you say
you never heard me calling that night
like you had stuffed me in a sea shell
and didn’t believe in oceans until you heard waves crashing
that was never the case
you let me kiss your hand
and pray to your knuckles
when you covered your ears
well I refuse to raise my voice any longer
i’m done starving mockingbirds to sing for you
cut the slack on our metal can tightrope telephones
that always looked like spaghetti string
while i search sound waves for the frequency
of snapping bones and dial tones
so next time I call for you
I know you are listening

And I awake from napping
with a sweet taste in my mouth more often
and wonder
if I am catching your salt kissed tailwinds with my tongue
or if I swallowed your distance in sugar.

night
it sweeps in slowly with the serenade of sunsets
to tell us it’s time for night lights in kitchen corridors
and the buzz of sleeping babies to put the earth to rest
a symphony I’ve ignored one too many times
preferring rather to drip with slumber
and leave drops of forced insomnia on city streets
than to slip into sleep and ignore the musings of night
to ignore the dreamers connected constellations
webbing from one apartment complex to another
mutual lovers and business men alike
i’m almost certain the 12th floor is safe enough for leaping on nights like these
when i look out my window and see several thousand square feet
of shivering pavement and twinkling traffic lights
that i’m sure are directing satellites when they aren’t stopping cars
and since no one is awake to disagree, they are my stars
so every song i sing while walking on 5th is another
outstretched arm of the galaxy
inviting wide open spaces into this stagnant Aristotle
who can quit thoughts of lovers lost
no more than he burn out stars
making tonight black fingered and lonely
i think i’ll watch the sun come up
from the west side
kiss the night good morning
and grow cold when it pulls the sheets
towards arizona
where lover lost is waking up
i’ll be lover locked
sleep through dusk like sunday morning
and awake when i am ready.

awoken by the lick of sunrise on my apartment floor
i wear sleepy eyes and boxer briefs like a slow morning superhero
more worried about the temperature of my coffee
than the brackets of the animal kingdom
i’m unable to do much more than watch fresh prince in my undies
but at 11am, you seem to be awake enough for the both of us
to fuck up my morning
while we are classified as mammals next to rodents, cats, whales, and bats,
you look more like them than you do a man
scheming under sewer grates and screeching to attract potential mates
you hunt while we sleep
and then retreat with feline grace
once i’ve raised my fists
if this city was a jungle
i’d be picking my teeth of you with the bones of your young by now

…and the next morning
after you shake off the latest night of dying
like it’s just another bag under your eye
you enter the kitchen with luggage
and muster courage you only find for insults
and tell me that despite my abstinence from substance
that the coffee i grip like good morning
bears a likeness to the booze you grip like crutches
that i show the same weakness in quenching my thirst
as alley addicts fucking for drug money
and grinning like Antiochus when the first Maccabee lost his faith
you state this as fact, not theory
you are addicted


luckily for you, I am a matchbook
and will only ignite when struck
but had i been a fighting man
you would’ve left the kitchen on fire…

if the poem below has serious problems. i’m really overtired right now, and may have left huge cracks or awkward lines in there that are blatantly terrible.

5:30 is the peak performance time for writing in manhattan.

the first time i ever picked up an instrument
to destroy my fingertips on steely stick and coil
was for a her
the first chord i ever let awkwardly ring out in the air conditioned chapel
of my baby blue to match your eyes 13 year old bedroom
was for Mallaigh McGinley

I ripped it out of the attic with the problem toys and christmas sweaters
to brush off the tire smoke of my bastard uncle
in hopes of learning her in the notes of a jack johnson song

banana pancakes
and no, i’m not ashamed to admit
i invested in a song about breakfast foods much more than i should have
because if i learned it in a week, then i could play it at the pool party
and then she might splash me
needless to say i didn’t need a change of clothes that evening
or any evening, for about a year

but the song goes on, to cauterize fingertips that were bent on bending strings
for banana pancakes and strawberry kisses I never tasted
it’s those kind of tunes i would forever receive like communion
the kind i would eat like christ to kneel and apologize for while i tried to swallow
leaving the pews until my kneecaps read another name

still tattooed under 4 months of scrubbing
is the next symphony,
Gina Marie Cardino
and I use her full name ‘cause I heard it was popular to do so in poems like these
to add credibility to the crazy tornado that was this little girl
because a lot of what I’m going to say
is going to sound like fiction

even though the beginning sounded like the end
she was my favorite song to listen to
even when our record skipped,
and the beatings left teeth like piano keys
i still learned to play for her
she was my Konstantine
she turned a spiraling crescendo of moaning half tones into whole notes
when i sang to her my favorite line about waking up in four leaf clovers
and she’d smile
but today I wonder if it was happiness or premonition that forced the gesture
because a long shot who bets on comets
wouldn’t be singing luck on accident if he knew he was out of orbit

like when she returned the 10 minute voicemail rendition of
Heart Poured Over Piano Wire in E minor
with grape slingshots
she was sweet but stung like hell
when accusing me of messing up the ending
the irony was unbearable
soon after giving me the long distance severance package
you said Steven Michael -
I use your whole name because a lot of what i’m going to say
is going to sound like fiction
your songs don’t sound as soft when i plug my ears
but i get more sleep that way
so, goodnight

and that was it
still i paced at the foot of her bed, singing like i used to, though now
I am 6 miles away, in perpendicular traffic where
i recognized my tire tracks as empty measures
my harmony as rain splitting indecision on passenger windows
my metronome wipers moving like my thoughts
and my bass drum a speed bump to awaken me
right before the decrescendo collision with a stop sign
i swerved to side B and kept driving
my vessel and i still in one piece, I was awakened more by a thought
that even in the age of pavement and goodyear
given water and song,
sirens can still kill sailors

but i lived
and to be honest, i don’t know what you listen to these days
but i know the musical chairs you play on another boys prayers still goes on
and that our music
is now catalogued under “irony”
something that started when you found me, and got louder when you said “get lost”
i became the kind of fiddler that couldn’t play over his heart beat
instead i slept with open windows hoping autumn would grip me like dead leaves
where you elbowed through distance and the seconds hand
in hopes of selfishly keeping your song alive
you slapped my wrist
and with infinite splendor of a walking juxtaposition
you batted your eyes as if to end the tune forever
before you raised your wrist and said “keep time”

…because it’s the blacktop vernacular that i’ve read since I was just 5 years old
walking closed palmed with fathers and candy
that makes the butt of october feel like the tip of childhood
even now, when the 2nd hour sweat in the dry, fly up your nose,
shake the sheets, lets sleep naked when we get home kind of weather
reminds me that autumn never leaves your bones, even when i do