That very morning,
Before the bell rang, I denied him three times.
Now sitting in a desk a peer turned to ask me,
“Hey, ‘carry the light,’ what does that mean?”
I don’t know, nothing, I denied.
But he asked again,
“It’s a cool looking shirt; you don’t know what it means?”
No, I don’t know. It’s just a shirt, I denied again.
“So it’s just a shirt then?”
It’s just a shirt, I swore.
Just then the bell rang.
Just then the rooster crowed.
green leafy vegetables and milk un-aged
or bowls of oily spiciness though with
most cheeses i’m in the clear. provolone
or mozzarella is seldom rotted enough
for me to get by but most swisses work
no magic at all. broccoli is not an issue
but a single slice of cabbage brings disaster
to an otherwise painless two hour trip in
my car. oh and while most peppers cause
no ruckus, the juice from cooked beans
bring me to my knees – from which i rock
back slowly onto the circle in my bedroom
which i call my bedpan.
How to count your moments of weakness
with only 60 seconds on a clock-face?
One could posit ‘carefully’
I would rebuff ‘with all the care in the world’
the less i care
the higher i get–
but i think of the ground
all the time.
they’ll get to you if you let them to
under your skin slowly mocking you
claiming VD when all you got was
scabies and your friends run for
their preverbal lives knowing an STD
is just a prettier acronym for what
they probably had coming in being
your friend.
He drank down their smooth yet firey
misnomers and falsehoods until he was
the drunkest man in the world.
He is devoid of logic and reason.
He would make it to the top one day,
hell or high water all that could stop him,
spurred ever onward by new casks
off the foul stuff bottled by the fellows
down the way.
But once or twice he sobers up
and starts in to thinking, as he once did.
I met him on such an occasion.
There he was, confused and befuddled,
just beyond an open door.
I went to him. He said he had troubles.
I said that life was hard.
Tell me about it, he replied.
But it’ll get better some day, he said.
I won’t be around to see it.
He left then, to drink more of their foul draft,
so I told him to take care.
He said you got to.
So I do.
the smell of beer,
milk soaked donuts;
the couch’s squishing sound.
with meticulous
strategy
we’ll fight for a
legacy
knowing in time we’ll
be
what’s left of a near
tragedy
turned success
story
Someone’s mist just
stumbled through the doorway.
No footprints, no strange
melodies echoed on frozen stairs.
Just an impression
left indelible, yet invisible.
These are not wise thoughts
to think of you. These are
Dangers, completely self-imposed.
We do not talk of tigers
in the cornfields down the road.
The tiger, you see, stays native
to it’s home in Wildest Africa,
and Furthest India, and certainly
not in the cornfields down the road.
Yet I speak of you,
and your mist ever stumbling,
and I know you to be here,
indelible, yet invisible.
Like a tiger in a cornfield.
life is better with friends
don’t you think?
no matter the type, or kind
the ones that live in the flesh
or the ones that go
down your throat
any friends are better than
none.
We thought we’d outrun the storm
only to find it waiting,
three hundred miles and three states
down the road,
with three hundred miles
of pent up fury,
and three hundred miles
of pent up rage,
ready and waiting
to beat and to batter,
to blind and to bruise,
to force us from our course,
to keep us from making it home.
they teach me it’s you i should learn
your insides and out.
but all i know is of your love for back rubs
and coffee
i can make you coffee each morning
(though often i forget)
and i can certainly try to rub your back
each day
but i wonder when it’s over
what i’m missing
in loving
in learning
to know much more than your
every curve
(a detail i assure you i can recite
perfectly from memory)
the learning process is certainly
not tedious, but rather daftly confusing
as i’m bewildered by why beer, donuts,
and me naked aren’t all you could
ever hope for.
the smell of rain-
soaked soil;
the door’s swinging sound.
when you move somewhere
far enough away from home
you might get there faster
digging down instead of
flying around
and you land and see what will
become your new home and
as you spend the morning wondering
where you’ll have breakfast (and if
it will contain a tree-worm)
you walk the streets and take
in the sky and the sun and begin
to wonder how on earth all of this
will possibly feel normal. feel like
home. and then you live and you
live and one day when you’re running
home in the rain you realize you’ve
arrived and it does feel like home
but you dont know how you got there.
and somehow dwelling on it too long
like the spelling of a comfortable word
makes the whole thing seem once again
uncomfortable
and when we kick it,
as they say on the other side of town,
all the folks will stop and stare
cuz there we’ll be, just kickin’ it,
admittedly,
on the wrong side of town
admittedly, i found your body
in a shallow grave in my backyard
i was shaking like a lost child
your body smoking like a fallen star
All great writers are drunkards—
It’s a prerequisite, perhaps,
That too be profound
One must also be inebriated—
This glass and aluminum key
Unlocking chests of insight.
Thoughts flow evenly, quickly—
A bottle tilted to parched lips
Wearing worn pathways
Across yellowed pages.
Words that speak of fight
Words that speak of rest—
Saying nothing at all.
Waking to begin anew—
Waiting to find answers
Underneath sea spun foam,
Crashing into shattered shores
Hoping to find forlorn messages
Sealed safely in bottles.
Swirling stories fill full mouths,
Spilling over the oceans side—
But diluted behind a liquid veil
Pain cannot dissolve in truth—
There is never an escape.
It will always be a fantasy.
You threw your whole body at the icy lava
But it spat you out like a cork,
And all the little fish drank champagne
And danced the rumba because
They thought you’d given up
And they thought they had won.
The big green-eyed octopus down there
Skated along the soft ocean floor like messiah
Each day the slimy grin on his face,
That fatty enclave of salty grime,
Grew wider and wider, until the sea
Started to shiver at the thought of its size.
Months passed in the oyster-grey soup
Of the swelling Atlantic Ocean
But every morning you hear the
Broken-backed barnacles whispering your name
Your time is coming my darling, I can feel it
Put your goggles on, it’s time for a change.
thick warm air
forced down throats by
heaving lungs
barely breathable
make it work, make it work,
cough and wretch and
gasp it down again
and every
little palpitation
of the heart
the mind
the spirit
will be painted in someone’s studio
immortalized wholly
for ever and ever
the elephant in the room
is that your mother is dying
from a cancer
and your heart follows the
rain,
down through the gutters
apathy is a warm blanket,
your body is a cold machine,
all around you a million shades
of grey paint pop-culture
pictures that disappear when
you look at them like
all of the fake-stars in the sky
there are few words left for what you see
you put your art in a grey can
and give it a stupid name;
this survival is an encouraged
and repugnant greed
and is the cancer itself
beauty is right behind that elephant.
the sieve and the sand 
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