Complications pile up
Ominous snowflakes on a quiet street
Never stopping, the blizzard
Finally lets loose in a storm of chaos
Understanding and logic gone
Suspicious of all those around me
Excluding no one from observation
Desperately trying to resolve the case

The esophageal chill of fresh rain paired
with Bozek's tire stove undertones
slipped through the chain link tennis court.
Love all, love-fifteen, love-thirty, love-forty, game.
I love you, service box Suns, fault one fault lines,
Grandma's crochet centerpiece. Cornucopia coping
with deuce, add.  in, deuce, add. out, deuce,
you get it. Lost ***** in the transformer pen beside
the playground where I watched my classmates
fall off the monkey bars and expose themselves daily.
Racket strings like pantyhose girls surrounding
the sink applying lipstick and stabbing each other dead.
They don't need monkey bars to show off.
Slice serve pizza at Pudgies to kids barely making it.
Grades lower than the pepperoni from the seedy
gas station they sit in and thumb-spike quarters
into each other's knuckles. The "grown-ups"
buy instant lottery and feverishly **** the tickets
with misplaced pennies, and then toss the moneywastes
when they score a free ticket. Free ticket to what?
The tennis match in Addison so far away?
A clear view through chain link?
A wet, elm bench some kid made in shop class?
An alternative to what we waste our lives on?
******, marijuana, drinking at the basketball court, and
flicking cigarette filters into Berger Lake like we're hot ****.
We are ****, not the ****.
Just ****.

Sleepless nights play a game of tag with me
Will they ever catch me?
I race ahead, with success and ambitions engraved into my mind and spirit
Newfound strength pulses through my veins, becoming my new lifeblood
I will not stop
Not until I am fulfilled
Never

I fall in love with someone new every day,
Because there’s something about smiling at strangers --
Knowing their eyes and absolutely nothing else.

Sand-crusted catacombs of dismembered dreams
Settle beside memories of the child who grew up

In rocky Harpswell, Maine. Not many beaches,
Only a foggy stretch beyond Morse Mountain --

But I used to stand ankle-deep
In the water, wait until my toes sank

Into crystalized Earth
And bubbles from Littleneck clams.  

I’d stand there until goosebumps spread upon
My blanched legs, rising up, up, like the artificial hills

Of Maya Lin’s Storm King Wavefield.
Now, when I lie alone,

Misplaced inside a vacant Manhattan studio,
I surrender to sirens and accelerated lives.

Peace comes in painting – thick oil,
Violet and claret on stretched canvas,

Depictions of neon signs and cityscapes,
Cheap t-shirt stands on street corners,

And 24-hour coffee shops with “specialty”
Blends in little white travel mugs – selling

To flocks of strangers, strutting like pigeons on cement
Sidewalks, pretending they belong.

Funny, isn't it?
That a woman no more than a knee-high coffee table and a few copies
of National Geographic away from me
is holding a cell phone in one hand
and an apple in the other.
One will eventually **** her,
and the other will make sure a doctor
isn't around when it happens.

A while back, Nick and I sat
side by side
in split-back forest lawn chairs.
Huff and huff
the porch's coat of scarlet stain,
talking like
existential cab drivers.
Legs on legs
crossed like war trenches or
window blinds
or a cold zipper's cold teeth.
Life or death.
More life on rye, Swiss cheese.
Holey talk of Jesus Christ.
Cross the cross
and hope to die; I know we will.
For now, though,
skip small to get to big talk.
Cursive hand
separates notes and throws out
the *******,
but everything at that age was *******.
Challenger
never blew up, Dillinger
never robbed,
we never dissected life
to see its
uncertain pancreas.
We're kids but can't act like it.
Qualms with calm,
and clever wordplay plays footsies
with my thoughts.
My stale bread secrets take up
too much space.

America'd get its independence
two days after I lost mine
to a high school halter top
twisting my heart like funnel cake.
Although love was still
much a concept four years ago,
I new what "a break" was.
It was the last fifteen minutes
of geometry, ten seconds
beside the Homecoming goal line,
it was me on a rotting bench
watching myself in shallow water
two slow moments before diving in.
Blue Skidoo into a boulder
because I don't know what I'm doing.

Slumped shoulders, a spine wire hanger
holding a jacket up. Taut sleeves, out-
turned pockets, warped collar,
and a gap-toothed zipper.

Elastic wrists plunged into shallow
pants pockets, tight like shoelaces
before the midnight untying.
Rose-gold hamper slid

beneath the box spring, dragging
cereal pieces to a fine dust
then dissipating with
the morning ritual

bed spread, bed sheet tearing from
a sweaty body to the tune
of a near-siren on the desk.
Leg swing and saunter

to cold tiles like broken glass. Clockwise
turn the shower dial, act clean, turn
it back. Fingers swipe 'cross
the medicine cabinet,

leaving droplets to race to the white wood
frame. Bridge thresholds past the fan-
diced ice air hallway to the closet.
Creep the door closed behind,

pull drawers to the end of their tracks,
find pants. Unhook jacket from bed
post, throw it on one sleeve
at a time, and plunge

elastic wrists into the shallow pockets
and leave.

Am I looking for love in Alderaan places?
Most of my SerenityXEnterprise ship jokes go over her head.
I feel like a John Cusack boombox blaring out nineties-age spaces.
Like a comedy no one's heard of, I'm Better Off Dead
without the love I'm not sure that I can find because then is it
really possible to find The One like Neo? (Haha. Get it?)
Like (p+l)(a+n)=pa+pn+la+ln, (Okay, Deep Breath) the universe is trying
so hard to foil my love PLAN. (That one was ******, but the best I can present)
I know you'll be saying "I told you so" when
I realize the narrow parameters of my search are a little naive,
but don't say I'm the Average because that's just Mean!
My love is like Ash Ketchum; I need it to be the very best.
My love is like Ariel; If I leave you I wanna know I'll be mist!
I just needed to pull a Sasha Grey and get it off (on) my chest,
I've already got my music, rhymes, and make-up. Give me the Kiss.