Poems

you make me feel like the bad guy

poetry

you make me feel like the bad guy
like i’m not good enough
you want me to lick your shoes
it’s fucked up that you keep asking
you pretend that it’s not fucked up
that you keep asking
everyone knows it’s fucked up,
but you keep asking
like i’m not good enough
you make me feel like i’m the bad guy
like i’ve still got something to prove
like being a failure isn’t bad enough
you make me feel like the bad guy
and like i’m not up to your standards
but you couldn’t care less about me
and it’s fucked up that you keep asking
for me to lick your shoes
i know that i’m not good enough
to be a friendly fucking robot
and i wish i didn’t care
i wish i didn’t feel like the bad guy
and my life wasn’t all fucked up
i am building a home at the
base of the mountain
because i couldn’t make my way up
please don’t visit me there.

yours is a selfish war

poetry

you rush forward
in simple straight lines
bayonets readied to
receive the deathly gasps
of your fellow country-men
of your enemy
and after
you close your eyes
and bury it sharply
into their chest
you look back
desperately for some type of
approval and see nothing
but a general
atop a horse
yawning

on wichita, ks

poetry

wichita is a pretty crack whore
who was cool in high school, once
but now an addict
selling her self and begging

as i sit with her on a street corner
before the winter when kansas
has warm fall breezes that travel
far across the empty plains
we talk sarcastically about
old inside jokes shared between
normal high school friends
but i won’t leave here without her crying
and begging me for change
and if i refuse
offering to sell me ass

it’s the oil running through
her veins that makes her cheap
and desperate

Nobody Tells You How Long It Takes

poetry

Every now and then it hits me
like a kick in the teeth

The stinging will pass, sure enough
but the ache and soreness eeks on
for hours afterward

then I’ll go a week, let’s say,
and everything will be just as good
as it could be, considering

but then the truth, like a startled mule
will stop suddenly in front of me
and out its hind leg will spring

Luckily my lip never seems to split
nor does anything seem to pop loose

But my jaw has been consistently stiffer,
these days,
and my gums are stinging real bad now,
that’s for sure

the ballad of the penguin and the polar bear

poetry

you’ve got the heart
of a bird
that can’t fly
but you want
to be
the mighty bear

you gather your strength
in numbers
sharing your warmth
and empathy

he’s got the heart
and the skin
for the blistering cold
and all alone
though he longs
to share

he sings his sad songs
into the wind
longing for warmth
and empathy

when the world is a giant iceburg
you see what you think you need
floating among
the shards of ice in this vast ocean
the missing puzzle pieces to
a heart that doesn’t bleed

you swim for it
and you find it
but they don’t fit

some foreign things
are foreign
for a reason

some opposites
repel
too hard to touch

you find it’s the things
that make you different
that keep you apart

no matter how you dream

we run from the easiest answers

poetry

i believe i knew before the dive,
anyway

i knew when i forgot where you were

i mean you know when someone goes
missing

at the bottom of the lake
and at the bottom of everything
you thought you needed to find
and was dead already
with your face,
and your eyes wide,
purple-ish blue
dead long before
you knew it was missing
dead already when
you realized it was gone

so what there is now
left
to hold onto
must endure.

let me know if you’re ever in Wichita we’ll get coffee

poetry

i know you’ll never be
in Wichita
and if you were
we would only
get coffee

we could share
maybe a half an hour
in the local flavor
and reminisce
on times we were
in the same
geographical
location
and what happened there

we could make jokes
so it wouldn’t be
awkward

then like addicts
retreat back to
reality
and dispense
with the dry
niceties

take showers
like call-girls at sunrise
wipe away shame with
our saved up social
capital
and smile,
next we
should meet

but seriously

let me know

if you’re ever

in Wichita

we’ll get coffee

and call ourselves

friends.

chaos

poetry

it’s true that most of us
would hate to have coffee
with the authors on our
coffee tables

i mean
i thought it funny you
had hitchens on yours
when you two have almost
nothing in common

nor i, with nietzsche
or bukowski
i guess

the tuth is not some minutea
it is much bigger
than that

it is that you should
see the world as art
which is to be a neutral observer
stumbling, perhaps
onto your own soul
and then to learn a new thing about it
told to you by someone else

you don’t search the mona lisa
for yourself
smile, smugly when you find it
and walk away content
with what davinci drew
as if it was your idea
all along

I can’t stop looking at my phone and computer

poetry

part 4 in a series inspired by Shia LeBeouf’s tweets
—

tell me you think i’m beautiful
even if it is a lie
and let us not shy away from
the utility in fucking
the rent is paid now for sure
but i still feel homeless
i know you too well now to even
have a firm idea of
well i mean the relativity of it all
is the only solid thing
i can’t stop looking at my
phone and computer

even heaven seems really boring

i don’t know what i’m waiting for

this sinking feeling that is bottomless

you can’t talk your way out of this one

hold your breath, count to two

poetry

part 3 in a series inspired by Shia LeBeouf’s tweets
—

hold your breath, count to two
dive into the deep end

remember: you must get out
or you will dissolve eventually

close your eyes, count to two
don’t let your teeth fall out

remember: you need air to breath
grab the firm ground and pull

—

your limp body out
don’t go back until
you’ve learned to swim
dry off in
the light of a dying star
the summer sun
on the floor of a rounded
petri dish
floating like a soap bubble
through the void
it’s just like your mother
never taught you:
find what’s inside
while you still have time
and hold it with your breath
mark the moments
with your counting
open eyes and start anew
open eyes and start anew

davey and judi

poetry

she had no home but
that’s ok
davey had a fast car
and everybody knew it
and she thought she loved marky
but then when she got pregnant
marky just stayed with doretta
isn’t that messed up?
and when the pills didn’t work
(it was too late)
no one would come over
so she panicked,
and she kept it
and then built a home with ronnie
but she always was with davey,
in his fast car
always skinny
always young

if time could travel backwards part 3

poetry

you are scooping bowls of ice cream
it is 1978 and you are scooping 3 bowls
1 for you, your daughter, and your son
in the distance you hear them laughing
at the television as the bright spring
florida sunset beats down on your kitchen
you struggle to pick up the bowls and carry
them to the basement
but you make it just fine
and as you set the bowls down you forget
what or who you were getting them for
because you haven’t spoken to your children
in years
it’s 2016
and your wife is crying.

harness your dreams

poetry

the lighting of a candle
starts with the intensity
of a spark born of friction

and when this spark finds
a body for flame, it eats
and eats and eats and eats
because that is what flames do

but the candle’s body, by design
slowly kills the flame

there is no more intensity
only a slow diet of the same shit
every
single
day

when at first the flame was eating
with the passion of the spark
given to it by the friction and destruction
and even a type of devastation on a
molecular level it now,
distant from such an event,
eats only to stay lit

each day it dims with it’s steady diet
and lives in it’s own shit
and one day won’t even be able to breath

about midway through its journey
the flame dreams of the spark

if only it were a human
and not a lit candle
and could harness
it’s own dreams.

it wasn’t fair, no one said it was, now go toast the happy couple

poetry

the lights were
still on the music
still loud when you
ran crying into the
cold night

the sand ate up
your steps and
when you met the
sea it was so cold,
and so uninviting

what did you expect?

maybe a caring and
warm omnipotent
cloud whose womb
you would climb inside
of and wish it all away

yet the air outside
the wedding tent was cold
as was the water that
lept at your toes
as you stood backwards

let go
fall into
the ocean
wait for
the dj to
stop alltogether
and the
party to
come for
you

drift into
the icey
ocean of
your feelings
and your
ambitions and
your perfect
universe never
to be

or, don’t you have the balls?
or, walk back to the tent
let the sand eat your steps
wipe the salt water off your face
and toast the happy couple.

when i ran away, rachel robinson

poetry

if i could live
16 again
i would meet you
in the open field
with your boys
at 2 or 3 am
and knowing then
what i know now
i would close my
laptop lid
and walk miles
in the cold country
darkness and
fight you with
everything i had

even if your boys
came in, as i
had feared
and stomped me
to pulp
i would lie my
bloodied face
on the thick,
dew covered grass
of my hometown
and laugh a crazy laugh
and spit the blood
out and laugh

and if you didn’t
kill me,
i would be better
for that

maybe better, some
how
than i am today

maybe i wouldn’t shake
or worry so much
maybe i’d be a better
man.

krokodil

poetry

i first heard your name the
winter of my returning home

you were the promise of respite,
a gentle wave lapping on the shore

your words were hyperbole and
placeholders for others and
you said i didn’t have to stay
or that you could go and

some years later it is finally
the morning after
the waves are garbage trucks
the sunlight is acidic
and my arm is rotting
from the paths you traveled,
krokodil

do something

poetry

the door is closed
i lie in a sugary filth
i dream of international politics
yet
the possibilities remain unheeded
the apathy in the air
fossilizes the skin

do something different
than you’ve done before
maybe it won’t leave you
empty and hungry
and lying in a cheap
sugary filth

do something or you
will be frozen in
time,
gasping for breath
with stone lungs whose
efficiency is massively
degraded

do something at all and
push a wave into the
maddening ocean and
try not to cringe
when it comes back
changed by the distance
and its intent foreign

do something so they all
stop staring.