First you get a swimming pool full of liquor,
then you dive in it
Pool full of liquor,
then you dive in it
-Kendrick Lamar, "Swimming Pools"

O milky cataracted eye of moon -
your brow a brittle wet-black shadow
of grave silence and starry freckle -

your gibbous gaze is cast at me,
but what do you see?
A poet who refuses to grow up,

who drinks scotch like wine,
& wine like water. Whose heart
stains his sleeve, who listens

to gin glories and sin stories,
slurring insurrections from the red
nest in the middle branches of me.

At 17 I dated a librarian who I loved
& thought I would marry.
God, how I loved her...

but it failed on a windy night
in a dorm littered with beer cans
& her pale blue infidelities.

Then at 23 I married, things slid
& slid and slid, the nights blurry
& dead; then there was nothing left.

At 28, the girl who was so angry
we were banned from seven bars
after she broke glass at my face,

crying and screaming and kissing me.
At 29 I dated the blonde *******,
who wanted a master and not a lover,

impatiently splayed across the bed,
waiting for someone I wasn't,
waiting for the perfect sober iron lash.

I dated and married, then did it again,
my moon always in Pisces,
my soul here and there,

a mechanism more than a man,
depression echoing like a bell
from Dublin to DC and back.

My father died of drink,
& sometimes when I'm in my cups
I contemplate my own destinies.

This family drinks its anesthesia,
accepts a ghosting numbness
& pretended ignorance. Don't look -

the prodigal son has fallen
on the threshold, and the moon
has no arms to lift him up again.

I was listening to roller skating tunes.
Yes, I am shallow, sir.
And though thou may say villainess or mistress,
I am content to be who I am.
One noon, we were over dull
and our hearts we serviced
like two thieves there
in the kissing place
where breaths are both as one
and the first of many kisses doubles.
He made vows in mine ear.
He has such hands and lips
and his fortunate nature fed mine eyes
oh, nothing was scarce.
Our horns locked together
with the intensest chutzpah
and we well-made our match.
We sparked feelings we all ascribe to heaven.
I would not tell you
I can serve a man
that by slow designs
men can melt.
He swore oaths
and dropped
half won.
Later he paid
the sweetest
after-debts
—he did owe it.
.
.
songs for this:
Find Me the Pulse of the Universe by Laetitia Sadier
Stormy (Bossa Mix) by S-Tone Inc

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.
-Sylvia Plath, "Contusion"


The job hunt is not going well:
wrong man in wrong city, no timing,
no luck - now I rise with worry

stuck inside my ribs, crouching
fat and cold where the heart was,
new clock flooding me with off-beats

so that I stumble in wrong-footed falls.
I'm fed by only sleep and steady rain:
all news, it turns out, is bad news.

Perhaps tomorrow the sun
will quit and I can take that job,
pacing to and fro, annihilating clouds,

handing things off to the night shift...
But no: I'll wake to indomitable silence,
a dread of mailmen, and ever-hungry cats.

In Reply to Lori Jones McCaffery

"Poetry Challenge 1: One sentence, 17 syllables"

I'm doing a variation and writing a poem consisting of only 17 syllable lines:

Born with everything possible; how disappointing it came to this,

watching dull rain erode the snow from chilled off-white to curb-frozen ash,

drinking old Ardmore and lamenting an ironic philosophy,

Evan's law - as disposable income rises, so do all the bills.


"Poetry Challenge 2: 10 Words - Time, Place, Emotion"

I was thirty-nine in Washington with a Turkish girl:

I chased my feelings for two years until I found

her in bed with someone else. So, to hell with her:

I'd rather get drunk and watch the snow melt.

I saw two snow eagles
and a naked girl
The one was the other
and the girl was none
-Federico Garcia Lorca, "Ode to the Dark Doves"


We drove all night to Long Island
to the Islip shoreline wedding
as knees of snow bent over us.

We knew it was our last stand,
all the endless arguments were finished
& all we had left was black market ***.

With this classmate's marriage
our bond was in its last hours.
Frost-fleece freckled the bay face,

crested skin chopped and skimmed,
as her licentious hand drifted quietly
across the dark car division to my thigh -

she loved when I was pinned like this,
waiting for her next move; soon enough
she persuaded even the snow to pause.

At the hotel the room heat was off,
so we turned it on and looked out
on still, bleach-banked hill backs

& things between us were hushed
until she undid her chilled hair
it dropped slowly to shoulder

& she said don't move, don't move at all;
I could see my breath hanging in air,
as I was undressed and given to the cold.