when the cafe closed
our hearts were broke
and we spilled out slow
crashing milk on a kitchen floor
desperate to expand in any direction
with no destination across black and white tile
our fingers fumbled anxiously
to patch all the leaks
but there were just too many
that the eye could not see
so naturally
the flood unleashed
and all of us
were swept to sea
all including  
you and me


we had begun to lose sight
of reasons for holding a lover close at night
my face feeling safe
in the nook of your neck
our bodies melting
as we slept
now both of us stand
with shrugging hands
when interrogation
comes bursting into our brains
and throws its
coat on the floor
yelling
for what did you do this?
for what was it all for?
and the days where we passed
on buses and bikes have been
all used up
i can't plan a time or a date now
to see you stroll up ditmars
chalk full of confidence
with your hands like fireworks
bite marks and blood at your nails
don't you remember how easy that was?

when you'd come over and roll blunts on a magazine
and i'd never let you sit too close to me
but was always willing to flash enough thigh
just to keep you guessing
i was your goal,
and you were my friend
and everyone here knows
how a goal really ends
it's right back to being disappointed again

now i watch the back
of your black winter coat as you
turn down the moonlit alley
caught dead center
between your place and the cafe
where i hear the voices of our
friends still echo day to day with
green bottles in happy fists
guitars on backs
snow on the ground
light in their eyes
eveytime i walk by
there's cheers for your name
the neighbors are  gonna call the cops again
the yellow booth in the back
where we get snapped at for laughing
too loud too drunk on wine too proud
of  ourselves
and its fine
in retrospect
we were allowed
now the windows are bare
and a green light dimly lit
still sits on the brick glowing reasonlessly
a beacon in the dark for those of us looking

and i saw them remove the sign the other day
now i hear there's gonna be a new cafe
i'll have to stomach the mediocrity every time i go by
i'll have to learn to keep my head straight
and not turn to look down that drive
and we'll have to keep laughing
and we'll have to keep trying
though the ashes have scattered
ill keep the memory alive

Butte Magic of Ignorance
Butte Magic
Is the same as no-Butte
All one light
Old Rough Roads
One High Iron
Mainway

Denver is the same
'The guy I was with his uncle was
the govornor of Wyoming'
'Course he paid me back'
Ten Days
Two Weeks
Stock and Joint

'Was an old crook anyway'

The same voice on the same ship
The Supreme Vehicle
S.S. Excalibur
Maynard
Mainline
Mountain
Merudvhaga
Mersion of Missy

i can't write anymore
and i know it's because
i am afraid of my own
truths

it's hard to find the
exact point where i
began slipping, because
usually it's with a whiskey
bottle in hand, but this
time sobriety haunts me

i become uncomfortable
at this point in a poem -
unsure of my intentions,
of who i am as a writer,
of my own ******* self

and so begins the anger,
the masking, the quitting,
the loneliness, the bubbling
of things that were once
dead and buried

and then i sit, and i don't
write in my head, and i
question it all with the
same intensity that has
lingered for nearly
two months, and i want
to take paper with my
words and shove it
back down my throat,
because this
is not
poetry

i have always run
with my hands cupped
to the boys who have not fallen
but fled
from the nest

i'm always staining the knees of my jeans
threading my fingers around the shattered parts of them
collecting what i can

degenerates and low-lifes
bad smelling cars and big convictions
nervous voices and hyper fingers
dead parents, dark stories
their despair, their careless cigarettes out the cracked car window,
with their weird teeth ***** hair
i can understand my purpose
a void filled

i always take them out bowling or something-
out drink them in whiskey,
out wit them in pool halls,
dive bars, black beaches
the formula is spotless

as soon as they surrender
and the careless foot slips from the tightrope
the brink of love leaves their mouths in words unwanted
my syrup hunger to solve and serve
is sapped back into the
heart from whence it came

my fingers recoil and i
lay em down gentle in the night- wish em well
slink away with collarbones street lit
starved to find the next

snapping your wrist at an unsuspecting creature-
one merely curious of the minute details and intricacies of a human life.
perhaps drawn in by a whiff of cheap cologne
or the scent of a sweet summer drink.

it lives without common sense and floats through space,
weightless, only concerned by luxuries it can't comprehend.
and we smack at them,
flailing, angry, unaware.
we're overcome with a sense of annoyance and disgust,
simply because another living thing,
with a body much smaller, and ambitions absent.
decides to swim by off course
on whichever axis they assume.

i can only wish that one day a fly will swat at me,
remind me to keep my thoughts from wandering too far astray-
too keep my curiosity at bay.

i need something to bind me.

you wedge your pointer finger between your canines-
in an attempt to appear sublime- or nervous- or seductive
either way it doesn't succeed.

your tooth, teeth
speck of blood, bleed
emerging as you pierce your calloused
yellow patch of skin
(layers & layers of the girls you've touched before)
but you crave one more-
for in every sleepless night
there's a quote to be fill- a new slit to drill-
you're a man.

i can sense it-
throbbing and shaking beneath your olive exterior
how you long to drag
your now bloodied, prior prettied
finger up an off white thigh-
to disregard the things obliged-
to forge the paradigm
from faulty tools,
splintered and battered in a worn down knapsack
duct taped to a hunching back,
you're a man.

thoughts of droning monotone
quiet your hungry bones
(i can hear them)
rattling as you ****
your head and lift that heavy glance up to me.

i can see you,
flopping and thrusting and sweating, which
after years of curiosity has handed me
nothing,
but sweaty sheets and burning ***.
i lay beneath you, silent
i'm a woman.

avert your eyes ( i am tempted to plead)
from the onset of premature varicose veins
(i am pale, glasslike, arched & stained)
allow me to suffocate the already immune-
girls born into the world with ******* brandings
stamped onto their lightly acne ridden foreheads.
(SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE)
trim your ribs, shave off the cellulite-
turning a blind eye to accessible insight..
a salad for lunch, make it dinner too.
finger down your throat, orange acid hurling,
stick like dancers twirling,
they bring tears to your eyes,

if only {you} possessed the grace-
but there are pounds to erase.
i'm a woman.

thirteen years of advertisements stapled to your eyes
standing barefoot    in a bath tub   with chunks of blood
running down    shaking legs    
kicking off a now crimson pair of old underwear-
stuck  &  tangled on trembling feet

[ silence your voice and push up your *******
  til they're touching your neck.
  get a nose job
  get a *******
  you're a woman  ]

half a dead pigeon
has indented itself in the gravel lot next door
and every day at dusk, when i run my sacred shower,
(with the lights off and windows open
and otis redding echoing through the empty house)
i have to watch the black static tide of flies
swim around one of it's upward bent wings.

the first time i saw it my jaw dropped and repulsion choked my throat closed-
disturbed by it's total disgrace,
i slammed the window shut
and preferred to gaze at tile grime to pass the time.
but from the days that followed,
i managed to muster up respect
and acknowledged that this
battered half of a bird
was now a variable in my scenery
(praise be to impermanence)

and now
the sunset drowns everything in it's hazy blood orange
and the wind floods the trees and fills the underside of the bridge with sound,
and i stand naked in the warmth,
singing boldly out of key, twisting hot water out of my hair,
as the summer breeze politely invades my privacy.

so i salute the pigeon, say i wish you the best.
and embrace the weight and fullness of my happiness,
and know well i am more than body and voice,
and watch it sink further into the arms of the earth each night.
grateful to know that death doesn't end life.

My wife, a psychiatrist, sleeps
through my reading and writing in bed,
the half-whispered lines,
manuscripts piled between us,

but in the deep part of night
when her beeper sounds
she bolts awake to return the page
of a patient afraid he'll **** himself.

She sits in her robe in the kitchen,
listening to the anguished voice
on the phone. She becomes
the vessel that contains his fear,

someone he can trust to tell
things I would tell to a poem.