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.

Sitting

You sing him to sleep
pretend he is yours
kiss his head
watch him sleep
feel like crying.
It is so easy
to take him in your arms 
to pretend.

He changes every day.
He’ll soon be crawling 

away from you.
He won’t need you
to carry him around
to prop him on the wooden dresser
so he can giggle
staring at the sight of himself in the mirror.

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?

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?

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. 

Settling is what sediments do

Settling is what sediments do.
They fall out.

After I settle,
What will I use to drudge me
Out of the slurry?

I want to fall out.
I'm bored once I land.

Newton and Stokes wrote equations
For the way things settle.
Applied force, drag force, density.

The equations are for free settling,
A single spherical particle
In an infinite fluid.

Free settling doesn’t really exist.
Hindered settling is the only
Settling with practical applications.

I think I hinder my own settling.
I am the container walls
I run into as I spin.

Icarus

Did he die
On impact –
Wax-covered neck snapping
On the surface of the sea,
Or did he drown gasping
In the water now named for him,
Head low,
Eyes glassy and empty,
Unable to focus?

Once the heart stops
A brain takes six minutes to die.

Waragi

Overturned truck

A herd of jerrycans

While the man is being beaten

We steal gin

Lira Lira

War gin

We steal the courage

To drive away

Laughing

Without glances over shoulders

To see the mob descend

since April is the cruelest month

since April is the cruelest month

the lewdest month

the rudest month

I sliced out my trout’s spine

arched his tail through his organless body

and pulled it out of his mouth

I sprung spring

listening to him sizzle

my warped half whole fish

four minutes on each side

The View From Here

I'm wishing I could jump

From 90 stories up

And still land on my feet.

The Funnies

I used to read the comics every morning,
Every single morning,
While I ate my breakfast.
Even in high school.
And they weren't funny
But I still did it.

Lament of a Fair Weather Biker

Blowing from the north northeast,
I cannot feel my ears,
This wind's so hard I barely move
In spite of shifting gears.

The lactic acid's building,
Tears and sweat are in my eyes,
I hate these fit, fast cyclists,
I hate their spandexed thighs.

Cavalier

I didn’t see you
When you drove past this morning.

Did you see the kiss
I gave him on the sidewalk?

Whenever I see a car like yours,
I peer inside—
Though I don’t want to.

I have never seen your face
Through the windshield,
In the seat where I sat
When glass and airbag smokehaze
Hit me harder than your silences.

Oh, how fitting
That I crashed your car
A worn out metaphor for worn out
Words.

How fitting
That you fixed it.

Untitled

When you stare through the glass of the el window,

You can will poetry into any picture.

Stare long enough

And the metaphors overwhelm,

So seemingly full of profound poetic possibility

I cannot bend or form them.

Misspelled graffiti so large you can read it blocks away. Does ‘cock’ seem meaningful this morning because of the size of its letters or because tomorrow they will vanish under a wash of black paint?

The homeless stranger who screams Thank you, thank you now at the same intersection every morning, the words escaping from his mouth with only the slightest twitch at the corner of his eyes, as if he is not entirely accustomed to expressing gratitude to those whom it has never been due.

The light that comes on beneath your feet, beneath the sidewalk grate, illuminating a ladder as you step.

The arrangement of the words APPROACHES TO VALUE.

I am incapable of reflection,

of taking the lives I stare at and folding them

into prose or verse.

I watch them until I hear my blood

pounding behind my eyes.

I challenge someone

to make eye contact,

I am terrified they will.

Stare is from storren, to stand out, project. I do not want to think and so I stare. I try to fill these vessels, trying not to see the projection of my own hollowness through the window.

Is there poetry in a train car filled with rows of people, heads bowed together, reading the same newspaper in unison? Is this less of an act of worship than the screaming woman in the wheelchair who prayed for each one of us? Jesus I compel you, lay your blessed hands upon this bus driver and all bus drivers.

Clapping, singing, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Spam (a poem sent to me by a spambot)

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pant morgue mix lives!
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bingo feel grouch pink?
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graft module feed gooey?