illuminated streetlights guide us down the trail of truth.
memories trapped within the corners are now ablaze.
secrets hidden in the mist are swallowed.
russia. mexico. puerto rico.
99 cards for this game of yahtzee.
beginner's luck excuses the match.
blank pages, missing drafts reflect the travels all lost.
semi or strong?
pickle. tomato. lime.
stir it up and tip it over.
orange blossoms and juniper leaves
line the edges of the trail
igniting passion and intensity.
faces lost, and experiences crossed.
it's hank moody's turn to rise.

I am a Province, a State, a Municipality, and a Region.
I am a Soldier, a Pilot, a Minister, and a Legion;
I am a black man, a white man, a brown man, a woman,
A French man, American, Canadian, and Roman.

I am a rap artist, a singer, a slam poet and guitarist;
I dabble in the dark arts accompanied by a Marxist.

I'm a barista, a gas man, a secretary, and Tsarina,
A King and a Queen and a janitorial cleaner.

I am a "lover," a "hater," a "here now" and "there later,"
I am Luke Skywalker, yet at the same time, Lord Vader.
I am a driver, a walker, a rider, a stalker,
A conservative liberal and a well-learned straight-talker.

I am a salesman and clerk,
A criminal and a serf,
The proud owner of a weapon that, while it kills, saves the Earth.

I am a drinker and smoker,
A consumer and broker,
A bomb-maker, con-artist, Priest, and interloper.

I am a Citizen.

Religious and secular,
Macrocosmic, molecular,
Suit wearing, uncaring, emphatic, irregular,
A "packie," a ****, a Scrabble fan playing Yahtzee;

A Jihadist, sadistic, addicted to Herodotus,
History is repeated by the philosopher that thought of us.
The eroticist literature towards which we've all lusted;
It looks like the bullets machine-gun is busted.

Indifferent, ecstatic, illicett, erratic,
An infant, a senior, a young man with bad-lip,
A black man, a white man, a brown man, a woman,
A Jew and a Christian, a Muslim musician,
A monarch, elitist, pro-abortion defeatist,
An anarchist, Black Panther, and a rich plutocratic;
I am a citizen,
And as one,

I'm elastic.

Today I wrote to you. I haven’t seen you in seven months and sixteen days, as of 10 AM this morning. Only two weeks left. It seems unreal… It also seems that to write to you is all I have. So this morning I sat at my desk, and I opened my mind to all the things I could have said to you, but never thought to.

Do you remember the first day we met? It was in the café on Franklin Blvd. You were wearing your grey Fedora, a Hurley shirt, and those burnt sienna penny loafers we’d make so much fun of later.

I was at the table by the window, and I couldn’t help but notice you. Three of your fingernails were painted yellow, and you wore a bunch of beaded hemp bracelets on your right wrist. They looked Bohemian to me, but one day you explained the difference in that and Jamaican. You were singing a little tune while waiting in line. Later, you’d call it your “little ditty,” and you’d sing it all the time. You always said things like that, & I always fell in love with you more.

You ordered a vanilla cappuccino and a plain English muffin. I looked down at the same half-eaten muffin and cold cappuccino in front of me. I wondered why it seemed that I knew you already.

You sat down at a table a few feet away from me. You took off your penny loafers and took a handheld game of Yahtzee out of your pocket to accompany your breakfast. I was perplexed that you hadn’t noticed me staring yet.

Ah, there it was. You looked over at me. You must have sensed me by then. Immediately you smiled that half-smile you would always do, a mix between a condescending smirk and a boyishly cute pride. It was altogether endearing. You raised your eyebrows and nodded, as if we’d known each other for years. I admired your charmingly playful introduction. I would soon call you sweet pea.

………………

It was eight months ago today that you told me you were leaving. Your large brown eyes were full of promise and sorrow. I dropped my half-full coffee mug, and it spilled all over the carpet. The cat ran to lick it up, and was disappointed when the taste was utterly bitter. In other circumstances, I would have laughed and pointed it out to you, and we’d admire the cat’s zealous naïveté.

However, the cat had but a split-second of my stolid attention before my eyes met yours again, and I felt paralyzed. I asked what you meant, and you repeated yourself.

You told me of Jacob and all he meant to you. I cried when you told me how God and all his goodness took a sixteen year-old boy and his giant heart away from this world, away from his brother. You also told me how you’d avoided him for over three years before his death.

I was in disbelief that you’d never told me of him. You just looked down and said you’d had no room in your selfish green world for his coal-black sickness. Then you told me of his letter before he passed, asking one thing from each person he cared about. To help the world in a way they never would have done before, to somehow leave a legacy in his name.

My stomach felt sick. My baked-apple oatmeal felt at the tip of my tongue. How could this be happening to you? I instantaneously let go of any would-be grudge against you for being kept from the cruelly and sickeningly beautiful reality attacking your heart.

For I could see in your eyes that you were tearing your soul to shreds. You explained how in your peaceful aura had been a mask, a denial of the sickness slowly claiming your brother, waiting it out. For he couldn’t die. He would simply be better one day, and you were waiting for that. But, he did die. And you already knew what your mission would be.

You were leaving in two weeks from that day. You were flying to Africa with the church your brother had been devoted to since the diagnosis four years before this day. You’d spend eight months with the church members in Africa, working with children in a third-world country. Anything you donated would be in the name of Jacob Meyers.

You had talked about this with your family, and they agreed it would please Jacob and the legacy he had asked for. I at once stated that I was going too. My belittled heart broke cleanly in two when you told me how you had to go alone, that Jacob wanted a noble mission.

He had explained that he wanted someone to do selfless work in his name. How in order to give truly, you must give all. I knew you felt that you had to give the largest part, for you’d been the most selfish to avoid him. I let you keep your dignity and, broken, I accepted what you were doing. If anything, I loved you so much more for it.

Sorrowfully and dutifully we packed bags to attend his funeral. I never told you this, but I read four novels on sibling death. I wanted to take your hand in mine and feel what you were going to feel when you saw him laying there.

………………

In two weeks I will see you again. I will travel to the airport and pick you up and time will move once again. I often wonder how spectacularly, or marginally, you will have changed.

I have your loafers, your fedora, and your faded Hurley shirt ready to wear to the café where we met when you come back.




To my faux Jamaican sweet pea,
I miss you.

Who the Hell wants to
Go off to Heaven?
Think about it please:
If you had to spend
All eternity
With “goody two shoes”,
And “zipped up virgins”,
And “pious *******”,
Always putting on
Thick sweaters of wool
Cause there ain’t no heat,
Playing “Yahtzee” and
“Old Maid” and “Go Fish”
And “Bingo” and “Red
Rover Red Rover”
Send the next bore on
Over! You’d pray and,
Oh my dear, you‘d wish
To come down to Hell
Where the party’s at!
By the time Heaven
Starts serving soda
Water and broccoli
Oh my dear you’ll crave:
***** Linguini
A full Trough of Sloth
A Southern Wrath Wrap
Greed’s mead, Peppered Pride
Glutton’s Mutton and
Sweet Envy’s Smoothie.
Can you live with just
Holding their cold hand?
Sitting on some cloud,
Gazing and never
Feeling or touching?
Never burning, nor
Experimenting?
This is blunt, but think,
This is where all the
Interesting folks
Go! Laughter? Its here!
Debauchery? Here!
Creativity!
Ingenuity!
We are what made life,
LIFE! Think about it!
Has obedience,
Has docility,
Has simplicity,
Has submission changed
This world? This universe?
A wise man, once said
“If heaven is where,
“Nice” folks like you go,
Then its surely hell
That I’d rather know”
Here is the freedom!
Here are the cool kids!
Why starve in the light,
When in the dark there’s
Every delight and
Every single thing
Enjoyed throughout life?

it's hot in a restaurant with the strangers you've since been stranded with

(look! You Finally Did It!)

and everybody knows your name but the symbolism of individualized letters with glottal stops and teeth-******* pauses and dyslexic lingering lisps is lost on them, they have their own letters to think about, don't you know?

(hundreds of pillows fly out my ears in increasing sizes, so i must be dreaming - Right?)

Yahtzee! Soccer! Give it the old college try!

(abstract oils crash and burn in a watchtower atop of your New Life)

It's Something to do with your Mouth, It's Something to do with your Hands, but we couldn't tell you why $2.50 wasted matters more than four months and the casual flinging of my (god forbid)

i n n o c e n c e

(you're happy and i'm unconscious, so in theory we're on the same wavelength - Right?)

can you assure me that everyone has two decades of nauseating mediocrity
or no - is it just me?
we Need coffee! we Need love! dread has to be evenly distributed - don't leave your years of it at my door!

(i don't want anybody's advice unless it's on how to fashion a fully-functioning noose)

tiny lips and long socks - i can't stop being in love with the whole two-eye/two-ear/nose/mouth ordeal but i'm utterly left-handed in my lust and i swear to god both hands are empty - but that's something else entirely

(back to where we started from, in bleeding headlights swimming on deserted streets)

'just wanted to throw an XO your way' say the eyes of every crossword connection i bend over backwards to trying to cater it to my thoughts of you

(For Sale: a storage unit of journals filled with sketches of you - it's pink and mushy and curled inside my head, if you're into that)

and it's only when we're in a bed together at 3:26 AM that belongs to neither you or me that i can consciously eliminate emptied emotions and neatly file them onto typeface notes hidden in bouquets decorating the dismal-ities of my freshly-planted tombstone

(fuse our bodies together and let's make this sarcophagus a necrophilia-polis)

the roles people play
cosmetic tunic, armor and robe
in cerebral dungeons delay
and physical dragons slay

pursuing love's elusive Yahtzee
flowers, candy and ethereal prince
show the smile, hide the ****
intensely adore, joie de vivre

blessed are those whose heart and eyes
see us for who we are
the stage, the act be circumsized
undressed relationships the prize

I still have more to give
                   cried
the rotting leftovers
in the back of the fridge
Desperate to be
used
ripped
snagged

just take me off
this crusting tomb
I
   want
              to
                     feel
what it is like to be
           reheated
just zap me
   :45
ill be tender
    ill be good
                               enough to eat
alive
and the last streams of red can trickle onto
your paper towel
                                                 all the mess
                                                 ****** away
                                              by the quicker picker upper
slip slip slipping
on this plastic plate
   because you dropped all your fine china
                      you broke all the glass
                             you cracked all your chances
for divine dinning
I can watch your eyes roll around
from the inside of my lightening storm
a game of Yahtzee- snake eyes 4 times in a row
scanning everything
                                                      ­forgetting everything
are you feeling lucky?
:10
almost almost
       almost

drip drip dripping
           is the drool from your mouth
you forgot how good I can be
use the knife and cut away the bad parts and ill be
the prettiest picture
               you've ever seen
i'll taste just like I look------ a piece of rotting meat with the corners cut off and the juices all dried with a warm reminder of hot all dumped onto a plastic plate.

delicious

I burn
beautifully in the
fires of
vanity

I got lost
in my reflection
on the
frozen foods
doors

I was
displayed
with all the other
products
on ice:

three fifty-nine
for four
egg rolls

six twenty-nine
for frozen
bread dough

six ninety-nine
for wild
blueberries

and
superimposed
among them
my long mug
doing its best
to fit in

according to my
forehead
I am
three ninety-nine

but if you
ask my solar
plexus
I'm clearly marked
five fifty-nine

however,
my **** is apparently
on clearance
reduced by thirty
percent and
selling for
one dollar and
nineteen cents

and that old lady
at the end of the aisle
is eyeing
my biscuits
and rattling
her coin purse
like she's about to
roll
a yahtzee

my eyes dart
back to
my reflection
on the doors

what did I
come here
for again?

People say love is a game

Monopoly is more fun than this ****

and at least that comes with directions though no one bothers to read them

With love the rules change with every new player

The basics are

You should smile

Laugh at all their jokes especially if none of them are funny

do not be too “available”

do not awkward

do not be weird, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.

I’m not a hopeless romantic

I’m just hopeless

People tell me to get a clue

But I’d much rather be playing clue

Yeah Miss Scarlett killed Mr. Body with the lead pipe in the hall

But hey at least she can’t break your heart

See I don’t mind losing a silly little board game

but baby I couldn’t stand to lose you

When you’re gone my hearts

when you’re with me it hurts even more

This hurt shooting through my veins and down my spine

like the rush of a thousand bingos and Yahtzee’s combined  

reminding me I’m alive

That I can feel and think and… love

I don’t want to lose that

I can’t lose that

But wins and losses are a part of life

And I’m not talking about the one I can cheat at

So I’ll just cross my fingers and roll the dice.

all was calm this morning
and now it's not
it changed faster than tachyons
how can it be?

how did that blue sky
breathing life into the little white flowers
the ones that tell me it is spring
the ones that seemed to smile as I passed them
how did that turn into this?

this torrential down pour
these ferocious winds
the sideways rain hits me like bullets
or at least paint *****
turning exposed skin red on the run
the wet trash is hurling down the street
faster than the rushing creek
the creek that serves as my driveway

how did the sounds of the birds chirping
turn into thunder crashing louder than the ocean
thunder shaking my house
we're in the Yahtzee cup of the God's dinner party
shaking around
no clue how we will fall

I hate the weather.