here's why I said 'not right now'

I cannot be yours, my love.
You should not be mine, my love.
I'd burrow inside your earth.
You'd live off my creaking words.
Termites are never ashamed,
but I think that we would be.


7-syllable experiment
form poem, October 2013

come fly with me

In October
the world is both
garden and cemetery.

I drive home to Sinatra
singing of flying away
inside the velvet evening
among dead things
and living things.

In autumn,
I am much
more alive
than dead,
more within
than without.


to my second-favorite month
poem, October 2013

they were

She was a rock,
worn-in and sun-bright.
He was a river,
full of mud and overflow.

They both just were
until the rock was canyon
and the river forgot the sky.


for my parents
poem - October 2013

the moon said we'll be fine

I asked the stars about us.
They said the space between
holds so much.

The moon said we'll be fine.
I believe her. She can take a hit-
you can see it in her face.

I wonder what fish think of rain.
I bet they don't care when the sky falls,
at least not as much as we do.

My voice box has a siren setting.
I'm unprepared for everything
except the worst.

I wonder if the permafrost
ever gets tired of being frozen in the past.
There is so much to be cold about.

I want to kiss you in the snow
so we can learn to love the cold.
It will learn to melt around us.

The Altar on Avenue B

I don't know what whiskey I'll find

in this shot glass but

I know it'll taste like this city.

I liked watching those lean,

strong welder's arms pour it.

I'll bet the bartender tastes like this city.

I'm here half for the Jameson

and half for the stories.

Shit, let's be honest,

I'm here for the stories.

There are so many.

I need them, mostly to melt

into the solder that welds

my quiet childhood to this raucous life.

I'm not even sure I can work in quiet anymore.

I'm sitting on a stool at the beer-soaked altar of New York:

the great classical conditioner of prolific chaos.

A grizzled lovely veteran of this city

sits beside me. I say- "I'm 20 but I'd gladly be 40

if I could've seen your New York."

I think, "...fuck,

what’s the best way to say,

Tell me about the days

you steeped your veins in heroin

and lived dipped in music.

Tell me about the time I missed

so I can see where I'm going."

I spin my beer in my hand. I say-

"So, tell me about having nothing

and the everything in between."

adapted from a conversation with Sara Kyle

June 2013

Part 1 of the series Secondhand City

Dawn in a Fishing Boat

watercolor rocks,
gnats vibrate above sunrise,
the wake is solemn.

haiku, March 2013

a toddler made me smile today

We smooth over the ache of the bee-sting
in the outfield in August,
and the junior high hallway heartbreak,
because they’ve become the stories we tell at parties.


Children transcend this habit.
They don’t bother to mold memory into
something better. They know that
things can hurt and things can sing
out everything within them.

They are memory perfected,
stomp-happy, beautiful in a way we forget
when we decide we care
about everyone else's stage directions.

My mother once told a little boy, ‘it’s okay, you’re just having a bad day’
and through his tears he said ‘no, I’m having a bad right-now.’

See that toddler in brown boots and a princess costume
stumble-running down the street on the first day of spring.
See her barrel towards her father, laugh-shrieking.

Remember that not all things can be recalled
in the false twilight of nostalgia.
Some things will always be that bold,
that happy, that pure,
drenched in sun and freedom.

freeform poem, May 2013

How Love Feels the First Time

He told me to go get some Kleenex
and band-aids when he wanted
tissues and bandages.

I wanted to tell him
he is my brand-name for love.
When I wake up heartsick,
his name nearly drips off my tongue.

On the day we sat in a clearing
next to a cornfield
and listened to the breeze 

in all those trees,
he looked at me
like I was made of the wind herself,
like I was large enough to wrap
my arms around the world.

Did you know
that some of the blue whale's veins are so large 

that the average person could swim inside them?

You are not average
and you have the best freestyle I've ever seen 

so swim down my bloodstream, 

show me your best strokes
I want to feel your fingertips
grazing my arteries.

Darling, please don't climb inside
my baggage. Float within my veins.

Add your life 

to my blood

and I promise I will carry you, 

weightless, 

forever.

Ad Infinitum

Eternal return:
not so eternal, it seems
when your eyes meet eyes
alight in dawn's pale earthshine.
Keep that only for you, now.

tanka, April 2013

First Mate

for Rhea

The first thing I saw was her crazy patterned pants

as she turned to meet me.

Even after we’ve spent years exploring every

nook and cranny of this crazy life together, 

I know I’ll always remember that first night. 

I’m careful with the word always

because there’s danger in forever,

but I’m here to say that when her eyes met mine 

it felt like the first breath above water after a dive.

She has the sort of kind soul that surges up

through her spine to be seen glowing

through the pores of her face.

As we stood peering through thin air at the beaming

light of the moon’s rakish grin, her eyes seemed to whisper,

“the world is much too stunning for only one lifetime.”

 And I didn’t know what to say so I said,

“would you like some tea?”

In the morning we sat at the kitchen table

and spoke of small things because the big things

couldn’t fit through our jaws that day.

We caught the bus to New York City,

and I spent hours listening to the waves of her

voice swell over me as we swapped stories

about the many tumbling injuries of childhood.

She said that some left scars and some

she stitched where only she would ever see them.

I felt the world shrink to those two bus seats

and as the tacky printed fabric danced on the edges

of my vision I wished for days and weeks and years

to hear all the stories she’s always needed to tell.

Dusk descended like a dense embrace of the heavens

and I tried to arrange my face into a scribbled

Post-it note reminder I could stick to my collarbone

that said “I’m listening, I’m here, tell me all about it.”

When we found ourselves in Grand Central I wanted

to say: you make me feel grand - like the subway roaring past,

like I’m strong enough to carry everyone forward to the places

they need to be, like my tracks are mapped, like you’ll ignore

all my gathered years of dirt and grime and the rats gnawing

on my littered heart because I am constant and useful and necessary.

But I was too drunk to say that, so I threw my tipsy arms

around her shoulders and said, “let’s be best fuckin’ friends forever.”

We boarded the F train bound for Queens and sat

watching a one-eyed hobo guzzle his rum with such

gusto and I thought, “that man deserves a better story than

sailing the subways.”

As you get older, the stories get messier,

and maybe that’s why I can’t stop telling them.

Like this one, and how I knew I loved this girl because

she’s the kind o’ character that always makes me

want to crack the book down its spine and wade

inside to join her, even after the first chapter

before I even know where her voyage is headed.

We got marooned at 3 am, locked out, armed only

with two colt 45s, so we tacked our sails, cut our losses,

raided a stranger’s stoop and swilled our malt liquor, 

leaning and laughing, pitching hard to starboard 

on the night’s rolling spontaneous sea.

Later, we stood on a balcony, plundering

the skyline under the false sunrise of the city’s glow,

and I felt my ribcage cracking open, singing,

like an empty treasure chest finally being filled.

In the morning, as we crossed the street to catch the bus,

her feet stomped boldly through puddles, 

sending drops of water soaring like silverfish. 

We slept the whole ride home,

my new first mate and me, 

and I dreamt of pavement, pirates, and peace.

slam poem, 2013

Jumpers

I believe in the world as much as I can,

but I’m tired, I’m tired in my very bones

of the deafening silence all around us,

like the way when someone’s poised

to jump off a building, cops and

crowds and megaphones gather

in a frenzy of people 

trying to save them -

but when a young boy’s 

selling dope for a cartel,

when veterans are sprawled 

begging on sidewalks,

when girls barely older than 18

sell themselves in the streets,

when gay kids are convinced

this world wasn’t meant for them,

there are no megaphones,

there are no crowds,

and when the cops come

their desperation is a called a crime,

or a tragedy, or a suicide.

There are so many different ways

we kill ourselves, and I wish

this world was more like the street

below a jumper on a rooftop,

booming with voices loud with love

and the promise that the world

wishes we would step back from the ledge.

Confession

I interviewed God

in my dreams last night.

I asked him about Eden.

He shrugged, and said, 
“I should’ve had a backup plan.”

When I asked him to pick

his favorite creation 

he paused, then said, “Gravity,

because it’s invisible but

beautiful because

it never gets tired of 

holding everything together.”

He leaned forward

with his head in his hands

and sighed. 
“Love was the best idea I ever had,

but I must’ve miscalculated.

It’s too volatile, y'see.

Some people just can’t handle it.”

That’s when I woke up

and remembered 

I don’t believe in God.

But before the fog of sleep

lifted with the sunrise, 

I was sure I could believe 

in that weary man

whose tired eyes confessed

that even his best miracle 
can be a burden.

For S.K.

Sometimes our conversations read 

like letters I’d never send,

a depository for all the unfiltered sadness 

that weighs down my mind -

those trains of thought so unkempt and dangerous,

even I don’t want to board them.

The comfort lies in knowing that when we talk it through,

making what sense we can of confusion,

after my tears punctuate the postscript,

you’ll fold it all up, place it neatly into an envelope,

and file it away in the box labeled "she’s-better-than-that."

You told me once that I am your conscience,

and I knew then that I’d never do our friendship more justice,

not if I wrote page after page on all the ways you’ve saved me.

Here’s the secret: you are my conscience, too. 

How beautiful, to know that my broken inner voice 

no longer must be finite judge and jury.

Participation

I've started writing on my typewriter. I think it's more spontaneous and fresh, but not as polished as my other work. Thoughts?