Never give up on love (unless you're being a creep.)

Man, if there was ever a time
where those two hands mattered
more than just pointing
out the obvious or tracing vague
memories on paper in swoops,
zig-zags, draw-backs, or the capital
cursive "Q" that still eludes me, it's
now. 6:26 A.M., and I haven't slowed
down since 9:20 yesterday
when my girlfriend gallivanted
about her room, her ******* perked
before me.
*******, she looked so good.
We, my friends and I,—the ones
I wrapped in cellophane and tissue
paper two years ago to take
out, reminisce, and put back
whenever I forgot their faces—
got in my boat of a car / bathroom
tile white / and drove through
thick I-80 fog to search South
Side for Santa's front rotor biplane
dropping Christmas joy mustard
gas down molded-brick, soot-caked
chimneys to get people in the mood
for a day or two before the egg nog's
spiced *** negligee stopped feeding
their stocking stuffer lungs and the blisters
that decked the halls like boughs of death.
Then we sat—I, uncomfortably on my car
keys,—by the bar, drinking refills that filled
the IBM-print bill $60 worth of Sprite Pepsi
Huckleberry Lemonade. My one friend
leaned over our cornucopia of unfinished
wings and said that he and the bartender
had been exchanging loaded gun glances.

Neither would ease the trigger,
or even aim well.

She could've been eyeing the waitresses
working the floor like a dart game.
Sharp when your drink's low and feathered
by pathetic tips. We stopped by Lyco. Lynn—
softly steeled—still sung her circular saw blues.
Baby, don't cut me so deep. Just let my girders
meet the street. Let me feel small trees and admire
nice cars signing their makes in last week's thin snow.
We took away two cups of coffee, some Modernist talk,
and a salt & pepper flannel past Market, Maynard,
and slowly spoiling milk to the Mansfield exit.
Over the occasional window defrosting,
we talked premature families, North Carolina
classmates, prison sentences, and that MU
***** who hates my guts. They're out there,
and we're here in this box going seventy-five
and skipping exits like rope.
Double-dutch dual-enrollment college credit
transfers, losing Foundation money talks
****, but can't leave her grudges on the rock
salt steps we sulked up. Hallways with
carpets and our cars parked poolside,
but we chose air conditioning over breast-
strokes. My God, would some lonely preteens
**** for that. Metal detectors to detect
our insecurities and greasy faces full
of acne acne potential. Potential some
didn't use. Potential that went wasted.
Potential that could've gotten them out
of this miserable hole, but instead rented
them out a sad shack on the outskirts—
nowhere near suburbs—of town
where they could inhale
the Ox Yoke's smoke stack laying fog
down to the county line.
Galeton High School, regrettably,
here's to you.

Yesterday he asked permission to kiss her.
"When pigs fly!" she said, with a laugh and a scoff.
Today he marched in holding a pig with wings
Duct-taped on (so they wouldn't fall off).

He tossed it in the air, I swear it did fly
I know because I saw him kiss her goodbye.

My mind is never empty

Like those days with clouds moving in different directions
a foggy landscape,
zombie weather, my brother claims,
but with particles zooming in all directions
or so my unfinished chemistry homework says.

Calendars filled with graphite lettering
stacked upon piles of papers,
discarded months swept into heaps
of forgotten leaves, neglected notes.
Ink bleeding in sporadic shapes,
lines of fatigue that never begin or end.

Faint melodies
trickle through the crisp
autumn leaves, vibrantly yellow against
dark, damp bark,
distantly elegant, distantly cheerful.

Winter winds whistling,
sharp and painful,
hurt, most definitely
torn arguments and shredded papers
and tears and grief and hope and defeat and anger and frustration.

And suddenly,
nothing.

I’m just trying to get some sleep.

1452

Your thoughts don’t have words every day
They come a single time
Like signal esoteric sips
Of the communion Wine
Which while you taste so native seems
So easy so to be
You cannot comprehend its price
Nor its infrequency

Four old friends
Dead of winter small town
Germany.
Smoke rising from chimneys
From cigarettes, and pipes
From trains riding the rural rails
From city spires
And factories
From airplanes
Airplanes
and Airplanes,
From Airplanes.
Smoke dancing and laughing
Stinging and coughing
Smoke in my hair and jacket
In the pores of my skin
Smoke in my eyes,
Up the hill
And through the woods
Dead of winter
Small town Germany
Four old friends
Walk two by two
Three by one
Four and four.
Walk by the church,
Down the creek,
Up the hills, the hills
And through the woods
Small town
Germany four old friends
Dead of winter
Cigar smoke and beer
Cigarillos in a chain
Smoke from crystalizing breath
And fireworks
Smoke from bonfires
And tailpipes
Smoke from airplanes
Airplanes and airplanes
Smoke from airplanes.
Smoke stains and cigarette burns
Little circles in my jacket
Germany
Four old friends dead of winter
Small town
Smoke tears
Smoke promises
Smoke memories that linger
Like the faint nausea
Of what-the-hell-has-happened.
I watch the **** end of your last cigarette
Crumpled and fading
In the ashtray of that Badischer bar
And your eyebrow twitched
The heart-wrenching shiver
Of what-the-hell-has-happened.
And I whispered:
(airplanes)
airplanes and airplanes
I whispered airplanes.
That’s what the hell.