I heard her say: "The lights are a little out in my brain today."

You are exhausted, aggregate;
your mind is made of dunes and traffic.

The earth knew you once before:

an Egyptian noblewoman - your brain was removed, 

discarded, beside the painted canopic jars,
the mummified cats.

Your bulbs burn out because your brain 

remembers the ceremony, the shredding,
the brilliant lobes of you

irreverently dismembered. 

I find you beautiful and handsome.
I long for your metronome lungs,
your amethyst heart.

Long have I counted your worth.
We have found coins of comfort
we’d forgotten in an old coat pocket.

In love I am mostly helpless -
there is a rustling in the soles of my feet.
It keeps me awake. 

Sometimes I stumble over nothing. 

Sometimes we lie about anything.
We are demented and it is good. 

You do not mind - you want me.

I do not mind - I want you. 

Come, jump inside, climb in with the detritus.
I will hoard you until I can't anymore.

poem - February 2014

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