It is time for a new speed.

A fresh pair of cotton socks and a handful of cash.

I’m going to take that road I have walked one hundred times

And walk it backwards.



I have slammed enough doors

To know when I’m ready to soften.

I must decide whether to hold my breath

And climb out of ground zero.

Or just lay down in the rubble.



I can see the dregs.

The grit in the tea, the flattened beer.

The paltry tobacco at the bottom of the bag.

Desolate and sparse. The ineffable honesty

Of the etchings around my eyes.



My legs twitch in a lethargic energy.

They kick out and twist in the bedsheets

Tangled in routine.

I’m kicking out against the bars

That constantly hold me in.

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

it is now an anniversary in some places
some anonymous faces
are celebrating the birth of a son
a wedding that happened
some hapless eve in yesteryear
and we have our anniversary,
the one we call
9/11
thousands have penned poems about that day
usually struggling with what they had to say
I know I did
not because I was choking back tears
or harbored any fears
that more planes would crash into innocent green knolls
or ram New York’s majestic glass towers
but because of the…flowers…the flowers
cut and placed on hallowed ground
gently laid without a sound
the flowers
the flowers always pay a price
for an earthly sacrifice
placed at altars made high
and on empty caskets passing by
they neither whimper nor whine
and say not a wilting word waiting
for the anguished congregating
of those who need to find meaning
in the limits of fleeting flesh
the flowers have
long ago accepted their finite fate
but sadly it is often too late
for those who stand and weep
to somehow embrace the silent sleep
that will come to all
on anniversaries yet to be dated
and billions of others to be created
who will proudly build new towers
and need to cut sad wise flowers

Stare at your bedroom wall
and bard me a story about
the creeks of white between
the sun-patches of blue paint,
the faded yellow of the door
where the damp towel was hung
day after day after day.
Tell me about the mark
of a swept paintbrush
that accidentally destroyed
distinction between wall
and radiator.
They're no longer clean,
either of them.
How are the door handle dent marks
from that hurried moment when
you rushed into your room
away from our argument?
What of those stories?
Will you need a new place
to erase the memories from your mind?
The flies and the walls cannot speak
to anyone but you now.

It's all rotten anyway.
The sweet stink of evenings
spent in an intimate supine,
with a cleaver caught upright
in the cutting board bedpost.
We were atop one another
with our faces to the ceiling,
reading passages of poems aloud
after drenching the bed sheets
in varied indentations.
Cut words and minced gazes,
we grayed as shadows
against those weathered walls.
I remember those walls,
moonlight had reflected off the frames
of littered photographs, those stories,
and created a dance floor pattern of crescents
and plank-meeting-plank askew.
Those walls will tell me stories
even if you decide not to anymore.
I'd buy them all up, I would,
as I do the meat hook-hanging
in the butcher shop.

It was a Wednesday night
in the city, in a shoddy bar
that was pretending to be
a trendy one.

I sat at a table along the
wall, trying my best to look
good while sitting on a stool,
which is a difficult task for
those who know what I'm
talking about.

I was on my third beer when
he sat down.  I'd seen him here
before.  He had dark black mess
of hair that somehow suited a
thin framed face and onyx eyes

He had a strong jaw, a quick
smile, and always seemed to
be wearing a faded bomber
jacket with the initials CMJ
sewn onto the front pocket.

He took a sip of his drink,
and took a long look at me.
"You don't look like much
of a risk taker".  He paused.
Another sip.

It took me a moment to
realize that he was waiting
for me to answer.  "Oh..uh.."
I thought about it for a second.
"I don't suppose I am.  I guess
I've always played it safe"

He casually stroked the stubble
on his face as he finished his drink.
"How's that workin' out for ya?"
"It keeps things simple"
"You smoke?"
"Nah, bad for your health"

He smiled a big smile as he
pulled out a pack and lit one
up.  He pointed over to a
group of girls 2 tables over.
"You see that brunette there?
She's been stealing glances
your way for the last hour"

I looked over, just in time to
see the girl in question quickly
turn back toward her friends,
hoping that I did and that I
did not notice her.  

"You should go talk to her"
"Nah, she's with her friends"
"What if she weren't"
"I dunno, maybe...I'd hate for her to say no"
"If you don't find out, you'll never know"
"If I don't go, she can't say no"

He looked at me, then my beer.
"Imagine that your beer is full of risk"
I looked at the amber concoction
"Now, if you take too much of it, then
you have a real chance of pain and
suffering the next morning, but you
also got a chance at the best night
of your life.
  You still drink it anyway, right?"

I glanced up
"Yeah, sure"

He finished his cigarette and put it out
in the cheap glass ash tray

"Lets say you didn't.  The thing to
remember is...If you don't take it,
someone else will"

In one fluid motion, he had swiped my
beer and poured it down his throat.  He
wiped his now sated lips with a grin.

"Come on, are you serious?"
"I'm absolutely serious.  The
question is, are you?"  

He stood up and walked up to the
pretty brunette.  Within minutes
she was laughing at his jokes and
forgetting about the man she was
thinking of minutes before

Two tables down, that man sat
in front of an empty beer glass,
realizing that the words of a
complete stranger were truer
than the ones he'd been telling
himself almost his entire life.

I needed another drink