I wake up early sometimes
I sit in my small apartment shower
It’s almost meditation
I let the water hit me
Inside, with a glass door to my left and tile Installed in the 60’s to my right
I think about anything other than myself
Isolated from noise
Insulated from cold
I close my eyes for 15 minutes
Internalizing and trying to predict my day
It’s all about me
I realize.

We buried you in the same grave as dad.
He died a week before, you were there
I kissed you on the forehead and said
“Please stay clean”
How much flesh does God want
Too much I think
I’ll pray when I feel like praying
I’ll stay when I feel like staying
He better have an excuse for you
I’m not saying grace.
I’ll be thankful next year.

I’m not sure there is a heaven, but I’m sure there is hell.
You don’t have to die to be there.
You can live there, you just finish another bottle.
You want to stop. You beg to stop.
You lock your apartment door until you sweat and shake.
Hell always takes you back.
Makes your chest hurt.
Makes you wish you would just die. But you can’t.
You’re too young and have a life to ruin.
So Hell waits.

We were so young
In the kitchen looking at Grandma’s glassware
Pristine like us
Next year we were bold I opened the lid and saw flour
But you saw ******.

What a ******* name.
You were missing an (e), I wanted to give it to you, be superhero(e)s
But you’re too high for me now. I don’t have a cape, I can’t talk to you anymore.

Have you read this book?
Can you stay with us?
Can the baby stay? I’ll make him a cape
And we’ll just talk about it

There ain’t nothing too bad
Too sad about it
I couldn’t figure you clearing my head
And I used to think I sounded slow
But now I think I sound shallow
Ya hear?
You here?
I keep hitting the brakes but the car isn’t slowing and the light is red, and I keep hitting the ******* brakes and I keep. hitting. the. *******. brakes. and I think “****! ****, sell it when I’m dead.”
And the police come
And you’ve been drinking
And the bag never looked better on me

Randy plays the smiths
On saturdays
While I slouch against the bar
I swim in bourbon so I could
drown in you
When I die
Sell this all for a quick buck

The glass clinks
A stack of highballs lean like the drunk next to me
Red faced, nose as hard as the oak bar he’s been drinking at his whole life
He sinks into a bourbon, gurgling
"God must be a woman, because life is a *****"
Well, **** Tennyson. I'd rather never loved at all.

She said I love you
And it made me shiver
Like David, standing to
Deliver a stone that would make
Him immortal in the minds of men.
What a giant is love, that it should move me.

We've made mountains of men,
Granite statues to those that have
Risen from Death
Gold coins on their eyes
And solemn words on their chests

I love her, and feel blood pulse again.
A caress from Goliath
Till we wept.

Baby, you're a bit like the blues.
being with you is
like
a two day bourbon-binge
I’m heading
eastward down
Dauphine Street
with shakes
planning to spend a cold night
on the rocks at Woldenberg Park.

Frozen
instant
packaged
mass-produced,
my love life and meals
are embarrassingly similar.
Except, every once and awhile,
I dine out! In the spirit of the fifties!
when men were men, and cars were fast
before easy instructions, and lonely, lonely, beeps.

She asked me to get drunk
and write poems.
I've been around the Sun
Thirty times and can tell you
that love is like
reading Bukowski

And Jesus
and all of us
wept while the sun
fled west to Copernicum
With roses in her wake

She thinks of quitting
sometimes
while He washes the dishes
in suburbia
Idyllically,
the Frigidair hums.

We were the transient children
windswept youth
marching to break the barrier
between nightness and dawn
whispering immigrant secrets
of our fathers
and mothers

lying on rooftops yelling
arrays of stars
speeding away
racing light
racing racing racing
hearts as we crawled
down fire escapes to
street corners
to proselytize

Amen
Hari Krishna
Namaste
As-Salāmu 'Alaykum
silent God