The poetry’s gone to **** lately.
Mostly I mean there isn’t much,
but what there is isn’t that good.
Maybe, *******, life’s just
not awful these days.

Maybe my eye for the magic in the monotony’s just gotten
lazy.

I feel too good to even resent whatever it is
making me limp-dicked.

“coward,” I think.
“******* coward.”

And in a minute,
the coward I am,
I’ll probably set this page down,
unfinished
walk to the television,
turn it on
and submit
like a coward

like a corpse
belly-up
under a sky of infinitely small pixels
flashing on
and off
on
and off.

And then one day in mid-february,
itll rain, sez I.
And youll be thankful for the eleven hours
o' day-light.
And a good lot of the street-grease-****-slush'll
wash down the storm drains.
Hell, you may even be able to call it "warm".
And obviously you wont be done
(its still february after all)
quite yet.
But itll feel like mornin'
which has its own perks.

Flowers smell just like stale wet snow,
sez I.

The window's cracked a bit
some cat had given out a lonely mewl
                   and I decided to hear his
                        swan-song

                      I figure he's probably just teary-eyed
                                            bout some girl
                                                        stood him up.

                                  We're both creatures of the night,
                                        things dracula turns into
                                                        when he gets tired of people
                                            calling him a monster
                                                                                 which I suppose he is, really.

                                 There's an owl in the spruce tree across the street.
                                         I can hear him belt the blues
                                                      if I quit fidgeting long enough
                                                 I wonder if they're listening to me too
                                                             while I click-clack
                                                                       out the window

                       trying to find some rhythm in the madness

                sing on, boys.
                            I'll be the percussionist
                            and you can riff all you want
                                  nevermind the errors,
                                        we'll just tell the naysayers
                                                   that jazz
                                             isn't supposed to have rules.

Light killed night so I rose and rolled over
shaved and showered
then stood before the blinds-drawn-back
freshly foggy glass
I traced the outline of the ridgeline
of the mountains outside with my finger
in the condensation,
sat and watched the light bounce off the snow
til the misty glass dried
and suddenly all the details were clear
tufts of green
tusks of brown
standing up through the crusted-over ice
and crystalline facets of cliff-face
bits and bobs, anyway, of color on a fresh canvas
and all still
til I spied a couple specks
-and squinted-
not just spots now, but bodies on stilts
(four apiece)
and a ***** crown on the one.
Goats!
yes, mountain goats,
male and female,
traversing the treachery
in spite of it all-
though I could feel they had none,
not an ounce of spite between them
no!
not in spite, but in tandem
with the elements,
the terrain,
with each other.
The conditions aren't adverse,
I realized,
they're ideal.

here is here,
now is now,
and you're a little speck,
just like me,
just like mountain goats,
just swimming through it all
with grace
and tact
and majesty.

light leaps lengthwise
purging this promontory prismatically
awakening all us awestruck
shameless sleepyheads, spying
delicious daylight drowning
out obscurity and occlusion,
frameless fixtures focused,
beams bouncing back between
emphatic eyelids,
leaving lenses lacerated,
despair defeated,
darkness destroyed.

someone wiser than me once said something
about how all things come in their
proper season

Well summer's gone away,
long since.
It was hot
and we bore our chests
and hiked the hills
but the season is past now.

The snow is plummeting gently,
whispering loudly,
shadowy white.

someone wiser and younger and purer than I once said something
about learning to enjoy the comedown
rather than submitting to resentment,
and so I am.
The wave crests and falls
and rises again
simultaneously
and I'm embracing sleeplessness
like a bat on the wing
and listening to the silent symphony
of translucent crystalline ice

plummeting gently,
whispering loudly,
shadowy white.

Enough of summer!
Bring on the blankets of frigidity!
Bring on coldness!
Bring on the night!
Give me death so that I might live!

Let sleeplessness comfort the lonely,
let sobriety **** drunkenness,
let hunger feed me.

Let death give me life.

Sometimes,
in spite of every moral,
healthful,
or social scruple I may have,
I crave the taste of
monosodium glutamate,
of fried red meat,
of watered-down grocery store pilsner.

Sometimes I even sit,
a cheap beer in one had,
an even cheaper cheeseburger in the other,
and watch snowflakes drift on the wind
out my window,
with no shame, no guilt,
no thoughts even.
Just cheap beer, fast food,
and my humanity.