Feeling Lucky

You take an oiled rag
to the rust spots
where the salt of your sweat
attacked the pistol's sights
and think, slightly richer:
Clint Eastwood never mentioned this.

It's not every day
that you get to watch your father
don his armor.
No one around
has change for a twenty
but there's good news post haste:
Our shadows leave at noon.

A One-Tree Forest

Finally finding
the ancient Greek's grave
archaeologists admit
that Aristotle's teachings
yielded few friends:
2,400 years laid to rest
and not one clay wine jug
propped against his headstone.

Dapper in Denim

She caught me in my cups
crossed two bridges to do it
had her hair up
in classic Hepburn fashion
like she knows I can't resist.
While I smoked outside the taproom
she made small talk
with those characters
she'd only heard in my stories.
Too cowardly to validate her
I'd never shared my Saturdays.
It must have been empowering
and disappointing, as most midnights go.

Seeing my sloppy state
surely brought back vivid images
of the man she'd left after a decade
a house, and no promised offspring.
The next morning
through the ginhaze
I read her final message
not recalling
the ride she gave me home
or that sealed, four-page letter
I'd handed her from my safe
before she left to sleep
in the bed she'd made her own.
It was short and sweet and fitting.

There will be no more dinner at Marcia's.
There will be no more "Breakfast at Tiffany's".
And I, no white-clad Bogart, will never ask Sam
to play that tune again
though I'll always know her smell.

Dayenu

The first time that she hit me
I was launched to outer dreamspace.
Her second volley
a year later
woke me to the sizzle
of crisping skin
and car horns blaring
in the background.

And that's where
I'll remain:
between hope and knowing;
between gain and loss;
in the interim's perdition
that comes with eating apples.

To know a goal exists
and wait for our messiah;
those who say it's foolishness
have never heard her snore.

Rudy

You swear it's a ghost
or that you're still ginned
when he assaults you
with a hug
that raises your partner's eyebrows
for that first time
on the job.
He always had a stereo
and a grandpa joke
to pass the day.
His number's in your phone
though you never stopped by
like he invited.
It's been seven years
since you've seen him
and you're shocked he's not
collecting his pension.
Electricians can work longer
since their bodies have been spared.

"Did you marry her?"
he asks once the smiles
fade to words.
Your boots turn to concrete.
You'd forgotten that young love
which radiated from
the face of the apprentice
you once were
before the quest commenced.

You have no leaking pipes
for the remainder of that day.
You laugh at the expense of others
as your tribesmen do.
But you never quite recover
from that dose of recollection
that brought you back to innocence
when hope was not your drug.

Pissing in the Wind

He wraps
his tobacco-stained fingers
vertically
around a stack of coasters
on the oak
between us
and squeezes
to perfect the tower.

I knock them askew
take a sip of gin.
Pisa for paupers.

That old friend
glances at my grin
over his lager
and nods.

Nominal Fee

Another letter came
from the dying little bald kids.
"Partners in Hope"
it said at the top of every page
of the free notepad included.
"I can relate to that,"
I told them
and their marketing reps
but I only signed a check.

So then I set traps
that killed all the ants in my apartment
but I didn't feel relieved
and I didn't feel alone
and I didn't feel like God--
I only felt guilty
and poured a Pinot noir.

Separated Psyche

A spinster in the making
she'll always be
one of my favorites
silhouette of lithe limbs
careening across her living room
a vodka dangling from her hand
and that heart almost large enough
to fit one more song and dog
had it not been
for her husband.

To Pistol-Whip a Face Like Truth Serum

Even if
it ain't meant to be
you've got
to give a girl
her poem.

Box Fan Blues

I remember the flashing lights
of emergency vehicles
through my kitchen window
but thought it was a drill
like that coworker who joked
about suicide
in a stairwell after coffee break.
He was kidding.
She wasn't.

A local shopkeeper
told me they'd found her body
in the dilapidated building
next to mine
a week after the lock
of the front door had been changed
and a sign was displayed
in the storefront window
announcing its availability.
"Squatting", they call it
but that implies deliberate action.
Some folks just
have no place else to go.

In absentia.
In loveless memory.
In eager anticipation
of another girl
finding her home.

Clearing Out Closets

It's not until our boots hits the gas
that we feel what's left of the cramp
in our calves
from a night awakened
by a day of dreaming.

All along the interstate
the raptors pick through maggots
looking for the meat
that these motorists have found.

We don't want to go out
the way we used to go out.
We've looked for blood in the water
and found it.

It's been so long
since something drastic
with passion
with our names carved actions.

"We Deserve This,"
the exit sign says
as we ease up
off the right.

Batteries Not Included

I'm talking to a 23-year-old
from Long Island on the sidewalk
who answers a suicide hotline
when she isn't tending bar.
The obvious similarity goes unstated.

"One time I heard a man in the background
trying to talk a jumper off the edge of a bridge.
He gave up and the line went dead.
The police were called
but never found her.
We assumed that she did it."
The euphemism goes unquestioned.

We pass a wine bar
filled with young women in red dresses
taking photos for their bachelorette party.
Salmon in a barrel, though I'm glad
to be preoccupied.
A few blocks later
another thirty-year process comes up.

"My father collects sea glass.
At the beach last summer
my boyfriend gave him a piece
but it was fake."
She explains the litmus test.
Her old man put it in his mouth
to wash off the salt.
It was no longer opaque.
"He threw it back into the ocean."
Her boyfriend was confused
but I was not
and did the same
at the next intersection.

Leonine, They Walk Across the Embers

My father, ever the pragmatist
used to voluntarily sleep in jail cells
of one-horse towns
when riding his motorcycle
between his home in Port Chester, New York
and Ohio's Bowling Green State University
during the time when love was free
and law enforcement was on our side
as long as you weren't colored
and on the receiving end of a firehose.
He tells that tale as if he lived on the fringe
a la 'Easy Rider', but I know it was
merely the primordial state of his frugal nature.
I let him have his folklore, though.
Compassion trumps being right.

He's a social worker now;
works with the "developmentally delayed"
as the latest textbooks and experts call it.
I jokingly say that my blue-collar occupation
is similar in that sense
but I envy the depth of his dedication.
Last week, when he turned 65
he told me that an autistic man
he'd met once eleven years ago
reappeared in his roster of clients
remembering the date of his birthday
and the day of the week on which they'd met.
His grip on the wheel tightened
as he recounted the scenario.
"That's common," I said. "Like in 'Rain Man'."
He pulled his eyes from the road
and replied, "But it's never happened to you."

For that moment
my father
(lover of the forgotten
bride of Christ
cell block sleeper)
seemed scared
of what his Good Book can't explain
and what I already know:
There is genius all around us
pulling wrenches, drooling free.

Their Price of Comfort is Cancer

The sole reason for your recent sanity
sweats through his shirt
so you come down on him verbally
as only brothers can.
"I wear deodorant, not antiperspirant.
That stuff gives you cancer."

After eight hours
you go home and read the label.
Aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex
sounds carcinogenic.
That middle word is fake
like farmed diamonds
and true love.
You decide not to tell anyone
if either fate comes to be.

A pain under your arm
sends you to the mirror.
You sterilize your nail clipper
with your latest black Bic
and chop off the fresh skin tag.
It takes two attempts.
There isn't as much blood
as you'd imagined
though you still have the wad of tissue ready.
You've learned to be prepared
from more than Boy Scouts.

After your shower
you remove some telephone numbers.
It hurts less than your bathroom surgery.
A trickle of red runs down your rib cage.
The mild soreness that flares up
after both amputations
is doused well by the pilsner
while the moon smirks triumphantly
despite its incompleteness.

Men on Macadam

This city's becoming a City
making magazine articles honest.
Spring bursts with culture
and shop doors are propped open.
Friendly gusts of wind
blow sundresses taut and high
on the Main Street sidewalk
that will never hold
a folded ten for me again
so I take what I can get
in the form of a glimpse
at someone else's headache.

A curly-haired kid barely twenty
goes for the Dylan look
with an otherwise urban vibe
complete with faded sweatpants.
His tenor sax is sadly yearning
for the brand of loss he hasn't learned yet
but I drop my only single in his can regardless
with a subtle thumbs up
as I pass the pet store
that serves as the backdrop of his performance.

A few blocks down
I find a bench across from the parking lot
of a food market
that will provide enough pedestrian entertainment
if the book runs dry.
There's a man on an adjacent corner
who's bet his last five
on the government's gambling racket
more times than he's slept in clean sheets.
I'd wager my pension that he knows
the longest, darkest alleys
to empty a full bladder in
if the midnight stumble home
is too long to wait for porcelain.
I should've saved my change for him.
It's not the first time I've given prematurely
to the wrong person
though I'd rather be mistaken
than lie like a budding bluesman.

An hour goes by harmlessly.
I mark my page and walk back to my apartment
edging my way between wards of the state.

Modified on a Cocktail Napkin

My Quarterback arrives

eighteen years too late.

I played Left Tackle;

poorly watched his blind side.

Here at the gin mill

I can defend him even less.

It's every man for himself

and the ball's knocked loose

for a fumble--

as it always has been

though they never told us.

He leaves before I can buy him a drink

to apologize for those sacks I let slip.

There were a lot.

I wonder if he still gets headaches.

I watch him ascend the staircase

but can't recall which number

he wore between his shoulder blades.

Eighteen more years

and the squandered college funds

of the kids we'll never 

put on the field.

One of these days

we'll laugh about it.

Until then there's the tonic.

Plenty of Fish

He beats me
to our chain coffee joint
six days a week
and parks his Blazer haphazardly
in the only handicapped spot.
The wide-brimmed camouflage fishing hat
atop his long graying hair
is the first feature anyone notices.
A fanny pack wraps his waist
under a parka that's overly warm for the season.
Next to his shameful satchel
a sheath holds a blade
too ominous for an old man to carry.
Its black handle is bordered by a silver pommel
before the descent into six inches of murderous steel
thinly masked by cheap leather.
Perhaps that's part of the fisherman disguise.
I'm never awake enough to solve the mystery
at that hour, before caffeine.

His order's on the counter before he's next in line.
He pays in exact change, grabs a dozen napkins.
Four are spread out at his table near the door--
one in front of every chair
though the other three are empty.
Whom is waiting for?
Do they ever come?
I always leave before the heartbreaking answer.
My truck's running and work is waiting
but not like he is.


Currently reading:
"A Man Called Ove" by Fredrik Backman.

Sit With the Shadow

Saturday's crumpled cocktail napkin
wears a scrolled name and number
unsolicited and unexpected
staring from beside the ashtray.

Ingrid Bergman begs Sam, a suited Negro
to play "As Time Goes By" on his piano
despite Rick's rule.

Mouthfuls of Spanish red
wash over a scrap of salty venison
stuck between two teeth.

The pipes and the personalities
are waiting for that grin
they'll see approaching them tomorrow.

A cork swindled from the last bottle shared
sits on a bookshelf as a reminder:

People need to make their own mistakes
but it ain't so bad.
There's the kid.
There's always the kid.

That cocktail napkin
finds its way to the trash can
where it will wait for the rest
of what's irrelevant

and the wine tastes more expensive
than its label claimed.

Ode to Inigo Montoya

Sunbleached
and distressed
with frayed cuffs
oil stains
elbows worn threadbare
by tables on ancient lunch breaks
his father's gifted work coat
keeps him drier
warmer
than his own zippered burlap
could ever right the rain.

Absent Arbitrator

You don't ask
because you know
so you leave the cork alone
tempting not a man immortal
coming down from mountains, nauseous.

Hating your own name
since it's shared with competition;
rueful of the river
and all other separations:
his arms;
his bed;
his jealous head;
some railroad spikes;
a crucifix.

The day and clock against you.
Her drive an hour north.
That souvenir was missing
from her mantle, as predicted.

"Does fire scare you, honey?
Or do you yearn to burn?"
Here's what you've gleaned
from sheets you've shared:
There's nothing left to learn.

Vinegar Strokes

"What's it say?"
he asks with torn desires
not wanting to crowd her shoulder.
She's clear on the definition of 'space'.
It isn't only the universe.

Their worthy ashes mix in the tray
on his table.
He wonders if that
will affect him
or them.

"You're not going to be a father,"
she replies through a sigh, ambiguous
as to whether she means now
or ever.

A row of black-cloaked Dutch Masters
smirks in unison
from her pack
while he feigns a forehead kiss
that he knows is uninvasive.

Ant Season

Flurries are falling in April
as the deathbed joke of a snowless winter.
The heat's kicked on
since there's an audible river
inside the copper pipes
screaming of inefficiency
yet comforting in its flow.

An ant carries the corpse of another
across a sea of linoleum.
Is it a fallen friend brought to burial
or a case of insect cannibalism?
A trivial difference to those without souls.
Cain failed to temper his alibi.

The faucet's been leaking
at its base for three years
but the plumber renting rooms
has fixed enough for free.
Remember that unpurged baseboard?
A bug accused of reeking
has been camping near the chrome
wise enough to find
the cleanest source of water.

Heels clack through the cracks in the doorframe
as a neighbor descends the echoing stairs
reminding the scene and its only witness
that unlike the snow
and unlike the bugs
and unlike the tradesman fed up with the rent
some of us know when to leave.



Currently reading:
"The Essential Rumi" translated by Coleman Barks.

Time in LA

The Amazing has mastered
the taking of lumps--
not that it's been
a choice to be made.

The Amazing has kissed
and has told--emptied lungs
in an effort to end
the redundant charade.

The Amazing climbs ladders
with razors for rungs--
meets the same person
who's got a new face.

The Amazing is tired
of beautiful tongues
that say, "You're amazing
but still--I can't stay."

The Wheelchair Mechanic

It's Sunday morning in trouble.
The novel lands on the coffee table
tossed aside, all familiar
next to a long strand of hair.
"You're going to find these everywhere,"
she'd warned after plucking one
from his beard
the last time she had come
mostly to unload.
He didn't mind those discoveries then.
Perception is a pendulum.

The follicle's flushed
a photo's ripped from under a refrigerator magnet
and hidden where it won't be bleached by the sun
or torn by the hands of the next copied key.
"Groundhog Day," an outside party called it
from an observation post;
the crestfallen repeater.

Losing himself in the search and a story
he picks his book back up.

Jilted and Jammed

Woke up with a ghost scratch
for the second time this month.
A line of red down my rib cage
somehow inflicted overnight by Egyptian cotton
with a 600 thread count--
a birthday present from last year's mistake.
It'll match the whittled smile
and enemies made for life.

April's biggest fool
chases breakfast with vodka
pondering permits required
to bulldoze the house and start over.
Traded like scalps and wampum
for a promise made too late
I slide the pan of bacon grease
to the furthest burner back.

Too often we forget
that love is our first contract.

A History of Seizures

I was a rookie then.
If you ask most patrolmen
I still am.
But I was new enough to wonder
why no one ticketed
that guy parked in the double-yellow median
on Dupont Avenue
as he sat there drinking coffee.

I pulled up once
rolled down my window
and watched as he ignored me.
Unable to get a copy
when radioing dispatch
I rolled, feeling confused.
His Grand Marquis
became a permanent fixture
immune to any law enforcement.
I was left perplexed.

It wasn't until weeks later
when reading a plaque
in the locker room
that it hit me:
That was Officer Rilo
slurping down decaf, retired
for a decade.
His partner had been killed there.
Drunk driver, no insurance.

There are still times
when I ask questions
though they never involve
the sins that we ignore.

The Gambler

The tattoo's honest.
I've held
Aces and Eights
in my games.
Wild Bill Hickok
carded the same
when he bought it--
six-shooter holstered;
back to the door.
I've taken that seat
this time.
It's worth the stakes.
She's got potential
to bite like an asp
but I'm familiar
with wrestling fangs
and shanty Irish.

Don't speak to me
of gambling
if you've never doubled down
on a hand you couldn't win
without the Hand of God

or locked your door
behind the person
you pray to share a key with
someday.

I've seen the eyes
of men who've folded.
I'd rather take chances
choking on chips.
There's a face held in common
by those too stubborn to lose
and I wear it.

One day, hussy
we'll sing of this.

Pagan Concessions

What the Hell was that?
you ask yourself
at the rip on the rooftop adjacent.
That building ends a storey shy of yours
so you've never worried
about wandering naked
or racking slides in your apartment
with the lights on late at night.
The unit's for sale
and you've wondered if some Hipsters
from Brooklyn will break the roof hatch lock soon.
But tonight, exhaling smoke
at a fan perched in the window
the repetitive noise of slamming and tearing
on that rubber rooftop has you drinking faster.

It's the brand of fear
only made worse by acknowledgement.
If you look through your window
to identify the source of the raucous repetition
it'd be akin to pulling the blanket over your head.
You take a pull, wipe out a red ash
that fell to your skivvies
and try to appear unmolested
by what you do not know.
It happens again as if on cue.
It's a person.
There are people.
Moving now would scream defeat
so you sip your Spanish red.

Somewhere across the river
you've always lived along
another Unknown looms larger.
Last on that list, but not the best saved
that willow is weeping
and runs its own course.


Currently reading:
"Hearts in Atlantis" by Stephen King.

Orienteering

Field day was fun
in the fifth grade.
They carted us off
to a camp in the woods
for elementary parole.
Team-building tests
trust falls
obstacle courses
designed by smiling sadists
cleverly disguised as teenage camp counselors;
it was enough to fill a postcard to parents
though we'd be returning that afternoon.

I was dressed in camouflage--
full paramilitary regalia
to sate my inner Rambo.
The girl who'd taught me
how to use a combination lock
was on an opposing faction
poking her tongue my way
when applicable.
She's married with a baby now.
Her tongue has been retired.

There's one event
that's stuck in my head
like that witty reply
that comes to you
hours later
in the shower
too little too late
for the maelstrom.
We'd been tasked with creating
a device out of nature--
forest floor detritus
rigged to shield an egg
which the Powers That Were
would drop from ten feet.

My team was ill-fated.
No amalgamation
of leaves, vines, and moss
would protect our doomed yolk.
Not even that clever girl
who knew of locks
and other adult things
could figure out the riddle.

Cracked shells and yellow abortions
littered the ground
as the sun set on a day
that most have since forgotten
while now, before an omelette
the camo's deemed transparent:

It's not about the scorecard
but boarding that bus home.

Regarding Lucky Pliers

I was an apprentice in my second
or third year of the program.
It was a Saturday and I almost ran late for work
probably due to overabundant revelry.
I'd left my tools at home in the blur.
He gave me an old pair of Channellocks--
Model 420, missing the rubber grips
with a noble patina adorning the steel.
"These were mine when I was like you."
We completed whatever miserable task
we'd been summoned on a weekend to achieve
and I added that tool to my roster.

There were many days like that
back then; not the hangover--
that's increased with the decade.
Skills were imparted, jokes were shared
bonds were formed with men
I knew, admired, and came to love.
My father had stopped talking to me
due to his own vicious demons.
Seven years without a dad
will mess with a boy in his twenties.
I was grateful to be part of a fraternal organization;
perhaps more grateful than most
since family is something I've had to build as well.

I started carrying those pliers routinely
even though the teeth were worn
and gripping pipe was tedious.
No matter where I was
or what feat I was attempting
I'd always have that man
who took me under his wing
right there in my back left pocket
ready to answer any mental question I'd ask.
What would he do?
It was a token of appreciation
for the blessing of a brotherhood
bestowed upon me at an age when needed most.

Years went by.
I got out of my time, became a journeyman
learned when to figure it out on my own
and when to ask someone
with more burn scars on his arms.
The previous owner of those 420s got sick.
I was working four hours away
at a nuclear power plant on an allegedly Great Lake
when I got the news
that he needed an organ transplant
or would die.
Our traveling crew went out for dinner that night
and word of his illness was mentioned.
"No one would shed a tear if he croaked,"
someone flippantly said.
I put my fork down and calmly corrected him.
The procedure was performed.
That father figure from my early adulthood recovered.
I stopped lending those Channellocks out
to people who didn't bring their own.
"Read our contract," I'd say.
Things mean more to those who have the least.

On one job a kid I managed to teach
ripped the blue grips from his own
to make them match mine.
Circles are full.
Circles are round.
Circles are more than the ends of the pipes.

You can break my stones wide open
for something you know nothing about.
You can draw your pictures
mock my values
tell me I'm pathetic
for holding tight to what matters.
The pity is for you, my friend.
You've missed the point of unions.
We both get paid the same somehow
but I've had more to gain.

Lunatics

Bloodsharing
bastards that they were
father-daughter kinship
through the window
I realize as I peer
through my own
at the second consecutive
Yukon Gold of a moon
encased in bluest velvet
that their love of night
was more than literal.

It's a club whose scorn's
now cherished.
The sky is not the only cycle
we should aim to break.

The Blood Calls

"There was an accident,"
she tells me
checking the statement's validity
with her tone.
The subtle question goes unanswered.
It's safe so she proceeds.
"You were crying on your uncle's shoulder.
The old lady walked over to comfort you."

There's more to what she says;
more to what she doesn't.
That's how it is with one's mother.

Our matriarch's been dead and buried
for three years.
So many of these women I've loved
only live in dreams now.

There's a superstition
in her culture
our culture
what I've taken for mine:
A person is supposed to share a nightmare
to prevent it from coming to pass.

Here's to being cultural:
My brother will end up like me.

Vein Compensation

I'm eight minutes late
or too soon to be fashionable.
He's 75 so the difference evades him.

"Your handshake isn't as hard
as I'd expect," he informs me, disappointed.
"With your build and your trade and all."

I rub my dry palms, kept soft by gloves
requisite by asinine safety regs
designed to justify job titles.
"I hurt someone once," I confess
not telling him of the blue-collar dinosaur
much like himself
whose hand had been worn ragged
by decades pulling wrenches.
"It stayed with me."

We conduct our business.
There's a signature involved
resembling my own
though throughout the transaction
I dwell on my shown weakness:

Sometimes, with men
I've adjusted to folly.

Skid Marks at the Bend

He feels several factions
fighting for his soul.
It's the only thing convincing him
that he is not a deity.

Coming down from cumulus
aerobic respiration
seems another heartache--
With carbon comes decay.

Behold the nonplussed fathers
who chew on their dismay
while the constant blight
of paperweights
helps to build a harem.

It's waterlogged and sutured.
It's serpentine and slow.
Stolen kisses taste the best
and guilty heads will roll.


Currently reading:
"Love & Misadventure" by Lang Leav.

A Journeyman's Psalm

In your daily actions
and with your chosen words
never forget
that you'll work with these men
for the rest of your career.

To Bequeath a Meteor

My mother's missing hers
and this son has been aloof
tending instead to the stitches
most ignore--
but he listens, he reads
he hopes she finds the anchor
that evades the best of us.

"Remember that stone?"
she asks.
"The old lady said it came crashing
down from the sky with a flash.
When she walked to the spot
where it hit, this oblong rock
with rings in it was waiting for her hand
perfectly smooth and warm."

She goes on to tell me
how my grandmother laughed
as it spun like a top with minimal effort
whenever she twirled it on a flat surface.
I try to recall, but can't.
It's not a block
but someone else's memory
that's collecting dust on a shelf
in the house where I grew up.

Some people leave us
with the same bright burn
as that stone brought.
"Asi es la vida,"
she'd say through dementia.
Such is life, indeed, old darling.

When nothing else feels right
we smirk.

Vitamin D

The same sun
that reveals swirls of airborne bedroom dust
while you tug on layers of cotton
to face the nameless strangers

is the same sun
that thaws the countered frozen steaks
that you bought with two in mind
at a time when that seemed right

is the same sun
that blinds you, brass under your arm
which is perfect like the month
when you must have been concussed

is the same sun
that you miss
as you cross back over Main
to the shadow of the awning
that almost blocks the rain.



Currently reading:
"Facing the Music" by Larry Brown.

An Addict Relates

My mother used to date
pacing my apartment with eyes cast down
these guys when they first split
where the fuck's my lighter
and I get it now
I get it
she had needs
the bathroom matches will do
but all of them were younger
crawling on my hands and knees
and none of them deserved her
under the table while she drives home
one of them bought me a VHS tape for Christmas
it'll pop up as soon as I buy a new one
and I guess I haven't forgiven her for that
until now when my Bic's gone missing.

The Prizeless Fight

For fear of never learning
her favorite stretch of road
or how her sweat smells
when she's nervous
you'll chase a ginned-up legend
that revolves 'round parameters.

There's that red fleck in his eye
from a rage that never left
and canyons cut in cheek skin
that came with combing deserts.

Bullets riddle.
Cancer riddles.
He's riddled by a memory
that sank its claws too deep.

Kaleidoscope fantasies.
Fishers of men.
Those who don't cherish
a smoke after sex.

This scarlet sky at morning
proves blood has been spilled.
It isn't a threat--
It's a promise.


Currently reading:
"News of the World" by Philip Levine.

Prophet on an Empty Stomach

"I swiped it from a bar,"
she says, passing me the book.
A gift from someone who gets me.
I fan through the pages
like women wipe
and notice that one's missing.
The black wool coat
I've had for thirteen years
carries the novel
for the rest of our gin-fueled evening.
That knife I thought I'd lost
is discovered in a pocket.
More triumph on a small scale.
More belated redemption.

The next day
with my bank card forgotten
in the register where we left ourselves
I wonder if that page was so poignant
that someone had to steal it;
if I should buy another copy
or fill in my own blanks;
if it's time that I stop finding fault
in open books before me.

I pry the blinds apart
enough to peer outside.
It's unseasonably warm for February.
There's still no pity
for the village idiot
or men who've scuttled seaworthy ships
screaming of scripture and Socrates.

I decide against wearing pants yet.



Currently reading:
"Illuminations" by Arthur Rimbaud.

A Unicorn in Suffolk

I'd been working on the tip of Long Island;
a project with an alleged friend
whom I should have let struggle alone.
The ride was four hours of aptly named parkways.
A midway point was sought and found.
She liked sci-fi and fellatio.
I shared some of her interests.
We were two lonely souls
looking for love on the Internet
wondering why wheels were spinning.

Her place was a renovated suburban basement--
polar opposite of my third-floor Main Street apartment.
My transparency about the circumstances
appealed to her jaded sense of romance.
We both knew it was doomed
and filled those voids regardless
making Hannibal Lecter jokes
while waiting for 'X-Files' to end
so we could kill the lamp without shame
as soon as her glasses were placed on the nightstand.
I'd drive the remainder the next morning
and show up in Montauk refreshed
ready to build what awaited me.
Three or four times, always no snoring.
Three or four times, never a note.

A few months ago I looked her up
to see if she'd found a better arrangement.
She had, and I was happy.
Her fiance moved her to Portland
where they'd manage through the rain
for decades to come, sans cellar.
Graciously forgiven for dialing unfairly
I deleted her number and poured one.
Now, as she'd rather
I couldn't tell you her name
with steel between my teeth.
The wrenches still don't pull themselves.
I doubt they ever will.

Carbon Steel

At least I didn't need it
at the time; only noticed
its absence when fumbling for a pen
in the pocket of my jeans
where it used to reside for years.
I made a mental note
to search once I got home
but I knew it was gone forever
like birthday museum dates.

A knife is something
you don't want to lack
when the time comes
to slice through the madness.

I've calculated the mileage
to write off on my taxes
and realized I haven't
gone anywhere
this year.

To the Moon

Chopsticks make the food taste better
since you've got to work for it.

So hard to laugh alone
that the honeymoon is vague:
Is it a test
or a testament
to the end of those awkward innings?

Jackie Gleason made his threats
but Alice had it easy.

To Tame Their Folklore

The stream underfoot feels suddenly too fast.
He trips on a stone that's tumbling
beneath the ancient current.
A trout darts under an outcropping of rock
but he doesn't bother to grasp for it.
Damn, he thinks. I'm getting too old for this.
The gray hairs on his calves
tingle at their roots in response to the water's chill
like the brown ones did
for centuries.

He's never understood
why humans have searched for him:
documentaries made, photos faked
entire lives devoted to evidence of his existence.
If his intellect could handle a Christ complex
he'd be wearing sandals in the forest.

It's been harder to sleep in caves and hollows.
The rabbits still run, but more out of pity.
He knows his time is coming;
only wants it to be quick
and without the flash of a camera.
A female peer was never encountered
but the wilderness kept him company
as best as nature can.

He lies down at the base of a massive hemlock
and would pray for the fate of Socrates
if reading were in his skill set.
His big feet rest atop the thickest root
as he stares at silver birds
that leave white streaks
in their wakes.

Where is mercy
when one needs it?

Hindu Bodega

It's only when you're down
that you can fathom out.
No one lands it large
when the odds are in their favor.
It cracks through your consciousness
like ringing, precious crystal.
An overpaid photographer
has watched them cut the cake.

Oh Christ, the sirens
arrive in time
for the Mexican standoff
and morbid paint-by-number.
Reduce your carbon footprint
playin' 'possum
for the year.

So this is what they mean
by getting sandbagged.

Chalked and Choked

You admit to yourself
that three eggs don't cut it.
Volume gets lost in the scramble.
Some gets stuck to the pan.
By the time you scrape them
onto your plate
there isn't as much as you'd aimed for.

It dawns on you
that there are people
who earn their livings
by figuring loss percentages.
"If...Then..." Mathematics becomes a reality
as you take the first bite
and wonder why you spend more
on "natural" maple syrup.
Some of those statisticians
make the same calculations for human lives
to help determine the worthiness
of political decisions, military operations
whether or not to parachute food down
to starving children in Africa
or let warlords and starvation
duke it out through natural selection.
There are classified reports in filing cabinets
playing God with fates
comparing faceless people
to a mess left in a skillet
as you sit and sip espresso
chew your waffles, chop your eggs.

It's Sunday morning, 10:00 am
Valentine's Day
and you've got nowhere to be
until 5:00.
Making your own critical assessment
you decide to add booze to your coffee.

Lick the Lips of Genesis

She was all legs and heart
as always
lithe limbs protruding
from the pumping pound of flesh
that most had taken for granted.
In the nocturnal stillness
of her bedroom
my eyes not yet adjusted
to the Darkness we could see
I swore her legs multiplied
turning herself into an octopus
that strove to entangle
my own throbbing mass
of ill-informed humanity.

A recent addition to her decor
caught my crux in a sling:
Creeping to her bathroom
a series of night lights
plugged into wall outlets
illuminated my path
all the way to the porcelain
detecting my motion
and aiding the steps--
But it wasn't that simple;
We'd been there before.

Sure like virgin snow
and twice as deadly
my love is twisted poison
like the Snake that fed her fruit.


Currently reading:
"On Cats" by Charles Bukowski.

Lord Willing and the Creek Don't Rise

To be made in love intentional
and not through an accident.
A thousand failings of the Rorschach test.
If Pete Rose bet on himself
why can't we?
Honest Injun
it's the good type of sore.
There's so much more than just the juice.
Readying the goats
to heroin music
your uncle clipped his wings
for a prostitute
so who's the harlot now?

This Time Last Year

I can only explain it
with the comfort of a used Buick.
The speeding ticket on my birthday
didn't matter
since I knew our destination.
That art museum was a waste
of time and space
but her laughter echoing
throughout its concrete corridors
made it memorable.

12 months after
her change of heart
I'm left with distance
between myself and every other.
Unable to think my way out of it
I fumble for the door.

"Hell is the impossibility of reason."

Journal

The trade publication
from my Union's international office
hits my mailbox
like an arm overloaded with grocery bags.
I sit on the shitter
and scan the death notice section
neatly softened
by the phrase "Benefits Paid".

The ages are posted.
I cringe at the kids in their 20s.
Last names I recognize
from distant Locals
pop out and make me ponder
if there's any relation
to Brothers I know.
A few funeral homes are printed
as recipients of funds.
With no Next of Kin
the Coffin Man gets his reward.
I think of the Loners
I've met pulling wrenches
and love them.

But then there's the 94-year-old
with two women listed
as collectors of his Legacy.
He got them.
He won.
I laugh and stand for the paper.

Flushing the day
and its transgressions
the magazine closes itself.

Mostly Coastal

Sleepless in Sullivan
the cadence of a boy's breath
reverberating in calcium
minutes after he trampled a suitcase
in the foyer with his Big Wheel
and growled--
"Are you a dinosaur?"
but only another ferocious snarl
in response
before his bedtime
and becoming who has burned
from New Jersey
the key starts the ignition
for a solid night's sleep
where sounds can be controlled
like "Wild Horses" on the ride home
that warranted a wait for the last chord
in park.

Bottle-Blonde

Harold's unimpressed by the gestures on the stage.
He and his date, fresh on the rebound
and looking for a hand-out, sit in the
theater's equivalent of nosebleed seats
as Marvin the Magnificent
butchers third-rate tricks before his captive audience.
The tickets were cheap.
Harold was tired
of tossing paychecks down the tubes
on dozens of first dates
with women he'd never see again
aside from awkward sidewalk glances.

"This guy's a hack," Harold mutters
to his company, too distracted by indignation
to remember her name.
She fumbles with the car keys
in her pocket and curses her coworkers
for telling her that dating was a good means
of boosting morale.

Marvin the Magnificent continues the abortion.
A dove flies from his cuffs; Harold sighs.
A card is guessed in a deck; Harold grimaces.
A girl is hacked in half; Harold chokes on his cocktail.
He can't take the farce any longer
regardless of the event's frugality.

"She's got a twin sister!" he yells from the crowd.
Harold's date is mortified.
She swears a life of celibacy
despite her ex's absence.
"That woman over there
is not the one smiling from the waist up
in the box."

The room has been quiet
but a different silence sets in
to stop time.
A child cries and is hushed by weary parents.
Marvin adjusts the microphone
clipped to his over-starched collar.
"Perhaps you could do better?"
he challenges from a dimming spotlight.
The books he's read on the art of illusion
never addressed how to handle a heckler.

"I'd rather not stoop to a duel,"
Harold says, downing his drink
as he rises from his seat.
His nameless date is relieved
that the charade's come to an end.
The two of them exit.
The show goes on as planned
while the marquee lies overhead.

A deluge has erupted to further doom the evening.
Harold and his guest ponder where
they've parked--separately, thank goodness
since the night has gone to shambles.
There's a car quickly approaching
a puddle in the street.
Harold sees it coming, predicts the splash
raises his hand with authority
and stops the water from hitting them, mid-air.
The droplets fall to the pavement
as Harold cracks a smirk.
His companion, clearly terrified, runs
a hand through the darker hair
near her scalp and strides for her sedan
without a look over her shoulder.

Harold lights a smoke
and cups it from the rain.
There's magic in the mundane.
He knows and loves the difference.

The Repentant

I don't think she caught me
inhaling her perfume
in the theater
with our feet up.

After the film
she asked why I gave
that kid in the parking lot
five bucks
for gas money
when he said he wanted to get home
though we both knew it was for heroin.
"He'd mentioned Matamoras,"
I claimed.

Maybe she caught me.
Home is a relative term.

Clinomania

You're always going to see her around town
lighting up the barroom with her laugh
and those eyes that pierce
through flannel and ribs.
You're always going to envision
that mane tossed across
your pillowcase
and ponder how she'd taste at 3:00 AM--
a devil's hour delicacy.
You're always going to wonder
about second chances
and how you would have fled
for the curtain that time.

Isn't that the rub
of a life you can't divide
into paths as wide
as your imagination?

The man of the hour's
a man of his word--
But damn, you bet
you'd eat well
for that lifetime.


Currently reading:
"Big of Us" by D.G. McLansky.

Mentioned Unmentionables

[The scene is an Italian restaurant:
the best he knows in that neck of the woods
halfway betwixt their respective towns
as per the unwritten rules.
Familiar brick lines the walls.
They're seated next to a steam radiator.
He turns the control valve down
to lower the heat
since he's already sweating
after the first sip of his gin Martini.
She wonders what he's fumbling with
but doesn't ask.
His steak's getting cold.
Medium rare has that tendency.
The lines are flying
like rockets over No Man's Land
with a white tablecloth
in place of barbed wire.]

"Single Russian women
line up outside the United Nations building
with marriage lawyers, waiting for
American men to marry them for citizenship."
He carves a morsel off
from his New York Strip
pausing for emphasis.
It's less than 16 ounces
but not the first time he's been misled.
"I've considered it."

"Why didn't you?" she asks
while forking her fish to a second death.
"You knew there was a girl like me
out there..."

"Fuck you," he declares
in delectable defeat
pulling the napkin from his lap.
"You win this round."

"I know," she says
while watching him retreat
to the men's room.

There's a message
from a friend
he reads in the mirror
after the urinal flushes itself.

He tips on his credit card;
feels badly about it.

Where You Want To Be

His brother had passed quietly
in a sterile room, cheaply tiled
with blue-flecked linoleum.
The rest of the week
was reserved for "arrangements"--
a word so vast in meaning
from flowers
to covering a casket with dirt
and letting go.

A card was passed around
in the break room at work.
People signed their names neatly
at the bottom of the encouraging words
penned and printed by strangers
thousands of miles away.
Most of us tucked a crumpled Twenty
into the envelope as well, though no one
checked to see if those who signed
contributed--
The Honor System:
The Way It Should Be;
Often times different
from The Way It Is

like when you come to your job
on a Monday and have to pretend
that a touching exercise
in the form of a wad of cash
handed your way
can ever bring back
your brother again--
a lifetime chalked up
to a Hallmark you'll toss.

The Way It Is.

Miscalculated Countdown

None of us would resolve
to quit drinking, quit smoking.
I was the first one
to whip a lighter out all night
whenever someone
in our circle asked
and I was proud of that.

A girl I'd burned ten years ago
showed up before the ball dropped.
I apologized for the decade.
She told me, "We were kids."
Juniper berries never tasted so fine
and closure came with flying corks.

24 hours after the year's first hangover
a buck stares blankly from the kitchen wall brick.
I tear him down with fervor
as if he'd made those choices.
The December days he adorns
enter the trash can
with the rest of the year
below him, behind me
pages of lives reduced to a
re-gifted nature calendar.

It's months premature
for lions and lambs.
Preventative maintenance
is pointless.

For JJ, as Always

Second Biggest Fear:
Becoming a Great Man

who's more than halfway
through his Life.
Time has been generous
in doling Billable Hours.
Gods have been gracious
in granting him Gifts.
He's Mastered his Art
his Skill, his Trade.
His Name brings nods
of approval in trenches.
At night he counts Achievements
like the lines in the grout
that hold the bricks together.
The walls and roof
keep Nature at bay
while he waits for the Dirt.

Biggest Fear:
History repeating

for a boy who's got
a Chance
and a brother who's not strong enough
to weather the Storm
and warn him.

Great Men make great statues
but a story trumps a Legend.

Living on Leftovers

It's days since we've been holy
but the food ain't running low.
"Take some home with you,"
the bloodline women say.
The maid quit
and the chef, too
and a bachelor's a fool
if he turns down a meal.

She reaches out on Christmas
to wish her merry best.
The next day his date
proves his mother right:
"They can see it in your face."
His reply is not a lie.
He misses now a ghost.

Two recipes of his dead grandmother go down
like "soul food and something to eat."

Rehash.
Reheat.
Season to taste.
Whatever you do
don't swallow.

Date Two, Scene Thirty-Nine

Jackie, will she do?
She almost looks like you.
The poor girl wouldn't talk to me
if she only knew.

She asked me if I'm stuck
or feeling out of luck.
I ordered up another round.
I didn't sip--I sucked.

I noticed in her eyes
she saw through my disguise
of beard and flannel button-down
and waiters used as spies.

Jackie, she won't do.
I lost her, just like you.
I hope Chicago treats you right--
an office with a view.

Currently reading:

"Poetry East:  Numbers 84 & 85".

Reveille Reunion

Overhead lighting
is karmic justice wisely avoided.
The lamp at my dining room table
starkly illuminates the right side of his face.
His cauliflower ear
earned from years of wrestling
attracts accidental glances
that he may or may not notice.
I inhale his mother's leftovers.
He attacks my mother's baked goods.
We catch up over whiskey
wine, and rum-infused eggnog
seeking refuge from family
we suffered through all day.
There was a time at age fifteen
when we'd be drinking giant bottles
of malt liquor with parents out of town
but now we speak of noteworthy literature
convenient history, drunken fumblings
women who framed our penchants and pet peeves
lessons we learned in and out of classrooms.

No savior is born, but a few saints perish.

The time comes when I kick him out for his own good.
There's a holiday party waiting in his new state
with a woman or two worth effort.
There are stories to be made for next time.
The oldest friends know distance.

I hear the locks tumble
as my wrist turns brass
and he descends the stairwell.
Half a glass of wine swirls down the kitchen drain.
I realize I don't have a suit fit for weddings.

A Homemade Hades for the Holidays

You shave the strays
pluck a few grays from your beard
repeating her name
into the medicine cabinet mirror
in case you forget it
in your cups over dinner.
Someday only one phrase
will ever leave your lips.
Until then it's "Cheers"
and "Sure, we'll hear the specials."

There's no miracle on Main Street.
It's like a Buick:
It holds up in court.
Please don't wish for luck;
only a graceful death.

Christ is born every Damned day
in the form of a stubborn writer.

The Bush Pilot

Drink back to your first rodeo--
then your lasso;
now your noose.
Flaccid attempts
transmogrified.
Seeking refuge in daytime sleep
when the pages aren't enough.
The glorious maelstrom
swirled into a morgue
with no one left
to claim the corpse.

Four champagne flutes, rarely used
collect dust on a shelf
since they're too tall for the cupboard.
You should have let her breathe
like the fine wine that she is.

Call it even.
Call it clashing.
Call it in the air.

An Understated Magi

Dumping the peppers was making me late. It was only a Saturday side job and my employer was probably still rubbing last night's venial sins from crusted eyelashes. That row of mason jars had been sitting atop my kitchen cabinets for well over four years, mocking me from their pressboard perch. Kristen's canning abortion lingered like a reminder of what unhealthy love can yield:  a dusty relic of time gone by that haunts you, breaks you, castrates. Company often asked about them and I fumbled for an answer. The drain sucked down the liquid, the trash can took the solids. I smirked with overdue accomplishment and descended to the sidewalk.

I'd seen him around town ever since I'd moved here shortly before the breakup. It was unclear where he slept, but his clothes implied a stairwell. He was old enough to have served in the latter years of Vietnam and the courtesy in his eyes suggested that the young man who drew a bad hand had served his country dutifully. There was always a nod or a wave from the suntanned skin he washed in public bathrooms. Long strands of gray hair fell from his head and upper lip. This morning a trenchcoat shielded him from the first delayed frost that had stalled until December. While I approached my truck, he rummaged through the ashcans behind the bar next door.

I pulled the pack from the left breast pocket of my denim shirt and counted its contents. Eight was enough to last him two days. Eight was enough for a Festival of Lights.

"Want a smoke?" I asked while my altered course intercepted his.

"I found a few butts," he confided. His trenchcoat made him look like a film noir detective. What he sought was the boiled down reduction that all of us pursue in our our ways:  a few simple pleasures before the curtain falls.

I handed him my box of smokes without the complication of words. He replied with "Merry Christmas." I admired the lack of "Happy Holidays" paranoia. We went our separate ways.

My truck rumbled to a start and I shifted into gear. I was barely out of the municipal lot when my part-time employer called to notify me of his anticipated delay. A boiler he'd installed last winter was having trouble. A man of his word, he was heading there with vengeance.

"I'll call you when I'm finished," he said. "Stay home for now."

I parked and climbed three flights to my apartment. My boots were returned the closet and I peeled my work garb off. Air bubbles plagued the copper pipes in its hydronic heating, but sunlight augmented the warmth. It seemed the right time to wash those mason jars. The faucet ran, the dish drain filled with glass. Timing sets the stage for the silent wars endured. A block or two down Main Street the outdoorsman lit his first.

Henry VIII

Sometimes her name
(a guillotine blade)
falls from my mouth
against my will
as if on cue--
like when our favorite gin joint
serves my sandwich with the gherkin
that made me sick last winter.
Maybe it's pathetic
to the patron hunched
on the stool to my right
but at least there's a name to say.

What they don't print
on that bottle of pills
is that you have to believe
in the medicine you're taking
if you want it to work.

Capsule

The photo's black & white
two-by-three inches
and framed in dollar-store gold.
A soldier and his ladyfriend
stand faking smiles
for some mother or brother
or friend of a friend
while the camera freezes the '40s.
He's in uniform, she's got curls
and their pose is off-center
like the world at that time.

I pull the cardboard backing out
see his rank, their names, the date
scrawled in a proud female's handwriting
wipe my dust and floating smoke
from the glass that still protects them
and place them back next to Clancy.

I brought them inside
a few months ago
to let them live on a bookshelf.
The curb was no place
for those young folks to die.

Polyamory

Hit 'em in the kidneys.
They'll be pissing blood for days.
Sleep in wet spots, dowry hunter.
Charming snakes can pay.

Vineyard clippings.
Livers dying.
Russians play roulette.
An off day or a day off--
neither help forget.

Lucky pliers.
Funeral pyres.
Matchbox Cars with dents.
Home was where her scars were
but Hell has cheaper rent.


Currently reading:
"The Bell Tolls for No One" by Charles Bukowski.

Marine Disasters of Cape Cod

It was her idea in the first place.
She asked of my Thanksgiving
but clearly sought to fish.
I pried myself into the shower
and headed for a familiar stage
across the trusty Hudson.

The script was slightly modified.
For the first hour she rambled
about her new French bulldog
as it tried to nibble on my groin
through the blanket covering us on the couch.
"This is Jack," she proclaimed with motherly pride
as I cringed at the canine name's irony.
"She's a rescue dog," she bragged
but I knew who was being saved.
Details of crates, eating feces to hide it
and being bred for financial gain
dripped from her living room walls
as I tried to watch a childhood Christmas film
while waiting for the wine to take hold.
At first I'd declined it, but the dog-talk
drove me to the corkscrew.

Our eyelids gained wait
so we ventured to the place where she sleeps
that's mostly made of pillows and wood.
"Don't untuck the sheets," she scolded
as I tried to free my feet.
It was Hell as I'd remembered.
It was unforgivable sin.
A poster in her bathroom
purchased in Massachusetts
made me swerve my stream.

The straddling was pleasant
until Jack howled through the door.
"What about your neighbors?"
"I pay rent. Who cares?"
I did, and urged her to allow
her charge to enter.
That was my second mistake.

The pooch climbed into the bed
though it feigned a need for lifting
when the sofa was our setting.
Commands were whispered my way
as the dog ignored her orders.
I felt a cold nose behind me
and lost it all
though not due to the grape.
"Let's stop."
So we did
and she put on her pajamas
and watched some late-night television
as I tripped over a garden hose
in her landlord's driveway.

An Owl and an Ingrate

The sex had to be quiet since we were staying with her family at their summer home in Vermont. Her brother always had something to prove, although he was already the golden child. A high-paying building management job awaited his return at a high-rise residential building near Columbus Circle. I was still on the unemployment list counting down my remaining weeks of insurance benefits. When he invited me on a night hike through a local nature preserve I had to accept. If you sleep with a man's sister that shamelessly you have to accept his challenge.

I wish I could lie to you about the moon, but there was none. It was there. It just wasn't visible. The darkness was a safe place to wear hard thoughts on my face. I wondered if she'd told him about how neither of us had cried after her appointment on Bleecker Street. I'd say "our appointment", but it was hers and hers alone. They save the inclusive phrases for happiness:  "We're pregnant"; "We're buying a house"; "We're in love." Suffering is solitary, unless one is being dragged through the forest by an over-zealous brother of a stubborn lover. A branch he didn't hold swung back and caught my forehead. The awakening was appreciated. That mental subway ride back to her apartment was worse than the current trail under foot.

I'm not sure who saw it first, but both of us heard the rush of wind and ducked simultaneously. An owl with a wingspan double the width of my outstretched arms swooped down at us--directly in our path--veering up inches before contact. Its talons could have flayed us had we made better victims. The night was owned by predators more savvy than ourselves. We shared some laughs and expletives. Our ride home was in silence. I was glad he didn't bring up Bleecker Street.

A few months later he flattened his face at a friend's house party in Boston. Cocaine and vodka convinced him of his immortality. He ventured from a balcony out onto a limb. The tree gave way underneath his slender frame. His fall was broken three storeys down behind a brownstone. The family rallied and made the trek to Beantown. His sister took it the hardest despite their sibling rivalry; or maybe she made those scenes to win back some attention. Regardless, I hated those weekends in Massachusetts hotels and that stinking waiting room. I hated the way she'd fly off the the cuff more easily due to the emotional cocktail mixed within her fragile system. I hated the tubes that ran in and out of him, holding the hero intact.

And I hate that owl, six years hence, for keeping its claws from our necks.

Mercutio, Fetch My Derringer

The article reads like a ghost story
a sadistic older cousin tells
with a flashlight for a microphone
in a midnight bedroom
the night before a holiday
when visiting from out of town:
Wooden ships laden with dead seagoers
have been washing ashore
on the Japanese coast which faces the Koreas.

The bodies are badly decomposed
left at the mercy of currents for weeks.
There are photos of first responders
or whatever they call those in Japan.
Investigators use surgical face masks
to mitigate the stench of liquefied flesh.
It's a recurring nightmare for the locals.
Finding boats containing corpses
is enough to madden a prophet.

To think that this happens
in this Year of our Lord.
To think of the conditions
that warrant this grisly gamble.
To think of the regrets
that went through their heads
as the seagulls circled hungrily
awaiting tender eyeballs.

It's enough to drive a man to Christ
this Age of Information.
Instead I watch a speck of floating cork
and wonder if wine
can turn back to water.

Chekhov's Gun

There they were
pinned to her kitchen's corkboard:
her poem I got in print
and a note from her ex-husband
that accompanied a birthday cake
which I was too stubborn to share.
There were three Chinese cookie fortunes, too--
something else I collect
but I was too jealous
to read them.

We slept soundly
even though her dog
kept tossing in her sleep.

I left before she woke
with the sun angled low
and always in my eyes.

The Man Who Braved the Everglades

Ray calls me for my address
though I've given it to him twice.
He's the uncle I saw most.
He's the uncle who Did Time:
15 years for beating his young wife to death
when he caught her cheating, high on LSD.
He's the reason I've never used drugs
outside glass.

First Puerto Rican cop in Rockland County.
First man I saw cry.
First and last person I visited in prison as a kid.

I think of him every time I cross the bridge
and see the lights from Downstate Correctional.
He thinks of me now
as he calls me on a Bloody Mary Sunday
my teeth unbrushed
my knees uncovered
my heart in relative shambles.
I give him my address
and he hangs up.

I know what it's like
to write from a jail cell.

What Do You Mean, You Don't Dance the Tango?

She keeps the gin I love on hand
in case we both get lonely;
never lets me make my own--
though not 'cause she's scared
of my heavy hand.

Sometimes I use
her lovely mane as reins.
Sometimes I drool
cruel words
to spare the innocent.

You only live once
and only with yourself.

Bargain Basement

The package waited
as patiently as it could
for my blade to tear into it.
There they were:
ammunition cans
"Army surplus", they call it
as if such a thing exists--
cubical steel painted green
hinged tops with handles
rubber gaskets to keep the powder dry
yellow stenciled lettering and numbers
that I only halfway understood.
I unclasped a latch
heard the vacuum break, felt my money's worth
with blinded buyer's pride.

There were grains of sand inside.

I opened the other five
all to find the same:
foreign soil in the boxes
that once held bullets
hurled to save the lives
of the frightened kids nearby.

I checked for dents
checked for blood
checked the white receipt
neatly printed in a warehouse.

I'll be buying new next time.
It's worth the extra cash.

Baking Soda, Vinegar, Science Fair Redundancy

"I love your words," she says through the haze.
"So do I," he says through the smoke.
The latter will stay the same.

"I want you write one for me," she says through the rain.
"So do I," he says through the clouds.
The latter will stay the same.

"You're going to write yourself right," she says through tears.
"I'll get it down fairly," he says through teeth.
The former is more accurate.

"She doesn't exist," she says through the door.
"That doesn't matter," he says through the wall.
The verdict is out on transparency.

The Wedding Photographer

I want to be the wizard who keeps the trains on time.
I want to be the only man she calls Sailor.
I want to wear her father's ring on a necklace.
I want to be loud on the Western Front.
I want to deny the continuous supply of female flesh.
I want to be a gentleman of leisure with the roughest hands.
I want to stall the morning commute in an early-model sedan.
I want to tell the men I love exactly how I feel.
I want to chew my tongue and wait for blood that isn't coming.
I want to be reminded that she's poisoned if she's fanged.
I want to be entitled and always photogenic.

Honey, let us settle for waking up forgetful.

The Windy City

She texted me from the Blue
to tell me that she found that sauvignon blanc
I introduced her to out there in Chicago.
It's another detail that means nothing to you
and everything to me.
I was drinking it at the time.
I was thinking of her eyes.

What's mine will always be yours.
Without yours in mind
I wouldn't bother opening my own.
All things grow.
I don't mind.

1%

The milk's soured in an unopened carton.
A blue date scoffs from the refrigerator door.
I've barely been home for two months.
Work has consumed me.
I haven't had time to cook, sip coffee.

As I dump the spoiled contents
into a swirling toilet
I remember doing the same as a kid
when visiting my father
two weeks after seeing him last.
The milk had sprouted chunks
ignored in the corner of a sad bachelor fridge.
He'd forgotten that he'd bought it for me.
The sentiment was there.
He tried.
I'm trying, too.

I push the lever, flush my thoughts
and contemplate the circle.
We've lost the marital privilege.
There isn't sweat to spare.


Currently reading:
"Big Bad Love" by Larry Brown.

Sea Cred

I catch her sketching me
from the corner of the bar
with a rum-and-coke collecting dust
on the plot of oak before her.
She's Jackie in ten years.
She's full-blood Italian.
I'm in lust so I step closer.
The profile of my nose is correct.
The beard has yet to flourish.
"It's a two-minute exercise,"
she confesses between strokes.

I return to my initial roost
and pose to let her finish
but the pressure's been added.
The knowledge is there.
She can't force the disconnection
we once shared
now that I've gone and
ruined it with words again.

Last Call comes and she flies
to another man's shoulder
saying she's too old
but still giving me her number.
I catch a glimpse of her final rendition
before she folds her pad:
Lead's been added to paper.
Space has been added to time.
She's captured a darkness in my eyes;
a sadness.

We'd get along just fine.

To Fight a Windmill

You never quite forget
the taste of blood
in your mouth.
Grade school taught you
to loosen teeth
to completion
and feel the swell
of copper from your gums:
the economy of motion
and general mistrust
of those who like math.

It's practice for Saint Peter
when the first frost hits.
A criminal gets caught
when he changes his routine.

Something Else to Scare You

Take it from someone
who knows of the lonely:

A friend is someone who drags you out
when you don't want to be dragged.

Adapt & Overcome

To the men who've surprised me
with a precious egg sandwich.
To the men who've whispered jokes
in our redundant safety meetings.
To the men who've tossed me
a piece of candy in the eleventh hour.
To the men who've reminded me
to shut up and take the money.
To the men who've helped me rig 35000-lbs pipe
into place with cranes and chains and ropes.
To the men who've made me smirk against my will.
To the men who've called me in the evening
to congratulate the prosperity.
To the men who've mentioned
the merit of keeping one's chin up.
To the men who've taught me the value of a Day's work.
To the men who've broken my balls wide open
for the sake of keeping me humble.
To the men who've seen something in me
that reminded them of their youth.
To the men who've fostered
what I failed to see when the odds were against me.
To the men who've left voicemails
I've saved for rainy days:

The trade can be lucrative
but your Brotherhood means more than the check.

Elusive Solutions & Comfort Food

"Your insight was right,"
she says with no surprise.
"I'm getting back
with my husband."

You feel the gin bite.
A lime wedge squirts your eye.
All's well on the oak.
Kids drown by the pint.
You're laughing.


Currently reading:
"The Sexual History of the World War" by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld.

68 Days of Hard-Boiled Eggs

Leave No Marks:
The mattress rule
for women who have men.
Although they like it rough
it's uncouth to bruise the fruit.
The goods are damaged inside
but their skin's as pure as bleach.
No evidence.
No love bites.
No handprints on their thighs.

Start in fire, end in fire.
Lies within the ashes.
Tread lightly, son.
Carve slowly.
It's not a kissing story.

This is all there is.

Decapitated Vines

I used to do this thing
where I'd save the corks
from wine bottles shared
with my beloved
of the month
and spread them out
on a shelf that houses
Catholic patron saints
burning above my bed springs.

The price of genius is sanity
but He called my wooden nickel.
I cheated on my lovers
with my writing.
Fire has no loyalty.
I purged and built again.
The corks were swept methodically
into an open trash can
and a new collection started
within the week
or less.

I used to do this thing
where I'd drink with other people.
Their voices became grating.
They took up too much space.

It's me and wine and cigarettes
and wedding season's over.

The Navigator

Our first night in Maine was decent
until the mosquitoes
came to claim their dues.
My father and I rolled up the windows
and left the rural rest stop
driving through the night
to the best cheap motel
I remember in a lifetime--
comatose for three hours
until check-out time arrived
since we were on a budget.

He bought sheets and bungee cords
to rig a canopy over his Camry.
I thought of what Bar Harbor wouldn't be
while trapped in a white sedan
unable to escape for a midnight piss.

At 15 I learned
how patient one can be.
Double the number
add a few more bloodsuckers:
I'm still here
writhing, with a smirk
and more fathers than I'd realized.

Huffy

****** lived in my childhood neighborhood.
He was Pakistani and more intelligent
in areas where I floundered.
Frankly, looking back, there are ways
in which I envied him:
Two years older;
better at math;
an unquestioned knowledge of reproduction;
and the best dirty joke in town
at a time when very few of us
knew how sex smelled.

I was eleven
equally dark, but naive
and ****** seemed to have most of the answers.
Laughing last is laughing longest
but I am doing neither.
I learned last night that he's been dead
for seven years now.
There's an article on a local newspaper's website
on his life and death
with a photo of him in uniform
standing in front of our flag.

Left college to enlist
four days after 9-11;
was ridiculed by drill sergeants
due to his foreign name;
served his country
as a soldier of Muslim faith
like my German grandfather
who fought in WWII
since he was spat on in school during WWI;
earned a master's degree at RIT
after his deployment to Iraq;
gave his dog tags to his little brother
after getting married;
returned to active duty in Afghanistan
as a second lieutenant and translator;
was blown to patriotic pieces
by a roadside bomb with the four men
in his patrol--
a martyr, buried in Albany
too young to be over
and too old for dirty jokes.

The boys in our development
used to laugh at the way
he'd wear his bicycle helmet
even after reaching his destination--
sometimes inside a condo
while we played video games
and tried to muffle the cursing
from our parents in the next room.
We even had a name for his condition:
******itis.

I wish his Kevlar helmet
had saved him in 2008
but explosions aren't like bike wrecks
or ridiculing kids.


Currently reading:
"The Zombie Survival Guide" by Max Brooks.

Talcum Powder

It's been sitting on my kitchen table
for the better part of a worse week
since I don't know what to do:
Toss it in the trash can
or stash it somewhere safe
for a future belle to loathe
and hold against me.
Her lack of return address is predictable.
The typed and printed destination
is what first implies sterility.
My building number's wrong
but the letter found its way.
My postman knows me;
crumples my mail

like that final cocktail napkin
from a night
the summer before last
careening in Manhattan
while visiting her friend
here from Ohio.
We'd hit several gay bars
on his behalf
and I'd hit the gin
on mine.
When she tried to pass out
on a Midtown walk-up's couch
I commandeered her keys to drive us north--
a modern Dmitri Karamazov
with work to do early the next morning.
I hit the Home button on her GPS
on a taillight-infested parkway.
Not recognizing the address
I barked toward a slouched dress
in the passenger seat
that the damn thing was mistaken.
She told me that valet drivers
can't be trusted, but I knew
she meant all men
because her stepfather had entered her
until, at ten, she popped
to an unresponsive mother.
And that was the end of that
and us;
and now, with this missive
I have her forgiveness
printed, italicized
in font as big as the fold.

Maybe she has the lines
I wrote her
--hiding in a drawer--
that no one will discover
since with our death
died her faith.

I'll do the same.
I'll tuck it in a place
that no one dares.

There are people
there are places
that best remain uncovered
but the envelopes we open
can bring us back to grace.

Rickshaw to Nowhere Fast

I don't expect you to understand this
as more than a sequence of words
but I get sick when I haven't sat to pound keys.
Something in my gut twists until circulation is lost
and purple parts inside turn blue, then black.
I shit dark organs in the morning
or maybe they're wine stains.
The coffee'ed commute
is more comforting than tired springs.
There's no one to impress by making the bed.
A gargoyle sighs and swoops down to Main Street.

I take out the gravity between nine walls
echoing only one voice
on lost souls who have none.
The aftertaste of mayonnaise
is permanent in my mouth
no matter how much I flush it
with 13%.

My Friends With Benefits
are all too sad to fuck
and I'd rather show restraint--
Disillusioned ships
sinking in the Southern Mediterranean
a stone's throw away from shore
or maybe another sandbar.

See what I mean?
I can't write any more;
only type.
But the fact that I'm still here to fail
means the chance is alive:
As it has been.
As it is.
As it will be when they sell my guns
and dump ashes in the Hudson.

Ode to a Clove

They mock me
call me hippie, faggot
assume I reek of patchouli;
But really, why I smoke them
is not their longevity
not their pleasant aroma
not their pungent nature
but that they require
a taming all their own:

If I don't suck
they won't stay lit.
I respect that.
There's a cherry
still present
that needs me;
knows my name.

Djarum Black
I stay true
and acknowledge
the existence of repercussions.

Refugees

My brother-in-arms parked--
the classic rock station
turned to what most would deem too loud
for so early in the morning--
and rolled down his window
to share sincere suggestions.

"I'll be Tom Petty.
You can be the heartbreaker."

We knew it was going to be a good day.
We were right.

Slick

It picked 

a Hell of a night to rain.

That frog picked 

a Hell of a time to cross.

I picked 

a Hell of a second to swerve.

Your brakes picked 

a Hell of an instant to lock.

This is what they tell you

when the Ride is finally over:

You've learned nothing

--wasted space--

if you haven't absorbed

the theme:

We pick nothing.

We

pick

nothing.

We pick nothing

(but our words).

Olive Drab

They drafted me in 1969
to fight their fear of yellow men and Communism.
I quickly forgot how my girlfriend tasted
and learned the smell of melting flesh.

When they ordered me to take the point
I led us through the jungle.
When they told me to clear an underground bunker
I grabbed someone's .45, prayed with a flashlight.
But the first time in base camp
when commanded to clean the latrine
I told the nearest sergeant, "My father's a janitor.
I won't die dumping barrels of shit in Southeast Asia."

They never asked me again.

Throwin' 'em Back on Thursday

It stabs me in the eyes:

There's the chop-job she got
that I drove her to
eight years ago--
a haircut of rebellion
since she knew I loved her locks.
I never thought I'd see it again
especially on her 21st--
a bottle dangling from her mouth
when she isn't slumped over on carpeting.

But the world has changed since then;
The world, and circumstances.

We all now know
the same as all of those
whom we pretend to know
and the juniper is strong
and the ice is melting fast
and the years are melting faster
and I'm glad that she married
the man whom she did
'cause I've seen their kids
in pictures
and Damn.

Riptide Fortunes

I take a page
from some stranger's book
by turning down her drink
while she sprawls across me
on the couch.
"Describe your ideal woman..."
she says, feeling so falsely original.

It's a ten-round fight
in as many seconds
as I dodge my mind's vignettes--
How the girl on that TV show
curls her upper lip over her teeth
just like you do when agitated
or the time I saw the painting
hanging in your kitchen
on the living room wall of a customer
and almost dropped my wrench
or that corner where I spotted a truck
from your development's landscaping outfit
and my friend said "That's a sign"
or the non-existent birth certificates
of those hairy, sweaty kids
you promised to get me back
and the night I walked away
from breaking up that bar-fight
when I felt your hand leave mine
and...

Jackie, if you're reading
you're wrong about the Universe--
All your math be Damned.

I've run from gods I couldn't name
but yours is carved in brick.


Currently reading:
"Fight Club" by Chuck Palahniuk.

Brooklyn Bombshell

There's no note
on the kitchen table
this time
when I exit
my bedroom
Sunday morning
and she's gone--
but I'm grateful.
Never again
will I see
the sailor tattoos
her old seaman
carved, marked
like claimed stake.

The blurred recollection
of her pulling back
the sheets
to find and thank
my sleeping face
seals the unsaid deal:
With a forked tongue
and a forehead kiss
we never would have made it.

The distance doesn't matter.
We use the same two moves.

The Practice Run

Her dog was 17
deaf and going blind.
The poor bitch
was a ghost
of the family friend
they'd known.

A neighbor backed down
their driveway in her van
crushing the Husky's head.
"My mother swears it was suicide,"
she says, her pupils pinholes
her palms a mess.
"The week prior she laid down
behind a parked Volkswagen
got up and limped away
when its weight was not enough."

Our conversation shifts
but my mind can't leave that scene.
A canine's wisdom tells it
when it's time to leave the pack.
Admirable. Admirable--
Yet humans have a stigma.

Coppertone Gal

Beach-bronzed buns
scamper across
my fake wood flooring.
Tan lines entice
what's left of this romantic.
The amber skin's real.
The blonde hair isn't.
The latter doesn't matter.

I know why the logo marketing
made millions.
When I hear her toothbrush
above my recently cleaned sink
every skullghost dies.

They knew that hope would sell.

Compensated Endorser

Don your morning war paint.
Give them half of what they want.
Keep them coming
back for more
of what isn't yours to give.

A silver fish blinds the meek
with sunlight, doing eighty.
Cutting off your fellow man--
that isn't very Christlike.

They'll claim you've left them tender;
try to flatter you, coquettish
but you can't be very tender
while your hands are wrapping headboards.

They don't make splints for lingchi
with lungs that limit laughter.
If you're still you'll feel the earth spin.
It's scaphism, at best.

Someone pretty block the shrapnel.
Someone else can grab the cab fare.
It's the sand you chew in scallops
when you're dining with dessert.

Franklinesque Experiments

Summer thunder wakes me

an hour before my alarm--

vibrations through the bedsprings;

flashes through the blinds.

It makes me feel much smaller

in a world that's grown complex.

I think of what my mother said

so many times in grade school days:

"It's the sound of angels bowling."

A crash comes like a strike.

She almost had it right

though it isn't fair to blame her.

It's coming from the Heavens

but not balls and pins and laughter.

It's the sound of angry gods

who are fighting for our souls.

Somewhere there's a kid in me

who's hoping for a win.

Common Thorax

I only see
one at a time:
the massive ant
that rides these walls
and pillowcases
here in my third-floor walk-up.

The singularity
leaves me unsure
if it's an infestation
since I've changed the locks twice
after breakups
and the exterminator can't get in--
or one freeloading roommate
too sharp to help with rent

but I never swing to squash it.
I just flick him from my corner.

There are broader swords before us.
"Death is not the Beast."

Pine Bush Blues

"This town's known for UFO sightings,"
he says between our calculations.
"There's a diner on the corner
that's called 'The Cup and Saucer'."

I stare through the fractions
stamped on my tape measure;
stare through the apprentice
fumbling through our Trade.

"I dated a girl who worked there,"
I tell him, boiler room sweat
stopped by my eyebrows.

"Did she believe in aliens?" he asks.
The Kid's a year older
but he's got a lot to learn.

"She believed in someone
more far-fetched."
I grin like a burglar
immune to the Universe
and pull another trigger
that only revs the band saw.


Currently reading:
"On Writing" by Charles Bukowski.

Gideon Bibles

Back-and-forth
across the page
yellow light
to praise high words
of the living dead
who speak
with those too tired
for sleep.
The ink is running dry
so the rubbing is much harder
blurring black and peeling pulp.
Omission is a sin.

Electricity, like fire
was discovered
not invented.
Edges smoothed by friction
prove that some things gold
can stay.

Soul Food

A reheated plate of leftovers
steams up at my face
on this quiet Friday night--
rice my mother brought me
and grilled chicken from my father.
The plate, so commingled
would make both parents pause.
Who knew they'd be feeding
their only son together
two decades-and-a-half
after the kitchen split?