cinema vows

it'll never be perfect like 

breakfast at tiffany's, but

we can still get a cat named cat,

and i'll still kiss you 'i'm sorry' 

in the rain on 57th street.   

i promise to write all our fights like 

aaron sorkin, quick quips quilting

together until they hang between us in sheets,

all barbed wire and typewriter keys. (it's fine,

we'll use them as drapes). 

and if christopher nolan ever flips 

our hallway, i promise, i'll throw the gun away

before my subconscious can fire at anything

your mom bought us.  

and if kubrick's elevator ever opens up

and all the blood pours out,

i promise, i'll be there.

i'll have floaties. 

and even if this whole world turns 

out to be a fake, i promise,  

i'll unplug us from the matrix, 

and we'll go learn kung-fu. 

but more than this, 

more than any of it, 

i promise,

we will never, ever, 

become gigli. 

The PIT

Tonight I stepped on a lobster.

A live lobster.

Like really alive.

I ruined its escape. 

It made it out of the Whole Foods bag

and was headed for Coney Island.

Its sad little claws

bound by rubber bands. 

It's a hard life on the streets

for a lobster. 

Made It

If you wait long enough,
maybe
the destination will arrive at you.

U.S. Uniform

To show off spring
colors, they've assembled
rows of white ass.
From the back, hips
jut suggestively outward,
small swatches of plastic
covered by panties
in cool greens and blues.

But these are man-hips,
boy-hips in truth,
that line the window
in their garish fluorescence.
No man would contort
himself thus for show,
and I feel dirty letting
these boys thrust for me.

I walk past late at night
and see my own face
superimposed on the bright
briefes, the manifest bulges,
and wonder what they'd like
me to buy, and who would,
from one who would twist
even plastic boys this way.

If chivalry is really dead,
then maybe I should stop minding
its fontanelle.

Cabin in the Woods

I just saw a film by Joss Whedon
Where we all got to laugh about Sweden
But the US failed too
So the old Gods renew
Their strength, thanks to Shaggy the hedon.

One Year

It never would have worked.

You hate limes. You sleep with
one sock on. You dislike modern
art and Les Fleurs du Mal and you
were only so-so on Sufjan.

You never noticed what I wore,
what perfume I put on, if my
hair fell differently. You didn't
read Invisible Cities even though
you had it for five months.

You fought dirty, always wrapping
your words in barbed wire. You
like the Harry Potter films more
than the books. You run at 4am.

Who runs at 4am?

And whenever I'd lean over, you'd spread out,
taking up every inch of warm space under
the sheets and laughing when I'd kick you
and try to take it back again.

It never would have worked.

Though once in a while, I'll find
an orphaned sock under the bed,
a freckle of you,
left behind,
and I think,

what I wouldn't give
to have tired of you.

Extinction

When my internet lags,
I feel as though someone
dropped me in the La Brea tar pits.

Maybe it was a slow connection
that killed the dinosaurs.

AA

Tall blue silhouttes
How many do you stand for?
Anonymous all.

Wasting Time

There's an undeniable
beauty
in sleeping
till noon.

But why
does it feel
so wasteful?

Golden

The leash is a formality
they do not bother anymore.
The great oaf grins blindly
on his morning walk
which often as not
is in small circles on the sidewalk.

There's a labrador on his block,
and a full poodle, even a dane once,
but the plodding, smiling one
instills no sense of grandeur in size
as the others do. He is nothing
to fear, but perhaps everything
to the well-shorn man who walks him.

This is a true Golden. His coat
does not show his age, only the
sag and squint of him, and the grin
that so clearly chants each morning
I am glad for this one more day.
Plod on, Golden, and gaurd your block
as it will gaurd your body in the earth
one day. But not today, good boy, not today.

I Try Not To

But some days
I love you

from the top of my heart.

Ode on a Just Salad Black Bowl

Today I saw one in the wild,
cradled in a stranger's hand.
My base temptation at once was riled,
the sight was near too much to stand.
And I thought to snatch it from their grasp
if only so I could briefly clasp,
that beautiful black bowl.
Because my salad loving soul
longs with every single beat,
to fill that bowl with cheese, and beets.

But in my heart I couldn’t steal,

that patron’s hard-earned bowl
for I would know how it would feel
to exist with a bowl-shaped hole
in your lunch-time routine.
For my life has quite sadly been
bereft of the bowl so black,
and my daily trips to Just Salad lack
the ecstasy of that ebon dish.
O, to have one is my dearest wish.

Ye Just Salad deities, if you are truly just

teach me how this bowl is earned
I’ll do anything that I must.
These months, each day at lunch I’ve yearned,
to take the vessel to Just Salad
and sing a tender loving ballad
to my black-bowl of kale.
And now we must ask at the end of my tale,
will it be one of pain or pleasure?
Will I ever find a bowl, that I can truly treasure?

Anonymous

Anon,
a naan,
and on and on,
na Na na Na
na Na na Na.

Maybe it's just the thick glasses talking.

Lincoln once gave a speech so great that there is no record of it.

Every short-hand in the room dropped its pencil when the president spoke for the passion of his oratory rushed through the hall and filled every chest with a plea

that no other heart be slave to another. At least not in the truly physical sense.

Lincoln did not use a teleprompter, and no one ever threatened to shoot him through one, but we know that happened anyway.

He sometimes wrote his speeches on the backs of envelopes, and then did the opposite of what one usually does with an envelope,

gave his words to a thousand people once rather than one forever. A gift of the moment, they could never re-gift, the gift of feeling and story that cannot be matched.

I too write on envelopes, and playbills, and yes, even the occasional cliched napkin when I find myself without a notebook

but somehow I always assume the notes will be read.

Maybe I will turn them into a poem later, or a letter to my lover, or my intrepid biographer will dig up this coaster from the High Line Ballroom

and glean insight about how a young artist felt about the acoustics of a cello.

When I say something clever or devise a moving argument, I post it to my blog for the world to access forever and always. That is my gift, and it feels cheap.

Speeches are on Powerpoints now, delivered in advanced on the AP wire so that we can watch in real-time closed-caption and dissect

every position a pundit has ever stated. Every mic is secretly hot, unless you fail to say anything interesting.

How many uninteresting things we write down, for all the true pith that passes our lips.

I long for epistolary revelation. I long to hear a speech so great the alphabet weeps and lays aside its vowels in refusal to capture it.

We are sentenced to 140 characters, eight second sound-bites, scrolling headlines and the speed at which the hands can type.

The ears hear more. Speak to me. Let me watch you, and listen.

Basement Things

Tell me
we've shaken it off.

Tell me it's past and that
past is a thing that is buried
in a box in the dirt under
the floorboards of a house
we never lived in.

Tell me one ghost story
that's not about us.

Javelin

It's smooth arc
was a beauty to behold.

But

He never saw the spear,
until it burst through it chest.

It has been said that death
Is evil, for the gods
Will not partake in it.

So birth damns us all.
We should create fewer
Lives, to spare the world.

The only good thing
Is to live.
To live with the living.

we walk and guess what our mother thought
--was thinking
when she was our age
--our ages

it is brisk and windy, as usual
--colder to you
so I have outfitted you in Chicago clothes
--my Californian sister

how many more mornings will be like this?
where will we walk, if not to breakfast?

I don’t know when I lost
--grew out of?
that desperation to be as good as you
--to be you

I just want to keep walking
both of us wearing my coats.

sometimes words are useless things.
they make poor buckets for what
we mean to fill them with.

and mine usually have holes in the bottom.