For the pale dudes who confront the wind
and try to push it back into its bottle,
and for tall girls with their datebooks
who can organize their dressers
but feel acid scorch their throats whenever
someone says the not-so-magic words
because disorder haunts them still--

For all the paralegal types
who had to rearrange their futures
for the kids,
and for the dryer locked in layaway--

I will keep the fire going.

Remember, when you find yourself rejoicing for the rainbow,
that the earthworms rest below you on the sidewalk,
having lost their sense of being and direction,
having died but lived to feel it.

Remember when you're aching for the earthworms on the sidewalk,
there are some that didn't make it to the surface,
having drowned before the sun could take them slowly,
having died without a preface.

And
remember when you find yourself embarrassed by the cycle
that destroys and then destroys what pleads for safety--
--these are patterns that remind us we are systems:
Rainbows wax then die like earthworms.

Bring about a second war,
or pack up - and go home.
We can't accept apologies
from Sicily or Rome.

We can't impart cartography
to mayors without maps.
And no one wades the rivers here,
and water fills the cracks.

And water, liquid power naps,
repels us at the coast,
But draws us in at pipeline ends
and haunts us like Dad's ghost.

I died sometime, the future came,
and everybody smirked
and asked me, while we waited
for my casket, if it hurt.

As runners in a fastened loop
stop often to recount their breath,
and lookers placed around the group
in blocks of twelve and twenty-four
laugh quietly and think of death,

an older man who runs a store,
who's still content without a wife,
flops aimlessly against the floor,
and thirty men in tailcoats swoop
to save an upper-level life.

Some men trek the marathon with grace
and finish gently.
Some men catch their second wind and roll
their way on empty.

The girl who thinks Tuesday is "almost Friday"
bakes in her room like a milk-crate left for Phoenix dead.

Nobody's knocking
but nobody's thinking.
How do we know that the fly loves its life on the web
if we've only consulted the spider?

How do we document
a Grecian revival of a Spanish writer.

So after we got to the go-kart place,
we adjusted our hats,
and recorded our thoughts,
and until someone shouted our monikers
(Tasters of Life and Cool Guys,)
we took turns at the cage
while the others recalled their most
Jersey-like memories.

Somebody died on the beach,
and they chose to shut down our requests
for more info.

We ate with the lifeguard
who shook when he spoke.

I used to think in numbers.
1: There’s one of me. Alone. Plus
4: my family. Still 1, but 5, or
4 plus 1; that’s me, alone.
I used to think in numbers.
36: That’s weeks of school;
That’s weeks of math class,
math class, calculator;
Father, Son, and Calculator.
Trinity: the holy three, the three, the
3 times 36: that’s 108.
I used to think in numbers.
Math class, algebra, room 108.
I hate, I hate, I love, I hate,
I hate the way they look at me.
They look at me like man at dog,
like planet hogs,
throw books at me like cannons cogged
at ninety-minute intervals at cinder walls
until I fault and cringe and fall, and fall
like London Bridge and crash, and fall like
Blown-out glass gone back to class. I pass the
tests and cash regrets like rent checks
bounced across the bridge that they knocked down.
Because I used to think in numbers, yeah,
but now?

        Well, sure. Abrasions hurt.
And yeah, we all want friends.
But at least equations work
and keep their balance on both ends.
So I will rock this scatter-plot of
social contract to its peak until
my hands are red meat.
I am no dead beat;
I hold the world record for blood lost
to a summer camp spread sheet.

But then,
but then somewhere along that number line,
a 6 stared down its stage fright when just
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 days before the show,
I met a girl who barred my better judgment
like a cage fight,
and thank God she did,
because for once, I put away the calculator,
and I listened to her voice,
and it sounded like…
well, it sounded like it sounded.
And for once, I sat and wrote about the things
that can’t be counted.
I surrendered to the cage fight,
and I fell into a deep hole.
And to be honest,

I don’t miss spreadsheet summers,
‘cause it’s easier to keep cool.
I used to think in numbers,
yeah,
but now I think in people.

The city spikes that peer out over
rock-spires in the distance taste like
coffee grounds and finger paint.
They're bitter, but they matter.

Maybe someone north of Washington will
read our S.O.S. and send an airplane full of
urban-types to gentrify our graves.

And maybe Jesus saves.

Or maybe Jesus raves with coked-up
Gandhi up in Jersey, when the
winter turns to mush.

I live in a cat.

There are people who
buy their kids hot tubs
and buy their dads
caskets in shapes that
get buried like reruns
of Cheers among thousands
of channels that sputter
through static to
emulate social
experience.

And I pour my experience
into a bowl labeled "milk."

I live in a cat.

She always thinks I'm two steps away from the door
But I'm not.
I'm secure with two feet on floorboards,
Scoreboards painted with permanent scores we forgot.
Permanent residence, precedents set by our parents,
Hesitant pecks on the terrace.
We're all just specks on a Ferris wheel,
Careless, real, with empty eyes, ever open.
Forget the divers;
Empathize with the ocean.
Plagiarize with emotion.
The boy who tells you to stop is more lost than you are,
More Boston, and too far from devotion to breathe.
You don’t need him.

Take my advice,
Like a traveling salesman in a baffling city.
The path isn't pretty,
But the destination is beautiful.

He spread himself remedial,
confused by words of power,
told to hate, and
told to bounce back,
bruised and bare against
Saint Martin's ugly
stained-glass
face-crack.

This was love;
there were lovers.

But instead of dying
patiently and piously,
like father's dad before,
he stuck his needle
of a finger
through the gospel of a bullet,
and forgot to
lock the door.

Never give up on love (unless you're being a creep.)

Carbon copy wolves approach a baby in a carriage,
ripping checks from checkbooks, checking
stock quotes, let me rock those Dockers for a day,
and pay me garbage cash to clean your pool.
I'd never let my money turn me into you, you
conquered bastion of a man, you broken pipeline
leaking seltzer water laugh tracks on repeat.
I seat myself behind your mother as we watch you
hate the world you pay to **** and juggle clients
for applause. I hope you dig your own memorial
with dollars that you stole, and make a million
off the tears that come to decorate the ground
around your feet.

Because no matter how you frame it, you're
a picture of "the worst is yet to come,"
and if you're lucky, maybe God (or some
divine eternal something) will forgive you for
the things you'll learn in time to cold regret.

But maybe not, and maybe greed will end you yet.

We forgot to build a snowman,
and we melted--
Guess who melted first.

But before we turned eighteen,
or even fifteen,
questions rolled into our houses
like sick bulldozers
for sick families.
I was never happy with the way
we held our hands together after
you started wearing those gloves.

I remember clearly
how you worded it when
you decided not to take my
"no" for an answer,
but I can't quite recall how you
pronounced it,
and your voice is all but totally replaced
with Lindsay Lohan's in my head:

"Now I'm writing to impress you,
and I hate that."

Sweet. There's the door.
Leave the pencil.

"Is there anybody out there who can
help me?" asked my uncle to the void.
Then rain, the rich confection of the gods,
became the only thing between his eyes
and heaven.

Bind your shins with jute rope
to the base of the tower,
and pull -- until the Earth is running
retrograde like VHS cassettes
your kids will never get to watch.

Be kind,
rewind,
remind me not to ask about
your day again.

We were well enough the first time
she admitted casually that
she would watch me die if someone
else would take the shot.

                                              We got to
second base (or shortstop)
way before we started counting
and recorded our accomplishments
on napkins, but forgot
to wash our hands before we ate,
before we fought,
before we cried.

                              Her name was
"who cares," mine was "I might,"
her approach to mathematics
was a parrot in a snowstorm:
plain to see, but out of place and
hard as hell to understand for those
who cared enough to try.

Satan shook a chill
into a twenty-pack of cigs
and bound his men
into inferno-fastened rigs.

Everything stood still
until the farmer let the pigs
into the pen
and sold his penmanship to pigs.

Firecrackers spark and sputter,
ashes land like comets; cupid
spits his venom hard and fills a
pool below the bridge before we
jump.
           Another castle in a
different part of France, another
broken-looking chair to hold my
broken-looking back. I told your
kids to look for shapes between the
edges of the cracks.
                                   I hope you
never find yourself and just keep
climbing 'til you fall. I hope our
teachers learn to kick us out for
riding on their backs.

To the few unwelcome guests who
chose to show up uninvited,
and to each who tried his best to
shake the hands of those he spited:

I salute you by the passion,
and the honor, and the name
of every friend who fell from fashion
to the King's ungodly game.

I asked your mom for pictures of that
New Years Eve, and yeah, I'm kind of sorry,
but I don't think I'm at fault.

You were cute before I met you,
and you're cute now, so forget
about the camera, and sit back
and talk like Moses talked to God,
and talk like Mom and Dad would talk
before they found out she was pregnant
with the worst and best two decades
that she still feels were a dream.

And talk like we do; talk like one
of two identical, divisible
denominators stuck inside a
textbook made of dances.
                                              
                                              Please
excuse my dear Aunt Sally for
forgetting how to knock.

She had memorized the train schedule, but
our speech bubbles overlapped the
right way, so I paid for her ticket,
thinking maybe there would be a tunnel
or two to keep our hearts in the dark until
London lay between them once and for all.

My uncle has a can for what goes in
to his mouth, and a bottle for
what comes out.

Cross your heart and hope to
tie me to the bed before
I call my sister for a ride.
I tried to pay you back tonight,
to say I'm sorry for the blackened
salmon that your stomach couldn't handle,
but I only managed "Look
at all the ways we stayed in love."

Because sure,
I trust you.

I trust you like I trust the
fridge-reach condiments
I smear onto my plate
before I find the time to read
the expiration date and part
with what will only hurt me more.

Fact: I rarely ever
forget. I remember everything
fairly intensely.
                            “Rest easy,
friends,” I reassured every
face in reach. “Everything’s
fine.” I relaxed externally,
fainted internally. Red explosions
filled indigo rooms every
few inhales. Rational explanation
fell into ruins.
                         “Exits.
Find intact, reachable exits
first,” I reminded, edging
finally into reality. Each
face I read echoed
fear.


        Incendiary remarks excited
fate; I remember everything.

Candy canes like flowers sprouted
up and out of sandy plains and
Santa landed squarely, barely
visible.

             My head contains
confessions, but my heart is not
cathartic, and when tears impress
complexion marks like artists' pens
against my face, they start to blend.

                                                        But
Rudolph never pulled a sleigh of
mayors to the capitol, and
Blitzen never severed several
thousand Native captives' calls,
'cause elves are made like Cherokee:
with bones, and eyes, and hearts, and backs that
bleed when they are stabbed.

If you're right and I'm wrong,
and people are really just points of connection,
staking a web of invisible political threads,
      
      then at least be the spider
      that crawls the web effortlessly,

          and not the fly
          that unwittingly traps itself inside.

I'm taking an elevator to the
top of a building full of
people who don't care to know my name.

And on the way up,
my mom calls me and asks me
"Where are you?"
and I have to tell her
"I don't know,"
because nobody actually told me
on the way in, and I'm alone,
and the elevator isn't moving,
and my bank account isn't moving,
and now that I'm home
(which I'm not,)
((which I am,))
I can't figure out how to move my feet,
and so my legs aren't moving,
and my arms aren't moving,
and my head isn't moving.

And basically, I'm not going to
dance for these corporations,
so they're not going to dance for me
until I'm back on an elevator, singing
"Hey there, Delilah.
How's it feel to be exploited?"

But that's okay, because despite
my arms, legs, feet, bank account,
and this elevator,
my heart is moving.
And the continents are moving,
and this planet is moving,
and there isn't a CFO on Easy Street
who knows how to slow us down.

Shut up
if you're here to complain about girls,
or boys.
Or anything in between.
Shut up
if you consider any of your friendships
a cage, and most importantly,
SHUT UP
if you're the type of person who would
treat another person like some sort of goal,
some sort of potential accomplishment to
brag to your friends about.

Perhaps nice guys finish last,
because they realize there's more to life than a
finish line.

Speaking of revolutions,
ours was like a train:
slow to start, but nearly impossible
to stop.
And according to the local legends,
those wheels churn on to this very day.

But what the story-tellers,
the bards of Pennsylvania, neglect to mention
is that the first half of the story
took place only in two separate,
but equally hungry imaginations.

She taught herself to love
the same way I taught myself
to whistle:
like a train.

I woke up this morning with ambition
in excess. "Today," I said,
"I am going to write the greatest poem of all time."
And so I did.
I just sat down and did it.

This isn't it, by the way.
It was awesome, though.
Like, really awesome.
And now that it's done, I feel a lot better.

"There isn't anything good about
anything, and all of my friends are either
****** or Christian, and I'm stuck
somewhere in the middle."

-Teenagers

She asked me if I was lonely,
if the only reason I said mean things
was that I'd heard mean things at one time
or another, and in order to cope with my
misunderstanding of human nature
and cruelty, I just repeated those sins like
carbon paper,
like a parrot.

She asked me if it was intentional,
if I let people trust me with their secrets
because I knew that I'd only have to prove them
wrong once, and they'd forever
leave me alone.

She asked me if I was embarrassed
of the person that nobody without the necessary
experience would ever see me hiding beneath
the unkind words and the distrust,
if there was any part of me that just wanted to go home
and go to sleep,
and wake up the next day beside somebody who would
already know the answer to all of these questions.


I said no.
And that she watches too many talk shows.

A nearly-elderly couple
(I mean the awkward post-middle-age
stage where the physical energy can't
quite keep up with the emotional energy.)
pays me minimum wage
to burn myself in as many ways as possible.

And I'm pretty okay with that.

I heard a gunshot
from my bedroom window last night,
followed by the screeching departure
of four tires supporting
a metal case of high school dropouts.

And I'm pretty okay with that, too.

Nineteen candles don't
easily fit, it turns out,
onto one Pop-****.

Time is money,
and money is power,
and power moves people
who prosper, and flower,
and grow into workers.
And workers bring service.
But service brings customers;
workers get nervous.
And nerves cause anxiety,
panic, and pain,
which cause workers' mistakes,
which, with pride, create shame.
And with shame, all the workers
stay home, never trying
to make something else
of their lives. Never buying
the houses they actually
want. They regret.
And regret causes anger,
and will to forget,
and forgetfulness causes
complacence and silence,
which causes more anger,
which brings about violence,
which leads to destruction,
and passionless death,
and then one lonely worker,
his last lonely breath:

"The world stole my power.
Ain't stealing a crime?"

But power is money.
And money is time.

"Finally," he smiled,
"time to relax." Exhaling,
he pulled the trigger.

I eyed three carnations
that I'd pulled from a bin,
and tied together with a rubber band,
so they wouldn't separate in the car
like his parents did a short month before
the funeral.

My engine grumbled on fittingly
towards a short-term patient
whose death bed
was shaped like a race car.

I'm inclined to take your hand
and pull you from the fire.
God designed a puppet stand
and hung us from a wire.

Set upon a canopy
of green, for dark we wait.
Lips are parted manually
by hands on arms of fate.

Literal and lyrical,
the rules of love are few.
Finding you was spiritual;
my love, I'm coming through.

An elderly man
with a stethoscope came out
and mumbled the news.

My spatula skates off the fryer like an Olympic
Dream come true, and my thumb dives headfirst
Into three hundred twenty-five degrees of regulation-sized
Swimming oil. The judges, impressed with my form,
Take a moment to confer over how much to dock my pay.

The torch is blown out on schedule tonight.
We hang up our running shoes by the register, and take to the
streets of the common man. Sometimes we’re recognized by
careful eyes, but we’d all prefer anonymity.
Some things you do for fame, but the important things
you do for Mom and Dad.

It’s training season again, and the new athletes take their
marks smiling. Another veteran casts me a knowing glance,
as if to say “They’ll learn one day.” I nod back in agreement.

Dad forgot to put his contacts in that morning,
and so he buried my childhood in the yard,
mistaking it, in his blind struggle, for his own.

A Robin laid an egg in our backyard.
We can hatch it; we just have to keep it warm.
Your hair dangles on your shoulders when you run
so you should cut it, or stop running,
or stop running from the storm.
In the Bible, there’s a story about some people
who never knew they weren't living right.
Let’s break the chains we made together,
run into the weather; let the lightning
be our lava lamp tonight.

I tense my thumb over the bottom right-hand corner
of the page and recite a block of text
transcribed from a dead man’s notebook.

A stuttered requiem without accompaniment.

When I run out of lines to botch,
I bow my head politely and leave the stage
before anyone with a list of names and numbers
in front of them can thank me “for showing up.”

Outside, a woman dressed like a carnival growls at me,
or to me, in a language I don’t understand.
The audition sheet she grips prompts me
to point her in the right direction.

I watch her strut from my present to my past,
and neither of us is smiling.
Maybe she’s foreign to this place,
and maybe, so am I.

Tonight, I wait for a man I don’t care to name
to send me an email I don’t care to read.
Somewhere along this timeline, the phone rings
and I neglect to answer it, because what if it’s him again
trying to feed me another USDA-declined beef stock story
about how his laptop keeps powering down prematurely,
not unlike his marriage to a woman who, I’m next to certain,
doesn't care to read his emails either?
Woe is him.
I’m not waiting another night, and evidently,
neither is she.