how almighty we are!
this enlightened
civilization
this great
human race
I bet
if you put this great
society in a cave
without the
distractions we
call necessities
without the addictions
that **** out our souls
I bet if you put this great
species in a cave
regardless of
every advancement
I bet
we still bang rocks

how almighty we are

he could hardly move
and the young men
like snakes
hissed and laughed
as they passed
he would keep his head down
and still they hissed
walking down
sidewalks ripe of life
youth and ignorance
everyone toward
everything
he could hardly move
and when he wasn't
laughed at
he was ignored
see the arthritis had got him bad
and the war had got him worse
he was cold with the sickness
and the snow
and the laughter of young men
or snakes
delirious and shaking
the race whirled
around him
everyone toward
everything
I saw him on that
sidewalk
for a few weeks
when I first moved to the city
I would go to pick up
groceries and he'd be there
and we would chat
briefly
he was not one for words
but was grateful
to see a snake
that wouldn't hiss
I told him I admired him
of course he laughed
but to me he was
a stone in the river
fighting a current
that didn't know he was there
except to hiss and laugh
I lived in that city
for almost a year
and after the first
two or three weeks
he had moved
off to greener pastures
perhaps
and he was the
smartest of us all
getting out of that city
of everyone toward
everything
but maybe the river caught up with
him and swept him away
--those that fight
normally don't last
very long--
but I'd like to think of him
silent on a beach
somewhere
without the arthritis
without the war
the snakes
the cold
without the everyone
toward the everything
just an old man with
no need to move
anymore

She had a boyfriend
back in Miami,
she said,
and she would love
to have me,
she said,
but she just
couldn't do that,
she said,
she loved him and
she would just feel
awfully terrible about
it if she did,
she said.

I told her if she didn't
want to then it seemed
logical that she shouldn't.

Oh, but darling how
I would love to,
she said,
and I'm so drunk
it would be easy,
she said,
but I love him
I promise I do,
she said.

We were in bed
and she lay atop me
saying these things
and the devils the
both of us fought had us
up against the ropes.

I ****** her then,
and once more in the morning
before I dropped her off
at the airport to fly home
to that wonderful and
terribly ignorant boyfriend,
the one she loved so much,
quite obviously a better
man than me.

If you are not dead
you are far from me.
If you are not dead
you are knocking on
some other sucker’s
door. Perhaps he is
in debt and in love,
cursed in similar
afflictions. Perhaps he is
up to the eyes in hedge funds
and stock investments,
his symmetric face smiling
down his checkbook at you,
attracting you in ways
mine never could.

If you are not dead
than perhaps you
are happy.
If you are not dead
than perhaps
you are sad. I certainly
will never know.
Do wedding bells ring already?
Do the long nights of love
break bones in bitter morning?

For a long time this imagination
proved worse than any reality
could have possibly been;
I lay in fevered dreams,
praying for answers,
only hoping to find
where love had been lain to rest.
Now, it is just nice to be rid
of the whole deal.

The universe makes
a lot more sense
without you.

A misting veil,
two incandescent lights
in parallel beams
reflect individual droplets—
a stream of not-quite-rain.

Among the morning shroud
live a host of furtive sounds:
gravel steps, inaudible susurrus,
a turning, silenced not-quite-heartbeat.

the radio echoes
noiselessly
off lives lost
too soon
dreams left
for dead
people die everyday
I only blink
move on
perhaps turn
up the volume
staring at
blank pages
they burn and twist
taunting
while the words
won't come out
and the women
won't go out
they scorn
the piano player
while dancing to
the music
it makes
no sense
no music
no women
they dance and dance
each with their own
set of teeth
of claws
only hope
to make it out alive
the door opens
and the door closes
it won't stay shut
the piano player
scorned in the corner
while the women
dance and dance
and laugh
while all dreams
bring paradise just
out of reach
while the dead
still die
still die
and the words won't come out
the music cuts off
and the women still dance
as if there was
no sound
to begin with
no sound
no sense
no music
no women
only blank pages
burning and twisting
and the piano player
scorned in the corner
and the words won't come out
the words won't come out
anymore

Love is merely walking around
and feeling good about everything
and everywhere that you happen on.
The rest is façade and embellishment,
meant to blush the cheeks of young children.
If you’ve found one to sit with you
on the park benches, silent and smiling,
then there is love there. If you have found
it then there is love in the branches
and the grass and the sun and the
quiet looks you share as you
experience it all in your togetherness.

I sit on park benches late at night,
under streetlights,
seeing ghosts of that love,
passing about through the
branches and the trees and
between the legs of the young couple
striding past me,
walking their dog back home.

the lions lay in tall grass
and I was trying to be good
but *******
they get what they want
always
I was trying to be good
but good is never good enough
and close is never close enough
and full is never full enough
they are here and they are now
the lions don't wait
they don't ask permission
strike at will
pulling at my insides
gnawing away
for a quick meal
how can I survive?
with the heart so red
and satisfying to the palate
can't continue to have them breaking
it like bread for their fill
they are like god to disciple
they command and you
can only obey
how can one survive

you see
it only takes one taste
to spark the beast inside
I was trying to be good
but the hunger overflows
and it is eat or be eaten
in this existence
the lions lay in tall grass
but they only move
on my command now
I'm sorry it happened this way
it is **** or be killed
and I am not ready to
fall in love
so I am the new god
and these lions now
whimper when I pass
unless I call for them
and I am so hungry
oh I am so ravenous
I tried to be good
but its tempt or be tempted
and they turn from predator
to prey at the touch
and they are mine
they are mine
and they are delicious

The night we left the dance and,
drunk, lay in heat across forbidden beds.
A tangle of suit jacket and black cloth,
kissing secrets in our thick
darkness-dream, a tightening shadow,
something like arms
that never quite held you up
but— knowing they never will—
wrapped around you all the same.

Thin straps of a dress
slide to pale arms and sitting,
shivering, and saying nothing,
except perhaps an offered smile
as I pulled my jacket to your shoulders.

How beautiful the world might
be if it was you!
Your little shoulders, your little sounds,
dark eyes alight with excitement,
dark hair as it falls then in front
of a face too solemn for twenty—
only to be brushed away again.

There have been a few

like you and there

have been many

who have tried,

but there has never

been one that 
was you.

When you are

old and fat,

and I am old

and dead,

this poem will

find its way 
toward your

blurred, 
flickering eyesight

and you will know 
of a
love that was
 replicated,
but
 never duplicated,
that was complicated,
but 
never eradicated.

No names will

be said,
 no memories

told, draped in metaphor,

simply the words,

but you will know

it was you,

and you will know

it is you

because you feel

it, already, every day,

though it sits denied

in the back of

your mind,

though it sits silent

in the shadow of

every smile,

where it waits

and waits and waits,

with a patience I could

never find,

for that day,

when, old and fat,

you chance
 upon this

and know,
 with
slight regret,

that it was 
always you.

Just turned nineteen, we sat
along the bottom of the bunk bed—
holding hands and nothing else
—reading from the big compilation
of Bukowski poems that I kept
folded up and tucked in a pocket
of my backpack as an anchor
through those early years.

The cottage was empty and quiet
except the circling ache of the ceiling fan.
Only blocks from the northern shore,
the others had gone to lay blankets
in the sand—even in a mid-spring chill,
with sweaters on—to drink the cheap
wine we stole from the corner store.

You told me you enjoyed Bukowski
because he gave voice to a self that you
had never known you had.
A self you wanted to explore and better understand.
You—with your suburban, two-car
garage upbringing—had never smoked
a cigarette until we met.

In the million hours since that hour
that we sat and took turns yelling out
lines of “Bluebird” to get a better feel for
the words as they took shape in our mouths,
there have been more cigarettes.

There have been more drugs that left our
outlines in sweat stains on the mattress.
There have been more broken glasses,
shards in-between our toes, and
mistake tattoos penned in our skin.
There have been more falling-outs and car crashes
and fathers with voiced, finger shaking disapprovals.
There have been more curses and
hospital visits and apology letters
turned to kindling or tucked in drawers
to be left behind.

There have been fewer poems.

perched on the curb
like a pigeon
on a telephone wire
clutching a cigarette
watching
the remnants of the rain
wash down the gutter
there's nothing like
that post rain morning
with the air
heavy and thick
a weeping sunrise
peeks through
scattered showers
and thunderstorms
those early mornings
like noah
after the flood
the world seems
wet
and new
clean
simple innocent
until the people wake up
and the illusions fade
into that nine to five reality
with their car horns
and scattered conversation
dont know what they missed
what they ruined
sighing
i walk back inside
away from a world left wanting

I had been alone
for three months at this point
I hope you know
swerving in and out of
the madness
climbing so high
off pills drugs ***
any cheap fix
only to dive down
so far
into the emptiness
of self pity
and sobriety
three months
with no call
hadn't seen her beautiful
smile
except sometimes when I
closed my eyes
I quit the job
I quit writing
I wasn't hardly living
merely existing
as if by some accident
of fate
but the money ran out
and the drugs ran out
so I took to the street
to find one or the other

I ran into her
down by the train station
after three months
with no call
no smile
nothing

she was surprised to see me
as if she had forgotten
I was the one that had
been there when she had
gotten that tattoo right
below her neck
or the high heels she
was wearing
she seemed to have forgotten
our lives had been tangled
together
in a mess of *** and
facetious love for
the better part of
a year
she was catching a train
out west
she said
to marry some man
sitting on 9 acres
of land somewhere
she couldn't handle
the city anymore
and she walked toward
the track and
looked back
for a quick smile

melted my heart
a ******* miracle
a ******* delight to see
I hope you know

Dawn is breaking like bones
against the clenched fist horizon
and the thrill recedes backwards,
thwarted and cornered
by the coming light.

It is the curse of those who
walk the alleys barefoot and
bruised to see such beauty while
in the thralls of unseen demons.

Hues of blood red and ochre
bleed through the vision as tangible
warmth creeps upwards across the
city, sick with its secrets.

I walk amongst them like a
minefield, choosing wisely
as often as not.
I watch the sun rise
over the anarchy of the night
and am confused by it.

People awake, conformed
by the coming morning.
I see a man with a shiner
walk in his suit towards the
bus stop. Those that let
control slide from tenuous
grips as the dark encircles quickly
reemerge as the professionals
they promised they would
never become.

It saddens me to see them.
Needing anything and anyone
to forget the lives they carved
out from the canvas we have
created. It saddens me
to see them, with the dawn
burning upwards and the
fevers of the evening dwindle
and smolder into the cold,
calculated face of the day.

I stare into the sky and
wonder why it is
so hard to truly
become crazy.

The visions blur like thick fog,
memories break into strobe-lit flashes.
The whole world exists in a flat line.
Troubled curiosity sits high in the throat
like a bad taste or a
hand around the neck.
You are ****** on the side of the road,
or the back of the bus on that
long ride home,
while the sunlight plays
judge/jury/executioner up on its
condescending throne, levying its light,
like punishment, upon you.

The world is a cruel place when
the late nights face the
early mornings eye to eye.

On the sidewalk you watch
cars pass, people pass,
the whole world moves in
that straight line forwards.
You bob your head in calm defeat.
On the bus the people don’t move,
but they appear to.
Mouths and lips and eyes and feet,
all containing no direction
except as the tires go.
You look at it all in quiet wonder.

There, with flash bang remembrance
and an intangible machine gun burst
drumming off your eyelids,
you lay on the pavement,
or against the window of the bus,
with memory a black din of noise and
half-formed images,
and wonder what it’s like to
be nothing at all.

All the memories feel so detached.
The time slips by and the things
you did to pass it feel as unreal as the
dreams that burn against the inside
of your skull when you awake.
It’s another day.
It’s another passing afternoon.
The reasons for everything you do
and everything you did blur and
dissipate and the emotion of it all
fades to background noise.
The hope of the future has become
the consequences of the past and
the context of the present.
Where have you been all of this time?
Where have you been while you were living?
Memory is as real as a good movie, captured
in pictures, or written down like a book
That you remember but can’t quite
recall the theme.
Time is unforgiving in its perseverance,

The house was perfect for us.
I always wanted stairs like these
because I only had
one floor growing up.
Moving in with all these nice things
and that hopeful excitement
of things to come.

After a few weeks of settling in,
finally got that dog
you talked about,
the white retriever you saw
at the shelter,
such a little pup with soft, big eyes.
He loved to climb around your bed
and sleep curled next to you
almost to the point that I was jealous,
but at first he couldn't get up
on the bed at all,
so he would whine timidly
till you grabbed him up and
buried him in your arms.

Once he knocked over
that photo of us from the wedding
off the bedside table
but the glass didn't crack.
What a treasure that frame contained!
A smile like the one you held
with white teeth in white dress.
The most valuable treasure in the world.

I remember you crying
the night you told me
you were pregnant.
I think I might've cried too,
we were so excited.
Finally starting a family,
finally living out our dreams together,
the two of us
there in that wonderful home
with two stories,
and with that wonderful dog,
with a child on the way,
and those invaluable
treasures of love and hope and family,
vaulted forever in our hearts.

They tell you to quit smoking.
They tell you to quit drinking.
To quit laughing,
quit loving,
Living.
Because it shortens your life,
they tell you.
Because it's bad for your health,
they tell you.
Have a drink, friend,
have a smoke,
that's what's good for the soul.
Long walks at two in the morning
skipping stones over concrete oceans,
that's what's good for the soul.
Pretty women with pretty
legs, that say all sorts of
pretty things, but never too
loud, or too often, that's
what's good for the soul.
Watching as those pretty legs storm
out of the hotel room after
you said the wrong thing again. Fixing
up that last glass of
whiskey and enjoying it
alone instead. Fighting in
the back of bars over
spilled drinks or spilled
words or someone who slept
with someone else. That's
what's good for the soul.
To take a hit and to hit.
To love and to hate.
To live.
That's what's good for the soul.

what to write about tonight
I wrote one
earlier
about the rush of
everything
about how crazy
this world can be
but that's overused
that's oversaid
I could write
about the woman
again I guess
she comes and goes
different names
different faces
but I know her when
I see her
in the eyes
of them all
you can tell
where she is
hiding
watching
waiting to bait
me in
she will always catch
me
though she's long gone
she will always catch me
I write to avoid her
I drink to forget her
I ****
just to feel her again
she will catch
me
and I will
let her

You were a silhouette
in red from the taillights.
We were lost on the side
of the highway.
It was cold and we were smoking,
exhaling gingerly into the winter night.
There's something gorgeous
about you there,
underneath the lamp of the
streetlight and tinted red.
You smoked with the cigarette
high between your fingers,
almost to the nail,
holding it tight and kissing it
to your lips with a grace
I haven't been witness to since.
Your hands got cold
and you grabbed mine,
pushing them into the
pockets of my winter coat.
It has never again been more
ok to be cold, there against
the car.
It has never again been more
ok to be lost.

Do you remember
the days when you used to
believe in things that were
deeper than the surface?
Days that would hold you
in eager, edge-of-seat anticipation
as you awaited their arrival?
Do you remember?

Hell, you barely even
remember yesterday anymore.
The lines have crossed and
twisted in so many ways you’re
pulling strings just to sort yourself out.
Think about it, there on that pier,
overlooking the ocean in
all of it’s eternity.

You were 15.
Meeting a young girl with
cigarettes in her mouth but still
kissed with a taste of evergreen.
It was one o’clock in the morning
and that Tybee breeze held you
rigid even in the warmth
of a July summer night.

Think about the glory in those days.
Think about the love.
The love that filled those
dreaming eyes, praying,
for someone to come
and to know you as their own.
I think you forgot those nights,
those days, those dreams.
Please,
find them once again.

Living in one place for
a long time tends to
complicate the memory.
Flashes and visions intervene
and overlap in the conscious.

There is the corner where
I first told you I loved you,
imitations of that anxiety flood
the nervous system and I am
that stumbling little boy again.
That time I left for the summer
and you cried, right there,
begging me to stay.
I look away now because I
remember how hard it was to leave.

Look back and there we are again,
a year later. You’re crying for
another reason.

And there you are,
yelling in that auditorium as
you hit me in the chest, tears streaming
down both of our cheeks.
I had class in that room all year,
replaying that hatred in your eyes,
over and over.

The bar we went on a date to.
I loved you there,
elegant in black, and I
hadn’t shaved and I knew
and you knew and everyone knew
I was the lucky one to
have been there at all.
Later, the same bar you threw
a drink in my face.

The same bar I watched
you with another man.

Memory is a curse when
stabilized by the tangibility
of location.
I am stuck in winding loops
of memories that will never
be made again.
Like walking the ruins
of a great civilization,
knowing something beautiful
and magnificent once took place
but now is nothing but
twisted remains and
dusted fragments of a life
that may have been
but no longer is
anymore.

You can't breathe.
The cold air burning
down your throat,
clenching up like a fist.
There they are,
in the backseat of a '98 Buick,
your mouth is wide open,
but the air won't inhale.
The blood is clotting up
around your brain,
and the the stars in
your vision fuse and form
clusters and galaxies of color.
You fall to the pavement and writhe
in anaerobic agony. The world
falls from blue to black to white
and your heart is clogging your
epiglottis, dead weight in the
back of your throat.
You can't breathe, yet you struggle
up to walk away, still
everywhere you turn
there's a silver '98 Buick LeSabre
and her, painted in
silhouette across
the back window.

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.

I never wanted it to go this way,
though it was my actions
that catalyzed the death and
the following internment of our love.

I never meant for it to be like this.
We have our prides and our
angers and our unbearable
emotions.

My finger still won’t bend from
that parking kiosk. I was so mad.
I don’t know if I would’ve jumped but
*******, it was a toss up.

I am sorry you saw that side of me.

The demons that normally vent out
through the line breaks of the poems
as they line the walls of my computer
numbering the thousands.

You should read them
all some day. Perhaps gain
a little perspective into
how I am who I am.

I never meant for it to be like this.
This broken record of arguments
and excuses and tears that never
seem to fully stop.

You’ve put your guard up.
Distance is a distinct enemy
of love, so is pride/anger/regret.
—Insert the adjective you wish—

I hate myself for you.
Most likely more than you do,
though you would tell me that
it isn’t possible.

Your anger is beautiful
to me, even though it
is the loaded gun barrel
lodged between my teeth.

Your passion for us was
something I have grown to
envy, even seek to emulate,
now that I understand it.

I never showed you how
I felt, never let myself believe it.
Now I am begging for a
second/third/fourth, chance.

Perhaps the boy has cried
wolf one too many times,
and now must face the inevitable
jaws of a love now lost.

I never meant for it to be like this.
Stuck in this terrible place,
this awkward stalemate
between loving and letting go.

you lay in bed next to me
with an anger uncontainable
you look into my eyes
with a hatred
inconcealable
you smile in my direction
but the dimples in your cheeks
never crease
like they used to
they called it love
they called it beautiful
all the things I grew up
waiting for
evolved to this
you were the culmination
of my childhood dreams
all the chapter books
with the hero and the princess
all the movies with the two
misguided kids finding
each other
you were the culmination
of everything I needed
all the one night stands
with women who never
got it the way you did
never saw me
the way you did
you were the trojan horse
that brought the walls to shambles
and left me crashing down
in the middle
of it all
an amazing fall
but we both know
the ground
hurts
and we both know
that movies are just
actors with a script
and books are
edited and rewritten
I thought I saw it
in those dimples
in those eyes
but now
you lay in bed next to me
and the sorrow
is unimaginable

prendi quello che ti ami
e bruciarlo basso

take what you love
and burn it down

It's not something you notice.
Years pass,
maybe you don't keep
in touch
as much as you would like.
He's the reason you're writing
and you can't even shoot him a phone call,
what kind of **** is that?
Then you see him;
maybe leaving a movie theater
or in passing at a restaurant.
His hair is long-- mangy--
eyes low and wandering,
you shake his hand,
brief hug.
He's been drinking.
You can smell it as good
and strong as
you can see it.
He smiles briefly,
spares a few words;
an old joke that
doesn't seem
funny anymore.
And that's it.
It's scary.
There goes your hero,
****** it's scary.
Everyone's old now,
and all of the hope
of the future
has replaced itself
with the tangible
harshness
of memory.
You look back
just to make sure
it's real.
Thank god
he's not standing there
anymore.

She walked in small steps—
always behind when you walked with her
as if a big deal to be moving at all.
As if she’d never gotten the motion
down quite right.
She’d been in Lexington
longer than she’d tell.
Had gotten to know someone
she never met.
Had taken a long black strike through
the page.

“A couple years,” she told you;
her feet shuffled up and narrow
in nervous white slips.
You’d be in the park or
sometimes out by the horses
waiting for her by the fence,
unconcerned. She was always
wanting to be out by the horses,
or in the park. She’d never go
back to your apartment, not right away.

“A couple years,” she would tell you,
“just long enough to hate it here.”
The type of thing people
say about a place to joke around,
but her lips never curled when she
was done joking it.
Some eyes don’t ever open up,
you would think.
You would think you knew
everything there is to know.
Prided yourself on it.

“Oh boy, she’s got some crazy in her,”
You would tell the guys, “Just enough to
swing around and have some fun.”
All the while she’s walking behind you,
those small staccato steps.
White shoes and her navy long coat
tucked tight around
her elbows in right angles.
“Only been in Kentucky a couple years,”
you would carry on, “Hadn’t even been
over on campus until a few months ago.”
All the while she’s walking behind you,
head down, eyes low and closed up
barn doors at midnight.
Maybe you’d take her to the park
around sunset, spinning her around
in the light just to coax a smile
up to the surface. Or to the horses that
always seemed to like her more than
they liked you.

And always her walking
just those few steps behind you—
even now.

There is an incredible sadness
that sits upon the city like
a dense fog,
if you look close enough to see it.
It tastes sweet in coughed breath
and in the early, endless night
you can see it there, stagnant
through the windows and
the trees.
There is an incredible sadness
that sits in this city,
corrupting slowly and fully
and without mistake.
The people sometimes know it
and can do nothing,
others embrace it,
most do not know it as it
leans and sits about them.
An old man leans his dark
head against the railing
of the Wanamaker building
steps, coughs twice, a
gloved hand covering cracked lips.
Walk past, breathe in
the sweet stagnation of a
fire that no longer has any
wick to uphold it.
There is a sadness here,
If you look close enough.

saw his mother
while they buried him. her hair
--with sorrow as flint--
smoked and caught fire. the world began to
cave in up and around the swollen fist of regret that punched
through my stomach --the fire spread--
speared my gut with blame.
all the while
a cacophony
of strings and trumpets
cried parting and
a soul flew
on golden banners
towards heaven
those stone white graffitied gates.
--the fire grew too much to handle--
in agony I flailed and screamed.
rolled down tall mountains clawing at bone and dirt
and flesh. gilded chariots breaking free. shepherding the beautiful
from the leperous, riddled atrophy that controls the living.
the dying and the burning. how everything burns
dies. fire smoke guilt regret. oh sweet death.
death in the summertime. death in the
morning, the evening, death of
everything. always.

eyes open
--a crisp, cluttered autumn hillside--
fall back upon his mother
reality stricken and grave.
blink twice. refocus.
a tear falls from her face
followed by
one from
mine.

the fire is out.

There she was.
Anger etched in
her silhouette,
framed by the doorway.
You see, women get all
upset at once,
like the crashing of a dam,
like the pulling of a trigger.
And there you are;
half-asleep in bed,
drunk in the back of the cab.
The pin’s been pulled and
there she goes.

Anger has always
been a source of
amazement for me,
especially in the women
I have known.
You never know what
will be the final strike.
She deals with you.
She deals with your drugs
and your drunkenness,
all the fits of highs and lows,
all the impossible arguments.
There she is; that beautiful women
that will still pet
your head and hold your hair
late at night after you’re sick
from the drug or the drink,
or some other, unspoken demon.

Until, in one beautiful moment,
that incredible anger
bursts out like New Years fireworks.
You’re taking blows
to the chin and to the
heart and to the soul.
Her eyes blaze with a
hatred, mouth tight and
cheeks reddened from the yelling,
her hair falls into her face
and she angrily swats it back
behind her ear.
She’s a terrible monstrosity.
A beautiful, terrible monstrosity.
And all you can do is watch in awe
as the culmination of everything
you will never be is spelled
out before you.

There you are; in the back of a cab,
half-asleep on the bed,
drunk on the edge of the bathtub,
and you can do nothing but watch,
slack-jawed and scared,
as that almighty anger,
spilling forth from that
almighty woman,
breaks every single bone.

After ***, she fell asleep
and I laid there for some time
thinking about all the collisions
and coincidences that led me
up to this point.
She was a beautiful girl
--blonde hair blue eyes,
you know the deal--
She liked older men,
she had said
while we were speaking
at the bar.
That's when I knew it was
a good thing. That's when
I knew it was good that
I had rented a motel room
so close.
Old men have baggage,
the older you are
the more **** you carry
around like stones.
Older you are, the more ****
everyone else has
to deal with;
especially young
beautiful girls
at a dive bar off of the interstate
hanging around old men.
Especially the old men preying
on younger women at a bar
close to their motel room.

Girls who like older men
are either too naive
to know any better,
or too desperate to give
a ****.

I quietly got up
walked toward the sink,
avoiding carefully the
clothes and wine glasses
that lay all
strewn about the room.
--****** motel--
The ones that still
have the old keys
with that big hole where
the key chain goes.
The water pressure
was terrible
but I ran my face under
the water.
I thought maybe
she must just be naive,
she can't be anything past
twenty or so,
**** still perked and eager
and her thighs still tight.
Not for long,
I would imagine,
not with that inclination
towards older men.
That baggage will weigh
it all down, down, down.

I wish I could
have helped her.
I wish I could have
made her realize
she doesn't much need
the baggage.
--But how do you expect
a lion to tell an antelope not
to get too close?--
You don't.
So I turned off the faucet
and laid back in the bed;
just another old lion
full with thoughts of
the young, eager antelope
and the shame of an
empty victory.

Cutting off blood circulation,
inflammation,
hand is turning
black to blue.
Poor fool's face
must've been
made of steel.
Typing with one hand
on a late morning,
3rd cup of coffee
finally getting the heart
pumping,
wondering what he's doing.

Hope the *******'s face
fell off.

There's a
primal urge
that rips through
the body
and you cannot stop;
blow after ****** blow.
Until someone pulls
you off,
bones shattered
all across your hand.
You can't even tell.

Till you wake up
late one morning
and you're typing
with one hand,
wondering
if that *******
had as much trouble
brushing his teeth
as you did.

cutting off blood circulation
--inflammation--
hand is turning
black to blue
poor fool's face
must've been
made of steel

typing with one hand
on a late morning
3rd cup of coffee
finally getting that heart
pumping

wondering what he's doing

hope the *******'s face
fell off

there's a sort of
primal urge
that rips through
the body
and you can't stop
blow after blow
until someone pulls
you away
bones shattered
up and down your hand
can't even tell
till you wake up
one late morning
and you're typing
with one hand
wondering
if that *******
had as much trouble
brushing his teeth
as you did

There was a homeless man
across from me in the park.
He walked over, knees crooked,
hanging upright onto a cane.
His beard was wild and unkempt.
His hair nearing baldness.
The jeans he wore were worn,
with the fabric torn and eroded,
washed in color around the ankle.
He spared me a glance as he rummaged
through the trashcan beside us.
Women and children laughed and dance,
oblivious to the man’s pilgrimage.
He found a half drank mocha latte that I had
seen cast away minutes before, and I watched
as he cracked a shy, crooked smile at the find.
He sat, and eyed me as he gulped it down.
Only for a few seconds did he sit,
accompanying me in silence. Then he arose,
placing the cup carefully back into the waste,
and walked off toward the street.
Off toward some other feast,
some other treasure,
his cane dragging his feet onward,
step by weary step.
Life can be beautiful in the little things,
if you allow it.

In my apartment it is dark,
but even then it isn’t really;
the blink of the smoke alarm,
the light from the screen, illuminating
my desk as I type.
I see a bug crawl into a corner
and out of sight under this
synthetic brightness.

I am alone without him there,
but even then I am not really;
outside, cars pass by, encasing their inhabitants
in spheres of aluminum and cheap metal,
seven billion of us out there, all encased in little boxes.
The cars honk but I cannot hear them
through the walls.

In my apartment it is silent,
but even then it isn’t really;
I hear the whir of the air vent, coughing
out from underneath the table,
and the couple in the apartment above me,
yelling, fighting, always fighting.

They are in love,
but even then it isn’t really;
he beats her and she cooks breakfast,
each facing demons that they twist
and contort and call something it's not.
I see her as she comes down the steps
while I step out for a smoke.
I think she should leave him
but she doesn’t and I don't say.

In the flickering light of the stairwell
I see the results of love, I see the results of
her, too scared to be alone. It saddens me
to see her, although I do not know her.

She passes without a word, and
as I come back inside I close the door,
shutting out the everything behind me.
I don’t think I mind so much
my fake darkness, my fake silence.
I don’t think I mind so much
being alone.

Laying in bed,

she told me 
all about her

most recent lover;

how he had broken

her like a clock.

“You see, I can’t move

anymore,” she said,
“You see, I can’t feel
anymore,” she said.

Her hands shook

and she got so pale
simply at the thought
of it all.

I rolled over,

—I am no superhero,

sweetheart—

Don’t believe I will save you,

Don’t believe I will kiss you,

I will not hold you hand.

“This isn't your rebound,
sweetheart, 
it is your rehabilitation,”

I told her.

This is your rehabilitation
for all the times

you fell in love

and couldn't get back
up,

for all the men
that seemed so sweet

but never delivered.

Don’t believe I will save you,
Don’t believe I will fix you,
“This isn't your resolution
,
sweetheart, it is your retribution,"

I told her.
This is your retribution,

so **** me

like all the men

who ****** you over,
like all the men
who broke you down.

**** me like 
a woman with no heart

and one day you will
realize it may not
 be
pretend anymore.

—I'm no superhero,

sweetheart—

But I will sure as hell

play the villain,

because most of 
the time
that is all you truly 
need.

Left me in the lobby
of your apartment building
for hours,
drunk--
spitting insults
at the doorman--
till you salvaged
enough pity to
let me in.
You were
getting ready for bed,
I was on the couch,
while you shook
your head
in the sink.
"The worst
relationship with a man
I've ever had,"
you said,
"you don't even
listen to me."
Oh, sweetheart, I do,
I hear every word.
Especially the ones
carved out of that
insurmountable anger
and regret.
I hear them.
I see them etched
into your features,
dipping between
your dimples,
and pouring out
of the tears that
slipped so fiercely
down the drain.
That anger was so
volatile
I thought you'd **** me
then and there.
However, you merely
turned your head
and slammed the door.
And we may make it
through this, but that
anger is still down there
somewhere, waiting.

I never knew how
violent someone
could be just
brushing their teeth.

Thin tendrils of splintered glass.
An empty mirror reflecting
an empty sky of asphalt and
pavement and what once
was smoke but is now
only air again.

Thin fingers of shattered glass.
An empty mirror reflecting
an empty sky of sawdust and
strangeness and what once
was sorrow but is now
only me again.

You can’t trust a pretty woman.
Those eyes, ethereal, glittering
in focus towards your direction.
You can’t trust a pretty woman.
Caught between the burning touch of
skin on skin and the soft taste of lust
in the nape of her neck. Her hand
is in your hair, perhaps finding its
way down your back. She’s smiling
through clutched lips, perhaps nibbling
on yours. You need her for a minute
there; all pride, all dignity, cast astray
for her fix. She understands this.
She capitalizes on your momentary
weakness, slipping the knife
slowly between two of you ribs.
You feel it miles away.
You feel it, pain careening
from far off, clenching
your teeth and muscles.
You can’t trust a pretty woman.
You pull away, look
into those eyes.
Nothing.
Nothing but that smile,
and the sweet taste of lust,
dead on your tongue.

a bird calls morning
already awake
i burn the papered edge
of nicotine and habit
the new day yawns into existence
through drooping clouds
and condensation
rub my eyes
stare from the porch
into the mist
almighty rain
cooling and calming
hides the sun
as his drowsy gaze
echoes back into my soul
perusing my dreams
thoughts
inhibitions

zoom out
see the trout
fighting the river
see the bird whose call
woke the morning
see the wife
resilient in her
bruise beaten love
back to my
silken sorrowed soul
the sun still continues
in its rise
above and apathetic
over the clouds
trees people buildings
looking down on
everything
he looks back at me
and we both
laugh

for awhile
the women would
tell me I didn't
smile the same anymore
they would say I was unhappy
they'd ask me what was wrong
day in and day out
they'd ask
baby what's wrong?
why don't you laugh
anymore?
why don't you play
anymore?
it was consistent
and drove me crazy
I'm fine
I told them
I'm fine
but they kept asking
sweetie what's the matter?
don't you enjoy me anymore?
aren't you glad to see me?
for weeks this went on
and eventually
I began to believe them
is there something wrong?
am I secretly depressed?
I started trying to laugh
and smile
even when it wasn't necessary
and it worked
the women stopped
asking me how I was
stopped seeing if I was ok
and eventually stopped
seeing me
at all and
now there really is
something wrong

what a magnificent dance we dance
around around around
always close but never touching
you in that dark red dress
--the one you
know that I love--
auburn hair flowing elegantly as
you turn and spin around me
and I
graceless
try my best to avoid
feet and eye contact
struggling only to keep up
blurs of red
sting at my vision
the corners of my eye
never stopping
never slowing down
spinning and twirling
around around around
enough to make a man dizzy
and you know it

who knows when
the song will end
or what will come on
in its absence
all I see
is these tinges of dark red
in my vision
an elegance I'm
not sure I've witnessed
in a long time
the dance continues
around around around
so agonizingly close
until you spin away from me
once again

You had a tiny, little heart
that let you down.
One that beat to its own rhythm,
slightly off,
tucked away in your chest
as it was.

You had a tiny, little heart
that let you down.
I remember it as you
lay asleep across me,
never slowing.

You had a tiny, little heart
that let you down.
It burnt bright
and then quickly out;
quiet now upon the hospital bed.

You had a tiny, little heart
that let you down.

The rest of you was perfect.

You are the age that I was
when we met.
I have become an artifact:
vestigial, an older
version of a thing no longer
necessary, a tool of stone tied
with fraying string in a world
moving on toward bronze.

An archaeologist digs
up my bones and scratches his head.
He cannot fathom what they
were for except in relation
to you.

how is it?
no matter
what happens
good or ill
no matter what
life
sends my way
I always end
up here
always here
how is it?
as the sun explodes
and my dogs die
my woman won't sleep
or talk
anymore
how is it
that as whiskey
drains to glass
and relationships
come and go
like thunderstorms
flashing
how is it?
life deals blow
after blow
and I sit here
turning the
other cheek and
typing
for christ's sake
typing
as if these words
meant something
other than nothing
I should be put to work
or death
these words
bring no food to the table
no clothes for my sister's
bruising back
nothing
only another few kilobytes
reduced from thought to ram
and then gone
quick relief
quick relief
then back to nothing
as life throws another left hook

It is an image of a man.
Behind him, a shadow stretched long and thick—
like tar. Like shoulder blades. Like a feeling you could lay in.
The shadow is a well, a pit, a grave.
The shadow is a hole the artist forgot to fill.
The image is a sadness, dark and shoulder-width. 

The image is a child at the beach,
a toy plastic shovel in his hand.
The image is his brown cap with the strap and
the gold embossed letters “Lowry Park Zoo,”
the sand from the shovel flying forever
backwards without a glance—
tiny diamonds caught by the wind and small hands,
flowering downward into great mountains. 

The image is a child in a hole shoulder-width,
sand in a landslide behind him,
resting for only a moment before cascading back
into the shadow again. 

The image is a false progress.
The child is an old man, the beach a graveyard.
Watch the shovel. Watch the sand as diamonds as dirt as time.
Watch the wind. Watch the crooked hands.
Watch it trickle down again, again. The child is an old man. 
The sand is a hole. The shadow is a sadness.
Do they lay in it?

The image is a regression.
In off-pitch impressions I wonder the comforts of the grave—
satin in the coffin. The feeling when there is none.
Do they lay in it?

The image is a man. 
The image is a shoulder-width sadness. 
The image is a boy and an old man laying in the same shadow. 
The image is a hole I forgot to fill.

It smelled of gasoline.
A lone tire twisted
in protest as the
rest of the Earth stopped.
I felt suddenly tired.
The tired that burns your
lungs to breathe and holds
your hands clenched and
crossed to your chest.
There was a strip mall
across the street, but the
signs were half out, and the
names of the stores were illegible.
The streetlight flickered from
amber, to red, green again.
It smelled of gasoline. Late spring air
thick with new and unwelcome scents.
I felt each breath choke down into me
and looked at the sky, dark with the stars,
none visible in the city light.
There was schrapnel strewn about.
Charred metal fuming atop the street.
It was all one could do to look
at the flickering of the streetlight,
the signs with the names of the shops, the
dimmed sky, all with tired
eyes and clenched fists.
It smelled of gasoline. The light flickered
back to red.
The tire came to a
still and fell over.

here is a story for you:
a man grew up
got old
got married
got divorced
never fell in love
never went to jail
never skipped work
never got too drunk
had a stable
mental health record
and wrote perfectly bland
poetry for a sweet fee
to feed his two children
until he put a bullet 'tween
his brain and theirs
one boring summer evening

How many years has it been now?
Filing cabinets full of minutes/hours/days.
A lifetime outlined in manila folder.
Five times now, it says in your record,
but where are the receipts?
Who falls in love and doesn’t get a receipt?
You can write it off and claim it
as a loss at the very least.

It has been seven years since
anything happened, another thirteen
since anything made sense.
The numbers don’t add up.
Where did the years go?
Each of their folder slim as if
they were never there at all.
Placeholders of a life lived in
hole-punched margins.