Favors

I wanted to ask
the professor if
he'd stay after class
with Elizabeth.
We needed to talk,
together, about
that night, where we'd walk
to, and the amount.
I couldn't pay, but
I had kept quiet.
He owed me, above
all else, and knew it.
I made a deal with
him; she was a gift.

Where is my whiskey
glass now, broken on
the floor under me
like a country song?
Will I two-step through
the jagged pieces
with a lost woman,
no clue who she is?
I don't think I'll dance
tonight. Just clean it
up, adjust my pants,
and meander out.
I'll slump back to my
truck, dropping the night.

Not Shaving

I refused the razor today,
neglecting a shave
so I might remind myself
I am a man.

The stubble masculinity
proceeds me, announcing
my roughness and
willingness to tumble;
I'll fight and nibble
the grit and gristle there,
in my near-beard.

And as its witness,
you will recognize
the beard's wisdom,
its grizzly bear gruff
and guttural, hungry growls,
grilling themselves solid
in the grind.

The manly freedom shards,
hanging from my face
as I age and grow,
into the smoothed
skin of youth.

I refused the razor today,
neglecting a shave
so I might remind myself
I am a man.

Bed Time

My eyes ache
like dirty blankets,
smothering my face
with gently hung
scratching and wavering
surges of hush.

I am rolled
into a drifting sleep
in the soiled bed
of my dirty clothes;
upright, my mattress
is firm as a gravestone
giving the posture
of a tax man.

I feign life
in the flashing tumbles
of consciousness,
strobing between periods of
teased dreams and descending
stillness.

I rub the roughness red
into my sclera,
hoping to flip
the draining pillow
of the moment to its
shocking cold underneath.

It is no use,
I admit to myself
that I am
slumber-fodder
and drift nobly on,
defeated.

On Spoiling a Crush

flattering fascinations
were never enough
to cover the bluff
of your infatuation,

so

your crystal snow flakes
fall fragrantly to the concrete
of our reality,
shattering into shards
of smell that stab
my memory into submission.

the transmission of peace
is interrupted for another
frenzy; again i am descending.

i blow kisses to god
for protection and mute
the jagged doubts
that self-protection
spins as safety webs
ensuring the quivering
insect of inspection
is not devoured
by the black spider
of the moment;

i am in the moment.

i bluster like an oyster
snapped from its shell,
there is no peace
in this tumult-ocean
and i am waved and
raked across the coral
that circumstance has
scarred into the seabed.

let me sleep and dream
of a softer nightmare;
my attention bleeds
to scab but i am
a ruby river of next,
next,
next.

and you.
you.
you bully your
tank-framed images
into line.

and i am powerless
to retreat, to climb,
or to swim at all.

i wavier and laugh
myself into fits.
again, i am descending.

and i blame you with
the reward of my spasm.

The Failure of the Prophet

i'm nervous.

before i even jump on stage
and pretend these wooden
planks are a word of
my own creation,

i feel my stomach's treason
bubbling and knotting
all my confidence,
kinking the hose to
my pure self expression.

and all the attention
adds heat to the already
burning, smoldering pile
of chard ash that is
my artistic ambition,

i had a vision
but this spot light
has melted it.

and while i prance,
singing praises to romance,
self-discovery,
hilarity,
and the shame of being broken;

i'll lament never hitting
the quick of those
original intentions,

the burden of the applause
is the proof that
i have failed.

i never meant to entertain,
i had only wanted to educate.

as Paco de Lucia

When the strings agree
and writhe, feverishly
plucked in the torrid
tune of the moment,
I wince in the pure
pleasure of my control.

These calloused hands
strike and scratch the
medal, pushing and
pulsing across the bridge,
as graceful and sexed as
the sultry dancers listening.

I shake my head in time,
violently dotting where
the song demands skill
and I oblige; again
seamlessly, again perfect,
again wincing until

there is a breath in the
song. And beauty intrudes
where intensity has quivered.
Tears will lick my eyes,
never falling. But the sympathy
is there. My hands feel the pain.

My fingers flash-flick and finish,
the finality of the silence
haunting the room in the instant
before the applause. The journey
is done and the story told.
My hands bow. I nod humbly and smile.

Alarm World

We live in such an alarm world,
set sirens for sleep and living,
and the nature in us has died
along with the ability to feel.

We stoically rustle against set budgets
of time and money and people, pacing
through memorized steps, dancing nowhere,
and stick parasitically to the lame rhythm.

We slouch and cough and die, all
in the same cycle set synchronised
with digital faces and micro-divisions,
draining away that inherent god in us.

We live in such an alarm world,
buzzed to birth then work then death,
wallowing in the set contentions of
this rigid and worn waking-day world.

Freshman

Our freshman year we would wake up together, pushing each other out of sleep and bed, and stumble to la clase de espanol, hardly on time and in our stale pajamas. We would find lunch after, doing the homework while eating, then crawl back to her bed with our stomachs full and, smothered in jersey sheets and feather pillows, sweating onto each other's chest, would fuck well into the afternoon, falling asleep until dinner and our late astronomy lab. These were our Tuesdays.

"you should go

down the street
to mr. reed and
find his cane
again.

find his cane
so he can stand
his drunk ass up
and try to walk.
take him to the
station so he
can buy himself
a beer. find his
cane and if he
needs a dollar
for a beer give
him a dollar.
don't say nothing.

go down the street
and help mr. reed.
find his cane
again."

Why We Should Leave

Now there is nothing here for us.

There was once kings and queens for
us. Smiles on trees for
us. Notes and kisses for
us. Hands and winks for
us. Candy and films for
us. Books and poems for
us. Nights and nights for
us. Sweat and moans for
us. Gifts and words for
us. Hours and wails for
us. Fights and grins for
us. Frowns and blood for
us. Scowls and crowns for
us. Winks and drinks for
us. Drunks and drugs for
us. Knives and hugs for
us. But the feisty angles have left
us, and this shallow, empty void becomes
us, and we need something. Anything.
But now there is nothing here for us.

Now there is nothing here for us.

if i could sing

i wish i could sing.
i would sing constantly,
i would not stop spinning
in my whirl-wind cocoon of tune,
infinity provided in my perfect pitch.

i would never stop singing.
in every breath would beat a new note, and
in every breath would unfurl a new melody, and
instantly: infinity in my perfect pitch.

i will never stop singing.
i will become a cocooned chorus, a constant gospel,
in every breath a whirling sonnet sung
infinitely melodic and note-perfect in orgasmic pitch.

i would make my name a song.

If You Want to Run

If you want to run I'll buy a gun and learn all of your favorite songs. I'll wear an old western shirt, find my boots and my jeans, and we'll jump in my El Camino and find a desert road to drive down until we both choke on the idea of our deaths while finding nature and whatever reason there maybe for us to be here anyway.

The
spinning cannon-ball
rapture that
has become my idenity
is hilarious
these
days.

Zip through the registry with me
and mark only expensive gifts.
Let them guess at what we wanted,
stranded, pondering frailly
over expensive guitars or dvds,
wondering why any new families
would at all need these things.

It would be our joke.
Our own little prank.