November 2011
1 post
October 2011
2 posts
Sinking
the sheets were changed for spring,
I finally cut my hair and
you were still getting in my eyes
captaining a ship in a piggy bank;
each time the covers were raised above my head
to rock down like waves, I saw you
two years looking under the welcome mat
twisting skeleton keys into your pictures
to see if you’d ever let me in again
I’d rooftop pillowed bunkers overlooking your spine...
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
“People say, “I’m going to sleep now,” as if it were nothing. But it’s really a...”
– George Carlin (via atomos)
April 2011
28 posts
April 14/30
to pull a coup is
to love the land. it makes sense
then, to light a match
April 13/30
a business man who
pushes his kid in a suit
is always at work
April 12/30
suits in trenchcoats put
on baseball caps like taxis
shine “off-duty” lights
April 11/30
as a 5 year old,
imagination starts where
moms bike limits end
April 10/30
the passenger seat –
a diner. her lips – pie. I
get the usual
April 9/30
if the bronze men on
madison’s tallest ledges
decided not to…
April 7/30
there is a mason jar that used to hold jam
that I use to measure who is right and
who is wrong
in water. there are 4 inches engraved for deciding,
so it fills and is emptied rather quickly this way
when there are disputes about dishes, trust, small things.
in the spirit of friendship, we decide if it ever becomes empty
– through whatever subtraction of my 10 things to your 10 things –...
April 8/30
I wish I could smell that kind of loyalty
like the 9 ounces of racing fuel evaporating through the neck of a beer bottle
the heat tells me exactly when I am to blame
the first time
it is a lesson
the second time
it is a reminder
the third time
it is a punishment
the fourth time
is special
it marks the first time
you considered never having friends again
the fourth time you buried...
April 4/30
every march
a theater projects my back on a 60 foot screen
for an hour and a half straight
a performance piece
the audience gets disgruntled, and throws things it.
this goes on
until the screen falls or everyone gets up
and goes home.
April 6/30
I spend most days behind a mesh veil
to protect myself from bees
balling my fist into a dipper
and taking what I can from the tight combs,
the one and done stingers at the end
of every sentence you speak
to bring you honey for dinner
once your plate was clean
you smeared it on your lips
to sugar coat every vile thing
that leaves your mouth
unfortunately honey,
like me,
is one of the...
April 5/30
Jokingly, in an elevator
I called you Cain to my Abel
and when we hit bottom
you said that it wasn’t fair that I get to die
as you searched my blank face for deeper meaning
the door opened and we left
it on floor level
my voice is nothing more to you
than the sound of pebbles underfoot
on the way to the field. my wrist
you lead tightly, a new staff for shepherding
my brow, a plowshare...
April 3/30
I walked out of depression with a balloon
tattooed on the back of my neck
because she makes them appear when I can’t get up on my own
I cannot wait for someone to ask me what it means,
so for once I won’t have to explain myself,
so I can respond by taking breaths
April 2/30
here is something you can say is all yours.
when other’s ask you walk a mile in their shoes
you have no intentions of trying to
give them back
and when other’s dance and make love to each other
you are scribbling their steps down
as if bodies were meant to be x’s and o’s in a playbook
as if allowing my partner to dip her hair into the dark chestnut dance floor
was a decision I...
L’esprit De Escalier
something I wrote last summer for someone I genuinely miss very, very much.
The first lesson learned about treasure hunting
is that you can never fail
you can only
get closer.
so while you were in the 15 foot hole named after me
I wondered if that’s how you justified
finding my empty chest
and I hope you have found the maps
i misplaced when i came to this city
with only a shovel...
April 1/30
when I realized I was showering 6 times a day
because I was trying to follow the water down the drain
that when I start shaving against the grain,
driving over bridges, through red lights
that these are the only times when I ask for favors
this is when I started carrying white chalk in my pockets
and a grease pencil on the face of my 14th story tombstone to ceiling windows
whose pale...
sorry.
I dumped all my decent poems (2009-2010) to make way for the 30/30, and eventually the solid upkeep of this poetry tumblr. feedback is always appreciated, even if it’s “why the fuck would you blow up my feed like that dude”
November 15/30
I read an article on the men who wanted to take a one way trip to Mars and thought:
Man, science is always playing catch-up
with the ways I am trying to fix you.
November 9/30
She is the blood donor dizzy spell
the light headed slouching chair
after the tourniquets flung open
a new glowing vision
no amount of sweets can fix
she leaves
herself in every room she sleeps in
without ruffling the covers or
taking anything with her
I’m certain something has changed
maybe it’s me
all I’ve had to eat today
is her photograph
November 4/30
that night
you gave me the greatest gift in the world
to let yourself die in my arms
rather than on my father’s lips
over the phone
on the way home
i couldn’t help but list all the things
we wouldn’t ever do again
in my head
and I remember saying one out loud
as if dad would correct me
and take me back to your house
for coffee
but the last supper had already passed
6 cups of...
November 5/30
I woke up with you under my pillow
I put you on my back before class
and I stained the ceiling with your face
in the dim classroom where
I learned about dead artists
That night,
the ark where I kept the last clasp of our hands
was rocking in the saltwater seas of my lower lid
I let you hit the desk a hundred times
the hospital
the living room
my birthday candles
I wiped them up with a...
November 3/30
How wrong we have been
to fight wars
with the enemies breath on our skin
how silly were the men
to wince at death
and fire away
without knowing the target’s name
her height,
her weight,
the color of her eyes, both
before and after she had been crying
but you do know this
you know her
like the back of her father’s hand
and still you
fire away
Show me how you fire bullets
from...
November 2/30
I woke up with a papercut
after rolling about in bed last night
i think it’s become a notebook
from all the lines i’ve crossed
this month
at the center, there is
a spine
consisting of
string,
adhesive,
and lots of pressure
which explains the occurrence
of paper dolls
on either side of me.
the smell of fresh pressed paper
is as sweet as the 6 perfumes
once were
and there are holes...
Victoria
When I heard you were hospital bound
on an ambulance I had shot out of a canon
I was gunpowder smoke
I lingered in manhattan
pulling heart strings across the east river
so you’d stay alive to the beat
while I was dancing
and on my way home
I remember balling up anxious
and pitching it to any god i had ignored
to put the wind at my back
and into your lungs
so we could stir up the...
Speak, November
to speak of failure
like an old friend
who is holding my hand
walking me through winter’s corridor
is a film strip i hold no closer to my heart
than the empty reels i’ve unraveled before him
strips spun so fast they moved backwards
though i can read lips no better in reverse
so i slowed it down instead
saw the fallacy in speaking of love
like a fallen forest tree no one was there to...
Temporary Tattoos
she had
the dressings of a savior—
x’s on her hands
and swept preschool floors
for hips
I saw expensive trips
for feet
the second coming
for eyes
and polite sparrows in her chest
saying without song
i could not fix what wasn’t broken
but like all good masochists know
one clean break leads to another
what if just as easily as god painted her ash
i could incite lava flows
within...
Almost Christmas
It’s been december first for too long I said
her north stars glaring out a candlelit glass pane
I sat under the stone ledge of your window
watching the brilliant movies projected from your eyes
on the scarred buildings across from your cloud on 9th
you could say I had been asking for you all year
the presents that hid behind your collarbones
and pressed against your back
could be just...
The Moon's Account Of Doomsday And The Girl Who...
I know the girl
god used to make molds from
when he needed to start a war
her wishing well eyes
will never stare as hard
after you sheath your sword
and she only listens to bloody lips
whether it’s from holding your tongue
or your latest kill
don’t pipe up unless you’ve got
organs between your teeth
‘cause the first time I said anything
she sent armstrong to put a flag on my chest
...
Thimble
‘Welcome to the museum’ she said
unbuttoned her ribs
dusted off the scars
and lined her waist with velvet rope
admission is free this year
I already feel sorry
for myself
there is no grace in her victories
no absence of pride in her face
when for once,
she can paint it
however she wants
she calls me out for not keeping a sketchbook
I told her
I keep a journal instead...
December 2009
1 post
excerpt from a working poem that sounds like...
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...
November 2009
2 posts
This is what I've been looking for
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.
“I can feel poems underneath fingernails like I had already dug them out of...”
– another 4:30 sprite dropping sweet words in my head
September 2009
2 posts
prose in the key of staying up far too late
overlooking the west side train yard
i see steel scrapbooks
no longer marred by the balljoint elbows
of graffiti gangs
nor filled with the same
huge cell phone wielding
red-scared wall street sentinels,
a few dozen train cars sleep
and for some reason
i imagine my past as 1982
and i miss stencils i never saw
and suits i never wore
you say i’m stealing an era,
i say i miss these...
“Remember. We write to live, we do not live to write.”