They were just poems.
Took me like five minutes.*

Yeah, but did you read them?
Do you understand how many
words are beneath the ones you saw
on the page?

Pure cane sugartar that sits on teeth,
sits on a canine porch swing
and swings too far, kicking the enamel
siding, wood knots, and greying-thin
windows. More exposed than Brad
Pitt's marriage or JonBenét Ramsay
on the cover of Old World News Daily
in the dentist's office. And there we
are. We're bleached white and burning
beneath paparazzi bulbs and a
a ****** case. Brief case money/
two thousand fourteen and it's still
relevant, still useful blood money.
Novocain lightning flash; burn a tree.
Cali home tucked behind parsley
palms. Fortune teller, baby, O.J. didn't
do it. Not The Juice, not him.
The gloves. The gloves. The gloves.
Comfort of picket fence rainbrushed
paint stripping. Raymour retail
of a mocha-cushion couch half-off
'cause the back's spattered with
toothpaste and taxpayer juice
like Grandma's cancer handbag.
Put your feet up, stay a while.
Don't leave.

Like an outcasted stoop kid,
I sat glass-backed, bar-assed ten
feet away from the main streets
waiting.      Waiting
for some leaves to fall off treewires.
I waited for inspiration in the bitter
November chill biting at my ankles.
And I got funny looks from football
cap colleagues on this dressed-down
Thursday. The trees were practically
naked. Scarce blossoms and partridge
leaves crisped by the stagnant air.

The door'srustedhinges-aircrack-
waking ends a four hour sleep
short. I found out she was a lesbian,
and allergic to ****.

My mouth tastes like plain Pixy Stix
and I can only swallow in short bursts
like a camera or pool water over-
whelming the filter hole. It's like
untreated brine that I'm swimming
around in, ******* in, trying to sweeten
it with my natural body oils,
but it's not working

because my pool is also a lesbian,
and allergic to ****.

The black, iron God arm punched
placid-blanched clouds, and dangled
cat cable down to lemon-vested men
with chalkboard faces.
Basic algebra, today's date, daily
syllabi, God-fearing anecdotes,
and the evils of homosexuality.
Fornicating with other dudes
is like moving Jesus' rock
with your ******'d *****.
Let sleeping dieties die.
We find them buried deep beneath
**** ceramics by T.V. criminals,
rapists, murderers, buzzers, free-
lovers, angelheaded sweethearts.
They have nearly four dollar souls,
barely enough for a Wilpo dinner
at Hepburn Diner. #2 breakfast
with one cup of Columbian cartel
coffee with a pinch of whole milk
to take the edge off, so he won't
be gripping the booth vinyl when
a "freedom" flash cop car passes.
Police cruisers are just bigger bicycles
that we're afraid of, sporting cereal
box baseball cards in the spokes.
Cops were the kids that needed help
their first time fresh off training
wheels. Training academy training
them for low-speed cat chases through
flower beds.
Sweet daffodil, you didn't have to die
like this. You could've drank straight
from the pitcher at a stranger's dinner
party potluck, seen the guts of a New
York highrise, shared the coke left
beneath a woman's botched nose job.
You could have been more than this.
You could have been more.
You could have been.
You could have.
You could.
You.
You, daffodil, stamen-down
in Miracle Gro and dog ****

could have been more.

The esophageal chill of fresh rain paired
with Bozek's tire stove undertones
slipped through the chain link tennis court.
Love all, love-fifteen, love-thirty, love-forty, game.
I love you, service box Suns, fault one fault lines,
Grandma's crochet centerpiece. Cornucopia coping
with deuce, add.  in, deuce, add. out, deuce,
you get it. Lost ***** in the transformer pen beside
the playground where I watched my classmates
fall off the monkey bars and expose themselves daily.
Racket strings like pantyhose girls surrounding
the sink applying lipstick and stabbing each other dead.
They don't need monkey bars to show off.
Slice serve pizza at Pudgies to kids barely making it.
Grades lower than the pepperoni from the seedy
gas station they sit in and thumb-spike quarters
into each other's knuckles. The "grown-ups"
buy instant lottery and feverishly **** the tickets
with misplaced pennies, and then toss the moneywastes
when they score a free ticket. Free ticket to what?
The tennis match in Addison so far away?
A clear view through chain link?
A wet, elm bench some kid made in shop class?
An alternative to what we waste our lives on?
******, marijuana, drinking at the basketball court, and
flicking cigarette filters into Berger Lake like we're hot ****.
We are ****, not the ****.
Just ****.

Funny, isn't it?
That a woman no more than a knee-high coffee table and a few copies
of National Geographic away from me
is holding a cell phone in one hand
and an apple in the other.
One will eventually **** her,
and the other will make sure a doctor
isn't around when it happens.

Is it my counter-counterclockwise
mind wasting time? Elbows
on the dining table pulling my angel
hair into grid-like times tables.
I’m invested in this non-conversation
table. Ich liebe dich, mein Freund.
I’ve got commitment issues and four-ply
tissues for when my eye lashes start
peeling apart. My grandpa died in 2005
and I’m all but over it. I’m holding
his kite string, but the reel is almost done,
like VHS tapes rewound then fast-forwarded
to the good times. Power Ranger birthday
and everyone’s wearing dunce caps
with elastic chin straps ‘til they snap.
Snap! Snap! Snap me back to three-years-old,
and I’m singing in a Robin costume
‘cause I knew I’d always be second best.
I had an identity crisis around fourteen,
so I stopped buying sunglasses
because I found myself in other
peoples’ shadows. But now the only shadows
they’re casting are the ones from their headstones
and from the fields of flowers cradling
them like they once cradled me.

Fast-forward, I’m genuflecting in gym shorts
before myself in a mirror smudged with plum
felt. And I seem small compared to my life
spelled out in Expo marker markings.

A while back, Nick and I sat
side by side
in split-back forest lawn chairs.
Huff and huff
the porch's coat of scarlet stain,
talking like
existential cab drivers.
Legs on legs
crossed like war trenches or
window blinds
or a cold zipper's cold teeth.
Life or death.
More life on rye, Swiss cheese.
Holey talk of Jesus Christ.
Cross the cross
and hope to die; I know we will.
For now, though,
skip small to get to big talk.
Cursive hand
separates notes and throws out
the *******,
but everything at that age was *******.
Challenger
never blew up, Dillinger
never robbed,
we never dissected life
to see its
uncertain pancreas.
We're kids but can't act like it.
Qualms with calm,
and clever wordplay plays footsies
with my thoughts.
My stale bread secrets take up
too much space.

We played H.O.R.S.E. with Mountain
Dew cans last night, but sat more
on the bench than the sidelines.
Wiregrass crept through the faulted
court in lines. Lines like bike spokes,
like greasy dreadlocks, like power
lines. Enough **** left to last
the rest of the game? Enough
till "E," 'til we're empty?
Mountain Dew foul shots bank in
and lay on the court until tomorrow
night's game.

Wade feeling around Jess' waist.
• ******
• Heat
• Wedding ring
○ Tucked away
87 unleaded
& Tuesday ham.

The actors that did not shirk
their lines before death
were the ones most deserving
of life.

America'd get its independence
two days after I lost mine
to a high school halter top
twisting my heart like funnel cake.
Although love was still
much a concept four years ago,
I new what "a break" was.
It was the last fifteen minutes
of geometry, ten seconds
beside the Homecoming goal line,
it was me on a rotting bench
watching myself in shallow water
two slow moments before diving in.
Blue Skidoo into a boulder
because I don't know what I'm doing.

Grandpa’s heart stopped before
a doctor demanded
Atropine of a nurse.

My dad knelt to obstruct
my view of grandpa’s bed,
and told me he was fine.

I pushed past Dad’s blockade,
gripped the icy bed post,
and pulled on grandpa’s sheets.

Samuel Coleridge.
Lord Byron.
William Butler Yeats.
William Carlos Williams.

I'm in Pittsburgh all the ******' time. Well, I used to be.**

I used to go bridge jumping,
lace ***** bungie jumping.
I had options, now it's Market St.
over the Susquehanna or the
long bar at the pub.
****! I miss the Steel City like
missed calls, not at all then all at once.
Stuck in Pepsi-Cola Central, Pennsylvania, in an armchair down the hall from my room flooded with pictures of lovely Pittsburgh. Single-pane windows come close to glass
skyscrapers. Kind of.

Not at all.

Slumped shoulders, a spine wire hanger
holding a jacket up. Taut sleeves, out-
turned pockets, warped collar,
and a gap-toothed zipper.

Elastic wrists plunged into shallow
pants pockets, tight like shoelaces
before the midnight untying.
Rose-gold hamper slid

beneath the box spring, dragging
cereal pieces to a fine dust
then dissipating with
the morning ritual

bed spread, bed sheet tearing from
a sweaty body to the tune
of a near-siren on the desk.
Leg swing and saunter

to cold tiles like broken glass. Clockwise
turn the shower dial, act clean, turn
it back. Fingers swipe 'cross
the medicine cabinet,

leaving droplets to race to the white wood
frame. Bridge thresholds past the fan-
diced ice air hallway to the closet.
Creep the door closed behind,

pull drawers to the end of their tracks,
find pants. Unhook jacket from bed
post, throw it on one sleeve
at a time, and plunge

elastic wrists into the shallow pockets
and leave.

Do you reject Satan?
...
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth?
**** no.

If you believe in God,
how pathetic do you feel
praying to the clouds
like there's someone above
them? What do you do when
your *prayers aren't answered
and Mom dies of a botched surgery
at forty-eight?
Do you know what *prayers
really are? They're excuses.
AND THEY DO NOT WORK.
If your sister needs a new kidney
and you're a donor match, give
her your ******* kidney, you selfish
*****. Don't get on your *******
knees and ask a Lie in white robes
to do it. God only exists in this world
because we created him to feel better
about ourselves. We're all going
to lie down in a satin-lined coffin
and rot in the ground one day.
Don't think yours is going to have
a higher thread count than mine
just because you spent your whole
life swaddled in the Shroud of Turin.

God isn't going to save you.
No one is going to save you.

I propped my heels on a vinyl
trumpet case beside a Rubik's Cube
with mostly white squares. Steel hinges
and a combination latch
kept a midnight groove contained.
Last load's dryer sheets found
their way inside my backpack,
picking up character from uncapped
pens and highlighters.

Saturday alone on a love seat
for two with my roommate
plucking away at twisted nickel
across the room.

Unshowered, unmotivated,
a maybe Monday.

My clean laundry's a footrest
for ***** feet fresh off the
almost autumn asphalt.
Come visit us.

Be unshowered and unmotivated
on this maybe Monday.

Don't worry, the door's unlocked.
There's just a few hundred
flamingos waiting to get in,
but they should move

at the sound of your unshowered,
unmotivated, maybe Monday footsteps

With a fallen branch,
I drew a line dodging pebbles
in the path, but I haven’t
the will to cross it.

Bleach out the blush wine in your sundress,
bleach the walnut from your hair, bleach the coffee outline from your teeth,
bleach the gray grout in the kitchen floor, bleach the teal sky.
Everything is pure,
*everything is nothing.

I'm studying real poets.

Shelley, Sandburg,
Frost, and Wordsworth.
Coleridge, Blake,
and William Butler Yeats.

Do you know why they're
considered real poets?

Because they made art,
not hashtag trends.
Wrote from Experience
with black quill pens.
Sure, they got high,
but wrote on instinct.
And The Road Not Taken doesn't
mean what you think.
They wrote about about life
and the world that they heard,
not ******* in the margins
of Microsoft Word.

East Hall Coop purrs, caged
in tough chicken wire. Third story Beta beaks cluck from their nest, threatening crickets nestled
in the humid grass finding shelter
from rowdy farmhands marching
the birds to slaughter. Cattail stems, moonshine bottles, even colored gloves straight from the box lie in the grass.

Our box fans inhale and puff smoke,
blanketing the couch like a carcinogenic throw.
The lung cushions decay beneath us.
We fall.
We dissipate on the sidewalk with one
thumb sweep of the filter.
Stashed luggage beneath bus seats.
Springs puncture the faux leather
like we're sitting on quills dipped
in bloodwells writing poetry by several
haphazard candles. Wicks crackling
with each lap of the flame four inches
from our faces momentarily relieved
of windburn by scrawny fingers desperately
flicking to keep the spark caught.
We're caught.
Caught in this couch wrapped up
in a carcinogenic throw burning.

One story in two hundred pages,
or one in two stanzas of four lines each.

I'm a sheltered nineteen-year-old
from Northeastern Nowhere,
Pennsylvania. I spent my preteens
worrying about girls and digging
holes in the backyard. I had my friends.
Two or three middle-low class kids
down the street. We rode bikes, played
video games, and occasionally watched **** together.
It seems a lot weirder now than it did in the moment.
We made memories daily and spoke our
underdeveloped minds. At thirteen, politics
were simply, "**** Capitol Hill" or "the prez's
a crook." Things change, though.
I still know little about politics, but I'm sure
there's at least one good policy in effect.
Everyone eventually goes their separate ways
and the phone lines between us get damp
or get cut. I haven't dug holes since a landslide
filled in my work. I traded in my bike
for four wheels and a piece of wood. My Nikes
are now Toms, and I don't worry about girls.
Just the one I've been with for almost four years.
Instead of ****, I look up synonyms, so I can
sound a bit smarter at 7:30 AM typing my thoughts.

Three days until I leave home for Lycoming.
Three years until I leave Lycoming forever,
but it will never leave me.

I've packed away clothes, textbooks, my laptop,
chargers, and two skateboard decks.
But I still can't find my television cable.

Microwave, ballpoint pens, notebooks,
soap, shampoo, posters, contacts,
a rug, and a love seat for two or three.

Everything I need is clustered in the corner
of the living room, weighing on the 20th
century hardwood floorboards.

I only left my journal out.
I still have a few things to remember
before all the evergreens turn to brick buildings.

She dug two tiny trenches in the loose dirt
near the porch steps and enclosed
them with pebble barricades.
Like discharged rounds, a rusted
grill rack seared the grass between them.
The Confederate flag that hung
from the gutter caught the wind and flicked
water onto the stairs and the Northern trench,
turning it thick like Union blood.

The phone crazed against its plastic receiver.
Tossing her clippers on the counter
with an exasperated sigh, she picked up.

"Mary's."

She began to pace around her paisley-floored
salon when she read the Caller ID.
Crosby General Hospital

The cord stretched further across the room
with each diagnosis like a tightrope that was
threadbare from decades of grim news and heartbreak.

A single thread kept her composure.

When word came across that her daughter
had died, the wire snapped and her faced turned
scarlet like she was crying barbicide.

I just hope my brain doesn't
slow too much before I die
and I hope I never stop dreaming.
When everyone else is on
their stomachs in their graves,
I hope I'm looking at the stars.

I really do judge
what I write as I write it.
Childish, boastful, self-
absorbed, morbid, pathetic,
simple-minded. You
know, the works. We all have to
be critical in
life or nothing is sacred.
N o t h i n g
m a t t e r s .
Everything will exist and
it won't mean a ****
thing.

Every flower in a fenced
flowerbed only has a few
petals to pick from until
you're climbing up
the stem like an elevator
that can only jump floors
so many times before
it gets stuck on a chained
bench with a cinder block
back and a $1,000 bail.
Maybe after a few nights,
I'll spar with the cast iron
bars 'til one of them falls
like the petals from my thin
fingers to the sidewalk.

My car came in a close second, bobbing
on the trailer with the concrete tides.
Three feet behind the black, flaked tailgate that kept a Rubbermaid cooler and rusted chains from shattering passing lane windshields on a daily basis. I'm a truck bed and three feet away from my alabaster beauty, and I felt like I was driving it. Window drawn into the door, my left wrist idle
on the wheel, and an evergreen air freshener bobbing with the concrete tides.

Shut the **** up.**
It's hard dating anyone,
and *a poet's no different.

The fridge droned between the sound
of her impaired footsteps across
the 600 grit linoleum floor. She ran
my palms against the cave-like walls.
Eroded paint bubbling like balloons
before bursting, flattening beneath
her touch. She felt the key rack
with more keys than a piano store,
cork board with porcupine thumbtacks,
and the thin edge of the Disney calendar
beside the light switch. Patting the blood
off on her pant leg, she flipped the switch.
With her sleeve, she brushed crushed Oreos
from the table and sat. Scatted about
the stained mahogany was a few National
ENQUIRER subscription cards, used napkins,
and an overdue bank notice. Sliding the chair
back, she sulked to the switch and flipped it
back.

I-81 North towards Hazleton.
                   Exit to Hazleton.
Merge left away from Mahanoy
City exit.
           Luzerne County crossing.
                             I always thought the spheres on telephone wires were kids' basketballs that got stuck in the sky.
    Three New York plates in half a mile.
                              151 A or B?  
Kelly Clarkson tells me through static that I don't know a thing about her.
    Water beads on plastic cup lids by the "diet" indent, but never goes in.
          Americans are water.
                      Lemonade clots the cuts
                      on my lips.
The car's a few years old but still carries its dealership scent.
                   Adjacent drivers keep their
                   lazy eyes on their phones.
Prismatic flashes through tinted windows from a woman changing CDs.
           Oaks in the distance overtake
           stores and church steeples.
                *The earth is theirs.

My right thumb dove from my pitcher
into a man's water glass, soaking his napkin
and place mat. He pulled away from his mug
of Labatt Blue, lips curling the caramel color
back past his picket fence teeth. Like his wife's
diamond ring, she was turned away.
Her face was illuminated by her phone.
Sharon's back with Tom?

Shoot me.

He slid his chair back, legs scraping
the floorboards like a car accident. He stood
a decent four inches taller than me.
Chevrolet was printed across his faded
t-shirt, and his boots hit the floor like mallets
when he stepped. The pitcher in my grip shook
like the Titanic capsizing. This man was the iceberg;
**I was the captain panicking behind the wheel.

Modern and Contemporary Poetry
takes up most of the passenger seat.
Pages' edges ruffled like the balled-up polo I'm wearing. Tommy Hilfiger'd
be rolling in his millions. Twenty minutes till work's screen door crashes on the frame twice before settling. Three salad plates, a skillet, and two jars of unsweetened tea condensate
on the metal counter. They soak dinner bills and paper towel coasters.
The front door vacuum seals behind sandal families reeking of Chlorine
and hairspray. Beachy look. Three more families crowd in behind them, taking turns sifting through the hostess desk peppermints for discarded toothpicks. Reservations for 7:00 come in at 6:50 and demand a table. They're  just like the mints packed tightly
in the lobby, but there are a few patient ones at the bottom.  They're the ones that inspire stanzas in **Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the college textbook waiting on my passenger seat. *Three more hours.

Like her husband, Claire's wineglass
left rings on the table. Her coarse
hair stuck to her thin, oxblood lips.
She found time to breathe in between
sips and dry coughs brought on by her friend,
John, smoking on the couch. He put his Pall Malls
out on the armrest like Dalmatians. Her sister
lay in a red wine carpet stain counting
the pennies behind John's feet.
Claire hid behind a fruit bowl;
oranges with skin far tighter than hers.
*Oranges her husband would've been glad to ****.

I’m whittling down my track list
to keep my iPod’s song count
from reaching 1,000. Rare Beatles
tracks, a famous Lennon interview,
less-than-great Punk Goes Pop
covers, and some jams I haven’t
played since 2005. Complete albums
are now only half full because some cover
art is better than the lyrics in the pages.

I miss the way your fingertips
drew circles on my almond skin.
I miss wrapping your hair around
my finger like a phone cord
when I watched you sleep beside
me.

Now that I have your attention…

My issue’s not with the lost loves
but with the ones still holding on.
Because of you, pain is a cliché.
Human emotion has become
redundant. The only thing
that’s #depressing about
your life is how you’ve made
a conscious decision to relive
your “hells” constantly by making
them the focus of your poetry.

I'd like to think that we
could unplug our Ethernet
arteries, replace them with
notebook spirals, and still
live long enough to fill
the pages.

I slipped into the walk-in cooler
to escape the kitchen heat for a few
minutes. I sat beneath a wine rack
holding up a chardonnay chandelier
with zinfandel bulbs. I'd swear
I was at the Ritz if it weren't for
a lemon box slowly collapsing
beneath my weight. The motor
to my right churned out frigid air
like a 43rd floor air conditioner
in a luxury suite with fresh fruit rolled
in on cardboard carts. Everything
was buffet style and there were no lines,
just the painful thought that I'd have
to leave paradise soon.

Do you like art?
Does Renoir sit in a frame above your bed?
Are you alone?
What does this painting look like to you?
I use dots to portray events in my life as described by others.
Van Gogh never cut his ear off.
Georgia O’Keeffe loved painting vaginas, and so do I.
Want to be a model in my next work?
I met Bosch at Starbucks a few years back.
This took me twenty-two hours to paint.
Buy this, buy that.
Andy Warhol is my dad.

Everything she said hit his eardrum
like a rimshot. Maybe he was losing
his hearing or she was just losing
his attention. Dinner conversations
across a two foot table flew past
him like houseflies. With her soft,
blonde hair blanketing his collarbone,
her mouth seemed to pantomime
more the closer he leaned in.

I may not know how to hold
my liquor or change a flat tire.
I don't know how to throw
a spiral, so I'll just chalk it up
to magic laces.

I have no idea how jet planes
work or how to solve equations.
I'm not so strong, and I know I'd
lose in a fight against
any one of your exes.

I'm afraid of spiders, bees
and grizzly bears, thrill rides,
ocean tides, and one day
dying alone. Hell, I'm scared
for next week.

I do know how to sew the holes
in your favorite pair of jeans.
I can make you some hot cocoa
because you can't stand coffee's
taste.

I know how AV cables work
and how to play Donkey Kong.
I'd rather fight with words
than fists but still, I'd prefer
to avoid conflict.

I'm not afraid of going broke,
disease or dying young,
holding hands on your grandma's
couch, or staying up too late.
I've got this life figured out

on a napkin in my car.
You don't have to be jacked,
high, popular, cool or rebellious,
angry, tough, or accepted
to live.

A man stumbled over to Catherine’s car
and pounded on her window. She cracked it.
“W-welcome to New York. Want to buy a map?”
A cigarette filled in the large gap of missing teeth
in his smile, and the stench of alcohol ran over it.
The light changed, and Catherine sped off.
The man stepped backwards out of his sandals
and tripped on the curb. He landed in a pile
of garbage bags as Catherine readjusted
her mirror.
**Welcome to New York.

I bent my toes over the tub
like talons on a sunbaked branch
and clenched the curtain
in my gloved hands.

I sprayed Tilex on a scouring
pad and scrubbed the black mold
riddling the ceiling and caulked
edges of the shower like leprosy.

My lungs filled with nitrogen,
oxygen, and argon as well as
sodium hypochlorite and hydroxide,
spores, and mycotoxins.

I staggered backwards, trying
to find solid ground but found
only a dazed, curtain-wrapped
fall to the cold linoleum below.

I followed a mob march of taillights
back from work. Two rows of thirty flames
spaced out streaked the darkness
beneath the looming sparkler
adding stars to midnight sky.
Roman candle travelers eager to burn
out tried to shoot past traffic
on slivers of unoccupied sidewalk.
The closer they got to town,
the more stars faded above
their hoard of torches.