(- This is originally a spoken word poem. Read aloud for maximum exposure.
-Asterisks indicate the necessity to pop your cheek with your thumb.
-Answer the two questions correctly and I will give you a hug.)

He fell asleep while traveling time
where a true name
becomes everything else.
So please give me a minute to explain myself
through the doorways
that I see champagne on a windowsill
walking across the room with blue
and fine china feet
saying again and again
drink me.
Until somehow
the words become a song
singing and swinging the bottle like a dinner bell for thirst.
A kind that we've settled to quench
with television
and somebody else's dream.
So don't pour my drink.
I'm trying to uncork it with my thumbs.

POP

It's flat
and I still have a tongue
so I will use it and I
I will use my thumbs to push back time
until hitler
becomes a baby.
Dr. King becomes a baby.
Until the left and the right and every dead genius in between
becomes
a baby.

Tiny feet trying not to crush the wet salad of the lawn
because it is green,
like my heart
that has learned
how to break fine china.
From experience,
let me tell you
it's a lot more tiresome than a blue dream
but he fell asleep on a boxcar crossing Germany
where mustard gas
drowns you in your own lungs
and he tries to breath between the joints in the track

the

click
...                             clack
click

as years
hurtle by.

Asking again and again,

"Who killed me?"
           &
"Who am I?",

until dinner was served without grace.
Until my head becomes stiff and bubble shaped
having been conditioned by
their
piles
&
piles
&      mounds

of
ob        cation.
fus

So we should tell all the baby hitlers,
that become children
that become us,
that a lie
is what you become
when abusing language to distort a reality.

And when you make a fist
you are handing lies out at random on a silver tongue.
But I still have one
and I still have thumbs
so sorry to burst your bubble but,

POP.

Child,
I don't mean to put

barbed wire

between us.  
I know it hurts
to have something so precious as the world
taken away.
But walls hurt worse
and through them only muffled sounds are ever heard
until your world is made of mute prisoners
that have forgotten what silver
really sounds like.

Blessed be
for I also have ears
so give me second place
and I will throw the medal against your walls.
Ringing out,
the universe doesn't look like an ebony tub,
with knobs we can't ever see,
full of infinite shining marbles to everybody.
Your mind
is a library of language,
so free will isn't a book written in english.
And tourists,
those know nothing infants trying to travel,
belong
where
           ever they
are
                             going.

Belonging like this medal bouncing trying to sing
off your wall
and
falls

into


your world.

Where again it will ring,

we've all been runner up

and somehow
we still get annoyed when another doesn't enter our library
instead of trying harder
next time.

So,
let me say grace.
Let me set l o n g tables
with the gruel that's been given
served on b  r                     n.
                         o
                           k  
                                        e          
china,
spooned
with sterling silver.

64 squares and 32 pieces
white and black or black and white
pending your thesis
whether your black or white
they all have the same features

8 pawns, simple creatures
8 x 2 is 16
infantry disguised as peasants
trying to get above the 7th
to the 8th and replace
their meager form for something more severe

2 rooks, sitting on the edge
2 crooks robbing everything perpendicular
to the perimeter provided the king
doesn't falter in his pledge


When the night rolls through,
the knights roll through.
Puffing green goo, these squares or cubes
will move an L make a 7 and snuff you.

The bishop will say a blessing
as he stumbles across the board.
Moving forward diagonally,
these drunken priests drink towards
a leader hung with dressings

The queen? That greedy broad
thinks everyone is a pawn.
constantly placing her place
in the face of those trying to take her place.

The king orchestrates the beat
carefully placing his feet before god.
His feat is living, no great givings,
giving up the wrong square will make his crown your treat

you're not gonna bother to think
before you pour another drink
so go ahead and mix it up
until you feel like you're pretty enough
calm the thoughts that race through your mind
dancing around under lights that blind
looking for someone to hold you near
they'll whisper whatever you want to hear
determined the world will drive you insane
you can't stand to feel the pain
so here we go, you're gonna drink
bottles empty fast
trying to outrun the past
let go of the life that chains you down
baby you'll never leave this town
can't get one foot in front of the other
statistics, are you just another?
you have this plan every day
that you're not gonna let it slip away
that you'll fight whatever's worth fighting for
and you won't do this, drink anymore
and you feel like you're thinking clearer
until you look inside the mirror
feel the weights heavy like chains
and you know what will ease the pains
of life, of living
tired of giving
and it's so easy to fall
when you've lost it all
and the bottle knows your name

I step in to the streets where my mind is clear
Nature feels my pain with her rasp in the air
  Singing duets about a girl back home
Dreaming of my baby with her light blonde hair

Laying in the gutter with a knife in my back
Trying to keep warm with this bottle in my hand
  I've got a reputation so I've got to keep it cool
I would take my life but there's the laws of man

My friend says "take a bump to keep your mind at ease
A coked up conscious will set your spirit free"
  Trying to find God but my ritual is insane
Living my life through a lucid dream

Running through Salem with the wind at my back
They execute the sinners with a bloody axe
  Got caught dancing with the ghosts of my past
They'll hang me from a scaffold for my witchcraft

My mind cries warning but my heart don't care
A dozen red roses with a note that reads "beware"
  I want to rise to fame, I'm going to make a deal
The devil takes my soul and the reaper is near

i just want some sort of sign from you
that you want me to still love you
in two years.

i will sit here and wait for you to come home to me,
i will.

i will wait two long fucking years.


if you wanted me to.


i swear i would;
if you could only swear that you would forgive me

for the hearts that i will have broken while you were away


and i would kiss you
                                             r
                                                    mind and your
                         heart

for being so understanding


it's funny
my hair has stopped falling out

and it feels thicker

                   i want to shave it all off in the bathroom

(with the same razor i used to drag across this wrist)
and put it in a wooden box, and send it to you.

it would just be yours to keep

(sometimes, when i am feeling insane
i take a box cutter at work
and cut my fingertips, just a little bit.
or i take the blood that naturally flows from between my legs
and smear it on the walls of the shower
and on my legs and arms

i lay down under the stream of water
in the same shower where you once made love to me
i let it cover me
and i cry
i cry out for you)




and then maybe months later, i would buy a plane ticket to see you


and it would make you so angry

(because you told me to leave you alone.
you told me to leave you alone
and then you kissed me
and you told me you loved me.
you just don't want to talk to me anymore.
i'm trying so hard to figure out where your words and your actions match up.)

you would of course just send me home
and the plane might  crash down
and in death i would be happy
that you might finally care about me



i wish i could explain to you,
how much i love you.

and how fucked up i am without you here.

and how strong i am without you.

but how weak i feel

and how i want to scream until you hear my voice, miles and miles away

and i cough up blood

and lose my voice

you hear it
and you get in your car,
and you drive into the sunset
and you see the city skyline

just a few minutes from my house

but don't even bother to call

you sit on the side of the road
staring at the cars driving by

concentrating on this decision
then, turn around and drive the two hours back home

didn't even bother to tell me you were here


and i can't even think about our home
the bed we slept in together

because in that little town
in that little room
you were the only thing that made any fucking sense,

and i am a mess now


and so is this p
o
e
m

"She is such an excellent student in English,
and I'd ask her teachers why her grades were low
and they'd say she wouldn't turn anything in.  And
it was true, she'd say this isn't ready yet, it's not perfect."
Perfectionism.  That's it.  I don't have it, God knows
but after 500 years of therapy I can look any psychological ailment
in the face...now she's dropped out of college and
he is not happy, my former boss,
"she says it's a 'gap' year" like the British Royal Family takes after
prep school, to be sent to rope cows in the British Empire,
Be an Australian cowboy and post to the trot like a proper Englishman
He's right, it's not a gap year.  
He speaks so quietly, he has judged me so harshly
pathologized me, behaved as if he is perfect and I am nothing
this is quite a large crack in the perfect facade
and I'm still here wondering
so I do what the courageous do and I google perfectionism and
before long I gather details of a childhood spent trying to have accomplishments
so your parents will notice you, a childhood where your feelings aren't important
an emotionally impovershed childhood lacking mirroring, positive mirroring because
the parents were to wrapped up in other things or they didn't really care and suddenly
I understand why this boss of mine would dig into my very soul
because he is so much like my parents
and yet, so afraid, because if I can google this,
then so can he, so why doesn't he when he's the one
with the degree in psychology, so why am I the one
trying to figure out his daughter's problems
and I know the answer
I want to solve mine
Is it the Jew in me?  That kind of willingness to look into that vast
horrid place of self hatred and take a flashlight even and look
at the bloody mess of a psyche and try to attend to the wounds
to heal, the be willing to walk in, squishy entrails cut off
and bloody under my feet, to try to sew them back together
to get the whole system working again.
I want to e-mail her the articles I read about her
I want to heal her, I want him to read this and know
that he is known and he was not such a good father
and she needs help
but no.  it is only me I hope to understand
as I realize I am in the cave, the immensity of my own psyche
trying to understand it, fix it, yet again

You’ll give me a look
And I’ll give you a word
You’ll give me a question
And I’ll tell you a story
You’ll give me time
And I’ll give you ghosts
We’ll draw each other blueprints
Mapping out every escape route
You deal in ideas and
I deal in letters
In unfulfilled promises, stolen art
What could have beens and prose
At first my words are beautiful
So you’ll give me a heart
In return, I’ll give you a poem about a heart
You’ll give me affection
I’ll take your kisses and your smiles
I’ll take your mornings and your cigarettes and your compliments
And I’ll love you so much
That I’ll write you into my story
I’ll give you your space
I’ll give you my ears, my blind eye
If you want to bury your head, baby I’ll be your sand
After all, we were both just looking for a safe place to land
You’ll give me your heart
Over and over and over again
But I’ll always want more
I’ll always want you to understand
That the thing you love is just a piece
That I am a thousand times the things you think I think I can be
That I love everything a little
But will never settle
On any one path
I want to follow you everywhere
Just to prove to you that I can be everywhere
Do everything
And you’ll get tired of that
I want to be everything you’re not
Just to prove that I still exist outside of us
You’ll get sick of trying so hard to figure me out
Just when you’re ready to leave I’ll decide to show you everything
Things will be good again for a few days
But then we’ll start saying sorry again
We’ll give and give and give
But every gift will be a size to small
The wrong color
So close to right that we’ll walk around with blistered feet and smiles too tight
Loving each other in clashing colors
It won’t be long before we start to miss each other whenever we’re near each other
It won’t be long before it hurts more than we’ve decided it’s worth, but still
I’ll probably always miss you a little