the schism and its dissonance

08:43 pm

Dear former, Future Self,

Remember that time in the steel mill? I know you do. Dad had you up on the winch, sitting on a plank of wood held by two chains. He lifted you up high into the air. And you were scared but figured it was okay, with Dad at the controls and all. He didn't have you up that high, did he? You were only up to his shoulders but it felt like if you slipped, you'd never hit the ground. Dad had the controls in his hand and he let you down when you really got nervous, but you did what you were moved to do. Wasn't it nice to have someone else do the lifting?

Or how about that time when you broke down in your first car,, and called Dad on the telephone for help? He told you it was fine. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes," he said. And he was there, in less than fifteen minutes, with a tool box and a grin, and all you had to do was hug him and say thank you.

You know, I think there's going to be one day, when your wife turns to you in the middle of a dark movie theater, with your daughter between you both, sleeping. She'll look at us and say, "I love you," and it will be so obnoxious to say, "I know," but it will be the only thing we can say out loud that actually means more to us than saying we love her back. And she'll get it, and she'll put her hand out to touch our face, and we'll remember all the drinking and the cigarettes. And we’ll think of all the long-gone nights where we don't even know what happened, though it was surely painful, and surely embarrasing, and we're surely glad to have forgotten it, and she won't scold us for saying something so stupid or selfish. She'll know.

One day you're going to look back at this letter, and you're going to think, "what a wasted time of my life." And you'll be right, I'm sure. We should have been out in the rain getting ourselves dripping wet beneath stony skies. We should have run through black streets with bright red spray-paint and left dribbling hearts on everything. That girl on the subway, the one with the green Navy jacket, and the long black hair, and the blue jeans? We should have kissed that stranger. But it won't all be a waste. Will it? It will all lead to love, right? To knowing we didn't make any of the real mistakes? To a time when waiting to do the things we're unsure of, ended up working out in the long run? I hope so.

Anyway, I dreamt of you the other night. You were at your computer, drinking can after can of beer and writing out a letter to yourself. I cringed every time you took a break to go outside onto the fire escape and smoke. You did that over and over until you finished - I thought you didn't smoke. But you looked so happy to have done something, even though you looked like you were dying while doing it. It hurt to see you like that. Is that too much?

Take care of yourself,
J

07:07 pm

I watch a lovely squirrel with matted grey hair
scamper up the fire escape below me,
with a wedge of knuckle-round food
clamped in its teeth.

She comes up the steps warily,
cautious. Eyes me as I drink whiskey and water
from my glass. I admire her tiny beauty and shivering tail,
notice the tousled swirl of fur along her side.

I smile when she's eye-level.
For a moment I fear a defensive leap,
the sound that she'd make as she came at me
through the air. But it's not one of those things.

She waits carefully, watching to see if I make
any sudden moves, and then continues toward the roof.

I continue to drink.

I watch her make her way up the ladder above my head.
Her claws click on each rung as she climbs.
I look across the way for the naked girl I saw months ago,
but the shining daylight lays a mask across the glass of the window.

I look up.

The squirrel is sitting on her haunches with a straight back
and a curled tail, and the wedge of brown between her paws,
spinning her food like a corn cob as she nibbles away.

I take another sip and think: this is the only thing
that has made me happy today.

And that is when the crumbs come tumbling down,
racing along side the building,
to land in my hair.

06:57 pm

Dear Marie,

Well! It finally happened. Your big day is coming up. I'm sorry I'm not going to be able to make it, but I wanted to get in touch anyway and send something along. I wasn't really sure what to send you, money or flowers, so I hope you like the orchid and vase. It was hard to decide on the orchid but something about it makes me think it was the right choice.

I'm at a small coffee shop at the outdoor mall we used to frequent back on Long Island. I've been coming here a lot. There are pretty glass tables with this mottled brush texture, like it's been swept over thousands of times. And the coffee's good. The Colombian stuff, tar black. There are a few sandwiches that aren't too bad. I think you'd like it.

The waitress is real nice. I wouldn't say we're friends, but I do talk to her here and there. She's been taking classes at the community college and I think she is a psychology major, like you were back in school. A little too young for me, though. Oh, one thing about her - the owners keep all the tea up on a shelf where she has to reach up on her tippy toes to get them, and every time she does it she reminds me of --- ah. Don't want to get started.

So, Marie, how are things? I know it's been awhile since we've talked, let alone seen each other, but I can't say I'm not interested in what's been going on. My friends have talked a lot about you. I know a few have met Ronnie, and they all say he's a great guy. Great job, good looks, loves kids. I kind of assumed, in some way, that you wouldn't have met someone like him. I sure haven't met someone like that.

Since the last time we were together I haven't really seen anyone else. I'm starting to think that I've been subconsciously saving myself. For what, I'm not too sure. I guess I thought if I waited long enough you might come back. But now it's official, isn't it? You're not going to come back. Too much time has passed and too many mistakes have been made. I mean, hell. Even this is probably a mistake. If I was in your position and I got this letter, what would I do with this information? Nothing, I guess. It wouldn't make any difference to me, I'd be fine either way.

I guess now the only thing I can do is let go and move on. Forever hold my peace, as they say. "Forever hold your peace." That's the line that gets me. That's another reason I can't make it to your wedding, Marie. And for that I apologize. I'd be so torn when I heard it that I wouldn't know whether to stand up and plead with you not to do it, or to keep quiet and let you live your life.

God knows I want more than anything for you to be happy. It's all I ever wanted, you know? To see you happy. I just never wanted to see you happy without me.

Congratulations. Please do not write back. - David.

07:10 pm

I have never seen a squirrel use a ladder properly until today.

10:45 pm

I dreamt about you last night.

We were kissing a lot. Our mouths intersected like u-shapes, like flung horseshoes intersecting mid-air, grinding against each other. We stayed like that awhile, pressing our centers together. I pulled the neck of your dress down below one of your shoulders and your body fell away. We kept on that way until whatever parts I can't remember.

11:42 pm - stream o the consciousness, typos included i'm sure.

Sure, it was a rural bar. And sure, everybody that comes in leaves all their empty bottles on the table, and throws their trash all over the place. They smoke their cigarettes and leave them snubbed out on the table or dashed out into the unlit candles. And they serve food, and the people eat half of it and assume the bartender is gonna come out later in the night and put it all away for them. But they don't, really. Usually the stuff just sits out all night and is still there in the morning when the breakfast drunks arrive for their screwdrivers and cold beer. You might want to call a place like that a pig sty, but even so.

You don't really expect a guy to come walking in with a hundred pound pig and saddle up to the bar. I mean, I saw him tie it up and all, right alongside the barstool he sat at. The poor thing, with its big round eyes, looking up at the guy. I think he said its name was Patty. It had this red collar wrapped loose around its neck, with the leash slung around the foot-rest in a tired slipknot.

A couple of the ladies, usuals, stooped down to pet it. They rubbed its head and scratched it behind the ears as it grunted and snorted below knee-level. What's her name, they'd said. Patty. Sure, Patty the pig. Perfect for a place like this. The bartender bought a few people sitting at the bar drinks and we all clucked our glasses together in celebration of Patty the pig.

I remember thinking that I didn't want to have anything to do with the thing. The guy who came in with her, a short irishman named Tom, kept lowering his mug down to her face so she could dip her nose in and do whatever it was that she could manage to do. Everyone else wanted to ask questions. Where the hell'd you get her? How long have you had her? Is she any trouble? Tom mostly shrugged his shoulders and didn't have much to say about it. He had found her on his cousins farm down the road, and since his cousin had enough pigs already, he was planning on just taking Patty out into a field and putting an 8 gauge slug into the side of her head. Tom wouldn't have that.

So, the whole time he's telling about how he came across Patty, I notice she's sniffing up the side of the bar. She was sort of running her nose along the wooden parts near the floor, leaving smears of snot along the panels which separated each section where the bar stools sat. Something about it was bothering me. When I was a kid, there was a dog that would come along my parents house, sniffing all around the sidewalks and the tulip patch my mother had planted. We didn't think much of it until the dog came up behind my father while he was snipping the unnecessary buds from their stems. My mother was looking out the window, a dish rag in her hands, and she sat there watching my father as the dog leapt onto his back with both its paws around his shoulders. My father fell backward and under the dog, and from there, it just went on slobbering and snapping at his face.

I didn't know what to do. I ran to the garage and grabbed a shovel hanging on a wall rack near his truck, and came back to help my father. I remember raising the shovel high in the air behind me, the tight bend of my arms above my head, and bringing it down hard on the dogs spine. I couldn't forget the sound for months. It's that sound that I heard, right then, in the gruff snorts the pig made below our waists.

I think you should get that thing out of here, that's what I think I said. Maybe those weren't the words exactly, but it was sure something close. Tom, the irish guy who brought the pig in the first place, gave me a sort of offhanded look. Like I offended the guy. I tried to apologize, the way you do when you're sorry but you're not really sorry. The pig kind of backed its ass up to the bar and looked around the room, nervous. Tom set his beer down and leaned down to pat her head.

That's when it got out of control. Tom, with his hand along Patty's snout, kind of lost his balance a little bit. And since he wasn't close enough to the bar, he made a sort of instinctual grab towards the nearest thing that could help him keep balance. It was Patty's head. I watched his legs shoot out and kick the bar. His head swung backward and his gentle petting lurched into a grab, and what he managed to grab were her hairy ears.

Oh boy. Until that day in the bar, with the jukebox playing Johnny Cash, I had never seen a pig rear up on its hind legs. Patty did just this, and on her way down, she hit the ground in a sprawl, squealing horribly, as Tom came right behind her and landed onto the floor on his side. They both collided in a way. I remember reaching out, not sure if I was trying to catch Tom or the pig, and dropping my glass of scotch on the floor. It exploded. Glass went everywhere.

Before I knew it, the floor was covered in broken glass, a grown man, and a pig, kicking its legs out in every direction. Patty went running off toward the door, trying to escape the chaos, and her leash caught. The women in the bar hollered and screamed. Patty came to the end of the leash and was choked back. Her round, fat body pulled a u-turn in midair and crashed onto the floor.

Patty spun around and bit Tom in the mouth. His lip just about tore from his face. He started to shout. He punched that fat pig right in the head and all of us sitting around the bar looked at each other, speechless. The time for being afraid was over. It was too much of a spectacle to be lost in. We just took it all in and acknowledged the problem. And before we knew it, the bartender reached behind the bar for the shotgun.

What is a guy doing bringing a pig into a bar? Sure, it's dirty. And sure, everybody sitting around the tap probably looks like they'd fit right in on a farm, with their toothless mouths and dirty boots, but what do you think is going to happen? Dogs maybe, but a pig?

11:34 pm

Oh, what'cha gonna do? Call your mommy?

I ain't gonna call my mommy.

You gonna call your mommy on this one?

I ain't gonna call my mommy!

Little boy kicks the dirt and makes an angry face. Bigger boy pulls the brim of his cap farther down his head and looks down at the dust.

Well you sure look like you're gonna call your mommy.

I ain't. I ain't. I ain't.

The bigger boy grins and shakes his head. The little boy itches his right ear and rolls up the sleeves of his red and white striped t-shirt, revealing his bony shoulders. The bigger boy puts one fist into the other and cracks his knuckles.

What're you gonna do then, you little dirtbag?

I'm gonna fucking end you.

10:51 pm

A man crawls hands first out of his window to stand on his fire escape. The rain is spilling down from above his head, dribbling down the grated stairwell and platform floors. He stares out across the way. The windows of the apartments in the adjacent building are sporadically lit, glowing warm orange in the dim, wet cold. He reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, opens it, and draws out both a cigarette and a lighter.

He cups his hands against the wind, hunching forward, sucking at the cigarette, and begins to light it. He takes a drag, puts the lighter away. The sky above is opaque, cast with low pink clouds and the arcing lights of an east bound jet. The bottom of the jet winks its belly lights and cruises high above the courtyard.

Wires above his left shoulder tap him as if to tell him of something, and he looks into the apartment windows. Blue light from a television set illuminates a pair of female legs hanging off a bed. A couple stands in front of a large computer screen, pointing. A bathroom light is on, throwing dark shadows into its closed curtains. A cat sits at a sill. Not much to see.

The wires tap the man's shoulder again. He turns his head to see them and pushes them behind one another, securing them into place. What is there to see? He looks across the way again. Those blue legs, the ones dangling from the edge of a bed, have crept further to the left. He can almost see their origin. He wonders about their meeting place, the woman who owns them, the spot he wishes he could nestle into. What bar can he drink at that will feature these legs? He imagines a cold beer and conversation. Small talk. A smile. The man wants to see that day, see those legs. He places one hand on the railing, cigarette in mouth, and takes a drag.

Carefully, he puts the cigarette tight between his lips and uses both hands to secure himself. He begins to hang over the abyss below, leaning outward to catch a better glimpse of the fork of those legs. Wants to see the face. With a little more distance he can see her face.

He leans further, his wet sneakers held firmly to the grating below his feet. Her thighs are beautiful and smooth like pursed lips, the feet wriggling as if almost to say, come here.

He leans further out and squints his eyes. The grating is wet and slippery, and before he can stop it, he feels himself lose his footing and tumble over the railing.

09:39 pm

updating again at http://adorism.tumblr.com

10:07 pm

Love is an empty port
on the shore of some forgotten town,
littered with derelict ships
and shipping containers filled with nothing.

You can stand on one lonely dock,
looking out at the horizon, waiting for the sunset,
and wait for your ship to come in,
but it never will.

You'll just keep hoping that over that
straight line where the light sinks under
and into oblivion, that some faint
grey hope will slink across the water
to pick you up and bring you
somewhere that anything matters.

You will mistake a cloud for something
like this. You'll realize you saw it all wrong,
but still try to make something out of the shape.
A lion, a face, a crucifix.
A little bird frozen in time with wings spread out
trying to take off to that same place
you wish you could go.

It's not worth anything.

The longer you wait for this ship,
the longer you find figures
in those dusty grey collections of water
the less inclined you are to hope for any of it.

Where is it going to take you anyway?
Farther away?
The disappointments bring you closer to yourself,
leave you with the knowledge that this port
might be all you have. And when you think about this,
you know you could spend the years to fix one of these ships.
You could labor into the night with hammer and nail,
banging away on something no one will remember.

Something small enough to be inconspicuous.
Something that can leave without any
longing for what had been left alone
but still needed by someone.

But you know what?

It's just too hard.

11:35 pm - fuck it...and sorry about the weird formatting.

( the olympics of love )

07:19 pm

Never Enough

For ten minutes
I was a fortune teller.
Knew ahead of time, despite the cold
sparkling concrete that left me cross-armed,
that what I said would melt away

in my memory, in the night,
and in her ears.

i stood through
two cigarettes of talking,
telling myself not to get caught up
in the middle of it,
and maybe, for the first couple drags
I didn't. But you know, it's hard
sometimes to separate yourself
from the past.

There's only a thin string
connecting what used to be,
and what is now.
Only a matter of chance,
heartache and distance, foul words
and the slow, thoughtless pacing
of the clock. But nothing tangible.
You can't look at all the things that
have happened since then, see the
loose joints, and break them.

Life doesn't work like that.

Life is a conversation between loves,
broken for a moment when one
sees the thin string and tugs on it,
and like the conversation,

it's never enough.

07:45 pm

The first time I felt like a wolf
wasn't when I woke up,
hot and shaking next to some stranger
with long dark hair and a sad look on her face
as if even a dream was an inconvenience.

It wasn't when I started waking up
next to all kinds of strangers, their bodies
all tangled up in mine, and leaned in closer
to run my finger along the rim of their ear
like some hidden goodbye between two people
who can't hear each other.

It wasn't when I woke up next to them and felt
guilty, like I did something wrong, even if only to me,
and one way for me to apologize was to lay there,
long after they left, and give up a day, two days,
to the guilt.

It was when I woke up,
with the hot sun beating down on the spot they had just gotten up from,
and didn't care.

11:54 pm

A Poem About Poetry

You cannot sit down at your desk
to write a poem only for yourself.
What you will begin is not poetry,
but a diary. Every day that passes,
I learn this lesson more and more.

Change the "I" to "You."
Address the crowd.
Make anything you take to heart
universal, so that someone you love
can take something to theirs.

If you go around thinking you're
the only real fish in this big sea,
then you won't teach anyone
anything. You need to show
the world that there's still a lesson
to be learned.

So if, at the end, you yourself
haven't gotten that great wisdom
you were searching for all this time,
at least you passed
the torch.

12:30 am

10:30 pm

Here I am. Sitting on this little wooden bench in the dusty street with my monkey, Tobias. It's a hot day in early fall. The sun is beating down between holes in the clouds. Tobias and I have been walking all day through the unpaved streets of St. Margot, spending time at each little market booth, pinching and prodding at all of the different important bananas we can find. Under woven canvas draperies, slung in sheets over bars above our heads, we pick up batches of bananas and sniff at them. Tsetse flies slink about in dark puffs beneath the shadows of the market booths. And because of the shade Tobias only finds the rotten ones, brown bruises denting their slender finger-like shapes.

It wasn't always like this. Tobias had a good eye, once. This was around the same time that St. Margot had its own banana trees. We never had to put out requests to haggling market men for fresh bananas to be imported from the far reaches of some hot, spongy continent. It was St. Margot that exported the bananas. The Americans would come to us. With their olive bags slung over their shoulders, they met us in our own market places, handing over American dollars for fresh bananas to haul off to their homes across the sea. Tobias would smile at the Americans. He wore his little Navy cap and tugged at his handkerchief. When the Americans left, their bags full and hanging low near the ground, spilling bananas on the soft orange dust, Tobias waved.

Together Tobias and I watched the ships leave port and head out to sea to gleam among the ocean. The empty banana trees and their bright, emerald leaves hung mournfully over the streets. Children ran under them and through their grey shadows.

Everyone in the village, myself included, had a monkey like Tobias. The monkeys sat on rooftops, flinging empty peels down to the streets. They sat on porches strumming banjo guitars. And late at night, when the lights were blown out and the sun set below the lip of the earth, the monkeys would sneak around St. Margot, climbing into the windows of people's homes to rearrange all of the cupboards.

11:26 am

Thus far, this timeline is 100% accurate.

09:13 pm - another 5 minute fun rough

"God, Mirabelle. How could you be so fucking stupid?"

I said the words out loud before I had a chance to think about the harm they could do. I didn't think I'd break her, no. I knew from the impish smile she curled at me that it was a mistake all the same. Harsh words could be used against me. And now that they were out in the open, those words, the profanity and the insult, I looked down at the floor. The separated halves of the wooden statue looked like delicious brown hams. Their lacquer made them shine like they were wet.

I guess I had it coming. I break all her shit. I threw a hornet's nest into the rabbit hutch. I pulled more necklaces off that girls neck than I can count. And the only way to make up for something like that, no matter how many times you do it, is to either replace the shit or buy a fistful of flowers. The flowers are cheaper. And easier to find. I get home late from work and don't even have to think about what I'm doing. I slip out from between the closing doors of a subway car and walk downstairs. The man at the counter knows my face. "Again?" He'll ask me. I'll nod and pin down a bill with two fingers, sliding it across the table. The rumble of the elevated train rattles the tins of chewing tobacco behind him.

But after all, what's a bitch going to do? They only take so much. They're like dogs. If you treat a dog like shit long enough, it's going to get the last word. Rob, the guy down the block, used to own a rottweiler. He kept the thing locked in a cage all day and when he'd get home from selling, he'd kick over the cage and let the dog bark and snap at the bars. He pushed ground meat through the silver, crisscrossing grid and drove broom handles inside right behind it.

It went on for years and the dog got worn down. Her cowlicked hair curled in greasy knots. It learned to give up. I was over his place once while he left burning newspaper balling up into a black sponge near the dogs face. Nothing. Well. I'll be damned if the thing didn't bother tearing off Rob's face when he rarely let her out. Dog just sat there. She put one paw across the other and stared emptily into nowhere.

I treated it well enough, thank God. The day Rob left her out and fell asleep, I was sitting with my ass up on the counter pulling at a joint, my legs dangling above the kitchen tiles. I didn't care enough to do anything while she went for him.

Anyway, the bitch broke my fucking statue. I looked at her, astonished. "Mirabelle, you know what you just did?" She looked at me from under her translucent green visor and told me she was going to bingo. "Bingo," I said. I didn't even have the words.

07:05 pm

Only for the Sweet Promise

I never liked Cracker Jack popcorn.
Even as a kid.
Couldn't stand the taste: the flat,
bland staleness shelled in saccharine.

Or the wide-legged sailor and his spotted
dog, attentive, looking out toward you
and beckoning you to listen to Jack,
to take his salute as confirmation that
1 oz. of candied popcorn and peanuts
are just the right thing for your right now,
your always.

I never finished a single box.
I got to the prize and its sweet promise
and my journey with Jack and his dog
would end.

I held the tiny paper envelopes in my hand
and tore them open and was always disappointed.
I never found a life-changing monument,
a zeppelin. No tanks, no guns, no spaceship.


But I got older. I didn't expect real prizes
to always be so big. You don't need to
soar on the back of a pterodactyl to
know what it is to fly.

Hovering above the world takes no more
than a pat of butter melting on soft bread
that your grandmother made in the kitchen
of her trailer home in Maine.

Do you remember the first time a girlfriend
leaned in close and handed you a folded
piece of ripped looseleaf paper? You held
it in your hands for a moment. You looked at
her, at the smile on her face and at her big,
worried eyes.

You knew, just knew, that it
couldn't be bad, and you just wanted to keep
the paper and whatever it could say, and the two
of you, and the way that it felt, in your hands
like that forever.

You read it and it said,
"I love you." And it was everything you wanted
and needed. But somehow, having to know it,
and to admit it, meant that you were one step
closer to knowing what happens after
all of the moments like that.

So when I finally got around to opening
this box of Cracker Jack popcorn,
I started like always. I couldn't finish it.
I got to the prize and stopped digging.

I had that slip of paper in my hands
and all the hope it represented
before it would let me down,

and I didn't open it.

10:44 pm

A little boy stands ankle-deep
in wet leaves near the edge
of the woods. A maple leaf
clings to his left knee, stuck
there by its wetness. His blue
high shorts are ringed in white
and his tangled brown hair runs
in dark vines across his temples.

He picks the black leaf from his knee,
thinks about the broken windshield.
About what his sister must have looked
like holding her new daughter close
to her chest like a football, the father,
her ex-husband, smashing his way
through the webbing glass with his
bare fists.

There was that time, out back, standing
on the hood of a red chevrolet,
lifting a baseball bat high into the air.
The sound of it bouncing off the glass
was insignificant. His hands absorbed
the shock, the stinging ran up along
his fingers and into his wrists. The windshield
broke five swings later, splintered and
sounding like cracking chips of thin ice.

What sound did the glass make that night,
amidst his screaming sister and her
cannon hands blasting the ignition with
misdirected keys? Amidst the driver's side mirror
coming loose with a snap and hanging
by a thin black cable along the door?
Amidst the kaleidoscope of police lights
and sirens? Amidst the stars winking like devil cats
in vast blackness? Amidst trees bending and groaning
in the wind? Amidst the shrill wailing of a baby

too young to know anything but

the terrible noise of it all?

12:37 am

fail

12:02 am

That bird - I've never seen wings
like that on an animal.

The baited wire
in my hands,
all that clicking and searching.

The label on the back
of the vitamin bottle.

Cheap flights to Europe,
backpack reviews.

How do you ask for food
in Korean
on a shoe-string budget?

An ex-girlfriend
has anxiety. I'll help.

Anything makes a good excuse
when you've got things to do.

08:54 pm

All I Ever Wanted Was Everything

I guess one of the wisest things my first girlfriend
had ever said to me was, "you just feel sorry for yourself."

I can't pretend to say that I really know what feeling sorry
for myself would even mean. I remember asking her.
We were in the car and the arm rest was pulled down
between us. We both leaned on our respective doors.

She said something about how feeling sorry for yourself
is something or rather. If I only just. Then I'd.
Which is my point - I can't remember what she said.
I can only guess about what it means to feel sorry for me.

I guess that I could know, if I tried: maybe feeling sorry
is all I've ever really felt. Like I've done things
that I can't take back, even if I don't know what they
are. Caught red-handed. My face flush, the cold
needles of knowing I've been found out.
Not by anyone else - but by myself.
Isn't that enough to feel sorry?

When I was a little boy, my mother led me by the hand
out of the kitchen and onto the porch. We went down the wooden
steps together and I brought my bare feet into the grass
where a green knot lay with its eyes blinking, its bubbled
skin heaving in the small, stony body of a frog.

I brought my foot down, took its nothing-life and looked
up at my mom. I want to remember the words she said
to me, but there's nothing. Only the ghost of reproach
and, "he knows not what he does." And though at the time
I may not have, today I am the glory of hindsight.

Little things like that never leave me.

I'm sorry for what I've done - the actions I forge into
what make me real only carry their consequence.
They're in a line before me, and the apparitions
of unmade choices stand behind them a hundred deep.
Nothing is ever good enough because something will
always be left out.

My biggest apology goes to myself,
for tying up my soul and making unnecessary demands.
The kind that I expect the rest of the world to meet, but
can't even manage to make on my own.

I guess she was right.

10:37 pm

Everything Will Be Alright

For a second, I feel sorry for the man
stiff in his wheelchair with a crumpled
receipt pinched between his dry lips,
the wire-spoked wheels on his chair slowly turning
as he circles around the black garbage bins,
when I see the sticker he's affixed
to the back of his seat: "Lost your cat?
Try looking under my tires."

09:44 pm

( this is hilarious )

12:35 am

You're on a dark corner, a dark night.
Smoking cigarettes under a dim light
and blowing clouds of dark smoke into the bright
shine above you.

Someone with dark eyes under
dark glasses has enough interest to wonder
just what another
man like you is up to,

"What are you doing out so late?"

I'm thinking about all the ones I
loved too much or
didn't love enough.

"That's too much to think about,
don't you know that worrying too much
about what might have been
will run a man into the ground?"

I don't,
and I do.

But it's all I know -
how to love someone enough that
I give myself a reason to keep on
bothering.

How to let them know
how much I feel
by not saying anything.

"Try, then.
Tell yourself that at some point
something is going to come of it."

That's alright, man. I know.

I just hope she
gives a shit.

08:26 pm

have to look into the mirror
to be centered

09:09 am

I've re-opened the treasures at
the end of a spectrum
and found nothing.

Tried to dig my way out of the grave,
each scooping hand
drawing down a tangle of worms.

I'm so glad to be home;
what makes the whole play
a tragedy - in the sense that
I should find the strength to break free -

isn't that I was at the pinnacle of myself,
that I rushed from grace
like beer from a lilting glass

but that I never left this mess
in the first place.

11:43 pm

saturday night,

i was on my way to see
David Lehman reading poetry
at the KGB bar.

I ambled beneath a stony sky
toward the subway station,
thinking a lot about
what a man like me
needs to be happy.

it wasn't quite dark
when I arrived at the bar's high steps,
their path like a mound of broken bones to climb.
I almost didn't go in.

But between David and some poet
who somehow procures a level
of respect that i cannot understand -
with her reading voice so cliche that I wanted
to leave before she finished -

I remembered:
friendship and generosity.

I bought the woman next to me a drink,
whatever she wanted, I told her.

She was in her 30s at least,
her dark hair pulled back, shining
red from the lights above the bar,
with a few blades of grey
hooked around her ears.

I don't know her name.

The last thing I said to her,
"this beautiful world..."
left her puzzled and groping
with her eyes

for some tangible something
to illuminate something
that i don't think is tangible anyway.

I left and met some friends.

We drank, and I
laughed as loud as I could.

I slipped away for a little while and
took the long way.

I don't know the name of the man i gave cigarettes to either.

I almost stepped on him.
I was rolling a cigarette while walking,
on the corner of
st. marks and 2nd avenue,
as he asked for "49 cents or
something to eat, or hey man,
can i get a rolly?"

I only stopped for
one car to pass
and said,
"You can have the whole thing."

I beamed magnificently,

and with every face in the street,
I shared my smile.

New York has never looked
as beautiful as it did that night.
I told my friends I'd
never been so happy.

I tipped like I
was dying.

And by 6 am,

married women wanted to take me home.

11:02 pm

Boy, is it hard to start everything lately. I'm the only person in this library besides its employees. Even the employees are just paid greeters. In an hour, they'll walk around the perimeter of the computer area and tell me that I've only got ten more minutes. Ten more minutes, they'll say. It will be that predictable, that pregnant with command. Right now they're talking quietly among themselves, the two greeters behind their wooden desk. When you first enter the library, there they are. To your left, beyond the empty couches where nobody ever sits. Their heads poke out from behind the low, wooden wall, with faces of supreme disinterest.

Hello, you say. They do not respond. They never respond to your greeting. It is in this fashion that they can't even perform their simple, secure, and overpaid position correctly. But they will get you when you leave, don't you worry. Have a good night. They will say it to your back as you leave. When you turn to acknowledge their buoyant pleasure in your departure, their faces have already tilted downward at their desk. It continues this way. It will always be this way, as long as you come to this library.

10:48 pm

mom,
why do i feel so
everywhere?

our bodies are only
the universe sighing.

love, infinite

10:11 pm

Vasectomy

A man is scooping condoms out of his cesspool with a long net. He says to his wife, you know better than to flush certain things down the toilet. A few yards away, with a hand over her mouth, she says, I'm so sorry. Ten years ago, after having two kids, she could do nothing but beg him to get a vasectomy. It's not what I want, he said. What if our love falls apart? She looked over at him with almond eyes and whispered, impossible. Besides, you won't have to wear rubbers anymore. Regretfully, he agreed. I'm the one who's sorry, he says. Without speaking, she goes into the house.

10:34 pm

Sunday night and I'm sitting here with a six-pack. A box of beer bottles. Trying to get drunk enough that it don't hurt my hand when I hit my kids. I hear wings in my ears. I think that if I drink these other two beers I'll be strong enough to walk my ass home. "You can't live here no more." I know, but what's the harm in trying? I'd sit on this green couch for a week if it'd mean you'd burn those divorce papers. Where m'I going with this anyway? I bought this six pack with the money I owe in child support.

Well hell, I'm the one buying the toys. Can't I enjoy myself? You bring the kids to the park and pay for those bicycles. I offered you bicycles just last week and you turned me down. But you'll bring the kids over someplace in a ferry and let them ride for five dollars an hour? If anything, I hope you see some nice birds while you're skirting across the Hudson in those floating coffins. There isn't shit around here. No flapping. No birds, no butterflies. Just rats with wings, shitting on all the window sills.

I'm watchin' you though. Watching the days ahead of me stretch out real nice and slow like. That's the secret, you know. Taking it one step at a time. Taking it slow. It's the only way you ever see anything.

12:30 am

... where they retreated to the introduction of their cut-rate boredoms, fingering their earrings while listening to their radios with eyes closed, or watching television in their underwear with feet perched on the rim of a reconsidered book shelf, and they stank. stank to high heaven. of plastic bottle liqueur and old things. crumpled on the floor were wet paper bags, devoid of recently eaten deli meat plucked with bare fingers and dangled perilously over their own mouths, as if over a nest filled with yellow teeth instead of birds ...

10:51 pm

Hello?
Hello?

Who is this.
No one, really.
What is that you want?
I don’t want anything.
Now, don’t give me that. You must want something.
If I wanted something, I would already have it.
Now, that’s enough of that. What do you want.
Nothing.
Well, have it your way. I’m hanging up the phone on you.
Very well.
Good bye.
Good bye.
Good bye, then.

09:10 pm

How do the days
sink like they do,
backward,

into an open mouth
gasping,

without leaving you time
to lift up your hands
and sift out the good parts?

12:59 am

like a machine

let out the cold oil
and wait

03:47 pm

I no longer chase a woman. I've been tried in the court room of the heart too many times to bother. I used to think, when I was younger, that I would grow up to be wiser, bolder, assured. That I would wake up in the mornings, turn in my bed and throw the sheets off. I would put my feet on the floor, slapping my way through my bedroom toward the kitchen. I'd open the screen door and and nose my way onto my porch and that would be it.

But nothing ever ends that simply. The whole world is one amorphous, unresolvable fog of effort. The question comes when one is forced to act: How lazy can a man become?

11:58 pm

I may have gone on a long time now without stopping to notice the roses. I will not call you on the telephone to ask you how you're feeling. I will not remember your birthday.

I will piss in your flower bed in spring.

I just forget. That's all.

07:49 pm

Short of breath. I'm not filling up, no matter how deeply I breathe. It's just not reaching my limbs, my starved arteries. I'm laughing because you're good. It's been quite some time. Longer, really. Longer than some time. Been forever. Explains a lot. Guess I've been wasting time. What else is new?

Still, glad though. The minutes are symbols. A lit cigarette, saturday mornings burn holes between my ears. A band of grey twisting, rising upward. Wake up with a finger in your mouth, God. Then let the memory rats click beneath the doorway.

Go back to sleep.