The committee is ecstatic with your progress
but it must reaffirm: no good deed goes
unpunished. No righting goes unwronged.
There is peace to be had, but
in the committee’s eyes, it will not be yours.

Process your paperwork, please. Double-check
that you’ve used the proper letter-head.
We simply can not stand any botched numbers.
Else, the committee may move to have you
committed, at which point you’ll be
fully-qualified to sit.

of good things like the gospel
and humility they say
it will flatten you
bringing you lower than low
till you look up and see everyone
above you.
even those below you.
and you peel yourself off the floor

wondering where to go from the
lowest of the low

travelling along the veins
the moon looking over you
as wise as can be as he
knows the value of distance
the distance between words
between you and him

The lids are heavy
caps and grates and tops and eye
and I can’t seem to compensate
i think. I can’t remember.
opened, closed, hard to lift and
shit I can’t get
shut-eye with this
racket. What’s that happening
beyond the tilted shades?
they’re hard to lift. and even if
I tried to twist I just
can’t seem to compensate
or lift up all these sewer grates
So at the least, I guess
there’ll be no hiding

yellow, crooked,
cracked pavement dimly
lit by a street lamp
and this one
stutters
and flashes
all night
along this dilapidated
street

drug dealers hide
in the craters
in the pavement
and growl like
dogs
and the shadows
cast from the
poor street lights
look like dogs

and here you are
crying because
you’ve lost it all
cheeks like
the surface of a
dying planet
recieving it’s last
vital rain clouds
before another ice
age

everywhere you look it’s
either her,
or death,
and in this part of town
the dogs don’t want your
meat
they smell no fear
you are just a worm

and she’s a gone,
so,
you squirm around
feeling wormy
wanting nothing and
living even when cut in half.

Shorelines and skylines and
star-lines (the ship kind)
and nothing ever seems to cross
or come together, grand and
expansive as it/they is/are,
no touch or tender caress between them.

Infinities, it seems.
Never clashing, only extending
everywhere and nowhere, like
all infinities must.
And here we are as specks.
And here we are as passers-by.
And we’ll have none of it.
And baby, we’ll have it all.

Don’t you hate that feeling
as a blister is building
just below the protective layers
of leather and cotton and
you know the damn thing is going
to pop tomorrow, or maybe
the next day, but the point is
it’s going to fucking pop.

The juice will be everywhere
but more than that, the skin
beneath the skin is exposed,
when things like this happen,
and everything stings that much more.

Well, I can feel a blister rising
and while there may not be -much-
that I can do, at the very least
I’ll have to ask you to leave.

in the garden
a fallen tombstone–
foam painted grey.

Lilly pads on the lake bring out the hopelessness
I knew I was seeing in your posture on that bench.

You sit beside and watch the moss grow
instead of the fish swim.

And I know you’ll be here a while.

roaches run on dusty counter tops
fleeing the light i shine at them in my
perfect paradise of a home on the third floor
of my in a thirteen story building

And the brains are left to rot
up on the table, and under the windows,
and honey I think you
left some on the bed

There’s a mess in the dresser
from the paint you spilled
so I think you ruined everything

I’ll scrape the brains tomorrow
and scrub the hardwoods
and maybe clean the sheets
but the paint’s not coming off.
No, I think you ruined everything.

There was man I never knew,
spoke to me when last we met
he had a nearly empty bottle
and a grin I won’t forget.
He tossed a newspaper aside
and lit another cigarette
before he told me to sit down
so he could try and learn me yet.

He said,

I think, therefore I drink
until I can’t think anymore
and I stack cans on the table
’till I end up on the floor.
Well all this time we spend together,
I can’t fathom what it’s for
so get all your shit together,
once you’re out I’ll lock the door

when I said I hadn’t known him
he replied that I was dumb.
He knew exactly where I’d been
and knew where I was coming from.
Then he made a sidelong motion
toward the doorway with his thumb
and swore, he’d never talk to me again
and neither, to his son

so I digressed and I departed
heading south, as was my plan,
wondering what I had just witnessed,
if I’d understood that man.
did he need those empty bottles?
why’d he keep all of those cans?
was he stacking them in towers
just like castles made of sand?

All the details swirled about me
but soon enough I did not fret,
for all the strange things that I’d heard
had dripped away like summer’s sweat
and as I traveled ever southward
that man was nothing, you can bet,
but a name I can’t remember
and a grin I won’t forget

Autumn brunette
A dash of burnt orange
Ripe pumpkin
And pumpernickel
Layered fallen leaves
Intertwining amongst
A clear complexion
Of fresh, marble corn
Dotted with
Sparkling blueberries
The face of a fall harvest
Of beauty so common
But that doesn’t mean
I want to look away

in your garden the plants
refuse to grow
and when you take a walk
the natural things they
wilt and bend
repulsed
almost magnetically
by your presence

your a fucked-up modern
day king midas,
man

your a modern day
fucked up kind of king
midas,
man

and all around you is an
invisible force that
turns things off and
makes them die,
and on your ride to work
and on your way home
destruction is all you see

and when you go out
and the pretty things
keep dying
destruction is all you
know

but when you see a flower
you still reach out to touch it
and the pain is anew all
the time.

you look for things you know hope you can do
seeking definition in your action
but alas
“homemade roach motels”
seems like a niche already spoken for.

for Randy

The cry of a man

Amidst the laughing kids

Alas, the seal song.

of this 16 year old guard
too smart for high school
but not bright enough to finish.

he works hard for $3 a day
and sits atop this bench.
his girlfriend visiting with a bowl of noodles
swinging his too-short-to-touch-the-ground feet
inches over the brick

and I’m lost for words at his hope.
too small to get me through till lunch,
but big enough to make him every day smile.
open and close the gate
420 times per day for the next 44 years
till his grandson does the same

well enough to support him.

swing your feet. enjoy your noodles.

a clicking sound in the distance gets louder
and louder and louder and all it is is clicking
but it does not seem to approach, only amplify,
so do we worry?

It is not, so far, tank tracks or mercenaries.
Not so far a civil, world, or cold sort of war.
However do we prepare?

Do we load the guns and arm the children?
Do we teach the women to fend for themselves?
How sharp are our teeth, really?
How long our claws?

And the clicking is louder, over treetop
and rooftop and blacktop and everything
but louder, never closer. Do we worry?

I have two locks on my front door, and
three on the back. I have two locks
and a door between it and I.
I have not a fear in the world.

But God and Everything, I worry.