Waiting at the train station
For my girl from new york
With my windows down
Sunroof open
My a/c has been on
The fritz for two years
Now, but you get
Used to it
Especially in a
Syrupy pennsylvania
August

A cherry colored pickup
Swings into the space in
Front of me and a middle aged
Guy hops out
And meets two others

They are speaking german
And cackling
The one is telling a joke
And dangles his hand
Off of his waste like it's
His ****
And they all laugh

For a moment
Every other sound
In the station is drowned
Out by their hard
Language and
Harder laughter

When you make a
Chili dog you never
Forget to slice the onion
Into translucent white
Slices and make sure
Your mustard is dotted
With brown flecks

Make sure you have a tall
Frosty beer the color of
October sunsets
Lay back in a chair
And kick your feet up
For me

When your song comes
On your headphones
Dance like a chimpanzee
Amongst Ikea furniture for me

Don't think of me
When the sky is stained
Pink orange and aqua
Think of something better
Something that is real
Something whole
That doesn't want what
Everyone else wants it
To want

When you stand next to
My coffin
Throw an orchid for me
Or whatever flower is
Cheapest because honestly
I don't know what you're
Throwing

Make sure the soil is
Heavy and wet
Make it clump over the
Cross I didn't want
On the top of my
Pine box

Make sure you think about
How roots and grass
Will grow through me
Eat me and grow
Without a thought

If nature ceased to
Persevere
Humanity would be
Absurd in its
Reckless building
Destroying and poisoning

When you look at my
Pine box think about
Repetition and death
Think about moments
Of brilliance and the years
That beat them back
Remember that hollowness
Is its own form of substance

Most importantly
Remember that a chili dog
Needs onions
And that one day
Your corpse
No matter where it lays
Will fertilize future life

And the circle eats its own tail
Its own tail
Its own tale

Surrender your meager twitching
To the echoing riff of the complete
Watch yourself dissolve
Into the void's cast shadow
Let your panic be snuffed
By the beating of bees wings
And the sorrowful violin
Of crickets legs
At dusk

There is a fire that has burned
Inside of me for all my life
Painful and brilliant
But as I lay here
I realize that after 30 years
The fire is starting to cool
And I am to become
Smoldering embers
And now,
I’m cold in bed

Life makes you feel like
Another dandelion
Stripped clean by the wind

My teeth getting cleaned
I choose to hold in a ****
Becoming a man

I'm hunched on our bed
Like a stone unintentionally collecting moss
You are away and your
Side of the bed grows cold and raised
The imprint that you left in my mattress
Is similar to the one that you scarred
On my heart

It is a skewed imprint of you
Like the frond of some beautiful lost flower
Pressed between granite palms
In a museum behind smudged glass

The dips and curves of all
Your perfect and imperfect features
Wrinkled and pressed
Into a *****
Used surface

Even though the ceiling fan was on
I was covered in sweat and so were you
Like full bottles of beer in the sun

I pressed into you and you
Conformed into my body
Without ever waking up

I got lost in the damp folds of
Your tee shirt
The ****** wrapper on
The night stand and
The bundle of sheets on the floor
By the foot of the bed

They put her in a
Curtained cubicle
Surrounded by
Beeping machines
And all types of
Wires and terminals
A trashcan and
A dripping faucet

When they rolled her in
They gave her
Morphine
Sodium chloride
And a pat on the head

"She's lucky"
The nurse said
As he lowered the gurney
"A lot of people have
No one show up"

And he left the room
Pulled the curtain closed
We were left with the
Tranquil beeping of
Faceless terminals
And the dripping faucet

Another nurse came in
With a clipboard
And started asking us
Questions
Apologizing for
The beeping
"It's like Chinese
Water torture"

Then she left
Pulled the curtain closed
And when the
Heart monitor
Started beeping
We pushed the
Silence button like
They showed us

We were left with
The sterile squeaking
Of the soles of sneakers
And hollow whispers
In the hallway
And the dripping faucet

A slow day at work
If only these walls could talk
Sighs like falling snow

They'll have no carcass
Not when our collective trash
Is up for picking

Procrastination
So obviously hollow
Nothing, with false weight

I like sleeping in
Even if sleep may just be
Death’s lazy cousin

It's so hard to like the man
And it's so hard to
Dislike the man

He traps me
With his cooking

While I'm eating
He talks to me
About kids he grew up with
In Virginia

About a loner with a short fuse
Who caught a stray
Shot of jello
Meant for someone else
From someone else's spoon
And he walked over
And slammed the spoon holder's face
Into the table repeatedly
Until he drew blood
And then sat back down
Without saying a word

About a kid who was
16 in the 7th grade
Quiet, never fought
Someone asked him
To whip his **** out
My dad
Holds his hands up at this point
"I **** you not Ben,
It was about a foot long!"

We laugh about this
For longer than we should

He also tries to impart his wisdom
Telling me that
Race, Religion, Politics
It's all useless
People are people
And you should take everyone
As they are

Yet,
His blame is missle guided
For such a humanist
It's always
"The ******* Christians"  
"The ******* Republicans"
"The ******* Chinese"

He is hypocritical of
His own self proclaimed
Enlightenment

I can't tell if
It's a weak attempt at relation
Or
If he honestly thinks
That his hatred is implied

I have always been
A bit removed from my parents
After the divorce
And the new spouses

If he wants to relate
He should just
Be himself
And I'll be myself
And we'll both
Still die alone
Him hopefully sooner
Than myself
Not out of hate
But he's older

Still
Oftentimes
Fathers bury sons
If not in the ground
In their ideals

Dread can grow swiftly
Like weeds in a flower bed
Roots crawl through my gut

There is no torture
As great as being a man
At a dress fitting

Under harsh street lights
And a rusted skeletal overpass
We walked in the syrupy
Silence of a Sunnyside Saturday
Night

A man asked me in accented
English
"Want that burrito spicy?"
"Yes"
His eyebrows go up
"Spicy?"
"Yes, ******* spicy!"

He smiles to himself
Reaches back into the food truck
And pours sauces and
Liquids of varying color
And viscosity into the
Tortilla

Wraps it up for me
Gives me my change
And waves me off with a smile

When we get back to the apartment
She is mad
Because I choose to make love to the
Burrito instead of her
I can't help it
Drunk eating is one of the
Forbidden joys of life

She slams the door and
Shuffles around yelling
By the time I'm done the burrito
She is telling me to sleep on the couch
Which is fine because I can't
Feel my mouth anyway
The burrito is so **** spicy

I tell her this and that her
Kisses would be wasted
If she wants to waste her time
With me, I want to feel it

We sleep together for
The night

I went to the shooting range with my friend
We both grew up in families that valued guns
Hate it if you'd like
But it'll happen whether you want it to or not

After we punched holes through paper
We went to a local dive bar to have a beer

We call Yunegling "lager" in PA
You just ask for a lager
And out it comes
I've made this mistake of asking for "lager" in other states
The bartender looks at you like you just cut your tongue off
And put it next to your bill as a tip

My friend told me that he has a reoccurring dream
Where he's in a fox hole
And his rifle jams
And the enemy charges him and
Runs him through with a bayonet

"That's horrifying"
I tell him, putting my glass heavily on the bar top
"Nah, you get used to it"
He says, lightly lifting his glass to his lips
"It doesn't hurt, it just has that floaty feeling
Like 'this doesn't belong there' and then
I wake up clenching my fists"

I guess that one can get used to all things
Even being run through in the sacred
Space of dreams

Susan hides a nest of goose eggs behind her hairline
She’s trapped with a man she doesn’t know anymore
Because of a child who won’t return her calls

She’s living in a fresh hell everyday

Ariel is trying to find a job
Sleeping in an overpriced oven of an apartment
Taking care of his brothers and sisters
They sleep on the floor and play with broken toys
While he travels city blocks dammed with trash
He comes home with nothing to show
And listens to his neighbors fight and **** through thin walls

He’s living in a fresh hell everyday

Everyone is barricaded in their houses
Or they’re out on the streets killing each other to get hashtags trending
The world is ruled by fools and we’re so self centered
We can’t understand that nature is trying to remove the cancer

We’re all living in a fresh hell everyday

When you sit at the same desk every day
The walls tend to get a little closer.

When the walls get a little closer
The doorknob seems to stick a little more.

When the doorknob sticks a little more
The windows start disappearing.

When the windows start disappearing
The long fluorescent bulbs start to hum louder.

When the long fluorescent bulbs start to hum louder
The ceiling and floor start pressing in.

When they ceiling and floor start pressing in
You know it's time to get out.

When you get out
You may want to get back in.

When you think you want to get back in
Bury yourself in advance.

I'm sure that
When the world ends
The sky will be beautiful

One of those days
That looks like a
Dollar store
Painted  landscape
In a chipped and dusty
Golden frame

I'm sure that
Everyone will probably
Have gone to work or
To the pool or
Out to eat or
Just sat like some
Seem to do

I'm sure that fog
Will settle on leaves
And bark in
A forest
Where deer and
Birds will graze
Unseen
Undisturbed

I'm sure that
The people
Will think about
All the stuff that
Sits in their houses
The cornucopia of
Usesless **** that they
Spent all of their lives
Trying to amass

I'm sure thoughts will
Wander to the
Dusty knickknacks
On bookshelves
Filled with those
Books that they
Meant to read

About the
Pots and pans
And cans of spam
The gourmet
Frozen meals
The fridge
The stove
The whole house

Melting into goo
They will think
About watching their
Ambitions
Hard work
Time
Money
Love
All going up
In flames

Subsequently,
It will

I'm not so sure
That you will be
With me when the
World ends

If that's true
The world has
Already ended
And I may as
Well be a pile of goo
In some wall street
**** birds mind
As the skyscraper
Crumbles from
Beneath his feet

Hello World
Thank you for the white birds and blue sky
The green grass and brown bottles
The gnarled roots and the flower petals
The packed sidewalks and empty fields
The sounds of dress shoes on pavement and
The smell of gasoline and leftover Chinese

Hello Void
Thank you for the sanguine embrace
The swarm of ants on the fallen bird
The weeds peeking through the cracks
The calloused conditions and the jaded outlooks
The fields of blood and people impaled on metal skewers
The smiling skeletons and cackling hyenas

Goodbye All
For all the white birds and swarms of ants
There is little solace to find on either side
So I'll rest here
In the middle of it
Where we thrash in barren hills
And gather under the stinking blooms
To try and find the sense
In any of it

I was out the back door
On my way to work

I spotted a deflated balloon
Tumble-weeding across the
Back walk

I watched it topple
Lazily
Too crumpled and
Twisted in itself to
Move much

A strong breath of
Wind moved the
Shining, gaudy
Bladder up and
Off the back walk

As it blew past I
Read the words
"Happy Birthday"
Adorned with exploding
Multicolored confetti

I got in my car
And thought about
How much that balloon
And I have in common

Coming home from the train station
A hare scurries through my headlights
Across the road and is gone

I think about all the hares
And all the other snippets of life
That we never consider
Let alone comprehend

As a rule of thumb
I will never trust a man
With a ponytail

"Notice that
I am not laughing"
He said this from
Another room
While my stepmom
Laughed

"Where are the jokes
now? Why are you
So **** quiet?"
She asked him this
While looking at me

Silence from the
Other room was
The only answer

She held the paper
In front of her and
Read through it again
Aloud
"Enlargement of ventricles
In the brain
Inconsistent with a
Forty five year old female"
She laughed again
And stared at the paper
Through the paper, really

"Well,
I don't feel bad for myself
I feel bad for you guys"
She poured another
Glass of Chardonnay
And walked out
Onto the porch
The foggy panes
In the double doors
Rattling as she closed it

I stood there
In the kitchen
My only company
The clicking of his
Keyboard from
The other room
And a plastic container
Of week old scones

I thought about
How nice she was
How pretty her
New haircut looked
How well she could
Decorate a room
How she still
Emptied my trash
Cleaned my toilet
Made mincemeat pies

How when I said
"Thank you"
She always just
Nodded silently
Or said "O.K."

I felt the space
I was already putting
Between myself
And her

The sour swelling
In my chest
That seemed to sit
In the back of my
Throat and eyes
Perched itself on
The back of my tongue

As I thought about all this
I heard him stop typing

He was tasting the same
Sourness and
Thinking about
How empty a bed
Can be at 1 A.M.
When someone
Else used to consider it
Their bed as well

A most deceiving mask
A coiled contemplation
A look of despair and woe

The grimace of pain
The coming of rain
The stubbing of a toe

My sweet love
I am ready to confess to every sin
The rumbling of the gut
The raising of the ****
The flatulence's raucous din

But lo!

This is not a measly prairie wind
That passes lazily through the tall grass
This is a grinning of the devil
A demon's carefully constructed bevel
A hell fire that rips from your ***!

From what I thought was my own fault
To cause you such a look
Twas' a stalk of broccoli
A sprout of Brussels
A miscalculation by the cook

So white knuckle my dear
Hold tight for life
As your intestines come trembling out
Whatever you ate
My succulent date
Is making your **** shout

But bless the heavens
And all that is eternal
That this has come to pass
What I thought was the end
The loss of my friend
Was just a spot of gas.

Many drunken nights
I’ve blacked out with my shoes on
Good night gentleman

I saw two dogs
White and black
On their hind legs
Playfully fighting
On a lawn
Manicured
Into sterility
Minus the
Blanket of
Yellow from
The shedding trees
Coats

I felt like
My life was
Woefully
Behind
That there
Was a black
Hole or a
Black cloud
That followed me
Around

I thought that
All my answers
Were in the bottom
Of all types
Of bottles and
Pipes and
They were nowhere
I should have
Known that they
Were never there
In the first place

I try to
Distract myself
The best that I
Can
Much like
Everyone else
But sometimes
There is a
Chewing worm
At the back of my
Mind
A writhing snake
In my herb
Garden and
I can't help but
Decapitate it
With my *****
And go inside
And have a glass
Of lemonade

Good luck all
As we march on
Into ruins and
A blizzard of
Hot ashes

I self diagnosed
Turns out my bubonic plague
Was posion ivy

I was walking on a
Leaf covered path
The oranges
Yellows
And browns
Of fall carpeting
The fractured asphalt

My dad walked beside
Me with the hounds

"It smells so good
Everything is just
Starting to decay"

The oddly sweet
Perfume of a
Dying forest is
Lovely

He told me
That his wife's
Ex husband's
Wife had
Shot herself
During her
Lunch break

He came home
And found her
There by herself
Much like she had
Been for a long
Time

"Jesus"
I said
"That's awful
No one deserves
To find that"

My dad looked
Out at the massive
Flock of floating geese
On the reservoir
Honking loudly
At one another
As the setting sun
Painted a golden
Streak through the
Water

"Dying is bad
Enough"
He said
"To self inflict
It is doubly
Worse"

I agreed with
The doubly
Worse part

Maybe dying
Isn't that bad
The leaves don't
Sob or scream
As they rot and
Fall to blanket
The ground

I'd like to think
She didn't either

I know that
The trees don't
Mourn their
Lost leaves
And I know
They won't cry
For me

Early on
My T.V. was controlled
By my mother and older sister
Because of this
I have an immunity
To awful television

Americas Next Top Whatever
Growing up Whatever
The Housewives of Wherever
All the spinoffs
All the three week
Episodic backstory
Specials

Everything

I have found this taste in T.V.
Is engrained in most girls and women
Not all of them mind you
But most

From all of the
Nonsensical story lines
Wooden and awkward acting
Scripted life tragedies
Artificially inseminated arguments
Pointless and pedantic drama
Lifetime movies stick out

They are their own special breed
Because of this
They are beautiful
And I enjoy them immensely

So many meaningless sub plots
Badly framed shots
Ridiculous morals
Awfully choreographed action sequences
That have nothing to do
With the movie at all

In this way
They are their  
Own type of pure

I have no shame
Besides
There is no where else
That I can watch an hour and a half
Of a police woman
Being hunted by her surrogate
Who was her best friend
(Before she psychotically fell in love with
The police woman's husband)
While the police woman is
Haunted by the ghost of her
Dead mother who
Gives her advice
From beyond the grave

Finally
With the help of the ghost mother
The police woman
And her misogynistic male partner
(Who is no longer a misogynist
Because she is such a **** fine cop)
Corner the surrogate
Who now has an assault rifle
And they end up having to blow her
Away
Emptying their guns
As she yells out and spins
Too many times into some faceless
Mansion's swimming pool
Ending with a slow motion splash
And no charges pressed anywhere
On anyone

All of this
Played by the up and coming
Talent of yesteryear
And the same six
Recycled actors
Who butcher their lines and roles
So artistically
That tense and awful moments
Make me convulse with laughter

It is surreal
And totally worth the guilt
I feel for enjoying such
Rancidly composed filth

Reading during lunch
On the screened in back porch
When I notice
Apart from the other moths
That are fluttering and
Kissing the bent, thick
Stems of the spider plants
That grow against the dirt
Stained panels of the porch

A little white moth
Smashing itself against
The inside of the wire mesh
Windows

My book open on my lap
I watched him beat his
Powdered body fruitlessly
Looking for a way to rejoin
His other moths amongst
The spider plant blossoms
Wilted white and
Putrefying purple

Still open
I rested the books sturdy
Spine on the smudged glass
Of the coffee table

It took me a few times
To cup him in my palms
Giving him a wide berth
In his fleshy cell his wings
Still beat furiously against
The worn lines in my hands

I didn't open the storm door
I poked my hands through
A hole the hounds had made
And cracked open the restraints
Of the little white moth

He sat unmoving on the edge
Of my fingers
Wings still
Antennae still
Before fluttering off
Into the syrupy hues
Of the August afternoon

I sat back down
Looked to the open face
Of my book and wiped
The residue of the
Little white moth onto
My dress pants

Like the feverish beating
Of its wings on my hands
The bleached brushstrokes
On my dress pants
From the little white moth
Have since disappeared

I woke up this morning
Depressed from a dream

In the dream, I was cradling
A little yellow bird
In my hands
I could feel a strong attraction
A bond
Love
For the small yellow bird
As it cheeped gingerly
In my cupped hands

I was walking through a vast field
With a carpet of waist high grass
With the little yellow bird


I told it to fly
And opened it's makeshift cage of
Flesh blood and bone
And it took off

But it had only just left my hands
When it dropped dead
Its tiny body being lost
In the gently blowing
Waist high reeds

I bent down and picked up its limp frame
One wing splayed over the edge of my palm
And I wept

I dropped to my knees and wept
The grass touching my face

Then I woke up
And I looked out the fogged, wet window
But outside
All the birds were black.

I guess my poems are a little too
Long Winded
Your interest gets blown away
In a monsoon strength gust of
Boredom

Be that as it may
I'll still scratch those bumps that
Show up on my knuckles from time to time

And I'll still keep that empty bottle of shampoo in my shower
And that translucent bar of used soap stuck to the floor
I'll step on it and pretend
That I don't notice

The clouds will gallop by
Polyps will form in my colon
My hair will gray
And so will yours
And one day
Hopefully
We'll both sit in a home
With a plastic mask strapped to our face
Long Winded
Trying to breath the air of
A changing time.

It's a new guy this time
He has the same jacket and gloves
But it's definitely a new guy
I pull the collar of my coat with
The tips of my fingers
And approach the roped off entrance
Of the building

He stops me with a
Sudden hand on my chest
"I'm sorry sir,
but you're not allowed
in today."

"What? Not allowed? I was
Just here yesterday. The guy
At the door let me right in."

"No matter sir. You're not
Allowed in today."

"Well, ****."

I take a seat on the
Rain painted curb
And stare at my reflection
In a ***** puddle

Some cookie cutter schlub
Comes down to the same partition
I was turned away from
The rope is lifted without a word
From either of them

I un-crane my neck from
The door's direction
Meeting my own stare in
The puddle of ***** water
Again

I push off the curb with
Renewed energy and
Approach the doorman again

"Alright, I think I can go in now."

He pulls his white gloves
By the wrist to eliminate any
Excess space in his fingertips
And meets my eyes
With a smug look on his face
And shakes his head

How the hell are his gloves so white
When all the puddles around here
Are so filthy

"Just because you were in here
Yesterday sir,  does not mean
That you will be allowed entry
Today. I'm sorry, but that's the
Way that things work."

I bend my mouth into an
Upside down horseshoe
Studying the gaudy marquee above
The padded door

The doorman sees me staring at the blinking
Chipped letters
Sensing my resentment
He tightens his gloves again
And stares at the brick wall
Across the alley

I wander off in the rain
To go find something
Else to do

"Metal Elitist"
A nasty title for sure
Slayer ******* rules

On the scorched Queen's sidewalk
I pass seemingly aimless people like myself
I am wearing shorts and leather sandals
They wear backpacks and pants
Flannel shirts and earrings
Sneakers and baseball caps

They all seem to have a destination
But I'd like to think that they don't
That none of us do
We are all Wednesday's mid-morning nomads
Looking for
A dollar for our empty hands
A bench in the shade
A place to rest our bags and shoulders
A place to remove our caps and wipe our foreheads
Complaining of wandering in the heat

There are few people I enjoy beating
Quite like myself

A missed period at the end of a sentence
A different data point on a graph
The wrong email to send
The incorrect setting on whatever it may be

It all hits you suddenly like
A putrid wind and lodges
Deep in your chest
Where it forms a solid mass that
Breaks into jagged pieces that
Permeate through every
Pore of your being

But don't worry
The wind will pass and
Jagged pieces will meld into
Skin

You will learn from your mistakes

The path to change
And in effect learning
Is hard and rigorous
And the victories at the end of each path
Will be brief

But they are necessary

And then
When you finally get it all
It will all be over

But

Hopefully you will
Have spent some of your time
Leaving trail markers for others
Bright paint on a trunk
A stack of rocks
A brightly colored piece of fabric
As they traverse the same paths.

I was driving my
Clunker mercury
Down 95 to the
Train station
When i saw
The moon

It hung humongous
And low
Like an oyster *******
Poured of melted pearls
In the pale
Blue and deep purple
Of friday's dusk
Adorned with
A crown of
Dark clouds

While doing 86
In the left lane
I couldn't take my
Eyes off of it

Then i had an
Alarming thought
I don't think that
Any of the other cars
Or any of the people
Driving them
Zipping past me
Had any idea that
It was there at all

Two fat young
Robins sit on a
Power line
Reaching off my
House

They don't make
Talk under pink
Clouds and a
Tangerine sunrise

They are serene
Perched in silence
They sense my
Envy and fly
To a neighboring
Tree

As I head out
To my car  
I can hear them
Talking
Probably laughing
At me

Black cat perched on wall
Watching a dead, **** choked tree
In a ruined yard

My best friend
He tells me that
I shouldn't be upset
About that abortion
That I made that girl
In college get
"There is no accurate way
to count ghosts"
He says
His eyes straight ahead
His hands on the wheel

Even as my eyes grow
Heavy with tears
I know that he is right
Counting ghosts
Is a fool's holiday

Later in life
I will ask him
Questions with obvious
But nonetheless
Hard answers
Which he will usually
Answer looking
Straight ahead
With his hands on
The wheel

We speak in movie quotes
And obscure jokes
A true friends
Respite among
Normal conversation
We isolate third parties
On principle

We went to a
Concert in Baldwinsville
New York
And screamed at the
Healdiner to play
Songs from another
Band he was in
That was better than
His solo stuff
Security threatened to
Throw us out
We were high
On pills and liquor

No matter what
I trust his judgement
He has never lied
To me a day in his
Life, let alone mine
When something *****
He tells me
Which is why I trust him
But it's also why
I didn't show him this poem

I didn't want him
To disapprove
I didn't want him to
Point out all the
Obvious flaws
That are part of
My nature
And subsequently
My writing

When I am dead
Maybe I'll carve this
On a scroll of stone
So that he'll be driven
To lay in the same
Ground as myself
And there
In the wet soil
We can share
Inside jokes
And muffled laughter
Away from the dead
And the infinite

My dad is an enigma
He’s getting older but is
Healthier than guys 30 years younger than him
I’m convinced it’s because he drinks white wine from sun up to sun down and is performing a ritual of slow embalming

And his fridge has an assortment of salad dressings and Clamato juice
That were good in 2008
And he eats it saying
“It’s fine, best by dates are just marketing”

And god ****** if he doesn’t wake up kicking and content every day

A solid mass of boxed wine and 6 year old salad dressing
All over confident opinions and ***** jokes
Feeding foxes kibble in the backyard
Feeding his dogs liverwurst and chocolate ice cream
Crying in front of strangers at documentaries about people in countries he’s never been to

An obelisk of weirdness in a sea of pale mediocrity

And he’ll let you know
He wouldn’t want to be any other way.

Good morning
And there you are
Obtrusive
Well I'd rather
Have you and not need you
Than need you and not have you

Time to ***
But the house is buzzing
With activity
Coffee being made
Keyboards click-click-clicking
The dogs doing laps around
The living room furniture

We can do this
Out the door
And we are ambushed
I turn towards the bookshelf
Awkwardly perusing the collection
While drumming you
Against the spines of
Hemmingway
Bukowski
Lovecraft
Murakami
Like a stick on
A white picket fence

Then the threat has passed

We scramble down the hall
Is he in the computer room?
Oh god, he is
And you just stared him square
In the face
"Good morning"
The silent nod
Says it all

I craddle you in my hand
Through my boxers
And do my best to conceal you
Finally
We are behind
The relative safety
Of a locked door

Peeing proves difficult
Advanced calculations
Yields ***** on the seat

Back into bed
I'm sure I'll see you again
Very soon

The A.M. Crunchwrap
How do they keep the hash brown
Crispy for so long?

Blame is such a
Contagious malady
It doesn't surprise me
That in our time
We both contracted
Terminal cases

I stopped being
Your son when I
Passed out at the reception
Spilling the pulpy remains
Of my 18th Mimosa
All over the table
While people were tapping
Glasses to makes speeches

You stopped being my
Mother when you
Told me you weren't
Making my birthday dinner
That you had made me for
26 years every August
Because it was more
Of a winter dish

You were my
Best friend when Dad
Was off banging his blonde
On business trips
When your daughter
Was off at college
Smoking *** and
Playing soccer on
A scholarship  

Inevitably
All things that make
Sense must be
Adulterated by something
That doesn't

It's a shame that
You had to seek that
Something out

Well,
You never thought you'd be here
Not at this age
Not knowing what you know
In fact,
Why isn't the whole world
Lining up to kiss your feet?

You know it all
You've been there
And if you haven't been
Someone
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend
Has been

All your bad experiences
Those are the world's bad experiences
Disregard the child soldier
The **** victim
The mutated and deformed
These?
These are real problems
If they aren't on the surface
They fester below
Rotting away at whatever you could hide away
We all feel so bad for no one

Daddy is too rich
He loves his guns and his motorcycles
And mommy got remarried to some maniac
Who has a drawer specifically for tissues and a sports car

How is an upstanding young man
Expected to compete with that?

Standing in a line
Elmo waves behind a cop
Searching bags for bombs

I wish that I could take the hollowness inside of me
And hold it in the palm of my hand.
I wish that I could hand it to someone
And say to them
"See, this is why I feel the way I do sometimes"
And they would nod
And everyone would feel bad
But then everyone would feel good because
They may finally understand

But what do I have to be upset about?
I've never had a real experience in my life
I waste most of my money
On video games and vinyl
And taking my girlfriend out to restaurants in the city
But I'm never strapped for cash
My bank account rarely suffers

I've never felt alive in my entire life
I spend my friday nights alone
Drinking expensive IPAs
And surfing the web

A perfectly meaningless existence

I work a full time job
And get by by telling people that there is more to me
That I'm working on something
A fantasy piece
Some poetry
"That book will be coming along any time"
When I have never written a single page

The more time you spend talking about it
The less time you actually spend doing it

I have delusions where I am rich and famous
The public grabbing for my alligator boots
My words engraved on great marble slabs in the town square

Delusions are delusions because there is no process
Instead,
The desired effect is already achieved
There are never details
Just the desired ending
Like a fairy tale

I imagine death
Is like snow blown from a branch
Upon hitting the earth
There is a rapid loss
Of color and form

Sometimes my wife
Squeezes me too tight
At night

Like she thinks
She'll wake up the next morning
And there won't even be

                                           An  
                                             E O    
                                           N     U
                                           I    T
                                              L

From where I was
And the way I hungrily eat
The pale morning sun

And swelter in the syrupy
East coast humidity
The sound of cicada song
Vibrating every line that makes
That outline up

I think sometimes that
She may be right