I can get over the face in the mirror.
In fact I kind of like it, bunched and
furrowed in thoughts, wet webs of contempt.

I wonder if I'd be a good father.
It doesn't take much to show up.

How am I going to tell my step-dad
my grades ******* blow this semester?
These are the
important questions.

How will I tell this futuristic child
St. Nicholas died in the 4th century CE?
Is telling him/her a bad thing, or
is there somehow more fun in that?

I've caught myself treating twitter profiles
like messiahs, without the martyr.
Those two lines sound very self-serving
because I don't write sarcasm well.
I've found coherence to be tedious
and boring and that's barely it.

Most sad poems are also
beautiful because they are pure,
untainted and untouchable, some
golden pendant forged of
***** not given.

If I have a son.
If he has my face, my mind.
He will be sad. He will not know why.
He will be an artist. But he will not just create. He has to learn.

You cannot make a thing without first
taking a thing away.

You said he was skinny and sagging
and he wore a sad face for show.
I feel as though I am the man
in your nightmare.
I can't tell you to wake up.

Hearts sparse in this carpark,
the wind feeling rowdy, biting like a
small rabid animal with no collar
wandering the city alone at night.

The car is making me claustrophobic,
I've spent far too much time with the heat,
too many minutes burning cigarettes and
my hands near-numb from the caffeine.

Poems are less like action movies and
more like action paintings exploding
in suspended motion. I'm sure we all
remember when art felt new. I can't
recall when it didn't feel so lived-in.

(And of course this poem is merely
a memory of feelings, which is not much
of anything to me or you because the past
is dry and done and does not intrude.)

Lincoln, Nebraska is a livelier city
than one expects. It is like going to an
art exhibit expecting Rothko and getting
Basquiat, bombast and immediacy.

My favorite poet is Craig Morgan Teicher
because he and I may ramble but he is not
afraid to sacrifice accessibility for
feeling. He could find the beauty in the
image of Lincoln, Nebraska in January.

I will soon need to devise another way
to keep myself entertained so let us
say this CD spins one more time and
maybe I can go for a walk, clear my head.

I do not intend this to be wrought with
sentiment, but there are times I am not
as cold as this city. There are times
the mind must scream
so the heart stays safe.

I do not intend my poetry to be
inaccessible and yet I refuse to shower
this recycled verse in pretty words
to distract from disinterest in my own life
and the things I surround.

Wait a day and pray
your god forgets sins confessed
under influence.

And now we see the singularity
of the artist, wrists spread bare on
mimed canvas, finally we see
his consistency.
Lazarus is dead on the first day.
Gold background, rocky outcrop,
sense of cluttered space.
Do you see the decay?
Can you sympathize, or do you notice?

I cannot sympathize with Duccio,
I am too vain to admit his Maestá
survives while my brain rots from
alcohol. But I remember Duccio is
at least fifty years old when his Maestá
preeminently destroys my career
as a visual artist. I do not mind.

Lazarus is dead on the second day.
Duccio had many pupils, among them
Simone Martini, whose Annunciation
is a cropped rehash of Byzantine/Gothic
flopped with Duccio's handy flair,
a pious reverence and virtue.
It sweeps and moves. Or attempts.
Lazarus is no longer sleeping.

I have never been to the city of Florence,
not now nor the 1300s, so I need not
explain my lack of comprehension.
Lazarus has risen now,
but it is different than I remember.
Lazarus is all alone, and
Lazarus is alive,
doomed to walk in mortal Hellfire
a second time over.

I wish I could write poems of distraction. I sit all day in rooms and there are times I am outside and it feels unnatural. I am curious to the state of my insides. Sleep is not reliable. Dreams are not patient.

It is night and it is cold, and as I look up to stare at stars and planets I see car crashes. Orion totalled by a Chevy Cobalt. A pickup dislodging each dipper and sending them reeling to infinity, smacking empty space.

Cold nights are cleansing. I need more time to think. There is so much to be thought, isn't there, so much potential just floating around, pathless, empty. The season will not change for a while. I must build a fire and warm myself.