he had folded photos of Anita Page above his cot,
and a melancholy little crucifix,
and, of course, a long-winded letter from his mum.
he dipped tobacco and always tried to spit it on the barrack’s ceiling.
he would squander half of his canteen on his hair, if it got too muddy in the trenches.
he whittled a bar of soap into a horse one time,
and then washed himself with it right afterwards.
he always put on his cap at this saucy sort of angle,
even though there never was a lady around to woo.
once i saw him read Jules Verne, and I asked him about it,
and he said “Who?  You know I can’t read for squat.”
he was a funny man, you know, a guy that makes life feel good.

two days ago i saw his lungs throb against the walls of his ribcage,
i saw his adam’s apple swell up rotten, and his neck grow thick and veiny.
his muscles spasmed and his orifices emptied and all i could think was
how worthless it is to carve a horse out of soap and then soak it to nothing right after?
it makes me wonder why someone would bother
whittling in the first place.

blues man, man of soul,
writhing in my forearms.
a heart too calloused to pump,
eyes too full, fading to chalk.
thin wooden fingers, whining joints,
sagging biceps splotched with bleach,
a broom mustache solid in sweat.
it hurts, blues man, to feel you fade.

your sax bleat against the sidewalk,
the dry reed snapping on impact.
your canned bank spilling nickels into the storm drain.
i felt your shattered muscles shiver against my chest,
your spine spasming back and forth, pounding against your lungs,
blocked by all the **** you’ve eaten in your seven or so decades.

your shoulders sagged and your chin wilted to your wheezing heart.
i laid you down against the wall of Mother’s and searched for a payphone.
looking back, you seemed like an old black Atlas,
i stuck a few quarters in and yelled at an answering machine for four infinite minutes.
looking back, i saw people looking anywhere but your face,
dropping change in your saxophone case.
your fingertips stopped shaking,
and with it, my old earth sank into space,
and you ****** me into a new one.
it hurts here, blues man, man of soul.
it hurts here, and everyone’s got a rasp in their voice.

In sophomore year, I was top in the county, one of the very best.
The school even made me a mug:
Johnny McCarthy: World’s Greatest Running Back.
There were so many times I saved our ***,
so many moments, four downs in, that I came through for them.
But then I my knee exploded in bone, and they all suddenly forgot.

I never really had to care before that; about anything, really.
Everything was given to me – friends and girlfriends and grades.
Especially grades; let me tell you, teachers are less sympathetic when you’re in a wheelchair.
And that’s what ****** me off most: when I felt most pathetic and most hurt, people cared the least.

My mom would kiss my forehead whenever she saw my eyes looking beyond the TV screen,
and she’d say something like “a leopard’s stuck with its stripes.”
Sometimes they wouldn’t make sense, but just hearing her sing proverbs with such confidence,
well, it was comforting have a self-proclaimed-sage living in the house.

As I rattled over the gravel walkways to the student parking lot, I would see the football fields,
see the guys practicing, laughing, and looking at everything but the sad *******.
It was then I learned that I hated football – well not football itself,
but what football meant in this west Pennsylvania town.
I hated how it was everything, and without it, I was nothing.
I was the overweight cheerleader to them, I was the equipment manager.
I was even worse than that to them, now.

I charged my wheelchair to our sixteen year old Dodge Caravan, and lifted myself in,
leaving the chair outside the driver’s side door.
I tore onto 270, and aimed myself north.
Driving on the stony stretch, between the strip-mined mountains and the blanket of pine,
I thought about what was left for me back in town.

I thought about my recently ex-girlfriend, who was like a butterfly,
in her ability to float from flower to flower, and **** as much life as she needed
before fluttering away to some other unlucky ****.

I thought of my high school English teacher,
the only one who pretended to care about me after I was drained of reputation.
He gave me a book, the Catcher of the Rye. I haven’t read it yet – it looks really long.
I want him to thing that I did, though, so I guess I’ll tell him what he wants to hear.

I thought about the half-black kid Christopher, who started up the anime club.
It was cosplay day, so we took his gym clothes and threw them in the toilet.
He had to run laps dressed like a samurai, and ended up ripping his kimono.
We all laughed, though I always wondered how hard he must’ve worked on it.

And I remembered my mother, with her free promotional shirts and forest green sweatpants.
I thought about her tiny piggy figurines in that case in the kitchen,
and how proud she is when the Hamburger Helper isn’t burned.
I imagined her kissing me on the forehead and saying:
“Home is a dangerous thing, and there is little knowledge where the heart is,”
or something like that.

I remembered every individual in that tiny high school, and how in my last week there,
I felt like I was choking on everyone’s endless spoken noise.
I pulled onto one of the camp sites at William’s Lake and collapsed out of the car.
I dragged my leg to the shivering shoal of the stagnant pool, and dipped my casted knee in the water.

I felt its bacteria swim in the wound, the exposed bone now pressed beneath my false flesh,
and infect me with a slow disease that felt like a long warming hug.
The water was shifting to a higher tide, and I lay there, feeling every knot of its slow ascent.
Its green-grey film floated at my chest, and I felt determined to let the algae find its way above my head.
As it creeped its oddly tepid sheet up and up my neck, I thought of telling off my ex-girlfriend,
and reading that book my teacher gave me,
and letting my mom know how much of an artist she is.
I twisted over, and pulled my extended leg back into my minivan.
The van smelled like the lakebed now,
like a great many microbes dying and re-birthing silently, in the cracks of the tan pleather carseat.

Remember Wyoming?
Those two days find their way to me, and it always seems so vibrant.
How it hurt to breathe with the constant cigarette smoke in our mouths,
and how hard it was to light one in the windy cough of the night.
I remember us and the others drinking some tea,
and seeing myself in its ingredients.
I remember looking in the splintered mirror for half an hour,
exploring the wonderful fluke of my face.
I remember feeling every ***** of you in the prickly light of night.
The desert howled at us and we howled back, not caring if our sounds would slap the others in the face.

When we stumbled back in afterwards, the space was silent.
Someone took something and they heard their own voice,
but they didn’t like that echoing clatter.
Their hands were over their ears; they writhed on the floor like their skin was a size too small.
It was then I realized that our cabin had no windows or doors, but just gaping indigo gashes,
and I felt so defenseless against the angry emptiness of those American wastes.

Eventually his body slacked, indicating that he was stuck in himself once again.
We stayed inside for the rest of the night, keeping our eyes away from the spaces in the walls.
We huddled together, me and you, on the concrete floor, and tried to keep the fire going.
I remember someone through in that Aldous Huxley novel, and I thought it was a waste.
I, for one, always liked the ending, with the feet rotating like Columbia Mall’s carousel.
But I’m sure you’d beg to differ. 

The next morning we and the others shook ourselves awake, and shambled our way into the Dodge.
I sat in the flatbed, and as we hollered down the highway,
I watched a single cloud slip across the sky at the same rate we were driving,
and lied on my side for those 8 hours; the cloud looked like a tired blur.
But when we arrived outside Omaha, and everyone and you jumped out to ****,
I realized that the cloud I thought was still must’ve flew about seven hundred miles.
It could’ve fooled me.
And then you kissed me on the cheek and took a Camel out of my pocket,
skipping into the soda shop like a child, two days younger.

We swam in wombs, with painted hands,
spreading the Red across throbbing walls.
the floor, Blue,
and the mess between, we made Orange.
Parents swam beside us, younger, dumber, but smiling.
In the vibrant sea, the some of us danced clumsily,
tripping the kaleidoscope fluid.
As the parents moved, though, their wrinkles returned, and they asked questions.
They swam southwards, the colors were too bright for their aging eyes.
They sunk like slugs into the blue, ‘till it rotted a stocky yellow-brown.
I tried to find them, and paint over their telling marks,
but in that putrid brine, I couldn’t find a single blonde hair.

Some amount of time passed, and the south returned to its older shade.
I felt the urge to explore the ordinary depths;
I shook as I stepped into the cobalt,
but soon became too busy to be scared.
I planted my feet on solid ground,
and in slow-motion, marched my way towards an elevator.

“Dig in the garden with the other omnivores,
and get me some lightening, not too ripe.”

i stumble out the door with my fingers and toes
arcing against the cold metal earth.
i wear rags with Armani scrawls;
barely enough to shield my skin from the chilling heavens.

we chew out the roots of nearby trees,
moist as ***** and tough as tendon.
we gnaw and gnaw but spit out only steel
and breathe in only soot.

shrapnel finds its way beneath my fingernails, and i wince.
it's not a new Pain, but a repeated one we’re told to relish.
“When splintered, push them in and
sing a song about It.” and we do.
though the melodies vary, the lyrics say the same thing:
it Hurts to Hurt ourselves, but not enough to stop.

i sigh and sit;
are we really expected to find this lightening,
or is this just unconscious hunt She wanted to put us on?
whichever way, whichever way,
you’ll be fed at the end of the day, i instinctively hum,
as i resume ripping through petroleum roots.

It’s easy to call yourself Ancient,
Painting wrinkles and molding moles,
But eventually your ugly Youth rears its head,
And you just won’t die.