The Lost

poetry

Second story dive bar; October’s eve.
Lights dimmed, laced with red neon signs
Snaking shapes and letters; booze and boobs.
Flat screens; baseball; one on, two strikes, two outs; muted.
Glass bottles, glass shelves, glass panes overlooking
Gum stained sidewalks and grimy snow
And flakes—falling—mocking, from the other side.
Indistinct figures; faces ensnared in shadows,
Like hosts of lost spirits waiting for their curtain call.
Amateur Comedy Night; laughing in the dark.
This guy, the emcee postures, this son of bitch is here every time.
Let’s hear it for Jay Cruise!
On stage with no stage, no laughs for meticulous words.
He’d show them he could do it, he would show them.
He swore it would work this time, just this once.
Every past scorn—faggot, you worthless faggot—
Swallows his conscience in white noise:
Fuck it, he says after two jokes and descends; back next week.
Emcee recovers, all right all right, moving on, next up,
He says, next up we got a real funny guy, give it up for Mike D!
Applause, it’s all he’s ever wanted:
Dad, dad, look at what I can do, he said, and could never stop trying to forget.
Shut the hell up! What’s the matter with you?
Ever interrupt me like that again and I’ll split your goddamn lip!
Nervous lines in a tangled smile; please look, his hollow eyes plead.
Please?—but no one does.
The microphone passes from his trembling hand.
I know ladies ain’t people, and ain’t funny but we got one in the house anyway.
Put your hands together for this dumb broad,
She’ll be in back for twenty bucks a person after her set.
Loud cackles and refills all around as she faces the audience.
Hanging onto his last words she wonders if he’s right.
It was last night; night before; she prepared for tonight.
Can you just hold me? She asked when he finished.
Flicking wrinkled bills onto her yellowed and naked body, he glared:
You’re not my wife, he said, and spat on her.
If she only could convince them that she had more to offer,
But the set is already over and she’s feeling lonely.
Tough crowd tonight, emcee rumbles, but let’s keep it rollin’.
Heard him before, get his party started for the man known only as The Kevin!
Only a first name because he doesn’t want to remember more,
Believing that the more cracks about molestation, the less real it becomes.
I trusted him, how could he? How could he? Keep laughing!
They’re laughing, but he can’t hide the memories.
It’s our little secret, the sensuous whispers remind him with every feigned chuckle.
He’s used the same line too—can’t help himself anymore. She’s so young.
Met this character tonight, don’t care what his name is, the emcee laughs
Funny guy though, and I know cause this kid even looks funny! C’mon up Corky!
Tightened stomach with a drunken brain and its happened:
I’ve been waiting for this!
But the spectators are shrouded in darkness;
A meeting of the undead with vein-red eyes.
Something’s wrong. What’s wrong?
An imperceptible darkening in his eyes;
A gleam of reality fists a dagger between his ribs:
This isn’t what I want, this isn’t what I want. Oh God, this isn’t what I want!
And somewhere outside—beyond the windowpanes,
Like a glass house, it’s still snowing.
Flawlessly luminous flakes touching down in silent ecstasy,
Transforming like chameleons into gray flecks like sidewalk;
Like asphalt, like skin, like statues, like shadows—
Like asphyxiating souls scouring amongst
The living and the dead of an empty heart:
Still beating, still sacred, still loved, but still lost.

i want to romanticize. but lets not fool ourselves. (or 农家乐）

poetry

the sun shines brighter out there
after passing through the fog
setting on the shore of this lake
huge by most standards but still
dwarfed by the great lakes

i find joy knowing i cannot see the
other side and the sun is out in force
both to the left and right of me.

the grass grows greener out here
but thats hardly fair given the grass
exists out here. the toilets come in
fancy grouping to separate our number
ones from our two’s because this
is farm land and human waste can
hardly be seen as waste when theres
crops to grow. to serve on people’s
tables.

the water runs clearer out there
rushing down night soil fertilized
hills of farm after farm we cant help
but want to drink what we know can
kill. so they build pots of porous clay
to run the water through and absorb
the bacteria right out of that heavy-
metal-free water.

the people grow darker out here
free from the concerns of the world
but burdened by the land to which
their great grandfathers were bound.

the cell signal.
well… it’s actually stronger out there.

To The Curb

poetry

I never would have thought this
from your younger days, but
despite all of the yelling, my
mother is still a saint, and while
I can’t speak foryours, I know
you could have borrowed mine
if you wanted. Instead, short
sight has turned you a failure.
At least your shourt sight
hasn’t failed us all.

guts

poetry

eat it up and go home
pretend you did it right
let the sun come up behind you
smash it all inside your head
make it sound good when you say it
laugh and throw it away
smash it all inside your head
oh you want it you want it bad
you get the shakes and you don’t think
but you think about it all the time
oh you want it you want it bad
but you smash it all up in your head

Portrait in Three Colors.

poetry

There is a pretty girl
in the other room

Off and on she looks at me
through the doorway,
and she smiles sometimes,
and some times she
doesn’t really smile so much.

There are lights and televisons
that flicker on and off again.
I see them flashing all about her
just beyond that doorway,
but I can’t see the lightswitch
and I’ve yet to really decipher
what I hear on that T.V.
(though sometimes she tells me)

Every few days we speak
about the banalities of life
or the things that are not
quite so unimportant.
Every few days we simply
do not speak at all.

I do not comprehend these,
the transactions that occur within
the confines of our little doorway,
Despite all the time spent speaking
waving shouting into the other room.
Though that never was the point.

But I keep looking through the doorway,
hopeful there will be a pretty girl to grin at.

I have not seen her so much these days,
despite the door being open,
if she has not closed the door,
She has certainly moved to a window.

Four Years Prior.

poetry

It was a flashback.
Too much noise,
not enough VOLUME
but everything was turned up
all-the-way-and
there you were just
slamming
but it was a flashback
and I don’t know where
the time went. and I’m
not sure if I’m wrong
when I hate it, or
if that’s just the way
flashbacks
are supposed to work.

Chartres

poetry

Aye, the fateful French
Never anticipated
That centuries later oui would have
Such perverse portmanteau,
Creating a word akin
To flatulence and excretion,
And markedly similar to their city.
So needless to say
But said nonetheless:
It appears something was
‘Lost in translation.’

trying to find the center

poetry

alone is different than lonely
but god I tell you I am both
and am walking ’round in circles, here
trying to find the center

and this is a true account of my days
written here for you to see
as usual, and of course
I can’t let go of the words, oh

what’s more is you can have all my stuff
i don’t care about much anymore
but i miss your dog, i miss your dog
yeah yeah, yeah yeah, etc

but if you wanted me (and you don’t)
I would’ve saved you yes I would
but your love is such a weighty lie
your love is just a sucker game.

Like ‘PIG’ or ‘HORSE’ without a basketball. It’s not ‘500’ either

poetry

Let me state obvious things.
I will speak your mind as the words
form in your cranium,
for I can read them from the gestures
that your hands make
towards your feet
all the way down there on the pavement.

I will work out a points system.
I will score when you have had your story
laid out before you before you can
utter a word. I will reign champion.
You will lose.
My points system, though,
is slanted.

honesty

poetry

on the ride looking for my home
there were so many things i didn’t say
the sun dipped low, our shadows grew
you dropped me off but i was lost
losing light behind the crooked horizon

after you left, i took a walk
and got back to the city by sunrise
through the lonely woods and dusk
and dawn and sterile landscape
where i waited in a parking lot

i stole food from the ants
i pretended to be superman
my soul flying through the clouds
i pretended in all honesty

In mourning

poetry

Everything around me
looks like a children’s picture-book now
and this is how it’s going to be
and this is how it’s going to be seem
until all the Pulitzer’s come back from Hawaii,
with their pens between their lips
and their suitcases bursting like the ocean.
This is how it is, in mourning.

There was a day when you smiled,
with your mouth that had two lips,
two peeled peaches, opening and closing
like the heartbeat of a hotel lobby.
There was a day when you sat perched, quite remarkably,
on a rung of the great wooden ladder,
that stretched upwards, like your arms, to the boardroom of Trinity,
where three wise men sat, and drank red wine very slowly.
There was a moment, quite suddenly,
when you declined their invitation
and stepped down from the slippery-slide to glory
with your hair a dripping mess.

Surely this makes the six o’clock news, I thought
But the novelists had already boarded the plane.

There was a day of endless superlatives,
of Latin and prefix and light.
Half torn now in front of me, the mundane are setting up camp,
so I’ll wait, until the real world that came attached to your hip
calls up its publisher and says, ‘’it’s time, I’m coming home.’’