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.

and bed and closet
and solid wood dressers
and mirrors
hung on each wall
so when you stood in the middle
you could see who you were,
four different views,
spin quickly in a circle
and all four become one
dizzy smear of fleshy skin,
dark strands of hair
and constant brown pupils,
trying to focus. Spinning
and getting nauseous
this room's walls inch foreward,
closer, the ceiling lowers
the jagged plastered lines
and edges **** ceasessely
forming a cube condensing
and swallowing your form
up with it. A diamond
shaped prism with your
twirling reflection bouncing
off glass and your life
beaming from their lenses,
out from the geometry
and from the fake wooden beams. underneath white socks
as you fall back
through claustrophobia,
anxiety and time
and lie with your back
on the bed,
reminded of its emptiness,
with the room still circling
you, as a cube
with especially pointed edges,
and you think the dizziness
and headaches would stop
if only he was in that same
shrinking bedroom as you.

And
I feel a bit empty a
nd lost not like in the way I was
with you, but different...
maybe I need a change. Mountains
seem large enough to draw back
deep into. Be one with
earth dust and the non-ceasing land
before this. Take enough drugs
and be there. Or find someone
like you. I don't know
if I'm depressed or just alone.
Maybe both. Either way I can sense this is
just beginning.

Will I go white
or bald. Sickly skinny
or obese. Maybe a round belly,
jolly enough and symmetrically round.

Sagging muscles and blotted skin
could that, more so, be the case.
As wrinkles become the norm
and my face begets new folds

will I remember my reflection
as it was, or instead
how the mirror reflects. Passions
hopefully stay lit and burn

still and bright in my heart
and soul and my mind still
recalling youth as a moment, brief,
but beautiful and flickering,

keeping warm past lives. And grandchildren,
children and those friendships
still gracing existence allow the beams
sprouting light out from memory

and joy to be absorbed wholly
within their pours. In doing so
I'll know that the folds in my dying skin
and thin strands of hair meant life
and spirit and so I won't mind

when those days come.

Love you
more than
I know
you can, so
I step outside
my fears
and these lives
past doubts.
And this town
never felt so cold
underneath these boots
even during Fall
leaves crushing
and New York
air brushing a could be
perfect would be
evening.

And I'm looking
through the other-side
now of a cafe window
at a collection of asian tourists
joyfully wandering
up and down 18th street.
Do they know
I don't belong here,
ordering a 12 dollar cocktail
pretending to type behind
a laptop glow. Do they know
I don't belong here
and I am not scenery
and not a local,
in this country
I feel someplace else.

Tracks by the creek
lead the charge,
a path for future pioneering troops,
boys aged six, seven, eight,
footprints made by me
and our gang
years ago,
running through the woods
chopping our own way
through tall grass, anthill fortresses
crushed by nikes, branches as swords,
sticks as arrows, grenade rocks,
a longing now to return
with them to backyard wilderness,
battlefields and armaments,
and rush forward
as a child soldier, fearless
in fantasy fray.

Our love is a bad scene
of a movie,
passive lines, unsavory
characters
and this gaudy
bedroom lighting
wreck any idea
of realistic drama
and if the audience applauds
when the credits roll
only you
can take the blame.

We walked across the bridge
Over the mud from the creeks
Leading to downtown and the bay
Giving gracious curtsy
Holding up from the fray
From outside windows and panes
Plucking time from a bottle
I wonder about you and think
Could you see me and want to
Break down hopelessness and fear
And be one with the winds
But I know you're a house cat
And wouldn't want to be near
The forces of nature and god
And *** and what's pure
Go back to the cage and purr
A lifeless being still unsure
But I know we can swim
Through these rain drenched streets
And find happiness together
But first in these sheets.

Paris, France,
streetcars, alley-ways
and tight corners
and perfectly trimmed
trees lining sidewalks
with cafe scent
and coffee taste rising up
to keep in pace
with the lights of the Louvre.

An emptiness deep
in the cracks of my heart
where I could feel  you
still with me beating hard
and I took you to my uncle's
grandparent's and mother's
but it doesn't feel the same
not falling in love with you
and is it wrong  I feel
so guilty forgetting
about you every so often
even when you refuse to call,
acknowledge I'm still here,
but far, and I miss you
more so but it's fading
and I how do I move on
when this won't
really turn to dust
float away.

Time's clock ticking, drops
infinity into the rust of bedside tables.
In Bed-Stuy, in D.C, dear Baltimore. And you too,
Ferguson.
East Coast warriors raise high heavy heads.
Break loose shackles, blushing muscles. Veins
of ancients pump through us.
Now we cry for peace. Resilience and time
******* out from present pleasures. T.V screens.
Longing hours contemplating
forgotten dreams. Nightmares,
trickle blood out of nosebleed section patrons.
An operatic multitude of greed
and insanity. Corrupt millionaires
spit down on struggling, stuttering
lost and alone
actors, poets
the good politician.
The neighborhood bully weeps after swatting a fly,
and immortality feigns existence. Be here
now death, let them know the coming of peace,
spiraling black holes
of emotion and pride and dead boys.
Broken time continuous, and hearts.
9-11, 2001 rocked a nation,
what rocked you?

If it wasn’t for darkness,
I don’t know if I could see.
Eternal night and black air
and sharp streaks of blue lightning
brought me closer to noticing
a convenient life ignored way back.

These shockwaves
and the pleasures of you
are not going unnoticed.

And I promise
these fleeting things,
these peaceful chemicals,
dripping between crevices
and cracks in my brain
aren’t going away.

This time might be short
the end of us might be rearing in
and I want you to know
I won’t ever want
to forget us.

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.

Flickering white
and orange specks, crowded
in a universe,
under a blanketed
warm sky, and us
enveloped between
cool earth, grass blades,
I'd forgotten
to look
up at
until you.

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.

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.

Standing up straight
but like falling through door
after door after open
cellar door,
bodega cashier
men who know me only
as the sad and lonely two
AM bacon egg cheese
two bud light  
guy who seems off
but leaves a tip,
this trip through new york
can't be more than delirium
wrapped in tin foil
and forgotten dreamscapes.
Where are the mountain vistas.

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

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?

A favor I didn't ask for.
But you did it anyway.
You made me feel
like a different person
and when our connection
pulls apart
and love fades away
who will we be then.

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.

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.

I can see the pale white wall
With nothing painted or pinned
And I reel through memory
And come to you
And back to this bed
And the comforters are warm
And I feel at peace
But moreso
If you were beside me
Holding my heart in one hand
The other arm around my chest
Pinning me down
To what matters
To lovely summer days
And fresh air
And the bamboo forest
That sprung out
From around your home
And the days we'd spend
Brown from the sun
And muscles sore
From doing nothing
Floating on my father's
14 footer,
Sailboat and knowing
That the summer would be out last
And that the pale wall now
Is as empty as my bed.

You kind of remind me of her, when you laugh,
and your brown crow's feet
lines smile, and I can't help but wonder
what you're doing here
at a place like this
dark and empty and stained
with beer so I'll order you another drink
from the bartender and pay in cash
and conversate and stare
(and by the way, that's a cute hat)
because you remind me
so much of her.

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.

Barstool, three legged,
wobbling, desperate, clinging
to gummy hardwood floors
and you're a good friend,
and here, eyes down unlocked
lips whispering reminding me
for a day "don't withdraw."
Thanks again for the drinks,
gloom only shows face
under sunlight, without you
offering me
confidence. "This will get better."

Gassing the esoteric
with toxins
and drugs
while attempting to keep grounded
but this thing in my soul
keeps puncturing nerves
and my brain may not be the same
since I saw you last
and these words seem empty
on an online forum
but I'm trying.

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.

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.

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.

Between the tangledness of legs,
arms and organs pumping
with and prodding on
beaches and blankets
because the warmth
of the Atlantic current
only separates our love
into microcosmic pieces of sand,
built up sea shells of my heart,
I can sense the waves,
wet and crashing as I hold my breathe
suspended beneath green-blue
glass tides and soft seaweed
on the in-betweens of my fingers,
a frozen moment could remain forever
floating within the folds of drenched time
and ***, I'll keep my lungs flooded
with oxygen and my heart beat slowed
and exact because drowning
with you in this deep
isn't the same as drowning at all.

I have nothing better to do
when it rains so I go to the pier
on vacation with my pole and chicken necks
and rusted traps, drive down

to where the kayaks wait
in the mud, stop to smell
where fresh fish float through
brackish waters and tie a knot

at the end of my string, attach a bob
and minnow and cast
out towards the bay spotting
dead skates and hope

for mackerel and striper,
how my father taught me be gentle
I tie the necks to string and let the meat sink
below the surface and wait to be caught

up with delicious ****** poultry
to feed on and get trapped behind
the jailed walls. I hope the blue
crab knows I had to drive over

the county line in my shoddy white
pickup to the quiet co-op
when she bites into the chicken
for our dinner.

You all the time
to feel your loving
Glance to hold you close
and be your ride
Past the park
Some little longing
To exist by your side.
I need you baby
I want to be around you
at all time's you're the only one
that I want when this world turns grey so please let me be around you
Don't even need to hold you
just let me breathe your same air
from your lips your the only suger
For my bitter world.
So climb over the front seat
into my uncle's Chevy.

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."

Mamacita hold me dearly under folds
of black hair where light can't shine I
feel the warmest with my nose
pulling deep breaths of floral shampoos

and hot mesoamerican corn tortilla
from the oven with pepper carnitas drifting
through cracks under locked bedroom
doorhandles, in the bed and under

an azetec starred quilt duvet between sunshine
brown arms with tiny black feminine hairs,
I think about dinnertime at seven
with my warm Mamacita and her cousins
and of all the caring people
L.A shared with me.

So what
if I feel less emotional,
the guilt,
anxiety
was getting to be too much anyway.
I'm happier now
but maybe less expressive,
the thoughts I have range
mostly towards the positive.
Light clearing up
depression, desperately
trying to come out
of the covers
and see you still there.

Like a routine
came her
lightness of verse
and it's repeating
and repeating,
still and always
holding wave-like
beating closely
to sand bank
inner memories
of every new girl,
old street blocks
and scented wisps
of brown hair
reminding
me of her.

You had two pet rabbits, one named Mickey the other Maurice,
who lived on lettuce bits and behind thin metal bars.
A caged environment set up on the study's wood floors,
with books and a red couch to keep company

and your mom, because she would finish her graphs and stats
on the mahogany desk living in the corner of the room
and she liked the rabbits purr and delicate noses
and would hold them and pet them

when she put down her pen and moleskin and accounts
because, although caged and bought at Pet World
in the strip mall across from Adult World
on the other side of Interstate 67, these rodents gave her comfort,

reminding her of Maine and Jonathan
who abstained from going and killing for sport
with his brothers when they went, in pickups
with buckshot and murdered deer and rabbits,

because she still missed Jon and bought these fluffy
white creatures for 47.99, a good deal,
and they came with a little rock house
that they could sleep and burrow under

like Jon and herself, snuggled in Maine,
away from Palo Alto. So every time I come over,
to have *** and eat dinner and listen
to what you learned to play on piano,

I stop by the study to see Maurice
and Mickey and feel the presence of Jonathan
and the sticky suburban sadness of your mother,
while keeping a secret promise close to my heart,
that I'll never become an accountant.

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.

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.

Loved you now
for a long long
long time.
If those brown
curls brought me nothing
but lavender shampoo
clean smell of sweat too
I'd be brought to two
knees wondering only
if these years mean't
something
to me other than seeing
you through myself
a glass mirror reflection
a past projected
and illuminating
a life correction
and pedaling,
moving quickly
forward.

Your "no reply"
in small text
pierces the summer night's
darkness through,
and that dim light
under my nose
might be what
emptiness truly looks like
in its most physical form.

Infidel, lost, lonely
and so very drunk
and so very sick
of the past
churning away
at my stomach
mixed in with *****
and memories
mostly about her
and some
more recent
one's about you
but I'm just drunk
and godless tonight
so let me sleep alone
beside you,
warm
and kind of lost also,
after we give a try
at pretend love.

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.

You made me feel
open
to a possibility
of comfort
(health security
peace privateness)
the things written
in vows, letters
from far away,
in whispers
under hazy morning
sunlight,
those kind of moments
I wish I could keep
hold of and only
with you.

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.