I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were telling me how you visited the zoo;
spent an afternoon watching the zebra graze
and the lions lazily roar at civilians with digital cameras.

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were visiting the zoo, crying on the phone—
How can they keep them in cages
Locked away as if they don't feel like we do
You forget
there are people in cages without keyholes
there are blistered eyeballs scanning a lightless horizon for a lock pick or a clothespin
that may allow them to puzzle their way into the gears
There are people who die searching

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
We chit-chatted about sunbeams and lawnmowers.
We were happy, careless.
There are no cages here.

Only keys.

They say ****** is an unforgivable sin.
I beg to differ.

Why?
Because it's fun to differ. And also, I could fathom myself committing ******.

I'd do it with a knife. It shimmers—it's clean; cutting flesh with primal ease.
It's painful.
It emulates so many feelings we have—brings them up to the surface.
You can see it in the victim's face,
right as the blade slides in.

They say ****** is an unforgivable sin.
It's a sin, no doubt.
—I ask now for forgiveness, for what I may soon do.

A sick reasoning of mine is this:
"In some defeated way,
I feel as though you should be thanking me."

Smart poetry



Christian pacifist punk artists shaking their fists at the government elite

Mothers dreaming in Tide-to-Go and quiet nights

'"Bed-head" implies you have a bed to sleep'

Cracked lips, because its cold and I don't display that spring-merry ****

Smart poems sound like silly songs

John 8:7

Greek reference to Aphrodite and her thousand noses

'I haven't slept in four days'

Atheists asking fundamentalists to dance at the prom because you're alive now in this moment at the least

'It's silly to think we'll be alone forever'

Finality—some kind of closure

I can't seem to sleep

There are those who die with the wind,
and those who inherit,
staring, steam-eyed, at the blistering cloud scattered sky,
scanning for a safe place to land amongst our feet.

Everything starts at the bottom.
Sun peaks over the orange Horizon,
Sea crests and bellows, ebbs and flows,
History begins at the Beginning, and so on.

People start at the feet, and wheel their way up.
So often there are toes caught in the zippers,
the hairs of our feet singed on the swelling soil
we plant our feet.

A Sun rising.
A wave crashing.
A human being born into a dying world,
deprived and blinded,
it's beauty swept away in the panic of a coming storm.

And some day
I will sit on my back porch
in infinite, consecutive jest,
staring at the night sky.

And, best of all,
I won't trouble myself wondering
why I have the itching inclination
to look up.

And, even more so,
I watch, contented,
a celestial understanding:
The stars. They speak.

Save a piece of me.
A laugh, a smile, a subtle flicker of my eyes when the lights turn on.
You have to remember something, so make it small. Don't keep the battles,
the strife, the words I said and never meant, the words you never thought you knew.

If you save anything, let it be a moment. A second.
So brief, so inconsolably unmemorable:

A candle's flame. A flower's lonely petal.
A breeze, pushing us both in opposite directions.

He was a father's son:
quiet, respectful, hard-working.

He loved the winter. The snow flaking
off the trees. Chilled little prayers.

His father had seizures. Every once in
a long while, his father's eyes would lock
his mother's and his being would tense,
frozen like Cybil's lake across the pasture.
Writhe, foam at the mouth.

He was an old man now. He remembered
everything about his father.

His raspy, charmed voice. His knowing brow.
His leather bound skin wrapped around years of a blunt ax and needy firewood.

As the son's eyes closed into nothing,
he remembers Christmas with his father. A reunion of sorts.

He would ring the doorbell, his father on the steps.
He would invite him in for coffee. He would refuse, only to say, It was nice to see you, George.

Yes, you too Dad. Take care.
Goodbye.