I look at the legs of older men
Aged, with their imperfections
showing more visibly every day.
Clustered veins bulging
like roots from a tree
climbing from under the dirt.

I look at the bodies of women
who have lost their youth
from passing years and cigarette butts.
Their faces sagging and folding over
pressing lines into the skin,
a new flaw every year.

And I'm haunted that one day
my body will be decrepit and tattered
like the rags of a skeleton's suit,
and I wonder who will love me
when I have nothing left to show.

My hand was shaking as I held the pen
But a year of practice had taught me how to disguise such tremors
But the way he was looking at me looking
But the way his hand felt in mine
And the way that seven numbers in black ink on his hand
Made me happier than any tattoo ever could
Because those numbers were a promise. A reassurance. A kiss between animate and inanimate.
And the Shakespearean line fell onto my tongue: So let lips do what palms do.
How happy I was that he had asked
was embarrassing. And I forgot to hide my trembling hands when I was done.
We grinned at each other like idiots.
And I wanted to keep the pen he had so readily available to me.
And kiss the bright smile upon his holy lips. The lips of saints.
'Can I have your number anyway? Just for contact?'
With nine blushing words, he fixed every tear in my heart.
Reassured my doubts.
Kissed my soul.
'Let lips do what palms do.'
Let lips do what palms do, indeed.

my misery
  doesn't particularly like company
but sometimes it likes tequila?

tequila makes me sleepy
  at least then i can take a break
from thinking

what i want
  no one will give me
though i feel like i don't ask for much

i need someone else to acknowledge
the reality and horror of this construction
no sugar added

i found a cure
  for unrelenting
and unreturned
desire
and friendship

it is misery and hopelessness.

i used to be self-righteous and holy
until i knew better
i listened and heard silence
i'm on my own

where i was hesitant
   i want to be bold
self-conscious
   i want to be free

but i'm hot
  my ankle is chained
    i'm rejected
      i'm miserable

and i just want to lay on the floor
for a year or two
with a thimbleful of tequila
and straighten things out.

They spoke of bears, I saw one last year while skating
And these women were chatting of their recent experiences.
Suppose I am lucky to have been only friendly with deer in the forest
To be bear meat would be rather traumatic
Last time I saw bears, they were getting ready to sleep
I could have stood there and watched them for hours
But it was the lovey dovey sea otters on a later, snowy visit
That captivated me more
They were so tender and violent, incredibly adamant, ardent lovers
I was embarrassed to be watching them mate while next to...
A man.
The children were confused, it was played off as parents tend to do
As nothing more than play and rough housing
The nearby people are in a heated relationship
I care not either side or their issues
But it is at such times as I see one of the mom's kids
Struggling silently with the boyfriend/half-brother/relationship crisis dramas
that I am more resolute than ever
to keep any potential relationship that one day may happen
Private, far away, from my children
As this has yet to be an issue,
no personl relationship of such a type
I am thankful for where I am in my life

Never forget
there is poetry in dirt
in greens, in beets,
especially in rutabagas.
Three-dollar-a-bag spinach,
you are a symphony of compost
with which an old man’s teeth are smitten;
Rosemary sprig, beneath all your flavor
you are the staff-lines of a madrigal written
in loving anticipation of the mason jars, weighed down with water
where you will grow and swell and bud and spread out strong purple flowers which say
that you are part of a song which sings
every year
a little louder.

This coming September, I will miss you dearly.
I will be days of travel away from your roots, your mist,
your six-in-the-morning-before-classes tonic of rain
which saturates my skin so good I’m surprised when I shake the dirt from the leeks
all over my bare feet & you don’t crop up green & white from between my toes,
that my arms don’t grow heavy with peppers
after they cake with jalapeno & bell seeds from all the half-rotten
to whom I have given baptism to in shallow plastic tubs of water
floating like elations of fire
in the grayness of the morning.

Know how to tell if a pepper’s rotten? Wash it & shake it
& if you can hear the water swishing inside,
if you can make a maraca of its innards,
then give it back to the dirt.

This is the wisdom of peppers:
when you grow soft
when you have been chosen
& plucked,
& washed
& thoroughly loved
& shaken,

when you have called out like fire
beside your brothers in a basin,

lay down in the compost
the kindly compost,
& listen, just listen,
(there will be nothing left to do
but listen)

to the poetry of dirt.

I was searching my pockets for a story to tell my daughter on the night before Thanksgiving when she was looking especially nineteen, shouldering the immeasurable weight of being nineteen, and I couldn’t find one with a good three-act structure, but I started to tell her about the kind of vaguely existential warm knot I always used to get in my stomach when I went home from school for Thanksgiving, and how I couldn’t decide at the time whether it was happy or sad, but now I knew that it was happy for certain, and when you think about how once things change they are not changing back it can be kinda heavy, but you don’t have to think about it too often, and we had this new recipe for cranberry sauce this year and you don’t even have to get up early to watch the parade.

When I went downstairs at nine the next morning to put the turkey in the oven, she was smiling in front of the TV, sipping a cup of black coffee with her dad.

All things get better
In the end,
If it's not better,
It's not the end.

Every end
Is a
New beginning.

This is a new year
A new beginning
Things will change

Things change
And friends leave,
Life doesn't stop for
Anybody.

You're not just
Anyone.
One day,
You're going to have to
Make a choice.
You have to decide
What kind of man
You want to
Grow up to be.
Whoever that man is,
Good character or
Bad,
It's going to
Change the
World.

You either die a hero
Or live long enough
To see yourself become the
Villain

Heroes didn't
Leap tall buildings
Or
Stop bullets
With an outstretched hand;
They didn't wear
Boots and capes.
They bled, and they
Bruised, and their
Superpowers
Were as simple as
Listening, or
Loving.
Heroes were
Ordinary people
Who knew that
Even if their own lives
Were impossibly knotted,
They could untangle
Someone else's.
And maybe that
One act could
Lead someone to
Rscue you
Right back.

A sadness in my heart tonight
must be told, then dim that light.
To never see its face again,
and feel the pain that eats within.

A tragedy befell, you see,
and stormy nights still torture me.
She fell and died while in my keep,
and now it haunts my every sleep.

Her face so blank and eyes opaque,
my heart fell hard, and then to ache.
No turning back what time hath wrought,
my constant conscience battles fought.

A fear of storms was Mollie's fate,
the night was dark, the hour late.
As thunder rumbled in her chest,
and her heart pounded in her breast.

To run and hide, but never from
the storm that was about to come.
She climbed atop a place to see,
what made this horror, what could it be.

But leashes length, a noose had made.
Fell to her death, no more afraid.
I found her hanging from the chair,
part of my soul still hanging there.

For simple errors can take a life,
trip up the stairs, slip of the knife.
I put the wrong leash on that night,
it strangled her, I took her life.


Forgive me my fellow poets for this unintentionally dark poem. The tragedy happened a year ago and I am still trying to find some closure. Mollie was a little mixed dog that I was fostering for a local shelter. She was kind and playful, but deathly afraid of storms