useless art

outside of the
City of Hartford
Office of Human Relations
the lobby clock
is broken

so we treat the minutes
as distance - mark
the milestones,
do our time,
and then run like hell.

keys quickly click
into locks, footfalls glance
off brown marble,
carousel doors whisper
to a distant stop

leaving beads and blankets
and the sound of vacuum
cleaners
to cover our tracks

across leveled
land and gutted factories
perched on the banks
of the Connecticut River

storefronts spread across blocks
of buildings holding brick
and little else we like
to see

because when someone
gets shot
on Franklin Avenue,
Main Street just watches

for the spark
of the muzzle
and the glitter
of cop car lights
off wet asphalt,

and closes the blinds.

Hello
do you
like
stuff?

Because
I like
lots of
things

And I
want to
talk to
you
about
things
I like

Because
I think
I like
you
and want
to talk

so I hope
you like
me
and we can
talk

about like
like like
like,
like

and stuff.

So what
do you
like?

into something special.

A near-sighted klutz
falls into a closet,
opens his shirt,
and becomes immortal.

An aloof millionaire drenched
in Armani and Maker’s Mark
eschews his fortune
for a grim embittered fury.

But that’s kid stuff,
ten cent pulp fiction,
dodo history.
It won’t help me understand
what I’m trying to do,
swinging between buildings
and cracking jokes
between uppercuts
when I can’t make rent
and all I have in my fridge
is month-old milk.

No one told me
with great power
comes the need to lie
to people I love to protect them
from the nonsense I perpetuate
cavorting with four-colored
lunatics and Raymond Chandler
rewrites.

No one told me
the same brick walls
would come hurtling towards me
every time I tried to do
the right thing.

No one told me
I’d still feel the bite
on the back of my hand
when I try to fall asleep.

This great power
killed my uncle, my parents,
my girlfriend. This great power
allows me to scurry across
walls, hide in alleys, skulk
in the dark like the creeps
I catch, the creeps I work with.

The night is like rain, and
I’m a worm squirming across
the pavement, free to hide
behind this mask
as if it’s only a costume,

as if I’m not really some squat bug
waiting for someone’s foot
to put me down.

“A Filibuster is the term used for an extended debate in the Senate which has the effect of preventing a vote. Senate rules contain no motion to force a vote. A vote occurs only once debate ends. The term comes from the early 19th century Spanish and Portuguese pirates, “filibusteros", who held ships hostage for ransom.” (from the C-Span Glossary)

Ladies and gentlemen,
in these times of war and peace,
in this state confusing clarity,
it is paramount that we stand
united and undaunted
against my common enemies.

Yes, we, as patriots, must
stand tall in the face
of outrageous fortune
and send a message
to those that would steal
our stainless pride and test
our vexing resolve.

Because to do nothing
while fallow nations
are burdened by a gross
misappropriation of
certain inalienable rights
would be a callow act
of restraint.

And we have shown no restraint
in our just quest for vigilance,
for this is a struggle of passion
and we must push onward,
push past any doubts or misgivings,
push past any vainglorious maidenhead,
push farther and stronger and harder
until we come upon that far distant day
when we can be free to release our less
fortunate brothers from the yokes
and shells of blissful ignorance
with exemplary impunity.

And to those of you hiding
behind notebooks and pens,
those that question our
cavalier attention to detail,
those wolf-eyed sheep pledging blind allegiance
to fickle facts and history shorn of spin -
this endeavor is a matter of expediency.

Matters of such grave importance
cannot be left to the slippery grip
of crude furtive bureaucrats
pawing our civil liberties
like a meek field mouse.

We have sent nothing less than
a brilliant message, a telling message,
a message without doubt or pause,
a message far beyond any mundane reason.

This is a new Rome, with just flags flying
fully justified over land and sea,
a fount of freedom awash in
a thousand points of modern courier
shouting these bold black strokes
across bandwidths of every creed and color,

marching coffers and caissons
and banged up snare drums
through throngs of screaming heathens,
and stalwart stumblebum bugle boys
carrying burlap sacks of crabapple seed
across burst red and purple plains
once left to uneven exchanges of
ad hominem for mea culpa.

We sow these seeds in discontent continents
to resolve rights wronged by the unsteady
hands of previous administrations,
to steer this circumspect course
through chilling choppy waters
thought shallow and unnavigable
by all, save those willing
to get wet.

Because the voice of freedom
is the voice of one true God
undivided and unmatched,
with liberty and justice
for us

patriots.

After the first time we kissed,
I realized my glasses were in the way.

I placed them on the dashboard,
lenses smudged and streaked,
turned away from us.
We were kissing in my truck,
in her parking lot, with the headlights
bathing the brick wall and our cool
breath pawing the windshield.

She paused and asked me why the lights were on
if we weren’t actually going anywhere.
Good question.

Not five minutes before,
I could barely open my mouth
as the anticipation kept us quiet,
but just as I was going to make the attempt,
just as the question was about to jump
from my tongue,
she asked me to kiss her

and I was so shocked, to think that
she was actually there, with me,
actually sitting with me,
actually wanting to be with me.
And then I bit her lip, and
our teeth collided, and we bumped heads.
Twice. She smiled.

The radio was playing soft jazz,
brushes smoothing out drums and
warm brass sounds as we snuggled
in the gentle fur of her winter coat.

My fingers washed through her hair,
and I asked what color it was.
“Um, I think it’s called
light brown?” she said.
“Oh,” I replied, surprised,
and snuggled closer,
thoughtfully considering light brown
and all the wonders therein.

We stayed in the truck, in the
parking lot, the lights off, the radio
glowing like a sleepy firefly, holding
our hands, legs entwined, quiet
bodies falling into a pleasant
slumber.

And all that we needed
was what we could hold.

A friend -
former Jew,
now born-again
billboard,

GOT JESUS?
across his chest
embossed in shadowed
sans serif,

a fresh splash
of blood across
the question.
Not his.

He said
I’m going to Hell
when I die.
That’s right,

He said
I’m going to Hell,
and when he said
that he smiled -

smiled like a snitch
sending a pal
down the river.
I mean, goddamn,

at least show
a little shame
when you burn
me like that.

Two years later,
and I still
stare straight
through the prick,

wondering if his
smug caveat
preempted any
actual concern.

Playing basketball.
He circles the court,
a spring-loaded hamster,
perpetual child,

a snake-oil shill
parting paved seas
on his way to
the promised land.

Shake and bake,
between the legs,
around the back -
a true showman.

I make sure
to shake his hand
as he swoops towards
my knee,

and as the ball rolls
away, I help him up,
because that’s the way
I was raised.

“I can’t be involved,
because it’s too good
to be alone.”

She sits in her apartment
in Brooklyn, on the phone,
talking to her ex-boyfriend
in Newington,
reading from her diary,

each entry a sequence
of cut-up catchphrases,
summations long removed
from the moment
of the event

but there’s a pause, and then
“Dave and I fought again,”

and I’m back in my car
yelling at her,
hiding what I mean to say
behind the words I’m yelling,
and she looks past me,
out the window
at the moon

and that’s what I hear in her voice
as she tells me this story -
she’s gone, far from all this
crass static and rural
desperation, beyond
my reach:

right after we met,
she was already leaving me,
just as I planned to leave her,
eventually,

every word one more
firm foot aimed towards
the door, every blank stare
a dry kiss goodbye.

Now, three years later,
she’s lonely in her new apartment,
and I’m alone in my living room,
and I’m waiting for her
to ask me to talk
about myself

but I never have anything
to offer - no girl trouble,
no news from Newington,
nothing save some platitudes
about her life, her problems.

Just more words
to send across long thin wires,
noise that trickles from ear to hand
to a loosely bound book
wrapped in black fabric
set on a nightstand
under an unlit lamp,

and a cradled phone
somewhere in New York,
somewhere in Connecticut.

I miss you:

missing not like
a lover sighing over a scent
or a favorite shirt or a fuzzy
cuddle against nude skin,
but actually more,
because we’ve never

met
and the distance between
my imagination and
your actual self is a gap
wider than sleep. I

miss
your words, our words,
our unambiguous
syntax hacking the fat
from our respective
justifications for

living -
turning sestinas into
haiku, making footnotes
out of theses, cutting quick
to the seed
of the moment. I

miss
the soft sound your
text made against my
eyes - a reverential
keening caress suffuse
with rigid cock
and bearded kisses
and hugs made of
stars and long strings
of whispers

but
let’s not bog this down
in playground semantics
of like and like
like, or some platonic
lust that’s an insult
to your spiritual
piety and my incurable
envy.

Suffice it to say,
Anthony, I wish you took
my elliptical silence
these year-long months
as a blatant invitation
to say howdy.

I miss you.
Please write.

I am truly old because I am tired
and beset by inescapable debt
to mistakes made through naive desire

and stubborn resolve. I have wept
silently, unable to plot the rhyme
required to purge this dim crypt

of its choked shadows, its whine
and bray, its treacherous historical depth.
This is a journey reduced to one thin line,

from spring to sand, from breath
to gasp, from fortunes foretold
to a harsh, derisive, forgotten myth

gilded in whispers and fool’s gold,
a bastard tale born of an impotent sire
whose mute shame sings this bitter ode:

I am truly tired because I am old.
I am truly tired because I am old.

Spelling mistakes
will remain as such -
testaments to
hit-n-run mental
routines performed
to keep furrows
moist and gaps
synapsed

because without
an Olympic judge
in my periphery
sorting placards
and cocking evil
eyebrows, I will
gladly forego style
points and rely
solely upon the
guile and gumption
of my graceless
intelligence

to stick the landing.

An account
is necessary –
a journal
of clock ticks
to document
passage

the way the point
of a pencil
scrapes paper
to announce
its existence.

And every scrap
and shred
is necessary –
each moment
set against
an approximation

of what has passed
& will pass
& continues to move
in an intractable
circular fashion

divining different paths
around the same
immovable stones.

Leave nothing
to chance –
be prepared
to offer
discrete
documentation
of every alibi
and excuse:
time,
place,
position,
and outcome.

It is
inevitable

How do you
Live a life
Wearing plaid
And denim
Bought with a
Filene’s charge card?

How do you
Think you’ll
Survive without
Getting wrinkled
Or stained
Or ripped?

Walk to the
Back of the
Mall parking lot,
Where the plow
Leans on the road
And the other

Cars are hard-knock
Primer gray
And see how your
Shiny new duds
Glow like a
Tourist t-shirt

When those eyes
Turn on you
And the tires
Start to strip
The buttons
Off your shirt

Because you’re never
Going to make it
Outside the mall
Unless you leave
The mall, and
You can’t leave

Looking like that.

So dig this big crux:
When Josef K met Suzie Q
I had boiled peanuts for breakfast
From Cairo, Georgia.

History repeats itself.
I’m on the edge of Burma.
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself,
Who makes the Nazis?
Intellectual half-wits.
Tell me, how do I feel?
I feel like

We’re two flies in a cookie jar.
The problem of leisure:
I will hear your name call out from a boombox,
I will hear your name call out from passing cars.
Go down the checklist, let’s see:
Pretty the pictures, work to the bone,
Like this – ack ack ack ack.

What’s the point of wasting time
On people that you’ll never know?
You’re driving me crazy; give me a kiss,
Suzie Q. Baby, I love you, Suzie Q.
I start at his knees and end in his dreams,
For no bonds can ever keep me from she.
I’m on a mission to never agree.
(more…)

Stop here.
From Arthur’s Drug, you take
a right, and then bear right
at the fork – you’ll find
The Tobacco Shed across
the street from Jim’s Pizza.
It burned down a couple
weeks ago. It was a pleasant
little hole, if you’re fond
of Windsor.

Arthur’s Drug now shares
space with Freddy’s Liquor
& Spirits.
Arthur’s used to be the sole
occupant, but when Freddy’s
building (neighboring Bart’s)
was bought by
dominos pizza incorporated
he decided to move into
Arthur’s building –
a nice gesture.

The video store
next to Arthur’s
closed a couple years ago.

If you turn left,
you’ll see a cvs pharmacy
next to the Post Office.
The Windsor House
occupied that space –
my friend’s sister (or his brother?)
washed dishes for a few weeks.
He – yeah, it was his brother – he
talked about smoking pot by
the dumpster with the busboys.
It shut down sometime
after that.

You’re right, that cvs sign is pretty small –
it once hung outside the pharmacy’s
storefront at the Windsor Shopping Center
(which wasn’t actually in Windsor,
but in Wilson, the part of Windsor
abutting Hartford that all the
little white kids on the Enfield side
of town learned to fear) (and even if it
wasn’t officially in Wilson, it sure was
close enough), but that sign came down
and moved to the new location.
You cut corners where you can.

Don’t worry about Wilson – that’s not
on the map. To get there, you have to drive
north, past the Public Library, Geissler’s Supermarket,
the Farm Shop – sorry, the Broad Street
Eatery – then St. Gabriel’s, and then
drive up this deceitfully steep hill.
I broke a Richard Scarey book coming down
that very hill in 1980. My mom
split her chin on the steering wheel.
My sister banged her head on the dash,
but she was OK. I bit my tongue, too –
I stuck it out at the telephone pole
just before we stopped.

And the Donut Shoppe!
I can’t say much about it, though
I heard the new owners disposed
of all the Christian propaganda
on the boxes and the windows.
Just as many folks go there now
that God’s gone as they did when
He nursed a coffee in the front booth
like a tired cop.

There used to be a comic book store
in the center – it’s a driving school now.
I loved that store. I even skipped school
a few times my senior year just to
go there and look and browse and stay cool.
On weekends, I’d bike up to the center
and go to the comic store for a few hours,
and then the library for a few more, and then
that soaped-up Baskin Robbins over there.
I’d buy a large Coke and sit by the window,
flipping through my books and sucking in
conditioned air so cold I could almost see
my breath.

And then the Plaza,
waiting for a bus
between the comic store
and the Baskin Robbins.
The town uses the marquee to
CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 1996
and
HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS

but that theatre used to be amazing –
walls draped with statuesque pictures
of Jane Russell and Errol Flynn,
the smell of popcorn palpable
even from the doorway, Red Hots
and Junior Mints sugaring the
display case, and steep carpeted
aisles careening towards the screen.

One night, my friends and I
were totally bored, so it was decided
we would drive to the Plaza to watch
this awful Dabney Coleman movie –
he played a cop with only 24 hours
left to live –

and afterwards, when I stepped outside,
the streets were barren but for
a few crickets and the lamps
humming to themselves –
the town green, the town hall,
the library and the church and
the restaurant and the grocery store,
even those fake cobblestone crosswalks,
they looked so gorgeous in this honeyed repose,
gorgeous like a young widow,
and I couldn’t help but think

this is what Windsor would look like
when I graduated
when I grew up
when I found myself on one of those
unmapped highways doing 80
in a 55 and I disappeared
like a tree within a forest
and emerged
this grand, glorious noise

and I was almost right.

Marcus White stood removed from the
poet, his profile stoic above squared shelves
of weathered books concerning Rome and
the church, framed in a burnt chestnut
brown hanging against thick white paint
trimmed by a beveled line of Wedgewood
blue - the colors quietly sand eyes down
to flat alabaster stones.

Marcus White listened to the poet as we
did – eyes turned away from the distractions
of his moving head and drinking hand,
training instead on the voice: a tired father
sitting down to a cold bottle of beer and
a simmering radio with Eddie Matthews
and Warren Spahn and the forgotten sound
of cotton singing in the wind.

Marcus White wore his fitted shirt with
a priest’s patience, wore his worn sable hair
with a mathematician’s precision, wore his lips
clasped tight like a change purse nursing
moths, wore the light from his living room
as he would wear smoke staggering from his
dormant fireplace.

Marcus White regarded the poet reading
in his living room, regarded the audience
reading the poet, regarded the smell of
aching wood imparting each intruder’s
footfall with the importance of the
awkward pause trapped between thought
and speech.

I send my children
to their doom
almost every night.

I salute their efforts.
They leap
from my tortured grip

and slide into the water
lemming-like,
smooth purpose lost

to the sound of progress
cocking a gun
and holding its breath.

I can’t bear to watch.
Thoughts drift
to the watered-down Guernica

wearing my mirror, and the
burnt dust
salting tarnished fixtures.

Look at me, at half-mast,
infirm and hairy,
beached on chipped porcelain –

I age four score
with each salute,
and when the light

goes out, I hear a
bugle boy
empty his spit valve.

Sealed shut and locked away.
One more skull to bury
with mundane secrets
forgotten in moments too short
to recognize.

I examine them all
in exacting detail,
each mistake and flaw
pressed against the glass
with unerring permanence.

I carry this nostalgia
as a crime scene wears
fingerprints and damning
spots. Jagged chalk lines
dance drunken on my eye.

The proof is here, spooled
tight, stretched taut, burned,
reversed and framed one
second at a time, crossing
moments, crossing years.

I, like you, can never be
bothered with the details –
we neglect the thoughts
behind these eyes, the intentions
of this smile or that pose

or the sudden need to
cut this moment from the
fabric, sacrifice fleeting
warmth to slick bloodshot paper.
But no blood is shed,

no crime committed -
the paper, film, gears and levers,
all of it is inert. It burns only
when told, burns with precision and
purpose, burns to serve your need.

I am no thief – merely a tool,
destined to obey without question,
as luckless as a knife
or a gun.

Sadly, the crime occurs in
those infinite moments when you
stare blindly at the stories I write
for you, and you search for
that long dead memory,

and your life becomes something
you never lived.

Ravished by figures. I can’t count the times
Voluptuous, sordid, come-hither curves
Would slide across sheets with their listless verve,
Offering passion like talentless mimes.

Balances, frequencies, calendars, clocks,
Scribbled in frenzy or proffered with grace –
Burnt black or rose red, they caress my face
Like a hangman’s shroud, a coroner’s shock.

But to burn these books, let the ledger show
These base abstractions hold no more power
Than a swift breeze drying dew-dripped flowers.
Alas, pride reveals what I’ve come to know –

I grow old. The hourglass loses dust.
Numbers don’t lie but for innocent lust.

I pull on the notes with little grace, the sounds stumbling through the wood like lost marionettes trudging across wet cement. Plink. Plonk. Thonnnnng. A tired phone ringing beneath a thick raincoat. Thin ice breaking under the heel of worn-down sneakers. Change falling on wet, bent cardboard.

Fingers know the pattern, to a point – well enough to push down, slide across, intimate a reason to these motions. But it’s more like fucking than love – two strangers under the spell of fiction, fumbling around in the dark, kissing beer bottles and breaking beds with insistent axes. My hands don’t know how to write down a phone number or cradle a dozen roses or even pull out a chair. They’re just two balls of meat flexible enough to work the zipper and the knob.

Trying to play “Blackbird” . I’m always trying to play “Blackbird”. I keep trying, but I get in my own way. Broken wings can never fly. It sounds like I’m the one killing the damn bird. I don’t carry a gun. I respect living things. But I drive a big Cadillac with no power steering down an unlit one-lane road and the dim bird can’t recognize that the wink of my headlights isn’t an invitation.

Trying all sorts of songs. I try my own songs – not true songs, not organized units of melody and harmony, but treatises on the will of a stubborn bastard too proud to show proper respect to the muses. They turn to mulch, pull apart like dirty strips of tape, return to random noise. I’m a fool learning to read by hitting my head on The Bible. Thou Shalt Learn. Thou Shalt Learn. Thou Shalt Learn.

And yet, for those times I’m alone in my room, cradling the guitar in the crook of my legs, and I hit that one note, that one moment filling the darkness with light so blinding my eyes are forced to stay open, and my hands move of their own volition, and more notes emerge, and suddenly it makes perfect sense. Even when I’m at a loss to understand, it makes perfect sense.

So I answer the phone, and I step carefully across the frozen road, and I pick up the pennies, and I continue to plink and plunk and thonnnng, and each callus grows strong, and my hands slowly begin to realize what it means to love. And, Lo, There Was Light.

Outside of the
City of Hartford
Office of Human Relations
The lobby clock repeats
Five zero zero

It speaks softly
With keys clicking into locks
Quiet footfalls glancing off marble
And the distant whisper of
Carousel doors drifting
To a stop

Like the very same doors
To the G. Fox building
No one visits anymore
And the clotted workday
Streets when the sun reaches
Five zero zero

The asphalt cracks
Parched and thirsty
Watching the Gold Building
Tarnish, lamplights
Fall asleep, plastered
Posters sigh and whisper

“Which is the
Sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the
Same bare place”

Next door past the
Stiff Calder sculpture is the
Museum where patrons
Admire dry paint –
They come and they go
Waiting for Michaelangelo

The bus waits for them
Blinking, yawning, tapping
And the cars yawn
Tired eyes stretched wide in
Rapt attention as traffic lights
Dim and flash because

Outside of the
City of Hartford
Office of Human Relations
The lobby clock repeats
Five zero zero

And no one is awake.

“Fire and war and monstrous things
I now leave behind me. I am grateful
for God’s mercy in not living through
these times. I have seen the future
and I am filled with terrible fear.”

I fear monsters of our own creation,
beasts of metal and glass mocking
our fallible mortality, arcing towards
a perfection where we, the Creator,
are parasitic gnats.

I fear the power of knowledge,
the notion that forces of nature
are there for our benefit, simple
mute resources we can tame and
harness with frayed ropes.

I fear the embrace of this vast expanse
of light and darkness towering above
the sky. I fear the ignorance of those that
accept this unknown danger as the truth
in light of His works.

I fear our stubborn ignorance, our
willful insurrections against the very
things that make us human. We are
forever scarred by the fire, and we fight
to conquer these scars.

This is our flaw.

The marks of our progress are violent fissures
tearing through the earth, leading quickly
to our end, leading into conflict
with ourselves, leading to the flame.
And we shall burn.

We shall burn, and the ignorance and
folly that brought us to this end shall remain
as ash, just as the ash made by our
all-important progress
settles on the bones of what we once were.

And for all this noise,
I fear nothing,
nothing has changed.

Slate gray.

The bones groan and ache each
night. The pipes push their
business through when required.

Darkness hides corners where
shadows of ghosts wait wait wait
with the patience of stone.

And the shades beat down light,
leaving weak strands of dust to
bleed through and pierce

skittish eyes. And the body
crawls into itself, a frightened
snake searching for shade.

There are two mice downstairs.
One, in the toilet, silent in
prayer, innocent, forgiven.

The other, frantic, trapped.
The poison worked slowly, and the
trap stood firm and just.

It watches the corners for shapes
crawling over cold concrete,
listens as the darkness tilts

from the light, bent across bubbled
paint, passes air through sandpaper,
cracks and shivers.

But I never move.

Nothing moves.

the grass is broken down, bent flat
flaxen purpose left to seed
flanked by tall pine trees
grinding each other
branches fighting
like children’s hands
reaching for a teddy bear

i am waiting on the stairs
stiff against the rusting
rail, once proud black
now frail and orange
dirt eroding to dust
and i stand in the center
of this cool spring evening
leaning towards my car
and the road

and i used to stand in the center
of the circle, just past the
driveway, four abrupt trees
squaring the curves, and the
sky shifts so quietly over my eyes
and I take a long deep breath
and the sun sets inside of me
when I let it free
and go back inside

I dress like an
Idiot lumberjack

In my olive green
Slacks and store-bought
Moccasins (sic?)

And instead of trees
Are all these siamese
Buildings rooted like
Redwood trunks

And instead of an axe
I’m holding a large
Ring of keys that jingle
Jangle like fresh dew

So maybe if I open enough
Doors I can get my work
Done

If I slam hard enough.

A clock is built
From two arms
Chopped at the
Elbow

Screw tight
To keep still
During transport
And set fingers
To proper obtuse
Angles

Fill with paper
Filled with numbers
Fill with fingers
Tapping desks
Fill with footsteps
Scattered fast

Turn to the wall
Sunrise, sunset
To make sure
Of accuracy

Return to desk
Push pencil with
Nose

He answers the phone like a spy,
And rushes from the room with a
Calm speed that makes the explosive
sound of the door seem smothered.

He pines for her in roundabout
Circles, chasing her from tree to
Tree as she flirts with wires and
Passing planes, never content to
Stop and perch and wait.

Gears lose teeth and springs snap
While she sings sweet nothings
into his ear.

I imagine he digs trenches into
The carpet with his pacing; dry ravines
Growing deeper with each passing
Sentence he releases, each desire
he references, each second of silence

while she waits for the tone to sound
and hangs up.

written April 8, 2001

A pile of dirty clothes
Sidles up to an open
Box of used plastic
Shopping bags and
Inches closer to the
Reticent flap marked
By stress lines and
A frayed piece of
Reused packaging
Tape.

Close your head.
Wander the streets
like a newspaper
no one read.

Find a nice tree
to comfort as
leaves fall on
the ground.
Secrets travel
under eyes and mouths
so careful, so wishful,
so in need of being
found.

But they don’t get it
right. They spend
their money on fancy
food and cheap wine,
trying to waste every
night

in a swirl of leaves
and newspapers,
wondering why no one
cares.

written November 11, 1998

One line, long,
through another line, wide,
through a third line, tall.

Spun through trees and leaves,
birds hunching their backs,
beards and eyes, marks and dots.

Spun around broken watches,
calendars and diaries,
lockets and chains,

and then, cut.

today
I did a whole lot of nothing
quite well

in this corporate america (TRADEMARK)
rat race (COPYRIGHT)
scurry for the big cheese
I sat in the front row back stage
and preened my mangy fur
starving with a smile

watched the hair grow out of my
wallet subsidized for a fallow
season of turning profits
on the spit over the
gross national compost

and when the clock said to me
five colon oh oh (though it might mean
lunch or break or some other
type of drooling bell)

I punched out hard
and the springs choked
on the cuckoo’s
timely reminder

that tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

The words beneath my feet
Are scarring the sidewalks,
These concrete veins flowing
Along the city’s bent spine;
All these proud, thoughtless
Scribbles, all these invoked
Names and places burdened
By misplaced potential.
And my shuffling steps,
Flowing through this system,
Approaching a destination
I’m not sure I’ll reach,
Pressing these mortal dreams
Tighter to the stone’s heart,
Until the ancient motions
Become channels, spreading
Rain across the ancient skin
Like a hand closing vacant eyes.

written May 5, 1997 / November 4, 1997

The waitress moves the cup and saucer
from the tray to the table with a hushed
urgency, then bows and disappears.

But she is so tired. Her torch dims
in the loud light smacking against the
skyscrapers’ professional façade.

And the people walking behind her eyes,
in her head, all their motions and
movements pressing against her heart.

Their hammers beating on her bones,
tearing her down, and she fears that she
will fall like a car into the ocean.

She looks up at the glass and steel,
the sky tilting against the sun and moon,
and feels her head begin to swoon.

But she picks it up, and the cup and
saucer, and the coins, and herself,
then sighs and disappears.

The microphone stands
Above the crowd,
Alone.
But he’s in it,
Eye-deep in smoke
And glassed eyes.

All this time,
Playing with mirrors
and flat shadows,

And now, alone,
faced with the spotlight,
there’s nothing to say.

“But, it’d be so cool,
To just go up there
And blow them away,

Right?”

If it’s just you,
And your voice,
And your words.

But the microphone
Needs sound; the light
Needs shadow; the eyes,

A witness.

He grabs the stand
And opens his heart
To the world.

written October 21, 1997 / November 26, 1997

A hand, gently,
against the back of her neck.
A bird, quickly,
against the dusted window.
Cold against the glass,
wings spread against the window,
caught in flight.

The feathers leave a mark
against the pane, like dirty hands
holding a chain.

She rubs her neck,
the hand still warm against
her cold skin.

The snow, quietly,
against the dying bird,
eyes closed.

written March 8-11, 1998

Reclined in a plush interior,
eyes fixed on the wide-angled screen,
and it’s a rerun.
The car doesn’t move;
the road merely grabs the wheels
and drags us in line with the rest.
All one with this stone serpent,
its corpse stretching into the past
as the scales sputter and stall.
“Write a poem about this,” Mom says. I sigh.

Green tarps are draped over the tinder,
warming winter’s brittle bones.
The sky is frosted with these silver thoughts,
and we all rush to catch lost sunshine.

“Well?” I shrug, losing another cloud.
Almost beautiful, but too many notes;
too much green, too much blue, too much noise.
It all blurs as I conjure a scythe
to slice away the signposts.
It fades, though.

It almost meant something.

written June 6, 1996 / October 7, 1997

Another cardboard Christmas
Pouring old beers in my throat
Dropping the ball a week early
The lights shine when they want
The trees lost their bloom with the birds
And this roof that wants to be a floor

Still, it’s beautiful, the clean sky,
Though all the angels are lonely down here
And the frost tastes like smoke

And the snow still falls…
And the snow still falls…
Like broken glass, like frozen tears

I can see the tinsel and popcorn
And the fire cracking chestnuts
And the smiles, and the shining paper

Somewhere, it feels like home.

written November 8-25, 1997

Craftsmanship would describe an ease with
the tools - the grace with which they glide
against rock, divine the softness of steel,
make wood as gentle as rot - and,
when finished, leaving a solemn product,
pleasant, useful, unobtrusive.
And yet, I find myself undertaking labors,
struggling against the tool’s natural paths,
the world’s constant motion, in order to
grasp a moment so elemental, so firm
and fierce, as to have its truth burned into
my hands like these finite roads that
navigate my palm. It is a struggle
against nature, to control these instincts,
to understand mysteries greater persons
have left mysterious.

And I discuss this pedantic path, all these
known answers, in the hope of learning
something new, discovering an element
so familiar that its true nature
has been forgotten; a shade of emotion
so subtle that no amount of practice
can turn it rote.

A simple warmth.

written August 3 - September 10, 1997

the scene is now slowed with the modern sound
of breaking metal and snapping glass
but it’s just a car rooted in the pavement
extending tendrils of smoke and oil under the rock
as mouths and wheels flail forever lost in patterns
approximating history

she watches the street flood with this mass of people
and her hand brushes past a leaf of grass and a
light green speck climbing off the top to her blue jean
wrapped tight around her leg too smooth and white
as the billowing mane set against the clouds
white on gray

and her hair falls over exposed roots and her eyes
slowly close with the dry arms breaking and the sky
opening to her empty arms and rain drifts down her cheek
feeling the world turn under her body
seeing dead leaves swirl through a sewer grate with
spit-soaked dirt and burnt cigarettes and wrinkled napkins
in the water through the water composing the water

and then seeing her form shadowed against the tight white hide of the sky
dead leaves shaking free in the wind wet with sweat and sweet tears and
the sweet wind racing faster faster faster

and she rises upon the billowing mane rushing against the grass
floating higher than the breaking arms higher than the mouths and wheels
and the bones fade and the tears fade and the worlds fade
into water into sky into all until nothing remains
but her forgotten skin singing
on the back of the musical earth
blessed with a new sense
a new life

written May 29, 1996 / December 8, 1997

My bones write their lies
On the back of my skin
In bold, bloody strokes.
They talk of the trees
That have given way
To a forest of stumps;

All the rampant rivers
Crawling to shore,
Crippled and burnt;

All the claws that pocket
Fistfuls of sand,
Only to have it sift away;

All the proud wisdom that
Became the noise
That slides from my mouth.

I have accepted this fate
With the grace
Expected of my state,

Just as I accept the moon
Rising each night,
To watch over the stars

For the sleeping sun.

written October 18-31, 1997

We held hands quietly, eyes closed
beneath the white warmth of the lamp,
nestled in our heartbeats like silent children
for all the world to see.
And then she said she could hear my heart,
and I stopped. I didn’t know what it said,
or why it had started talked, or why it
talked so fast.

And then her eyes opened - our hands
were right above her heart, strong, soft,
and all this sound flooded my head,
drowning all the words,

all these worthless words I used instead
of what I wanted to mean. But I still didn’t know,
even then, holding her heart in my hand,
and her smile, so gentle and forgiving.

She sat up, strange to my senses.
All I recognized were our reflections
in the closed windows, dimming under
the mute presence of the sunrise.

A car passed. I imagined the headlight
sliding through the windows, across the wall,
freezing us as my hands moved across her shirt,
trying to understand.

And there we were. I share her tongue,
taste her cigarettes, touching her again
and again, as if she’ll forget her body,
then turn around.

She is gone.

written October 21 - November 3, 1997

Standing by an eroding road,
kept company by the attentions
of passing cars. Behind me
is a gray brick garage, the same shade
as the cracked street. Weeds dot
its perimeter like thankless guards,
and the gutted car carcass hides behind
its rusted hood. Bent wire bars
frame the thick fogged windows.
To my left, there’s motion - I think it’s
a person rounding the corner. Instead,
a large black dog, swiveling its head
in time to the sporadic traffic. The
fierce golden eyes pause on me, mute,
stupid, then turn back to the silent
road. It cocks its head, then barks, as if
answering the silence. Its owner shouts,
then whistles. The neck shifts, pulling
the head back to its duty, as I return
to my watch.

written August 8 - September 23, 1997

A picture postcard morning.
Empty swings sway between shafts of dirty sunlight.
A girl leans on the striped play-set, watching dustclouds
Spin around her dress like brainstorms. Her knees are
Grass green, speckled with shavings from a fine-cut
Lawn. In her hand, a brand new witches’ broom.
She mounts it, and flies into a patch of soft clouds.

Wish you were here.

written August 1 - September 22, 1997

I can still
See the sky
And that star
Spin and fall
Through the night.

I can still
Feel my son
Watching me
Sit alone
In the dark.

I can still
Feel his fist
Wrap around
My cold finger
So strong.

I can still
Hear the phone.
I can still
Hear my breath.

I can still
See my son
Disappear
Through the night.

written September 16, 1997

A committee of lawnmowers eat the
Chemically sprayed stalks of wild grass.
The cracked wood plank still rests against the curb
Since that day a friend’s former dad got drunk

And took his motorbike out for a spin.
A small group gathered around the crash site;
Him, laughing with a broken leg, mothers
Gasping, fathers angry, and the children.

Riding our old plastic bikes on chalk roads,
Feeding out frayed laces to hungry spokes,
Playing Monkey in the Middle with my books,
Running around and around and around.

A new school Sunday. Colander warfare,
With green crabapples and crooked fences,
Pausing as the innocent cars drive through
Ground Zero. The apples sting like flu shots.

We drop our bruised weapons and go inside.
His parents are walking across the street,
To share gossips and compare shanked golf shots.
His sister watches TV with the couch.

With cold sodas, we stumble up the stairs,
Tripping over piles of dirty towels,
And reach his room, with nothing more to do.
Hold on, he says - in his parent’s bedroom

Closet, behind the clothes, in the corner,
Is an olive green file cabinet.

He tiptoes back, the books under his shirt.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, door shut
And locked, our sodas still full and dripping.
We flip past all the shiny, boring words,
And the folded middle falls in my lap:

Mona and Lisa, locked in the attic,
Playing dress-up with boas and moth rags.
They make themselves up, dance with mannequins,
And braid their hair with tongues and kisses.

He hides the books underneath his blue sheets.
I didn’t think what they did seemed like fun,
With the tight smiles on their red faces,
And all that rough grabbing and squeezing.

So, he dares me to show him my thing.
I don’t want to, though, because I have doubts
About myself, since it looked so small when
Compared to those big pictures in his books

So I dare him to show me his thing.
After a glance at the ceiling, he agrees.
Turning away, he closes the shades, unzips,
And begins the countdown.

One. I snap my waistband, shaking my tummy.
Two. I loop my thumbs, prepared for the crucial drop.
Two and a half, two and three fourths, two and five sixths,
Three.

And there it is, nervous and blushing.
He laughs. He saw my thing. He saw my thing.
I gather myself and run from his laugh,
His room, his house, away from the bus stop.

He’ll get up early. He’ll tell everyone.
I won’t be sick, and if I wake up late,
Mom knows the bus always stops there again,
Running around and around and around.

written November 1, 1995 / September 12, 1997

Dirty book, let me clean you.
One lick of spit across
juice? soda? sticky sweet
and dirty, picking up dust

Across the pages there’s a brown blotted stain
that reminds me of a small gnat
I painted across the edges of a book
with one strong finger.

But I come home alone (yes!)
emptying money from my pants
a $1 in my jacket and 26 cents
in my backpack with 3 used CDs
and an EP
and comic books I like to watch

And this dirty book of pictures and words
slanting, shouting, left justified and bold
with a scratch traveling southeast on the front
like when I told myself I couldn’t write
and taught my thoughts to fly
like the dead trees they were

But when did I reach this point
where I am touching a book the way
I soothe my own skin?

and smoothly turn the pages
with the hope that inside
I can find myself?

written April 23, 1997

A velvet Sicilian worm
Squinting in the fishtank
With the bubbles
Playing Moonlight Sonata
On wrinkled ribs
While searching
For a quiet spot
Beneath the Technicolor
Sea-green
Rocks.

written May 2, 1995 / September 12, 1997

The cherry
Had its pit
Spit back
In its heart
It won’t
Taste the same
Again

written September 1, 1997

Bird feathers and bananas, dancing in
a seedy speak-easy littered with ripped
fish nets and soiled garters.
The louts bang on the table; they want
her, the girl with the joy dust.
Everyone flies when she smiles.

But something’s different tonight - she’s
growing. It’s a messy business,
shedding skins. And she doesn’t know

what she wants to be, so she’s nothing -
her presence noted only by scents, moving
air, brief touches, what she once was.

Now and then, a stitch appears in a
certain light, if you think
of her. But it’s too late;

she steps on stage, and no one
applauds. Her ghost falls through
the floor boards, felt only by those

that never knew.

written May 1996

and mother finally turns the burning monitor off with the
computer fan spinning in the blood world and
life rotates in a gyroscopic shelter of
smoke and smoke and dirty love in smoke filled
caves beating on the drums of the heart
running quickly across grass and sky into
light blue-white cleansing and screaming light
now, yes now, everyone belongs in this damned light now
though we never look or feel right beneath
the God white shame of it all
(and it is a shame) thumping ourselves with
Psalms and science and seers with eyes
binded tighter than fists screaming
thou shalt not! thou shalt not!
thou shalt not set eyes upon the devil’s
stiff prick and bathe in his wicked tongue
and sordid words for a snap kick jolting
surge of knowing that nothing is safe
and nothing will ever be safe ever.

written August 21, 1997

The altar
Of stone
Is coated
With ash
And a prayer
Left cold.

This was always supposed to be a poem.
Staring at a dim radio tower, I imagined
all this as I was trying to sleep - the lake,
the leaves, and you, in the distance.
So I got drunk, and went outside.
The streetlights stretched in both directions.
One car rolled to a stop, then turned
and drove away. There was a couple walking
towards the intersection. I crossed the street,
walking towards them. We passed
without a glance.

In a few hours, a few years ago,
you would wake me up, throwing my clothes
over my head as I dived underneath the pillows.
After washing up and tying my sneakers,
I would run downstairs and unwrap the papers,
while you would throw them in you backseat,
complaining about the cheap ink staining
the leather. If I was especially late,
you would deliver a few, content to hide
the papers under the welcome mats.
Then we would go to breakfast at a place
where you bought coffee every day before work.
And then we would go home.

There was one bench beside the lake.
The outermost slats were missing, so my feet
met the ground at an angle. Rock music rumbled
in my head, echoing like pennies in a tin cup.
The same words, over and over, so many times
as to mean nothing.
The grass was nearly nude, except for a few
scattered leaves. The tree to my right seemed
crystalline, set against the cool night sky.
I walked to the edge of the lake, stepping onto
a rock that jutted from the shore. A frog
croaked and jumped in the black water. For a moment,
I imagined myself as an explorer claiming a new
frontier. But I hadn’t discovered anything
yet, so I started walking.

After a few months, we stopped talking. You would
pick me up, I would deliver the papers, we’d eat our
runny omelets, and wait until next week, or the week
after. I never had much to say, but you never
seemed to notice. I just repeated the same things
over and over, until you stopped asking, until
I simply forgot to talk. It wasn’t the same.
It was never the same.

One circuit. After passing the rock, my right foot
sank into a patch of cool mud. The shoe almost
came off. I looked at the reflections
of the streetlights in the shimmering
water, how they began coherent
before evaporating.
I stopped a few times, watching the water flow
under and around the light. It seemed the
perfect image, at that perfect moment,
but it was simply the past, like the moonlight.
Just a piece of a broken watch.

At this point, I was supposed to look up from this
quilt of leaves and see a dark figure at the
other end of the lake. He would reach down,
pick a leaf, and vanish between lamps
like a firefly.

It was getting chilly. I couldn’t help shaking,
and turned back towards the street. On my way,
I stopped. There was a yellow leaf, its leathery
skin dripping with moisture. I picked it up,
wiping the water between my thumb and forefinger.
It seemed too yellow, the same way
circumstances can seem too perfect.

I looked across the lake one last time.
No one was there.

written November 11, 1994

You paint, in the courtyard, surrounded by rose bushes and storms,
picking petals from each shut blossom,
with thorn pricks blooming on your palms.
You struggle with your tongue, desperate to pass
between the fresh stitches, but instead
raise your face to the water, eyes closed,
mouth pulled up to a smile.

All the while, your hands moving from the flowers
to the canvas, mixing rain and roses and blood
in maddening sweeps of purpose.

And your hands move along the canvas
as you turn to me and open your eyes -
a void, beautiful burnt black alight with embers -

and your hands move as you regard my canvas,
blank and buckling from all the weather,

and your hands stop painting
and touch my hands, smeared with the same red mess,
and you place my hand on the canvas,
and it moves,
and it stays blank.

“This is the silence of astounded souls.”

written January 1, 1995 / November 15, 1996

“God is so ugly.
Let’s kill him. Again.”
the new manifesto is written
on the thighs of onion bond girls
chaste through nudity.
punk hair dogs mount disneyland
comets and citystreets collide
in bursts of godhead chicken scratch.
a feedback tyranny. a deadend joyride.
imperfect youth runs in the yard
and the eye of saturn opens
for ear damage! a taste of
disgusting perfection
all the angels grow sharp wings
and shackles bursting across temples

the world is screaming.
the world is reborn.

written November 30, 1995 / November 13, 1996

so mom why won’t you talk?
why won’t you smile and throw off that year you
grew up in this great democracy that taught you to
swear and spit and spite life because life didn’t
give a flying shit that you didn’t belong here?
why won’t you spread your wings and stitch up
the fallen feathers and forget the wax and jump
straight into the sun and love your muse?
love your mind?
because i just noticed the burnished silver frame
nest to the dusty lamp facing the mute television
hidden from your coughing and your sighing
and you’re there with your big sister
(who also married a thoughtless bastard in your words)
and you’re facing the powder flash so gaunt
lips shut tight in your gray sailor suit
queasy sailing your gray sea and you
just as unhappy as you are now
with you wedged into your cloth throne
wasting your lungs into spit yellow tissues
scoring night after night in your
dirty burgundy robe in your Jules Verne
dream world drowning in your past

and each time i hear about the amaranthine
floating above the dead witches
each time the pedal of your steel bike
forms another proud bruise
for your father
each time you cradle your cold cup of coffee
thinking about your little baby
and her smaller brother
and smile
i think of you

so mom why won’t you talk?
why won’t you listen to me mom?
i love you.

written September 25, 1995

Bubbles rise within the vaulted glass,
then shatter.
Around your taut neck, a hollow moon,
clearly a bauble used to seduce
lingering eyes and heaving hands.
And your wooden mouth, another trinket,
force-fed lives, volumes of useless informations
that spit themselves out rotely,
pre-wrapped and ready for purchase.

“I catch lightbulbs in my teeth.
I juggle red hands on the jackpot strip.
I’m a lion in fake fur. I hid the key in my heel,
and I shake off the static of wire-thin billboards
like drops of oiled sweat.”

And on your left hand, smoothing the hair,
is a small cut, so small - a red eye,
and I wonder what it can see
within all these broken bubbles,
within all this dying light.

written October 30, 1996 / June 12, 1997

I sat next to the swinging door,
eyes crusted shut
under the red haze of my sad skin.
I didn’t understand.
I wanted to go home.
Loud strangers were everywhere,
kissing me, petting me, breathing on me,
drowning my name in words
I didn’t want to understand.
She pulled the sheets straight.
She smoothed out the hair,
held the skin, looked out the window.
“Soon,” she sighed, smiling weakly,
and she stroked the tears
and kissed the redness,
and the doors closed,
and I was alone.

I slammed every door.
I dropped every chipped soup bowl,
spilling brown broth all over the old oak table.
I pushed away every stranger,
swallowing my stupid eyes.
I yelled. I screamed.
I cried myself deaf.
“Soon,” she whimpered,
slamming the car door.

We were home.
There was a man, next to the luggage.
He didn’t hug her.
He was with another girl.
My sister ran to the girl
and hugged her. The man smiled.
I hugged him, but
she pulled me away.
It wasn&