When you name me, spit it. Your mouth is lukewarm,
and your lips too porous. Remove me.
Throw me on the heap that's nearly hill and
light the ****** up already.
Let me burn last, so I can see the rest go before me
and know.
No rest for the weary cremator, eh?
Let us all burn fast. Let's get this over with.
It's never over, though, is it?
None of these were ever special. None of us was ever "yours."
When you name me, call me "Kindling."
Call me what you've called us, each, if you call me at all.
Later on, you can smile and blame the ashes!
I know I've trusted blind and spat my best lessons
back into the wind.
I will always be a wanderer, broken glass at my feet, each step.
Lacerate me. Separate my skin again. Break me open and see the rot inside this tree.
****** ******
**** me. The same
mistakes
archetypes
engagements
entanglements
Miles.
Years.
A lifetime.
One and the same.
**** me.
Throw me on the heap that's almost hill. And light the ****** up.
Feb 19
Feb 19, 2026 at 12:56 PM UTC
I.
I've got no time;
I know that now.
The jig is up, the jib is cut
And I'm no dancing sailor.
The wild winds whip--contaminating a dream or two.
Belt out an anthem for me, if you can find it
in your frame.
You don't have to forgive me.
Make me an erasure mark,
still here but only barely.
Brush away my grainy remains
and be done with what's left of me.
I will make you feel nothing, now,
but the mildest frustration
at the inability to
remove completely.
A crumpled page will **** me now
if that is what you're wanting.
Do it.
Stop waiting.
I'm an autumn that you've half-forgotten,
colors fading quickly.
Bleed the last heat out of me now, and make it snappy.
It's cold out here.
Visible breaths, unwelcome reminders.
II.
I still see the ghosts of us, out haunting our sidewalks.
Your voice will never leave my mind; the insides
of my ears
sanded smooth
with your syllables,
your clipped and crackling consonants,
your rich, bourbony vowels.
There's a mall, out in St. Vital
(or was, anyway)
I think we went there for fries, one time?
No--it was for Chinese.
I am always doing _just this_, you see:
trying to make your face, in Winter,
with my exhalations.
Trying to frame the feel of you
with the negative space between
the shapes of my two hands.
Dying to be touched, but afraid to shatter.
I let the larger concerns go quiet...
...shimmering, shaking in radio silence.
Dec 15, 2025
Dec 15, 2025 at 2:09 PM UTC
Are you street side?
Are you topside?
My friends and I, we were always outside.
It was hot out,
Causing problems
in the swelter
For our parents' neighbors
Stolen cases
Stolen cartons
MIPs
growin' up in g'rages
_Wanting more was too much,
when swearing off of ever growin' up_
If times they change, we'll just stay high and lonesome.
Charmingly unwholesome.
Making promises to ourselves to give up...
swearing that we won't ever change...
Cuz that's the way the kids here all get along,
hooked on junk and punk songs.
The monsters are the ones that are absent
dreams can't die if they're never born...
Matt's in college.
Beth's in Denver.
But we're still here, "cuz we never surrender!"
Trees, they change shades,
Wear our coats out
Propose to cold fate
"Always rebels."
Misdemeanors
Growing meaner
Sentences,
Out on good behavior
_Wanting more was too much,
when making love to always fuckin' up_
Times, they change but we stay high and lonesome.
Sickly, sad and loathsome.
Kept our promises we made to just give up...
we're 29 but we never changed!
Cuz that's the way we always told each other,
we'd hang onto the Summer...
the traitors are the ones that are leaving...
or dreaming of a different escape...
_These buzzing orange streetlights
...have been with me for my whole life...
I know your face's creasing laugh lines...
like I know the shakes and withheld sighs..._
Tired eyes. A
house divided.
Veins like roadmaps,
under heavy eyelids
Now the cold comes
Through the doldrums
kissing causes,
married to our problems.
Bars are closing
ghosts are coasting
raise a toast
To those overdosing
_Wanting more was too much,
Ran outta time, we're never growing up_
Times they changed, but we stayed high and lonesome.
Sad and old. Unwholesome.
Kept our promises we made to just give up...
over 40, poor and ******* insane...
What's the cost of staying in your hometown,
when fate has turned the sheets down?
...the traitors are the ones now surviving.
And winter is the sum of our fate.
...Cuz that's the way the kids here all get along,
hooked on junk and punk songs.
Making bets on years of nights soaked in whiskey
...telling lies and getting carried away...
Nov 15, 2025
Nov 15, 2025 at 8:55 PM UTC
The Boys of Summer were all named "David"
that year,
But "George" and "Ernie" and "Davis" and "Vladimir."
An overpriced clan of underachieving also-rans,
Last place dishwater, poured into tin pans
But stories are made of such sinewy stuff,
the connective tissue--the gristle--that only chews tough
and never goes down. Of infield dirt on dark blue jerseys,
Of bright red on white pants, from bleeding, skinned knees and wide smiles shining under 7th inning light.
And what is The Great Game?
A story.
The Great Game is a poem.
It whispers and surges and wanes and then screams.
A child of fickle fate, following parental footsteps,
selling beer and hot dogs to the Norns as they weave,
(team sweaters in the 8th inning roar)
A city, a province a country had guessed, in swing-and-miss dreams,
and blown-call cogitating, of .500 finishes and lukewarm bathwater--Of room temperature chow at the kids' table, and calling it "strides."
But Goliath was sleeping after twelve peals of the bell,
and the first round was over like a pinch-hit homer.
The Boys of Summer were all named "David"
that year,
But "Kirky," and "Davis" and "Gausy" and "Bo,"
"The Hound," and "Isaiah," "The Savage" and "Mad Max."
_"words that are heavy with nothing but trouble..."_
_Our_ Tinkers. _Our_ Evers. _Our Chance._
The giants played on their ground and from on high they fell,
by grand walls, by glass towers, by the frothing seas.
A City's Chosen Sons spent their summer slaying titans.
What is The Great Game?
It is a poem.
And our teams are protagonists.
What is the ballpark?
It is a cathedral.
We kneel at the Altar of Grass-Stained Knees,
and with infield dirt whispers of oiled mitt leather do we pray:
_"Let's play two." "Say hey."_
Play ball.
Nov 3, 2025
Nov 3, 2025 at 6:21 PM UTC
You can measure the days out in weight or in dread
It's a gunmetal grey sky, dented up and bent.
Went to Lakeside and tried out the spluttering depth.
Slept too well to stop breathing, started dripping instead.
A pig with porcine needs...
_You're freezing, not swimming
stale mouths are all grinning!_
__Up from the mattress, let go what I stole
Calling the mud and the clay, cards to show
Go to troughs, walk through droppings when it's time to be fed
"I can die like a hero, or go back to bed..."
Finish out the sentence...__
You can tell them I hate them and want all their smoke
I can slice through the surface, and sink 'til I choke.
Spoke to Sergio, he told me, "Boy, you're a ghost!
Spose'ta dry out on mainland, but got soaked on the coast!"
A pig with piscine dreams...
_You're bloating, not sinking!
Just floating and stinking!_
__Up from the lakebed, and back to the pen?
Squealing for slop and then sleeping again!
Go to troughs, walk through droppings 'til the pickings are thin
"I can live like the fodder or die like the fish."
That concludes the sentence...__
_Down to the mattress and shadows once more
Cold fish are talking and keeping cold score
When the bucket is empty, the pigs all just rest.
You can die like a hero, or go back to bed.
Back to bed._
Nov 3, 2025
Nov 3, 2025 at 3:27 PM UTC
You caught lightning in your mouth
and kissed the world a thunderstorm
All Four Winds bleeding out,
moment by moment
and stilling the night;
instill it with silence.
Infuse it with waiting
bait our breaths--
_--The ocean's saline, and
I'm surprised to say,
it seems to like us.
Lips can clamp or loosen,
catch and hold or unleash.
Choose one?
it's catch-and-release._
I gulped wondering into my mouth
and I spit out an omen.
Dolmen smile fading now;
twin teeth releasing
floodwaters
from this tomb door of a frown.
Quell the squalling night;
implanting our silence.
Infused with surrender.
Hold no breath.
Anyway...
We don't check on each other...
_...or look at our neighbors._
Yesterday's just that, friend.
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 3:19 PM UTC
These 4 walls, the only friends
The hours tick away, but swelling
Winter, hurry — freeze my blood.
Sweating through these supine steps,
I'll stumble on.
A/C buzz, electric hum.
The room lit yellow, bathing jaundice.
Fante & Hamsun.
Folding pages, scratching dog ears.
furrow brows.
**** this color paint."
**** the Summer."
I say it, always.
4 new walls, my only friends.
The seconds boil away, but slowly.
Solitude, please freeze my blood.
Snowfall in my reptile dreams,
all serpentine
Heater hum, alone again
Wish they wanted my chanting voice, now.
Footfalls hustle. Frozen, crunching.
Clothed in funerary coat
The wine explodes.
Shake this thrumming midnight buzz,
and rooms lit dimly, sweating blizzards.
Trudge & debate Blake —
—use my degree for ******* something._
Shoulders hunch.
"Just me. In falling snow."
_"Tyger Tyger, burning bright—"_
Here I stand, a dwindling flicker—
_"In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fires of thine eyes?—"_
—I can barely see tonight. And thicker lines
have failed to lead me home.
Alone.
And kindred with the cold.
Aug 16, 2025
Aug 16, 2025 at 10:51 PM UTC
You gild my haunted mind like Carnegie's ghost
A shining parenthesis for brass-poisoned dreaming.
I wish I could reach my rhizomes through time like you do--
or space, even!
I want to watch you do anything.
Fill a Passchendaele shell-hole with
your triumphant tears; heal it, like it's easy.
I want to watch you do _anything_
Stretch your equinox smile from atop Hyalite Peak
across all the townways and then right through me.
Reframe my failings, won't you?
(If that's what you think they are)
Or rewire my frowning night times, at least?
Spread me thin across your time, if you like;
but let me have some.
Find some worth, won't you?, in my fraying wires
my decaying lines of code,
my fear of success?
I have only my vagueness, and banks of bad metaphors
to measure against the tradewinds you blow across my minute bow.
You are such victory, such mighty reaching.
Don't fault me my anxiety.
Jun 11, 2025
Jun 11, 2025 at 1:50 PM UTC
Leak into another night
I am dead mechanical
Cut black lines into my skin
Tattoo me with asphalt
Touch my face one time--kiss me goodbye with an insult
I'm just fading tail lights
It isn't my fault.
Your fingertips are tracing something...
And my reddened eyes are craving something...
Some might hope for for the weather's improvement,
but, me?, I'm hard in love
with the cold front that's
moving in.
Let me crawl across the sky--
a skull coated in red wine.
The Titan's getting tipsy.
I'm at home in the sweating night.
Cracked my ribs one time, kissing asphalt on Orange Street
Then I had to stand up
screaming
after sweating through sheets!
My memory surrendered something...
Your frozen face was mending something...
Might have hoped for condition's improvement,
but, me?, I'm hard in love
with my aching--that's
all I am.
Dead Mechanical
Romanticize it.
Dead Mechanical
I can't eclipse it!
Make me fiction, or ***** my fingertips.
Let me lie. I am Dead Mechanical.
Jun 8, 2025
Jun 8, 2025 at 2:55 AM UTC
I'm damp from soaking in my spite and
I don't have a jacket.
I'm dumb for eating up your crumbs and
filling up on famine.
Your hands
are death traps
Your eyes
are road maps
faking destinations.
Making preparations
to sever me off spitefully...
lacerate me, sight unseen
Our town is an eraser, now, and you've made me into fade marks
Stayed quiet on the margins til I marked your words and got smart
Smarting heart and scabbing memories...Already! Let me peel it off
Let me peel it off. Destroy me and then peel it off.
Street lights are laughing cruel again and
I can't even blame them.
Stupid, I drowned in the belief that
believing was an agent.
Your words
false star maps
Your laughter?
A death trap--
A blooded incantation
A prepared exhalation
So sever me off spitefully...
slash out my eyes so I can't see.
Claw me up, while I wait
tear every single atom
I have
in me
from me
Our town is an eraser, now, and you've made me into fade marks
Stayed quiet on the margins til I marked your words and got smart
Smarting heart and scabbing memories...Already! Let me peel it off
Let me peel it off. Destroy me and then peel it off.
Jun 6, 2025
Jun 6, 2025 at 6:45 PM UTC