Soggy

Rain seeped underneath

my duct-tape insulation --

dripped by to say hi.

King David

The king marched off to war
and left ten concubines behind.
They weathered a different kind of
attack and survived to receive
the king again, who cloistered
them and their spent fealty
as a thanks for their service.

The River

I went to rest

my feet in the clear

blue water. But after

a while soaking

I found myself

mid-stream

being carried away

by the current.

Fridge Note

Dear,

You are out of red meat and wine.
You are no man. From the beginning
I thought you would hack me up in
a trunk. Even you know you have not
been pleased that I am human and
eat stuffing or laugh at Larry David.
You thought we were a death-match
but I do not love your brittle soul.

Petit Chou

The Ants

I don't know what the world looks like
to an ant, but maybe the ground under
the abanico tree was their field of fire.
They marched right through the red-
petaled ground, but it could have looked
like something completely different.

Echo

Keep

calling

out.

An

answer

is

coming.

Externally Oriented Ericksonian Relaxation Technique

Now that you are stressed from reading the title,
Let's begin.
This technique is helpful as a sleep exercise.

Notice 5 things you can see in your space
right now:
empty lightbulb socket
shadow grid on the ceiling
streetlights
palm tree
(Who was Erick, and who was
Erick's son?)
window planter

Notice 5 things you can hear in your space now:
a puttering moto - the Doppler effect
distant traffic - the ocean
(Are there any non-Ericksonian externally
oriented relaxation techniques?) soccer
referee's whistle
bats in the wall (Does the
supposition that orienting
oneself to the external heralds
relaxation inversely signify that
orienting to the internal
heralds anxiety?)
creaky bedframe

Notice 5 things you can feel in your space now:
(Does this then imply the outlook
for mankind, based on the stuff
we're made of, is bleak?)
the knot in my back
the sweat on my legs
(Is this what we get
the something biting me
for staring into ourselves,
a despair fixed on the looming
maw of the human soul?)

You will notice at some point that you get confused.
Just close your eyes
(If sleep is an exercise,
do I really want to do it?)
relax into the confusion
and fall asleep.

Walk

He stops along his walk, to kneel

and unfurl a line of steel thread

from his pack. Knotting the strand

around his waist, he drives a slender nail

through the stray end and into the ground.

Straightening himself, he continues on,

letting the strand tighten behind him --

the taut steel forcing him to remember

that as he walks he must stay

tethered to the path.

A Toast

Cheers to your new phone,
may it outlive its predecessors
and always have minutes.

Fair Weather

I

hate

to

see

fans

streaming

single

file

away

from

their

team

just

as

all

hope

is

lost.

What

a

time

to

abandon

someone

you

care

about.

Tener sentido sentado

To make sense seated

When names get mixed
the tongue creates
a parallel
existing world.

The tongue creates
what feels correct,
existing worlds
unseated; now

what feels correct
making no sense,
unseated now
all, all but breath.

When names get mixed
making no sense
all, all but breath
a parallel.

Biscuits

I wish I could sleep

curled up inside a biscuit, nestled

warm between the flaky folds

of dough, melting,

a pat of butter

sealed away from the winter

chill, spending each night

wrapped up in the embrace

of family.

Shrimp Preparation

Place your fingers just behind
the joint at the base of the orange
brain, and pinch and pull
the head off. Then, peel back
three translucent strips along the three
main segments in the abdomen.
Finally, with your thumbnail,
pinch the meat from the tail
and pull off the exoskeleton;
if you have peeled the strips correctly,
the entire thing comes off, taking the legs
and swimmerets with it.
                                             Next, to de-vein,
stick the tine of a fork and slide it
along where the spine would be.
Instead, out pops a string of gut.
Some of them will have a light
tautened string, while others are
rich and loose. It’s as if they had eaten
just before dying. Yes, if I were
a shrimp, I would eat all the time
to ensure that whatever ate me
would have to go to extra lengths
to make it all very civilized.

Twenty-Two Miles

Twenty-two miles is not an appropriate distance between
my current home and my childhood one. Too easily crossed,
twenty-two miles afford little conversation
about differences in weather, time, news. And yet
when I find myself looking at commuter-rail timetables,
I start to think maybe going home shouldn’t take
so much effort; maybe twenty-two miles of unknown territory,
an entire un-broached borough, means I’m quite a ways away.

In terms of net distance, I have traveled one mile per year
in the direction of the nearest civilization hub
around which my childhood life was already oriented,
anyway. You’d think I’d eked out a fairly cheap existence
that way, but no. It’s expensive, traveling elsewhere just enough
so that twenty-two miles from home seems reasonable,
that in fact you start to believe it’s possible to possess multiple homes
with the same TV weather-alert tickers and breaking news. In fact,
each night at the same instant on the same channel,
both my TV and my parents' ask if we know where our children are.

The twenty-two miles between us are fairly ugly,
as miles go, and neither destination is quite worth it.
I know nothing of the stops along the way;
whole towns are just signs I maybe use as landmarks
to report progress on journeys I generally wish
I wasn’t making. Twenty-two miles for twenty-two years,
net distance averaged by age doesn’t account for how I got here,
but it seems to be saying I can’t stay.

Sundays

On days when I'm tired,

sometimes simplicity wins

out over effort.

I am become keeper of

two women
sent from
the equator
who share
the bathroom
with its
sink its
toilet and
its tub.

I don’t complain
much except for
the blood and
clots of hair
in the drain
clogging the flow
of water with
indifference.
I don’t complain
to anyone in particular,
just the backside 

of twilight and 

the spring buds
unfurling out the 
window at dawn.

They have come great
distances to be discarded,
these things, 
this biomatter;
it seems almost wasteful.

An unusual inversion: she who owns 

this windowed stone heap called home

expects me to scrub clean filth
that is not mine; basins caked
with grime and cakes of soap and so 
I am become keeper
to the housekeeper’s granddaughter.