When I had a heart
Shaped like two red canaries
Holding each other
Wings flapping so hard
I coughed up feathers

I knew

I am not a big man
But I feel like a big man

I feel important
Like the glints of light
In a man’s muddy fingers

I shine in places

Trench my sides at night
I will keep you warm

In dreams I lumber
Break bee hives
With my bear hands

Dip my hands in honey
Like it was holy water

The bee’s tiny sting
Is worth it

The buzzing is a hum
I wish I could make with my chest

The pain is worth it

In dreams
My eyes are still brown
But darker
Reflect and camouflage
The landscape
The trees and dirt blend into the
Globes of my eyes

I dip my bear hands into the
Honey again

There is the sting
It feels like god

Tell the bears I am coming home

For the sake of discretion, when I retell this story, I am a fish, gill-hooked, near gutted, and thrown back. You are a goose with swan beauty, but not swan grace. There is a girl throwing bread onto the water above my head. Competing for the same crumbs, through what could be a mirror, our mouths met. You took the bread, but I kissed you.

Got audio published. Check December's entry's for my name.
http://dimestories.org/news/san-diegos-best-dimestories-updated/

Is what I am doing the plight of my existence?
She asked me

Sitting on her lap
I notice the beer on my breath
Heating my mouth like a furnace

In giving answers I always feel like
A hundred Schizophrenic Walt Whitmans
Scrawling math problems on walls
With bits of coal
And we keep saying to ourselves
“But I am a ******* poet”

And what I wanted to say was
Probably
Or what are you doing exactly
Or if you are truly honest with yourself you won’t be

Here is how to truly be honest
It will feel like words in the mouth of a toddler
Learning how to speak to its mother
And you just keep saying, “Yeah” and “Wow”

Only this time
What you’re hearing makes sense
And you turn white
And you want to puke

It is the secret things we say to ourselves
Like
After my mother almost successfully killed herself
Well enough to be gone forever
I now secretly bank on my dad dying soon
So my aunt can take my brother and sister
And I will no longer feel responsible for anyone

Walking away
And feeling good about it are two different things

There is plight in our existence
In the monotony
In the repetition of sorrow
But that feeling fades
the fear of being alone
And unloved
and lost
and whatever

Like being in a nightmare
They all go away
As soon as someone touches you

Now be honest about what makes you happy
Do that
Do it well
Make others happy with it

“And if it ends in flames
At least we’ll be warmed by the fire”
She said

And to be honest
I don’t remember what I really said

He had a clock in his stomach
Time is a hungry crocodile
After eating your hand
And learning he likes the taste

That is when the arthritis kicked in
Or the unexplainable pain
Caused by a broken wrist
Or maybe just aching joints in the cold

I think of all the times I wanted to sever my own shadow
Question my presence
Even in moments of light

Where do I stand
If I cast no shade?

There is a boy
Who one time for hours
Pointed at a can of pringles
In the hopes that he could make it move
With only his mind

The bike he learned to ride on
Had flat tires
He one time shaved down and spiked the back of his head
Then grew his bangs out and dreaded them

He had an albino rat named snowflake

Those were his angsty years

Then he found this crocodile
And it was so cool
And it ticked like a time bomb
It didn’t hurt him or anything
So he kept it
Until one night it tried to eat him in his sleep

So he ran
But maybe it thought he was its mother
Or love wasn’t enough
Or it was just mean

He wonders if his got hungry too early
Burning bridges at both ends
Forcing him to jump in the middle

He was a darling child
And he was lost for a while
Then he was found
By a crocodile
With a clock in its belly
And really
Who doesn’t want a pet crocodile?

I’ve got plenty of ghosts I promised her. I leave them wherever I go.

At the house on 711 Ellen St there is the ghost of a dog named Hessa and a dog named Mac. They don’t play together, but they pant heavy, waiting my return.

There is the ghost of a cat named Charles. He chases a raccoon out of a busted window that my mother fell through.

There is the ghost of my mother pacing the living room, contemplating suicide.

When ghosts die, they become useful fire, burning as long as necessary, and then blowing out forever.

There is the Ghost of Louie, helping me fix my car. There are the ghosts of our tall cans crushed to the curb. There is the ghost of their fullness. Little drops that are left sit in the rim of the mouth.

Every moment makes a ghost. Every time you move something from stillness, there is a ghost for it.

When I come to see you, I will leave behind the ghost of laughter, the ghost of my warmth growing colder. Miss it if you want to.

There is the ghost or your taste in my mouth. Certain foods bring it back to life. I let the Bud Light sit on my tongue. I almost tasted it. Something is missing.

There is the ghost of your smell. It tricks me into craning my neck, eyes searching for you. There is the ghost of your smile which haunts me when the ghost of your smell tricks me into thinking you’re there.

There is the ghost of my cool breath dying on your neck, then dying again. The fire it becomes extinguishes quickly.

Behind your couch there is the ghost of a cricket. He has stolen a harmonica and plays only the high notes. Tell his family that he misses them.

There are the ghosts of apples that I skinned when I learned to make pies in high-school. I have made many apple pie ghosts since then. I will bring one to you. It will be a slow ghost. The steam rising from the middle is its spirit returning home.

Home is your chest. Breathe the ghost of my pie, the ghost of my cologne, the ghost of my eyes wet with poetry I have just read.

There is the ghost of poetry as it mixes with my breath and exits my chest. Let it die and die again. Let it haunt your heart, your belly, the back of your neck like a gentle hand.

I make graveyards. I make ghosts. I leave them behind wherever I go. I miss some of them. There is the ghost of my irregular heartbeat, when I feel the ghosts that I miss pass by. I breath slowly trying to feel them, but too soon they are gone.

Ghosts don’t stay long. I can stay long. Make ghosts in the meantime.

When I come to see you, I will leave you with ghosts.