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.

A Dream of Autumn

Today,
for just a moment,
I thought that it was fall.

What a lovely thought.

A Sister's Prayer

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

Good luck with the interview, little brother.

May He protect and defend you.

Whether you are hunting
or licking your wounds,
you always have a bed with me.
Follow my voice beyond the din,
out of the white noise of your stress.

May God's face shine toward you and show you favor.

You have always been the wise one,
to know even this will get better.
It is only on you not to mumble
or hide your face.
Your squint makes you look wily
in a charming way.

May He watch over you and grant you peace.

Good night, little brother. Eggs in the morning.

Trying to Find

Today I looked for an envelope
that I had misplaced on top of my dresser
some time ago.  So I began to
dig through a pile soy miscellany.

Magazines, receipts,
a ziploc bag full of coins.
Ticket stubs,
gum wrappers,
a fresh peppermint.

Fifteen to twenty
other envelopes.

Pens, deodorant,
a slightly broken comb.
Playbills,
my wristwatch,
a baseball cap.

Some particleboard,
a pile of socks,
freshly washed towels.
Shims, a rug,
the floorboards.

Aw, shit.
Now I better start looking for some nails.

Kai

For a time Kai sat in laps
and watched his father
make spreadsheets.

Now that he goes to preschool
Kai takes attendance at home.
Lines are crooked. Stakes are high.

Kai does make things harder
when we go bowling
and every dancing pin reads

Kai
Kai
Kai

Whose turn is it, Kai?
Will they make it to the lane
in time?

Run

Aching muscles,
sore feet,
crackling knees,
sandpaper lungs.

Bite marks.

Turns out,
I can't outrun a horde of zombies.

Gowanus

There once was a man from Gowanus

whose favorite dish was cow anus.

     He'd braise it in wine

     till it tasted quite fine.

That silly gourmet from Gowanus.

It's at night - when you're
just about to fall asleep - that your
unbounded brain starts to write
out your grocery list and wonder
if he is really mad at you or just trying to
make you feel guilty and, suddenly,
you know the solution to the
debt crisis in Greece and the exact
way you want to rearrange that
top-left cabinet and, wait, why
do we shape our eyebrows for
aesthetic pleasure, isn't that weird?,
and could there actually be a meaning
behind all the the seemingly random
ways we come together and fray apart and
come together and fray apart and repeat
and repeat and repeat?

Then it's morning.
And all you think is -
I have to pee.

Light

You may watch me
when I'm gone.
I wouldn't mind.

You could watch me
in my sleep now
and I'd sleep just as sound.

Put new words in my mouth
if it pleases you.
That's why I put them there too.

I think I'd like
to be made of light
and remind you, you are not.

Brining

It's a slow process

Water pressure

welling against tissue.

The salt burrows into muscle and fat,

clawing through tissues,

breaking down proteins, cell

by cell.

Pressure welling against tissue.

Saturated

Pressure welling against tissues,

forcing expansion in muscle and fat.

Breaking down,

cell

by cell

until the meat

is

changed.

Denatured

And constantly, the relentless pressure

Don't try to hold it in

Don't try to hold it in

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.

My Hipster Temptation

when you lean like that, 

all odd angles against brick,

laughing into my hair smoky and 

liquid and low—

i want to do it over again.

i want to drive into this

until we run out of road.

Pussy cat

I came back from the pharmacy
to find 317 open tabs
open on the browser
of my open laptop.

My poor cat.
She still failed
to find kitty porn.

Super Lazy

I never wish

for super powers more

than when I'm standing

at the foot of a staircase

thinking about teleportation.

Nesting

I do not like your machinations
For my posters.
Frames are for rich people and criminals.

In the dead of night I will hang
Construction paper chains from the chandeliers
And strange Ikea lights in the windows.

I will not hide a single shelf of books.
Not even my reasonably-sized Anne Geddes collection.

The knick-knacks are bursting with charm:
The Barbra Streisand doll looks out over
A Civil War soldier girl one eye who grins
Dumbly at a poster of dogs in smart hats
That make me giggle.

You may try for "refined," but
I hate to edit the life out of things.
Here's to a happy medium
(Porcelain, peering into a paper weight on my desk).

For Tupac

When I'm gone,

don't cry for me.

Just boot up our

favorite memory.

Haircut

After you'd gone, I
sweeping up, days
later, finding dark half
moons on the floor.

Howler

The howler monkey may be
The loudest animal
In the new world

But it is not the loudest
In my apartment building.

Simple Songs

Sometimes I wish I was

a little bit taller, and

I wish I was a baller,

but then I remember,

I'm sexy and I know it.

Lot

These are the lucky numbers for the Victorian lotto—
Thirty-Six, Twenty-Four, Thirty-Eight.
Your love for me is bound
between eighteen and twenty-four inches,
running down the length of all twenty-four
of my ribs. Maybe if God or the husband or
Her Majesty—whoever rules my trunk today—
would remove the twenty-fourth, I could breathe
enough to tell you this. Give my rib some fertile lay
of earth, bury it, and let it sprout
into a third sex with perfect proportions,
a sex who’ll never sweat with wheezing dreams
of what she’s not.
We walk wasp-waisted, wrapped
in whale bone, hugged to death by another thing’s
skeleton. Women of bound feet and stretched neck,
why do we love to twist ourselves into impossible states?
As if one pause, stopping at the edge for one, deep breath,
will wake us up to where we’ve come.

I resemble the hourglass that never empties,
while estrogen slips from one bulb to the next
through the tight cervix of the waist.
Always I will be the handled bearer
of your generations, always I will seem
the impossible woman sawed-in-two
while your hands trace the outline
and your lips move with the victorious dimensions:
Thirty-Six, Twenty-Four, Thirty-Eight.
Jackpot.

The Mind [according to Montaigne]

is like a horse that has broke
from his rider, who voluntarily runs
into a much more violent career than any
horseman would put him to, and creates me
so many chimaeras and fantastic monsters,
one upon another,
without order or design, that,
the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness
and absurdity, I have begun to commit them
to writing, hoping in time
to make it ashamed of itself.

Fingers must learn rules

If you write it screaming
you can't take it back. Retype
it, calm and reasonable.

Choose your brackets wisely
to maintain the order of operations.

Control and command do nothing
alone. Another stroke calls the action.

Unless it is all frozen,
escape may save you in a corner.

You have the power to shift, to be less
than a comma, more than a period.

The zero is twice
as large as any number.

There are four directions.
Choose wisely.

Nerves

Sometimes I get so jittery,

I worry that I will start vibrating

fast enough to just

disappear.

Stella, Tobias, and Snausage

I dont know where to stand
At parties. Too near
My companion and I finish
Every other story, start
Few of my own, too far
From her and I can't find
An opening to speak at all.
I am forever underfoot.
Lord help us if things get political.

Today I gave up.
Broke away from the two
Conversations loosely reigning
My efforts at sociability
To roll in the grass with the dogs.
I always know the right thing
To say to a dog.

For Taylor

I was drunk,
then hungover,
then I had an
iced coffee.

Now I'm okay.

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.