Your feet got tangled
in your own **** name
                             Layed
nights out end-to-end,
now you're the oldest one here drinking
in this dingy, shaking basement
                   by at least "a couple years or so,"
so shrink from searching eyes.
Strike up that ****** band again--
                  your teeth have grown tall enough
                          to ditch this ride

                          Outside,
              some drunken crusty's
             trying hard to pick a fight
      and shadowed necking in the corners
           punctuates the "Got a light?"s
                  like drowsy eyes and
             yawning sighs parenthesize
the way you check your phone a thousand times

                                       "Hey, don't you work tomorrow?"
                                        Yes, I ******* work tomorrow and...

Though all these fresh-lit fuses
                                          sizzle--
--starli­ght studs in leather night--
the morning leaves you spark-singed
               paper, sulfur lungs
                 and sagging eyes

The stairway's ******* crowded
with a thousand younger yous,
feet creak the upstairs floorboards
cue the crooked smiles in familiar hues

               But pigs have pens
               and feet have boots.
               Old hats need heads
     and birds, they need their roosts

So let the lines fill in
on this fermenting face
and lay this craggy grin
          into its worn-in place
          beneath these creaking stairs
          and let this basement shake.

In poetry, I open the pod of my heart,
freely,
without fear,
I show who I am.

little yellow flowers in her ears
and they trundled along the gravel path,
when their bellies grumbled
from a day spent lying atop
a small hill near the golf course
radiance from the setting
rays of sunlight shown
a haunting sordid undertone
that a young boy in love
just never would have known.