Why had Andy chose to quit smoking?
He had no job,
                        no ambitions,
                                              no passions.
No reason for salient speculation on the beaming waters
of the immaculate Pacific horizon from those unaffordable balconies
you see in movies, with sports cars rushing toward them on
that unnamed California byway.

“**** them all,” he thinks, crinkling the now emptied package.
He'd rather be reformed and forgiven
            or punished for what he‘s done.

Not both.

Stretched on the rack for his failure.
To acquire a Malibu suite.
To cup silicone *******.

To fix the loose handle on their porch‘s door,
              and smile while reciting, “I do.”

“One more won’t hurt,” says Andy,
as the woman in his shirt wraps her hands
around the shoulders.
The cloud circles his head, as they laugh about the sunset.

I’ve ordered and carried my steaming cup of brown to my table to ignore the falling snow beyond the walls of this box.
My clothes are wrong, my hair as well.
I just cut it, and everyone knows which mistakes I made.
A man sneezes and the song changes.
Better not make eye contact with anyone; I am not in their league, here at the muddy spoon cafe.
Chewing so loudly in the de-creeping silence,
these safe, polite, quiet ones.
I am the creep here. I am different.
My thighs are tense.
Hunching over the paper, arms tense and clutching  a gnarled red pen--
It’s probably self-indulgent to even sign my name.
Someone’s shuffling cards.
I almost forgot.
The awkwardness I’m filled with breathes out a short sigh when I realize
--my part’s over.
“Do you know Sanskrit? Do you know what that is?”
A woman asks another.
I want to choke on the pretension
The tenseness, I adjust my leg to relieve pressure on my ankle.
Why can’t I just enjoy the snow? That’s all I really came here for-- well, and the coffee.
I hear a woman cough with an unaffected tenor, which would convey her gender to an interested party but to me carries no intonation.
I wonder if the girl I recognize from class thinks I’m following her.
I came here for coffee, sweetheart!
Is it yet too hot for me to dare a drink?
I can see it, the steam, rising out of the corner of my eye.
I haven’t looked away from my hand in twenty minutes.
“Who am I?” they may be asking myself for me.
I don’t have a clue.
They can think about that problem
for themselves
while they’re lonely
in their forties.
I’m lonely now and I hope not to live
that long.
Here, we pretend not to see each other’s faces
in the gleaming presence of steaming cups.
“I don’t want to wonder about that.”
I realize there’s nothing I even deem worth writing down.

Staring at Space
Touching Time
Miraculous Confection
Absorbed in Soil           and
Water                    and
Gas              and Daylight

Rusted, thrown
                          Brown
onto the walls of
                          Subsequent
                         ­ Possession
We feel, blindly
Our tips rubbing plaster
and soliloquy. Dodging             meandering
                          despair from
torridly ambitioningly mild forms
of lower-
                          Back
                          A­rch.
You scallion, you
                          You
and yours.
                          Those shoes

There's a *** on the windowsill behind my eye window.
                                                                                              It gets no sunlight these days, in the Winter.
I need you to open the blinds of my eyelids and kiss me,
                                                                                              burning your image into my retina and
feeding that plant with energy.

I hold your hand, young one,
you are torn apart.
I am the beating spirit inside us all;
I am the earth, the air, the heart.
Take time, youth is fleeting and
tempered by flames.
Your breath escapes ears through misheard rumors
and your claims go unfelt.
Shush.
Be calm, I promise someday to leave you
torn by others and scarred.
But for now you are handsome, young--
I hold your hand.
Telling you I love you is my charm,
my piercing beauty is forged by your ***** gaze.
It’s ok, young man. I hold your hand,
and leave you,
returning with fire, soldering the wound.
Taking you into the earth, the air, the heart.

I woke up an hour ago and repeatedly said 'hello' to increasingly disheartening silence I expected to be your voice.
I got so scared I thought I was going insane. It made me think I had imagined you and had always been in this bad place, deluded into thinking I was with you that whole time. It seems saying thank you for the break will make it real again and telling you I need to say it makes me weak. I feel I might throw up and telling you is selfish. So much for convenience and light-heartedness-- if those are things people want from this experience. I think people want to know it mattered.. But maybe I've made this point too clear.