Parties

Social circles cruise
past the lonely left-behinds,
at least they saw fun.

If I Sleep

If I sleep
I breathe ancient dust
onto crystal targets
mounted on my lips.
The dust drips from its soul-cell
coating my chin and throat
then attacking all movement,
shattering streams of light,
raining them to the floor,
learching the room towards total night.

If I sleep
I drown in visceral hourglasses,
counting chromatic kisses
sabotaged in suffocated adventures.

If I could only wake,
rip open the windows,
kicking through the panes if needed,
I could clean this weighted room,
swimming back to some unstuck melody,
free from breathing my dream-dust.

But if I sleep,
I stay asleep until the breathing is done.

Old Man's Song

"Only the death in my eyes,"
the gray man assured,
mounted in his hickory rocking-chair,
"can keep the breeze of life
from blowing in me. And that's why
I keep them closed."

He let his mouth close
around his last words and began
to blindly hum a guttural hymn
I did not recognize. The man
rose his arms into the room
with flamenco patience
shifting his ragged weight
forward in the chair. Worried, I
sat opened mouth with my eyes
shinning across the room
toward him. The hickory rocking-chair
lurched forward, tilting the hungry frame
of the man out onto his bent legs.

The man then rose his voice
as he did his arms, first
into his high neck then
into his alarm-mouth,
wailing, with his lungs
behind him, some holy song.

And I started clapping along,
staring, nearly drooling,
at my hands which had
naturally slid into the rhythm
without my noticing when.

And he sang for what seemed like hours.

Watching the Clock

I stalked the clock
following the falling
seconds, rubbing my hands

back-and-forth on the desk,
trying to drag them
with the rhythm of the day.

My dry hands scraped
the surface of the cheap desk,
raking the sound of desert rock-sand.

Rubbing the desk I found
my own time and sweat trails
swirled under my progress.

The scraping turned to
sloshing while I routed
my oasal puddles. The clock
evaporated from purpose.

Driving Someplace New

Your chest shook
in your flannel shirt;
you were a rattle,

jabbering on about the car,
the traffic, and weather.
I did not care

if it was overcast
or if we were stranded
in the rush hour standstill.

We left early enough
not to worry about mirages.
I could have bathed

myself in your saucer eyes,
glinting over me driving
and the landscape blurring

behind us. You smiled,
full of happy secrets
and plans. I only knew

because you held my hand,
squeezing with every heavy
sigh after hours of miles.

Again, again.

The clicking keys crash
into plastic pecks dotting
each keystroke decision.
Am I writing again?
I must be.
Don't hush me.
Let these fingers frisson
across whatever manifesto
they happen across.
Let them burn the albatross
from the sky and fling love
letters between the thighs
of every panting maiden.
Hands, surprise me.
Brain, infatuate me.
Let's send this empty space
into space and reflect
on the journey. Let's fly,
soar, and score in whatever
arenas we invent. There will be time
for form later. Let's just write now.

Let’s Go Out Tonight

I need flashing lights
and the 1980’s playing
in my ears. I need dancing
and a bass line pulsing deep
like twilight traffic on a Friday night
with the coast in view. Make me
a white sports car so we cruise
to synthesizer screens and count
the shades of cocaine neon distracting us.

Dizzy me into a slow burning morning
and another layer of stubble
rings on the tree of my face
counting my good nights.

I want camera flashes
and still memories
and to linger on the trip there
in swagger-tilted attitude.

Let’s go out tonight.

The Cake

For her first visit from Florida
she baked me a vanilla cake
smeared in chocolate icing,
Two layers of white sponge delicious
divided by a blessing of creme
with red-blotch organs
where sprinkles were baked inside
the monochrome fun-fetti surprise.
The thick brown icing palleted
delicate vanilla swirls, surrounding
a ripe-red heart in the middle.
The heart was ours, she said,
each slice seared from the cake
carrying a piece of the love
bringing her here and baked into it.

The Miniature Monster

The miniature yorkie downstairs
drives jagged yelps through the floor,
forcing disfiguring nerve-chill wrenches
up my sleeping spine. I fly jersey sheet

war-flags, my tossling an act of aggression.
Fortified in my disheveled bed, I stragitize:

I could stomp thunder down into its room
through these dying, paper-crust floors
like an angry god, bellowing
my case below, cursing the dog's cries.

I sheepishly decide, slugging onto my back,
this plan is reactionary at best.
There is no sense of satisfying vengeance
for the casualty of another night.
And I would have to leave my coven base-bed.

With more sonorious rounds firing
from that putrid, tiny mouth downstairs,
I explore alternate campaigns,
bellycrawling through the impossibility of sleep.

Some Haiku

I stole the ripcord,
baby. I’ll regret watching
you tumble away.

Panicked breezes flush
cherry blossoms on my cheeks
these winter mornings.

Craft another lie
with bent truths and half smiles.
You've made it an art.

On the wrestling shows
the muscle men grow
bigger by the minute, I
wrestle with dessert
promising exercise after,
hoping to mold myself
into their stern shapes,
capturing their hard work
in dizzying arrays of push-ups,
the results always hidden
under gentle burn and fatigue.

Church

The adults stood mouthing lyrics
and hearing the wailing pipe organ
singing the drone of an angry God, I
trembled in the pew, curled
cowering beside my mother's coat,
the congregation's chant lifting
the brazen angels' clinched fists
over guilty hymnals on Sunday morning.

On A Monday Morning

The sky melts from blue to
tangerine near the horizon line;
sprinkles of stars
struggle, fading back to night
so they may sleep
on the other side of the globe.

The sun rises and stretches,
throwing majesty at all corners
of the morning, and announcing
its blinding ascent to
Awake with bird chirp-songs.

I absorb the breaking day
in waves as the ground drinks
the dotted dew off the wet grass.

I have not slept in the night,
hungry for the clockwork
potential of an infant tomorrow.

The Whitehorse Winter

I chose Whitehorse because of the blistering cold and hour-miles of seclusion. I pioneered myself a cheap, forgotten miner’s cabin and hermited there for a winter, encouraging myself to write. Often, my eyes wore tired of the pale blind of the empty white page, and I sauntered—caped deep under an itchy flannel blanket—to the porch I kept shoveled and cocooned into the old oak rocking chair there. I tended over my wounded words while I rocked, pretending my steam-breath was perique pipe smoke. By spring, I had mustered a thick beard and not much else. I spent no other winters in Whitehorse.

Leaving Again

I tell her
crackling-stream eyes
and twittering frown
I am leaving again.
She believes me
each time I lie
about finally going.
I have turned her
into my younger brother.

I teased him on purpose.
He asked me to play,
plot our new adventure
excited after I agreed,
then frustrate and sigh at me;
I built clusters of mini-chores
between my yes’s and our playing.
I made him wait,
stuffing the in-between
with dozens of ‘just let me’s
and ‘right before’s, tightening
the tension of his trust.

Now, I tell her
drooping brow and
blank slate cheeks
I am leaving again,
toeing the tight-line
of her frail faith in me
to actually leave her.

Cartoons

I have turned your name
into a sort of music,
a jingle for a smile shop,
and lost in you merry melodies
I turn into a cartoon
stereotype. Suddenly
your skin is milk-cream
and I am a starving cat,
but there are no saucers
waiting at my midnight door.
After we say goodnight,
banished to the solitary
staleness of my bed,
my eyes spill under the sheets
looking for the stains
of you left in my mattress.
I linger awake, hungry to smell
your scalp and sleep-sweat
soft across my pillows,
clutching at even the giggling
ghosts we have planted here
deep inside the box springs.

The Morning Fence

The snap and lock
or doors outside
muffle through
the morning fence
we built from sleep
and our own closed
bedroom door.

In my roommate's black
tempur-pedic bean bag chair
we watch Ben Foster playing
Eli, a special kid, on that show.

You sigh and nuzzle closer
to my gray, sweatshirt-covered
chest, readjusting your neck,
trying to get comfortable enough
to pay attention and relax.

Neglecting the screen, I move
to notice the new space
for your head. You bob
with each breath I subdue
like a confused puppy on its side.

I want you to hear my heart
alive in me, drumming along
aloud in my ears, burning
for attention with its eagerness
for your delicate attention.

I am nervous, wondering
if I am breathing too hard,
hoping you hear heartbeats
resounding through me.
I wait

until your breathing slows,
you collapse in a line,
dropping still from head to feet,
relaxing into me to sleep.
I stop watching your head
to find Ben Foster has left
the scene, ending the episode.

Paranoid and nervous with the drunkenness of a crush,
I hope only that you have not decided to ignore our splashes
in quiet chemistry through flirted looks and stabs at intimacy.

We stumble on the brink of conversation,
the veins in your cheek burn and bulge,
I slide my hands against each other
trying to easy the corpse numbness there.