A ticking clock keeping beat

and sunshine rays leaving

shadows behind the dog

dancing from kitchen to study

absorbing life-beams

from time's continuation.

Droplets of rain mark the end
and I can sit and sink within the softness
of the reading couch we bought and count
the drops descending slowly as a bunch,
then separating from wet globs
mimicking July 3rd when you
left cardboard boxes of forgotten sweatshirts
and polaroids on the porch
of my mom's brick paneled apartment.

The husband divorced the wife
after she cut her hair
because she was
way less "****-able"
so now he bought
a condo and goes
to the pool
without a bathing
suit to scout out
prospects.

With looping hillside vendors
and red-light beams stalking the
cigarette smoke clouds, clinging
behind business men mobs (of 4 or 5)

and fracturing wildly from green-glass
bottles of soju and the girls
(oh the girls) who guard and call
out from dark thresholds with only
a spotlight of pink neon from

(***, Trans Cafe, Eat Me)
the signs from above. And the glass
walls separating the men
from the girls and the short skirts
(plaid like schoolgirls) beckoning,

silent and alone, sitting on stools
(one leg over another) paid at the bars
for two drinks (and 250,000 Won)
usually by Americans, bored and trapped,

stranded (at Yongsun Army Garrison)
they venture Incheon at dark,
with sad eyes and lust, (trading paychecks
for hand jobs) guilty and delaying,
waiting for a three year tour (of
what feels like a lifetime) in Seoul
to end.

Leaving Minnesota on train or buses,
crowded and alone, were you fearful
to sleep on couches and of the Village
people with a rhapsody of dreams

and cacophony of chords, under rain
and sewer stank was it hard,
to step inside and play
the first time for glistening eyes
and stage lights and to let melody
escape your belly-throat

for them, or did you know
more, that words can sculpt
delicacy as smooth
as Donatello and that life can be bought
without wrinkled greens and pressed

threads? Walking under a hard-rain
of assumption and change, did Greenwich
birth a demon-sadness, so you hid
your neck beneath collars and dark
glasses and smoky rhyme, when the ship

comes in will you be onboard or escape
to Louisiana, misunderstood, working
a river boat after you give Lennon
a puff and Warhol a tight-fist?

Did sad-eyed Sara send you back
leather spanish boots or forget,
and was Christ able to mend that
broken love, and did you later kick his idiot
wind away and in 2009 on stage when I could
see emptiness and heartbreak
hidden underneath your creased stetson,
were you still singing
it ain't me, babe?

Walking with a baker's
dozen white eggs

I see her dancing
slippers behind notebooks

and burnt out
candles in the corner

of the apartment's
closet and I

wonder if you
didn't put them

with the other's
in the brown cardboard

boxes as a reminder
of the ballet

in January where
I slipped under

ropes to be with you
backstage that first time.

Asphault rats                             Lonely suits
guide longing                            snug tightly
hungry beasts                            around cigarette
under bridges                            smoke hidden
through afterglow                    under ******
oceans rippling                         Ivy League
snarling hoods                         fraternity paddels
through tunnels                       slapping clean
leaving subway                        bruised-white
cars lonely                                old-money *****
trudging aimless                     walking tall
after some                                through window
fortune here                             lookouts of
in S.E                                        shining N.W
corners D.C.                            sidewalks D.C

When your fingers move
within the betweens of keys,
white then black, scaling
and tumbling through and over
knuckles and joints and wrinkled
imprints does your chest flutter
arpeggios and dance along
with tender pale-pink ballet
slippers balancing, spinning
in a reflecting room of mirrors,
the echoes of a pentatonic scale
the pounding of parallel chords
nudging your toes exactly right,
do you forget your wives and daughter,
both Emma’s, when you let the genius-flow
and the grand piano waltz
with your soul,
do you fall in love with something
more I cant describe
in verse, delicate Debussy.

Turning his back now
and through the turnstile, under x-ray arches
and a uniformed pat down,
under a white tunnel and spotless linoleum
flooring and after a ripped ticket and hidden
smile and through another tunnel with a
cold breeze trickling through and a
plastic smell seeping in, he steps one and then
two feet onboard, ready to take-off, back
to New Jersey, back to the only place he has
left (a mother's home), away from a new wife,
now divorcee, and new diamond ring, and away
from St. Petersburg and away from
the Neva River and away from the Baltic Sea and
his blonde accountant wife and from
their flat on the river on the fourth
floor leaving the keen walls,
aware of his shouting and her swelled bruises.
His visa was expired anyway.

Would he still feel comfortable
in brooks brothers felt trousers or those loafers
with golden ornamentation or with pale white
business cards being traded between moisturized

fingers. With hands clutching a cold metal
pole on the subway and swaying to coltrane
from his headphones would he still trade glances
with the woman in good humor whites with two

black babies and a clear tub of windex and fresheners
and rubber yellow gloves. Or just stand tall and straight
and rigid and lifeless and keep his eyes
on the black floors and the loafers
and the illuminated emails shining from his palm.

With a newer suit and pay raise and the snarling of his new office and the desk with his middle aged secretary, would he still treat her kindly and keep her father's cancer in mind or instead, (next month), ask for a younger blonder girl from a better school (and bigger ****),
after the man finally makes his seven figures.

Maybe when she's older she'll understand why
she can't hold a relationship with her mother
and sister and all those boyfriends that left
with sagging hearts and her boss who made it
clear she wasn't ("fit to work in this office") with

him. And when she's home and the tv flutters between cable
news (and reality tv) and her watered down
glass of pinot with the ice cubes dying and
melted she feels at peace. And when the door slams

shut from the outside where another (ex-lover) walks
away and the ashtray he left, (but that she never used), is filled
halfway with his dust she'll wonder why
apathy kills and then go on not caring. Because

with another day comes another interview
for a job (as a copier) and more cute skirts and business
attire to pull her from the house and out that door. And when
she comes back to the plush couch she'll notice

the change in her mood that comes with more glasses of wine and
more slipping opportunity but that won't make it any different
here in the home. She knows the couch is her's, (with its floral print
and frayed pillows and left over stains of ***** and wine),
it can't leave her too.

Polka dotted dress fit tightly across
full hips with a ribbon pulled firm to shape
her frame. A mirror and a husband reflect
the white betweens of violets and yellows

and blues trapped in circle-from, spinning
frozen over washer-friendly cotton. And
blonde hair trimmed above the ear and pearl
earrings to match the whites of

cold skin and eyes. With black flats and baby-toes
underneath painted pink that would curl
when her groom came in bed. But a sadness
in her chest when she had taken off the

dress and after the dinner-party with ham
fresh and red wines and business friends
of the man (her husband). A sadness searing deep
within her, in bed, after her husband came

and her feet didn't curl  and he would roll over
and she would be awake. Insomnia
is when you wake reoccurring in the
night (the husband would say.) But she

wouldn't ever sleep, for months, she covered
the black bags under the blues
in her eyes with makeup from macy's
while the husband went to the firm in a new

cadillac and came home every week to steak
or ham fresh without noticing the lines beneath
her eyes. Every sunday she would cook
more food for the business

partners and cover more bags and black
sags with more makeup until macy's changed
their inventory so she drove
father away to find more flesh-colored coverup.

Don’t tell your mother when she visits
home that I sleep beneath frayed house
shoes, under floorboards, noticing
creaks. Or how I pulled the trigger

here, to my chest, and after how you
fled along the highway, dropping a second
.40 though, out the window (still loaded with a slug
meant for you) where tire-marked
mutts bleed, sinking with wild sage

growing in blacktop
weeds. Tell her I watch you crawl
into your bed and still try to keep you
warm, beside your father. Still living

behind these walls I feel his thumbs
press into my skin, (closing
bullet belly-holes) while my icy fingers sew
him a new pair of wrists. Ask your mother, why she forced
separate beds on her lover-mate, and why

the running pink from his arms still stain
our kitchen sink. Let her heavy *****
know, (it's not her fault) she
shoved us from this single-bath

American rancher, with one foodstamp
still hidden in her blue-jean back
pocket and with the Walmart all the ways across
a black-clouded interstate. Make sure

she welcomes these trapped ghosts hanging on
wooden clothesline-pinned sheets, swaying
with wind gusts from the highway where unlucky stray dogs
bleed, sinking with wild sage growing in blacktop weeds.

Lima bean farms
are good places to forget a dream.
They grow shin-length.
Just tall enough to ignore, but still definite,
unmistakable. The soil is damp,
fed by tin planes and farmer pilots
who take pride in their acres.
A family of worms have their brunch
while buzzards circle in line.
Waiting and pointing out the roadkill doe
that stumbled here last night.
If I keep walking towards
my father's bloodstained
Ford pickup, she'll be there.
Eyes glistening
and dead, aware
of our harvest-green property.

Crystal monument's blossom upward
and white light from them
lacerates a black skyline
as the blood of ancients trickle from tired
atmospheric wounds.
These droplets remind some of eternity
as they soak existence up and dampen past lives.
But for me they commemorate the now
and of a tangible present, rather than rejected antiquity.
Receiving this gift
I'll swim through today's rain
and accept the delirious drowning
of tonight.

This **** could be a lot easier
if I wasn't so dusty
or if my aspiration hasn't been disposed
or exposed. 'Thought you'd like to know.
I'm failing math again."
And my game is still obviously whack,
Anyway I got you to come over.
So, with a pretty girl now and drinking kombucha,
all these Facebook friends
I didn't think I'd have to see again.
Beckon me with a tight fist.
Refresh the laptop and let the afterglow echo
back and drift,
over a nose and fascinating lips.
"You know the bars here don't close till very late."
Everything I love will probably crumble
into a glass of soju. Vices
and the soul undressed
and the fish market's funk clings and holds tightly
onto another's thin grey hoodie.
"What do you do?"
Hobbies among other things include googling
or maybe just oogling at an Incheon passerby.
"Seoul tonight is almost as bright as you."

Sinking
down on the couch
the next day,
feeling upholstery,
up and down
rubbing the betweens
and insides of the crevices,
the faux leather,
cracked and brown.
The dust bunnies
the old gum
and nickels
are all that I find
left over
after we made love final
between cheap
flower-print throw pillows.

Because he was Pop-pop and farmed each day
He had sunshine darkened skin that soon blotted.
Fingers bruised, cracked, and hair sliver grey,
Cancer sored hands soon quickly rotted.

Sometimes he would touch me with those hands,
Although he wasn’t always loving.
A boy of seven years never understands
And so when he left, I felt nothing.

Delaware has a part, of cornfield mazes,
dirt paths, muddy ponds and teary willow trees.
Whenever I go back I notice changes
But still sense what’s left of Pop-pop’s disease.

Along harsh harvest palms and hammered nails,
Weaved a life’s loving work, now damaged details.

My successor lives a life of taught 
asceticism,
corrupted by nothing,
but a heart and a mind, his own drum
and band
 and beat. Worries escape
his unlocked hell. Possessing the same
antique key, molded
in our old hurried erstwhile
intimate flame.
She once left me to burn. 


Oh how I long for this emancipation,

unaffected freedom and thought,
turned to open a heart’s beating lock. 

But still I feel a pull towards her
and an arrow shot from her being,

stabbed and wounded, 

the speed unbearable.
Dark red ****,
a flooding river,
flowing from the hole,
drowned out our pyre,
poured down a love’s last lung.  

Her existence, vitality, 

and sharpened breathing clock
opened wide my ocean. 


Why does your effect,

still burn, infect,
still 
keep my innards
 wanting, longing, 

for further cooling plaster
and my retired
matron master.
Oh sew and needle me.

Jealousy and need 
and human lust
and self 
absorption never stung so deep.
I miss this arrow’s fire,
and blazing tip,
cutting at heart’s fibers,
probing at psyche’s delicate despair,
replaced now, by another,
a latest fair haired heir
to my sweet woeful blunder.

Yet you’re my only bygone brunette.
And the marks left from a glowing brand
remain scorched,
internal.
Still I cherish
a pain-past impression
and your heirloom flames
used as sacred protection.

Pop-pop had really dark skin.
Brown sunshine soaked within him and
heated up the prodded red kindling of a young heart.
Fingers were bruised
and cracked and torn along the palms
and insides and betweens of his nails.
Sometimes he would touch me
with those hands, pat heads
or rub backs. Brown leafy eyes
made sure to do most of the reassuring.
I don't remember a lot. Just a soft Delaware accent, and tattered overalls reaching up and around
a remedying belly where I would put my head.

Delaware has a part
of cornfields and small ponds and towering trees,
and people don't see it
and people deny it.

But the sufficient Autumn airs and
broken summer starlight
invites 4th grade me for a stroll.
To old banks of muddy palisades
to patches of moss and turtle shells.
Overturned boulder's and empty cracked roads
kindly instructed and nudged a boy onto a bike
onto dirt backpaths,
complex limabean farms,
crop-dust and those delicate farmer's planes circling,
nurturing grain.

Ticks, black beetles and mosquito bites
and a striped red snake
we spotted once
under the brick scared you, Brother, to death,
me too.

Slowsong
turns on and it's jazzy and reluctant
and her hips belong where my rough palms sweat.
A graceful ****** of the evening's closest
company and sparkling stars
and her and I pull deep into each other.

Swaying to and back and Coltrane and an ashtray of sadness
when I get back to the room. Zipper down the waist
while her leisure stagnantly becomes mine.
Covers are her cold guide and tepid flesh is mine.  
Sincere nakedness and hospitable skin
and the hotel has a damp aroma,
we embraced with the room
and the sheets
and slept.

Shampooed hair with floral trace
but I can't keep the lids of my eyes down
a white ceiling and the draw of a life
so immediate whispers for me to stay present.

Don't escape by giving in
or to be a guide to a girl
and road and route that has the
same signs as a love past. The dotted dome
of the plaster Holiday Inn roof
beckons and urges
and leaks into a bygone brunette
and I wish that one, Sarah,
was as present,
awake.

Windows are down and gusts
blow back my hair.
An ancient breeze and Josh's cigarette is lit
and swells deep into my lungs.

So this is what it is like to come back home,
to a place we grew up
and spent days,
and hasty afternoons under trickling sunlight.
The old bench still stares
longingly at the Bay,
the seat where I first kissed Sarah
and felt the warmth of her skin
in November,
it was thanksgiving break.  

I dart my eyes from the ghost,
and back at the road.
And keep my ears sharp and alert,
hunting for another past
and a different memory.

These words have no meaning just opened ended feeling.

I went to a club today
and didn't feel like dancing.
I went to a bar and didn't feel like a drink.
I went to a girls fourth floor apartment
across from a 7-11, her underwear salmon pink,
and I was nervous.

A head so clouded
by heavy darkened thought
and fake instilled meanings
and cannabis.

Hopefully there's more than this

What's success but a bubble of lies.
Be a failure
and burst these toxic
green mists
and let the ooze run down your forehead
and into your spine
and feel failure
and feel lost.
Then you'll know of my progress.

Thighs pounding and muscles sore
the osprey floats above
bouncing among us, hawking us down.
I glance to the side of your face,
nostrils large and inhaling,
eyes at a squint,
bright blue nike shorts
well above mid thigh
and the necklace I bought you shimmering and buried
within a dark *****.
If only I knew this would be our last go at it
our last jog with the team.
Maybe I would have opened my mouth, rubbed your lower back
and whispered my pounding heart.

The grasses are tall and about to die,
the air now begins to chill.
Your moms old college sweater fits so loose
your eyes match the color.
The last time I saw you was with that sweater,
and that terrible
blue bird in the middle,
not a bad end
to something I loved
at least you felt some comfort.

Sea of sound with mechanical fish,
neon frowns,
why don’t
you know
float down,
to the floor of this bedpost,

How did we get here?

Broken glasses, spectacled rainbows,
attached to a black coffee stained halo,
and mixed up greens,
and the coral looked so real to you,
and didn’t it call to us?
From the bed
of this rock
the back of the
stock room,
the upstairs dust
of the bookshelves,
ladders extending to the roof's stars.
Howler monkeys do their best.
Elephants stomp when they walk.
We stomped when we, looked up,
brazen blues and blackened too,
evaporating our beings into a trippy
dead end dreamed up dream.
Stabbing with the tip of insecurity,
hacking with sunken sailboat eyes.
And then the sky took us up with them.

Sharp staccato steps as I made my way downstairs,
Into the white convertible I always hated.
Sailing down the streets of what is, and remembering what kind of was.
Homeliness and homelessness and
brokenness and that messy glue you use in Elementary School.
And all the parts
connected like a quilt
and the holes in it make it ours
and the cold air keeps my toes warm,
as the limbs shiver,
and the bumps rise,
I remember how you were,
and how my heart feels,
and how my hands shook,
and how now they are steady, and stiff,
and how lifelessness comes with life,
hidden under a black cloak,
but you know he’s there,
and so do I.
And that keeps us driving,
wordless as we drive off the cliff,
silent as the waterfalls take us down with them,
quite as the car bomb we built goes off,
and yet we emerge from the ash,
and breathe under the ocean roar,
as we climb back
into another convertible car
and do it again.

Library pulsing with audible shrieking and terrible scent
tattered books slid from his back shelf
a years will of sociable training
flushed
and swirling, as he,
loneliest and surrounded by
himself, visualized purpose,
innermost being. And he
slouched down within the plushness of a navy couch
and absorbed his moment,
and dreams tangible grew from his index.