There’s no sense in trying to describe the present
it always runs like dye;
diffused and confused by constant currents
in the river of my mind.

Memory is the ferryman
who laughs beneath his breath
each time I seek him, begging
to take me there and back again.

He smiles like an old adviser
subject to a child king
and picks up his oars, still dripping
from the last time I came knocking.

He never ties his boat
I know why, but he won’t say.
he hopes one day I’ll turn the world
and let the dingy fall away

Like a tired tutor ready
to let his pupil fail
he swings a gaze that navy father
would save for son before setting sail

Do you find the silence clearer?
He pulls us from the pier.
Because I won’t bring back
every cricket to your ear?

Or does the laughter seem prevailing
when I don’t give you the chance
to collect in such detail
each abundant downward glance?

My finger starts to tap and
I anchor eyes on opposite shore
and clench a fist into the dye
that hurricanes about the oars

The bank beyond this river
is salt white washed and dry
and shows off only footprints
I dragged out from tides

Its only touched by water
where I choose to tread
and only on these paths
does the river dye it red

I slip into a grin
and Memory sees me smiling
he lets words fall again
with the clatter of iron filings

And how about the nights?
The inky drinks of smoke?
Don’t you see they make my job
No more than ******* joke?

The less that I can give you
the more you fabricate.
You sedate your days awaking
to make that other shore ornate.

Every day you come to find me
and we cross this boiling stream
to bring you back the torso
of some amputated dreams.

I can’t fill in their limbs
so you take them to your cell
and flesh out puppet wings
to play heaven with your hell.

You coward of a tyrant
I wish you would realize
the bliss that you remember
is just your best told lie.

Now he leans in close and stops his row
to watch my face unwrap
we drift a muted madman’s pace
till he curls his words into a trap

Before he even spoke
I feared the question mark
Why do you find the weight
So much lighter in the dark?


Sometime before we fell
from the river’s mouth to sea
I chewed a knot within my jaw
And squeezed between my teeth

a defeated growl of malice
*Just keep rowing

The medals from Vietnam only saw light
when it fanned beneath the bed
so that when you removed them
the black velvet had grown forty years
of grey moss

it wasn’t that you wanted to forget them
but that they couldn’t stack up against
the black and white time lines
the photographs of your children
my mother, aunt and uncle
that grew into color by the top of the stairs

it wasn’t a matter of forgetting
it was a matter of choice
and the shark teeth and crab jackets
that all the cousins pulled out of the Chesapeake
stayed on the shelf because
that was what you were fighting for

the only relic you decided
to keep in plain view
laid right next to the crab jackets
a little vial wrapped around
a little metal tooth

because when the mortar flashed like a stroke
inches from your head
your thoughts went to home
and that fragment of near death
you keep in the glass vial
looking out over the living room
to tease it, to torture it, to say
Not even you could make me forget

Last time I saw you was a year ago
and you were dying
bruises bubbled anywhere a corner touched your flesh
and oily scales peeled from the shell of skin
stretched over your forehead

last year you told us everything about your medals
they were all just throwaways
though your wife and daughter pried,
you knew that remembering them was a waste of dying time

now two more strokes since that mortar flash
have left you in the ward
people have stopped visiting
because visitors like to be recognized
and when Marmee sits and watches football with you
she hates football
she asks you what teams are playing
you sob
*I used to know.

i didn’t come here to smell like roses.
the stain in my shirt; blue paint crystalized in cotton
and greased in sawdusty sweat,
goes unwashed as waterfowl feathers-
an oil skin to shed the lake.

i didn’t come here to build an empire.
the lumber walls and archways go unbowed on the stage
measured to the bone of fingers,  polished by blades
made to be perfect and immortal for a day,
then razed and unchained
and quicker than a sandcastle-
laid back into the bay.

i didn’t come here learn a trade
every skill is the same; do as instructed,
think for yourself, know when to push the bit into biting the wood
and when to put your drill back on to the shelf,
when to re-cut what doesn’t feel right
and when to trust the math
over your own sight.

i didn’t come here for the photograph
or your theater arts career path
or to sing through the saw screams
even though i do

i came here, where we know
the characters are in costume
the creations will be forgotten
where the applause wont reach my ego
and feed the ghost of self
that wants to captain without crew

i came here to work, where only work is true.

I walked down for my daily meal,
probably spinach salad
and yesterdays pork in a soup
and flesh on the brain stopped me
dead in my pace
when I saw this striated sack of bones

a greyhound, kept thin as ribs
by the genes she was bred to express
collapsed on the end of chain, tail-tucked
dead weight where once was thoroughbred speed

built for speed, life on the fast-track
chasing a mechanical sheep
a lure she’ll never catch
kept hungry
for the good chance she’d run faster

winning some beer-belly’s bets
but at least she was given a wage—
a crate, and all the food she’d need
to stay thin.  when genes turned her
speed to the slip and sag of age
one ******* was human enough

instead of a quick slug pulling out her brain
through a new hole and pinning it to the dirt
behind the trailers, Beer-bellied *******
let her retire to an old-dog’s  crate
plastic walls and one gate

Isn’t she beautiful??
I raise my gaze from the hound’s caramel eye
and find the thing clutching the chain,
grinning like hooks pulling cheeks
far too wide, with too much skin on her thighs,
a squat pile of woman bred on fatty beef and pecan pies

We rescued her, she’s our mascot!
and she hands me a flyer:
EDUCATION INTERNSHIPS
PUT YOUR LIFE ON THE *FAST-TRACK!!

I raised a brow at the mountain
how it decided to subside
to a crater, and envelop some massive alien craft;
a forest carved into a god-bird

From my cot and window I
saw the aftermath of the crash
the quilted wings in wreckage of red
and green flipping in the wind
like the blankets of some great tribe

tangled in the mountainside
pinned with splintered rock and splintered pines
and flags of feathers surrendering
the woodworked flying machine
to the mountain
and to me.

I climbed to meet the behemoth
And felt that underneath
there was something to be grieved
there was something to be seen

but circles of the people,
who I call friends by obligation
came with quarrels as flat as spades
and were already building up molehills
on top the wooden bones

And soon then I was told
if it fell out of the sky
it was never meant to fly.

and soon the scraps were salvaged
and cut into furniture for the TV

out in the mountains,
when my feet are pressed and purpled
from pushing the world to roll her callused breast,
then each breath, deservingly,
funnels the friction into fire.

but here our milk flesh thumbs
flick the ridges of the flint
and through trees we **** a Bic
just to exhale flame again.

oh-two deprived at altitude
or getting high with all the dudes
you’d count them as two trails that lead to the same place

but that’s just what the map says.
neurotransmitter math has
sold, by weight, the dopamine
wrapped like gods great gift
in threads of nervous lace

and you forget that different paths
never summit the same
if steep, or shallow, the peak can be
epiphany pleasure or just good ****

in green pill bottles, they trap the trees
and plastic cages hang on me
when the weight of our minds
bends our necks towards the asbestos sky
where porous plains of ceiling tile
have us counting holes in the light

so you see my disappointment,
when you were too ****** or drunk or cold
and said it would be better
if we just went inside

as we circled up the stairwell
you stepped easily on plaster pieces
of white ceiling that had fallen to concrete

perhaps it is from fear
that some can find a comfort
having heavens built so brittle
that they crumble within reach

Vultures would aim at the passage of children
they’d  dive beneath garments and masks and myths
like you, they want truth, in its distant quarry
cut from loose disguise and weak belief

Yet, you are not content in the mind of a miner
to dig like a spear for warmth behind the armor
And when you have found some soft place of pleasure
You cant help but feel you’ve crawled back to the womb

so you won’t swoop down and peck the eyes of new life
for fear that in assuaging your hunger
you’re somehow giving in to the binds
of something unbirthed, primitive, weaker

I just laugh when you ask why
you’re eating scraps that are no more
then what clumsy vultures have dropped in flight
gristle that even the ants ignore