i am not one to glamorize smoking,
but there is something recklessly beautiful about new york
and the way each cloud of smoke on every city street rolls
with a detached aggression
from cherry onwards —
like a demon knowingly conjured.

it is a slow suicide so defiant it is almost admirable.

almost.

but like most things called admirable at first glance
and detestable
at second,
there is an ugly side.

new york, though,
doesn’t know ugly — never has, never will —
and even when it does it is a
“between the lines” kind of ugly:
the spitting up of blood bright and red —
cherry —
at home, behind closed doors,
not cool and casual on the city streets.

new york doesn’t know ugly.
and so slow suicides become
park bench pastimes and
throats filled with smokes become synonymous with:
“living life to the fullest in the heart of new york city”
and the way each cloud of smoke on every city street rolls
with a detached aggression
from cherry onwards becomes
almost admirable.

almost.

(a.m.)

today my gums bled when i brushed my teeth,
and i thought of making some metaphor
about how efforts to attain purity
only result in more stains,
but no.
it was just blood.

to call a rose — or torn gums — by any other name
is to silence the initial sting,
but it still ends up hurting more in the end.
it always does.
lying always does.

and if all i have are my words,
what am i if my words are lies?

what am i if i cannot be honest?

a bad writer, perhaps.
but trying.
i am also trying.

there are some days when the blood looks
a little less like words on a page,
and simply a little more like red,
and i am hopeful.

yet still i know
that efforts to attain purity
only result in more stains,
and red is a ***** to clean out.

(a.m.)

That I was alive: I suppose,

there was a certain eager meaning to
these moments–wide and short–these
hours–fat and narrow–these years
long and deep–

the stars, the lunging of my breast, the
turned curving of a sunrise, the rapid
expulsion of blood, tunneling suddenly through artery and vein;
I guess.

Looking and wondering; I turn my
hand over in a spent beam of sunlight. Its span tumbling with that heavy glow–it iridesces.

(I love you.

Knowing I will die–I love you.)

I am walking in some hall. There is the fast purring of a cat. Easily my breath inhumes and exhumes the space within my chest. Heart beating. Air and flesh exchange.

How easily it is to be–it seems these
hands are mine over your *******. I put
my fingers in your mouth. Your tongue
tousles their fiber. I make and unmake
myself in your hips.

The thick leaning of this chair into my back–where are you?

(Reading this perhaps.

And am I alive? And where?

Or dead?

Could be.)

And what is death?

Dying after all, it is, I guess, what I am.


There was the forest today. And five minutes ago I kissed you.


I am incomplete–I can feel
the way this shirt turns over the skin of
my arm. Somebody is speaking French on the radio.


"I will be dead someday." I want to whisper.


(I will be dead someday.


I love you.)

my father carries his grandmother's wisdom with him
like a satchel upon his back,
like a palm print;
his own father’s teachings tug like strings
and read like a map worn but never wrong —
one that transcends.

my father knows how to live for himself
for the sake of others.
a hidden art form —
secretive to his son
who only knows how to live for others
for the sake of himself.

i could ask him how he does it,
but he tells me first that i will live and learn and hurt and grow,
and so i know, instead, that i will come to know.

my father carries me in his arms as though i am still one day old,
as though i am still taking my first few tiny gasps of air from this great big world
(the world he built for me),
as though my eyes have not yet become accustomed to the light.

my father’s arms never tire and i know why.
they are satchel and palm print,
strings and map.

i am one day old and sure that my father has lived a thousand lifetimes.
he speaks in bloodlines, holds heritage in his hands and then brings it to his head when it whispers.
like a child holding a shell to his ear, listening to the ocean.
my father knows where to find right answers.

i could ask him how he does it,
but he is already answering.

he has always been answering.

(a.m.)

My father died
from a gun shot wound
to the head

self-inflicted

Don't get all weird about it.

Fathers die
and their passing
though certain
is rarely easy.

So what can I say of this man
so many years
after his emphatic end?

I can say what Whitman said
of Lincoln:
"O Captain, my Captain.
Rise up and hear the bells."

But he will not.

He was ever-present
wise and alert
a boxer in life
a fighter in every way.

And I grew up with the gloves on
quick
elusive
and thanks to him
successful in every ring.  

He died
******* on a lit tobacco stick

Emphysema was gonna
take him down
so he pulled his own trigger
saved his family that way
though that's a longer tale

Therefore
and whereas
this is a belated requiem
for a man I loved.
My Captain.
Dear and departed
these many years
may he rest in peace
as he never rested
in life.