"recovery is in the remembering" - rebecca sanborn, bastions

folding themselves and time and light,
malleable in patient hands who
made a bold display of cold, gray days

metaphor or monument
its a script for progression

they are teaching me how to create
in the thirstiest times
but the most i can muster is
usually a tearful hug of gratitude

time comes mowing
forever stamping us with change
and robbing us of the only things
seemingly meaningful

we will throw banquets
and fundraisers
and pen tributes and poetry
or immortalize the lost on stage

and so death is
cowed in its corner
for now
even though someone pegged me for 38 the other day
and even though jenny has a shaved head
and despite michael collapsing on the treadmill
and forgetting all the troubled and maimed we'll never know

we'll still point and shoot for admirers, friends and lovers
and even in the death of dreams,
marriages, partnerships
careers and lives
the act alone is the only prayer of substance

creating song, myth, statue or pledge
we'll push past the moment
we always feared
and knew was coming
and the best of us welcome it

where are the dead milkmen when you need them?

"...in a world where ministers murder golf pros, don't you want to drink some bleach tonight?"

hang onto yr ego-o-o

if i think about it
evolution isn't necessarily equivalent
between the genders

we've got big dicks
187 skills
and a functional mind
for survival, sure

but if i think about it
i just want to pump enough blood
to fuck and die

i'm like a drone bee
ready to burn for the cause

i can smell perfume on the wind coming
through the apartment window

i can see curves under fabric
from yards away
and imagine them from fucking acres

i can imagine juggling for hours

or taking over the room with an anthem

and i can lust for jumping only to find
the parachute won't open
and i can see a bloody
splash in a soft
oregon field

turns out
sex and death are so much
hotter cliches
for poetry and music and self-aggrandizing
than i had ever given them
proper credit for

quitting

can’t tell the spider
it has cancer, I can’t tell
tobacco from trees

opening/closing
doors as if they will change me
simply by swinging

ambidextrous?

yesterday was a good one
total control, masterful thrusts
telling her to 'shh shh'
she was silently mouthing 'i can't'
and the red in her face
i only finished because she had
somewhere to be

i throw, punch, hold scissors,
tits, steering wheels and my keys with my right hand

i write, masturbate, hold forks,
beverages, and lead improvs on keyboard with my left

isn't it only ambidexterity
when you can switch limbs
to accomplish the same thing?

come to think of it
i am truly ambidextrous in that sense
when it comes to the drinking, smoking and all the sexual tasks...

...but every little red a-cup volks in the city
still looks like you approaching
and i can't invite you to this party
and we shouldn't go to that one
out of respect
for the dead
i assassinated something infant
(and it might still be in the I.C.U.
but will anyone even give a fuck?)

i want trivial little exchanges
and real big grown-up ones
on my phone
and in my ear
and even by post
and it's all about me
i know
but it can be all about you
when you need it to be, too

warm candy

queasy
knowing you can take
or leave me
freeze me out like a bad memory
‘omm’-ing me away like Ginsberg and those cops
is it your trust I have abused
or just my paranoid ego
black, bruised
is it every single time
I run my mouth and things fall flat
or am I only imagining that
friendless ignorant emptiness
fill me up, I am a white chocolate peanut butter cup
stuck in between ugly bus line cushions

i talk way too much

walking back up
tonight
just one block off the
same hill i walk down
every day and most nights
the plants out front of the houses were lit
with little pool lights
there was a huge red fixture like a pomegranate
in the front entry
and the edging of the glass
in the door
shone green
with the flower behind it
and yellow when you got past the angle
that revealed the big red bulb inside

tina fey is funnier than you

each smelling faintly of fish
stupid angry succor
heralding the theft of your every connection
administrative failures in tragic repose
folded my deck despite my hand
he was a man named marshall by both parent and decoration
secondary definitions avenged
johns doe with honest casework
beatrice returns to the port
fuck your independent streak
a thousand beaks offset by milliseconds
spell it out with crossed tees
to the last mouse smuggled into
prostitution rings around
the posies laced in a cold wreath

pensacola

the other night she
said it: "the sandest of whites"
best phrase ever, man

haiku!

I like to watch the
butts bounce off brick walls, showers
tiny orange sparks

tofutti break!

coming back in from a break
I saw a guy
on the other side of the locked door
jogging suit
cell phone to his ear
cute little planner and other stuff
balanced in his hands
in the crook of his arm
he didn’t open the door for me but
I chalked it up to having his hands full
I waved my fob in front of the
magnetic reader
opened the door
wiped my feet
looking down at the ground I overheard,
“I didn’t tell you about my flight back.
I sat next to these two girls.
Twins from the Caymans.”
as he backed out the door behind me

fair weather smoker

spring is the season
i'm lighting up in the sun
it embraces me

always channeling
someone through this aftertaste
of green beans and tar

that leaf looks like a
dried-up slug and this one looks
like a child's lost glove

empty parking lot
is my home away from home
please text me, loved ones

hold my right side up
the left side took on more tan
in the sun last week

wore a cowboy hat
i bought from a walmart in
rural washington

we drove curved highways
held on for life as she jerked
the wheel either way

at the time i wished
we would veer into heavy
traffic and burn up

over so quickly
only our memories are
hanging in hot air

got home after all
shame, but i'm disappointed
to find we're still here

fucking blogger ate my poem

blowguns sending messages and bullets
across a busy street

open sign
flickers
bartender flips a coaster...

and that's all i remember
from a minute ago

thats why i type this here
why i hit publish

fell down a stairwell
in my ER dreams
brought back some more:

making the most of this
shimmering overhead

stepping onto a breezy porch
waiting for the light to fall out
around us
like tiny leaves from some manicured bush

a cyclone whips them like
white trash snow
up into your car window

they will form a new stereo
or patch up rusted pockets
fuel your ride from home to milwaukie and back again