you’re hanging on my frame,
and i’m
looking for something wrong with you,
and i’m
not finding any holes, or stains,
or stitches that forgot their function,
you’re unexpectedly immaculate
and just my taste,
a one-of-a-kind that makes me
believe in soulmates,
you fit just right,
the good kind of tight
that hugs every curve
desperate for affection,
compliments my most specific parts,
sparks joy through every
vein and pore,
lifts the highlights,
and drowns the low,
i can’t comprehend
what possessed your possessor
to let you slip,
so i flipped you outside in,
searched every seam,
and everything was
just as good as it seemed,
now i’m baffled that someone
banished your beauty
to bargain bins for this
beggar who can’t choose,
who’s spending her last dime on you,

so forgive my fears you’ll fall apart
secondhand has rarely taken me far.


2. you’re wrapped in my arms,
and i’m
looking for something wrong with you,
and i’m
not finding fault in your clumsy smile,
or fading facade,
or ink poked imperfectly
over scars,
or how you warm what
the radiator doesn’t reach,
how you learned the rosetta stone
of my love languages,
and lately i’ve been
desperate for affection,
you compliment my most specific parts,
exactly what i needed
cause i’ve never felt ease,
and we’re a crooked coordination
the kind of mismatched that’s pleasing,
still i can’t fathom
why you’ve settled for scribbled songs
when it’s symphonies you’ve earned,
so i turned you outside in
looking for one fatal flaw,
found it written in your
sobered skin, but i can
overlook an imperfect timeline,
i’ve wiped my own clean
washed it down with wine,
so sorry to cling, to become parasitic,
i’ll pry myself off, please just be patient,

and forgive me for fearing this is all in jest
i’ve just never had more than second best.

Nights Are For Stuff Like This

It's 3am.
The city's sleeping and I'm not.
Lights like scattered dots burn dim outside my window.
People are dreaming and I'm awake thinking of the
life that's been passing through me like second hands-smoke
lingering in the slowed-down traffic of my DNA.
Nights are for stuff like this;

stuff like silken roads through ragged hillsides,
feelings blacker than night that disappear in the
day light, prisms  bouncing off grey ash, tiny sparks
falling through trap doors, never again to be seen
nor heard, nor taken for granted upon the long
laid train tracks of this ongoing dance.

Memory like loaded simi-trucks taking me all
the way back through corn fields and hay, through
old hard hitting rain that goes clank, clank in my brain.
Scars cutting  through my skin opening again and again
like songs that you hate but can't stop singing  on endless
streaming highways-hitching a ride inside my mind,

pitch-perfect pristine and off-key in the dark,
on a night like this blue black over amber gold.
I'm a million miles further away and one mile closer.
Signposts loud and large selling  big hopes for
happy dopes, emerging eyes now gone from me
peering through clouds because they can, because
they probably always will.

Because who knows how far they've gone and how
far I've come on this night of all nights awake in the
grid of passing stars and dividing lines, now merging into
my lane for better or for worse where gratitude needs no
promotion, because it just is or is not. Because it can't be faked.
nor pimped. Because it has no need for
patronizing nor apologizing.

Because it's outcome, a side effect of nights like this where
everything makes sense and where nothing makes any sense
at all in this gigantic freeway of time that will eventually reach
a dead end. Where sleep will come 'cause the poetry will have
run itself off the bend.
Ah yea nights are for stuff like this.

The interrior was dark and dusty,
a second-hand treasury for searchers.
Deeply breathing the particulate air,
I squeezed through to my secret back room.

Care of J.M. Dent and Everyman,
there for sixpence, at pocket money price,
an unexplored world could be had.
Dickens, Dumas and Stevenson.

you cannot
create
something

and then just
abandon
it

because
I will
not
walk a
one-way street

and if you think
planting kisses
on my
lips
will keep this alive

then you are
pathetic

because
I am
not
a love machine

that you
can fill up
with
spare change

just to
empty
your pockets

i don't feel very
whole these days

that specific sticky
dusty feeling all over
my palms neck tilted
sideways running the
tips of my fingers down
rows of plastic cases

"oh are you over
there looking at
music again?" you
sigh but it's not
the kind of reproach
i need to defend
myself against because
you know i always do it

and i don't think you
really mind how long
i take because once in
awhile i'll find one that
you like or that i'm so
excited over you can't complain

and then we wander
through rows of
scratched dressers
winding our way
around old doors and
molding strips that had
a better life once
chairs and desks
dinette sets and hutches
a little bit of this
a little bit of that
a little bit of something special

laughing over
strange items
ugly clothing
even art pieces

and for an hour or
two i can feel the
stuffy secondhand air
between us clear

we usually don't
buy anything or if
we do it's not much
because neither of us
happen to have very
much extra cash

but once in awhile we'll
find a fifty cent mug
potato coasters
a solid wood end table
or a nice cd rack
a piece of someone else's past

and i'll load the
furniture into
the van if you let
me keep the change

i like thrifting
because looking at
items with unknown
history puts the
present into
perspective

gives us a reason
to go out something
to laugh about over
the dinner table

to agree about how
nice that cabinet is
or to disagree about
how ugly wicker is
instead of what
the other is feeling

because everything
is subjective whether
it's trash or treasure whether
it's mine or the next person's

and i don't feel very
whole these days
but on the other hand
i'm not yet in
the attic of the salvage
shop on the corner
and neither is
our relationship

the rim of your beer can
tastes like your stale cigarettes
i choke on the lingering flavor
persistent in my mind
you're overwhelming from afar
if we were closer perhaps
i would build up immunities
to your snares that have me
caught up and falling
head over heals drowning
only at the rim of your beer can