[here is the thing—]

here is the thing—

i want to tell you about the sunrise.
in an unguarded moment i think
you would like this, the drama of it
with an old smile in my heart:
then i remember all the pain I've caused you,
how i am trying to free you from me,
and the sunrise flames to char.
a familiar lump settles in my neck,
because this is how i love you—
but i never helped you see it
and now i hope you never do.








10/07/24

i don't know

why there was a rusting 42 gallon barrel in the backyard or

why i hid in the green onions behind it from the teenagers and

how to feel about getting pushed down stairs when adults weren't looking, nor

how to think of fresh or ancient rejections while driving home from work, nearly 40.




that little boy behind the oil drum who must be enough, whether or not:

whether he is with a wife or without; with a good life or without; with potential lovers or without.




why this weeping woman would confess to a small boy hiding behind an oil drum

that his friend, who she has loved for 20 years, is a near-martyred saint with a perfect cock,

if the little boy, sucking the end of a green oninon, can only turn himself into absolute nothingness in order to provide--

what could even be provided, he wondered, but it seemed like comfort, costing him something equally indistinct.




why his caring mother should care so deeply about preserving his infidelous marriage

that her voice should break like the skin of his emotions leaving bright new scars across the top of old,

which he should worry about, metasticizing tissues at his age or death,

how you might describe it.




why lovers stop talking to him sometimes slowly or all at once, leaving him then

if he can pull back, ascending in macroscope to clouds, then galaxies, then abandoning

the limits of his body and his heart (my heart), the plausible weakness of existence, even the question of whether i care

whether i am alive enough to recognize my own enoughness, elevated so far i am perhaps puncturing the basement of reality




where i am enough, as is, with nothing else

if the little boy was also enough








05/01/24

i forget to remember

Make the assumption

you aren’t desired
see what it does, how it
seeps into you:
unwanted, cast off
at the moment, the millisecond
when love seemed at reach:
it’s not this time, or situation
but you specifically
love denied, wanting nothing more
with you.
You know it’s false
but feel it anyway, scum:
only despair can lead you
to repentance & repair.

1/20/22

suspension

stone suspended midair

“potential energy” was the term
wanting to fall

a 9 ounce human heart pumping
3 millionths of a gram of adrenaline
can shake this body like a rag

i stole glances at her eyes, lips,
the curve of a cheekbone, of a smile, of
a potential energy

her mind a fire in my mind
energy circling mine
tempts motion to unfreeze in time

so my stone heart shivers
one millionth of a gram away
from a rockfall plunge into kinesis

i hold it up; it will not move
but potential is undeniable
wanting to fall

1/20/22

over the Oakland rowhouses

oh, you blink at me

you, lights on dangerous buildings
and if i stare, and wink carefully
i can tell you which comes first
in this parade of
blinking red roof dots
and yellow wall squares.
you are the city's dance:
stationary movement
or the illusion thereof, caused
by removal and replacement.
how like us!
have we ever met anyone new,
or is this social dance of ours
just like the blinking lights?
sometimes this one over here
and then that one, there, turns on,
blinking different colors
different channels of one divinity
and sometimes the faces change
but not the person within.
how many times have you said
i've met someone just like you before,
although you know it's a lie
it seems so true.
well, i said that today
but the truth is, i'm happy
meeting just this face of you
because it's wonderful
and just oh so delightfully different.
and on the tips of the buildings
the lights are still blinking,
and i'm still winking back
trying to follow the city's dance.
the steady, still motion
plants a peace in me.
you, there, you're blinking
exactly like you did last night,
and the airliner is landing slowly behind you
which tells me some things
are consistent and worthy
of trust, love, and winking back
from behind a solemn joy.
for, oh, you blink at me,
you who are the city's dance,
keeper of my peace.

8/29/07

sheepskin

Raised with the flock, it never occurs to him

perhaps the others never wrestle with his appetites,
cannot comprehend his bloodlust;
find true satisfaction with the pasture
as he could never.

The shock and the fury, the terror in their faces
when he grins, when he digs his claws in deep;
their weakness in trouble, bleating fears he never felt—
all mysteries to his fanged mind.

Carefully; carefully; he hides his fleeceless hide
to stay in places he detests with souls he loves.
But one dark night with reason to growl
the clothing slips as he bristles to protect
—the shepherd raises a holy staff
and sends him tumbling into a moonlit exit.

Now he will sulk in shadow and in shame
but never let them come to harm; this promise
he howls to Luna, shivering their honest spines—

He’ll wander on, never far
but never in, never fed,
never loved, never safe:
ever watchful over the flock
he terrifies and loves.

5/05/23

mountain views

i just want to watch

slack-eyed and damned
irreversibly languid yet
alight--hot coals under my soil--
was i once a rock? and did it split?
perhaps it melted; i feel now
the impassivity of a mountain
without the grandeur, of course--
let me Watch, goddamnit!
some innocent activity taking place
a child's play, a stock trade, an art show, an arcade,
just anything--any human thing--
but once here i cannot stand it,
no take it away, hide me
in some mountain spring's dark cave.
redemption dances lightly away,
love forever fingertips out of reach,
even watching cannot conjure
whatever tendril of the past i was looking for.

4/23/24

Upon Arrival

the silence ringing in my ears

demands—demands—
shouldn’t i be doing something more?
(once upon a childhood
streams burbled in these ears
and the empty afternoons
warm with buzzing
smelled like moist soil)
but dry-faced imagined tears ask what else could I have done
and what now—what now—
is there for me to do?

3/13/24

Requirement for Breaking Things

i cannot get far enough away

to stop pretending i am celebrating
and find out if i really am

the promise of her eyes flickers
neon sign in a dirty convenience
in dark flashes i see a ghost reflected
but—we leave the lights on

i cannot rouse myself
shattered pieces all around
exhaust me with requirement
before i even make a move

the shadows do not satisfy
but cringing at her touch i think
how can this be anything else

2/20/24

when i tried

too many thoughts all cream and static
even if i never write them down
remember when i tried so hard
he shifts away from the campfire smoke
(as if) i admit
cream like ashes, cream like oatmeal
static like TV, like a stone
which to his snow-bank white in-motion
righteous clear-eyed idealism seems—
as he settles in his new seat,
campfire smoke following suit, (as if) i
say nothing whatsoever
but remember when i tried at all

1/31/24

clutter

body foul in wet-leaf obstinance

screeching what do you want, elbows inverted
pupils wide as empty horizons, i
thunder inside a shell that whispers
down, down, down, taking it all back
all the fucking way, to seven-year-old guilt
making mud of the lawn and hoping
maybe this bicycle jump will kill me
maybe i will freeze to death and never
ever land in feather nightmares after all

1/16/24

archives empty

but it's hard to talk about a closed diner being made into an auto parts store; being made so completely into an auto parts store that i have to check my location on a map

i say it's hard to talk about it when there are kids in Afghanistan, you know, whose whole and complete childhoods are rubble now—

the ache of being
unable to appease memory by visiting an old scene

some of my friends are intentional orphans by which I mean they do not speak to their parents not because their parents are dead but because their parents are so horrible to their memories that they are pretending their parents are dead, and these friends sometimes call me and mourn that there is nobody to remember it all.

the way a mound of dirt might be all that's left of a city over which splendid men and divine women schemed and planned and bled for a thousand years—maybe not even that, say

we think there will be more memories because of photographs, and records, and data,
but i tell you it is not so. Nothing
hear me, nothing absolutely at all will fill
the empty archives where we laid our past

12/24/23

December Crows

December crows still sound of Autumn

as if given two rocks they might
start a fire or invite you home. Until winter
winds remind me this is all dark optimism:
thin jackets and paper flames in frost.
You know I cannot pray anymore;
even chic morality sears my skin.
She bleeds and reaches out a hand for me
as if given two rocks I might not
still be the invisible arm bludgeoning her
with regret, with regret, with regret,
but it’s still December, regardless of whose
bright blood spills steaming on the snow.

12/18/23

wither

the child dashes

down sidewalks, in fields, off walls, through life
the youth strides
down hallways, in forests, off docks, through love
the man labors
downtrodden, introspective, offended, throughout
and the elder sits
to watch them all at play, remembering.

i wait on my porch to tell you this
hoping you will want to hear it
because while i am all four, i am
with you, a youth, and nowhere else

12/07/23

last moments

when the dog lays down to die

and master yanks the chain—
when gazelles let tigers land
one last mourning stare behind

ten thousand years ago we stood
fierce fight and fire in our eyes
for those we’d lost, for those at home
bring down the beast and bury warriors in the field
but now—but now—some one will say
“i can’t go on” and mean it:
for what’s the point, who even cares?

when the yowling cat gets quiet
under vultures circling there
when the elephant takes his knees
and hyenas circling dare—

12/02/23

collide

galaxies in violent marriage, say,

or fission, or gravity sucking dust onto itself
time holds for us no bloodless moment.

darkening church doorsteps all alone,
say, or an empty house some evening,
waiting for a call, a touch.

we see the stars all at once
but cannot grasp the endless void
between them; the silent solitude eternal.

i set the pictures on the wall just so
for laughing friends to stand between
never thinking—this will pass.

behold the weight upon the leaf
see how it bends and slips its burden down
and shivering springs back to its brief career.

12/02/23

brotherhood

at nine o clock on wednesday

inexplicably, everyone
had things to do. except i
couldn’t remember why
if there was a prize or
where they buried my grandmother
whom i never met
and if we would have been kindred spirits.
it troubles me to think of some young man
clutching my lover to himself
and then i remember my older brother
whose lifeless corpse slipped out
maybe on a wednesday night like this
right from my mother’s body
into a bloodied bathroom.
i wonder if she caught him
or if he splashed into the toilet.
the messages all end in silence and i don’t know
what to do with this precious life.

11/09/23

I-95 After School Drop-Off

soup for blood
viciously convenient
cut you off and scream downlane
let me get out of your way
not as care but denial
not as denial but self validation
look: i am nobody’s obstacle
terrifying myself awake
but only a very little
i clean like an act of war
making soup with a scowl
another self, from the gallery, smirks with an eyebrow

10/12/23

prayer meeting

o god he’s laughing

half his face fleshless
jaw hanging by red cords
one eye—staring, lidless
body an oozing mass in the middle of the floor
laughing, laughing
the Bible study sitting in couches
vanilla scented candles, murmuring
lifting a gentle prayer;
his laughter chokes, intestines bulge
against and through a wound
with a little splash of pooling blood
i can see the splintered bones of his arm
as the little ladies look up and smile dimly
good prayer meeting; time for lunch;
o god, he’s laughing

9/30/23

wednesday silence

the days are rags stretched out before me

tapestry of discarded fineries

and his teeth—his teeth are bared

eyes leering up at me from where he bites her neck

i wonder idly what composes broken men

what are the contours we could thus describe

a nightmare forms around the words

now you know how it feels—i do, i do

i already did but this fresh cut burns deep;

what is the line between cowering and cows

and what’s a steer to all those stallions?

every second closes up the pasture into pens

and days loom heavy dull and dangerous overhead

—all of it in dark neuroses, imagined hells

the look, the eyes, her frigid voice

only tantalizing unexistance

a thing to mourn in happy times

when i am sad but don’t know why

9/17/23

surf at noon

immortal white horses charging

down the infinite green hills




horizon stars in blinking vigil rim

the canvas of their vast sisterhood




all this and yet it feels small

like a backyard; like an attic;




like something from our childhoods

that has already outlived its need for us




the flame hot sand is cool at night

and i leave barefoot, uninterested

8/12/23

suspense

the night before, we waited

hearts beating, working, stuffing

deciding on knick knacks and spaces

cooking something, fretting.




i breathe deep the air of it

as i would the first inhale at sea

only opposite: a last, a parting,

a familiar scent soon to be strange.




“what were you like as a child,”

she asked me just today—and i mourned,

a lot like this, see: always longing for

the ideal, and seeing it everywhere




yearning for a moment to be ages

feeling a wave of loss before it breaks

“i was a sad kid,” to put it simply

as a bright morning forces us beyond.





the night before does not remember itself

breathing deep last air as though the first

sad child longing for eternity to be now

liminal morning prowls just beyond

8/09/23

such great reuse

airborne on cloudy days

above the blanket hide winter scenes:
powder snow over frozen lakes
mountains hemming distance-dim—

i know this view: i was ten
my father drove the rental up
some summer California mountain;
past the tree line, climbing, climbing
to where the snowcap blocked the road.
we turned around; and there we
among the rumpled bright-iced valleys
discovered an enormous snowy field:
it went on forever, perfect flat.
only after did a map betray the water
hiding there like so much ground.

i’ve seen the universe reuse a face
but never only twice;
so now i’m looking everywhere for the third.

nobody from that mountain trip
survived: not the child playing me,
nor the funny firebrand cast as dad,
my innocent sister, promising cousin:
scattered from that mountain lake like seeds
we sprang from many poison soils—thus.

but airborne on cloudy days
above the blanket hides a forgotten joy:
summer children in unseasonal snow
a happy father, pleased with himself
watches like the mountains distance-dim—

8/04/23