
with nothing but a dime in my pocket
and a set of keys
but I couldn’t buy nothing from nobody
and that nickel at home wouldn’t help.

So I got down to the viaduct
out South street way and I
tossed a dime in the murky waters.
I made a ten-cent wish, then,
and headed on my merry.

They hadn’t processed many
wishes that day, you see,
so those odds were probably
stacked up for me and I’ll
take what I can get
and nothing more than it.
And it it won’t be much
‘cuz after that nickel
I’m fresh out.

yesterday’s morning tea garnered public fame
and doubled in price overnight
making this morning’s tea worth its’ weight in
precious, delicious gold.

I hold my dagger
Traditional Florentine
for to cut and parry
while the other blade
does the dirty work
and I keep them on edge
by means of my edges
and thrust and push
and slice and stab
so you stay just out
of harm’s deadly reach
but somehow with
my dagger held Traditional
Florentine you snuck up
right beside me and
you’ve been inside my
deadly arc for years now
and I don’t think that
I’ll ever cut you now,
just as long as you don’t
cut me,
first.

for a few minutes He brings torrential freezing rain and
as if just for me
He clears the city out.
so i book it through these streets alone
listening to a loud silence of the kind i haven’t heard
in months.

the masses flee inside as if afraid of the lack of people and
as if just for me
this city is empty, and for once, no one is cheering me on.

the world-famous guitar extrordinaire
played some hendrix upon a mexican
stratocaster
oh lord
he was so good
i could barely tell
i thought those songs were his

and neither of us wanted to tell
the secrets that were so painfully
clear

that he was high on crack cocaine
and that we both felt like the
weather outside

and he’d never been world-famous
either

and i wanted to just go away

we wished otherwise
like the people driving down cork street
and all the people in the hardings
and at the day-cares
and everywhere

somewhere in each tune he changed it a bit
original, i thought
unrecorded, too

he played on, and on
la la la
and it rained outside.

three pink balloons
lack the luster of 99 red
but cause no such
nuclear confusion as

daughters bat them
around in the dark

We dug for gold and struck oil
and sold it for all it was worth.

We’re rich now, and we’ve
got a lot of big plans for this
little
godforaken
undeserving
wretched
piece of
shit of a
town.

We’ll be burning the schools
and setting our sons to graze
the greener pastures.
Our daughters, to trot
on beaches ever distant.

Our dogs will all be beaten
and our grandparents held
face down, underwater,
and the strong will survive
and build me my monuments.
They will build me
my hallowed halls.

And should a man or woman cross us,
It’ll be the whips for them.
And if they cross us twice,
the chains, and then the cleavers,
for we will have our order,
and have our orders carried out.

Not a soul will stand against
while their carts move so easy
and their drink containers
break so much less. Nor do
they rust.

but years from now
when all our oil
has been burned away,
I hate to think
what happens to
the pair of us
when all our loyal followers
burn Kerosine instead.

now
ten minutes from now
2:13, April 20, 2011
five minutes ago
next month
now
a moment from now
just a second
2:14, April 20, 2011
2:14, April 20, 2010
12:14, May 23, 2012
now
a minute ago
20 minutes from now
tomorrow

thought i’d filled this space before.
seems like just yesterday i found it empty and did what any self-declared writer would do.

stared blankly. then ran when someone came into the room and considered looking over my shoulder.

seems like i’d filled this space just an hour or so ago with something i was quite proud of.
but then i came back and looked, and it was still empty.
is it possible my mind is more poetic than my fingers? when all the evidence has proved my mind is incapable of poetry without my fingers.
until (that is)
poetry is written without ever being written at all, settling instead to be scribbled on the black board that is my mind. where no one can read it. where my memory allows me to forget it.

and as certain as i was i’d filled this space before, it keeps coming up blank. about every time my glass hits empty.

I knew a woman
one or many years
ago
(It pains me to remember)
and oh did she hold
such a flame.

Her looks and charm and such
were such that lesser
sorts of men surrendered
and it was well and good,

she was not hungry,
not once or ever.
She could carry nothing
but had it all
and oh did she hold
such a flame.

Her car went down
in a ditch on someone
else’s wedding day.
Her leg was broken
but only in one place,
but her dress was ripped
and where’s the
fairness? where’s
the justice? The
Humanity?

I saw her that day
but not since and
good riddance, I think.
She cared not at all
for me or mine but
oh, did she hold
such a flame.

like when eyelids slowly droop to cover
over the last minutiae of inspiration you had been saving
since breakfast from that article with unbelievably-
descriptive imagery about