Behind.

One on one
Makes two full hearts
that break at the same speed
as crashing trains
and machine gun centipedes
hanging from trees.
Does it matter the catipillar was white?
Does it matter our fingers would
brush at night
& perhaps intertwine?
Only to me.
Eat A Peach
and sing a song
of music and love
and friendship.
(I forgot the later)
When you hugged me,
innocently enough,
from behind.
I think you'll find
you get it now
I say within my mind
"You're just one of the guys"
And when it comes to love
that you deserve
you will be left behind

NJ// Aug 2014

O, Henry.

Oh Henry Hudson

Oh sacred parking lots.

Cheers to broadband lengths

And fruit that’s rot.

From shattered hearts

And broken dreams,

To little girls

With tambourines.

To soft end rhymes

And friendly ghosts

At the edge of the height

You can feel in your throat.

A coat of arms,

A crystal ball

A volcano in a puddle—

That fateful fall.

A beam of light,

A speckled cat,

A dream—you wake

To never go back.

A hole in the wall,

A rip in a boot,

The phantom of showbiz,

The business of youth.

The circle of life,

The square of deception,

The inopportune

And unplanned erection.

The stroke of four,

The key of E,

The keeper of scores—

Queen of all she sees.

The fruit of the womb,

As sharp as a bat,

As quick as a secret

That’s tumbling fast—

Down the mountain of Eden,

Through the alcove of Jack,

The charity of love

& the stepped-upon crack.

Weather beans talk or not—

A seed has been planted.

How hard that you fought,

How soft that you landed.

How strange it’s to come

To the end of the verse

So I hail Henry Hudson

& end with the first.

Firenze

I saw a cat try to catch

A bird with paws,

Flippant and quick,

To no avail.

With a perfect view of a piazza

That has the perfect view

Of the city

(Watching the watcher from afar)

I sit.

I wandered wearily to the top

And sank into the music

where my bones confess

They retreat.

Glancing down towards a place

(not far off at all)

Where people make a point

to sit down

And talk about nothing

Each day.

We must sit down

With them and speak

Their language

Although we can’t translate

Their tongues.

We try to abide

By the time and are lost

In translation.

We found a round sensation.

The sense

That the sentiments lost

Will never be picked up again.

—we’ll leave them then.

On the cobblestones

Where the horses hooves

Beat in long ago

Before I did know

How to light

This cigarette.

The smoke that travels

Travels wide and white

Like the pallor

Of strange encounters

Outside

I saw a bird

Release his bowls

Right in front of me

Missing my head

Because I decided it was impolite

To pass a stranger on the street

I retreat into my music

And sing a song of sadness

Silently inside

While I’m totally and completely

Happy

Just to be alive.

Blue Lightning (nonsense)

The red flickers. It flickers as your breath resets itself among the better half. The ash blends in with the hands that don’t mind being tarnished by the day’s remnants. Pen ink. When you think you’re doing something wrong the right shows light more fiercely. The dust gathers. It gathers below credit cards crushing. Crushing with the odor of pills pressed softly against it before. Sirens echo. They echo in the night and remind us that we’re not alone. We roam the streets we call our own but no one dares to mention home. For, home is where the heart belongs and no one told the neighbors we belong here. The fear of walking down the block is a fear that rots in the conscience. The nonsensical self-deemed detestable yearnings for solace in a place where that’s hopeless & futile a mission. They tell you that you should climb the latter before you make the jump. But once you’ve made it up the rungs, there’s seldom climbing down. The let down is palpable, the irony unstoppable and ‘till I wonder yet another time again about it all the doubt will break my fall. I call out with all my might, and stall out at the bottom of the hill that I’ve lived on top of all my life. The right words come when the one to do the saying stops and thinks—and before reflection and correction, the saying starts to sing itself to sleep. I weep for the old and I weep for the young and I weep for the overly confused, and tangled and abused—respectively. The red flickers. It flickers on the tip of the match over which you rehashed the better part of yesterday, while the future burns away and blue lightning saves the day but only because of the crack that makes you stop in your tracks and take in the color. Have you forgotten today belongs to another?

The Funny One

The rush that comes

When the palms hit the table—

When quick wit

Works faster than you’re able

To discern. The turn it took,

On the way to the tongue.

You become—

Euphorious.

It’s a glorious feeling

To be

At the head end

When the butt’s stuck

Between rebuttal

And the scuttle of laughing limbs.

It begins

As an accident

And quickly grows.

It knows

How to work the room.

And soon

It shows.

Each smirk received—

Answers recede.

I think I peed my pants

Is the tango,

Is the dance,

Is the number.

One rule.

There is but one.

Despite the fun,

Don’t fumble.

Come to a close

When it knows

There’s

Not much more to say.

You’re funny, doll.

Let’s keep it that way.

Ireland / Fall 2013

The Woman Who Sold Her Soul

The Woman Who Sold Her Soul

Here is a story of a woman, maladjusted

Her lifestyle deemed qualities

For which she felt no just was

Given to her in her flowery form

Of daisies and lilies and

Keeping meals warm.

Unable to cope, succumb, or exist

In a world where her feminine whiles persist

In pursuit of a king guised as pauper or peasant 

In pursuit of the duty to make ones live pleasant

She summoned the powers, darkly cloaked

Deep inside. She wished for the devil

To possess her mind’s eye

And conjure the wicked, the powers that be

Sell her soul for the privilege to stand up and pee.

It’s more than a method

It’s more than that—no

The privilege to pen ones name in the snow

Without using ink, and without using hands

A pleasure from which adorned ladies

Are banned.

There once was a woman struck down by woe

Amidst a long journey—she just had to go

She had been here before, but the pain

Not as tragic. She scowled, closed her eyes

And summoned the magic.

Of a thousand years banished

And a thousand times scorned

She drew darkness from a place

She had been forewarned

Would harden with darkness the world she did see

Forever for the privilege to stand up and pee

It’s more than a method

It’s more than a dream.

The ability to produce a near perfect stream

Without bending the knees, without wrinkling clothes

Not allowed of those who

Take the shape of a rose.

A pleasure from which gents inherit their stance

A hassle for those at the end of their glance

Across a crowded room

There were locked eyes.

Between the two, a spark, it flies

And in an instant, he blinked

No longer he could see

His beauty. Because she had stepped out to pee

It’s more than a method

It’s more than that—no

The privilege to pen ones name in the snow

Without using ink, and without using hands

A pleasure from which adorned ladies

Are banned.

It’s not much to grant,

And we’re offering our souls

We’re exchanging in blood

Our time growing old

It’s not much to ask

Just a simple decree

Grant us the privilege

To stand up and pee.

Ireland / Fall 2013

Inspired by Bob Dylan's Tarantula

Ignorance and Fear, 

as a matter of fact 

Everyone is listening and there isn’t any show on the overarching add-clad silently screaming radio. Everyone is listening for the beep of an outreached thumb at the end of a line that only exists in the mind. The tune of the tone forgot where he left his keys & they’re sitting somewhere along his generic inherent inherited possession trail. The Holy Grail was 4Loko and the membrane-numbing veil of chumming and thumbing through books you’ve barely begun and know you won’t see the end of. Pretend does apply to the existing actuality of a different time…reflected in the bouncing of the mirrors of the mind before it falls asleep. Today’s type of poets in the public’s mind, their words have the music to lean on & so, the kids situated in seats, plug into a present that struggles even to keep up with its own train of thought, with itself. We try not to melt as, with purpose, we swarm towards the lamplight emitting the heat. Beseech the common word—haven’t you heard? Is it so much fun once you’ve fully begun to melt into the floorboards & spit a sharp thanks to the shark tank that solidifies churning desires…those of those who will never bore nor accept the chore of patiently pondering Nevermore.  We try not to melt as we flick the tips of our fingers over the slick Bics that light our cancer sticks & we try not to melt as we delve into deeper tumultuous waters where the core emits its force & we try not to melt under the scorching wet heat of the faucet stream & we scream with delight into a night that promised response but rescinded at the last moment. Instead, the wind whispers Pinocchio knows best & the unrest is killing our killing power. The reeling force of remorse rings out in the wee hours of the morning, without warning, waking one from sleep prior to the beep of alarm. The clock strikes fifteen minutes late as your eyes open up for the day’s first time. You’ve born the burden of a wretched disguise you picked out from an assembly line carefully & with an exquisite amount of ease. Open the blinds enough to stretch your eyes but not enough to meet a stranger’s guise. As day breaks, chains take the form of status update terrors and the next race of the debased tragically beautifully over-sharers takes its place atop the corner of a stone placed in a very important person’s garden, ironically. It’s a chronic sleeplessness & there’s so much to be done & the idea of what is yet to come ascends the ladder laden with a smattering of differing notions of become. Yet, what’s done is done & planted, grown, where left is left but not alone.

Bronx / 1/17/14