I was barely 21
when I ran with this older crowd,
(they were between the ages of 30-35,)
and I thought it was something cool,
something special,
I thought I was someone
real grown up and mature,
I thought age had something to do
with sophistication
so, I tried to impress them with Bach & Beethoven & Mozart
while drinking rotgut whiskey out of cheap tumbler glasses
because that’s what I thought grownups
were suppose to do
but instead they’d say,
“this isn’t that kind of party,”
and then they’d exercise their drinking prowess by guzzling down a whole bottle
of Rumplemintz and chasing it with a case
of Icehouse while blasting Screeching Weasel so loud that my neighbors couldn’t exist.
my forethoughts of adulthood had been marred by the stench of reality
and despite the headaches and hangovers
that paired with the morning sun,
I continued on anyhow,
matching them drink for drink
like it didn’t phase me
because I had something to prove;
I wanted to show them
that I was cultivated,
that I could hang,
that I was tough,
that I could run with the big dogs,
that I was all that was man,
(whatever that means)
all I wanted was their approval
that I was something
after so many years of being told
that I was nothing
and I wanted it to be known that I had endurance and stamina
but those addlepated simpletons were too vapid and clueless to notice the ****-stains
in their pants let alone what I was doing.
we were an odd pair, different yet the same;
we shared the same desirous need for intoxication yet our levels of class
were on a parallel universe.
but as time went on,
the framework of realization took shape
and I began to see they were just a gang
of losers with no place to go.
they used up my living quarters
as their party sanctuary:
people getting tattooed in my kitchen
people snorting coke in my bathroom
people ******* in my laundry room
people throwing up in my closets
people ******* in my living room
and it grew tiresome after a while.
so, I had to kick them out of not only my house but out of my life for good.
decades went on, I reached my 40’s,
they reached their 50’s,
and most of them are dead
but the few still living are more dead
than those buried in the ground.
they’re out there now,
enduring a midlife crisis
with bed-wetting regression;
peering down from the hills of nostalgia,
sprinting towards their
social media platforms,
losing their minds over
things they can not control,
smearing opinions around
like **** as if you asked for it
and gnawing away at the bars
of their enclosures for one last taste
of the honey, the pleasure, the folly, the glory
because they’ve become
embittered with world;
a world they hadn’t envisioned
a world they weren’t ready for
a world that’s changed forever
and after all the wild and lawless nights
and after all the rebellion against authority
and after all the broken glass & cigarette holes
they’ve became like everybody else:
unable to face the inevitable.

Echos from the distant past
Hide out in dusty stations
Waiting for the Midnight train to Georgia.

Feet ******* with burning cramps
Stumble through the buttercups
That always used to turn chins yellow.

But my-oh-my there’s cherry pie
Baking in the oven
That used to cook on Douglas Street.

Good grief never did exist,
I’m sorry Charlie Brown-
You need to find a new phrase.

The Ferris wheel goes up and down
Without a sound except for all
The children screaming as they fall.

Why did my Daddy **** his hand off of my leg
When Mom walked past the bedroom door.
Why can’t I manage to forget

That I have nothing to remember.
            ljm

Every winter morning around ten
the shortbread sun tweeds its fingers

through this drowsy gauze, insistent
& curious, leaving slices of shade

like blades across the rug, arranging
itself like a mask across me -

today it squints over a killer's face,
for the cats rounded a mouse

beneath the liquor rack, broke its leg
at least, there was no saving it,

only hastening a sad end
& stopping its fear and pain.

Cats of course were furious,
their instinctual ritual interrupted

by unwanted mercy, by gentle hands
they now can't understand.

I drown the poor gray life,
& though I know we're both flecks

of nothingness in the absurd
entropic vacuum latte of universe

I feel a tremendous sympathy.
After all, what are our lives

except this same, but in slow motion?
We hunger - we risk and chance it -

sometimes we find the crumbs -
sometimes the swiping paw -

until one day the water rises over us
as the morning sun climbs in the window.

Dear A------,

I remember you at my sister's wedding,
you had hands of wild river,

& clouded beach was in your hair -
I was halfway through a sober year

sitting in a rattan bastille chair
watching the sea fashions,

my ear full of jailbreak children -
but I was thinking of night shapes,

things transformed by the dark -
I thought of your recipe: lost keys,

waning crescents, streetlamp breezes -
how strange and free I felt right then,

evening's cousin dressed to the nines
under trees bent to ferocious shade.

Then years passed: another marriage
disappeared into ribcage landslides

& mind riots, jobs were just smoke,
then it was Halloween and I was 44

& I was in New Orleans.
I wondered if you claimed it

the way I once claimed DC -
ambushed by a lost heart

that crept up into me in the suburbs
until only the city crux felt safe,

surrounded by new people
who might be doctors or hangmen.

I missed you that Halloween night,
though I ate in the corner

of your restaurant before I was blinded
by the rain bustle and whisked back

into a hotel window. I missed you also
the next night on Frenchman Street,

& in Storyville and Tremé where I wandered
throughout the runny yolk mornings -

who's to know if you'd even recognize me,
they've been hard years since Ocean City;

until I see you next I'll leave this letter
like a sip of liquor kept in promise

of stories shared in a plank-barred dive
on Toulouse or Tchoupitoulas Street.

Yours, Evan

To Liz Arnold

Her slicing eye carved all
through me as she spoke

stories of marriage, cancer,
poems never to be written,

of garden stones and cocktails,
of **** coffee house parties.

What did she think of me,
more boy than man, sitting

in her worn maroon chair,
telling her of country miles,

of listless marriage, of nights
wide and deep and strange,

of the river bed of the heart,
& poems never to be written?

Liz stared intently, her eyes
dissecting; I never did know.

They build their gods by hand
on Frenchman Street -

cup by cup inside baroque bars
bearded by brine-iron galleries,

fronting veils of mourning-lace
over ruddy O-mouthed faces,

dotted with glitter-fizzed phone forms,
glass skins decanted into alleys

shoving light down cobbled brows
and back up the laddered spine of palms.

They fill their gods with song,
the hairy-starred sky a smoking mirror

that pushes the music back onto us
as we scroll night markets in slashes

of color and money, strangers dreaming
on each other, discharged from the dives.

They don't build their gods to last
on Frenchman Street -

every night is only walked the once -
dissolve your empires, let the words

plunge under the strange black lash
that drowns the eyes to sleep.

She wrote our love in water,
(the rain lived in her)

we drummed into each other
with blue Pontiac fumbles

breath skating our necks
& empty loops of denim left

in book-spilled footwells.
Our smiles cooked the dark

as we recalled the road
to Cincinnati, to see the college

on the hill, her mother
& her friend up front,

us in the back seat napping
(& then not napping whispering

with the wet of our eyes,
her fluent periwinkle

my coffee-steam pools),
hands so careful so careful.

She wrote our love in water
(the waves lived in her)

our names purling, creasing,
stirring, smoothing, gone.