The air, stiff as a starched collar
Falls dead on breath, heaving tides
Pushing driftwood ashore
Land, the sigh of sirens ringing
Raising alarm for the fire, the hose
Too weak to engulf the flames
The whole thing burns down.

All my boys, their eyes, upon me
Like peeping Gods from the heights of my
Mind. Their eyes--those lights--
Reflecting different spectrums of color
Hazel-speckled, deep black-brown
Gazing down upon me, from those bastions of
Memory, wandering somewhere above--
Dark shadows, eluding presence but always present
Always lingering behind the step of my feet
Trailing slowly, slowly.
Carried by the slack of my clicking heels.
Dragged into bed with me at night, with new boys
My new boys, their eyes, those lights
The spectrum of colors--

Summers at grandma's used to be fun,
Before we realized our grandparents would eventually die
and transcend to planes invisible to our eyes.
And we would sneak into the house, soggy bathing suits and all
Dripping pools on the floor while we snuck slices of American cheese from
the fridge, and butter crackers.
And, in fear, thrill, and delight, we would wolf down our sacred snacks
In the dim kitchen light, before Mama could see or grandma would
get home from work,
And dart, crashing into the swimming pool and enduring stomach-aches to keep
Our secret delight silent.
The delights I endure now are different. More painful, even.
The shrieks of laughter when you would lick my face. The moans when
we slept together and enjoyed those more-adult sorts of pleasures.
Your fingers, when they gracefully plucked a tune from the banjo,
and the notes stabbed me in the heart, and I soared with love and joy and love--
A thrill--like those simple times, sneaking snacks at grandma's from the kitchen
on summer days, when we were swimmin'.

Silence,     screaming lies
The lion in the sun
Bathing     in the bubbling      s p r i n g s
The grass towards the sky kissing
Lips, dead or try
Harder, faster,      cry
Now,   again   , on high--
The pastor, to the choir
Sing PRAISE                        Hallelujah...
Lord!     Oh my and my fingers
Round' your ears, caressing skin
Me alive, as long as I'm here
                                           By your side.

This cliff is not so jagged as the rocks below,
The heavy tide swallows and spits them
Over, and over, consuming
But not keeping.
The embrace of these waters could not be any colder
In this plunge to new depths, alone and reborn.
Could this mystery be my new muse?
Could this siren sing me home?
Home--
The darkness and the slumber, to
The other shore; surely the sun shines kindly, there.

My sweet boy:
Kind like soft candies that melt in the
Warmth of your palm,
Velvet to the touch and delightful to the
Tongue.
I was wrong--
That your sweet would quell my sour and
Recoil the pucker that these poison kisses
Slathered on your lips.

Punctuation marks the hesitancy in this conversation and
I can't help but dwell on words resting unspoken between
commas, ellipses and apostrophes;the
Spaces between letters where sounds sleep, vibrations
strike empty chords and fall short of expression.

I burnt the tip of my cigarette into my
Tumbler to **** two habits with one stone.
Though the **** coughed its last sigh and polluted a decently-priced
Rye, I don't trust that the addiction died.

Tipped my finger to the 'tender to fill a new glass,
Struck the flint to the tinder, a tobacco mask.
They poison slow, but the effects are fast.

You, like these habits, are in the past,
Waiting for me at the bottom of a flask, swearing always
"It'll be the last."

I'll take you as you are, whether the
Tides have turned towards warm,
Tropic waters or ****** this ship upon
Jutting rocks too close to shore.
As you are, coming or going--
Opening the door or slamming it so
It breaks off the hinge and falls in splinters to the floor,
Piercing fragile fingers that try to mold
The fragments to the former whole.
As you are--when the dark makes you quiet and
Your eyes burn like fire or the
Love wells up inside you,
Breaching dams,
Gushing violently to swallow all in beautiful fury.

Speak no more
Utter no more sentences
Vague, and context devoid through
Glass electric fixtures.
Stopped communication via
Frozen gears and halted processes
Dead progress, mutated metals.  
Sing no more, no more notes raised
Upward bound towards fleeting skies
Reigning over all we were.
Love no more, see no more
Begone like the invisible microwaves that
First created and ultimately possess you;
That zapped you full of life and color and now defy you.

Childhood toys now antiquities
Smile from the nightstand with
Shining eyes that glitter like hope
Before it has gone stale.
There was honesty in innocence, when
The mundane kept me content and
Restlessness sought no solace in
Tailored lies.
Fantastic epics were lived, not perceived and
Imagination was solid, not the
Amorphous, ambiguous pile of mud
It has become.

Phasing out
Conversations stretched like
Sparse cobwebs, where
Spiders tread with cautious
Care along exhausted fibers,
Stressed more with every step.
Weathered from passing years,
Paint, once bright peels in flakes
Like dead skin from steel
That bound it
Strong.

Disembodied sequences of
Messages, coming in
Intervals between minutes of hours.
Fragments of information flung
Through tangled webs and into my palm,
Waving with letters through a
Glass screen.
Always in my hand or pocket
But never besides me.

All my life--
Memories in seconds,
Beats per minute
Have led to this exact moment
In which, now, I'm living.
Weight of hours
Accumulating
Concentrating, and compressing
Self and being.

No, rise like dawn
And blood or
Plants reaching for sun.
Flow, words slipping from
Loose lips sliding secrets
Better kept discrete and dry.

I see you in narrow spaces
Between tree branches where
Light hits dust at the right angle and
Builds temporary fairy-worlds of
Sun in the dark of the wood.

I hear your voice in the hum-drum
Of strange conversations,
Carried on wind, refracted noise
Bounced from edges of buildings,
Settling behind my eardrums,
Whispering
Words in a language I no longer speak.

I walk beside you
On lonely midnight strolls through
Places dark, ancient and deep.
Footsteps echoing while we
Stumble in blindness through
Depths of caverns new and routine.

Screws jammed the lock
In my throat, twisting
Clockwise, choking
Tighter which each revolution.
Throbbing steady like
Hands in a clock crying
On the hour for time
Spiraling from its
Golden hands towards
Dimensions unperceived and
Already retrospect.

Brevity in time
Reaching through membranes
Outward like pulled cotton candy,
Pink and orange sunset whose
Eye witnesses the dusk and dawn
While all things break between.

Loneliness freezing fractures
In old bones, rotted leftovers
Tossed aside among dead leaves,
Candy wrappers and cigarette butts.
Cracking, dragged by streams of
Gutter water in heavy rain to
Turbulent streams
Journeying on to
Distant seas.

Moon shining     dead     light,
Lonely beams
                echoing               empty
Through still night and distant lands where
Fires grow flowers
Exploding
Through pavement doused in blood
From wars     waged    by men
Not as wise as you.

While our sun is setting during
The evening commute,
On the other side it's
Rising.
Alarm clocks and whistling
Coffee pots in morning light
Breakfast cigarettes on the
Front porch watching dawn break
And I'm watching dusk so
For a second in time we're
Inexplicably intertwined.

Remember my voice on sunny days
When laughter carries on the breeze
Kissing your lips, tickling your hair
Like my fingers would when they were yours, or
Butterflies that fled our mouths when
We found courage to speak.

Screeching silence whispering
Truths your lips won't form
Letters from shapes to messages
Unsent piled high under the desk
Where secrets are swept, clean
Unseen by judging eyes
Stamped with footprints,
Soles ***** from creeping in beds
Of flowers in gardens your feet
Should never have sought
Sowing seeds you can't water.

Spirits riding winds
Spurred by past days spent living
Without being present
Shrieking   in the night  
Beating branches against window Shutters       begging    slumberers
Please wake,  please wake.

White crane fishing trackside for
Vestiges of nourishment from
Newark muck and Secaucus slush:
            Be aware;
Three-eyed tadpoles live in these waters,
Breeding alongside rotting corpses--
Mob jobs gone wrong and various
Plastic garbage.

Pulse;     life     lives    here
Clicking it's heels on  gum-speckled sidewalks    between     sirens and
Cigarette butts spouting carbon, Diamonds   at the right temperature,    
Polluting    for the time being
                    Wasted
In  drunken stupors under
Bright lights and the
                 would-have-been
             dreams of a has-been.

Pause        hairs on neck standing
Who, what is that impending, lurking
Shaking hands at intersections with
Pedestrians    blissful   on their way

At night alone walking,  strange
Steps    echo                 disembodied
Following       knowing    stalking and

In the haze of city street lamps
A figure fogged in passing glance
Laughing in alleyways while
I run to live one more day.

Eyes on me.
I know they wander   thigh  to   thigh
                    Girls passing by in skirts
      shorter  
                  than
                         ­ mine
Eyes on the prize wave goodbye to
               Pretty girls passing by
Please let me be the
                                    pretty
                     ­          one
                    tonight.

The Man told me there's a way to be
But I don't give a **** or care about the Man
Because the Man doesn't care about me.

Flash   your face in subway station
Corners of the eyes in
Strange passers by     evasive
Run awry    racing   shadows
Between thoughts of mine
Jump  how  by surprise
Flash your face in their corners of the eyes.

Teeth ground to dust
Dirt, where it lies
6 feet under    wringing    hands
Ringing knell,    bells burned into
Ears popping vessels out to sea
Storms making waves causing wrecks
Biting nails between teeth
Ground to   dust.

Days blur to years blur to
Memory becoming phantoms
Even this day, vivid
Grows to ghost.

There's a steady beat
Drumming in the background static and
I can't tell if it's water dripping,
A clock ticking time by or
My heart pumping while
It's alive.

Spray paint still stains the driveway
From that gift I sent you
Boxed up in the red white and blue
And 'MERICA, welcome to the USA.
Who could have guessed that the paint
Would be more permanent than you.
You can shove the Budweiser t-shirt and
John Deere trucker hat I sent at the top
Of your closet and forget about them,
But I can't scrub the spot off my driveway.

Failure and success
Are subjective and
Relative but either way
They're my fault.

Another reality is ours but for the time being
We're chronic victims of our own poor judgement  
And anxiety
Spurred by loops of psychoanalyses, like VHS
Tapes rewound and repeated until the film tears

Mirrors telling lies    makeup
         Painting illusions,
                   Stains
                      On
                     Lips
Making caricatures from my face, a
Character in its place, playing
Narcissist    every    day.
If I love me they will come,
If I love me they will stay.
This part masks insecurity,
If I say I love me, won't they?

Another year and
While we're sharing toasts and cheers
I wonder what you're drinking and
Where you are.
Here's a toast to you
And the love we wanted to share
But circumstances and contexts
Couldn't allow.
I wonder if you're cheering and toasting and
Thinking about what I'm drinking
And where I am and who and what
I'm doing now and
I wonder if you're wondering
If I'm wondering about you, too.

A name carved in stone, weathered
All that remains is an
Anonymous ode to a has-been.

We won't wrap our lips around
Or string together    words   through
Proper
            Mechanics   of
Grammar   to
Birth what's inside,  alive
And better off dead.

Liberation
Is speeding down
Back roads
In the dark, windows down
In the pouring rain and
Sticking your hand out  so that
Water droplets sting like pins and
Needles when they slam
Against your palm at 80 miles an hour.
Liberation
Is loving someone when it's wrong
And doing it anyway
Because 'god ****** I'm free'
And I'll love who I want even when
I have no right
Even when they're bound, gagged, tied
And held for ransom by a ring on
Their finger.
Liberation
Is getting on a plane to fly
Across the country on a whim
Because there may just be a chance
That that man I met once
Halfway across the world could
Fall in love with me when my feet get off
That plane.
Liberation is cracking open your head
And looking at your skull
And blood is life that sludges
Out of you and you wake up
A few days later realizing that
If you had died it wouldn't
Have made a difference, anyway.
And knowing that next time
You're dying you will
Make **** sure it
Matters.

I used to wonder
Where the road would
Take me but
That was before I knew
I would pave it
On my own.
Draw the map in lead
With your fingertips

We are
Cartographers.

A horsepill
when swallowed
chokes you.

I forgot
That the geese fly south
For the winter when the
Chills begin and the air crisps
And black ice freezes death traps
On back-way roads.
"V "formation is natural
To militant
Mutual survival and
I wonder if their leader was
Born or
Made.

Justice    is forgiveness
Vengeance,   benign.
Retribution feels best,
But what is right,    divine.

Hot oil burning  kernels
                      Jumping in stomachs
                                       Exploding and delicious
        Hot and   steaming    burning
Red like pokers
                Molten from flame
                                Bursting lips spark heated
Words like firecrackers.

They say
All roads lead to Rome but
In the Tristate the tracks
Bring you to New York.
This cement platform smells
Like **** but the anticipation
In the air while the crowd peers down
The track for the 6:16  p.m. Eastbound
Train to Penn you'd think
NJ transit was delivering us to
Heaven.

Black and white morals but
I live life in color and
When you put the rainbow in a blender
It all looks grey.

Prayers answered by
Echoes of themselves imparting
No advice, 
Repetitions of the question
Asked over again
Whispering softer
Each time it is refracted.
No thunderous voice from clouds agape
To shed light through stormy skies
Or seas parted to pave the path.
Spread the blood of the martyrs and
The Lamb across my door,
God does not live here, anymore.