nostalgia

a frozen ghost

poetry

i spent night
with my aching past
t’ward the poorly
lit 31st street

it’s been so long since
i spent time in that world
we built ourselves

i wait, breathless
to hear the whispers
of only 17

i am a ghost in this
world
and to stay too long would
freeze me
have i been on this couch
before?
with the record player on
the shelf
reclined, afront a vinyl
big-screen
you nuzzle your freckles against
my skinny
frame
did we watch the movie flubber?

was it cold like this,
back then?
i wasn’t
disappearing.

of that i am
certain.

a picture is all you need

poetry

a picture is all you need
when you’re yearning for the past

like my bike ride to work
and the dim nowhere sky

the booze in the autmn
leaves
it’s been a year

it’s been a year

or the party with the crazy guy
the one who knew
your perverted friend

and the yellow colored
lights in their house

file errors

you can almost smell the
girls,
on your bed
flipping you off
on a laptop

or the ones of you trashed
by yourself
bloody-nosed
in the mirror
in your bathroom
all alone

followed by the dead foliage
pricker bushes
and nasty landscape
of the lot behind
the parking lot of
your hellish old,

whatever,

a picture is all you need.

BAJA

poetry

We floated in
Warm muddy water
Calm and lapping on the
Gummy sandbars

Woke earlier in the night for
Reasons that I don’t know or
Reasons I forgot

Dark night scatter-lit
From above and we marched out
To catch the receding tide
Heels sucking in Mexican clay

I’m pretty sure
Cortez was an asshole
But I didn’t know the guy

His sea, though, is just
The kind of adventure that pulls
Some kids from far away

We floated in
black and starlight
and I can’t remember what
we talked about or
if we talked at all

but that night I was sure that
mystery was real and that
life was a stunning gift

it rolled over me in
tides of curling diamonds –
phosphorescence that
I hope Cortez saw too