From across the hall, I watched her double
over Coleridge, sympathizing as she looked
up to the thin curtain filtering the street-light
universe past the pane held in hot glue.
The click-heels, car barks, ceaseless L-Train
turnstiles, tipsy choirs in cracked-door taverns,
hinges, keys on carabiners, bus hydraulics,
the wall clock, and her fingers caressing the page.
She loved a soft wind carrying birdsong
through screen doors and dowel chimes.
She used to leave her shoes lace-tangled
by the key rack until she saw glass pollen
sparkling in a caged tulip blossom.
She raised the book and sullenly whispered
the last stanza of Frost at Midnight
into the spine, wondering how anyone
could live away from impressionist-dandelion
forests, children's plastic toys in the front yard,
and church bells at every hour.

I wondered the same thing.

—For Tom Surdam

Town's quiet—
aside from the timid
waltz of a porch-swing
wind chime and the backyard cricket
kingdoms. I passed the funeral
apartments, the static cat,
and the bar stool where my uncle
wore his soul sore on steel strings
in a wooden shot glass.
He was a good man, a cigarette
saint with a pacemaker scab. A tavern
sweetheart with a memory made
of drink chips and Marlboro foil.

I saw an asphalt toad on the bridge
bathing in the ghost glint of the only
stop light in town beside another
that was smeared like house paint
just inches from the storm drain,
from home.

She sat, back to the paint-drip
furnace and the little, drywall
mountain beneath the single-
pane sun. Though we were hunched
over a tablecloth of ink and Xerox
study guides, I knew we were there
with our legs swung over, dripping
parallel to the faults in the face
where it threatened to split itself
and leak sweet, Colombian dirt.
We could feel the push of fifty million
coffee grounds at our steamed-milk heels
and the edge crumbling off into teaspoons,
but we didn't move.

We watched the teal-crystal sky
boil over instead.

I made notes of docking posts
pointing out to murky reflections
of tourists that didn’t have time
for a souvenir mug or a picture
with a black trumpeter content with his brass,
and nothing else, blowing life into the seagull
sky, making the clouds pop and drop spray-
mist jazz, which accompanied his trumpet
with a gentle washboard scrape.
He beat his heel to the thousand pin-drops
of passerby earrings, crab sweatpant draw-
strings, and trawl nets dissolving into the sea.
Baltimore filled the margins
of a travel notebook alongside
pencil sketches of the Aquarium,
Prufrockian split claws
wrapped in algae bandages,
that homeless man weakly thumbing
through a pocket bible, the 32
cents wearing sea salt jackets,
and my cold girlfriend pulling on patron
sweaters in an art museum closet.
But it’s all a gimmick.
It’s $22 crab cakes
and paint-splatter-printed
sweatshirts that say New York
or D.C. or Everything on a Disposable
Kodak Camera.

Tired of the idea, I threw the page
over the edge, hoping to drown
it in green, but I never heard it hit
the water. I braced myself on a life
ring rack, leaned over,
and watched it settle into a natural
barge of dead leaves and orange peels
while sea foam circled
it like a bed skirt that’s only
noticed for the few seconds spent stripping
down before going to sleep
just to wake up to rain on the Royal Sonesta,
kids racing down the hall, the obligatory
alarm clock,
and the black trumpeter’s groove
four floors down.

I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray
legs, counting the khaki strands
in the beaded curtain that dices
the hallway up into barcodes. The table
by the fridge is a cable spool lead-
painted to match the molding. Around
it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal
fold-out from a SoHo dumpster,
a spill-trayless booster seat,
and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s
wearing second-hand sport coats
with seam stitches as loose as telephone
wires tacked up with undersized lapel
pins.

**** Capitalism. **** Disco.
Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint.
Bleed *******. Smoke Local.
Espresso, Or Genocide.
Dresden Was A Lie.
Shrink-Wrap It All.

Everyone is clustered around the cinder-
block stand record player, grooving
to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide
change beneath the broken-oar ceiling
fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves
tight like corporate ties to keep their throats
from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco,
and *******. Amid their rubber flower talk,
I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing
Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some
guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary
Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of.

They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook
while I skim through a copy of the Onion,
teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.

I found the class fish wrapped in single-ply
tissue and pencil sharpener refuse,
her poinsettia-sunset scales picked clean,
gathered in a Styrofoam cup. Her coral
fins crumbled, leaving rough edges like split
chalk or hopscotch gravel. Her last ocean
was the cover of a Nat Geo from
1995. Easing my fingers
beneath the matchstick spine, I deftly walked
to my desk, and laid her on construction
paper. I casted her slivered ribcage
in glue before I poured the scales, hoping
she'd triumphantly flick some harmless fire
when she woke, but she just laid there, shining.

—Chet Baker, '88

I put The Lost Tapes
on while I shaved my face, inching
around two chin nicks turning
the lather into the remnants of a strawberry
shortcake paper plate soak-through.
I tapped my Chucks on the pink,
checkered floor to the cymbals.
Heel toe, heel toe strut,
stopping every few measures
to re-tuck my herringbone-detail
tie beneath my collar. I heard
his trumpet wail, and mimicked
it on the rusted shower rod like a cheap
snare, deep drumstick strikes patched
with meat tape. I carefully ran the flexed
blade beneath my cheekbone
like a piano-park saunter, trying not to step
on the drummer’s heels ‘cause he hits
it just right. And the brass birds
are just right. The bench creaks, the cinder
snaps, the twilit fountain dance, the pop-
skip needle, the slick floor, the jazz faucet,
and the shave
are all just right.

I write poetry, drink coffee,
talk art, dig cinema,
wear t-shirts without graphics,
t-shirts without tags,
and screen-print my to-do lists
on everything.
I say all this as I blow-dry
the temporary tattoo on my wrist.

You've got a flat screen mounted
on your kitchen wall with zip
ties and chewing gum.
There's an ashtray by your left
wrist, and a tattoo on your right
of a midnight street light sunshine
shine
down
on a reupholstered love seat,
only used twice: once for the Eisenhowers,
once for last weekend watching Seinfeld
reruns, putting out Sonomas and *** talk
on the twill-like cushions in that dank
basement apartment w/ poster'd brick
walls.
Slayer, Sinatra, Sabbath, Springsteen,
a Space Cowboy, and something Sanskrit
above your box-springless mattress
about the cosmos spitting hellfire
next month because we didn't sacrifice
crumpled dollars yesterday, or Clinton
in the '90s. There are masses of humans paying
for the market collapse that sent 800,000
oranges rolling into the street, cold.
God-fearing couples are abstaining from ***
to save their souls from the ******
Rapture. Cable cords are being unplugged
in the middle of A Christmas Story so people
can hang themselves from church steeples
to avoid ruining their Chuck Taylor Loafer
Tennis Shoes in the molten **** suffocating
saplings and parking meters. Christ'll save
the righteous ones, the ones strung up closest
to the bell tower.

The parish hall radio says salvation's
only as good as a new haircut.
And that we should all pick up the warped
acoustic guitar in the cellar, and try
to form barre chords with our swollen
knuckles and arthritic wrists now
because punk music will be dead tomorrow.
Hell, the postman will be dead tomorrow,
and every little postcard, paycheck, and print
coupon he's carrying will be dead, too.

There is an ashtray by your left wrist,
and a tattoo on your right.

—For Téa Page

That was Téa’s window—third floor,
the one with the burnt-
sienna box of skeletal moss-
roses dangling over the side,
a cloth curtain tacked open,
and a padded chair—royal
blue against the white drywall.
She said she used to watch
Coudersport traffic tumble dry
on low past Charles Cole,
quickly sketching sedans
and minivans as they left the frame.

She told me all this at a high-school
basketball game, beneath a cork
board plastered with black-and-white
portraits of track girls with crochet
hooks for collarbones.

She showed me the healing scars
where she dug Swingline staples
into her ankle, like mismatched
thread in a worn blanket.
Téa was the thread.
Her parents wove her in
and out of psych wards, therapists’
notes, and Prozac prescription carbon
copies. Over: Dad snapping peanut necks in a bar somewhere.
    Under: Mom Keystone-soaked on the couch.
                    Over back to that third-floor window:
the only place Téa felt at home,
though I’ve never seen it—
I never even gave her my name.

I painted the bedposts and bedside whiteboard
beside the baseboard, the outlet occupied
by a power cord, the bookshelf, both coffeemakers,
the power strip duct-taped to the brick wall,
the bush outside, the sidewalks, the brick,
the steel fences separating traffic
babble from pedestrian small talk,
then filled the wall in, gave the oak posts
enough depth to hold up four coats,
a backpack, and a shoe lace, swirled
in the condoms and coffee rings
inside the microwave, sketched a Sears
Apple-Jack-colored record player plugged
in, turning dusted Beatles records
like the cosmos, like the snow, squirrel-
hair, and leather-leaf bush outside.
I masked off the concrete, the asphalt,
and construction yard sidewalks,
penciling dead mosquitoes in the cracks
and $2.39 Rock Salt Slush along the edges.
I measured the fence, so each stake hit
the vanishing point like cigarette butts
in cement cereal bowls of cat litter.

But I ran out of paint before I could fill
the mouths of motorist **** yous,
the car barks chasing dogs
to the chain-link guard rail,
doorbells and mailbox flags
being flipped up, pay phones
clashing on metal receivers,
church bells, footsteps,
some guy breathing,
and a red-light button Wait.

Maybe it’s for the best.

We had coffee last Wednesday.
She took hers black,
like her blouse, its buttons,
right-wrist bangles,
but not her earrings.
They were basil, wrapped
in a blue pool liner,
and glazed with July-sky.

The painstakingly swept seven-
o'clock tile floor was a February
beach by one: beige coast cloaked
by footstep salt dance mats,
and slush like snow cones
tossed on the boardwalk.

Lunch rush was hell for the new girl,
stacking foamed cappuccino cups
and stirring spoons in a broken-handled
bus tub while trying not to slip
on soft ice and discarded lemon
wedges. She took our mugs,
and told us about a guy

—Dave, she said. I don't know.—who sat
with his friend, comparing *** to work
over the rusted cabinet tracks
of his warped fork scraping
his egg-caked plate.
Dave's friend was leaned in
with a cocked grin waiting
for one of Dave's "Classic Dave" punchlines,

which I'm guessing are all witty,
the funniest *******
things you've ever heard,
but there wasn't one
this time

because there's nothing funny about
a ***** intern cringing beneath the weight
of fat Dave and his brick
paperweight jammed in her back.

I rolled my ankle last month,
but didn't pay much attention
to the swelling because it didn't feel
like nougat flesh with a pushpin
center. It felt like skin, tendons,
and fishnet bones.
But now, when I make my bed,
I have to waste two or three
soft pillows at the foot of it.
So, I'm left with the burgundy ones
from the couch that I tried to patch
with boot liner and an eighth-grade
comprehension of sewing.
I stuck a rat's thimble on my ring
finger, so I could push the straw-thin
needle through the beefy seam.
No such luck.
Finished the stitching
with a Band-Aid beneath
the thimble. And I left
the cheetah-print liner hanging
off like a piece of skin,
hoping it'd fix itself.

I took Fifth Street home last night—
two blocks back from the corner
store selling dry-mouth Camels
cheaper than the shop downtown.
Away from the newspaper boxes
selling the Gazette, Times,
Tribune, Post, Weekly, Daily,
Whatever for one dollar
and fifty cents a pop.

The crumbling sidewalks
took the glare of porch lights
and slid with 'em the length
of this rusted chain-link
fence spanning four yards,
three front doors, two
pipe railings, and a doghouse.

The ice salt sprinkled
from the stoops earlier that day
made the glasswalk melt
and bubble up, popping
like Christmas bulbs
beneath my shoes.

-Parsley flakes
-Cheap pens
-Memo notebook
-Breaded fish filets
-1% milk
-Bleach for the bathroom floor
-Brillo pads
-Italian Wedding soup
-Instant meals
-Pushpins
-2 cans of fruit cocktail

      Man, I grew up on fruit cocktail.
      Waxy cherries, see-through grapes, grain pineapples,
      and wrinkled peaches bathing in thick syrup,
      waiting to see 1990s kitchen lights.

      But it probably costs $2, or more, now.
     And I've got a car I need to keep runnin',
      a house I gotta keep standin',
      a job I have to keep goin' to /
      keep bustin' my *** for.
      I guess I can see how things go
      in the next few years.
      Maybe it'll be in paste form then.

—Ray Barbee, 1971 -

Barbee's stuff just hits, sounds
straight like a bee-line back
through bedrooms, garages, picks.

Back to when it was man
manipulating ma-
chine, and not the other

way 'round. Just human hands,
white nails, and some strings,
plucking.

And just one here-and-there
hi-hat and one woodblock.
The simple sound of it,

just pins for the groove
to move on.

Almost blue
like some stained-glass Christ
that never felt the saving sun burn
his caulked stigmata soft like
cinnamon toothpaste in the creek
bed.
Were his robes Robin's Egg, or Giotto
like the clergy wanted?
And when their fake pearl bracelets
rattled, fishing out cheap change
from brass-clasp purses,
did Christ stoop to gather
the sixty-something-year-old pennies
from in-between the arm rests
while they sifted through
the silver?

Almost blue
like a southern / western overcast
that never calls New York in advance
to schedule time to sweep up
the sky, standing on cold water flats.
Buys a Southwestern ticket straight thru,
walks past Madison marketing
her ***** underwear to anyone—everyone—,
buzzes in, third floor, apartment B-6,
but the door's locked, and the canary
curtains dance out the window like a house
fire.

Almost blue
like the Dawn dish soap
glass I neglect to rinse well.
But more like a lazy oil stream in a gas station
parking lot beneath the perforated banners
yakking in the still-cold March midday
about $12 sheet pizzas or unlimited
free coffee for $1.19 a refill.

Money better spent on a pack of Marlboro
Blues saxophone squeal by the plastic-
wrapped firewood by the almost-
blue wiper fluid and the antifreeze peaches.

Third floor psych ward window lookout,
second from the right on the east side.
Best seat available, padded, from 1934.
Backrest Swingline-stapled to the faux-
Maple leg support 2 x 4s. Beige bedspread,
white walls blend into the door threshold
that people are honeymoon'd
through kicking the aids, clawing at their eyes.

But Téa sat there watching the overcast
shadows sweep the sky heavily
like the watercolor paintings on the group
room plastic table where ******-off
preteens paint Dad beating them,
or Sis dying in a car crash.

Téa just sat there while the stagnant Valley
tumbled dry low outside, tuning out
a black patient behind her riling-up
another fight with a plastic-hinged
particleboard door.

Swinging.

All I want is a stick-up light, so I can read at night,
between my bedpost and bedside whiteboard
beside the baseboard,
outlet occupied by a black power cord,
the bookshelf, both coffeemakers,
the power strip duct-taped to the cream brick wall,
the bush outside,
the sidewalks, the brick walks,
the burnt caramel steel fences separating Washington babble
from Lyco small talk.

With one touch,
I’m lying against the wall
on acrylic-painted stretched canvases,
photo booth strips, a brick and sky scene,
gouache and ink sketches, that Giant
receipt with teal pen in the margins,
and developed photos of storm
troopers, ****** microwaves,
and forklifts moving trash sofas
around from film class.

I pushed aside a plastic box
of plastic-backed thumbtacks,
a half-roll of Scotch tape,
and a paperclipped stack
of edited verse to write
a letter to you.
It went something like this:

Dear Audrey,
     No, that's too informal.
     Just her first name would imply
     our friendship didn't mean anything.
                     What about
Dear Mrs. Barber?
     Way too formal. Like, am I going
     to follow it with "can Billy come out
     to play," or "I'm sorry I threw snowballs
     at the side of your house," or "I apologize
     for skipping your class to pop Tums
     in the nurse's office."
                     Maybe
Dear Audrey Barber.
     Something about the sounds
     doesn't feel right. The Ds and Bs
     hit the eardrum weird, like marsh-
     mallows or caramel toffee.
     They're just too thick.
Dear Audrey Sofield Barber,
          There we go.
     It's been a pleasure knowing you this past year
     or so. In a way, I regret being there for the box-
     moving and the computer troubleshooting,
     but not for the sidewalk shoveling or book editing.
     Or driving you to Elmira Corning Airport to pick
     up your daughter. I'm an English writing tutor here—.

     Never mind. How's your book doing? I'm sure it's a hit.
     Enjoy Hawaii.
Sincerely,
     C. S. Cizek (Christopher)
    
P. S. I plan to purchase "Wellsboro Roots" over the summer
         and relive our conversations in Wellsboro over coffee
         and cheap sugar.

Thank you for the honor.

Sometimes on the way out of Giant,
I'll spend some time freeing change
from the receipt-paper
bindle in my coat pocket
for one two-twist mystery prize
from a Folz machine.

Two quarters:
Enough for a sapphire ring and a cheap
laugh while I juggle coffee-cream cartons,
a sack of December oranges, Certs,
cinnamon mouthwash, a dented can
of green beans 'cause it's cheaper,
red toothpicks, Ziploc bags, a barbecue
chicken TV dinner, Noxzema, a 32-case
of Poland Spring water, a Valentine's
Hallmark card and envelope, a bottle
of pink grapefruit Perrier,
two quick picks for Cash 5,
gluten-free potato chips, garlic salt,
some cumin for $2.82, and a copy
of Vogue.

I strap my groceries in the passenger seat,
and see them sitting straight up as I had,
childishly marveling at the lush
maple leaves washing the windshield
edges in green, leaving helicopters
and dew trails.

She and I watched slug trails
beneath mustard streetlights glisten
like Berger Lake.
Bright as the last cigarette my grandma snuffed out in a smokeless ash tray.
Bright as the first line of road flares that separated me from a burning Taurus.
Bright as the quarter my grandpa gave me for the Folz machine in the Sylvania.
And bright as the emerald ring I showed him.

Sometimes on the way out of Giant,
I’ll spend time freeing change
from the receipt paper
bindle in my coat pocket
for one two-twist mystery prize
from a Folz machine.

Two quarters:
just enough for a plastic, sapphire ring and a cheap
laugh while I juggle coffee cream cartons in both arms.

I strap them in the passenger seat,
sharing it as my sister
and I had just to sit up straight
and marvel at the maple branches
washing the windshield in green,
leaving helicopters and dew trails.

We watched slug trails glisten
like Berger Lake water
beneath the incandescent streetlight.
Bright like the last cigarette my grandma snuffed out
in a smokeless ash tray.
Bright like the first halogen headlights that stung my retinas.
Bright like the quarter my grandpa gave me for the Folz machine
in the Sylvania.
And bright like the plastic, emerald ring I showed him.

Every now and then,
I'll pop two quarters into Lucky
Lucky Me! for a plastic ring
and a cheap laugh
on my way out of Giant, juggling
cream cartons in both arms.

And I love
them beside me in the passenger
seat, sharing it like two children
that sit up straight just to marvel
in the maple branches washing
the windshield in green.

But then slouch back when law
firms and Wells Fargo flood
the forest floor, trapping
blue birds and black owls
in one-way glass cages,
so all they can do is look forward
back in on themselves slowly
splintering into subsidiaries.

Commuters and Armani suits
bounce their Starbucks cups
off each set of cell bars.
"Can you hear me now,"
2002 asks us, but no reply.

'Cause it's no good.
There's no use in communicating
with social butterflies
when their wings are folded
like the cardboard boxes
we're packing with paperbacks,
'cause we'd rather stack tabs
than physical photo albums.

The one on top with the burgundy
felt cover. Yeah, that one. Flip
three pages back to that picture
of us at prom in '96 with that faux
sapphire glistening on your hand
from the heat lamps overhead
and the disposable photo flash
we couldn't turn off.

I walked into the laundry room
to a couple folding into each other.
Her chartreuse camisole and his
evergreen boxers pined for a bough
break in the noise of twenty-something
cents rattling in the dryers.  
They talked about peeling off
and sorting each other's skin layers
by darks and lights, trying to find
a neutral blush they could blend on.  

My towels had three minutes
left on the spin cycle, so I walked past them into the dim-lit room, took
a seat on a dryer, and turned around
to face the cream brick wall and
pipes cutting on a diagonal, dividing
it into lights and darks.

No mad coffee shop
emotions make time real be-
tween jazz consciousness—
and the taste of sound howls for
soul on city gas
beaches that work naked like
***, like sleep; selling
ev'ry beatnik book in some
village.

Cats improvise god in barely-there clubs,
so cigarette smoke music can be cool forever.
The slide guitar, gutter trombones, the sax,
drums beat into submission, and
that voice scatting softly but strong
like hail in the scrap yard.

Be-bop skiddly bop do-*** skiddly bop.

Those lips crack off dryer barrels, blender bases,
alarm clock cord plugs rapping on the dumpster.
Those teeth chew out heels on pavement, police
tires on gravel driveways, the 8:15 bus' hiss hydraulics.
That soul.
His soul.
Is just that.

Our first time was in a honey-colored
Cadillac on the caramel seat covers.
My hair was combed back;
yours was corkscrews at the ends
of fine blushes both ways.

I forced my razor knife down
into an anniversary coffee cup
crammed with pens, pencils,
two pairs of scissors, and one
roll of color film I'm afraid
to develop. I jammed it in blade-
up so I'd have to deal
with the hard part first
like a blank page before
an accidental tongue slip
drips ink and makes the page
pretty. Some tree I've never met
and some pink dye died for me
to cover this pressed pulp
in illegible squiggles;

and I'll be
                  ****** if I let it down.
'cause I'm drawn to things
without opinions. Sketchbooks,
inkwells, rubber band bracelets,
a mixed-nut dragonfly rested
on my trampoline net. // Cut it
free // cut it loose.

Find a brick behind the shed
and smash it dead,—preteen me—
young Wordsworth me.
I pulled the sepia tape from Queen
cassettes and finished the glossy
plastic off with a vise grip in Dad's truck.
Old Brucey had mustard pinstripes
down the driver's side, all the way down
to the Germania General Store.

He was a blur to me before I could buy
my own Dreamsicles. Passing the chicken feed
and the resident, caged dachshund couple,
I saw his face for the first time. Seventeen-years-
old, staring at my grandpa through picture
and plate glass panes.

The angels he swore were real—the ones he payed,
praised, and prayed for every Sunday and everyday
the sun shined and everyday it didn't—

were now less deserving of heaven.

St. Eulalia's gushed cinnamon disks
engulfed in licorice. The smoke stacks
were now purely cosmetic. The M & M roofs melted, heaped thick,
and dripped charred caramel turtles
to the Easter grass below.  Maybe the
chocolate cross on the steeple
is filled with fudge, maybe it's not.

I sit at a two-top by myself
by the bar. I draw on the back
of a bill with a cheap pen I found
clicked in a foam cup upstairs.
I draw flat cars, flat poles,
flat humans. I give them swirl
hair and no fists.
They are all alike.
The bartender comes over and tells
me that the bar is closed. I hold
my left hand up to him and draw
the sky. I fill it with carbon pink stars
and coffee nebulae. Saturn's rings
are made of cornbread crumbs.

I blow a straw paper comet across the galaxy.

I drew pants out of my backpack
like a well bucket brimming pennies.
Legs upon legs tied together
in a campfire circle and sitting
on moss'd rocks, listening to rock
music, drinking Rolling Rock,
and nothing else. I pulled up
on inseams to a single black
pocket liner sixteen cents richer,
but the fire. Oh, that fire, flames whipping
weaker than slave drivers weaker
than the wind bailing low-lying
lake water to the faux Dover beach
mound of sand by the mud shore
like the crayfish were drowning.
The sand was like trampled
"welcome" mats worn-in by sidestepping
horseshoe players setting down
their tin cans by the mound.
A pitching machine on the pitcher's mound.
Machines have made the big leagues.
I quit baseball when Coach Seth castrated
my half-friends with a robot.
Some took red stitches to the face,
the lucky ones. But the fire—if you could consider
a Bunsen burner-esque flame a fire—turned
our burnt sienna bottles into burning-out beacons,
tiki torches between pine trees, street lamps
kicking off in four hours, a box of matches,
and a lightning bug's ***.

Gunmetal Christmas socks pulled
past the calf like go-getter high school
girls "rocking" rainbow ******* below
the belt loops. I never went a day
without seeing short shorts and socks
replacing pant legs with a gap at the knee
to breathe. Downplay X-mas with black
jeans thinning 'bove the knees. I guess
it's payback for all the surly Santas
paid per nervous child lapdance
that got ******* out of $1.50
because I walked away.
For all the St. Nicks breathing pressurized
bourbon on little kids' wishlists.
Thread through a burgundy belt frayed
by the buckle teeth. And I'm sure this is really
burgundy, probably the only burgundy I never
questioned much, unless the manufacturer's
lying to me. Unless it's really a flexible case
for wild circuits and tiny open mics in bars
going on 'round the clock. Not just Tuesdays.
Fiber optics around my waist transmitting
telephone transmissions and cybernetic ****
monitoring my hips and what my **** does.
And my thoughts; they're ******* taking
my thoughts. Precious poetry lines lost
to the scarcity of pens in my car, when I'll
shave next, whether or not I want a burr grinder,
if I'll break glasses at work and have to drink
the glitters like iced tea from the hardwood floor.
Maybe I'll cut my gums. Maybe my tongue'll
become a chandelier butterfly and carry
me to Coudersport or Elmira or Nowhere
to watch pregnant teenagers push flat-tire
shopping carts ******-shaking in the newborn
section. Their babies are spitting up Gerber plans
Mom has never considered. Baby's just a rock rolling
down the birth canal that may someday end up
a boulder in a state park.

You hacks wouldn't know
real poetry if it ****** you.

My mom tried to sweep
clean the cigarette burns on the armrest,
and turned the plastic-cracked
lampshade away from rare houseguests.
The arrow-shaped gap melted
at the middle and leaked down
the shade like a stopped-
up gutter. Climbing out her bedroom
window, she knelt on the rotten
mint shingles and tossed matted
maple leaves as indiscriminately
as rock salt onto the glassy sidewalk
drinking in the overhead halo
of Penelec Electric and pine needles.

Needles—

The red biohazard suitcase
in the dining room is packed
full for distribution
in a Philadelphian switchyard.

City of Brotherly Burning Barrels
and railroad-tie benches—
but not for dressing up suburban
meditation gardens, or housing
yellow jackets and half-melted
Army men. For sitting, sleeping,
and supplying calf splinters
for small talk along the Schuylkill
River, watching the cell lights
of Eastern State get swallowed
whole by the systematic tall grass,
one by one, thanking some blessed
something for their freedom
in the boxcars, their *** and Lucifer
matches, and each other.

Cool Daddy-os dig free
between a highway from then
breathing out youth,

breathing in universe,
holding their poetry guts,
letting them swell.

Swell big balloon pin *****
pop splatter ink notebook.
Words, words, planned lines.*

The cursive coffee house
where people yak metaphors
is congress. Mad.

And I'm a saucer cat
deciding to run, or burn,
when the cup tips.

And I'm the last few lights
radiating false security
on highway cars.

And I'm the road, hoarding
rubber tires and soda cans
for newish guard rails.

And I am oak trees mourning
fallen brothers, lovers 'cause
we all fall the same.

It all goes the same way.  
It all swells, pops, talks, burns, and
falls the same way.

Man, if there was ever a time
where those two hands mattered
more than just pointing
out the obvious or tracing vague
memories on paper in swoops,
zig-zags, draw-backs, or the capital
cursive "Q" that still eludes me, it's
now. 6:26 A.M., and I haven't slowed
down since 9:20 yesterday
when my girlfriend gallivanted
about her room, her ******* perked
before me.
*******, she looked so good.
We, my friends and I,—the ones
I wrapped in cellophane and tissue
paper two years ago to take
out, reminisce, and put back
whenever I forgot their faces—
got in my boat of a car / bathroom
tile white / and drove through
thick I-80 fog to search South
Side for Santa's front rotor biplane
dropping Christmas joy mustard
gas down molded-brick, soot-caked
chimneys to get people in the mood
for a day or two before the egg nog's
spiced *** negligee stopped feeding
their stocking stuffer lungs and the blisters
that decked the halls like boughs of death.
Then we sat—I, uncomfortably on my car
keys,—by the bar, drinking refills that filled
the IBM-print bill $60 worth of Sprite Pepsi
Huckleberry Lemonade. My one friend
leaned over our cornucopia of unfinished
wings and said that he and the bartender
had been exchanging loaded gun glances.

Neither would ease the trigger,
or even aim well.

She could've been eyeing the waitresses
working the floor like a dart game.
Sharp when your drink's low and feathered
by pathetic tips. We stopped by Lyco. Lynn—
softly steeled—still sung her circular saw blues.
Baby, don't cut me so deep. Just let my girders
meet the street. Let me feel small trees and admire
nice cars signing their makes in last week's thin snow.
We took away two cups of coffee, some Modernist talk,
and a salt & pepper flannel past Market, Maynard,
and slowly spoiling milk to the Mansfield exit.
Over the occasional window defrosting,
we talked premature families, North Carolina
classmates, prison sentences, and that MU
***** who hates my guts. They're out there,
and we're here in this box going seventy-five
and skipping exits like rope.
Double-dutch dual-enrollment college credit
transfers, losing Foundation money talks
****, but can't leave her grudges on the rock
salt steps we sulked up. Hallways with
carpets and our cars parked poolside,
but we chose air conditioning over breast-
strokes. My God, would some lonely preteens
**** for that. Metal detectors to detect
our insecurities and greasy faces full
of acne acne potential. Potential some
didn't use. Potential that went wasted.
Potential that could've gotten them out
of this miserable hole, but instead rented
them out a sad shack on the outskirts—
nowhere near suburbs—of town
where they could inhale
the Ox Yoke's smoke stack laying fog
down to the county line.
Galeton High School, regrettably,
here's to you.

This guy was on the bar steps,
but mentally by the tap, mentally
lip-locked with a long neck lover
mentally on a beach  in Vietnam.
"Red Beach Two," I swear he said.
It could've been "we beat you,"
aimed at the Vietnamerican
bartender straining Manhattan
Projects for faceless suits toasting
by the jukebox beating out Springsteen.
Something about a bomb, millions of lives,
and innocent Satan. But that war's over now.
This guy must have seen some ****
because he kept his arms down
and eyes at attention like a death
march. He watched everything
like a liquid sky slowly draining,
leaving the Sun tacked up
to the cosmos. He pushed the crescent
moon over to get a better look
at Andromeda's guts, and tore
a hole in the pool lining. He revealed
more ocean with U-boats and Albatrosses
and the Enola Gay sobbing for what it had done.
And bombs / bombs / bombs. And Nagasaki,
we did it. It's our fault. "We're sorry"
spokesung to the beat of a two-finger
tremolo on a stretched hide drum.
And Hiroshima, we're sorry. We didn't know,
but we did. WE ******* KNEW ALL ALONG.
We made the bomb, we tested it in the desert,
we put a bow on it, and left it on your doorstep.
We left it beneath the arch. THE ARCH.
That arch I've seen in my dreams.
This guy,
broke and begging for a beer,
has seen it.
He is it.
He was the atom bomb and the bomber
and Hiroshima and the universe.
He is it.

8:30 A.M.

She wakes him up with breakfast
on the night stand.
Two eggs over-easy and lightly burnt
on the bottom so the yolks don't run,
two pieces of sourdough toast cut
diagonally, and a cup of coffee /
no sugar, no cream / brewed
at 8:15, two hours after
she got up to clean the house.
She mopped the floors twice,
tied the trash bags and set
them at the curb. She tested, dusted,
and retested the stagnant ceiling fans.
She vacuumed the rugs and wiped
down all wood, granite, and steel
surfaces.

She lemon Pledges allegiance to him.

While he's at work, she cleans his laundry.
She clean-presses his button-ups, making
sure to cut any stray threads and neatly
mend any loose seams. She irons a firm
crease in his pants and shines his all-black
wingtips.     She doesn't use Kiwi. Something high-class
                      that I've never heard of.
When he comes home and sets his briefcase
near the furnace vent to sulk in his leather
chair, she consoles him. She pulls the lace hem
of her sundress to her waist and ***** his ****
until he comes to his senses.
You look like a billion-dollar, gold-plated
monument feeding the world rosegold birdseed
from your immaculate palm binding my hair
like a Dutch Warmblood's tail, darling.
She dabs the corners of her mouth trying
not to smudge her lipstick, straightens
her dress, and hurries off to wash
his car.

Write everyday.
Write everyday no matter what.
Write even at a loss for words.
Write down the sounds.

I make notes of the plane crashes
I've never heard, the brook trout
that never shook pond water
onto the brittle grass when I didn't
catch it, or the thunder cup coil
I keep kneeing trying to give the overcast
over the mountain something to compete
with.

And I'm not sorry.
       I'm not.      I'm not sorry that my
reborn Christian best    friend    has   seen the    light,
and I still scoff when people pray over potatoes.
And I only believe in plastic Polaroid postcards
from last decade timestamped in the white space
with Bic black ink.
I'm not sorry for that.

And truth is, I've never washed this black shirt;
just hung it hoping that moths' would ****
the sweat spots and leave
the fabric.

I clenched the gold cap beneath
my ring finger from the glass green
bottle occupying my lips driving
down the Marsh Creek bridge.
I wanted to relate / to be relatable /
relative to the sedans, and seatbelts
too tight to breathe, passing me.

At the end of the bridge, where there was no chance
of drowning and the road color changed, I parked
in the driveway of a wooden house. Its blinds
were up, shades pulled apart with two hands
like gas station freezer doors, leaving them
vulnerable to the hiss of semi truck tractor
trailer high beams slicing through fifty +
raindrops per second going a few miles shy
of sixty-five, yet the people inside moved so freely.
I  sat Indian-style—a term I learned at four
then learned it to be racist at fourteen—
in their driveway, and ate the gravel
they walked on trying to taste security
because all I'd had in the last few hours
were plates of refried fear.

Fear of audit, of my teeth breaking off,
and of ending up like Eric Garner
when I heard that wailing
Voice of Justice
coming for me in the distance.

She preferred to take her smoke
break in the bathroom facing
the mirror, losing herself
with each deep breath on the
soapstreak glass.
The single was her
speakeasy, her dressing room,
her long, French cigarette parting
her lips to keep her lipstick from
gluing them shut. She pulled on the
paper towel lever for a temp lover
to kiss until her lips stopped bleeding
Revlon. And the tissue lay balled up
in the trash
having only known her tar love
for a few moments.

It had been awhile since I made
my bed blanket print down.
The lines diced her torso like
veal bound with baler's twine.
I walked out shirtless, aimless
into the old night beneath
the frigid-stricken branches
refusing to sway. The pads
of my feet turned gravel
from the fresh asphalt the city
just laid beside me. The tar
lines that patched the gaps
glossy like kintsukuroi.
Where workers in ash and oil
gloves picked away at the new
earth two weeks beside me.
Too weak beside me,
too weak alone.
My movements were sparse
wading through the dry
swimming pool. My joints
were like a shed lock trying
different keys until one's
ridges matched enough to move.
Branches, no cars, just branches
like arteries pumping night,
but more like baler's twine.

Cement patch brick twenty dollar bills.
Sidewalk with f i g u r e d steps figure
skating around Bazooka Joe and Joe
Camel sharing banana split menthol
kisses beneath Atlas' golden world.
Idealism, baby.
We gold-stripe fine Chinet, fine clothes,
a broach laden with Leda swan feathers.
Plastic-tipped felt strips wound with
a straight paperclip.
That Ginsberg belt & pleated pants +
ruffled shirt. Seinfeld, Central Perk,
and Easthampton. Flip through
conceptual art book with art
still inside your glowing, artistic
mind. Reverse countersink
a media bit / Craftsman
holds it still. Teal X (Tilex)
on a Chuck Taylor floor
so clean, sparkle, innocent,
blind, oblivious, ignorant,
narcissistic, sparkle, spark
me up but don't let me help
you find your face in the dark.
Hold the gun, ease the trigger,
ignore the twisting hair and wet
shoulder. Forget the shreikscreechscream,
it's only jazz.

Keep-A-Breast
                                 Apple
             OtterBox
                                                    Acu-Rite
    Dial                                                                Aquafresh
                        Oral-B
        ACT                                Garnier                                           Equate
    Hanes
On the Byas  
                            Rude
                                                        Toms
                                Dakine
                                                                 Acu-Vue  
Ponds                                                                                         Degree
  Preferred Stock    
                                    Mighty Wallet
                                              Hot Topic
                     Keurig                                        Dixie
                                                                                               Donut Shop
Domino

International Delight

                                 Peter Paul's
Best Yet                                                            Great Value

                                        Instagram
Facebook
        Snapchat                                           Yik Yak
                                                                              Forever 21

                Adventure Time
FSC                                     Bic                 The Poetry Foundation
             Staedtler                               Pilot                Sharpie            Microsoft
The Norton Anthology
  

                                                         Toshiba            Dell          Expo
Lipton  
Emerica
Anti Hero                                MOB                   Shorty's

               Bones               Thunder  
                                                                                        Shake Junt
                                                                                       Swingline
                                                                                      Pandora
Tommy Hilfiger

'                            Jill                Greg                 Ashley          Courtney

Judy
Bob
Janice                    
Shannon                                                                                   Kelly

Robert                                 Emily                  Jeremy      Darrin      Liza

Bill                Joe                         Dominic            Sean              James

Gav                             Jordan                   Tony              Eric


Christopher

I hope you'll find me
          sitting on the edge
                  of a dash where
                                   the line
breaks.

8:55 A.M.
Wednesday,
December 3, 2014

Eyes dry, stagnant like a box fan
in a windowless room in summer.
Del Monte plastic blades—black
on the serrated side—dice rotting
pizza tomato trash air.

Stomach like a battery acid pond.
Flannel, Dockers, hair slicked
tight like road signs, tossing oyster
crackers to acid ducks. The sky's
on fire.

Clouds textured like *******
and never-ending like Escher.

Jet planes carry ***** comatose
patients into the sun to burn
out like a light bulb
a few flickers of life gone.

Hands dry, faulted like missing
bathroom tiles at Exxon-Mobil/
Sunoco/Shell beneath the metal
sink where crabgrass sprouts
from the cracks like

cheap caulk from Second-Hand Hardware.
Bent nails, rusted patching trowels,
ants in the quick-dry drywall mix.

I'll never reach Nirvana.

I suckled my mother's Bluetooth breast
while my father built me a bassinet
of series circuits with high, motherboard
bars.
I've got that artificial baby glow.
But Mom put my ****** on Facebook
at four weeks and I still haven't re-friended
(forgiven) her. My upgrade's in nine months,
but I want my downgrade now
'cause all I get are social invite excuses
from Facebook fuckfaces. We pack
our lives into little boxes that we're
not even allowed to open.
We drink to technology, keep our lazy
eyes on our news feeds, and recycle
ideas like their owners would even
want to see what we've done to them.
We misquote Confucius and credit ourselves
with mangled Robert Frost stanzas.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I think
it's awesome that Pepsi used to be blue."

Reblog, revine,
retweet, FaceTime.
Folding chair fold-out on someone's lawn.
White-out Yeats, Keats, Byron, and Auden,
and write John ******* or Tom Whatever.
We're caught in the chicken wire of an LCD
fruit basket so neat, orderly, and brushed
aluminum. How can people write in Starbucks?
S
   B  
       U  
            X
B  
     S
The cooler's too ******, music's too shy,
and the sugar, no, not just the sugar.
THE PEOPLE are too artificial.
The carpet-suit inlay I'm standing
on has pencil lead, sock lint,
and receipt shred lapel pins.
Even corporations play dress-up.

But what happens when Y2K kicks
in tomorrow?
Lives will be lost even before
the missiles **** us.
And the planes that drop
from the sky won't even come close
to when the bough breaks your little
girl's heart, baby, because your phone
can't raise her anymore, so you have to.

And based on your search history,
tweets, and recorded dreams,
she's better off in the warm
embrace of a hard drive.

So down, I'm drinking coffee grounds
to stay up. Pieces of bark in my

cup like a tired dog running on half-
woofs. Half & Half fizzles, sizzles

West Coast Folgers corporate doorstep.
Step lightly / hardwood floorboards.

Each creak, each door hinge "hello" couldn't
make me go. Fetch me the paper, some

poetry, a pen and a pad to write on.
To feel right on.

Lines so loose that delicates / zip-ups /
camisoles lie on the hillside

trying to poke the clouds, pop 'em,
with their tags. 100% cottonpoly-

estersilkrayon blend. Pure blend,
breakfast blend. The mug I stole

from the caf 'cause they steal from
me. Thousands of dollars every semester

for Cheerios everyday. Cholesterol doesn't
matter to me. Not because I don't care,

but because I've lowered the good kind, too.
So low, so low, the parking garage elevator

girls can't pick me up. So low on morale,
my textbook battalion would rather shut

me out.
So low that I'd let them.

No, not for Fifth Avenue or the suits
giving the homeless more **** than change.
This one's for Buffalo, the city above
and below the city.

Where we watched fireworks pop low
behind a Chinese restaurant's mustard frame
on the hood of my car contemplating
Wolfgang. Where, 20.3 miles away,
I saw two men holding hands, and I felt
whole. Where we could find a sit-down
dinner / no candles, but not everywhere
can be paradise / at 9:30. Where we tried
to make love in a bed too big for two
small people in this big, big world.
We're stray cats playing with locked
keys left in the ignition and a wire
hanger snake slithering through
the window seal. High moon,
we held hands, receipts, and ice cream
cones at Anderson's Crocs-behind-
the-counter-custard-and-roast-beef-
stand. We kept a gallon of lemon tea
in an ice pail as our centerpiece / king
suite. The Holiday Inn pool tasted
like ****, and boiled my contacts
like a fried egg.

But that's all gone now.
The fireworks, the dinner,
the sexless bed, the eggs.
All buried in Buffalo.

Haircut stairwell.
Linoleum floor, walls, door,
dog, clippers. Hair like smoke.
Temporary carpet.
Peppermint/cinnamon disk
medley by the hemp shampoo.
Eleven dollars.
Buzzteethscrewnostrils
and a cordedtail kiss my neck,
leaving behind plasma lipstick.
Six dollars.
Fish-scale table.
Rip a twenty, place face-down,
so Andy won't have to watch
you go.

Wireshell trash can sweep-brushed
by Fusion, Alero, Chrysler Something.
They’re filled to the brim like sepia-stained
skyscrapers with swivel chairs and water cooler
pow-wows. Boss’ talking fax machines
and projections for the second fiscal quarter,
flipping a stock EKG reading on its ***. We’re
all millionaires. All up like the NYSE at seven o’clock
in our living rooms watching the fireplace
playfully threaten our investments while CNN
sends money through the VCR slot. Cars, no
garbage trucks, cars, cars, scraping hubcaps off
the high sidewalks like beautiful harpsichords.
Neighbors. Suitcases and dresser drawers
packed tight with meat tape, paper towels,
and coffee mugs/fine China make heaped trash bags
seem obsolete. There’s no garbage here.
Downtown’s neon district makes enough
that they could afford a glowsign on every window,
every square inch of every lunch special, gallery opening,
or Salvation Army bell-ringer.

Forget New York,
we're the city that never sleeps.