Bike videos, you love em so
And we'd sit on the couch
Right across the street, you and me
And last year surreal
Your eyes never looked so different
So blue, blueboy
What happened to your voice?
My brown boots
I could never say no to you
Drinking four lokos on the carpet
Kissin in the toolshed
I remember those tall tall sunflowers
They died and took you with them
****, so sunny back then

The truth is, I’m not really sure who I am.  She told us to draw ourselves and then to draw our souls; so I drew my face scratched and uneven, just as I’ve always seen it, and frowned at the result both in the mirror and on the paper.  The only soul I’ve ever really known was the one that shone through the strokes of the keys I punched, the scrawling of ink on paper in mismatched arrays of awkward thoughts, disorientated and unorganized, shaded different spews of emotion and rearranged through the lens of ever last viewer’s eye.  Even so, this soul that is composed of words that defined me painted a picture vivid in its contrast, though blurry from both afar and close enough to squint, no details able to be made out.  These words that have wrapped around my soul rubbed raw from the time my skin first flinched at the cool March air cannot be deciphered by their author, though I know somehow that their letters flowing into one another say more than any curve of my face ever could.  These words are black and white, two extremes crafted in the pallet of the Universe’s toolshed, and perhaps that’s exactly what I am.  Black or white.  I’m dark and lost and scrounging for some rusting wall or tree branch to cling to as to ensure the shimmering waves, onyx and charcoal in their nature with the flow of blood in its spine, do not flood into my mouth at a rate in which is too quick to balance myself upon them, or, I’m white, drifting snow from a cloud scraping the vast expanse of brilliant blue gazing as a sky above all the world, pure, innocent, unscathed with the potential for creation in vibrancies yet unknown, or to be ripped to bits, scattered amongst piles of cream and autumn leaves drained of their color beneath months of shivering frost.  And so, perhaps any physical representation of my being would be all wrong, because that’s not what I am.  Myself, my soul, it resides in the murky depths of heights I’ve yet to discover, tethered endlessly and uncertain among the caverns of my inners, pink and mushy, stirred and ******, untouched from the harsh light of a world encased in brevity.

striving for simplicity
has starting seeming
quite similar to settling
for much, much less.
i suffer this stubborness
       like some plague;
some ***** scared of searching
for a saviour, or a cure,
unwilling to forgo the laws
that make him shout, 'impure!'
or 'unclean!' or 'run away,
******* run away!
i am death and his son hopeless,
and we've come out to play.'
an answer waiting underneath
every leaf and stone
and every molecule he breathes
on the wind when he's alone,
tickling his seeping wounds
and begging him to see . . .
i'm here, i'm here . . .
look here . . . see me.
but instead of living hopefully
looking for answers
that want to be seen,
just writhing in pain at the sting of the breeze,
and cursing and moaning
and spraying forth death
so stubborn and stupid with every breath
that's me, that's me . . .
that's me . . . that's me.
a *****'s disposition
on a long dead, lifeless heart
afraid of hoping for a change,
a cure, a fairy's pond
stubborn like a stone
so stupid and stubborn with every breath . . .
a glass of porter left behind on the bar,
flat and forgotten,
forsaken, weak, and wasted . . .
that's me, that's me . . .
that's me . . . that's me.
so stubborn and so selfish,
never reaching, never finding
the simplicity i supposedly
believed might save my life . . .
an excuse to surrender
and to squander and forsake
every opportunity
that would ever come my way
until my talents are just rusty tools
in the back of some toolshed
in some swamp in new new orleans
in the background of my head.
i have long since lived too many years
to believe i am owed more
and i have yet to do one single thing
that's been worth fighting for,
and sticking to and seeing through
and working at until
it pays off and releases me
from my hopeless, bankrupt will.
a ***** with a strange and stubborn
sense of salvation
my days are leaking right through my skin,
and dripping their decaying death
along a trail stretched out behind me . . .
a path that's leading nowhere,
made from nothing, with no one along its way . . .
potential in hunks littering both sides
in different stages of decay.
stubborn, and selfish,
but some will must still remain
in the corner of some toolshed
in the bog that is my brain.
a cleansing of the soul, or a
katrina of the mind
my freedom must be lurking somewhere,
for i am still alive.

my life is a toolbox
waiting to be discoverd
so someone will no whats inside
so that God can use the tools within
and cunstruct a better toolshed

Bats in the toolshed
dont give a f*
about sunsets
spoonfed and searching for a subject
cutting hymns into symmetry
What does it matter if our tattered limbs
dont fit right?
We're still elegant
in a scary way
All too familiar
I'm disgusted by it's
tiny frame
and how our dicey angst
gets in the way
a rat with wings
hanging upside down
in a handmade shed
on the outskirts of town
who knows where
and who knows when
evolution made a creature
so gruesome so grim

Grandma calls from the back porch
Feeding moldy bread to the ducks on the pond
Fish came from the depths
And picked apart the biggest pieces

Brand new boots
Torn lace
Flapping on my foot
Tying the pieces around my ankle
Just the black toes of my boots
Toeing the edge of the toolshed roof
Your eyes grin up at me


Toss the hair behind your ear
Fingers
Touching strands
Beneath a rolling black thunderhead

jump

They drag the pond looking for your body
As if they wouldn't have seen you floating.from the shore
Cannons blast
And my eyes tear
And drop on the carpet
I don't know anything


Naked feet on the coffee table
Heaven needs no hand rails
Heaven is where you went
when your long neck broke
Against the wall of the dam

Heaven is where you kiss God's feet
For all of eternity
Kiss his feet
As he shakes the earth, sending buildings
Crashing down on lovers
Kiss his feet
He holds the gravity that drops bombs on children
kiss his feet
As he watches us **** one another
Over our ideas of him
I will be down here
Licking the deep cuts
I deserve
I will be down here
Haunted daily by what you might have been

“Better than working in a factory.”
Truer words were never spoken while
Smoking a big fat *doobie.
For Doug Clifford & John Fogerty
It was a motto; an anthem.
Creedence always respected &
Loved the workingman.
Working stiffs know--
They know in their bellies--
That Republicans are good for the
Proles, here in Oceania,
Good in particular for the building trades.
I recall a distant mob of
Swarthy plumbers & carpenters,
Electricians & masons,
A toolshed parliament & all-purpose
Construction industry trade show;
So many, many Italian family
Weddings & funerals attended . . .
Sometimes my residual blue-collar instincts
Show up during the most inappropriate,
White-collar times. But I digress.

Which brings us down memory lane
This evening, as in “Good-DEEVE-ning,”
Welcome aboard the Hitchcock Railroad.
(Stage whisper: If I have to explain it,
You’re outside my demographic age cohort,
And a member of a pointless throng of green,
Still-wet-behind-the-ears,
Presumptuous whippersnappers.)

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And now that I have your attention:
Consider the current national stage:
A media circus, a minstrel & medicine show,
H.L. Mencken’s last *******,
Give us our daily bread.
It’s August 27th, 2016.
We’ve survived back-to-back
Republican-Democrat Political Party
U.S. Presidential nominating conventions.
I’ve caught you smack yabba-doo-dabba
In the middle of this Trump-Clinton
Full-press, traveling Reality Show Cavalcade.
In short, I’ve caught you at a good time,
Perhaps receptive, somewhat, for a:
Nixon Retrospective.*

I submit that without doubt,
The most stunningly democratic gesture
Of our generation to wit: replacing the
College deferment loophole with a
Blind, dumb-luck Vietnam Draft Lottery.
You can thank Richard Nixon,
Milhous of that name,
Our much maligned 37th President.
The only RESIGNEE in history,
Run outta town on a rail,
Convicted without bail.
Set adrift without sail.
(How you wish I’d **** this
Wretched rhyme scheme.)

Yes, you can thank Tricky **** for
Sticking it to the Bush Family
And their inherited-wealth neighbors--
Riparian souls one & all--along the quaint
Long Island Sound, New England seashore.
Surely my Brooklyn working class roots,
Demand I salute and snap to, attention.
Hail to the Chief, Babaloo!
Mr. Nixon still has my vote.
He tackled big problems: nuclear arms,
Diplomacy with China, Vietnam,
The Economy (can you frickin’ believe a
Republican got away with
Wage Freeze & Price Controls?)
Not to mention The Environment:
Slap! BAM! Soupy Sales:
“I told you not to mention *THAT!
But you knee-jerking libs out there,
Must remind yourselves that
President Nixon created the EPA &
Signed the Clean Air Act.
Think about it next time your
Nixon-Watergate gag reflex kicks in.

It's where I keep my
Unfinished masterpieces
My polished imperfections
My broken promises

My draftbook is littered
With work and unwork
Like a handyman's abandoned
Toolshed

Forgive me when the books
Flow slowly; it's all I
Can do to stay standing

it is fairly safe
in this town
to walk
without concealing
the spray can
found
in father’s
toolshed

-

our love
for the spray can
while not
well documented
runs wrist
and wrist
with celebrity
worry

-

a cement wall
scraped
in passing
by one
with a stick
is the love
we have
for father

-

for mother
we scale back
on pillows
and lie
face down
on blank sheets
of paper
or watch

television

-

most times
we pop
the keys
of a ribbonless
typewriter

A simple figment
lost in a toolshed
oft times tinkled
with broken appliances.  

He manipulated
rusted design
to his fancy,
breathing second life
into misfit *******.

The elusive wisp
dressed in split fingernails
and knotty knuckles,
as lore foretold.

Slender reeds sway gently
in the cool breeze of your passage.
The whispery songs of dusk
carry across the placid waters.
The trembling shadows of clouds
skim lightly
across the liquid mirror of the pond.

A flock of young geese
is pecking hungrily
at the waterlogged and bloated corpse
of your tutor.
The axe wound
in her eyeless skull
gapes darkly
in the dying light
of a perfect summer day.

As you glide back
across the dew-glittered meadow
toward the house,
the first tremulous notes
of the nightly choir of frogs and cicadas
float up into the darkening sky,
blanketing the thin and muffled screams
of the tutor’s daughter.
Her head cracks and implodes,
like a coconut wrapped in a wet towel,
as I lean on the handle
of the big vise
in our toolshed.

Equations and asymptotic curves;
Variables and discontinuities –
I Subtract Thee From The Sum of Humanity…

The eels down at the murky bottoms
will have thoughts for food tonight.

caught dangling in the bathroom, caught thought up in little thinkings, those little nibblets nibbling at your inner ear, telling you you're weird

funkining funkinings frolicking around frustrated ambassadors

stuck out of time, make sense of anything, when the road ahead seems so clear,

and a vision presents itself on a pedestal, asking to be taken

awkwardly feeling my way around a toolshed, I'm on empty

where am I again?  step by step

step by step

be gentle on yourself

peter, i could not make things like that either and admire those that can.

it is good to mend and keep things nice

such an achievement

i gave you the sun.
created in the toolshed of my heart

the labor into making
a light out of dark.

it was imperfect,
it was patchy.
but it was my sun.

and i so wanted it to be yours.

She was real. She lived like this life was something God built for her in His toolshed. Like every wrong turn was just another excuse to dial God’s landline just to hear Him breathe through the phone “I’ll love you whatever way you travel.”

She has something worth buying the whole field for, worth devoting 60 years of your life and the next 10 minutes to build a temple for Christ that has pastel portraits and electric green ceilings. She deserves a man who has “Christ forever always” written on the back of his hands, so if he falls in worship or in life, it is seen regardless of the motive.

She will stay as her role is defined, and I hope it is a good one for my heart’s sake.

Either answer,

Thank you for the yesterdays.

in 2008, i found myself

in a disgustingly sterile,

non-rustic library in:

Jackson Heights Queens.

think a toolshed meeting a

hospital.

on an exceedingly poignant

whim, i cracked open a glossy edition

of: Rolling Stone.

encountering an article on the passing

of the late great: David Foster Wallace.

i tore out the article, & shoved it in my

pocket for a deeper read.