For the pale dudes who confront the wind
and try to push it back into its bottle,
and for tall girls with their datebooks
who can organize their dressers
but feel acid scorch their throats whenever
someone says the not-so-magic words
because disorder haunts them still--
For all the paralegal types
who had to rearrange their futures
for the kids,
and for the dryer locked in layaway--
I will keep the fire going.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 12:05 AM UTC
Remember, when you find yourself rejoicing for the rainbow,
that the earthworms rest below you on the sidewalk,
having lost their sense of being and direction,
having died but lived to feel it.
Remember when you're aching for the earthworms on the sidewalk,
there are some that didn't make it to the surface,
having drowned before the sun could take them slowly,
having died without a preface.
And
remember when you find yourself embarrassed by the cycle
that destroys and then destroys what pleads for safety--
--these are patterns that remind us we are systems:
Rainbows wax then die like earthworms.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 3:01 PM UTC
Bring about a second war,
or pack up - and go home.
We can't accept apologies
from Sicily or Rome.
We can't impart cartography
to mayors without maps.
And no one wades the rivers here,
and water fills the cracks.
And water, liquid power naps,
repels us at the coast,
But draws us in at pipeline ends
and haunts us like Dad's ghost.
I died sometime, the future came,
and everybody smirked
and asked me, while we waited
for my casket, if it hurt.
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 1:17 AM UTC
As runners in a fastened loop
stop often to recount their breath,
and lookers placed around the group
in blocks of twelve and twenty-four
laugh quietly and think of death,
an older man who runs a store,
who's still content without a wife,
flops aimlessly against the floor,
and thirty men in tailcoats swoop
to save an upper-level life.
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 12:03 PM UTC
Some men trek the marathon with grace
and finish gently.
Some men catch their second wind and roll
their way on empty.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 8:45 PM UTC
Lunch rush was hell for the new girl,
stacking foamed cappuccino cups
and stirring spoons in a broken-handled
bus tub while trying not to slip
on soft ice and discarded lemon
wedges. She took our mugs,
and told us about a guy
—Dave, she said. I don't know.—who sat
with his friend, comparing *** to work
over the rusted cabinet tracks
of his warped fork scraping
his egg-caked plate.
Dave's friend was leaned in
with a cocked grin waiting
for one of Dave's "Classic Dave" punchlines,
which I'm guessing are all witty,
the funniest *******
things you've ever heard,
but there wasn't one
this time
because there's nothing funny about
a ***** intern cringing beneath the weight
of fat Dave and his brick
paperweight jammed in her back.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 11:44 AM UTC
The girl who thinks Tuesday is "almost Friday"
bakes in her room like a milk-crate left for Phoenix dead.
Nobody's knocking
but nobody's thinking.
How do we know that the fly loves its life on the web
if we've only consulted the spider?
How do we document
a Grecian revival of a Spanish writer.
Jan 31, 2015
Jan 31, 2015 at 5:01 PM UTC
Every now and then,
I'll pop two quarters into *Lucky
Lucky Me!* for a plastic ring
and a cheap laugh
on my way out of Giant, juggling
cream cartons in both arms.
And I love
them beside me in the passenger
seat, sharing it like two children
that sit up straight just to marvel
in the maple branches washing
the windshield in green.
But then slouch back when law
firms and Wells Fargo flood
the forest floor, trapping
blue birds and black owls
in one-way glass cages,
so all they can do is look forward
back in on themselves slowly
splintering into subsidiaries.
Commuters and Armani suits
bounce their Starbucks cups
off each set of cell bars.
"Can you hear me now,"
2002 asks us, but no reply.
'Cause it's no good.
There's no use in communicating
with social butterflies
when their wings are folded
like the cardboard boxes
we're packing with paperbacks,
'cause we'd rather stack tabs
than physical photo albums.
The one on top with the burgundy
felt cover. Yeah, that one. Flip
three pages back to that picture
of us at prom in '96 with that faux
sapphire glistening on your hand
from the heat lamps overhead
and the disposable photo flash
we couldn't turn off.
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 7:30 PM UTC
So after we got to the go-kart place,
we adjusted our hats,
and recorded our thoughts,
and until someone shouted our monikers
(Tasters of Life and Cool Guys,)
we took turns at the cage
while the others recalled their most
Jersey-like memories.
Somebody died on the beach,
and they chose to shut down our requests
for more info.
We ate with the lifeguard
who shook when he spoke.
Jan 27, 2015
Jan 27, 2015 at 12:10 PM UTC
I used to think in numbers.
1: There’s one of me. Alone. Plus
4: my family. Still 1, but 5, or
4 plus 1; that’s me, alone.
I used to think in numbers.
36: That’s weeks of school;
That’s weeks of math class,
math class, calculator;
Father, Son, and Calculator.
Trinity: the holy three, the three, the
3 times 36: that’s 108.
I used to think in numbers.
Math class, algebra, room 108.
I hate, I hate, I love, I hate,
I hate the way they look at me.
They look at me like man at dog,
like planet hogs,
throw books at me like cannons cogged
at ninety-minute intervals at cinder walls
until I fault and cringe and fall, and fall
like London Bridge and crash, and fall like
Blown-out glass gone back to class. I pass the
tests and cash regrets like rent checks
bounced across the bridge that they knocked down.
Because I used to think in numbers, yeah,
but now?
Well, sure. Abrasions hurt.
And yeah, we all want friends.
But at least equations work
and keep their balance on both ends.
So I will rock this scatter-plot of
social contract to its peak until
my hands are red meat.
I am no dead beat;
I hold the world record for blood lost
to a summer camp spread sheet.
But then,
but then somewhere along that number line,
a 6 stared down its stage fright when just
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 days before the show,
I met a girl who barred my better judgment
like a cage fight,
and thank God she did,
because for once, I put away the calculator,
and I listened to her voice,
and it sounded like…
well, it sounded like it sounded.
And for once, I sat and wrote about the things
that can’t be counted.
I surrendered to the cage fight,
and I fell into a deep hole.
And to be honest,
I don’t miss spreadsheet summers,
‘cause it’s easier to keep cool.
I used to think in numbers,
yeah,
but now I think in people.
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 12:25 AM UTC