you came to me drunk and looking for love
when before it seemed i had plenty of
suddenly my eyes must have been
mazelike and empty
it falls out of me
so neat and yet so unkemptly
all these bodies in storage
and the coroner sent me
but i can't clean up this mess
i'm only good at disassembly

you cupped my chin in your hands
and begged me tell me what you're thinking
i told you i was staring at the wall
with that smile quickly shrinking
too fast for you to catch it
i felt your breath kiss my neck
as you tried a different approach
with a more subtle effect
i should have explained i need a while
to think before i talk about these things

My memere liked the smell of gasoline, i do too
the tiny shreds of dying nice and slow it pulls from inside of you
and stale cigarettes in mom and pop drugstores
and burying the dead birds, saying it was just time for them to go
explaining that they don't realize they are killing themselves
every time they slam into the glass doors
she loved the seashells welling up from the atlantic
and the waves that held me detained
when she disappeared from shore
the glass that cut, that taste of blood
the stillness of death and linoleum floors and the whining dog
i couldn't fathom how they could all remain

her still skin was first time i noticed
the shifting quality of epidermises cusps so waterlogged
like lotus leaves and flaking logs of driftwood in the ocean
the way it's currents pushed and pulled everything above and below our bodies'
disturbances and submersions of purple i didn't love
i wondered why our bodies couldn't just come back to us
couldn't learn to rigor mort this
still deaths leaves me feeling purposeless
waxy and elastic, with small hairs like the cactus on the windowsill
she said so but i can't convince myself that this is a beautiful thing

when i was young i dreamt of falling down the wooden rungs
of our staircase, screaming in pain in the airway and waiting to be saved
it felt so real, and days later we were pulling over on the side of the highway
when we got the call, saying no one was there when she had the fall
when i saw the sunset from the beach for the first time in years
that night i cried for the beauty and
washed off the tears, purple and red clouds
salt water and tender sounds
and stared for a long time
at the empty shell of a horseshoe crab
did not eat the poison berries
removed the glass from my feet
set down the photographs in defeat
sat and read the dusty books
still caked in her fingerprints
sitting on the shelves of the library

and he never liked gasoline
he always liked fresh air and talkative people
the little things, and the adrenaline of strings
the 4 am sunrise over town center's church steeple
i was terrified of loving this good person
this aversion confuses me,
i teeth at these pseudonyms for something so real
being turned into something transient
i can't explain it i just hate dominance
and love hurt children

i still see his face like it was yesterday
saying that it was his birthday, and he was smiling
about going to the lake
i still can't retrieve a single date
last year from the months of august to may
i just remember the pictures and google pages
i would read 1 through 25 internally enraged
by this rememberance of you
my fists clenched in a faded grip
feeling the searing headlines
cutting through the blackness
i forget what it's like
not to lose it all every time
i close my eyelids
and the waves i love creep in and rip
i've just conceptualized it to be a pattern
and accepted it

They tell me to stop remembering
But they don’t understand with
Each blow life hands me
Another is already sewn
Into my ribcage, bruises in each hand
between each crescent bone,
this isn’t a coincidence
Most nights i hang my lungs
Dangling from my spine
Watching the walls cave in
the sticky residue of surgical tape
Strapped around my bicep
Will not wash off in the shower and then
This guilt will not wash off in the shower
and then, you are a burden, hidden
In the paperwork, between the lines
Three weeks later and there is still
Traces of it on me
Parts of me trapped in glass vials
i wonder what people thought
when they saw me in that blue robe
on the bed in the little blue room
I still remember how thick the
needle was
I was never scared of them
until now

i trick people when i feel like
i'm not seeing at all
i'm just feeling, not healing
with these words
that's my downfall
i wish i could give more
but this is all i have left
if i can't keep it locked in closet doors
i know the effect with be my last theft
don't force it out of me
just let the drainage catch your crests
let it come in time
when i feel safe knowing you
would catch my conjested confessions
and lay them to rest

They are building a house
half a block down
and I sit up here
with the shades down
listening to the sounds,
the hammers pounding in nails,
thack thack thack thack,
and then I hear birds,
and thack thack thack,
and I go to bed,
I pull the covers to my throat;
they have been building this house
for a month, and soon it will have
its people...sleeping, eating,
loving, moving around,
but somehow
now
it is not right,
there seems a madness,
men walk on top with nails
in their mouths
and I read about Castro and Cuba,
and at night I walk by
and the ribs of the house show
and inside I can see cats walking
the way cats walk,
and then a boy rides by on a bicycle
and still the house is not done
and in the morning the men
will be back
walking around on the house
with their hammers,
and it seems people should not build houses
anymore,
it seems people should not get married
anymore,
it seems people should stop working
and sit in small rooms
on 2nd floors
under electric lights without shades;
it seems there is a lot to forget
and a lot not to do,
and in drugstores, markets, bars,
the people are tired, they do not want
to move, and I stand there at night
and look through this house and the
house does not want to be built;
through its sides I can see the purple hills
and the first lights of evening,
and it is cold
and I button my coat
and I stand there looking through the house
and the cats stop and look at me
until I am embarrased
and move North up the sidewalk
where I will buy
cigarettes and beer
and return to my room.
from "All's Normal Here" - 1985

I skipped some passion
There was a moment when words pulsed
Through my veins
And instead of letting the blood flow from my finger tips
I pent it up
Instead of penning it out

Girl, you're crazy

So, it's late
I'm late to class
The funeral's started
And my ship's just set sail
And as the wave get choppier
I realize that I'll never get there
No use fighting the ocean, right?
Divine intervention

I have no time to give
And no hour worthwhile
And every minute is a breath
Every second is nice touch

There's candlelit dinners awaiting
in the silence of drawn curtains and misery
Someone asked me to build God

No one asked me anything

Mix little lies and lots of truth
Call it a serum for relations

She says the truth is so dark
I think of pitch blackness

Have I mentioned I find comfort in the blackness of night?
Get that anonymity

Swallow to let it hurt you
Spit it out to let me know
I swear I'm ready to understand,
You just need to let me.

No matter how many drugstores I rob
I will never have enough Band-Aids
For what you've done to me

bent Hallmark card (for BJ Donovan)

”I'm a bent Hallmark card with no stamp. It won't reach my love”
                   BJ Donovan (HP gone, Gray Dotted, r.i.p.)

at the drug store, loose poems,
no right-sized envelopes left,
loosie cigs, for newly ‘underemployed’
both, thumbed, finger oil anointed-stained,
and
bent

all available for purchase
24/7, in these United States,
in national drugstores jailed,
kept in “chains” till discarded

therein hides the rub-bled best,^^
great verse writings, deadline-
inspired in a Ohio bullpen office,
@ corp. HQ by an Eng. Lit. major

composed, vetted, approved, yet
marked ‘failure,’ by quality control,
third Tuesday of every month, ritualized,
manager freshens display, victims chosen

Hallmark display, pruning the die-marked,
the no-hope cards, consigned, to a green
in-the-back-garbage dumpster resting place,
where you just may see me climbing-in

(and where America safe keeps its treasures)

droning on, as per usual, I’m kicked away by a
rent-a-cop, muttering insurance assurances, just
business, not personal, grab what cards I can, mine,
stolen pleasures, resending via insertion here ‘n there

my resurrection act, a new business, wife thinks
me stinks, but for me, a perfume of saved  words,
an act of rebirthing, god bless America, making it
great by giving Hallmark poems a second chance

gonna send one of those cards in envelope,
addressed to BJ Donovan U.S.A., no stamp,
inside note, your poems were ordinal, small
plates of sardonic pith, human foibles, on being

old, recalling youth, both celebrated, Icarus and Daedalus

pretty sure this poem may not get there but I believe
in poetry and the US Post Office, who delivers
mail to me, marked “Nat”^ and to Santa Claus,
which impresses, cause I’m mythical, he’s real

your compositions were breathtaking, literally,
miss your hallmarked witticisms, criticisms,
glad you escaped that virus nursing home jail,
if needed, write to “Nat, NYC, living somewhere
in a park, scribbling close by the East River”^

I’ll get it, like I got you, they know my special tree,
and the rock nearby, that too, is a known hideout,
no worries buddy good stuff may perish, but somehow
it gets a second wind, can’t keep a good scrip, down forever...

a very humbled admirer...

NaTTy

Cover my nakedness
Forget any truths
Let me not have questions
Or freedom
Sacrifice me from thought
Implant me in false religion
Give me politics to argue
And stare at others in envy
Let us photograph French deities
And live in corporate stress
Please take away my family
And keep the twenty four hour drugstores
Rain down with chem trails
And I will believe area fifty one is not there's
Hide in fables
Suppress true knowledge
Let philosophy become an aborted word
And abort those who can't afford your tax
Hunt down free thinkers
How dare them
How dare them question
The cowards that sold the world

One more shot!
A scorching heat radiates
from her forehead
The last of raspy wheezes,
rusty coughs and gasps
leave the lungs, abandoned towns
lined with rows of empty drugstores.
Her grandkids watch from
behind a thick sheet of glass
through a dense fog,
asking -mommy how long will grandma
be asleep for?-

One more shot!
On Tuesday she was at work.
On Wednesday she got a slight cough.
On Thursday her heartbeat was slow.
On Friday the line hit the flat note.
On Saturday the back of her coffin
married the worms in the dirt just below.

One more shot!
Wiping the sweat off his forehead,
is it his mum or the coal; that ****** black is his skin tone?
A coughing fit, seizing his consciousness
gasping for air; as if he was dying
of laughter,
watching his daughter dance like a ballerina
across their living room into his arms.
Those weren't tears of joy,
when she was dragged away by masked security guards
from the room where her father plummeted into
The swan lake.

One more shot!
The pen quivers in his hand
as he finishes up his English exam.
Finally, all this work done,
the last of the bunch was long gone!
Until he sneezed on the paper.
His portrait wasn't lit as well as his mother hoped
when he received his post-mortem degree,
Honor roll.

One more shot!
They yell as she chugs the bottle,
jubilation ensues!
Shattering glass all over the floor.
Her foot starts bleeding,
She wails and sets for the hospital door.
The doctor takes tweezers
carefully to her sole
as from the corridor comes a loud moan;
her mother on the hospital bed
rides past her door.
The last shot she had at seeing her alive.
But she never looked up.