I don’t know how many knocks
I’ve had upon my door and
opened it to the sight of
some poor, ill-fated,
hapless crumb ***
standing there
with another
sob story:

“I got kicked out of my house
and I don’t know why.”

it was always the same thing
and yes, they put on quite
a show during their
initial screening
with their
spongy eyes
like ****** cakes
and as vulnerable as a
clay pigeon shot into space.

I’d buy into their dinosaur tears
and they knew I’d take them in
because I was an enabler.
I could never say no.

and next thing you know there was
bodies on the couch,
bodies in the bathtub,
bodies in the basement,
all drunk, drug-addled
and without women.

each time a new one entered the house
it always ran in the same sequence:
first, everything would
start off good, fun even;
they’d buy the beer,
I’d provide the music,
the music brought conversation,
the conversation brought laughter,
the laughter brought moments of joy
and the beer, the music, the conversation,
the laughter is what kept those nights alive.

many lively nights had passed.
gradually, they grew more
comfortable with settling in.
subtly, their courage piqued enough
to overstep some boundaries but not
enough to notice it or brush it off.

they were testing me.

seeing what they could get away with.

I was a pushover,
allowing myself
to get steamrolled
by their daringness.

then I noticed that none of them secured employment.
they’d pour their excuses all over me as to why
they couldn’t work or even pay me rent.

I imagined some interviewer
flipping through pages of their resumes
extending out a long rap sheet of various jobs
knowing they wouldn’t last long.

their twenty-four hour presence
thickened the tension in the house;
up and down the stairs
in and out of the front door
beer run after beer run
& continuous song writing.

I’d come home after the 12 hour shift
to beer cans preoccupying every
countertop and table in the place.

and just like that, I became both the
innkeeper and the house maid.

their incompetent and noise-laden identities
had troubled and angered my counterpart.
it wasn’t her fault though.
she had to put up with
my poor decision making:
I ran our home like a flophouse,
like a homeless shelter, like a charity ward,
like an adult foster care center.
I was inexcusably bad at playing landlord
and at subletting my house.

too much resentment had burst.
she’d curse me. we’d get into it.
the arguing would get out of hand.
then one of them would boldly step up
and say something robust and tumultuous,
interrupting our personal affairs,
as if it was their business,
as if they were now
running the show.

I’d let my emotions get the best of me and snap back at them.
boy, oh boy, did they have an answer for everything.
confrontations were never my strong suit and
winning an argue with these dolts seemed virtually impossible.
I had trouble saying what I really meant and what I really felt.
things never got resolved.

suddenly, it was starting to become abundantly clear;
as to why they couldn’t hold down a job,
as to why no one else would house them.

we’d return to our corners,
let some time blow over and
then reconvene at some later point.

burying the hatchet over a few suds,
only this time I was buying the beer
and they were taking over the music
and the conversations were awkward and dull.

the nights were quickly dying into a stale dankness
our eyes met in silence, there was no more laughter,
the room became uncomfortable, aloof, standoffish
no matter how much the beer and the music worked its charm.

the quality of our lives had gyrated into pure toxic sludge
we were pushed and pushed and pushed beyond our limits.
I was brought out of character; a reasonable man,
driven to do unreasonable things, I too, like so many
before me, had to kick them out of my house and they
hadn’t a clue as to why. they’d put up their fight,
they’d storm out with a dramatic exit and act
like I was losing something valuable.

oh yes, there was a time, when I believed it would be easier
to live in sheer misery over hurting someone else’s feelings.

I was too busy pulling knives out of everyone else’s back
that I didn’t realize how many were stuck in my own

but after many years of waiting it out,
I finally got the message
and had to pin
eviction notices
on the doors
of my beliefs
and on the doors
of the strays,
the rejected
and the runts
of the liter.

I’m in Vietnam right now overlooking the city at 3am watching the ** Chi Minh lights work their shades of violet and jade into the black mass of night.
there’s a lot of poverty out there and with it a lot of generosity.
I commend them for that because while deep-rooted in the garden bed of desolation, I can’t override these frustrations on feeling defeated.
I went to school, participated, put forth the effort and made the grade but the board felt I wasn’t worthy enough when it came to the final test.
the only thing I achieved was retaining monikers such as loser and failure because I have lost and I have failed.
the smallest obstacle had become my biggest hurdle and I am too mentally and physically exhausted to quash it.
each step I take feels frozen and keeps dragging across wet cemented floors
& the skies have listened to my screams
but delivers no answers.
my god, have I given up?
it’s not likely for me to do so.
especially when so much was riding on life.
I watch the motorbikes zoom pass my psyche
as a Tiger beer falls from the balcony and shatters in the debris. a wet heavy sorrow suffocates my heart.
I sob. I weep. I cry. I fall. I wail.
I must resurrect and rise like the sun, the smoke, the symphony but my focus escapes me and I lose my hope.
my mind turns to the system; they decide
who makes a better world and who gets
tucked away in the dust.
but I can’t blame the system, only myself and
my inabilities to try once again until
I’ve reached my success.
I gaze over a man yelling at a woman while roasting a chicken down below.
they’re trying to make it out there on the ***** streets of Saigon.
fighting to survive. one more day. one more time. one more ounce of life.
and my biggest struggle is only with myself.
my stubborn brain clashing against everything I worked so hard for.
beating myself up, tearing myself down,
all that time, money and effort: wasted.
it was all  for nothing, I screamed, it was all for nothing as my half naked woman sleeps behind a green curtain and a red rooster crows at another new day full of possibility.

you were the answer
to a question i should have never asked
a hesitant spark;
crafted from stolen glances
that dared the universe to say no
in that  fleeting moment—time as if folded
two souls stitching their edges together,
briefly infinite,
as tough it wasn’t meant to last

yet we buried deep of what could have been
not in anger, not in betrayal,
but in quiet understanding—
a mutual surrender to the lives
that were never meant to intertwine

we became the weight of an almost—
a fire i couldn’t hold without burning,
a dream too vivid to stay asleep,
a heart so full
it could never be contained

it is almost as if
we are the resonance of tunes,
played in a room no one else can hear—but us
like a rhythm that felt familiar
but we never quite knew its notes

so i carry you;
not as a wound,
nor a regret,
but a quiet echo of a hum
not in a way that demands the world to bend,
but in a way that whispers,
“in another life, maybe.”

M. G.,

It was years ago in the A-frame,
beside a cold bachelor's lake

that was clogged with reflections
of raving burst-headed trees,

that we laughed as Jake threw up
the Genesee river in the midnight sink.

When you caught your breath
you told me how you had traveled,

how you'd found a woman and gone to her,
it was the most you'd ever shared with me.

But this letter cannot reach you, friend,
because Jake just told me that you died.

My head fills with the numberless times
I drove by your long-lawned house,

or knocked beers in a rampant yard
while fires fractured dull dark.

I consider that love is a terrible thing
when I see what it's done to my friends -

it didn't rise as sweet slow dough,
it wasn't a shyly signed valentine -

it was a Petri dish of troubled sleep
that bred malformed dreams;

it was a crocodile's jagged jaw-drag,
it was the dross of unwise prayers.

Well, hell: let this letter remind them all
of that barking laugh amid the stray pines

as Jake birthed a twilit river from his teeth.
Your Friend, Evan.

looking around this empty room right now,
I’ve come to accept that the gig is up;
the party’s over, the lights are off
and everyone’s gone home:
the music here is quiet and tame
the basement echoes in phantom laughter
the window panes are no longer broken
the pyramids of beer cans have crumbled
the late nights have turned into early mornings
the dancing girls have turned into career women
and I had it good for a while, maybe too good;
shooting dice and rolling sevens and elevens
but now everything comes up snake-eyes.
I finally understood that the foundations of people
were more unstable than water and
less faithful than a Rush St. ******.
friendships and other relationships
sank faster than a mafia ****** weapon
(maybe that’s why they call them “ships”)
but as the aging hours of time came
crashing through like lightning:
I found love when love was unkind
I found hate when hate was merciless
I found people and stubbed them out like cigarettes
where by and by, it all turns to ash,
just mounds and mounds of ash,
windswept by gentle persuasion
and now they’re buried in their shrink-wrapped lives;
dropping kids off at soccer practice, attending PTA meetings,
hosting chili cook-offs, yelling at football games,
disgusted with Tuesday’s, bowling on Wednesdays,
pretending everyone’s doing fine and living quite well
while I am left here with myself
and this eerie moment
of reflection, now realizing:
it’s all gone.