Bad Day Blues

I forgot that life was fragile
For--what seems like years but really
adds up only to a little while
I once bit the head off a little glass turtle
to see if I could
I keep the shell in a place
I haven't yet forgotten to return
and it reminds me that my mouth makes sense
That was a time
so like now the future seems uncanny.
I know it is not.
I went home to tell a soul like mine
The Irony of the morning.
A fat dead rat upon my stoop
shook me up.
I never go home at ten A.M when I know
I must leave near eleven.
To myself, I thought, a smack in the face
from the universe
for being naughty,
lay before me.
Now I see I cam home so
my sensitive soulmate
wouldn't walk it alone.
I hid her from the hardly horror
of the rat. I cursed to myself.
I had to go it alone.
I'm glad I came home and I'm glad--
We walked it together.
Saw pain together.
Two sensitive souls. Swimming--
in a sea of sharp edges.
Everyone watched it all happen
and I imagine they were fine.
A glimpse of blood,
limp limbs, grimacing youth
was enough to suck the day up
through a straw.
I never go home at ten A.M
when I know I must leave around eleven.
I never thought, till now, if I didn't
She would have to go it alone.
A Shitty Bronx Apt. / 2013

I Remembered What "Hello" Meant Yesterday

I feel very alive
should i repent?
is a little bit of deadness
the severer of civility
and softness?
But i'm hard as a
sharp tack
sticking together
is the death of me.
All of it
feels so good
in its rawness.
Paralyzed.
I'm afraid that I
don't understand
the scope of things.
My love--
Don't tempt me fait
I believe in you
ya Dirty Devil
STREAMLINE THE COMMON SIGN
AND REST
FOR THE REST OF THE DAY
A Weird Time / 2013

Science

When a Scientist is a poet as well,

The whole world stops at his feet.

I found an atom under a book of stories about boisterous men

And then I remembered that it wasn’t really there

I didn’t really find it

And I don’t belong here.

Yes, I don’t belong here like my shoes don’t belong on my feet

Because I stole them from the bowling alley down the street

And they have a warrant out for my arrest

A gift card and two sticks of bubble-gum

If I chew it up nice and thick

Maybe I can make a covalent bond out of the tiny bits of paper

I’ve been thumbing for

While drifting into stubborn solitude

And puffing on infinite swallows

Of scientific smoke

That I forgot the name for

But it’s okay because

NO and NO still mean

I can’t learn this

When I read them aloud

I think I understand

Why Darwin never wrote poetry

To fit the rest of us
A Library / 2013

If it weren’t for those incessant lines

If it weren’t for those incessant lines

a sprinkle of sheer enjoyment would be upon us.

Alas, still closed it reads a book

the droplets from the spring I shook—

and blew away the obstacles.

The last damn bits of powder from the sleeve

Reprieve.

Retrieve those antioxidants

You swallowed with the thoughts

Of them. That measly intellectual:

Disease.

Who said my sublimation was

inferior sensation?

Is that the touch your fingertips

Achieve?

The miniscule apartments

(I know you were a part)

and crept from.

Bent upon the notion of

reprieve.

Don’t worry little Golden boy.

I’ll leave the door ajar and coy.

And close my eyes

While Up you size—

Effeminates and undesirable breeds.

But Please

Don’t forget to lock the door

Before you’re cocked

—to learn of more

triumphant ways to whack away the weeds.
A Library / 2013

Happy Birthday George

In honor of my favorite Beatle, I scrawled this little ditty out. it's nothing much and began when i pulled a Robert Frost book from the shelves on a whim, but it became something more and I dedicate it to my one and only.

My lips lick my fingertips

Touching the frost

The leaves are broken

Bitter.

I blink and think about the moments lost

And inspiration found—

‘Constellations of Intention’

Isn’t it pretty?

To think about the trail of wandering inspiration

Hitting the page

Brushing past the backs

Of sweaty palms

And ending their long drawn life

Under snoozing sneaker-clad

Belligerents

Isn’t it sad?

We can’t leave behind

A bed of memories

Only a lackluster muster

At a beautiful sentence

Succulent sentiments stick to my numb,

Numbing,

Thumbing fingers.

We analyze with waking eyes

The sleeping dreams of believers

Dream weavers

And apple scruffs

Just.

It is such a rough feeling

To know

To fully know

That I was never a blip on the radiant radar I praise

But beneath the leaves and trees and screens

And drum-machines

And screaming teens

I commend.

And end—

with the phrase,

This is not a phase. 
A Library / 2013

Masculine Mentality

The streets stood on the backs of men

—whose regiment settles sour scores

who leave in their wake those wanting more.

And perched upon those marble tiles

between the sameness stretching aisles

no one has the gall to whisper—get out now.

The crowd becomes a stepping-stone

for men who wish they’d never grown,

now shadows running free around the town.

So do not dare stop and stare

there’s no more heat left in the flare

For, all the boys who left for war; stayed there.
2012

My Generation

My Generation

Ask me about the hands of the man of the house

and I’ll tell you that he is not home.

I’ll yell from the peaks of the mountains, scraping the smoggy sky

No! I did not mend the bent tips of his leather gloves,

nor stuff in a brown sack knickknack snack bag

sandwich sentiments and send him off towards the masses.

Or neatly stack cotton atop cotton, atop rinse cycle repetition,

mundane membrane tasks, thoughts,

caught between pages of self help, how to—Be.

Be told what to be, how to see—what is me. Gobbledy Gook.

Ask me how I spend my days and I’ll tell you,

Go To Hell.

Now, ask me how I spend my nights—and I’ll invite you there.

To the hell of uptown found homes,

stone-cold decisions set in unassuredness,

growing up, growing left, growing different.

Growing Weird.

Stoned realizations, Brilliance!

Retreat. Regret. Rethink. Repeat.

Go Ahead, Ask me what goes on,

behind the façade of snapshot picture frame windows—

broken glass, superglue, dried up superglue.

Hard time pass by with the blink of an eye.

Seamless—

onto singing, screaming, giggly shouts,

weekly calls of relief across streets.

Friend? Acquaintance? Stranger? Foe?

Flashback to picking poison,

cashing checks or clutching quarters,

one in the same when blurred together by broken memories.

We do it on purpose. We hail it with purpose,

when we know—in our racing minds, difficult hearts,

and percolating pupils. Speeding, Slowing, Stopping, Starting.

Strike that—never stopping—not really,

We know that within our minds we have not yet become inclined—

To Find.

Discernable purpose, fleeting purpose, pleasing purpose, gleaming purpose,

in the evening of progressive purgatory.

Ask me about My Generation.

But do not dare go and request explanation.

It’s all-relative.
Poetry & Citizenship / 2012