he's getting old now, but still young enough
to buy self-help books he’ll read
only to stay on the treadmill
next to the other suburbanauts.
uses a fortune cookie slip as a bookmark
that just says run.

he's getting old now, but still young enough
to think he "found" someone—
someone as boring as he is,
and they swore to her readymade god
"to have and to hold" each other's
credit card debt and tangled mess of neuroses
‘til death of one kind or another comes.

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to pretend it’s not happening.
cleans the gutters. trims the lawn.
drags his boat to the river every summer
to drink beer and lie in the heat—
like the sun will burn the years off.

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to break down in the grocery store,
somewhere between the potato chips
and the popcorn,
crying onto the linoleum,
wiping his nose on his sleeve—
a quiet little implosion
under fluorescent lights.

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to think he’s missing something.
like a dog still searching for the ball
that was never thrown.
like a flickering motel sign that just says
no vacan, no vacan, no vacan

he’s getting old now, but still young enough
to feel like a frozen dinner in the microwave—
burnt to hell on the outside,
ice-cold in the middle.

you shifted your weight
like a hunter when you saw me—
dead eyes, dead aim.

straight and true, like a well-told lie,
sliding off the tongue
with just enough rhythm
to sound like gospel.

a lottery in balance,
measured only
at the close of things.

that look of yours—
it’s a glass cannon,
and I swear I see a crack.
come on, baby—
give it to me.

take your shot.
aim for the chest
while my heart
swings open
like a rusted gate
on its last hinges.

make me think twice
about getting too close
to your kind again.

bare your teeth—
smile.
let that decoy body pull me in
while your hands steady,
while your breath slows,
while you line it all up.

exhale.
squeeze.

BOOM—

a clean ****.
I’m yours.
now drag me home,
lay me out,
and do what you do best.

Venus, O Venus!
you do not shine—no,
you burn, awake and knowing,
a luminous wound in the sky’s
quiet body, a beacon for all
who lift their eyes,
aching for direction.

but today, you have slipped
behind the curtain of the world,
a veiled ember in the great turning,
lost to our sight—
but not gone.

this morning, I too am unseen,
folded into myself,
caught in the invisible workings
of some celestial geometry
that cages and releases,
cages and releases.

there is a breath at my back,
an absence pressing in,
a presence without a face—
like hands just beyond the veil,
like voices speaking without words,
like the quiet dread of being watched
by something I cannot name.

and so, I ask, trembling—
what am I to do with this?
how do I stand beneath this weight
without crumbling?

and from the silence, an answer,
a whisper that is not sound
but understanding—

flower and fall.

this is the way of all things.
this fear, this pressure,
this restless hum beneath the skin—
it is not death, but motion.
it is not decay, but renewal.

do you not see?
what once clung to you,
what once devoured you,
is now peeling away,
a husk lifting in the wind.

let it go. let it fall.
let the unseen hands carry it
as ants carry petals to their hidden cities,
as birds take seeds to waiting earth.
what seems an end
is only another sowing.

Venus is not gone.
she only moves beyond your sight,
whispering in the quiet—

grow.

I have frozen lake independence—
self-sufficiency stuck in a state of stasis,
waiting for spring or a better excuse.

I’m the last bud in the bag,
that lonely bit of green at the bottom—
each time you reach for me,
you know you’re running out.

I’m a scarf left outside,
stiff as a corpse, wrapped tight
around a post under the overpass.
Some do-gooder tied a note to me—
“Take me if you need me.”

but nobody needs me.
everybody’s got their own warmth,
their own coat, their own somebody.

so I stay there,
*******, forgotten,
waiting for some cold *******
to come along and wrap me
around their neck.

You are lovely
like birds in winter,
a rare sight when the world has turned its
back.
When solitude slips into
loneliness,
and the echo of forgotten places
becomes a silence so loud
it deafens—
you.
You shouldn’t be here,
but you are.
Fragile and feathered,
defying the dying world
with every beat of your wings.

I’ve shrunk myself before,
folded into corners,
but you—
you are smaller still,
yet somehow
you stand taller than the frozen trees.
You sing in the biting cold,
pirouette on the barren branches,
murmur in the bleakest of skies.

Unshaken by the darkest days,
you’re here to remind me
that something in me is, too.
No matter how dark,
no matter how cold,
no matter how dead it all seems—
there’s always something flying,
something singing,
something alive
in that desolate stretch.

It may seem
small

but,

it’s enough.

I burn
beautifully
in the fires of vanity.

Got lost
in my own reflection
on the frozen food doors—
there I was,
lined up with the rest
of the products on ice:

three fifty-nine
for four egg rolls,
six twenty-nine
for frozen bread dough,
six ninety-nine
for wild blueberries.

Superimposed,
my long mug
trying its best
to blend in.

My forehead says
I’m three ninety-nine,
but my solar plexus
clearly marks me
at five fifty-nine.

However,
my **** is, apparently,
on clearance,
reduced by thirty percent,
and
going for a buck nineteen.

At the end of the aisle,
an old lady eyes my biscuits,
rattling her coin purse
like she’s about to
roll a Yahtzee.

I flick my gaze
back to the glass
and my own ghostly image.

What did I
come here for
again?