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