Gilded, sickly yellow
glowing from a smattering of phosphorescent streetlamps
under homogenous grey skies,
which have finally started to sprinkle rain, after a day's worth of deliberation.
A late night songbird gives one feeble attempt at melody in the distance
and then is silent.
Tip-taps
of droplets
sent from heaven above
as they clatter against plastic car hoods-

to have travelled so many miles, just to terminate there. What grief.

the faint whoosh of engines still on the highway.
People running home,
or running from home,

I can only imagine.

Forty seven nights
Spent sleepless
Or wasted, shitfaceded
Stumbling I'm aimless

And fear
Stabs at my mind
Porcupine hides
And bee stings
Wasted passionate ambition
An ad for lost tenacity

Cruel fate
Just world
Full court
Swine and pearls

Six months
Of restless days
Assurance didn't ever run
It sat and washed away

And my hopes burn
like turpentine
In a fire-breather's lungs
Singed ****** hair
And scorch marks
On the surface of my tongue

Forty seven nights
And just as many days
Youth never tried to run
Just sat and washed away

Youthful love,
stupid love
Happy gluttony
Waste of time,
In my mind
Says hateful heartless me

Millions of years ago a glacier
-like the pinpoint tip of a paintbrush
in some celestial architect's hand-
carved off the ridges
and peaks
and rough edges
off this valley,
like a frigid finish sander;
leaving sparse patches of
smoothed-out, tiger-striped gneiss
that permeate a background of
grass and scattered boulders.
Picturing the area's native peoples
-humans, deer, rabbits and porcupines-
meander across it is too easy-
but what is even easier is moving across it.
The word "running" doesn't really
fit-
it's more of a fast-motion jig
crossing feet one over the other
and tiptoeing
from rock to rock to rock
five feet at a time
until, at a pause for fresh air,
you realize you've crossed a whole valley
under sun's watchful gaze.

We spent the day here,
just across the border between the man-made
and that which made man,
whooping like madmen
under sun's embrace.
Emerging,
some indeterminate moment later,
burnt,
but enlightened
in the truest sense
of that word.

I stared into a void, deep, wide, and truly awesome
and felt as though I were a single grain of sand in the belly of the ocean
infinitesimally small
and the void stared too,
back into me
and I wondered how I must look to it
a blinding light?
a void of equal size?
perhaps it perceived me as I perceived it
More likely, I was virtually invisible
something to be ignored
for what is being in a sea of non-being?
and I grew tired of this, this void
this great and mighty nothingness
and I began to fill the space with being
faster and faster
I grew and it changed
from nothing to
something
and something filled in all the cracks where nothing had been
and twisted and contorted to form shapes
and waves of somethingness across a background of nothing
and this sea, this
great and mighty somethingness
surged high and drowned out the nothing
until there was only something
and there was no nothing
and everything was exactly the same.
but I realized this was the same as when
there was only nothingness
and without negative space
there was no difference
between what I am
and what was
before.

But,
there was one space.
a space
infinitesimally
small
which was blank
a point of something in a
sea
of nothing
I watched it for a long time
and I am
sure
it too, was watching me.

I left my house today to find all things about me were wet.
Not from melted snow, but from legitimate, god-given rain.
I could smell the downpour in everything, all things ecstatic that they had survived so far.
And this is when I decided that winter had ended.
That's right, people, it's over. We can all go home.
Winter may pretend to linger, and it will probably snow again.
But I can feel it in my bones, the seasons have changed.
The trees cry out that they still live. The soil itself is stretching and yawning.
It seems this always happens when the seasons change.
Summer ends, and there is a change in the wind.
Before the leaves even begin to fall, autumn is present. An elephant in the proverbial room.
In late October (in salt lake at least), the earth enters the big sleep and snow begins to fall.

It seemed strange that I could feel this so distinctly.
But it's entirely natural, from a step back. Birds fly south, salmon migrate.
Perhaps, in fact, it's stranger that I would consider it strange.
The seasons are more natural than anything else we know. The cycles of the earth are at the core of our experience in terms of being alive on this planet.

Maybe we should begin to worry when we can only tell the seasons by the calendar.
Or maybe it would be worse if all that the seasons changing meant was a change in wardrobe.

Our ancestors used to rely on these sensory gut feelings to properly harvest their crops.
Frankly, I'm embarrassed that the term "sweater weather" exists.

I take pride in the fact that I participated in the plants stretching today.
We yawned and raised our faces to the rain and rejoiced as one.
It reminded me that the cycle goes on, and nothing really ends and yet everything ends but nothing really really ends.
It's just a little rain, after all.

We seek love because in love we are validated in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation and in love we are given reason not to hate ourselves for the things we see are wrong but cannot change even if we spent a millenia in an instant or infinite instants in eternity struggling to shake off the shackles of our humanity which is both our captor and liberator in this,
life,
yes we recognize its importance in allowing us to be but we spend the congregation of moments we are given in that holy being damning it, for it also makes us imperfect and in our imperfections is the capacity to do harm unto the world which we love so much,
and so,
we equate these imperfections with evil and seek to expunge them with all our might of will and all our cleverness of wit and all our screaming and pounding and passion of
soul,
but it is all in vain for these things which we despise so greatly are joined at the sutures with our very being and hence have many good but troubled lambs of the internal apocalypse chosen to end that being for sake of ending that malformation, though they know this is wrong, but it is the only solution in trying to remove the weight of one’s existence and hence the weight of existence from one’s mind and so they sleep easily,
unbreathing,
unknowing,
and having completely cleansed the burden of themselves from this immaculate and gorgeous universe which they love so, but they are also
unloved.

And it is in love that we are validated, both in our perfect flaws and exactitude of malformation,
it is in love that our weight on the world is not lifted, no, but counterbalanced and nullified,
and in that way,
we are set free.

A seat by a window is all I ask
where I can see beyond the walls
of captivity
and watch clouds
like whispered truths,
hiding in plain sight
roll and collide
and contradict
and disappate.

A seat by a window
so I can see beyond what I know
so I can grasp hope
so I can chance to witness something
beautiful.

But all I see is a group of kids
with their hands on their *****
playing dice
and shouting at mothers
pushing babies in strollers
and spitting.

per aspera, for the love of god
let me down
the oil of the asp,
the bee in my bonnet
in a needle
rolling deep
in the hay,
the raspy cough
from the hayfever on my
cilia,
on the kitchen counter,
in my mind.

Let me off this bottomless ladder
you *******,
you fiends.

At the end of the day
when even the dogs guarding beloved families
sleep soundly in the cool grass-
When the hurly-burly's done,
when the battle's lost
and won,
and the parks fill up with long shadows
the cars roll into the drives-
When the dinner bells chime
and the homeless
and ragged
look up to the stars-
for hope?
for clarity?
for something to do?

When the work can wait til morning
and the sleeping dogs lie still-
and the children play games
and chase fireflies-
When the lights come on
and the sun goes out-

When we finally accept
that nothing lasts
and tomorrow will come.

The haze of a distant fire
flattens the light on the knolls
beyond the sageflats. Their half-tone
silhouettes jagged by tall pines.
The rumble of the engine as I stand beside the truck
with the door open, surveying the
horizon. Locusts crackling.
A patchwork of shadows washes
over the flats. Steel-gray clouds above.
The wind kicks up sparse columns of
dust. A lonely road
and a shot-up gate.
A glimmer in the dirt. Brass.
Nine millimiter. Discharged and forgotten.
The lock on the gate has been grazed by bullets.
Maybe this one.
The shadows wash over outcroppings
of lava rock amid the tall sage.
Nooks and crannies. Places to hide.

A gust of wind and I am standing in the shade
and my eyes relax as a prairie falcon
glides over the road to survey the
far side for something to eat,
close enough I can almost
hear the beating of his
wings and suddenly
zigs up and then
charges toward
the ground
and then
he has
gone.

Crushed to death
under falling leaves
Drowned
by torrential rain
scorched by sun,
and fades away,
and never speaks again

the sober simply sickening
sapping all my electricity
the waking under midday light’s
reflecting off the mirror tiles
I placed this all beneath me but
it always ******* backfires

Crushed
under a thousand falling leaves
Drowned
by a million drops of acid rain
scorched by the sun
and fades away,
and never ever speaks again

Shining black, incandescent
watermarks that line the present
and presently I can perceive
a personage, just above me
It speaks nonstop and slowly
and never ever ******* leaves

Crushed
under a thousand falling leaves
Drowned
by a million drops of acid rain
scorched by the sun
and fades away,
and never ever speaks again

crushed to death
and fades away
autumn leaves became a grave
drowned by rain
never speaks again
the undertow of passing waves

the autumn leaves became a grave
the undertow of passing waves.

Sometimes I'm low.
and quiet
not really despondent
or depressed
just
low.

And quiet.

She says she doesn't like the desert,
says it's ugly
and I can't help but wonder
why?
And she's sometimes quiet
but never low.
I think maybe the desert is in me
and when lowness abounds
the wind whips the dunes of my soul
and shapes me as it sees fit
that wind is the sound in my ear
just
before
sleep finally takes me.

and although we wouldn't know what to do with it
even if we had it,
we will pray on for
rain.

Silken stone
dewed damp
tipping to topple
over outcropping-

balanced buttress
feigning flightlessness
until, unexpected, uphill
avalanche advances
rushing, racing
poised to push-

rock rolls
sailing slow
slow
slow
slow-

explosion echoes
crisscross canyon.
Sheep stop,
listen long,
lingering

It’s not a question of
who
but a question of
where
I am.

I am the median between the street and the sidewalk
I am the threshold of every waiting room
I am the space between spaces
I am shadows looming
and fumes pooling above puddles
of spilt kerosene

neither seen
nor heard,
but felt
in the vignette of a dated photograph
the border between
fine
penciled lines

I am the mist after rain
I am scars
and streaks where tears have stained the shells
of crustacean people
I am crushing hangovers
and embers glowing

Who am I?

I am the
    spaces
       between
spaces

Stairwells and parking lots
unmarked graves
        condensation on a whispered word
     floating up into
     frigid twilight

          under an off-white
half-
                               moon.

Happy birthday,
by the way.
I just thought I’d write to you,
since I never really did

It’s been two years now
two complete rotations around the sun
since you died.
I probably think about you every week-
believe it or not,
you changed my whole outlook on life
But I’m sorry to say it didn’t happen until you left.
I think about you every time I leave the house in the morning
I think about how sudden it was
and how that happens every day to all kinds of people
even you.

I think about you every time I say goodbye to anyone
especially if the person I’m saluting is getting into a car
and when I say goodbye
I say it as heartfully as I can
and I hope that maybe they’ll realize that I’m saying
“I love you”
and “please, for the love of god, drive safely.

please.”

all in one word.
Because if I said it openly like that they’d all think I was totally mental.
I’m not mental.
I’m just a lover and a fighter
who lost something he didn’t even think he had the option of losing.

I think about you when I hug
anyone.
because you never know.
  and hugs are not ever worth half-assing.
                       ever.

  So maybe I lied.
and maybe I actually think about you multiple times a day every day of my life.
   not consciously i guess.
      but I can tell you for certain
that your absence is felt
          in one way or another
                      every
                             ­      day
                             of my life.

I wish I could have learned these lessons without losing you.
                        but you went all the same
                                         and here we all are.

             anyways happy birthday.
                          
                             Miss you.

Last night was one of those nights that makes your coffee a little blacker the next morning
And takes a few more cigarettes from your pack
And makes your ulcers worse
If you got ‘em.
Snuggled up alone
With a barrier three blankets wide
Between me and the rest of the world
Trying to heat my still-beating heart.

It was raining hard outside.

Breathe, breathe on.
let's sit across from each other
so we can
breathe
each other in.

I can smell the pheromones
in your hair
from the next room over
I'm listening to
you
pack the last of your
things
and I'm asking myself if you're really
trying
to make that much noise
or if you're just
******.
and you shout that I'm being an *******
and start to leave
and I wonder if you can smell
the *****
on my breath
when I say
"bye."

and I wonder if you really misheard me when I slurred it
or if you just wanted to hear me say
something
else.

And I wish there were something else I could say
to make everything better
and put you on the other side of that closed door
so we could sit
and breathe
each other in
and get high
on the tension
on the pheromones
on the *** stained on my breath.

But you're not.
You're outside
and I'm inside
and I can't hear you breathe
or sing
or cry
or say our names
separated by a miles-long ampersand
or whatever it is you're saying to whoever you're saying it to.

and instead I'm just getting high on cheap cigarettes and cheap ***
thinking about
everywhere
that's not the bed I have to sleep alone in tonight
thinking about
everywhere
you could be riding that bicycle.
thinking about
anything
I could have invented to say to you
but it has all been said.

So breathe on,
and I'll try to do the same
between the long drags
and drams of cheap *****.
and in time, maybe
there will be
something
to be said.

I drove while she slept.

We were both tired,
******,
maybe a little drunk still.
I had the music turned up
to try and convince myself I was awake enough
to manage a ton of galvanized steel on fire
down the highway.
Somehow she still managed
to wrap herself around my arm
and breathe easy.

We got back to my place at the other end of town
and she curled up in my bed
and might as well have been comatose.
I lay there for a few minutes contemplating how warm she was
next to me.
I think I fell asleep smiling.

We made hurried love for the first time
just after dawn.
In honesty, I could have been better.
I should have been better-
but I have a tendency to **** these things up
when they go right.

I cooked breakfast while she sat
and told me about her family-
hash browns and eggs.
Butter in the pan, flame at medium,
stir occasionally.
Simple.
I must have been distracted,
kissing her cheek
because all the same I burnt them.

It felt like an omen.

We ate what we could salvage
and then I drove her home.

Sweetly stomach-sick
again.
Plummeting back into
my puzzle-piece niche
among more notes in the same key.
We’re a messy chord,
played by masterful,
but drunken hands
on a piano
wavering on the brink
of broken intonation.
Just close enough to make
you want to sing
along
and hold the right notes in your throat
bring the decibels up
to a thrum,
vibrating in my chest that
calms down the sick
in my belly.

It feels good-
in the most nerve-wracking way
to look at you looking at me
like that again.

I can feel the quietude of an entire ice age
breaking in upon my weary mind
in this, the witching hour of my life-
where topsy-turvy seconds spill
from mislabeled vases in a haste that bursts spinning, smoking tires,
where treaded water boils,
where the pale face of ignorance smokes a skinny cigarette beneath a naked lightbulb on a bare matress in a quiet studio
in a deafening city-

I can feel my cells collapsing
under the weight of the metal in my blood,
the smog in my lungs,
the grease in the hair on my heavy head-
the fear...
fear of icebergs descending into unimaginable depths
fear like a kite at the end of a piece of taut red yarn
fear that steals my breath from me
that crushes the soul into soundless, whitewashed rooms.

Some caged birds sing.
Some freed birds don't.

My knuckles will bear a scar
From where they collided with your teeth
Until the skin heals completely.
I will bear a scar within
Until I learn to forgive
You
And myself
And everyone
For being what we are
Which is sometimes
Terrible, terrible
People.

But all this anger
These fifteen-pound chains I carry as weapons of self defense
Are not hurting
Anyone
Who is trying to hurt me.
They are doing
nothing
But weighing me down
And I'm sick and tired
Of trudging the streets of this city of headstones
With them in tow.

They are doing nothing for me.
And I will drop them
Just so soon
As I get over
Myself.

A chasm stretches itself before me.
And I will cross it
But it is not so simple as that even
I will make it so that no-one will have to cross it ever again.
Casting a chain from my side, I find a hold on the other
I swing to it
Then I begin to dig
Digging deep into the earth I pull the chain behind me
Together, we emerge from the side of the cliff I just clambered across
I pull at the knots I have tied for handholds
I pull with all the force I can bear
The ground shakes and I have slack
I toss the remainder of what I have to the top of the opposing cliff
And shimmy across it.
Reaching the fallen end, I begin digging anew
I emerge after tunneling once again
And
Heave
With everything I was born with
With all of the matter that comprises my feeble,
Fragile
Human
Frame;
Nay, with
All
That I am.
The opposing side of the chasm shakes
It groans in the protest of a thousand-year sleep
It presses even against me
But I pull it all the same
Inches
Closer
And with it a length of chain
Which I use to throw to the opposing side
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to throw
Which I use to climb
Which I use to pull
Which I use to stitch this colossal divide back together
With all that I am I am pulling these two opposing forces
And there is
NOTHING
That will stop me
From burrowing into the ground
And pulling these earthen demons
This great sleeping wound
Together
I will mend this
Or I will
die
trying.

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.

You asked me why I would ever want to
be with you
and I said
"Really?"
and you said
"After having gotten to know me better, and learning all the problems I have,
is it really worth the time?"

Really,
I just want you to remember that
I kiss you
even when you smoke Marlboro Blacks.
And I'd kiss you if you smoked
Cloves
or even GPC's.
And if you ever decide to quit I'll be 100% behind you
(Because honestly blacks taste awful)
(And because they're terrible anyway)--
But if not,
I'll still be happy to kiss your
cigarette lips.

Because they're still your lips-
no matter how they taste.
And because they're worth it.

The sun is resplendent and warming.
on this bench in front of these shops in a town we’ve never been to.
Italy’s a lot nicer if you’re in a small town.

I’m watching her peel an orange
slowly,
meticulously
she’s removing the skin from the meat.

She reminds me of a boxer wrapping his hands
before a big fight.

The last moment of meditative solitude
before the **** hits the fan.

She’s finishing with the peel now, setting the pieces on the bench next to us
as she splits it in half, an aerosol of juice sprays from the orange
she hands me one half
and begins to eat the other herself.

I peel the segments apart, eating them slowly
and spitting the seeds into the gutter.
she’s smiling,
the juice running down her chin,
and neither of us are speaking.

Later I’m smelling the citrus on her fingers
as she runs them through my hair;
it’s barely long enough to run fingers through,
and I’m thankful for that.

I’m thankful for that orange.
I’m glad I saw that small town,
the one without tourist attractions or snakeoil peddlers
I’m glad my scalp ever knew her citrus fingers.


it came,

I saw,

it went.

The condensation on cold exhalation
drifts, lifts
to the ceiling
where it collects
droplets drip
drop
plop
on slick soil floor.

I am a bat in a crack
watching the fluorescent reflection
of blue light from outside glint
on lavarock ice
selfsame as the light the cave swallows
dance and titter in.

There is simply too much heat
and light
and noise
out there.
Within the world is stable and cool and
safe. The ceiling is my
shelter.
Give me some crevice to crawl in.
I want to feel the embrace of the earth.
To live in a place that no one can see-

not even me.

She said,
"you won't believe what I'm looking right now.
The flames must be fifteen ******* feet above the roof"

And I went outside and I could see the plume of smoke like it was a block up from the house
so I ran back in and got everyone out of the house and we hopped in the car and sped off
toward
the flames
-just like a gruesome car accident-
and when we finally came within a few blocks it looked like the revolution
gone and started without us
people were running and jumping fences
to get closer to it.
So we got out and started running
through back alleys
and back yards
and suddenly, we came around a corner
and there it was.

They said the building was abandoned, that no one had been inside when it started.
It wasn't much of a building now.
It was a skeleton
and the flames were maggots picking it clean.
Inside was like the brightness of the sun
and the fire crews were giving it all the water in the world
to little avail.
Gigantic plumes of tiny embers were jetting from its open ribs into the twilight-
falling all over houses and businesses

and all I could think was
"what if it
doesn't
stop?
What if this is it? and it can't be contained?
and the whole
city
goes down with it?"
We were standing in the middle of a riot ready to happen-
it was like a backdraft-
an explosion minus one ingredient-
a single exhaled breath.
So what if this is it?
What if the end starts right here, right now?

So I began to root for the fire, not the firefighters.
I prayed for it to collapse
and eject all that hot ash over everything
to end us all.

But it didn't.
and after fifteen minutes or so the firefighters were winning.
So we turned on heel
and we hobbled home.

Live to fight another day.

I rattle on like the wind if you let me
I make a million plans a minute
To go a million places
And **** a million women.
I spin silken sterling yarn with my silver tongue
But I can't do much else.
Not too surprisingly, plenty of people don't care for me.
And for a while I was among them-
The product of an overanalytical mind and a policy of no-******* cynical honesty (or maybe honest cynicism), I suppose.

However, on my good days I know it to be true, that I
Can't change them, can't change me.
Why try?

I was built
To fly by the seat of my pants
And try to use my best judgement-
Though I'm probably going to lose my mind
And all my money
And friends
In the process.

We'll see.

The road stretches infinitely onward,
To the bitter end-

God knows I'll get there someday.

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.

Did you hear that
so-and-so
was caught on film ******* into a bucket?
did you see
so-and-so's new
music video?
Have you
seen
those new
Nikes?
Did you hear
that child star
admitted
to doing
drugs?
Oh my god, I love this song it's on the radio all the time!
And the chorus line goes something like
"Up in the club, getting drunk having fun. Spending money like I don't care. All the ******* love me. This is what you want. This is where everyone wants to be. This is the definition if fun"

Is that really the absolute best that life has to offer?
They **** well write about it like it is.
And all the distracted people fall for it.
We humans are
so
good at distracting ourselves from anything of any importance.
Men no longer hunt-
they lift weights
and Women practically objectify themselves.
Art is dead.
Earth is dying.
And the people are perfectly happy
with buying things.
They spend their lives
seeking
sensation
and
feeling
nothing.

"Why do you box?"
I asked one of the gang bangers I coached at the gym one day.
"To stay out of trouble, I guess," he replied.
And all of a sudden I got kinda mushy over this kid and realized he really was in a
Hard
Place, trying to make the best of a
Bad
Situation.
And I said,
"Listen to me. Don't ever stop boxing.
School, whatever,
Work, whatever,
But whatever you do,
Keep boxing."
He looked at me kind of funny and
He said "why do you box?"
And I said,
"I've been doing this a while now.
Boxing's fixed me up through some
Serious ****.
So above everything else, above women and money,
Whatever you do,
Do not
Stop
Boxing."

I'll probably never know if boxing
saves him
like it
saved me.

But I do hope it keeps him out of trouble.

I'm feeling
Bitter.
And all this stupid
Pretentious hippy
"Spirituality"
****
Is just getting old
Or maybe I'm just getting
Older
And I'm seeing how all these
Burnouts in tie-dye
Appear friendly
But they're not talking to you,
Just your girlfriend.

"Free love, man."

They're scumbags just like the
Scumbags in suits they hate so much
Or the rocker scumbags who are
Mysoginistic
Just like them.

This
Self-brainwashing
Is getting old and I'm getting sick of
Being lied to,
By them and by me.

the truth is nobody knows
What's going on in the universe,
No matter how much of a
Shaman
They claim to be or how much
Peyote
They smoke.
And anybody who claims to
Is
Selling
Something-
Be it glassware pendants
Or ****
Or their throbbing
*****.

This hippy ******* is a bastardization
Of an image
Of a faded picture
Of a set of ideals
Thought up fifty years ago
That only ever really worked on paper
Anyway.

I dream of delirious shadows and frantic,
whispering light.
in the doom of an hour my bones
are opened to the sky.
rise from me, mortal pilot.

eyes unseamed to the foot of
a pillar of fire in the void,
screaming truths,
becoming.
vaporize and depart.

adrift in the hysteria of one second,
a rapidly receding horizon.
awash in a thunderous confluence,
mind rent.
I am clay,
transmuted.

The wind is always blowing here.
It rushes down out of the canyon
to the east
like a cavalcade of rhinoceroses.
The cyclists
struggle against it
the pedestrians
have to lean into it
the motorists
spend two dollars and ninety cents extra
each time they gas up
to compensate for it.
The trees on the eastern edge of the cemetery
are bowed-
to the west-
and their leaves don’t fall
they’re ejected
like screaming pilots from flaming cockpits
at wonky angles
until they crash into the grave markers below them.
And the headstones are all weathered
prematurely,
names and dates and histories
erased

while below,
wrinkled shells dressed in sunday suits
sit in metal boxes
pretending
that some shred of them
will last forever.

splayed
with a deathmask as gaunt
as in life

metacarpals and phalanges,
liberated (in vain) of rubbery
connective tissues

ribs and spine,
so surprisingly human,
sunbleached

bones that may as well have been mine
but weren’t for whatever reason
(or no reason at all)

what karmic debt
could this poor specimen have possibly incurred
to be pinned, naked and fleshless, in a glass-paned box for all to see for all foreseeable eternity?

mayhap beauty is, itself
criminal
when it goes without a price tag.

He floats
like frizzy cottonwood seeds on a wind that is not really there,
not really.
And light and sound and rain
pass him through-
he is borne on a whim
over the still-living earth
waiting in the wetted hollow
of some behemoth fallen tree,
waiting.

Wistfully wandering
listlessly longing
dogtired daydreamer,
airy apparition,

are you just a moving lucid hallucination,
or is it me who lives in your
imagination?

I’ve been going to this boxing gym and training every week.
And everyone there is fighting something
You can see in their
Eyes
They’re punching their dad
Or they’re punching
Whoever their wife is sleeping with
Or they're punching
Their kids who ignore them
Or they’re punching
Themselves.
Their boss
Their job
Their alcohol problem
Their poverty
And every week we get to fight our problems together
And we’re exploding inside.
What?
You can’t fight your problems?
It’s not only that I can.
I will.
And do.
Because crying alone isn’t good enough
Because all that fire you build up inside you has to go somewhere
Or it’ll burn you alive.
So you throw it into the heavy bag
Or into the guy you’re sparring
Or into the ground you run on.


We’re all fighting something
So what about you?
What are you fighting that’s so ******* important?
No, don’t tell me.
Tell that heavy bag.
He listens.
He listens when your wife doesn’t give a ****
He listens when it doesn’t even matter
Tell these padded mitts.
That one-two punch says more than a twenty-four volume encyclopedia
And speaks more concisely than Churchill or Hemmingway or Ghandi ever did.
Don’t tell me how it feels.
Don’t even try.
Let that punching bag know.
Because you know he’s listening.
And he doesn’t have anything else more important to do.

Yellow
fissuring undulations
breaking through
inky navy-
street lights casting reflections on
the lake out the window.

Flecks of neon
marking locations
where the party is still raging,
where people are still
chasing the world of delirium
and ***,
breaking over distant trees.

This is the place where America's
rich come to die
after a lifetime
of toil
chasing the American dream.
And I suppose that means the American dream
is here in Florida,
where sweat never dries
and mosquitoes never sleep,
where retired bankers
and ******* dealers
can finally get their slice of the pie-
separated from the suburbs by twelve foot tall hedges
and automatic gates.

The young don't care here-
they're too preoccupied
with The Chase
and neither do the Old-
because they're tired out
from a lifetime of being young.

This is the place
where America comes
to roll over
and spend its final hours
alone,
bitter,
and wealthy,
taking naps in the sun-
having more than earned

a little rest.

Fog lays like a pale figure in an uncomfortable chair
languishing
and I lay too
with a full heart
under a duvet
yet awake in the dark
as the electric fan ticks away in the corner
and on the street there is no one
not delinquent teenagers
not stupefied drunks
not star-crossed lovers in the cold

just the vapor in the air
too lukewarm to form hoarfrost
too cool to disperse

the streetlights are refracted into orbs of blue light
hanging with a soft buzz
over wet asphalt,
beacons for no one,
no thing.

I used to make believe
In the stability of unity
And unified individually

Until the knot came undone
And I hung a hairsbreadth
Above oblivion

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known
Easy come, easy go
You're gilded and I was sold
So we glimmered like fool's gold

Just Like fool's gold

I used to make believe
You and I were lost
interchangeably and there
Was a surety in security
But gold's just rust in training
And all time's wasted waiting

But you're not waiting any more

We built up Rome in a day
And for a while it was great
But I should have known,
Easy come, easy go
You were gilded, I was sold
And we glittered like fool's gold
So it's no surprise I find
That I'm better off alone

Should have known from the start
You cried easy and came hard
You were gilded, I was sold
It was nothing but fool's gold

Remember the old days?
when, back when
the good days
we drove and rolled joints
and laughed

in your white sedan
in my backyard
everywhere we went you and i

It's not I don't care
it's not I let go
I just want to help
It's just you need your help

When we were kids
when, back when
glory days
Nothing hard
no tree to tall to rest beneath

in your aging eyes
in my foggy mind
mistakes we made
you and i

It's not I don't see
it's not I let go
Yo need to help me pull
or we'll both fall behind

Not so different
distant image X2
restart, relapse, revise

It's not I
It's not I
It's not I
want to fix you
It's not I     X3
Never knew you
It's not I     X3
It's not I don't care
Cause I just want you to help you

I spied three figures, ebbing in fixed positions on the lake.
Like the freckles on your cheeks when you squint at something distant.
I noticed them only because
as the waves moved beneath them,
as the clouds in the sky passed above them,
as the heavens themselves turned about them,
they sat still
as though their liquid perch
were hard and fast as granite.
They hardly even bobbed, resisting the jostling of the waves.
I watched them a while and decided they were herons at rest.
And then I remembered what I was doing before I stopped to watch them

I turned to leave,
and still they had not moved.

Looking out this double-paned plate glass window into the gray frigidity and red-leaved bitterness of October in one of the last wild and still-untamed bastions of freedom in the west at the mountains thinking about how even they are moving, my darling, and how the spaces in between them are growing just like the space in between the sun and the earth and the space between all the galaxies all at once and the space between the spaces between the world and I and soon I’ll just be floating all by my lonesome in some swirling pool of- not air, no, not even air, just nothingness and watching everything float away like disappearing city limits from the tailgate of a truck on cruise control zipping across the badlands and maybe you’ll be there but going the opposite way and there’ll be nothing to do but watch it all go, go, go, til it’s
gone, gone, gone

I live in a city of salty people.
We are all
at times
mean
crass
goatish
people. Like grains of salt
in a salty sea-
-or a salty lake.
but, we are not ever
boring.
we may be salty
but we are doubtlessly very flavorful.
we have more personality
and *****
and character
per square inch
than most of the cities in the world.
most all the cities I have been to, anyway.

anyway.

I am a salty *******
at times
and I have discovered that I
need
a grain of salt in my life.
cold mornings.
a shot of whiskey.
Something to push back
against.
For fighting fake conflict is just
flailing.
I’m trying to tread this
salty
water and keep oxygen in my lungs
just like all the other mouth-breathing saps in this salty pond
pushing each other down to get a breath of fresh ozone and carbon monoxide
and I guess that means I’m fighting
for something.

Like how
babies
laugh
at
nothing
at all.

The laughter that comes
as it pleases
without invitation
without joke
without ridicule
like something floating
on the rising
and falling
of the spring wind
the trees laugh
as they
bloom
like fireworks
without audience.
and the bees laugh
at their fortune
to have such pollen
they fulfill their calling
in collecting
and retrieving
the precious powdered gold.

They do what they are made to do
and they laugh
like children laugh
buzzing sweet harmonies on that same effortless spring
breeze
everything is laughing and reproducing
and the
season is
holy
and the
laughter
is
holy.

This is home.
A home full of life.
A home full of music.
The song of voices and laughter fills the walls and floors.
A home full of light.
And this light pours through the windows and drenches the rooms in warm yellows
And passes through the leaves of the trees without and the plants within
And soaks deep into my skin and warms my face
And wakes us in the morning.
Yes, this is home.
Not a house, not a domicile.
Not so simple as a structure to provide shelter from the rain.
It is made of wood and nails,
the floorboards are uneven,
And the silverware in the drawers are all different and span decades of use.
In the summer it is hot,
In the winter it is cold,
And it is old,
But
It is not dead.
For we live here
And we give it life by living in it.
And it gives back by being light.
It is our fortress.
And these walls can keep out exactly as much of the world outside as we want.
Or we can open the doors and windows and let the wind and the leaves and the world rush in.
This is our home.
And it lives;
because we live too.

Walking out of the bank yesterday
I got blindsided
By the sight of the late-afternoon-early-evening
half-moon floating
in the overhead sea.

It wasn’t that I forgot it was there
and suddenly remembered, it was just so suddenly clear
that it wasn’t an image,
but a large and very real
and simplistic object
suspended
and the angle of the sun in the sky
was apparent by the shadow
cast on its surface.

For a moment I saw the grand order of it-
the scale and distance and relationships
of three orbs-
two dark, one light,
the big false hope machine in the sky,
like impressionist art
like an empty vase
like a blank sheet of paper
with three little circles on it.

Something I have seen every day
for my entire life,
as though anew.

And then I got in the truck
and I got on the highway
and I turned the radio on
to a commercial about a transmission shop in town
as someone cut me off in traffic.

I can't come back.
Sorry, pastor, I can't come back.
Sorry mom and dad.

I can't come back.

I have seen crippled men beg for pennies outside the mile-high walls that guard the glittering, gem-encrusted Vatican.
But I haven't seen Christ.
I have seen good men's funerals picketed by angry mobs all swearing to be the hands of God.
But I've never met the rest of Him.
We've seen holocausts, crusades and conquests **** millions in his name.
But I have never heard His voice.
And I think those men holding those guns missed the point as far as his commandments go.

But that's not why I can't come back.

I ducked out from under the umbrella of religion and I felt the rain
And every day since I've been learning to take the wet with the dry rather than seeking shelter in what's comfortable.
And what's more, I've gotten a clearer view of the sky than ever before
And without that umbrella
I have seen something.
Or the outermost edge of something-
Something unimaginably large
Something not only too big for words, but too big to see all at once.
Something bigger than me and you and god and everything.
And I can't unsee that.
I've surrendered to the fact that not I, my children, or their children will be able to fully comprehend the vastness of everything,
But I am willing to die incomplete before it.

So sorry mom and dad.
Sorry god.
I found my own truth.

and that’s why I can’t come back.