play the hits she screamed in my ear
its all we want to hear—
those glory bells of yesteryear

the jams from the days we knew
we’re hot and young and free
like we’d always be

like we’d always be
hot and young and free
at least temporarily

time is a funny thing
not a cycle not a ring
just a line that stops

forever doesn’t last too long
but you don’t know it till it’s gone

a train pulls in
your station here
and that’s the end

Two ships on the sea,
drifting towards the sand
do you think they knew
they’d run themselves aground?
Monstrous things, moved with inertia.

“Languid and unturning,”
we said to save ourselves the trouble;
beached monuments grand and majestic,
a lighthouse unsightly.

What’s the sixth when I’ve tried five?
Surely nothing bad, it’ll be fine.
It’s just another pull, another go
And then reload.

It’s fine, it clicked five times.
Nothing happened after four
and you’re afraid of just two more?

You might ask why —
because Cowards don’t try
and the Bold don’t die.

I’m ahead of the curve
and I can’t get left behind.

i often wondered if id see the end
not like the folks of pompeii
who saw hell and thought
it’s surely not just us

but i mean the real one
the big one
the last one for all of us
and for what?

not much.

—but worth a fight.

She showed her whole ass to the man in the past
asking the world “who wants to know?”
When I grabbed her drink and offered a seat
she said “I can’t sit here all alone.”
Bare-assed on a stool she thought I was cool
and I told her I definitely wasn’t.

She insisted I knew
when I asked what she was asking.
The first wasn’t right
but the second, it was almost perfection.

She leaned in close
I thought I was toast
but she just coughed instead of ralphing.

Hazy Eyes and general good vibes
and my stupid ass ignoring the action.
I thought I was fine.
But the night was young and she moved on
searching for a better good time,
while I sat on my stool feeling a fool
for wondering what she thought I knew.

—

wandering lost
scooping shit from a litter box

it sounds better in my head
(and the music, too,
is right in tune)

these pretentious ways to say
i miss you

the cat’s in the toilet
taking a drink
and where’s my phone again?

—

I’ve seen you naked a thousand times before —
one hand on the handle of the door,
halfway out,
like you were born to run.

The memories that muscles make
the dumb flexing of a mindless few;
they never move a day in their life
but they dance to one hell of a tune.

“That’s how they teach you to fly.”

–some sly aside made me wonder why they named you Wendy
and you said your mother ran away when she was nine
“she took the red-eye on Pan-America, flight 55”
a story a touch too funny
to be true.

I thought of Harry Houdini.
The calm of always seeing an exit sign
and knowing people can’t fly.

–

The year I left home
was years in the making;
Clouds gather before the rain;
you make a mountain in an instant.
The moment the earth tides crash
fissures scar the landscape irreversible –
mountains and valleys and texture
and summits.

“Texture makes meaning” my teacher told me in
a class on the English language. The word was
contact. “Feeling is friction.” Clouds will
gather, then wash with the rain —
but the mountains
they stay forever.

I convinced myself
falling is flying
the windrush rising
stomach balling up like a doughnut hole
up and out and over and inside out
wondering of a
sudden stopping

but you never look down

I don’t know what happened
it was a long way down.
I never looked I never saw.
My feet just touched the ground.
The bottom, rock bottom,
‘l’ll never know.
I won’t look
now.

the sum of many parts
the many the lesser
the anti-anti-agressor

the man in your head
the future
the getting ahead
the bottle the wine
the grape
the good time

the fade-in
the gone again
the rhythm
your heart
the water the surface
the reflective superstitious

the “listen!”
the hearing
the muted morning
the dawn
you wanted to believe in
the noon
the truth

the hours
the morning
the time
the loss

the thing you forgot
the thing you did
the good bye
the swell

your continued contributions
to the problem you decry
your kidney your heart
your internal organ
your failing
your mind
your hope
your dreams
your many mountains in between
your moment

the last thing you’ll ever be
the eternity