The eyes glowed as she nodded
into the apartment. She’s been out.
She comes and she goes
as Prufrock once lamented;
all of that banal nonsense.
She always has things to do,
she only stays the nights,
worn out and turned on.
She begs it all from me,
the self, the mind...
It is all I can to simply
bend the knee.
I concede as man has
conceded since the first in Eden.

I write late into the night,
but not when her footsteps
echo up the stairs.
Not when she nods in,
eyes glowing,
lips silent and pressed tight,
legs, ears, fingertips;
all of the above moving vividly.
I have nothing to
do but sit. I have nothing to
do but wait.

She drags her mess in
with beautiful disaster
and I with eager anticipation.
The pen is mightier than the sword,
but not this.
I am not even a writer anymore
but a servant, a vassal.
She comes and is gone by morning
and the mess is left,
and the page is empty,
and the door shuts silently
but it keeps me from going back to sleep
all the same.

It was never as if you asked for it,
no, not really anyhow.
Sure, you wanted the attention,
perhaps a little love to
tide you over through the night.
Sure, sure, who doesn’t?
But not like this.
No one ever asked for this.

It is sitting next to a vulture,
you see them, you know them,
all dressed in skirts and high, high heels,
all of them in long legs,
all of them in soft smiles.
You can always find something
for them to have going good.
A nice laugh, eyes,
the way they hold their drink.
There’s always something,
a starting point to go off of.
From there it’s game over,
it’s the bottom of the ninth
and you’re striking out.
All they need to do is wait, circling,
sitting there, smiling with sharp teeth.

It is something simply not to
fall in love with every woman
you meet.

Often, we take care of the
death ourselves.
These women needn’t
get their hands *****.
Maimed and tortured
in the backs of bars,
bedrooms, telephone booths.
Beautiful little vultures,
do you see how they circle overhead?
winking, blowing kisses.

it was never as if you asked for it,
all of it part of a plan, an organized death;
carrion for the scavengers.
You think you have it good,
you smile along with it all.
Gripped deep into that flesh,
breaking bones, ventricles,
talons sinking into clutched skin.
And we just keep on smiling;
clueless, eager.

You cannot cheat death;
splitting up most of these
little ripples and movements
into a terrible uselessness.
You cannot cheat death;
slipping endlessly through
the cracks towards you.
You cannot cheat death;
but sometimes you can beat it
in the cold, stone-gray mornings,
struggling down pavements
to the corner cafe,
all just to have a seat
and just to have a smoke;
looking across the plaza
at all the young little girls
tucked into their colorful scarves,
their big coats swallowing them,
hair blowing in the wind and
faces red from the cold
and those little fur boots...

They can’t be a day over twenty,
those girls, with all legs
and teeth and attitude,
everything pointing upward.
Youth is a wonder
once it is gone from you.

Is it not enough simply to exist?
Perhaps not. Perhaps the whole
scam of it is just too much
to truly ever be happy.
You understand existentialism,
deep down you accept it,
but you never really think about it,
can't ever truly let it get to you.

"Meaningless... Well then, what now?"
“Nothing," is the response,
"Nothing at all."

Nothing but the smoke,
trailing off in the early morning chill,
lifting up with the wind
up over the balconies, and
the coffee, and me and those
sweet young women layered up
in their wool hats and little gloves,
passing lazily by my table
without so much as a glance.

I was writing at the desk by the bed
when she started talking.
She told me that she couldn’t sleep,
told me she wasn’t comfortable here.
She told me that she was just going to leave.

“Are you serious?” I said,
“Get the Hell out then.”

She told me it wasn’t like it
mattered to me either way anyway.
I turned back to the desk and
she turned her back to me
in a sign of dignified protest.

I couldn’t write after that.
They always find a way
to ruin the writing,
something they do,
something they say.
I was ******* she had
said anything at all.

“You know, why do you
gotta always pick fights?
Why can’t you just sleep
like a normal person?”

She told me I was an *******,
told me I didn’t appreciate her.
I closed the lid on the computer,
turned to stare at her;
She was putting on her shirt
and then her shoes, her coat.

“You really gonna just leave then?”

She said yes and told me
I was an *******, again,
I must not have heard her
the other time.

The door slammed with
an angry crack and afterwards
I turned back to the desk,
reopened the laptop and
wrote this poem in peace and quiet.

A man can fall in love
under any circumstance.
A little attention; a soft smile,
a touch of skin like the
brushing of thighs
or the tips of fingers.

All it is might be a look
across the bar.
There she is; legs crossed,
leaning hesitantly against
the finished oak countertop.
There she is; and it is love
in her brown eyes, glancing
downward after a moment
into her gin and tonic.

A man can fall in love
under any circumstance.
It happens in the little things;
the lock of dark hair she curls
behind her ear but never
quite seems to stay there.

It happens in the little things;
the soft smile, the small touch,
making love without a word.

Looking out the glass
down over damp streets
spread like boundaries;
streetlights and stop signs
to keep everything in, or out.

This city is a prison.

Your heartbeat is steady
next to me, slow.
Beneath that slight frame,
veins pump the blood that
gives you life.
The same blood that
allows you to cry at your
worst mistakes, or mine.

This room is a prison.

There is a rotating light,
the spotlight overseeing these
midnight prison grounds.
It burns from green to orange,
back to green again.

Your chest heaves, hitches,
I can feel it as the sobs
whisper out like a jury sentence.
The prison is here in white sheets,
where sighed whispers of
blame echo out.
Aside from that, it is silent,
the window holds out
noises of another world.

I wonder, glowing orange
to somber green,
what crimes I have committed
that hold me here.

I wonder, trapped by these
barbed wire streets,
what repentance I must seek out
to find sleep.

Here we are again,
in the same places–
kneeled over–
staring down at the
very knife that gutted us.

The blood is gone,
wiped clean from the blade;
shining and clear and gleaming
now like it is brand new
in the dim light.

How many times must we
impale ourselves
before understanding sets in,
before we realize we are
bleeding out again
beside the bed.