i got poetry in me!

so this is how it happens
in a room like a ditch
but with some satin,
bleeding from a tiny little hole in your gut
while the first presbyterian church burns
and your woman ties one off in her mouth.
although we do all sorts of things
against our better judgment
this is not the time to talk about them.

you’ve gotten snow in your beard
there are five bullets left

please come home now,
i’ve made you your breakfast
it’s on the table.

chad and i are working on this thing and here are some things i did for it

One day I will believe in something greater than what I see in front of me
I will be happy and understand my place in the world.

One day I will be a great man
people will come to me to speak on all sorts of things I never even went to school for.

One day I will have a job I feel is appropriate to my abilities
I will get up every day and go to work and I will come home and continue to work
because it will really be just that cool.

One day I won’t be so serious.
I will understand that everything dies baby that’s a fact and that maybe one day everything that dies comes back.

One day I will have constant faith in the indomitable power of the human spirit
I will attach no rider clauses about how mankind is inherently flawed.
I will simply end doubt.

One day we will all wake up and all our hang-ups will function like their name and just go away.
I will not call or text or email so much and worry people will forget why they liked me anyway.
I will give of myself more sensibly.

if i gasped would you be more likely to believe me?

we have gathered our stuffed animals and our soft pillows in a corner as a barricade against our childhoods, for they were fantastic.

and who says we grew into anything
other than what we would be?
we all have these little stories about little things
that we wave like flags
and paint on our bodies for important events:
once upon a time chris told me he was going to become a communist;
he thought he could look good in earth tones.
once upon a time i saw this woman and thought
she had a gap in her teeth you could drive a buick through.
and once upon a time you were abandoned on a street corner naked
when you were three
for a whole lifetime of thirty minutes.


now i cannot talk to you about the mathematics of facts and stories
the equations involved
the differentials
and other things I remember from old textbooks.
i don't have the head for numbers
but i'm pretty good at all the basic operations
and sometimes i can solve for x in my head.

we are up on the mountain top. we are getting prepared.

I want to examine this without looking at it
can we do that please?

it is a skill I have been practicing.


this is a dialogue we have
when I dream
which just means my eyes are closed.

sometimes you make me feel
like a stick prodding a wound
in the sun
on pavement.

sometimes you make me think of rome
and the pigeons moving through the air
like a sea of so many marbles on the floor
and other things that have mass
and take up space.

I am being harsh because sometimes it makes me feel like I am breathing in cold air.

and if you go as patty hearst
I’ll go as stockholm syndrome.
and I won’t even tell them
that you used to have a 21 speed too.

because nobody rides mountain bikes anymore
everyone is getting ready for the smooth ride up ahead.
my little brother’s bike has shock absorbers.

we are out there on the streets they are repaving,
I am spinning my tires
I am stretching for my back
I am trying to remember where all the cuts
on my fingers came from.

untitled

when I grin your diet giggles.

let’s sit on the half roof out my window
and pretend it’s your back porch.

if I clap loud enough,
I can turn all sorts of things off
and on

we can do this again when we are older
and too tired
to do anything but rock.

in my mind
exhaustion beats
paper beats rock beats
excuses.


let’s write this down in a note
and slip it in somebody’s pocket
when nobody’s looking.

if self-indulgence was the same as whale fat I could light the apartment for an extended period of time.

red delicious apples.
I just wrote this on my list
with a period. for emphasis.

it is time I took steps to make sure I eat better;

today I found an old container of cream
that I kept putting off remembering to throw out

and as I squeezed it into the sink
and had to rip open the top
and pull it a little
I thought about what you said about not drinking milk.

after I turned on the garbage disposal I drank some 2%.
because it’s all about having a sense of purpose
and making tough decisions

and I want to turn our second of three floors roof into a deck
with an awning and chairs and a view.

and you know

sometimes I feel more like june carter than john cash

that we all need to make decisions
texture aside.

I am going to buy some apples tomorrow.
the wind is fucking howling
they will be delicious.

something about the holy ghost

like a phone call that says
“what do you hear?”
“nothing but the rain.”
or the way an out of tune radio can
sound an awful lot like the ocean and the wind and trees
or when you can’t tell if it’s a skateboard outside
or a jet engine overhead.

if we got rid of the ceilings and just strung blinking lights
which we talked about before,
they could breathe with us
would we sleep on our backs or stomachs.


other implications of divinity:
the sensation of a very hot shower
on a mosquito bite.

I want to cover you in footnotes

during my walk today I saw a priest who looked earnest
and a denim jacket that looked worn
and literally hundreds of people
who all looked hungry
for something
to really sink their teeth into.


and I’ve been thinking about words I was vaguely familiar with
glossolalia
fidelity
out of order.

I want to be honest with you

I want to cover you in footnotes
and take polaroids of glaciers

when they’re not looking

I want to think about what life would be like if all the excuses went on vacation
and nobody was exhausted
and none of us had blue balls
and there was always something
refreshing to drink

XLVI

i want to fill your pockets with weapons

i want to power that blinking light on your back
with a renewable resource like tears or construction
or something else you can count on to take up space.

my love looks at me
& i look forward, with intent.

i say i have got two sets of headphones
& a vcr
& sixty-percent of the time,

I pick up on the first ring.

my love says this shows I’m desperate and lonely
i say it shows dependability
& think about telling my love to go take a hike
to see what happens when the light changes.

cough cough cough

last week I saw a woman walking
reminded me of an old wallet
the sort you keep things in and forget about
could of been a violin for that matter

which is something I should pick up more often.
another thing I think about picking up but right now: the phone
but I don’t because of a past experience.


when I get back from my parents house, I am going to wash the couch cover
and watch some westerns
and phone you up so we can eat shrimp until we burst
these were your words I just put them here.

how’s that

for being evasive.


and I think that if I could shoot the butterflies I would
but the older I get the more I learn how to listen to them
and it would leave an awfully big hole in my stomach
and there are many important things in there
documents I couldn’t get copies of if I lost them.

this is about the party last week

I saw a woman get off the bus in Allentown wearing a black cocktail dress and high heels
that kept getting stuck in the concrete and on her head
she had the sort of hair you find in a peroxide bottle
and I am almost positive she was drunk and it was 11 am and she was wearing sunglasses.

I am the kind of guy who answers the phone on the first ring
sixty percent of the time.

I’ve got two sets of headphones
but they’re the little kind that you stick in your ear
and sometimes forget about.

and we all had fun at the party last week
where everyone went home sick
where everyone got laid
where we sat in the back under stars and plotted
a novel a coup a military one with violence and blood and also the kind that is swift and painless and seems to occur overnight we drank lemonade with all sorts of things in it and saw for miles

I am writing this on a bus and in a room in my parents house and all the time, especially when I sleep.

and because most of the time I have time for what is in front of me and slightly off in the distance
at least as far as my glasses let me see and beyond that I think well,

I think of that party last week
and how we all stood there in our ties and finery
and how I wouldn’t ordinarily have a chance to use finery in a sentence
and turned all the lights on and off and woke things up and put things to bed
all over ourselves and the neighborhood and how these things start somewhere
and could literally go everywhere if you tipped it just right


if we all drank moonshine and played guitars with broken fingers it could sound okay
we would see for miles and fill garbage pails with cigarette butts
and turn the blacktops into beaches
and bury each other.

II

yesterday we cooked burgers and hot dogs
drank belgian beer
spoke of a need for better things

because saying it that way feels more apt.

when you walked me to the street that morning
I told you our couch was longer and more supportive to sleep on
like a pep talk
or a space mattress.

and when you looked at me it was like it was even okay to say this
and the walk home was the best walk ever
and I looked at everything
and planned a complete takeover that was swift and painless
in the span of forty five minutes
and five gallons of sweat.

when I got home it became home and I built a bed
and thought about what it was like when we built our own houses
and structure
and about revolutions
and all the things that happen when our eyes are closed.

XLVIII

i said this is nothing like it was in my room, in my best clothes
the shark in the tub just swims a little
& i listen as the hum makes things quiet down a bit

how fans do that somehow
how things quiet down if you drown them out.

i said to my love the other day what does it mean
to believe in something greater

my love said it believes in the concrete
because sometimes that’s enough
because sometimes because

because we all do what we can to get by
my love said I should start eating breakfast
that it could really make a difference in my day.

you say, "corn flakes have ruined my life."

something about the holy ghost

like a phone call that says "what do you hear?"
"something about the rain."
or the way an out of tune radio can
sound an awful lot like the ocean and the wind and trees
or when you can’t tell if it’s a skateboard outside
or a jet engine overhead.

if we got rid of the ceilings and just strung blinking lights
like we talked about before,
that could pulse with us
would we sleep on our backs or stomachs

other implications of divinity,
like the sensation of a very hot shower
on a mosquito bite.

strategically placed umbrellas, three

this morning I peed for a remarkable length of time
and later gave myself a haircut.

tomorrow I am going to build myself a house
and outline the floor plan in masking tape.
I am going to place the furniture where it belongs
and windows where we want to let the light in a bit.
we’ve been over the lights enough already,
and I’m thinking about strategically placing umbrellas
like the people at 17th and JFK
who use them to get a goodnights sleep
and bring the steam down to keep them warm.

this is really all I have to offer you right now:
a new haircut
a functioning bladder
a floor plan
and a series of strategically placed umbrellas
to keep us warm at night.