Colitis

It's a constant reminder
a droning in your ear
of a mosquito squeaking closer
saying "Something isn't right"

and it's not until it is.
That's the issue; a hangover
of the past ten years
like rope out the window

of an abandoned hotel room.
Is it all just catching up with me
now?  What makes the wheel
turn and find me, to throw

this fire in my face after so long
without it?  The puzzle of myself
gets no clearer and whatever
new phase is happening

it is not comfortable yet.

Lenny

It is the first time
I have let him in

and in doing so,
can't let him go.

I saw him, first,
in my mind,

a simple angry man;
a criminal, a genius,

an emperor waiting
to be crowned;

found his tics,
his quirks, his charm,

his beauty, and set
them against her

and raged. Now
I can't let him go

Now he remains
with me, though

the melancholy
of loss invades

like gallons
of water dumped

into an empty
fish tank.

I will find him
among the small

stones someday
and tap on the glass

and the echo
among the deaf water

will wake him
like a zoo beast

entertaining a visitor.

Language is a Knife

Language is a knife
and we use it

sparingly, cutting small circles
in the thin curtain
hanging between us,

to reach small treasures
through and coax one another
into bed.

Note to Self

I gotta believe I'm something like a writer
something like you've seen in books
only now I'm much lighter than I used to be
I shed a few pounds of emotions that were new to me
I listened when I finally said to myself, "Who do you wanna be?"

I dream a lot about this future me,
how he's somewhere happy and content being me
I find him in garden pulling weeds
tracking weeks like it's nothing to see
and days become shorter and longer
without a care or thought of "To be..."

Could he live my life more genuinely?
Be more focused, more vicious,
more honest, more ME?
Am I playing this version
stiff and classically
when I could be more vulnerable
more open, more Me?



My jaw is tense,
my eyes won't wet
my ears are ringing
and my song is off-key -

It's no wonder
no one
is listening
to me.

Bacon

So don't write me a poem,
write a little love story,
about how I came home
and you made bacon,
tons of bacon
and put it on a sandwich
with some pineapple
(cause you love Hawaiian pizza)
and called it a pineapple BLT.

And what else was there?
Some basil and mozzarella
(to go with the tomato)
and lo and behold,
you forgot the lettuce,
so what we actually had
was a pineapple BMBOT
(cause you cut some onion)
with mayo.

Then you made bacon-dipped
chocolate and it stuck to the plate
and I suggested something sexy
and we got around to it eventually
cause we fell asleep after the bacon
and awoke to more bacon
and that's how I fell in love with you
once again on a fall night
one year and three months
after we kissed on your birthday
and spent most days together
after that.

Colitis #1

It's a hard thing to make art
out of what the body
conveniently gets wrong.

It's not weird and it's not painful,
at least not anymore
the pain
feels like an old familiar hardness,
a lump like Death
is an old friend
we almost meet when we first come out

and then we are smacked on the bottom
by a stranger and we cry, because
Death was our first friend
and now he must float away for a long while
while we cry and cry and laugh too

but without him, so he comes back
in small ways, in small pains
in the abdomen and creates
problems and complications
and doles out medications

and actually listens
when giving up is given up
and we listen and say
'Your will be done'
and we are done.

Spring

I guess it's this springtime thing,
this gamboling air; the menial winter;
the dovetail grace of our hands laying
in the springtime grass under blue sky.

I guess it's that, that whimsy, that smell;
of cattle and grassland; wheat chaff
and burdock; thawed earth and mellow
sky; new buds on the branch bursting
to burst.

I guess it is that, that, that, that.
An indiscriminate longing
for a simple something to learn,
to play, to find dinner prepared
when it's all done, when grass stains
are trophies and summer is near.