Choose another bitter morning routine -
whether from cold, coffee, or compression,
As in "man, I really need to just relax and decompress"
But without the last bit happening.
Choose to let it sink in until you can bite it off,
Choose the pressure because it feels like home,
Choose to dally, choose self-sabotage,
Choose kicking at the gears of your routine until
Something warps under the strain until
It fits like you never believed it would.
Choose the long way into work, a million faces
Nodding off behind their steering wheels,
The city's symphony still trying to get in tune,
Still trying to harmonize with, with, with, with
Whatever gets them to their job still sane, all
Trying to dance to beats only they can hear,
Howling out careworn verses they scrawled
By trailing their lives along the road:
The rhythm of the city is discord and hell.

You know it. I drop BOMBS like a B-52,
Drop psalms like a Bible off the back of the pew,
Stay calm, like the '80s stay trippin' on 'ludes,
Like the 90s stay trippin' bringin' me here to you.

That's how I do it, you know I keep it fluid,
I flow so smooth, all my verbiage is fluent,
No verse hits late, no syllables truant,
Got my angles all lined up, spitting congruence -

And I bet you didn't ask about my transcript, fam,
And I know you judged a book by its cover, ****,
And I bet you didn't think I'd call you out right here,
Start addressing with respect as though we're peers, no fear,
But here it is. Some folks stay out at night to reach for stars,
I go home to dodge the fools askin' me to drop bars.

The surface tenses, trembles,
A crystal mirror gazing skyward
As if waiting on the edges
Of a revelation

And when the sun's first gleaming
Carves down past the horizon
To shatter that tranquil blue

I glance at the fistful of pebbles
Clutched tight in my tender palm
And wonder if I could do it, too.

A sentimental mood draws down the night
To memory and reverie: a dream
Of you beneath the low theater light -
I see it now - the way your bright eyes gleam
Like sunrise dawning past the flashback haze
Of morning dew - the tension in your lips
Just after their betrayal - your searching gaze
Pursuing those three words you'd just let slip -
Could there be any wonder that I froze,
As stunned by your confession as the way
"I love you" welled within me, slowly rose
Until I couldn't bear the wait to say...
Well, there it is. Inelegant, sublime,
And no less true, viewed through the lens of time.

The bitter sting of winter's singing howl
Drives me to seek some deep and darkling place
Far from the blizzard's scorn, the wind's embrace,
Far from the beasts who bear its brunt to prowl
In search of prey. I'll clutch close to my cowl
And cloak, beneath which hides a younger face
Than most foresee. The forecast yields no trace
Of hope for safety 'pon the road. No foul,
My fellow traveler, don't fear from me.
I'll lay my knife down well before we meet,
Before we each choke down a share of ***
Or what would pass to warm camaraderie;
I know not where I've passed, to where I've come;
I simply beg a place to warm my feet.

Another dram of "philosophic wine."
For all the tumbler saps my fingers' heat,
Its glass holds little, now. Let me entreat:
I'll recollect the tremble down my spine
And spin my little web with every line
To catch your gaze, to bid you take a seat,
To bide my time until the next we meet,
When next we close, we kiss, we intertwine -
I fear it so. I fear I'll be transfixed,
All stunned and muted, stricken by your touch,
Or worse, the web won't draw a moment's gaze.
It must be offered, though it isn't much -
All love and lusts, desires intermixed -
On this, of all the ****** romantic days.

Sunset's horizon
Clots together green-glow haze
To coat the night sky:
As the city denies sleep,
It gifts us a strange blanket.

If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay -
The dawn dismissing you, I can't endure.
I'd rather you than any given day.
Each moment spent with you, in every way,
Surpasses expectations more and more.
If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay.
With dawn comes revelation - come what may,
I favor you in darkness, deep and pure.
I'd rather you than any given day.
Your pale commands the sky, a Milky Way;
Your blonde, like moonlight through an open door -
If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay.
I saw your beauty first - what's there to say? -
But looks alone could hardly seize my core.
I'd rather you than any given day.
"He's talking to himself," I'm sure they say.
Delusional? I doubt they'll find a cure.
If you're a dream, I hope the night will stay;
I'd rather you than any given day.

Tranquility
     Coalesced together
          From the morning:
The gulls sang -
     Screamed out, really -
          Seeking out fish
Where the vultures
     Poached roadkill
          Before autumn faded,
Where the sun's rising
     Sets the lake alight
          With a smoldering glow.
With each step taken
     Away from the threshold
          Of our little hearth,
The aura of your heat -
     Clinging as best it can -
            Fades and admits the chill
Of a winter morning,
     All its bright potential
          Wreathed in spent breath.
I wonder at each of them
     Spent stepping on, away
          From warmth waiting behind.

...It sprawls to the horizon, all this sea,
This blue-green brine all mirroring the sky,
The deeps devoid of light and charity,
Adrift and floating...
                                        What's become of me?
The waves still lap against me, no reprieve,
But fear and treading steady me a while.
I can't imagine how I'd ever leave -
I cast my gaze across the empty miles,
Revealing...
                        isolation, chill and grim
Until the dawn sweeps up above the brine:
A glimmer lighting up the ragged rim,
Then sea-foam verdigris gives way to shine.
And still I float below the gelid sky,
Adrift, a castaway within your eyes.

As melancholy seeps across the sky
Like sunset bleeding orange into blue,
The days to come all seem to pass me by,
Entrapped in reverie - I dream of you,
My wandering attentions yearning still
To hesitance and lingering, to slip
Against the feel of you. A bitter pill,
No less because it still evades my grip:
One wanders into winter absent fear,
The better still if warmth awaits at home.
It stands to reason: I can bear it here
So long as you'll be there. Perhaps we'll roam
The wintry wastes together, hand in hand,
All wreathed in summer, dearest firebrand.
Though summer quickly saps the will to move...
They languish in the sun's recumbent gaze,
All subtleties and whispers, naught to prove
And naught to do but bask away the days...
Elsewhere, the birdsong decorates the air,
A harmony from discord - life abounds -
And elsewhere still, the bees are buzzing there,
Alighting, tracing circles, winding round...
Elsewhere. But here, the summer glow remains
And furtive touches summon halting tones -
Then tones to murmurs - whimpers - soft refrains
Inviting - then demanding - then a groan...
The bees will call to bees, the birds to birds.
As summer comes again, I offer words.

How to begin?
A prison made of rock and chains; carrion birds hunger on high.
Fear demands an uncertainty which cannot be, here.
Distant crashing salt-spray wears away weathered cliffs,
inch by inch,
and with them it wears away...
There is no fear, not here.
If I should be seen running, it is not running away;
it is the slipping roll of a Sisyphus's rock,
the rattling snap of a Prometheus's chains,
and the headlong flight from the summit.

Silence wraps us up,
shoves us into the corners.
Winter's not this cold.
There might as well be a wall
for all the miles between us.

My hands have always lingered close to tools,
Each yet another means to cheat an end,
To ward away a break, to build, to mend.
Discarded carelessly, absent all rules
Or sympathy, their care makes me seem cruel.
But as I reach my desk, again to bend,
Again to pour what thoughts may condescend
To slip from mind to pen, my hand their mule...
I wonder in the silence as my thoughts
Go still and stiff without your drifting gaze,
The blooms of inspiration withered down
To bristling hedges in a maze I've wrought.
To know abuse, know Muses: when they frown,
Their tools quickly become their castaways.

Orlando furioso, in your name
I dare not raise a violent hand in jest;
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game.
If I’ll be guided by a candle’s flame,
Its light compassion, you’re a shroud, darkness.
Orlando furioso, in your name
And mine, on your behalf, I’ll carry shame;
I’ll chant a eulogy some might attest
I’ve learned too well. That pain is not a game
For two, for any number. What's to blame?
What burned away your wits? What was your test,
Orlando furioso? In your name
I can’t duck out, no hiding where I came
From, where I’ll die before I go. I’m blessed
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game,
Far more a lineage I’d hate to claim,
A leaving I’ll revile within my breast,
Orlando furioso! In your name
I’ve learned too well that pain is not a game.

The instruments, we carefully arrange
Atop the creaking dinner-table oak -
Remember, if you get to feeling strange,
You'd better just forget it. Go for broke.
The ritual's a silly little trip,
But easy to forget. You take a seat,
You angle all the papers, get a grip,
And...
          And then...
You grip the pen and try to - hey, shut up.
I don't know. You can't force it, right?
You just have to let it... let it...
It's supposed to work, but
It's all just falling apart and there's no,
there's no rhyme, nothing, it's a mess
and, I don't know, just let it... ugh.

A family comes together all hoping and smiling
over the cheap thanksgiving turkey trying not to
stare toward the empty seat at the table
until the phone rings. Then all bets are off.

Two Thanksgiving miracles this year:
a liver for a grandfather, a plane ticket for a mother.
Thank God we'll still make rent! We'll still make rent.
An idiot child says "I'll talk to you soon. I'll see you soon"
like he doesn't understand the gravity of the old man's hollow wheezing.
Everything falls inwards in time.
But one ticket means the four kids will have to wait,
hold down the fort, have faith. So they wait with their faith.

The sun rises. An idiot child, an aspiring poet,
almost thinks it glints off a surgeon's blade.
He mistakes the glare, here. Scythe. Not scalpel.

So when the phone's ringing wakes the whole house,
he rushes to pick up, to hear the good news:
a wife sobbing
and crying
and "he's gone"

And an idiot child, an aspiring teacher, cannot hide this.
Three faces look up to him as he pulls them close
And teaches them a bit of wisdom he wanted to hide forever.
Here, he watches over them like an owl, scared to blink
while elsewhere, God, like a vulture, does as He pleases
and elsewhere, a mother holds back enough tears to drive home.

Years pass. I wonder. My mind wanders.
I remember my lips and the scythe and
cutting out a piece of hope that should've bloomed.
I know this: maybe it was mercy. The hope went necrotic.
It had to be rejected. It was not sustainable.
It could not be.

even as I lift it like a wounded bird off pavement,
out of its case and against my chest
as my heart cradles it close and my hand presses it away.
I don't let it in yet. I can't. Not yet. Maybe never.
The viola sits atop my knee and waits for me.

And they know - I know they know - how long it's been
From my own lips, lips that once would hum along
As younger fingers danced up and down that ebony stage...

It's nothing to me now, but it's a gift, so it's everything.

...they'd dance for hours, because I loved it.
I grew around it and it grew through me,
This need I could never share without seeming crazy
And maybe I was.
I loved the feel of it, the sound of it,
like a thunderstorm waiting just for me,
in the palm of my hand

like the one turning the viola atop my knee.
The strings face outward. When the time comes to play,
She will turn a graceful arc until the cool of her rib
rests against my shoulder like a lover's temple,
her eyes turned up to wait for me
to realize just how long it's been.