His father was a drinker,
                                                        ­       his father was a drinker.
And for him,
                                                               love was a folding chair.
Life was difficult.
                                                      ­         and time was purchased in packages.
Bruises would wax and wane,
                                                               though his skin stayed clear,
His wrists were like orchids,
                                                               you could peer through it,
thin, fragile, and resilient,
                                                               but see the carbon, not the blood.
His father worked at Lobel’s;
                                                               his father worked at East National.
In those days, gin was cheap,
                                                               but tonic was steep.
(Circa 1894)
                                                               (Circa 1918)

Plato believed that the future could be told
by listening to the lingering whispers of the wind.
between its howls and sighs and
its knuckles cracking on the branches
it mentions something,
the something to come
the something that envelopes us
like an iron blanket.

or so Plato says.
but every time i've opened my ear
it just grew cold and slightly stung
so i stopped trying to hear the something
that wouldn’t voice itself loudly enough.

yet, along came an orange-haired girl who claims she can hear the wind
and i watch her and she sings along with it
in words that sound like cello strings.
her arms sway leaflike in a breathing ballet
a combination of her and the something
and all i hear is its hushness.
but it lures my legs to sit
and it tempts my mouth to shut
and listen.

i don’t know if this girl actually understands Plato’s sacred windsong
i don’t know if it’s something that her mind composed
but i do know that her lungs seem fuller than mine ever have
because she breathes belief, something i’ve always exhaled
in my sarcastic search for Science’s future.

after enough charred inhaling and stuttered swallowing
and after the invincibility of the act evaporates
your biceps begins to sag and your mind stops moving
it’s you suddenly find yourself hovering through the days
and time is subjective and all things are subjective
and so what if you don’t do that because everything’s just particles in your brain
slapping against one another to make the flickering pictures of this world

and then once every few days you shake your head and stand up
and say I’m gonna do something! but keep the same diet
and revert to the same state of synthetic zen-like denial.

you sit on a silent conveyer belt as hours pass
and things happen around you but you see them through a lens
a film onscreen, pleasurably cathartic, but your soul’s still in the theater
watching from a stained, sticky seat some dimensions away
and the heckler’s behind you won’t shut up
and they keep you from focusing on the movie itself
and your peripheral vision becomes distinct
and you find yourself aware of the speakers and exit signs
and the slight dust and film grains splashing in front of your view
and you think of this as an ephiphany
instead of Brechtian distanciation at its most curdling.

then your brain starts feeling like a frisbee
and your body is the monkey in the middle
trying to grab at it but it tires out
and the bullies run away with it
and your left with a black hole in the head
laying in complacency in front of a shimmering cube
sounds and images with no correlation or relevance
pondering your higher knowledge of all things around it, around you
and giggling to the echoing cobwebbed corners of the room
about the ignorance of those not privileged to the same diet.

the moment when you met was rather insignificant
but then someone told you that she liked you
and you realized that – hey – you suddenly liked her too.
and so you expectedly courted her
kissing her at moments that you did with previous girls
telling her old sentences
recycling plainly hidden stories from your childhood:
one showing your good heartedness
one about your embarrassing marching band days (without forgetting to mention your pop-punk band now)
and, of course, the first girlfriend tale that makes you seem vulnerable.
and through these, you reveal things to her that other girls, now decaying in your mind, have known for many many months.

yes you hook up
and the *** is up to par
and there’s some appeal to the overall lack of trying involved.
you date as obligation
and you somehow convince yourself that you love her
because feeling wanted feels so **** pleasant
and her lack of intrusion on the rest of your life is pretty convenient overall.

and out of complacency this love takes hold
or at least solidifies like an algae bloom
and you grow tired for settling
and she gets exhausted from caring
and everything stagnates to a perfect balance.
your blood hardens to plastic
so the your muscles can no longer fight
against the unsettling comfort of the life
you said you’d never lead.

living can be tiring and decisions regretful, so often we find ourselves
marching to the beat of obligations’ drummer – unnecessary paths are safely untreaded
doing only because the doing is necessary – to keep life at its homeostasis
fixing but not tinkering – the return to normality is the goal
just accepting these ******* days for their lukewarm livability

yass yass
you his over my shoulder
******* through Foucalt
agreeing to whatever I said in a way
that doesn’t show commitment or care
to my whichever whyever opinions
cause I’m here to drive you to Vegas
so we can drink and you can leave our trip
for a guy who tames white tigers and will buy you

white wine from California from a vineyard that his friend owns
and he will have to take you there sometime

you sure are fun
and we have fun but I don’t like being
a vessel for your fun
so you can take your ambiguous agreements
and your artificial american adventures
and shove them up your
recently waxed showered this morning but look ***** on purpose
middle class daddy issues band-groupie neo-intellectual
early twenty’s ***.

and your sigh and smirk
and say *yass yass
and push a bang out of your eye and look ravishing.

boo croon the sunflowers
and **** squeaks the jay
this garden was not tended to
and when it was, it was done with bitter blisterless hands
the weeds are creeping out now and thickening stalks
and they move out
out out
goes any sense trust we grew in this garden.
and out
out out
goes my frothy yellow blood into the humid grounds of the garden
and you mop it up and glaze over my barkless parts

boo croon the sunflowers
and **** squeaks the jay
the hose to feed me
was bent at angled corners
and the water shrieked its way through
to come out a subtle flaccid
drop by
drop by
drop
on my parched cracked tan sun slapped skins
and i was angry
that you never felt the need to untangle the hose
because you turned the faucet to full volume
so you assumed that was all the water you could give
and i needed

boo croons the sunflowers
and **** squeaks the jay
the garden is all sand colored and tired
and you don’t feel guilty
you looked at it every day
and squirted what you could on it
and picked whatever weeds you saw
but you never went beyond what looked pretty to visitors
and you let the roots rot across the summer
and now that the winter’s fallen in
there’s not enough water to keep the garden beating
and all the melted snow in the world won’t make up for it