EASYREEDER

Selected Sonnets, 2008 – 2015

80

10/18/2015

I knew we’d be seeing each other again.

It looks like everyone else is here, too.

All of us, once angels, who finally finished falling.

We were so crazy about here and there,

when the little difference was “always,”

or the other eternity, “never.”

Just listen to all of this childless laughter.

Now we are gone, and here we can stay,

you and I, who are you and I no more,

who tore apart our daughters for the bears,

who offered our sons to God, LOL,

who are, we know, we’ve forgotten who,

who are now outside of ourselves, without when.

79

03/03/2015

I know she’ll be the one who comes for me,

and it shouldn’t matter what she says now,

because the ghosts are always tapping me,

and they’ll keep tapping for these forty years

of work I have left, if I’m lucky enough to work that long,

because she knows and everyone knows,

that I’ve already risen from the ground

in silence, without horse hooves, rain, or snow.

She’ll be the one, who in jest, I will hear,

as I once heard the seasons in the trees.

She will have her wings then, not just her bow—

and so what her darts, beneath a silent sea?

When I know she’s the one who’ll come for me.

  • Published in How Journal

78 (valentine)

02/14/2015

Momma, are there other wooden children?

Momma, am I your only wooden child?

The others, momma, are they more alive?

Do the meat children offer you their hearts?

Momma, you know I have no heart to give,

but I have given you axes, and chainsaws,

and I’ve said you could cut off my limbs, 

you could take me down to timbers, momma.

Chop me down, momma, and I’ll give you my stars.

Why momma, why, do I still have my sky?

Oh momma cut me down, or I’ll grow wild.

Momma cut me down, if you won’t come again,

I have no love, I have no love for the wren.

77

11/05/2014

Momma, are there other wooden children?

Momma, am I your only wooden child?

The others, momma, are they more alive?

Do the meat children offer you their hearts?

Momma, you know I have no heart to give,

but I have given you axes, and chainsaws,

and I’ve said you could cut off my limbs, 

you could take me down to timbers, momma.

Chop me down, momma, and I’ll give you my stars.

Why momma, why, do I still have my sky?

Oh momma cut me down, or I’ll grow wild.

Momma cut me down, if you won’t come again,

I have no love, I have no love for the wren.

76

09/13/2014

I’m only going to ask you for one thing.

From now on, I don’t want to have a name.

When you see me, just say “Hey,” or “Howdy,”

Or, “Oh, how lovely to see you this morning.”

Don’t say a word about the apostle,

who I was in the life before this one,

when Astor Place had a sky and no hotel,

and I was lithe and irritating,

with my dance moves and hopes and repartee.

From now on, don’t talk of what I became.

From now on, talk to my eyes and my skin.

And no introductions. And don’t call me John.

75

08/22/2014

I’m afraid that child isn’t here anymore.

He left on the fog from last February,

taking with him his red fireman hat,

his parents, all torn to rags and once loved,

and two good eyes that were scared of monsters.

Now, from the inside of this gold foil birdcage,

I—as if I, I am I no more—

live as a ground meat burger, without rages,

or a past, or those hundred other doors.

Child, if you come back, bring your baseball glove,

and all three of your red bicycles, and

cut me down if I can’t see the sky,

if I can’t see that sky again, of ours,

send for your slayers, send for your slayers.

2.4

04/19/2014

Tire me with white lies and petty pretty 

complicity—we’ve never ventured far 

from here, preferring civil to the city.

///

The summer streets don’t smell of death, and tar

crossed avowals on mortar and concrete

are dusted away by hairspray and money.

///

The women walk fast, low cut and high cleat—

and men turn their heads, eyes sunken and puny.

///

Point to me, starlet, with newer good lies; 

watch my eyes receding, beady and dead.

Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride.

Gaze into the sockets of slime in my head.

///

//Palms to the temple, and alms to the flesh,

pray to the steeple the tender are blessed.

74 (charge my card)

03/18/2014

When I die, invite everyone over.

Make sure I’m stripped down, wherever I am,

There’s no need to move me, or fix my face,

or take out my organs, or anything.

Just leave me like I am, just exactly

like I am: arms, hands, legs, feet, mouth, tongue, eyes.

No weapons—no boots, brass knuckles or swords—

barefoot is ok, as are elbow strikes,

but the fist, the closed fist, is mandatory.

Knee, heel, palm, forearm—but every third swing

is the fist, the fist until it stops or breaks.

Play music and serve blackberry brandy—

charge my card, and order in whatever.

  • Published in Intercourse Magazine

73 (French kiss)

03/18/2014

Maybe you can lie your way out of this.  

You know I’ve always admired your lying.

Someone like you, doesn’t need to slam doors,

or stomp feet, or throw the remote control.

Someone like you leaves craters everywhere.

Someone like you kicks holes in the sidewalk,

even if her shoes don’t fit, even if

she runs on the tippy toes of her claws.

You think you haven’t tied me in your hair?

Go ahead, just you go ahead and pull.

You can cut through me like a nest of wire.

You can gather up your elfin ribbons.

But lie to me, liar, with a French kiss.

72

03/02/2014

“Without lies, none of us are beautiful.”

/

“Not me, him, not you, her, not us, us, / not love, love, not loss, loss, not bad, bad.”

/

You and I are two glasses of white rum,

and another curse or a second chance—

“Da-ding … lucky 7s, ding, jackpot”—

and a church basement or penthouse casino,

and wondering if this is the last stop 

“to the Terra, where God only glances, / to lay us down to sleep when we are done.”

/

“Didn’t you come for trouble, and find it?”

The two of us aren’t sorry enough, 

for “newer good lies,” to bury our kill,

to offer our hands, unlock the steeple,

put out the fire and drag out the people.

71 (valentine)

02/14/2014

Be mine. Don’t be friendly to other people.

Don’t smile at all those other psychopaths. 

I want you to drag your feet without me.

I want you to breathe like you’re underwater.

I want you to die after each heartbeat.

I want you to feel bad about everything.

Except me. I want you to think of me.

Just me. Think of me as the sun and rain.

Think of me as the center of orbit,

and cold space as your innermost enemy.

Without me, go out and turn up your hat

and beg your betters to toss in nickels

that you scatter in skies sooted in diesel.

70 (New Year’s)

12/28/2013

In spring, sorrow looks through my socket skull

and starlings titter in my deaf ear holes,

and the marsh is most swampy in the bone,

and I feel the sky in a far-off star,

and I taste the black bottom of my jaw.

/

In summer, I am falling, and digging,

where the ground is soft and the green grass grows,

too grave, from the septic tank to the springhouse.

/

In autumn, I ride shotgun in the car,

and when I arrive in winter, I saw 

through the white sawhorses, burn your sweet home,

and hunt you down while you search for the road.

This year, this year, I resolve to be hell.

  • Originally published in Electric Literature (read by avatar)
  • Print published by Otter Magazine

65.3

12/27/2013

I don’t think I’m ready to talk to you. / It could be that I’m afraid of something. / Well, it must be that I’m afraid of you. / But when I hunt for fear behind my eyes, / I find black slate, or maybe it’s gypsum. / The fear, though fear is a weak word for it, / threads with a bodkin, into my abdomen, / and coils back out.  It’s the stitch that slings / us into day, overshooting our gifts, / and hurdling us through unknown diseases. / If I’m afraid, I’m afraid of the future, / of you, on the handling end of this string, / tired of twitching your yoke thé buffoon, /  tired and looking for something else to do.

  • A version of this sonnet was originally published  in The Denver Quarterly

65.2

12/14/2013

I don’t think I’m ready to talk to you.

It could be that I’m afraid of something.

Well, it must be that I’m afraid of you.

But when I hunt for fear behind my eyes,

I find black slate, or maybe it’s marble.

The fear, though fear is a weak word for it,

knits a fat fist in my abdomen, 

and coils back out.  It’s the stitch that hauls

us into day, overshooting our gifts,

and hurdling us through unknown diseases.

If I’m afraid, I’m afraid of the future,

of you, on the other end of this string,

tired of tugging, with something else to do.

  • Originally published  in The Denver Quarterly

2.3

12/14/2013

Tire me with white lies and petty pretty 

complicity—we’ve never ventured far 

from here, preferring civil to the city.

/

The summer streets don’t smell of death, and tar

crossed avowals on mortar and concrete

are dusted away by hairspray and money.

/

The women walk fast, low cut and high cleat—

and men turn their heads, eyes sunken and puny.

/

Point to me, starlet, with newer good lies; 

watch my eyes receding, beady and dead.

Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride.

Gaze into the sockets of slime in my head.

   /

//Here are two hands and a steeple of flesh,

pray open the doors and here, all the blessed.

68.3

09/13/2013

Every once in a while, I get a hall pass,

which is good because I need enemies,

and they’re not always easy to locate.

Sometimes, all it takes is rolling over.

But other times, you need to look alive,

you need to scrub yourself down and turn on

that last vestige of charisma, madness,

that fatherly recoil, over the line,

that smile onto the not-so-great beyond,

where all of us are used-to-be lovers.

   /

Every once in a while, I stay out late—

        /and cab it home in go/stop memory,

        /cast in signals from my town of outcasts.  

  • Originally published in in Fjords Review

2.2

08/17/2013

Tire me with white lies and petty pretty 

complicity—we’ve never ventured far 

from here, preferring civil to the city.

The summer streets don’t smell of death, and tar

crossed avowals on mortar and concrete

are dusted away by hairspray and money.

The women walk fast, low cut and high cleat—

and men turn their heads, eyes sunken and puny.

Point to me, starlet, with newer good lies; 

watch my eyes receding, beady and dead.

Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride.

Gaze into the sockets of slime in my head.

   /

      /   /Two hands form a church and steeple of flesh,

pray open the doors and see all the blessed.

69

07/24/2013

You know ten years don’t matter to me,

that when you drew your too-sharp fingernail

across the black nylon, I’d still be here,

saying we just danced—didn’t we just dance?—

trying to pull your forearm through the hole,

trying to get my head through just one drink,

just one drink, wherever you want to meet,

because you know, you and I, you know.

We don’t weep, and the sky falls when we blink.

In this life, there are some kinds of orphans,

who lie in the depth of this very well.

You and I, we know there are no stars.

You and I, we’ve come to the hour agreed.  

  • Originally published in The Denver Quarterly

68.2

07/22/2013

Every once in a while, I get a hall pass,

which is good because I need enemies,

and they’re not always easy to locate.

Sometimes, all it takes is rolling over.

But other times, you need to look alive,

you need to scrub yourself down and turn on

that last vestige of charisma, madness,

that fatherly recoil, over the line,

that smile onto the not-so-great beyond,

where all of us are used-to-be lovers.

 /

Every once in a while, I stay out late—

      /and cab it home in volts of memory,

      /cast in relief by my town of outcasts.  

  • Originally published in Fjords Review

8.2

04/11/2013

I walk with the dreams of the child I was,

who walks with his father, handsome and hurried.

My mother is young as the first wish of love.

The ember of youth is a crumbling fury.

/

A man is a paper sack full of sins,

greasy with donuts and coffee twice brewed,

calloused in hand and sodden in liver,

pale as his vision and bruised as his muses.

/

Dimwitted, dull-eyed, the ember gone dark,

dollars to donuts and donuts to dust,

liar to lover and lover to jerk,

child to father and father to shark,

a man is the door, the car and the lot.

Men, in the end, are their work and their luck.

  • Originally published in Fjords Review

68

04/06/2013

Every once in a while, I get a hall pass,

which is good because I need enemies,

and they’re not always easy to locate.

Sometimes, all it takes is rolling over.

But other times, you need to look alive,

you need to scrub yourself down and turn on

that last vestige of charisma, madness,

that fatherly recoil, over the line,

that smile onto the not-so-great beyond,

where all of us are used-to-be lovers.

/

Every once in a while, I stay out late,

well past the limelight of these memories,

inscribed with the choler of these outcasts.

  • Originally published in Fjords Review

67

03/31/2013

We can’t hold everything, but we try / sometimes, to hold them longer than we should. / Over there in the windowsill, you’ll find / a bicycle and sidecar made of wire, / and an oblong stone from a beach in France, / as if, as if, as if I remember, / as if I could look back with these glass eyes. / Some things, you’ll hold as long as you can stand. / That jar, I tried to fill with the river. / In this scar, I would have fossilized fire. / But look, I’ve held my breath under the ice, / and I came in here alone and naked, / with just my feet, my voice, and my blue sky.  

  • Originally published  in The Denver Quarterly

66

03/29/2013

Ok, you didn’t need to break something.

When people come into this china shop,

they tiptoe around, they oo and they aa,

and then when they walk out, they slam the door.

I spend my whole life sweeping up the glass,

rethreading crystals onto chandeliers,

trying to crazy glue the porcelain,

telling myself that it was just an accident,

and I’ll crawl around and find all the gears

to reassemble the two grandfather clocks,

which maybe needed cleaning, and then I’ll

fix the doorknob, which didn’t even lock.

Tomorrow, I can reattach the sign.

  • Published  in The Brooklyn Rail
  • Also embedded at The Believer Logger
  • Also embedded at PEN
  • Included in “Webcam Girls Read Sonnets” in Vice

65

03/29/2013

Ok, you didn’t need to break something.

When people come into this china shop,

they tiptoe around, they oo and they aa,

and then when they walk out, they slam the door.

I spend my whole life sweeping up the glass,

rethreading crystals onto chandeliers,

trying to crazy glue the porcelain,

telling myself that it was just an accident,

and I’ll crawl around and find all the gears

to reassemble the two grandfather clocks,

which maybe needed cleaning, and then I’ll

fix the doorknob, which didn’t even lock.

Tomorrow, I can reattach the sign.

  • Published  in The Denver Quarterly

64 (I’m not mad, beautiful)

03/27/2013

I’m not mad, beautiful, that would be

like blaming the sun for casting shadows,

like cursing the ocean with a threat of rain.

The first gift of sin is hypocrisy.

The second is bilious forgiveness,

like pigeon pecks in morning vomit,

because wrong to wrong, all of us are leaders.

A few more hours of my silence—

you won’t be bothered to think about it.

And why should you?  There isn’t any we.

But that look of yours hurled me from heaven,

me, who for your grace trades to live below,

who for a glimpse of sky, lives in the sea.  

63

03/18/2013

You show up when you want me to help you.

You show up, talking about all you’ve done,

since the last time you sent me your bio.

You show up, not knowing I have children,

not knowing that I’ve fed the hungry world,

soothed lions that tumbled in rose bushes,

plucked their thorns and plastered the Komodo,

who, just sleeping in his lair, was scaled

under the chin by the wild lunges 

of one more hero with one more dungeon

and a hex on one more magic chateau.

/

You show up, still sick, still hunched, and still drooling,

still mooning over your handful of crumbs.

62

03/16/2013

I might have a present for you, this time.

/

All gifts are lies.  But I don’t think you’d want

for me to come here with nothing for you,

with nothing when I’ve already given,

when you’ve seen the somethings stuck in my teeth,

when, well, really, it goes without saying

that, well, I think we both know I’d be right

to point out that we don’t need a story,

that the songs we know are the songs we sing,

that this for you is—well, yes, agreed then.

/

So what? you can guess what I have for you.

All the better the surprise, because

the biggest present is the biggest lie.

61

03/02/2013

She got every single thing she wanted

by avoiding smiling liars like me.

She knew better than to trust these jackals,

with their arrow eyes and teeth like cold air,

with their laughter, their true-sounding laughter,

about lions who didn’t make the kill.

The lions, they’d say, don’t come until dawn,

long after the last child has been felled,

after the loin is stripped from the giraffe,

and fear cuts time and shows time to fear.

/

But Elizabeth, when your toast got dull, / and you needed someone to save you, needed / a hand to take the book, you turned, saying, “John.”

  • Originally published in Wordriot

60 (little miss)

07/25/2012

Little miss, little miss, don’t you miss me? / Miss me, miss me, miss me, little me miss. / Miss, miss me, little miss, miss me a little. / Put on your sunglasses and miss me, lips— / lips and sunglasses, and wicker baskets, / and a picnic pattern two-piece with ties, / and yellow sandals from the dollar mart, / and never flown, high high, never flown kites. / Little miss, little miss, sealed with a miss, / with a glass of wine and handful of spit, / with sun, sunglasses, and hair in a mist— / little miss, with hairspray under a tree, / miss me a little at the count of

  • Originally published by Otter Magazine

59

06/16/2012

Just a few minutes after eleven, / and I won’t be sorry until sunset, / when you have chased the horizon / into a black laugh and unblinking sleep. / My wishes scatter infinitive verbs, / cast to your feet like bruised wedding petals, / to your eyes looking, looking for the herd, / afraid that you girls—you woman, / you—have strayed too far on legs too weak. / What will we two knead?  The flour and leaven, / in a kitchen where the sun rays no debt, / where we are not (s)old, and we are not burned. / You girls.  You.  What happens if you don’t turn?   

58 (?)

06/07/2012

Didn’t you come for trouble, and find it? / Didn’t you wave to the twelve apostles? / To say goodbye or maybe ask which way, / to not a dozen but lucky thirteen, / to the baker’s gift of wanting too much? / Not what you asked for?  Twelve blades and a razor? / Not what you wanted?  The smooth touch, rough? / (I know you’re not sorry we’ve lost our way—that we’re children still walking upstream.)  / Haven’t you and I seen the holiday? / Aren’t the guesses free from their bottles? / Isn’t it June, the year of Quezacotl? / Isn’t our best suit birthday and hazmat?

57 (13 lies)

03/27/2012

The truth is, I only tell 13 lies.

Lie no. 2: I lie in praise of heaven.

Three: this is between just the two of us.

Four: in the silence we share, we are whole.

Yes, I heard you (five), I was listening.

Of course it matters to me.  Very much.

No, it doesn’t bother me, it’s nothing.

Da-ding … lucky 7s, ding, jackpot.

For every lie, I’ll give you a nickel.

A lie is a live heart, hopping in dust.

Just a few minutes after eleven.

You and I, we are a dozen goodbyes.

A better lie is a fountain of youth.

Without lies, none of us are beautiful.

56

03/19/2012

She didn’t get it all, but she got most.

What little there is now, is as salt,

decreed to black the street, the ice all melted

     /to white once stone in tidal stains of tears—

the summer already lost, freon spent

on rooms cooled enough for college sweatshirts,

and loveless nights, nettled, fresh as spearmint.

/

If she thinks of one thing, I am the worst,

the first smiling visage of her own fears,

human, briefly, as velvet to velveteen,

as a flashing dagger to the dull hilt,

as a virus to a p-zero host.

She left me the lie, but she took the boast.  

55

03/07/2012

This way madness lies.  This way madness lies, / in the blue volt of an hourly motel, / light of Tuesday’s ensemble for casket, / on starched sheets dishonored but still welcoming, / enseamed, lascivious, but maybe clean, / maybe a profession to the “orderlies.” / “Orderlies,” for the torn charade, in heap,  / for the card you have, while they have the key, / for the ashtray tip you don’t think to bring, / for the paper slippers, left in plastic, / for knowing one doorway opens on hell, / for the front desk, stop watch, signature, price. / We lie mad in our bed, made free of lice.

53.2

03/05/2012

Why would I lie when I can just be wrong?

I’ve fallen off course, drifted from orbit.

I’m here, paddling, pushing off the stray neutrinos,

casting excess weight out of the airlock,

asphyxiating and decompressing,

but more afraid of the nearing planet,

Earth, mundane, mud dispelled from Saturn’s rings,

to the sun, as soulless as a magnet,

cracked, tossed in dust, in sorrow’s second look,

made know noledgeable of the know nown.

as bereft of birth’s promise as spit.

/

The stars, stars, while we find the long way down.

What better invitation to the ice?

This way madness lies.  This way madness lies.

53

03/03/2012

Why would I lie when I can just be wrong? / I’ve fallen off course, drifted from orbit. / I’m here, paddling, pushing off the stray neutrinos, / casting excess weight out of the airlock, / asphyxiating and decompressing, / but more afraid of the nearing planet, / Earth, mundane, mud dispelled from Saturn’s rings, / to the sun, as soulless as a magnet, / cracked, tossed in dust, in sorrow’s second look, / made know noledgeable of the know nown. / As bereft of birth’s promise as spit. / Wouldn’t you rather have a fool, a clown, / than a bashful liar, faithless, untrue? / But actually, you’re crazy, aren’t you?

52

02/28/2012

But actually, you’re crazy, aren’t you? / Aren’t you on the corner of the bed? / In the daylight.  Saying I’d better hope / nobody comes in through the open door. / Your square glasses can’t hide your drifting eye, / and I know you’ve answered the call before. / “Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride.” / I can hear the rattling of the freight door. / I know you have a secret, bound in rope, / that the gold band on your hand, in your head, / is a knot around your finger, your youth. / What part could I have in this divine plan? / A liar, a liar, is a good man.

51

02/28/2012

Our little losses just the cheer of crows; / a laughing sheen on the face of the cliffs; / the wet limestone, gray and white, cold as eyes; / the still dance, wind, in wait, in praise of winter. / There’s no siren.  There’s no siren, blowing. / We are given unto autumn’s bargain. / Our lives of snow to fall upon the sea. / Nobody turns back to home on the grange. / We are the break in years, the splinter / between December and January. / We’re the shaky step into the skiff. / We’re the five fingers in the puppet’s clothes. / We’re the promise.  We’re what the liar knows.

50 (the barmaid’s freckled hand)

02/14/2012

Let me tell you what a liar I am

I’ll tell you right now, right here, everything,

or, well, I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t.

I’m more interested in you, anyway.

/

And isn’t it always there? In the tinkling

glasses, laughter, and the barmaid’s freckled hand?

Isn’t it the grail mix of the mixed drink?

A liar, a liar, is a good man.

/

These men with the porcelain on the quay, / are trusted all, never not innocent. / Who could love a man who won’t dance, won’t sing? / Trust a man who trails his bowels, who knows, / our little losses—just the cheer of crows.  

49

02/11/2012

I promise you darkness, and blinding sun,

and a carnival wheel at twilight,

and in death, a ham atop the maypole.

/

It will be everything I’ve promised you,

our lies like fatty fish under the ice,

pendulous, waiting for their fishers to come,

in dead winter, when lovers speak in white,

honest as they are cold, as sundown sun.

/

Honest as idle lies, promised in twos,

fat as double boasts, and spoons of fishroe,

I promise you the boardwalk and the crier.

(“Step right this way for edification!”),

and that we will marvel, blissful, behind our bars:

“Is this the exhibit to the conquered?”

48

02/09/2012

Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

The workers are gone, flown off like vultures.

The embers are oily and stark, as black

and vengeful as the eyes of once lovers

now soulless to you in your soulful eyes.

Isn’t there something in this heat, this white

ash from our bed of stinging, flightless flies?

Isn’t there some flint of wet delight

apart from the fire?  Some cool other shore?

You know that our resolve is lusterlack,

that we, tweenbe, are combusted sutures,

that this blueprint, charred, this foundation, ruined,

this best guess, blown, this parting of the briars,

dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.

47

02/08/2012

The asylum rescinds the naked law.

Given that we’ve woken to the surprise,

of these hospital walls, these glazed brick walls,

these residents and orderlies, all eyes,

hairs, teeth, and hands that grab handles all day.

Given our sorrow at this arrival,

given the initiatives underway,

shouldn’t we exercise our proviso?

Shouldn’t we shudder in this breach of lies?

Climb these burnished tiles into the warm maw?

Into our own teeth, hair, and darting eyes.

Aren’t we beholden to one jest cause?

Don’t you smell the fumes of our mores

on fire at the apothecary?

46

02/06/2012

Is this the place for the miracle cure?

Here, sitting around this veneer table,

where we all hate each other, like family.

Like we know, which we do, the sad, sad truth.

Like it’s thanksgiving in a hotel room.

/

We’d better spend our time on other lies:

chasing flesh in the corners of this tomb;

finding the airshaft by following the flies;

     /blinking at the black night and cured by rue.

/

Better we two saved, than all of us dull.

Better two of us born, than all of us still.

Better we are spawned from these doors and halls;

the asylum rescinds the naked law.

45 (miracle cure)

01/20/2012

Is this the exhibit to the conquered?

Is this where I come to see my old friends

chopped to messes, plagued with poxes?

Is this where I find strangers I don’t like

crucified on refrigerator doors

that aren’t mine, that nobody will touch,

that sanitation just leaves on the corner,

bloody and mildewed, handle set in rust?

/

Is this where someone else’s palsied life—

shrieking and whining—is better left mocked?

Is this where I come to kick the sickbed?

Where the gumball machines dispense skewers?

Is this the place for the miracle cure?

44 (twenty-dollar holiday)

01/02/2012

Death is a twenty-dollar holiday.

The first dollar buys a seat on the train,

then a dollar on lunch and a redcap,

and at the stopover you send a drink

to a tall pale woman with red lipstick,

who slouches when she laughs but laughs and laughs.

Her legs are crossed and she scratches her calves

     /with her heels and her bitten fingertips.

But it’s too long a trip to sit and think,

count pennies against a line on a map,

and spend your days on days, three meals a day.

/

So you decide you’re going to the grave

with this woman, and nothing to save. 

43

12/08/2011

I keep waking up in this burlap sack.

I’m on the edge of the Hudson River.

There are rocks in the bag with me.

I’m naked, so I hop back to my place.

My wife is upstairs, working with the ropes,

which she says she needs for an art project.

The other day, I found these two buckets,

with my feet in them.  I was on the couch,

and the rug was vacuumed, and if I traipsed

around in wet cement, I’d have to clean up.

So I waited, tested with my finger—

and when the cement set, firm but tacky,

I dragged to the tub and turned on the tap. 

42 (old friend)

12/07/2011

Applebees and a strip club, all for free.

Isn’t that heaven to us, old friend?

Old friend, who stood with me at the divide, 

knowing, just briefly, they were just one cliff,

just one crashing chasm of heels and jeans,

and decades, and children who understand.

The children can forgive, unlike the man

who saw the face of Satan in his spleen,

smiling, sanguine, exposed in his white ribs.

If it’s not right, what then?  If it’s not right,

what then?  If it’s not right, what then?  What then?

Heaven is a strip club and Applebees,

and it’s all for free, my friend, all for free.

41

11/02/2011

All I really want to do is stab people.

Once, I got a chance to do it.

But the guy kept trying to get away,

and I’d stab him where he was moving.

He’d reach out a hand, a foot, I’d stab it.

After a while, he moved less often,

so I stabbed him a few times in the back.

I talked a little about the woman,

but I wasted the opportunity.

It’s just an accident to hack, hack, hack.

To stab, stab, stab is intentional, will.

/

Resort to speculation is a shame,

but the point, I’d suppose, is intention.

  • Published  in Big Other
  • Published  in The Brooklyn Rail
  • Also embedded at The Believer Logger
  • Also embedded at PEN
  • Included in “Webcam Girls Read Sonnets” in Vice

40

10/31/2011

She smelled like puke and a bar, and childhood; / where love is a dozen thoughtless handouts, / and old women you don’t know ask your name, / and slip you money rotting with perfume, / like your parents are children that left them, / and you’re all they have, and they’re all you have. / Smiles like that, on the bus down Seventh Avenue. / She smells like my ex-step-father’s girlfriends, / barmaids that laughed like porch paint and bourbon, / and looked at you like you were more of the same. / You and your friends and your miserable hopes. / She’d seen your type before, and wouldn’t budge. / They all came into the bar, with a bulge.

39

10/30/2011

Is that you again, standing next to me?

Wearing last night’s dress, missing a button.

Rolling through the city like some big lie

moves the traffic this side of the freeway.

/

Wouldn’t we be better off in three hours?

Wouldn’t you have some of what you came for?

Aren’t you looking ahead much too far?

These years come off with a drink and a shower,

and the choir observing a song of praise,

and in words, in acts, living in defiance,

no longer shadows of our professions,

and drifting in the say-no-more of beasts,

made undone, except for laughter and sleep.

38

10/29/2011

Possession is nine tenths of the law,

where I come from, where city met meadows,

in lots of rubble and praying mantis.

/

I was sent from there, with my dirty hands,

to dig to soil through the crumbling asphalt,

to discover species long thought extinct,

to name the garden tended in neglect.

/

Or is wind the origin to the call?

The sick sunrise, the desert sand.

Is genesis a stale breath of aspic?

A prick of nausea in the shallows?

A formal invitation to deep waters?

Where the seas of our lovers, as by the tide,

may be taken as possessions from inside.

37

10/27/2011

On fire at the apothecary,

all that effort, melting in sealed boxes.

Aisle upon aisle of hot ashes

on robin-speckled linoleum tile.

/

You, still running in your rubber-sole flats.  

/

Me, vapid in eye, ever here, hovering,

watching you fly through the teetering racks,

down and back, manic, lover to mothering.

/

You look uncomfortable, all that crying.

/

Maybe no need for lipstick and lashes.

Maybe it’s best you take off your stockings.

Maybe if you ran in your lingerie … 

    / or maybe it’s best that you just strip down.

Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

36 (dangerous)

10/26/2011

Dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.

Have we not always known of this visit?

Betwixt between the vagaries of when 

we first met, eye to eye, too curious.

/

It isn’t dangerous that I’m handcuffed

driving through this wide wide state on a bus,

the danger is unbound, furious,

inviolate, the blossom of chaos,

Zen, to your selfish, lonely inquisitor. 

/

Are we not the old matchbook, struck to fire?

/

Rouge not, dear girl, and no more careful bangs.

I promise you darkness, and blinding sun.  

35 (falling)

10/21/2011

Warm from the cradle of God’s presence,

rushing in the breath of upper atmosphere,

first air, and inhalation, and welcome

to the Terra, where God only glances,

and remembers our names with detachment,

meeting our prayers with shattering glass,

in shards of sorrow and fleet fulfillment.

/

The sun is branded with our mortal cast, / flesh derided, bereft of time’s expanses, / made gentle to the lie and rolling drum, / and the trespass of the righteous in fear, / our brethren, banished to forbidden senses, / to the crime, delight, of the Godless trenches. 

34 (one for the team)

10/05/2011

We are all children here—against the wall

of the gymnasium—smelling of fat,

waiting for our turns, bellied with futures.

/

Nobody knows how and we’re all afraid

of the principal, who doesn’t love us,

who prefers the other group of children,

who waves us to the foul line, the ashes,

and gives us our punishments, one by one.

We know better than to cry or complain

and stand like the nurse tells us, lips sutured,

wondering if we’re really that bad.

As best we can, chest out, heads straight and tall,

shaking from the shower of gasoline,

we strike the match, and take one for the team.

33

09/23/2011

Little did you know about the implant.

You thought so so hard about the couple,

about the made beds of some kid’s parents,

and how it was we two—there—stayed the same.

/

Little did we know—drunk, sleeping children—

about the aliens, eyeless, hairless,

regarding our embrace from the distance

of our futures, craving torrid zen,

and the perfect turn of a bent lifetime. 

/

They drew their razor on our teen intent,

and seamed into the felted, virgin wool,

the undone, the unmade, the unpliant.

/

Don’t you remember what they said to us?

“Good children, hold hands and run in the house.” 

32 (paean)

09/19/2011

/ We of waste, waisted we, who would squander 

    /sorrow, squander the rich trash, the morning grinds,

    /the pears over-ripened in the fruit bowls—

for we are gardenless in Eden,

naked in the shadow of forbidden trees—

    /we, who would lower our child gaze, to age,

    /to fall unwinged from heaven’s favor, seized 

    /with cheeks of grief and mouths of bitter sage,

should we not stake our spite, grow weeds in bins,

    /to praise creation, render heaven whole,

    /and sow eternal mercies of our strife?

    /

/Wastes tended, pears halved, in an alms of rapture:

  /is it not to us to ivy the arbor?

31 (sorry R)

07/20/2011

Sorry R.  I am so so sorry R.  

Immodest me, modest of modesty,

giving you so so nothing, and so knotted

    /a so so-not de nada denial.  

By whiches bewitched and witches beshrewed,

    / so not the case for the trial.

    /Sorry R, you know who you are.  How rude

that the heavens would offend a child.

So so a pear and a skirt disregarded.

How so do I creep in my prosody?

/

So so sorry R, you know who you are.

I’m just one drink at a martini bar.

So sorry R, this crying old, and far.

30 (bleavenly hiss)

07/17/2011

Me alone, dear God, in these hills of flesh, making

nothing of something, something of nothing.

Do you hear my prayers?  Or here, do I pray for

nothing for nothing, something for something?

Are there no gifts with heaven’s broken promise?

Nothing to something, something to nothing.

A ribbon in wind, this motherless aching.  

Nothing no something no something no nothing.  

I am tidal need, and break-water spray.

Know something, nothing: a know-nothing something.

A minute abyss of bleavenly hiss.  

Some know know-nothing.  No, some no knowing.

/

We dear know God, no Godless know nots.

We dear, no God, know Godless, know naught.

29 (2B at “The Tannery”)

07/17/2011

You and I.  Then we, on the railroad tracks. / walking the blue-gray and rusty byway. / Rocks to throw, spikes to keep, and nuts and bolts / to wonder how it holds, what fell apart. / Beyond the houses, the valley, the pond, / the farms, the charred foundations of the school: / a distant mountain of shining diamonds, / much farther than we thought, and up close, coal. / We sit in the shade of a mining cart, / wish for kaeng khiao wan—strip by the high voltage / of a bulldozer cab.  That end of May. / Once a day, once a night: thunder and clack, / teeth rattling in our gums, as the freight cars passed.

  • Originally published in the Coffin Factory

28 (your name is Slim, slim)

07/17/2011

I am more gaunt than my slender zero,

counted not ghost among the living doomed.

Who but you?  Jackdaw, rover, sister?

/

Slender sickness, me, and we rotting meat.

Flyer, no flies, from Bangkok, Germany,

or here, where the lies are collected,

/

hovering at the curbs in white July,

flittering former addresses, texted.

/

Do you miss the old town, the frozen sleet,

the small white car and bridge on the river?

Your old furniture and organized grooms?

/

Elysium fields.  But not gull, not crow.

    /Prey above, little sister, or below?

  • Originally published in the Coffin Factory

27 (Queen of Ice)

07/17/2011

O bitter light, O queen of ice, O wicked flicker 

candlelight, blue snow to touch, “too much

too much,” the queen would melt with my delight.

O laughing sprite, O smirking spite—icy

lips and me on fire.  Heat to scald and hate

to tire, lust to lies and lies to strife,

glacial teeth meet slushy need—frost to heat,

love to sleet, and we not we just fire free.

   / In sleep, the cold is sorrow blind.

/

    /By day, I push the tempest, tossed. 

Unto death do us part, pneumonic quickened,

queen to stricken, life to meat and meat to ice,

won’t you, cold to coldest strife—stay my wife?

26 (more Ann)

07/17/2011

How is it you would rely upon me?

I would lie at your command, relied upon.

The words of the promise, I read, writ large,

to meet the larger vow to the larger read—

and provisos and riders shall rest in peace,

assured safe keep, and devotedly prayed upon.

Rely upon me and the harder reads with ease,

hour on hour shall be reliably free.

Rely upon me to honor my wards,

to be to you doubly true, or true to none,

to undertake the blest and the holy.

Rely upon me as if the ice age

moaned the vow in a chorus of moraines.

  • Also embedded at The Believer Logger
  • Also embedded at PEN
  • Included in “Webcam Girls Read Sonnets” in Vice
  • Podcast by InDigest
  • Originally published in Wordriot

25

07/17/2011

Heaven descend, wash over this ocean,

wink at the wretched, and leave us islands

unbreached by the banks and shoals of time,

with keeps of steep cliffs and uncharted shores

pocked by shiphulls and corpses on the rocks,

where sins may flourish unremembered,

where flesh is first and time is tender,

where fog wets the granite which streaks our hocks,

where wind blows, boughs break, and limbs pour,

    /and the measure of measures is brine.

/

    /Divine Heaven, perfect, eternal, grant us,

        /in our short, broken lives, your origin,

for under surrender is devotion.

  • Originally published in Thumbnail Magazine
  • Podcast by InDigest

24

07/17/2011

Smash smash smash, sex and half, sex and half. / Woman and a man, woman and a mask. / Crash crash crash, the lady’s in the trash. / Half half half half never shall it ask ask. / The luckless in life are lovers divine. / Win, win but God will take the loser’s side / and Venus will love the sick Saturnine, /and rub lessterlust the life satisfied.

/

Not me, him, not you, her, not us, us, 

not love, love, not loss, loss, not bad, bad.

And it’s never never enough, enough.

What we have we had, and have and halve.

/

Never last, never last.  Check out the trash. / Petty the inn and pity the cash.  

23 (double R)

07/17/2011

Double R and you know who you are.

/

And I’m the friendly among the enemies.

And more dangerous than you know, you know.

/

You know a child can climb onto my back,

and I can get myself up from all fours,

and I don’t feel the weight of the body.

/

You know I’m born with an X against me.

/

But when you look up at me sex is sour,

sugared candy in a see-through wrapper.

/

Better the start than the end of the show.

/

So.  

Imagine you and me, hated we:

me, wrecker, dancing on the bar;

and you, rocker, breaking your guitar.

22 (seated at her table)

07/17/2011

To a woman like that, I’m nobody. / But this other woman says that’s not true. / The first is Harvard, summa cum laude. / The second is Vassar, professor’s delight. / It used to be a real victory, / to get myself adopted by the first, / to get myself admired by the second. / Now it’s something else, something more like thirst. / Despite themselves, they laugh like I’m funny, / like my urban blight is a city of light, / like one day I won’t dry up in the draught, / and I’m still a dirty, charming youth, / knowing the alleys of the hymnody. / It’s not what we want now, but we’re still stunned, / and we turned, she and I, to what beckoned.  

21 (just years)

07/17/2011

She leaned over the bar to arm wrestle.

She’d pulled me to a stool to let me win.

Red hair and green eyes and I lied and lied.

It was some other kid’s birthday party,

but she wasn’t anybody’s mother.

She had a tanned, freckled, sunburned bust,

    /she wore a low-cut, rust, v-neck sweater,

and I said that no woman could beat me,

and boasted of other women who’d tried,

and she let me win again and again,  

    /and said “Ooh!” when she felt my muscle,

and she smiled, part with love, part with disgust,

knowing that just years had come between us.

20 (John John)

07/17/2011

John John automaton, born to never, 

never learn. John John automaton, born

to never never learn. Born to ever 

ever urn.  Born to burn and born to scorn.

/

John John automaton, got nothing,

nothing, nothing done. John John automat,

nothing winning, always spinning spinning

spinning. John-a-folds his wrinkles flat.

/

John John automatic. Panic panic

panic panic. Needs to needs to needs to naught.

Needs machined, by house mechanic.

John-O-John, ought-to-John on auto ought.

/

Not John-o-ton. John John, not John-o-ton.  

John John, not John-o-ton.  John John, not John

  • Published  in The Brooklyn Rail
  • Included in “Webcam Girls Read Sonnets” in Vice
  • Podcast by InDigest

19 (saints and winners)

07/16/2011

She shows up, hangs around, and smiles at me.

I hover over her hair, and she knows.

They visit like this, when they’re in-between.

Hard to say who’s putting on the show.

You can see any part of a woman

if you look hard enough at her face.

To see her lips move, you can’t listen,

and she knows you can’t hear her from her waist.

Good trick: the overcoat then all that skin.

No matter how it goes, I break and break,

and I count the delights, for saints and winners.

And if I could just say what I can’t say

I would say and say and say: words to air,

and what a woman should know when you smell her hair.

  • Originally published in Column

18

07/16/2011

Sea-moon blue.  He marries the Paris sky,

her eyes, and a loose knit dress of fine wool.

Just the color, and she’ll never know why—

their love no more lie, their life no less full

than a marriage for pride or weeping want.

A boy will always miss the beach, the gulls—

the thoughtless gaze, the begging and the taunts.

And at low tide the city is wet sand

and the seaside town of seventeen-fifty-five

and buckets of beer and cherry stone clams

and poorhouses, oysters, apples and dives.

          /And love is long or far between us:

the distance between New York and Paris.

  • Originally published in Column

17 (life unweaved)

07/16/2011

You live on the other side of the world,

and somewhere between us, in the ocean,

me with my crutches and you with your curls,

and the green coffee house with big muffins,

and the fanciest restaurant in town

(that used fresh basil and canned tomatoes),

and you and me in sex till we drowned,

and running through the corn to scare the crows—

we stay there, still and always wise young fools.

Bruised, raw, scratched, bitten, and frayed at the sleeve.

You and me, together on the lambswool.

And even now, now, my chapped lips still bleed,

when I know … that we have lived lying, not we,

        / and that we are still we, in life unweaved.

  • Originally published in Column

16 (a long night)

07/16/2011

A long night, my love, my sweet sick sunrise,

my drunken dawn, my pearly, priceless doom.

Who but you?  Waiting in my blinking eyes,

churning in exhaustion—my reckless fume.

Dirty feet, white thighs and somebody’s bride;

divorcee, chapped lips and laughter to lie for.

We had no shame but we both had our pride.

Never were you mine, never was I yours.

Never came the nevermore, the sorrow

for the lost cold war, the bickered, battered

bedroom sores, mascara charred and marrow

bored.  I hate how they knew we would shatter.

      / And whoever invented the promise

      / had no love, made no concession, for us.

  • Also embedded at The Believer Logger
  • Also embedded at PEN
  • Included in “Webcam Girls Read Sonnets” in Vice
  • Podcast by InDigest
  • Originally published in 1AM

Before (15)

07/16/2011

Before, before, we are children afraid / of sleep, of the hallway behind the door. / To keep, to keep, we are bickering traders, / offering strong for weak, and peace for war. / Meek, meekly, while the choristers swing sweetly, / we weep at the ribbon of our one reward. / We cry beneath our mother’s hand, preening. / We vie to exhaust our contented steward. / And the pretty, pretty darkness is our / cooing, caressing, ever-hushing mum. / We cry in minutes, and she waits in hours, / to lay us down to sleep when we are done— / to dream the wordless weightless dreams of children, / to voice the voiceless, and sing among the wren.

  • Originally published in Drift Index 

14 (eleven)

07/16/2011

Eleven years later she comes to me

and remembers she said “in ten years.”

I remember I said we’d never speak,

but two children since I’ve nothing to fear.

She tells me she has a story to tell,

about the dream I gave her, which she lived:

there was wealth, a poor girl and art to sell,

and a rich man, an artist and a shiv,

and an engine left running at LAX,

and leaving behind a new way to live.

She wears high leather boots and shakes with sex,

and decides that we’ll write it as a script.

Will it be all right, she asks, with my wife?

She knows that it’s something her boyfriend won’t like.

  • Also embedded at The Believer Logger
  • Also embedded at PEN
  • Included in “Webcam Girls Read Sonnets” in Vice

13 (holiday)

07/16/2011

Whatever is there to explain, my dear?

The tinker of regrets and little lies?

The suspended breath of holiday drear?

The needs, the dreams, in our sticky surmises?

We are too smart but we are still children.

We are too much grown and too far apart.

So little time is given our brethren,

we are toddlers in eyes, and broken hearts.

And how, my dear, might I detail the day?

Perhaps with the memories of the old

and the dead, and all I’ve seen from the train.

What would I tell, dear?  And what would I hold?

What little, my love, could I take to you?

Just a green blade of grass, frosted with dew.

12 (Never Forever)

07/16/2011

In Never Forever we live together,

eternal in terminal wanderlust.

The jokes aren’t old and the coffee’s not cold,

and we don’t know the end of the end of us.

Should it always be roses and amorous crimes,

or tragic foreclosures of youths in their primes?

In Never Forever we love each other

estranged from the bridge at the terminus.

The wind isn’t high and the river’s not wide

and nothing is rattling under us.

Should it be nectar and honey and thyme,

or sirens and sirens and torn valentines?

Huffing and lusting and never enough—

hate tastes of iron and love tastes of blood.

11 (joust that hack built)

08/13/2008

Cruel crisis, and we, dusty dividends,

are flies fleeing, black mist, from the horsemeat.

Tuck your money into large plastic bins,

and hide your interest in moirée pleats.

There’s still time for lifelong love, or a mistress,

or to make new friends with the newly human—

or to elect a new death queen or goddess,

or empress or temptress, or vampire granddame.

We are all of us ample and simple:

fat and stoopid happy with our horseshoes.

We are all high fashion and unpimpled.

Luckless, the lucky, who can’t sing the blues.

“Viva!  Touché!  And take that, vile viper!

You shall quench the blade of this window wiper.”  

10

05/13/2008

Sad, alone, she is reaching for the world

with the mist of her breath on the window.

She wears a double string of tarnished pearls

and her wan eyes are punctured by sinkholes. 

She flies first class to Rome and Venice,

summers with vintners in Napa Valley,

vacations from thought in Los Angeles,

and hops the first copter back to the city.

She’s tennis white and can read a sonnet,

and pretends there is young in my stubble,

and writes of corsets like a baroness,

and can pluck a rare bloom from the rubble.

    / 

All of it lies, but what does it matter?

Poor boys like me are easy to flatter. 

09 (Seventy)

05/12/2008

Seventy-seven ladies of sorrow,

dear hearts, cruel hearts, broken hearts and true hearts,

none of us saints, all of us hallowed,

for all that we teased, and picked life apart,

for all of our dreams, like flashes of dark,

for all of our heaving, gone with a puff,

for lipstick-rimmed crystal, greasy and stark,

for ashtrays of filtered cigarettes, snuffed,

for the little we took for far too much,

we shall be inurned in chambers of want.

For the youth we lost: be mingled in dust.

Be one dying breath in a shell of conch.

Seventy-seven, ladies of sorrow,

farewell my loves, and wake me tomorrow. 

08

04/11/2008

I walk with the dreams of the child I was,

who walks with his father, handsome and hurried.

My mother is young as the first wish of love.

    / 

The ember of youth is a crumbling fury.

The fire is siphoned away by the wind;

the last wave of heat resolves into night.

    / 

A man is a paper sack full of sins:

greasy with donuts and earthly delights;

dissolving with coffee and factory work.

Calloused in hand and calloused in vision,

dim-eyed, dim-witted, the ember gone dark,

he kicks the gray ash for black coals to shun.

A man at the camp pyre, boy laid to rest,

donuts to dollars to donuts to dust.

  • Originally published in Fjords Review

07

03/11/2008

Her breath catches.  I am white heat and ashes.

“I tore it outta the flesh of the world.”

I am thundering to the annexes,

mad like a king, but only a herald.

My house is broken, cursed and divided. 

My lands are taxed, levied and barren.

I stand in the dancehall, a dimeshow crier:

“Visions of hell and glimmers of heaven!”

Not thrifty, not cunning, not friendly, not well.

Not nice to the in-laws on family picnics.

Promising all that a lie can foretell:

snake-oil massage, and vinegar vinic.

Recanted tropes of temperance forbidden,

as my seeking hand lies half forgiven.

06

03/10/2008

Come to me like tomorrow to a child.

Like the day is cradle, blue world below,

to the misty, tussled dreams, half wild,

of cherished seraphs in cloudy furrows.

Like the dawn will wake us to memories

yet unknown, waiting in our baby brows.

Our lives of snow to fall upon the sea.

Our little losses just the cheer of crows.

Wake me, my sweet, to our pinky bodies,

like newborn pigs in sacks of spiky wheat.

Like she is, she is, she is she: a tease, / an angel, and a laughing whiskey neat.

Wake me, baby, from this too too solid dream. / Exit the woman, and enter, the steam.

  • Originally published in How Journal

05 (little loser)

03/10/2008

Nobody loves me like my little loser.

She would lift me, love me were I less man

than the clenched fist and busted-up bruiser

and tearless deaf-mute Führer that I am.

She would love me if I let the luckless

in, let the little villain believe in

all the suicidal wreckers of his

rotten youth (and onetime glimpse of freedom).

Let the backhand swing and the frying pan

break the window and settle in the trash—

two stories thick with black bags and old cans—

that’s there at the bottom of the airshaft.

My little loser doesn’t ask for much:

just to love me until I self-destruct.

04 (adieu)

03/09/2008

She comes like a wrecking ball in winter,

razing the old tenement and with it,

plink-plinking, she shatters your ice to splinters.

No one expects the foundation: the pit.

But you always recognized the ruins,

the crumbling walls, the painted hearts—you knew

it like a child alone will know to spin.

When you lie down, the weeds will take their pews,

and the white sun is too far to warm you,

and only the wrecking ball, your gray moon,

laps the empyrean for bloody dew.

And whenever she comes, she comes too soon.

And you will love her like the broken glass

loves the wind that blows away the ashes.

  • Originally published in LiveMag

03

03/08/2008

Vainglorious somethings undone by time.

No time for lust or enlightened delusions,

no time for sweaters and scissors and wine,

no time for sex and regrets and seclusion.

All of these mountains and mountains of nothing,

and life expeditions and reasons to climb,

are dross to the flesh and dust to the touch.

A dollar exchanged for a shiny new dime.

Spare me the treasons and rhymes of our youth.

We’ll wake to the teeth marks with nothing to say.

We’ll sit at the window not wanting the juice—

And tear, like we’re dying, for air from the day.

My polymer china porcelain doll,

we’ll deck you in finery plucked from the mall. 

02

03/07/2008

Tire me with white lies and petty pretty 

complicity—we’ve never ventured far 

from here, preferring civil to the city.

The summer streets don’t smell of death, and tar

crossed avowals on mortar and concrete

are dusted away by hairspray and money.

The women walk fast, low cut and high cleat—

and men turn their heads, eyes sunken and puny.

Point to me, starlet, with newer good lies; 

watch my eyes receding, beady and dead.

Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride.

Gaze into the sockets of slime in my head.

We are all friendly and heavy with flesh. / Touch hands together, and pray we are blessed.

  • Originally published by Otter Magazine

01

03/06/2008

Sunshine or gold on a family urn

is a hue hard to hold, so I just stare.

How far did I come to have my brass turn?

Seventeen courtyards, with a cross to bear.

Beyond the churchdoors, she straddles the stairs.

The wind doesn’t roar, the branches don’t wave—

I am grounded with woes, leases and cares.

All of my kingdom for a little grave

where the happy pair are the fair and brave.

The grass is greener and the sunlight floods.

Nobody needs more, nobody needs saving.

The morning is sweet, but love tastes of blood.

And we are just weaving and she is just 

heaving and headstones are fevered with rust.