The small faced Korean
Man
Paints orange nail polish
My girlfriend's feet
He wears plastic gloves that

Don't fit
Quite

Rightly.

He is missing half a
Finger on
His right hand.

Robb and I talk
Again
Of the orange grove
He will inherit,

We make jokes
That cause the women
Rubbing our feet

To laugh and smile.

My feet begin to lose their
Hard earned callouses.

The soap they use smells
Like oranges.
The three of them

Walk over to a crock-***
To grab warm rocks
Robb asks if it's time

For chili

He had
not finished

His soup at lunchtime
As we talked of
Old stories
Some that left scars
And others
Callouses.

The soup grew cold
But the smiling
reminded me
It is springtime

Darkness surrounds me,
My left arm holds
My iPhone aloft.
A light shines down on
My face. Its pale face

A light in the darkness.
Beside me is my lover,
She -- worlds away in dreams.

I read the words
From worlds away
On Twitter.
On Facebook.
On Reddit.

Netflix draws me in.

My phone,
With white face
And shrouded in darkness,
Holds her chord,
scythe-like
Across my chest.

Serving to sever my soul
From this life around me.

Merely a psychopomp,
The reaper ushers
Souls into the abyss.

They lose touch with this world.

I lose touch with this world.
My mind is worlds away.

I lose touch with this life.

The waiter grabs
another beer

brining it to
table 24.

They send him for
more
water.

He cusses as he walks
back
and forth

He brings
them
the water
the beer
is

gone.

They send him for
another.

I pour him one.

He brings it to the table.

But not before
asking me
if we plan
on getting ******* tonight.

I tell him:

"Yes. It's Amanda's
birthday.
Everyone is going out."

He brings the table another beer.

The fat man sitting there
laughs.
His laugh is
curdled with
an onset drunkenness.

I pour another beer
for a different waitress.
I am counting
the
clock.

She grabs the beer.
And smiles with
an honest
smile.  

She is new.

Unaware of the
distain
we all
hold tightly.

I pour another beer.
I count the clock.

Until we can
get

*******.

First may I apologize for
The womanizing,
And
The shallowness.

Call me Ismael

I went whaling once.
Not -- on the high seas
But, at Big D’s, Gillys.

I went downtown, and around town
Trying to -- get down.

I needed a Moby to my ****.
So I went searching.
For the meanest, biggest, foulest fish in the sea
And there are plenty of fish in the sea

Trust me

And four or (fourteen) shots of tequila later,
She’d consumed me.
Like, Jonah.
I was inside her.

And the only way I could get out was a smoke
And I quit that **** years ago.

I woke up, my muscles hurt
My head hurt
My heart, still hurt.
I looked over and there she was
Lying naked in the covers
Suddenly, my stomach hurt.

As I hung my head praying to that porcelain god
I thought back to last night, and who’s lips I was kissing
I remembered tasting yours, not hers
I remembered your eyes, not hers
I remembered your touch, not hers
I heaved up, your memory, not hers.

And like that you were gone.
No longer did I pray every time my phone rang
That the phrase would be “1 new text from -- “

I had deleted your name in my phone.
The letters were just too pretty.
I tried changing the fonts,
They looked good in every typeface

Hell, you made Webdings look good.
So I had to tarnish perfection.
I had to delete -- perfection
And I sat there, head in the bowl,
Removing every last bit of -- perfection --
from my stomach. I smiled, broken heart and all
I smiled.

On idle Tuesday nights you coast into the darkness --
the captain of your two-door space cruiser.
Enveloped by the empty North Dakota roads,
among the nothingness and the stars,
you stare beyond the windshield
into the peace and the silence.

Your eyes search the horizon.

Inside your shuttle,
the music dances at volumes
Of 10 or 15 or 25.
The lights flicker.
Your phone vibrates.
It is clinging to its only bar of service
And the messages from a million loved ones back on Earth.

You pay it little attention on these drives.
The stars speak more to you
as you cruise through towns I've never heard of
(And probably won't remember).

I don't know if you know this,
But: I went to Space Camp,
and I've always been a fan of star-gazing,
and cruising past satellites you've probably never heard of.
I've got a penchant for idle Tuesday nights
and adventuring into the stars.

So the next time the stars dial your number,
your steering wheel turns toward Jupiter,
the country music is just a little too loud,
And you wanna leave these streets behind:

I've never been much of a pilot,
But I'll always be there for the ride.

A gray-haired professor
Once harped on us about our titles.
I was sitting to the left of a cute brunette,
Brita.
We'd ****** the previous night.
And now, we analyzed stories --
Dripping in analogy and pretentiousness.
Our backpacks smelled of coffee,
They got a second-hand kick off the aromas
Of our hangovers and homework,
Completed in the coffee shop just off Harvard St.
I smiled over Janet's essay about a dead lover;
It was called, "Till Death,"
Which was apparently too revealing.
So was Brita's blouse.
My essay was "Black hoodies and blind intersections"
And it tackled grief, fate and the dangers of running at night.
It, too, was too revealing.
Unlike the hoodie it discussed.
I never got the titular lesson,
But figured I was more of a poet anyway.

It was late one March night after we saw Superman in theaters,
I got home and heard my phone chime with a new email.
It was from my grandma, who had died a few years back.
Maybe it was just a glitch in the system
or maybe
She really did hope to see me around Christmas.

They used to put bells in grave yards,
So the dead wouldn't be trapped if they came back to life.
So they could tell us that they were still here
That they are still here.

We have an obsession with talking to the dead,
Don't we?
Séances, Ghost Adventures, Chris Angel.
We think that they are trying to tell us something.
But what?
"They miss us"?
"It'll be okay"?
"The money is hidden behind the sofa in the den"?

Or is it not that they have something to say,
But that we have something to hear.
They are still here.

Maybe I'll develop an app
For people who have just lost someone.
Their phones will chime at 3 a.m. on Friday morning
With a message saying
"I am still here."
The graveyard shift will light up with a million chimes,
Bells tolling for the living.
The dead saying that they are still here.

And maybe It'll have a button
So we can hit reply.
And it will send a message to the dead
Saying I miss you, and I love you, and your husband isn't holding up great; he misses you too, and the million other things we want to say.

And maybe in the afterlife, the dead have bells,
And at 3:01 in the morning,
A thousand chimes will be heard in the sky,
Bells ringing from living to dead, and back.

A cacophony of "I miss you,"
Orchestrated to the tune of forever,
And sold for 99 cents on iTunes.