I watched kids fall off the monkey bars
Skin their elbows
And get back on
From here in the sandbox
Near a patch of piss

Too dead to sleep
Too thin to eat
Is this starvation or predation
Or more?
And if so
What is it hunting for?

My bed takes time to speak with me
When giving up is all I see
Saying aches and pains will come and go
As spring defrosts the winter snow
But how to keep the hope alive
That once they're gone
There's strength to thrive?

In darkness, bathing
Hiding, waiting
Plugging away by foot and hand
Reeling in some promised land
All the while reminded, blinded
By this hindsight
Ghostly limelight

Gleaming fruit a rotten mess
In lieu of improvement
Backward movement in distress
Sweet turning bitter
As elite becomes quitter
How to end a dreadful song
Of none turned right
And right turned wrong?

(sit down, open notebook
mission: closure?
of all the things I could be doing right now…)

Before we begin, you must know
that I don’t need to be writing this
and it means absolutely nothing to me
Much like many other words we’ve
exchanged in the past
(aimed at him –
not for my own reassurance)

What we had was no mistake
It was deliberate
Misguided, maybe – heartless
But intentional
(good opener?)

And I don’t intend to apologize
at any point in this discourse
(terse, man – cold)

Honestly, I don’t have a goal in mind
What could I accomplish by telling you
any of this?
Vinegar for your wounds?
A feather in my cap?
(get on with it)

You’re probably just as busy now
as ever, if not more
So am I
We always did inhabit our own
respective little worlds,
evils the lesser of which
is yet to be determined
(babbling, stalling, deceiving)

In spite of what we told each other
and ourselves, I guess
it wasn’t love gone stale and discarded
It was necessity fulfilled and surmounted
(he’s just a kid – chill with the big words)

We learned and taught
and that counts for something
(cheesy bastard – go write fortune cookies)

Let’s be honest though
I hate myself for stalking you on Facebook
to this day
(if only this were a real conversation)

I let go of something
Was it a leash?
Without even knowing it

Chuckled as I got into his car
Left the belt unfastened
Smoked more in one sitting
Than the last three combined

Who was he?
The man with the comfy couch
Of course
And the  friendly pup
He was lonely
That's who
And so tired

He lit the incense
Like any friend might
Dimmed the lights

It's okay

He slipped in as soundlessly
As I slipped out
The next morning

I leapt into a hot bath
Scalding hot
Jumped back out
And stood there naked
Shivering

To be seen
And acknowledged
Even in passing
To be heard
And understood
Even on rare occasions
To be aided
And guided
Even the wrong way
Is a gift

“You are here”
It says on the card
And for that
I am thankful

Falling apart at the seams
Fading and losing their shape
Marked with empty words
Tied up in maddening knots
Slow to unravel
Harboring an indistinct funk
Filthy and scuffed
Torn
Battered
Ridiculed
They’ve seen the world from a worm’s eye
And shrink some more
With each attempt at renewal
These shoes have a soul
As black as leather
As squalid as dirt
But somehow march on
Without a second thought

A plastic bag quivers in the wind
Its shrill thrashing hiss
More so imagined than audible
Resonates from across the parking lot

Weak and insubstantial, it coasts
Like a veiled phantom face
In ethereal moonlight
Ready to take flight

On the breath of frigid winter
It departs the callous pavement
Whisked forth from its purgatory
And behind the curtain of night

Heavy in the wake of this escape
Scarred by the breaks and tears
Of taking on too much at once
I see myself

Here I felt the ocean tide caress each speck of sand
As it slid further and further away
Receding to the far reaches of nowhere and who cares
Each new word like a grain of salt
Dispatched in brevity from my restless tongue
Succinctly to fall upon humble feast
Repugnant and astringent

Here I held myself a fence of iron
Or a box or the string of a kite
That once again my eyes could see
Here I reveled in insipid vacuity
Cool and stale in monotone costume
Here I found solace in ticking clocks
And an empty mug beneath the coffee

Here I thought me a tower
But with the idea of you
I’m no longer so sure

Empty space in your corroded system
All that atmosphere between you and everywhere
Hanging heavier with every breath
That dark and dubious wavelength
Ensnaring the judge of is and was

Ozone rises from the dew-stippled earth
An all-consuming energy
Racing through prudence and tenderness
Like a broadsword through your flesh
Pungently bitter

Feverishly elated is the electric doctor
Bellowing rain and fanatical wind
Ferocious, your pulse of steel
Soliciting tragedy for a faded bill
Havoc in the wake of havoc

A city darkest before its awakening
The tornado is right above you

Refinement tastes like saliva
Pooling in your throat until you must spit
To save your life
It scathes the nostrils like drought
And floods the eyes

Refinement parches your lips to slivers of tomato
It floats around you like a swarm of laughter
Swelling the atmosphere in wispy silver tendrils
Peppering the dialogue
Atop parking garages and lakefront moorings alike

Refinement sweeps across forbidden parkways
Burrowing into your upholstery
And hitchhiking in your overcoat
Inciting you to lie in cheap deodorant
On your way home

Refinement resides in metal drawers
Thrives as a school of diminutive suns
At the edge of a bloated cinnamon galaxy
And dies as an exanimate dollop of soot
A life with at least one purpose

Along the perilous curves
Of a snaking thoroughfare
In constellations of raindrops
Speckling the windshield
And the mewling of rubber blades
Wiping them away
In gentle, protective seatbelt hugs
And their satisfying clicks
Just past the headlights’ reach
In brilliant rearview reflections
Among coffee stains and rock salt grains
And fogged breath on the window panes
In the humming heater
And the throbbing speakers
Beside the pilot’s throne
And within every tiny stitch thereof
Under the sweeping ashen hood
Somewhere between fourth and fifth gear
Poetry hides
Waiting to be driven

I haven’t been beaten hard enough
With the splintered cross
To give a damn about their contorted features
I haven’t hidden long enough
In the tormented rainforest
To know the comfort of murk and serpents

But yet my knees are giving out
Under the waterfall you send plummeting
Into my animate puddle
Rattling your bucket of spare change
At my window
As if to beckon me
Driving me further and further
Down forbidden paths
To chase phantom feelings
In the name of frozen numbers
Stitched in a welcoming blanket
An overcoat of generous proportions
And a smile of congealed plaster
Emblazoned with the target
And whisked forth by wild birds
In too many colors to name

Goodnight, my would-be lover
I will know you quietly
While the rest of the world
A spoiled broth of time
Shudders in disgust
Sinking its unfathomable fangs
Deep into the curious ribs
Within my curious torso
Lulling me to slumber
On the highest bough
Of a tenderly collapsing tree

Treasured soil brimming with the fruits of a lifetime of cultivation
Cancerous and taxing beneath my canvas-clad feet
Pregnant and beautiful beneath my recumbent back
Embracing and letting go of windswept words
Go west young man
Well
Come find me bathing in caffeinated spirituality
Wrapped tight in a blanket on the hardwood floor
Come find me hanging from the rafters of what I should have been
Pretending in faith to walk a solid platform
Jamming my fingers in doorways that never were open
Don’t forget me I’ll say
Come find me bereft of misconceptions
Olden hind-sights
Headlights
Sharing the cup of fortune with blank notebook visages
And floating about on the breath of perpetual winter
The displaced sentry-style witness of less and more
Silent and calculating under fossilized irises
Peering over ramparts of spiffy words spat rapid-fire into the night air
Shaking the trunk of leafless trees
Wasting away splayed out on the terrace
I will remember shame
And inhale shame
And exhale shame
And fall head over conscience down waterfalls of human creation
Down the rabbit hole
Downtown
The hours are counting me down
It’ll be a desert of a different color and beautiful as such
And frightening
Soon enough their hair will whiten
Your face will sharpen
My edge will dull out
And our voices will fade from our throats into ambiguity
Into the depths
In time
Days and nights spent steeping in reverie
My head will spin concentric circles around my ears
Around my eyes
I’ll melt
And so will this town
Indefinitely

Asleep I am aware of the most colorful tortures
Waking up I let the sand slip through my fingers
In consciousness I know not what stories tomorrow’s tomorrow will spill
And so farewell

Building from the ground up
From heaven, hellward
Pausing between the pangs of doubt
To fill the trowel with the thinnest of air
And slather it about the first ill-placed bricks
Quietly, this mortar will set
In the joints of one contorted beast
The monolith whose cornerstone is fallacy
Complacency, fright

Towering above the trees
Cowering beneath the clouds
A skeleton of what once was
Fighting for time
Fighting to deliver
Growing ever larger
Ever weaker
And fast losing balance

Baptized in gasoline, the newest room of my soul
The leper penthouse casts its shadow
Perched atop one cathedral of denial
A chamber which no match could set alight
Which no insistence could topple

This monstrosity was irrevocable since its conception
Since plans were first drawn up
And now we’re stuck with it

Since we last met
You’ve gotten fatter and uglier
I wonder how that weighs on you
Never were one to eat up your reflection
But for a few thick words of misguided seduction
Like a perverse salad
Tossed in my general direction
Aimed at peeling off the layers of
Dress between you and my averted eyes

Since we last met
Time has paled my features
And darkened the bag-cradles
In which my eyes sleep to cease to see
To what do these eyes owe the honor
Of dodging the beaming bright stare
You give all these years later?

By some sickness of fate
Our deep-fried friendship remains
As a trace of caked-on grease
Marring the underbelly of one uncanny pan

Since we last met
(After the end)
It’s all gone stale
And I’m perfectly nauseated
That this little morsel of thought
Should even find itself on the menu

Stinging eyes are not to blame
For these fissured droves of queasiness
No, it’s all a foolish sport
Magnified under the warped lens of mutilation
And it’s hardly the future they had planned for me

These sparks course through every vein
With each pungent pulse
A tidal wave
Slapping me on the wrist
Paralyzing my power-socket mouth
Until it can’t form the words
“I fucked up”
Any more convincingly than your standard fuse box

My head is swimming
Awash toward nowhere
Lolling uselessly like that’s its job
Reminding my washing-machine stomach
That the agitator within it
Is no more material than the everyday nightmare
That this spin cycle
Staggering my gait and my breath
Is sustenance equated to jest
And sleep consumed by an addict

“You must have seen this coming”
Says left to right to mirror
“Seen huh?”
Replies reflection to pill bottle
Or so it sounds to me

Me, yes me
All two dollars and fifty cents worth
Clambering down the hallway
Drifting blindly through intersections
Or pretending to puff away the blues
Alone on a park bench at four a.m.
Picnicking
Single-handedly extinguishing any sign of promise
Gagging on the self-pity lodged in my throat
A foolish sport indeed

And as I close my notes to conclude this appraisal
A sinking feeling creeps to the top of the page
If this today
Then what tomorrow?