Why Men Cry in the Bathroom

For so many reasons.
I will tell you the why.
I think you know,
Or perhaps, you think you know.

Men are always O.K.,
Even when not.

We expect the worse,
Accept the worse,
Nonetheless,
We are forever unprepared.

Wearily, we cry,
In the bathroom, in private,
Lest sighs slip by,
We be unmasked,
Early warring, strife signs warning.

Copious, tho we weep
Before the mirror confessor,
It is relief untethered,
Unbinding of the feet,
An uncounting
Of beaded rosaries,
Of freshly fallen hail stones,
Of night times terrors
By dawn's early edition's light,
and welcomed.

But look for the mute tear,
The eye-cornered drop,
*** tat, that never drops,
But never ceases formation and
Reforming, over and over again,
In a state of perpetuity of reconstitution,

The tippy tear of an iceberg revealing,
And I see you peeping, wondering,
What is beneath

Look for:
the torn worm-eaten edges of spirit,
thrift shop bought, extra worn,
grieving lines neath the eyes,
where the salt has evaporated,
discolored the skin.
worry lines,
under and above,
browed mapped, furrowed boundaries.
the laugh line saga,
where better days are stored,
recalled, as well as recanted,
publicly, privately.

Why just men?

I don't know,
Perhaps,
it is all I know.


Jan 6, 2013

you called us the perfect match that one birthday, i felt my bag of seeds fall onto the open sidewalk, the twines ravel into discoid around my feet and make me think your words are water to be sipped from your open mouth, your hand snaked my waist as the roots pulled me farther away from the night you told me you don’t want to bend over backwards for my knees anymore, my Puma’s always gave you cold feet but my inner thighs were still Ghadames enough for you to set up a tent, or perhaps, steal one I thought I had saved for someone special.

you called us the perfect match that one day. i saw you leave that sentence in the fridge and sip them five days later, face wedged somewhere in between the biting humour of my psyche like a power station without a generator and the never ending exploitation of the little blonde girl named weakness who found a place in my fingertips so close to your face, in my wallet, in the place I once used to be able to rest, but these shoulders, opened orifices for black holes, like Falstaffian stars that caved in, that were anything but the empty space we occupied on the benches of basketball courts.

Three days after I started writing this and the urge to your clouds hover over me once again glistens like a poison apple I don’t want to confess to biting, because this pain is biting, and there is only space for one. I don’t want to eat the cake at three am and hope no one notices it again, because they will, they will see it from the icing on my lips and the grime on my fingertips. I miss your smell already thought it sells for 10 dollars at the corner shop. But its you, its you, its just you. Your kisses on my cheek after we fight. It is wrong that I consider this a sweet moment. It stems at you pouring my blood into a kettle and leaving it to cook. But this liquid will not evaporate.
But I know these tears will.

Do your legs ever hurt
After running away
From all those who care about you?

Do your arms ever hurt
From pushing away
All those who desperately want to love you?

Come, come you avian darlings
You hawks, gulls, wrens and turkey vulchers
Lo! I have a sacred place
Where mountains are made
From unburnt debris longing to be ashes

Come, come you airborne circlers
Wafting up on heat streams unseen
Your kin abide on Jealousy Lane
Thinking you are satisfied.   All your needs met
Without having to scour the ground

Those careless human benefactors, wry and grizzly
Poking fun at the sight
Of so many black shadows
Flies in swarms
Gnats attacking the pitcher’s mound in August in the swamp
Bees.  Caressing the Queen.  Delicate, Loving, Caring
How can we not anthropomorphize the cackle,

They arise out of curiosity
And stay out of satiation
When do the bats revivify the seeds of waste?
Why are there no jackals?
Who built the fence?

That glorious victory mound
Miccosukee burial ground
Green seeded with local grasses
Humbled with railroad trances
We, your dancing gymnopedies
Bow down.
Constant motion
In your service

Thank the wasteful trash purveyors,
May the dump rise high!

What should I write with words tonight?
Should I write that demons dance in flight?
Maybe the stars are no longer in the sky
But, that would only tell a lie

Don't be silly the stars never left the heavens
Although I'm sure I saw a dragon with heads of seven
Those around can't see the end has come
Yet Satan has put my heart under her thumb.

Remember the days that my life was love
Now the winds have made me void of
So passionate was her smile
Now, nothing could be more vile

Through such a tiny void he came
Before long I was the one to blame
Upon the sultry eyes I never laid
All the cards had done been played

Search hard for the fiery grave
Each day is such a close shave
A gentle knock on the doors of death
Screaming impatiently for the final breathe


They all doubt that death will show it's head
I can assure that I will soon be dead
Tomorrow's light is not my friend
Nothing more glorious than the end

Oh the miles she rode upon her back
As my nights went to a deeper black
A few short days from now
And the last rows I shall plow

From the earth will come no seed
The heavens did make the heart bleed
At the days end there will be no harvest
Words spoke louder and louder that I do not jest

As the page turns
And the hearts burn
Layer the clouds ever so thick
Never more have I been so sick

Make the bed upon the hill
And lay the love upon the seal
To the fool it may seem to bend
Yet only one prayer needs to send

The arms will pull close tonight
Finally an end to the horrific fright
Give it all the final seed
For, in pain her heart will bleed.