Our house is full of ships. A painting on each wall.
Some schooners, racing single sails,
18th century warships, some American,
some French, most British

and captained by Nelson. There are fishing boats,
less although, they're lining the staircase
leading down towards the basement.
The bathrooms house small

single frames, big enough to fit in your palm.
Maybe 25 portraits or so. All of them going fast,
the water rushing beneath the bow,
cutting through black-blue waters.

These were painted, hand-drawn and hung
by my father. Now a financial advisor. And cold.
But underneath, I know, still loving.
I haven't seen his brushes, his paints.

But he drew these boats years ago.
And I can't stop thinking,
every-time I ****, wash hands or ****,
about the artist he was and why paint these ships.

It's blank and dark down the pathway
under your bridge
the one connecting the life you earned
and mine I bought
and cheated for.
Take the first step
cooly convince yourself
its ok and cross
below the laurel overpass
to find you waiting,
hand open ready for
our single trek together.

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.

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.

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.

No more
love for this world
make me forget
myself. I know
my heart is good.
Understand how
I feel like
I can barely speak

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.

Time is swaying
and broken,
white and blue static,
like a TV set
trapped and muted
on a damaged channel
that I cant change.
This remote needs batteries,
but at least this looks better
than Fox News.

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.

With small colonies
Of rain water
When brushed form together
And make a fountain
When hung from the neck
On wooden coat racks
Wobbling from the storm
Outiside, compiling a lake
On the white **** rug
Hopefully your aunt doesn't mind
The newfound guests of water
And mud
And myself, quiet as this farmhouse
And the land it shepherds
Let the raincoats stack
One on top of the other
And let the puddle grow into
A sea of collective belonging
Because behind these walls
And a way from the thunder
Our family can stay soggy
Together, despite being
A funeral for uncle earl
We're just droplets.

I'd give the world
to know if she means to let me go
and it means as much to me
as a mountain
or a screeching blue jay
asking me to go
to ignore it
like a king,
a monarch rules over everything
but I'm not the same
and she's making me do as I should
among the wicked.

You'd be the one
to wait for
and I cant tell
if home is still a place
I want to be,
it feels so alone
without you
and maybe this a phase
or maybe I'm right
in thinking this is it
and you are it
and that you might
one day be here
with me.

What do I do
with this bliss
I feel like an echo
reflective voices
wise earthed
memories
and an experience
untouched telling me
it's all ok.

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.

under slime that sticks
between hairs and fingers
you felt stuck between
the Pontiac
and my duvet
so with a trudge
through oceans of time
and cracks on the pavemnt
leading the apartment and my hand
to your rainboots
and wet smile and bright pink umbrella
with too much vitality
for this neighborhood
to handle you were scooped
up by my arms
and with raindrop pellets
landing awkwardly
between nostrils
and between eyebrows
and through the sticky weight
of break-up politics
I took you back to our bed.

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.

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.

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

I'll call on you.
Thinking about you. About kissing you.
Touching you.
And I might be reacting. To the little waves rolling in.
By my ankles. I feel constant.
Unfinished. A little lost.
Is there someone. Now.
In your life. Not like me.
Still hold on.
Until I stop. Thinking about you.

I felt large standing next to your tree
and your hands
and knees felt wet
beneath the leaves
and green from the grass
and this sun is diving
back down slowly
under earth and you're still here
in a backyard and the rays bear shining gold
reflections from your eyes
and hair and I wish this could last
longer but it is now and it's still and stopped
and the same. Because time is sometimes weird,
like this, and sometimes
subjective, like this,
and right now
I feel healthy
and I feel whole
and the skinny brown watch
wrapped around your wrist
hasn't ticked its hands,
in my eyes.

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.

Feeling a little empty and lost
because I decided it was time
to break, rip free and pretend
I was stronger than I know
I am. So I stopped talking,
and we don't have ***
and I hope she misses me,
and more than my body,
because I long for her
and regret those mistakes
I hope she know's I have not forgotten
my fouls, or her's.

I had not forgotten them,
those graceful
past-life girlfriends,
adamant brothers
and all others
who drift everyplace
and throughout
squalid brown apartment
complexes and the green-neon
hotel bar illuminations
'cross the street.
When I come back
tomorrow these bold avenues
should diverge away,
be different, memorial
ghosts, however, will remain
waving, walking hand in hand
still into my futures.

Sit and talk a bit then move
your hand down her thighs,
and maybe under her skirt
(and please talk a bit)
because he needs a
voice to keep reminded
that he feels your hand too.

Like delicate floating
wafts of incense puffs,
this place is ephemeral,
temporary, a minute
waiting for the 6 train
downtown warmed
under wool sweater,
wintered hat, patched
jacket and stranger bodies
pressed, confine, familiar
a city this may seem
is imparted rare
impressed reflections
once and only
through the me
of now, the 6:30 am
no coffee, cold
as bone new york city
person I am
this only morning.

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.

There's an eight wheeler,
with ice cold vapor
wisping upward and out toward
St. Mark's street walkers,
crust punks, do they think
of the frozen fish
and chilled shrimps
un-delicately
unloaded
delivered
to the subterranean
Japanese market
I purchase tempura from,
probably not. This scene
is written, it seems,
for me,
my glassy eyes,
a wandering stare
toward a banal
spectacle
displayed and private.

And Manila seemed *****
not like New York or Philly,
like naked street-kids and yellow skies,
drooling stray dogs lost in wandering packs.

But we chose this home
and now it is that.

A studio apartment
high above the trash
and the slums down below
piled and stuck together
by sun melted ******* and dirt glue
greets their new neighbors.

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.

Alone with other people.
proximity killing heros.
I needed help but couldn't call you.
these people don't seem exciting.
how do I find someone more
like you.
writing poems didn't do much.
"socialize, get out more"
you say your mother doesn't like this
I say broken dreams reflect guilt
and loneliness needs an empty room.
Stop
when I make a point.
These things take time
but I wish wish they didn't

We were thinkin'
how fast the years fly
"two gone by quick"
but what's to come
and go
with speed
hopefully not
the next few
with you.