I was a schoolchild
in early autumn

waiting for the bus
with my mother.

In the early morning
light, it was there

yellow and hard
and terrifying,

a beast equipped
to rip
me from the womb.

I stood, my red
plastic lunchbox
in my hand,

a freshly made
bologna sandwich
with white bread
and mayonnaise

beginning its trek
to first grade.

I cried
when the doors
opened
to swallow me.

I forgot
when they
opened
to let me out.

Starting a Fire

When you brought me back from the hospital
I saw you in flashes:
sitting on a chair,
eating too buttery quinoa,
turning on the microwave.

You were busy.

I was an otter
in an oil spill.
I slept and woke,
found you were gone

and slept again.
You woke me up
again much later when
you told me I was grumpy
and I laughed the whole way
home from the train
and found I needed to create
something pretty.

So I put up a tent
in my room and changed
the sheets on my futon
and strung Christmas lights
above our heads because
I couldn't quite get the stars
to come out on my apartment
ceiling.  You were tired
but loved the thought

and we slept under the sky
of my room, folded over
and under like a matchbook,
and it felt,
for an orange moment,
like we were the last
two people
on the coast
as the sun went down
on the world

forever.

Wine

“He makes a Merlot,” she said

unconsciously running her eyes into his

and laughing there at the collision.

Awkwardness died.  He laughed.

“Merlot is a combination of two kinds

of grapes, but I can’t remember

the rest.”  He hoped a bottle 

was waiting for him 

at the end of the conversation.  

“You wanna take a walk on the beach?”

she asked, not really thinking

the question would be something

worth kissing over.  “Yes.”

He smiled

and wandered into her footsteps

laced his fingers with hers

and sewed them together

by brushing the sand 

from her knee.

“You don’t need to do that.”

He smiled

and laughed into her eyes

sparkling in the purple ocean

like two grapes just picked 

from the vine.  How he longed

to see them ripen with age,

pressed and emptied of tears

so that joy

made up the rest of it all.

“Two kinds of grapes,”

he said, leaning closer.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“One is never enough.”

Looking Glass

Did I dream it this way
or did it just happen,
like the accidental passing
of a bicycle beneath
a Paris window
as I sipped orange juice

and dissembled the morning
headline.  Red frame
and boxcart wheels
rolling like a world war two
film around the corner
and down the cobblestone
street.  Did I dream it?

Back to the paper.  You
were painted across 'Les Loisirs'
opening your film.  I groped
for the present.  Did I dream it?
But there you were
your gleaming smile
like the old front-row gas lights
that lit up vaudeville,

and there you were too,
asleep in our canopied bed,
an angel with a secret.  I sipped.
Paris was alight with your
beauty, you were 'le testament
a la vieille beaute'.  I chuckled.
And then thought back and back

in the past, where we both poor
and working too hard, and slightly
unhappy.  I remembered dreaming
a poem like this one, and found
it easy to recognize my prescience
as a grandiose gesture of love. 
A morning poem of love
to keep us both alive and hoping.

I chuckled.  Did I dream it?

The Last Word

A small scene in a restaurant:


"What are you going to have?"


"I don't know, I haven't seen a menu."


"It's right there - "


"I know, I'm just getting myself situated."


"Why?"


"Why?  What do you mean, why?  Why what?"


"Why are you getting yourself situated?  What is there to situate?"


"My chair is too far under the table - 


"What?"


"My chair is too far under the table, I'm getting squished."


"So move it."


"That's what I'm trying to do, but it's stuck, there's something - oh jesus..."


"What?"


"There - there's gum underneath the seat."


"What?"


"There's gum underneath the seat.  I put my hand underneath and gum was underneath the seat, under the seat."


"Gross."


"Yes.  I'm going to wash my hands.  Wash up.  Order me an old-fashioned.  Now - "


"A what?"


"An old-fashioned.  The drink."


"That's a drink?"


"It's a cocktail.  It's whiskey with something and a twist of lemon."


"Gay."


"You're hilarious.  Why do I even - ?  Can you just help me get out of my seat?  Please? "


"Are you stuck?"


"Yes I'm stuck, I'm fucking stuck underneath this goddamn table with the Doublemint twins, so can you please help me out of my seat so I can wash my hands and then order me a drink so that when I get back, I can start pounding it down quick enough to forget most of this happened or maybe, God willing, the entire evening.  Please?"


"Jesus Christ, just ask me then.  You don't have to berate me and half the restaurant - "


"Are you going to help me or shall I start praying, because at this point, nothing short of divine intervention is going to get me out of this chair."


"Yes.  There.  Are you feeling better?"


"Yes.  Thank you.  I'm going to wash my hands."


"Good."


"Fine."


"Now what drink am I getting you?"


"An old-fashioned."


"You don't want a martini?"


"No, if I wanted a martini don't you think I would have told you?"


"I don't know, you usually drink gin, I was just - "


"Well tonight I want something different.  Tonight is about celebrating right?  And I haven't even washed my hands yet.  I'm going.  I'm going to do that.  Now."


"Ok.  I'm gonna order an appetizer."


"Fine.  I'm going."


"You want calamari - "


"I'm.  Going."


"Right.  Enjoy the view."


"What?"


"What?"


"What does that mean, 'Enjoy the view?'"


"I don't know, it seemed right in the moment."


"I'm going."


"Good.  Enjoy the view."


"I will."


"And Happy Birthday."


"I told you not to say anything - !"


"Sorry.  Un-happy birthday."


"Thank you.  I'll be back."


"Like Arnold."


"Yes.  Ha ha.  Like Arnold.  You're so original."


"So are you."


"That wasn't a compliment."


"I took it as one anyway."

At Ease

If I were a king

I'd start with

the little ones

and bring them

up in a world

that didn't have

lists and ordinary-

ness and lying.

Then I'd move

on to the big ones

and them I'd kick

out into the wild-

erness for a while

to remember what

it was like to be

little. Then while

everyone was

occupied, I'd steal

a horse and ride

away to see if they

could solve problems

on their own. Then

I'd come back a year

later and start over

and everyone would

love that about me

and hate that about

me all at the same

time. But things

would get done.

There would be

plants growing

from the bigs'

wildness and

art growing from

the littles' un-

ordinariness.

Then we could

nourish body

and soul and

sit on the porch

watching stars

come out like

twinkly fireflies

among the trees.

And we'd all

have poetry woven

in our hands

like miniature

Greek gods and

all that was good

would come back

to the world because

the littles don't tell

lies and the bigs

work hard and I'd

laugh and laugh

because it's all so

simple when you

really put your mind

at ease.

Mediocre

I'm a liar

he wrote passively through the night.

I'm a liar

and I've nothing to show for it. I don't

lie about anything useful, I lie about

my resume

(read the attached memorandum

about how I once climbed Everest

without the slightest hint of oxygen)

or the day of the week

(like the world is on Monday

and I'm at Friday cause Tuesday

is my rest day)

but I can't help lying. I can't help

forging and engorging my shallow

statistics to something prolific

because I'm no Einstein,

I'm a dropout of the '90s

without a lifeline.

I'm too nice. I'm too sweet.

I can't force anyone to listen

to anything I have to say

because frankly,

it isn't that interesting anyway.

I can't tell a story.

I don't have jokes.

I have meaningless banter

and tired old hearsay

that everyone else has heard

everyone else say

on TV last Wednesday.

I'm not that funny.

I'm unreliable.

I work as much as I have to,

because responsibility terrifies me

like the world or the sea

kind of terrifies me.

I won't be convicted,

won't be interesting enough to remember

I'll be mediocre

and not cause trouble

cause that's what I was taught -

to take your problems into nature

and forget the world

like a blank piece of paper

and start over again.

But maybe that's what peace is.

A boring man in a fishing boat

casting his line to the bank

and quietly reeling for hours

at a time, listening to breath

and the wind passing by.

Maybe that's what peace is.

And peace is boring. There is

no peace in New York City

like there's no peace in a rapine brain,

that conquers a new problem

a thousand ways every night

but doesn't allow me the rest

to get it right.

I can't sleep tonight. I'm like

a retired thoroughbred screaming

for the track

for the abrasive attack

for the consistent lack

of anything

but form

and mud

and sweat

and blood

and quiet thunder

through a minute and a half

of pure energy.

Give me lightning on a sunlit day

hit me with it

and I'll burn down, then come back again

better than before, but give me

lightning from the endless blue

and I will draw beauty

from this charcoal pit city.

Just yesterday the man on the train

said hey man I've got jokes for a brain

and steel for an arm

but I'm happier than you

and your distant heart.

And that probably matters

because every checkbox

I checked today said I was

happy 'a little of the time'

and depressed

'some of the time'

and anxious

'some of the time'

and tired

'ALL OF THE TIME'

and I am tired

ALL OF THE TIME

because I can't sleep

in the middle of the night

when these thoughts creep up

like a cat from a storm drain.

But I can't ignore them.

Poetry is the voice

of giants through

the end of a piccolo.

It's the high

ringing in

your ears.

It's the remnants

of a broken heart.

It's sleepless nights

pulling air into art.

It's sleepless nights,

watching air

turn into art.

Broke

Clumsily sitting

on money

like a monkey

drinking tea

from a peeled

banana.

Jumping Off

When did I last find something worth creating?

he said as he wrote down myriad triangles of spiral

thoughts and vested interests. When did I last

find something worth creating?

In the end, the answer was a simple one: there

was never something worth creating, just as

there was never something to begin with.

It was always just there.

In a dream once, it came to him,

like some kind of prose powerpoint presentation:

the image of man standing ankle-deep in a puddle,

clutching the remnants of a skeletal umbrella,

and whispering softly as the rain, "I am free."

It echoed throughout him, a vague vessel

for the entirety of existence to swell into,

and it sounded like thunder on the horizon

when the sky grows green.

I could light a lamp, he thought. I could paint

a masterpiece. I could troll in shallower waters,

near the banks and under the fallen trees,

and maybe then I might catch something

worth filleting, cooking and eating.

But that all seemed too easy, like every book

ever written that has the same story in it

Homer wrote three thousand years ago.

Like every book worth reading is a story

we all knew in the first place, a story we

were all born with, a story placed in our heads

by that speckle of stardust we all carry around,

that we recognize somewhere inside

when thunder rolls on the horizon

and lightning turns the sky gray-green.

How the wind blows sometimes

he thought, and it did, straight through

the meager tenement apartment,

crackling paper and lighting up dust

like a great battle on a dry plain

hungering for the blood of creativity

to pull it from the stacks and make

something of it in the end. But

something became too much too quickly

and that was it, the same meaning, over

and over and over again, that it all was

written ten thousand times before

and all will be written ten thousand times

again and if just one word might be different

somewhere

he wanted to know it. He wanted to see

the word and smell the word like a thunderstorm

on a dry summer night,

with lips cracked and bleeding

from a lack of foresight

and he wanted to taste

water

and

lightning

and

simmer

in the

brightening

newness of summer white light

on pale golden water

a moment before

the dive.