break the poem
open like a pomegranate

spill the seeds
squeeze the juice
and
**** the flesh

when we were kids
we played in
mother's garden:
carrots, strawberries,
rhubarb, tomatoes,
plums, raspberries,
cucumbers, pumpkins,
green beans, watermelon,
onions, potatoes
and
a goldfish named Pierre

he died after
my parents
cleaned his tank
and didn't rinse
it properly

done in by soap--
life can be such a
fragile thing sometimes

we buried him
in the garden
and marked his
grave with a
smooth river stone

one summer
we picked a great
big watermelon
from its dirt nap;
heavy as a bowling
ball and green
as a cat's eye

we heaved it onto
the picnic table
and carved it into
smaller
and smaller wedges
until each one
of us was holding
our very own
chunk of melon

everyone dug in
after admiring their
piece for a moment;
eating it with
their eyes
before their
mouths

but as I went
to bite into mine
I noticed a seed
in the way

so I peeled
at it to free it
and as I fingered
the dripping flesh
of the fruit
the 'seed' revealed
itself to be
not a seed at all

but the eye
of a goldfish
staring back at me
lodged in the melon
in its death throws
gasping for
breath in the
open air

its mouth opening
and closing like
it had a secret
to tell

I stood there
in stupefaction
when suddenly
it slipped free of
its womb
and landed in the grass
behind me

but when I
turned around
to retrieve it
I couldn't find it

there was no goldfish
anywhere in that yard
I checked under
my feet
under the picnic table--
under other people's
feet--nothing

"what are you
looking for?" someone
asked

"nothing," I said,
because who
would've believed it
anyway?--I'm not
even sure if I did--
"just thought I dropped
something."

I stood back up
feeling different
about the world--
like the mystery
ran deeper than any
of us realize--
looked at
my hunk of fruit
and discovered
I wasn't hungry
anymore

so I put
it down on
the picnic table
and walked over
to Pierre's grave

there, underneath
that river stone,
was a watermelon seed
just beginning to
sprout

I smiled in
bewilderment
and gently covered
it with fresh soil
moving the stone
a few centimeters
off the sprouting seed

'Pierre, the watermelon
fish,' I thought--
wiping the dirt
from my hands--

'I wonder what
death has in store
for me?'

i'll raise an electric fence around
the gods up there
in mountains and ivory towers
and they'll all wear shock collars
too

i'll spread peanut butter on bread
and send it to them through
the mail

i'll write them letters from the
lower world saying that 'time
really isn't a bother anymore
because apples rot in home
baked pies down here'

i'll reach through my own
tainted build up of corrosive
discharge and pull a petal
from the flower of life
to eat in front of
them with a coffee toothed smile

i'll throw weeds over
palisades into
groomed gardens

i'll **** on the flaming sword
spinning like i do
outside
heavenly gates

i'll put AA batteries on
my ******* and force
feed the north star
until it bursts

i'll stain the glass in windows
extolling failures and shining
blunders under vaulted
ceilings

i'll be nothing less than
the imperfect son of
an imperfect man and
an imperfect
woman--

human
all too human
after all

patterned love responses
spiraling outward from
the chest in search
of hearth and
hemlock to
soothe the brittle
bones of a
generation lost
to time.

I remember a feeling
once felt in
the spacious quality
of my life
in its infancy.

a 'coo' to my
mother--her face
beaming through
the unknown
harshness of life
yet to touch me.

father was out
working, adding
more and more
points of stress to
his life to provide
for the seeds
he sewed in the
soil of his youthful
ignorance.

adulthood snuck
up on me too and
now its too late to
go back.

these days
the only coup
that will save me
is the one
I perpetrate
against myself.
the one that
corrodes my beliefs
and illuminates
the extent of their
misconceptions about
the world and
what it means
to be me.

loyal are the lashes
that lick my flesh
serving the blood
that drips and
flows to the
soil of my own
wasted youth.

all I can do now
is look forward
to the unknown
that looms ahead;
terrifying and promising
failure and change
alike.

pray to your altars
and cry to the
invisible mute gods;

they will answer
in kind in the
laughter of children
playing upon
your spent life.

and so it goes--
life eats life
and mother's die
too.

use your voice
while you have
it--speak of clouds
and storms that
broke you, of winter
and the living
silence you've endured.

praise be to the
broken and the
weary of heart, for
in the breaking is
the great gift
of life

and what you
become after each
shattering is nothing
short of your
endless potential.

shirtless screaming through
the heartland and I used
to smoke cigarettes
too.

she never wanted
to stay: the youth
she had
left demanded it.
now, I'll wager
she's somewhere
in an apartment with
some dandy that
wears sweater vests
to Thanksgiving dinner.

maybe she thinks
about me and my little
twisted heart every
now and again:
like when she's away
from the sweater vest
on the toilet
behind a locked door,
"be right out, babe!"
or toting groceries
through a parking lot
to her car,
or signaling a
left turn before
changing her mind
and deciding to
go straight instead.

and
maybe I need to
stop thinking
about her
especially after
three years
incommunicado

but what can I say?
I've never slept on
a bed of nails
I couldn't
dream on.

bathed in a beam of distant light, i'm
dangling from the mouth of
the sun today. it won't come like
Fante. it won't come like Bukowski.
it won't come at all. it's rusted
chunked blood calving off from
graveled glaciers onto dead sea beds.
it's a joke, it's far away, it's not
meant for me. and so it seems...yet
there still exists a tiny heart somewhere
under all that pumping away almost
imperceptibly.  funneling what blood
is there to send life to these
fingertips. i don't know if it will
ever reach the page though. odds
are good that death will take me
before those veins reach any words
with weight.
but in the writing they have a
chance to stretch and feel and
find their way through the
labyrinth of time and being
human. they have a chance to
beat the odds. a trickle becomes
a stream. a stream becomes a
river. and a river becomes an
ocean. these dead seas will fill
once more whether i am: the glacier,
the trickle, the stream or the
river. my blood runs to that future
ocean...one way or another.

my dear fellow human,

you have been wintergreen against my heart. a sharp brilliance of blinding light captivating me within the infinite breadth of a wandering moment. my lungs frosted first freezing figures of frozen firs upon the memory of each breath. my blood ran cold like that winter river and I was a fish beneath its icy exterior and you have been wintergreen against my heart. a cold slap of circulating change penetrating each layer of protection. you have been wintergreen through them all and now you are wintergreen against my heart. a fresh perspective from the core of my being to the scales of my skin. a permeating resolution of piercing glacial coolness frosting the valves and chambers of this brumal beater. you have taken my breath from gelid gilded gills and scattered the shattered pieces of peace across this boreal landscape. from the hiemal heights of arctic aurora aura's to the lower polar valley's suspended in diamond dust--you have been wintergreen among them all and now these roots are too--cool, clear and growing--and i have never been so grateful for the cold that pierced and kissed this wintergreen heart.

i wrote that drunk
i was trying to bypass
an impasse
lucked out and
circumnavigated the
rabbit
ran into the fox
he stole my color
only to find it again
at first light
and now i nod
to the speed of life
the unceasing turning
of greater and greater
wheels
the lightness of death
as it passes

there's no
circumnavigating
that