He sends a peace sign emoji
and that's cool

I tool around
the underground
Morning dreaming
of manipulating
what seem to be
good hearted girls
on their way to school

After classes
we'd walk around her campus
I'd be holding
to keep the good times rolling
Just to keep the good times rolling
My life starts buckling and folding
I feel the good times rolling
But where is she going?
Where is she going?

I send him a peace sign emoji
He says to himself
"What a cool guy."

What if this is the
best it will be
and it's not good enough

Pluck a woman off
the street and
plunge my tongue down
her throat

Romance a thought
feel the breeze
clear the mind
and it’s not good enough

Happiness is fear
If I try to ride it, I’ll choke
A rise to a fall
A cancer to a hope

What if it’s never
as good
as it was when
it wasn't good enough

Things I once found beautiful
like not knowing when I saw you
on that rooftop
that I would love you
When we’d walk down Riverside
in all seasons
You telling me about
Boston and Outer Space

Sleeping on airplanes
Talking about
books and my dead friends
with whiskey and champagne

Are now painful reminders
being replaced with a blindness
A ****** tongue on a outlet
lighting a fire in a fountain.

Her copper hair and her ******
ankles
As she smiles at the rats
I smile at her and she catches me
and looks at me like I’m creepy
Takes off her sweater
and ties up her hair
Drops her lipstick on the platform
my hope is reborn.
Not for me
and not for her
She looks like a *****
and maybe I am a creep
But a hope that maybe tonight
i’ll be able to sleep.

She reads Agatha Christie
Taking breaks
To imagine what the weather is like in France

She opens the window to feel the storm
I imagine her glasses fog up
And when she blinks
Her lashes clean them like windshield wipers

She’s cynical about love
And foreign to the touch
She shuts out all the lust
That's range. Porcelain to dust

When she is overcome
It’s with a demon
From a console
Raging to life like a tantrum

If I could have her any way
I’d take her covered in fake blood
In the foyer of a haunted house
Mounted in a ripped up blouse
Her lips matching the color
Of the dye in her hair
Dip my romantic in her cynicism
Keep the window open to let the city listen.

Under the weaponry
of stars and stripes
Alice let her first son die
When asked
why she let her
boy go
she said:
Why make
another man
to fight
to ****
and not throw out his popcorn
after movies
To be the first to
Complain
and the last to die
To be quiet until he’s
Loud.

Wouldn’t it be beautiful,
if I could stay this way
in this room.
With a good book
and two dogs.
A hot meal
and free ****.
Some cigarettes
and a Bukowski,
looking at all the stars around me.
No need for a woman,
and far from perfection.
Fourth quarter, game seven.
A hot shower, and clean laundry.
No ***** and no drugs
no god and no one.
Content on living with deep blues.
Wouldn’t it be beautiful
if I grow old enough
to hate my tattoos.

I write to you for a
difference of opinion
To be kept in the dark
far away from His wisdom

You,
like a tripped wire
in a bone structure prison
You,
dancing through rooms
in and out of perfect vision

The news of distant killings
and tortured women
Is proof they're all the same
and we're something different

There is a fire between the pages
a story for the ages

You say, " just keep them coming"
I tell you what you already knew
God created truth so
I could lie to you

How much would Hemingway and Raymond Carver,
Bukowski
and Oscar Wilde
scoff at my sobriety?
"You gave in and gave up, at 28?"
The words I'd then write
for these old dead white guys
about wanting to get better
about trying to be sober
about working a program
C'mon man...

In my defense
they didn't have Oxy cottin
or Xanax
But
they also didn't have central air
or auto-correct

So for my old, white,
dead drunken heroes
Who most likely
wouldn't like me
I'll hold my white privilege close
to my heart
At my core I'll be angry with
women
I won't look to jesus
to beg for forgiveness
Most importantly
I'll hold onto the truth
that statistically
I'll end up drinking
myself to death
at 50

I feel like a human being
not like a thought or an idea
People swarming around me like
a keepsake tornado
For the first time, a bag of bones
with a soul
Not a concept
or a war treaty
A beast with shoulders and feet
not a fleeting feeling
I'll stay awake until I go to sleep
I've just accepted I have a heart
that's beating

If I could go back in time
I wouldn’t change a thing I’ve done
or didn’t do
I wouldn’t stay in, the night I met you.

I would travel to the time of the beats
How nice it is to imagine “ leaving town”
with no trace
except the ones I choose.

To live in a motel
Come and go as I please
Smoke cigarettes and drink beer
Eat the food without the junk

Wander to different towns
Taking odd jobs
Meeting different women
They don’t have to be beautiful

Never getting too close
or too familiar
Putting out my thumb
never getting left behind

I don’t need big lights
or white beaches
American small towns
and their niches

In a time people still ramble
To live offline
Call home from a phone with a cord
And say “ I’m doing fine.”

Are any of these women real?

My step mom opens the top drawer
In the guest room
Takes out the cut bracelet
And asks,
Can I please throw this out?
It reads Fall Risk
Which is what I am
Yellowed and frayed
At the ends

The boxes of books dance with
the lids closed.
It's not too cold
But it's raining
I have one friend and
She's praying
There are two dogs and
They're saying
Please get out of bed
We both believe that you can
Walk again

Fast forward and I get lost
In the big rows, poetry lanes
while I shake and crave
through the outrages
I learn to come back down
I learn to give and go

It says Fall Risk
Inside, they told me I'm not bad
I'm just sick
It's tricky,       whether
I know it all     or
have no clue
it exists
I'm a fall risk.

In a rush of tactile symmetry
he heard her voice so vividly
she whispered softly

" You can't get rid of me
If you can't beat em
you are left to set em free
Teach patience
Practice chivalry
You've cornered a beast
now act accordingly"

I've sobered up long enough to see the moon
and half the plagues that
were drowning you
I only wish you could see them too

Alone in a room with 9 million people
gazing through the rain at a pointless steeple
I realized nothing, all at once
Except- trust the water
and that you are evil

This is the leaving season
Emergency vehicles
heading in opposite directions
for different reasons

The middle of my cigarette
was the end of one man's life
Cut lines and a dropped call
The rise in the black top
and the places she never called home

A girl skips on the sidewalk
Oranges fall from the market
Small obstacles in the path
of strong legs moved by imagination

Fantasies of what normal feels like
Routines of a year ago forgotten
Did I drink coffee in the morning?
Did I always wake up in pain?
Are him and I the same?

Last night I felt it
something was coming
Something awful
Or even worse
nothing at all

Spoiled
West Highland Terriers
Man, they're everywhere
Pulling back on leashes
giving us humans
that look
as if we've mistook
what time is and
the value of the smell
that is right now

A blessed breeze
pushes me off the tracks
to the trains
Like billy Collins or
collision consoles
whipping passed me
uncaring
like the past me

I have nothing left to be afraid of
besides maybe a tumor
and even then
I hope I'd sit back with my friend Pat
and seek the humor
And if it kills me
my loved ones should know
I died happy, but
mostly annoyed
and I'll be watching
when you pull out your lap top
and you lock your door
You pull out your tube sock
and I'm judging you
I'm taking pictures
and I'm laughing at you
Sitting there with Rooha
maybe with a lit blunt
Maybe where I go next
I'm not an addict

But for now my mother says
I'm probably healthy
Google searches disagree
In a world where our god
is broadcast through screens
All knowing
All powerful
Screens
Who should I believe?

I still get a dark taste
watching the un thoughtful mass
of clumped up, spot cleaned suits
pursuing what?
Fancy tooth brushes and
the newest carpet cleaners?
But then my train
ascends
I look at the Brooklyn bridge
and the statue who stands so
confused, over
what she is meant to represent
and I'm okay

You'd be okay too
if after ten years of dirt and fog
you were headed to Central Park
to walk a dog

Lottery tickets
Time Keepers
Yo,
the trains coming

All these words
left
to type into my notepad
I'll take the local
Breath in the fresh carbon
that is the morning R train

I think I'm tired of being in a hurry
I'm not getting anywhere anyway
I have a couple different books
on me
Pop-tarts
coffee and a banana
I think I'll write a silly poem
about dogs today

I listen to my BBC News podcast
News flash:
donald trump's
a ****** Punk ***

I can't figure out why
my bedrooms so hot
I turned the heat off
I pulled my sheets off
I'm reminded of all
the unsolved murders

Today
take me away from me
I'm out to get me
What's the difference between
the night sky and a black eye?
If I had three wishes
I'd ask twice to be open minded
and then to mind my own business

Life keeps going
You will not outrun this ****
It will catch up-each step of
the way
You never really leave where you
grew up

Not only
do I want to keep living
I'd like to be
thin
With the *** appeal of a Ferris wheel
in a skyline

There is an ancient time
Peace
Please
The arguing will only leave you
wanting more
You'll always find the philosophy
you are looking for

Argentinian teenagers
taking in the cities
Their predilections all  
based in fiction

Shocking green masses

Turnstile seminars

Debauchery hidden behind stars

Captured innocence

And they wonder
could this be New York?
The snow came and the snow
melts
The only boy in the group
turns to his prettiest friend
and says
I'd rather end up in hell

When the Internet
existed
for conspiracy theories and
remixes
I woke up
laying next to you
after an Oxy-lovin night
waiting to start another fight

I let you roll the blunt
I let you sit up front
You, always sit next to me  
We took the back roads
Through the green trees
Past
the houses of our tired friends
Past
the girls that made you jealous
Past
the future lovers you'd take
We'd  drive past the future.

The fog makes it weirdly bright
A full sun hanging
Over the park
I make out its border lines
I walk into its sides
I try to survive

It's a central morning
On a central time line
Reactivate
I sometimes still wonder
Over your whereabouts

Indirect steps towards
Momentary encounters with
Beautiful women
As if there were not buildings
On each side of this trail

I wake up
In the center of the park
My dog waits for me, smoking
I tell him I can try
I can pretend to remember your smell
He says it's time to go home
That all this is getting boring
That nobody cares about me or
my story

To me, God is everything.
It's the strangers on the train,
The smell of my saliva on her ****
It's the times I told people they were stupid for saying it exists


The wonder
of the gap between her legs
The way my smoke tastes in the morning
It's why I'm still here. Still going


Rilke taught me who God is
Leonard Cohen seconded his opinion
Alan Watts explained what it's not
And everything it's got


God helps me be free
It doesn't have a gender
It doesn't have a look
It's got nothing and it's got nothing
to prove
At least not to me

March
gives birth then
kills off
the plants while
she figures out where she stands
It's like that eerie journey of
not taking you own life
in your hands
and seeing where you land
My friend Steve says
"I'm getting upset because
I don't know who I am"
We talk about if we are complete
and the falsehoods of leaving our
interpretations of ourselves to
ourselves. Sometimes I have
moments where nothing feels real
I felt good
when Steve said
You are more than just a book deal

The bodies
moving forward with their eyes
on the papers
Narrowly afraid of eviction
from the land of the free
the home of the scared

Angry texts to my spouse
Apologetic pleas to my boss
concerning the delays
on the yellow line
My news app tells me of
our "leader's" convictions
and his yellow spine

Take the Arabs business
the Mexicans their fruit
Take the sand from the beach
the water from the well
Take the drums from the songs
the laces from the boots
Take caramel from the candy
the dogs from their families
Take the feeling from our first kisses
the mystery of the new day

Just know you'll never take the
direction of the passengers
on New York's subways
who don't need and
will encourage you
to keep your fear

We all die sometimes
I hope you are all
high on drugs
because, how can you not be?

I felt *****
And being done with trying
to justify who I am
left me weightless

and tied to the ground
Between my ears
felt like a department store's
lost and found

Keep coming back
Stay
I wasn't alone in rehab
on Christmas Day

I was alone with the door locked
My brown water stopped working
My hands kept shaking
Soon i'll turn ****** thirty

Mickey went back to the bars
I ask him
What did you learn?
He says
nothing

My stomach hurt.
I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.
Sitting on the train, pressed up against the cold metal pole,
resting my red,
beaten face against the metal.
The standing riders attempting to find space to hold on
while I tried to breath in
as much of the air conditioning as I could
while enjoying the last moments of the dark tunnel
before the four train spat out into the bright Yankee Stadium
infused outdoors of the Bronx.