Everyone’s so **** far
away
Everything is on steroids

And as all we know
Swells to sizes more
Than even god planed
They inevitably come in between us

The way a 70 inch TV splits a family apart
To opposite hemispheres of their “living”- room -world
“Can you hear me over there Brother?  Sister?”
“Not listening.”  
“Can’t see you.”

Electronic wedges that push us farther
And farther from our fathers

“Dad I just called because you never
answered my textual message
And email is too slow as you well know.”

“Come home son.” He concedes

“I lost my way home pop.”

“You’re right, I guess the 50’s are done and The Wonder Years
is long out of syndication.”

So I’m an alien on this *******- like stretch of land.

Ponce de Leon would claim it for his peninsula as
A peninsula of eternal life
A greater man than I would label it “The happiest place on earth.”

But all I know is this:
This earthen ***** might as well be an island off the coast of nowhere
Gainesville might as well be in Russia, rather
The Steppes of Asia Minor
And you most certainly are
An aberration from a softer night far ago

I guess I’ll see it all half full and live
In my State of Confusion
Located somewhere between the North and South Pole

Call it self pity, but no one but people like me understand
The concept of one million miles
Meet me halfway, someplace if you agree


Live in States of Unknown
So then you will
Always have a home

Lumber and lacquer
Nails and elbow grease
Blood from the splinters
Before you were stripped down
From the wood
Of the forest behind our home

Standing sturdy and steadfast,
On the patio
I laid
Brick by brick
Gate keeper of the orchard that grows,
Thick in the summer  
And curls up barren,

In the cold months
As if sitting on its mahogany shoulders there are
Mountains to the North West that seem
To smile with their peaks,
And valleys against the blue satin
Sheet of a sky

You who bare witness to my body and the bodies of
Countless others
Those that would just simply use you and fewer,
That would become your very grain
You are watching our conversations,
Through knots for eyes
Through bird-burrowed holes,
Hearing us,
As we break bread as brothers
Wood through the trees
Flesh from bone
Feast to famine
You are,

Beautiful and complete
As the steak,
Cooked rare
A glass of summer port–wine:

The color of the red russet potato,
And the earth-soiled hands that dug them up

Tell me what makes me love you?
Tell me what makes me want you?

In the not too far off distance
I here the faint splashing of an indie song,
That reminds me of you ?

Maybe not of you,
But your gait
And if I want to reminisce about
Your demeanor I will twist
And gnarl and damage the song
To be who you were,

To me , it is as if
Whenever I think of the grand entrance
Of the natural history museum you are there
On the steps, in a deceitful black dress

And I weep like a wound infected
Half because you are heaven
An eighth because you are a day at the DMV
Or worse

I’m not alone
I have a partner for checkers
The computer
But I find that you can’t have a laugh
About how bad you are
With someone that much better than you

I’m now on loan
But what a strange feeling it is to own
Half of someone
Like when you take a lean
On a car,
Sure, the bank could take it back

But would they understand the eight-week-old,
Chulupa in the back seat?
Would anyone understand

Your tongue?
Or might they ****
The life out of it
Only to cut it out later

I recognize the song
And draw it closer to me
I have bent the sound to fit me,
To suit you,
Fake- deaf, I tune it out
Only to have my conk- shell –for- an- ear
Throw it back up in a fishy -mess

Then it laughs at me and says,
“Don’t be silly now, I’m your song forever.”

I can’t handle that
So I run away leaving my brain
Behind
My brain is on the ground bleeding
Saying, “Oh! How embarrassing to wear red after my birthday!”

Paramus? I bought a desk in Paramus. Don’t remember what it looked like.
There were ***** men outside the store. Or maybe they were Mexican?
They played a Skiffle beat as I haggled for that couch I was getting.
“When I’m dead and in my grave. No more good times will I crave.
When I die they’ll burry me deep. Way down on old Chelsea Street.”
Title was “Freight Train”.Think that one was by Nancy Whiskey You said Rutherford you’re from or Roebling?Ya, that Lonnie Donegan could sure make a song The song those Mic’s in front of the store I got the hutch at in Oradell was called “Face in the Rain”, went, “When I’m dead and in my grave. No more good times will I crave. When I die they’ll burry me deep. Way down on old Chelsea Street.” Wait what were we saying bout’ Paramus?
I mean Patterson.

If she is my half
Then it is one of numbers
And order
It is that which gets me up in the morning,
A wholeness that keeps me fed

If I may be her better side
Then I am there only
To loosen her mind
For she cradles the weight of
So **** much
I’m there to keep her warmer
Than she’s ever been

And at night when she’s at my side
I say, “Let go” and when I do,
then
And only then she will sleep in a velvety daze

When I put my head to her body
She holds it and takes my blood
And takes my faults
And who I may be
No longer matters
Just who I am


It is her smell
On my bare chest

Her hair, in thick strands
Wrapped in between my fingers

What she does with her fingers
to every inch of me

It is her grandmother’s way of talking

It’s how near she can be to my mind
And how distant to my person at the same time

It is all these things
That makes her a calculated mystery I never want to solve

In the midst of a heavy snow
I saw a thrush amongst the dunes
With little cover and no where to go
The bird perched brave against his doom

Having said all that,
I am indomitable
Any road- block or set back
Proves to be nominal

In truth at times I have cowered
My face has fallen victim to ill grimace
And yet in this my final hour
I see it is not how you start but how you finish

For it is in the stars for me to battle
Though my soul may be worn
I will break free from mediocrity’s shackles
I am intrepid as a thrush in a storm