Age Ain't Nothing But a Number

Hey,

watch your language,

buddy.

My inner child can hear you.

Advice for Life and also Excel for Mac

If you face a task
Where Control is giving you trouble
Try using Command.

Bang

I may become desensitized,

in my old age,

to many things that once

terrified me.

Dark nights,

now full of shadows

concealing only

laundry piles.

The hole

in my wall,

plastered over.

Middle school,

well,

finished.

But piercing noises

never seems to dull.

I fear one will be

the death of me.

The Talent

To claim no fish were harmed
in the making of a film,
producers must ensure no
single fish does three
out of water takes per day.

Would that my handlers were held
to the same requirements.
If I had a witty retort
for every time I felt out of
my depth, I’d be more fun at parties.

Illustrators favor bears for subjects
because they stand on hind legs like
humans, and are easily drawn in clothes.
Smokey couldn’t greet the public
without his pants. The Feds said so.

No government can make me wear pants
not on my own land, anyway. At least
I have that. If there is a volunteer
to draw my clothes on for me each day,
I will consent to play by bear rules.

Polar bears have it best of all: invisible
to infrared light, pelts identical to the snow.
The military tried to make armor from them,
until they realized the bears were bright white
and visible in ultraviolet anyway.

There is no part of the spectrum
in which I can hide. I am here
and each of my handlers expects
countless takes from me
and generally pants. Damn it all.

We come here
empty.

We leave
empty.

But there is something beautiful in
the barren symmetry of bones
to bones again.

Sometimes
I look forward to the lack.

Cavities

Little empty pockets

make it excruciating,

but I can't stop

eating candy.

scrawl

i feel so desperate
when i see how many
notebooks i have left
empty

Old Charlie

His latest picture might be one of Zeus,
his hair all flowing grey and eyes of steel,
searching out the woman he’d have next.
As a young man I’d soon mistake him for
a junkie lolling on my Chelsea stoop.
He won’t grin with his mouth, but embers
crackle through the haze in Manson’s eyes.

Denied parole eleven times, it’s hard
to find it shocking that today makes twelve.
Oh, I’m a dangerous man, he said,
and proved it with his shivs and contraband,
make it gruesome as you can.

The swastika etched on your brow is fading.
I watched you once, on court TV and chills
kept me awake all night. It’s what you wanted.
But Helter Skelter’s just a line from some song
about pie to us now. Your genius, too,
will fade from memory. Your eyes, I think, will stay.

The Cost of Comfort

America had

the warmest March on record;

my power bills soared.

City Prayers

Standing on a small bridge,
leaning, my face brushed by
sun, warm and soft cotton
candy rays, my fingers trailing an
old iron rail, exploring its
roughness, its divots, picking at
the paint with two fingernails
while I watch a tattered man play
a hurdy gurdy, coaxing a sweet,
aching note from its hinges as
he smiles to himself, to no one,
to nothing but the sound,
I think—
please,
please stay this way.

Granddad

Your filthy lucre
Dumpster pies
Salvaged metal
Mended handles
Cannot hide the bitterness
Does not hide your fear
Of the past you ran from
16 years old
Why are you still running?
88 in June
Are you trying to outlive them all
So you can spend one day fully satisfied
You sure showed them
Before you die?

Ice Block

I keep trying to write,

but all that ends

up on the page

is a list of Ben and Jerry's flavors.

Virginia

Children playing in the shallows with a toy boat.

Her body coming downstream, pulled away

From the stone she placed in her pocket eighteen days before. 

This was no Ophelia circled in fantastic garlands

Incapable of her own distress.  

Face down skin blue body bloated

Could Leonard even recognize her when he had to claim her at the station?

res ipsa loquitur

My mother is adamant:
I should not go to law school.

She went once.
She went and learned and argued
impassioned proofs that burned justly in her chest
inane sophistry to prove she could.

She went and learned and married
my father, who also went and learned
and they argued through a divorce and past it.

My mother does not want me
to go to law school
because afterwards, I'd likely become a lawyer.

I would argue things I agree with
and some I do not
but I will argue harder for the good, I think.

Most of all, my mother does not want me
to go to law school
because law school makes you arrogant.

To this I can only reply
with a chuckle.
I am a poet already.

Barcelona

Barcelona is the kind of city that changes you.

Makes you whole when you are not

already,

and opens eyes when you refuse to see

hard truths.  

New York makes you more who you 

already are.

Sometimes meaner,

or faster to calculate what time is

worth in dollars

then in Euros. 

Puffed mints:

out of place here.

This place:

so much left unsaid.

We speak but we don't know:

My favorite spring. Your mother's death.

How funny to only remember the body
When it hurts.

Certainty

There will be a crowd.

And you will rise

and they will clap

You will kneel

and they will fall silent

You will cry and cry

and they will cheer

You will howl

and they will howl

And you will feel them.

But you will know, above all else,

one thing.

And they,

they will wonder.

Don't say I never said anything nice about you

The sounds of the city
bleed through the walls,
settling into the room with us.

There are taxi horns freckled
across the kitchen counter,
a "fuck you, you fucking fuck!"
smashed into the fruit bowl,
a rumbling bus engine purring
from beneath the
bathroom sink,
the dull bleat of a
jackhammer
tapping against
the edge of
the couch,
in time with
the fan
of your
fingers.

There is an ugly tango to it all,
a graceless rhythm that
winds me up and makes
my nerves spark like
wires rubbed
too hard.

It takes the solid feel of
your chin tucking into the
depression of my shoulder
to remind me what
quiet feels like.

Some days
you're the only sound that makes sense.

Symbiosis

House ate Car in the middle of the night
or Car tried to take a bite of House's porch.
now if Car is removed, House will collapse.
a single violent moment altered:
House perched on Car
Bird on Rhinoceros
Plover picking Crocodile’s teeth
Shark with Remora fastened on one side.

love me, love me not

I am so delicate.

wilting in this summer heat.

my high voice breathy

I cannot shout.

prune my arms

to stay at my sides.

slender.

beautiful.

I am turning

for you, love.

turning towards you.

love. 

LSATs Ahoy

I would rather wait for a sign
But frankly I've gotten rather miserable
So something has to give

Substance

Some days, I just lie on the couch

ceaselessly eating crackers.

By evening, I'm sitting

in a pile of crumbs,

hungry.