Penniless Withdrawal (A Foolish Sport)

Stinging eyes are not to blame
For these fissured droves of queasiness
No, it’s all a foolish sport
Magnified under the warped lens of mutilation
And it’s hardly the future they had planned for me

These sparks course through every vein
With each pungent pulse
A tidal wave
Slapping me on the wrist
Paralyzing my power-socket mouth
Until it can’t form the words
“I fucked up”
Any more convincingly than your standard fuse box

My head is swimming
Awash toward nowhere
Lolling uselessly like that’s its job
Reminding my washing-machine stomach
That the agitator within it
Is no more material than the everyday nightmare
That this spin cycle
Staggering my gait and my breath
Is sustenance equated to jest
And sleep consumed by an addict

“You must have seen this coming”
Says left to right to mirror
“Seen huh?”
Replies reflection to pill bottle
Or so it sounds to me

Me, yes me
All two dollars and fifty cents worth
Clambering down the hallway
Drifting blindly through intersections
Or pretending to puff away the blues
Alone on a park bench at four a.m.
Picnicking
Single-handedly extinguishing any sign of promise
Gagging on the self-pity lodged in my throat
A foolish sport indeed

And as I close my notes to conclude this appraisal
A sinking feeling creeps to the top of the page
If this today
Then what tomorrow?

After the End

Since we last met
You’ve gotten fatter and uglier
I wonder how that weighs on you
Never were one to eat up your reflection
But for a few thick words of misguided seduction
Like a perverse salad
Tossed in my general direction
Aimed at peeling off the layers of
Dress between you and my averted eyes

Since we last met
Time has paled my features
And darkened the bag-cradles
In which my eyes sleep to cease to see
To what do these eyes owe the honor
Of dodging the beaming bright stare
You give all these years later?

By some sickness of fate
Our deep-fried friendship remains
As a trace of caked-on grease
Marring the underbelly of one uncanny pan

Since we last met
(After the end)
It’s all gone stale
And I’m perfectly nauseated
That this little morsel of thought
Should even find itself on the menu

Stuck With It

Building from the ground up
From heaven, hellward
Pausing between the pangs of doubt
To fill the trowel with the thinnest of air
And slather it about the first ill-placed bricks
Quietly, this mortar will set
In the joints of one contorted beast
The monolith whose cornerstone is fallacy
Complacency, fright

Towering above the trees
Cowering beneath the clouds
A skeleton of what once was
Fighting for time
Fighting to deliver
Growing ever larger
Ever weaker
And fast losing balance

Baptized in gasoline, the newest room of my soul
The leper penthouse casts its shadow
Perched atop one cathedral of denial
A chamber which no match could set alight
Which no insistence could topple

This monstrosity was irrevocable since its conception
Since plans were first drawn up
And now we’re stuck with it

On the Occasion

With you, I've jumped
and never ceased to soar.
Free of the denial
that once upon a time
hung my shoulders low

For in your voice there is a music
that tastes of ten thousand tomorrows unspoken.
In your eyes there is a magic
a garden in radiant bloom
a laser set to stun
and in your touch, a poetry
that glows a living blue
gently melts this glacier soul
to clearest spring
and burns as a wish come true
with every step in time.

I reach out to you, steady pulse
wanton bliss
brilliant tide
to wish you all you wish yourself
(and more)
and to remind you once again
that despite our fresh acquaintance
I love you.

Dusk

Grey Today
Met Rosy Tomorrow
On the brink of extinction
The last light of a bitter sun
Sucked up
Absorbed by a jealous horizon
Behind veils of clouds
And skeins of crows
They wed not in secret
But without any fuss
Marshaled together by forces too large
For one man
Or even an army of men to object
The sheer will of practicality
Or vanity
Or longing
Was and always will be
A muffled cry
In layers of vacuum
An opposing breeze
Against the prow of the cosmos
No
Only time can tear dusk apart
Working dark and stealthy
Divorcing at dawn
Loveless rusty Grey Today
From silent patient Rosy Tomorrow
To usher in the autonomy of morning
On the crested yawn of the waking sun

And So Farewell

Treasured soil brimming with the fruits of a lifetime of cultivation
Cancerous and taxing beneath my canvas-clad feet
Pregnant and beautiful beneath my recumbent back
Embracing and letting go of windswept words
Go west young man
Well
Come find me bathing in caffeinated spirituality
Wrapped tight in a blanket on the hardwood floor
Come find me hanging from the rafters of what I should have been
Pretending in faith to walk a solid platform
Jamming my fingers in doorways that never were open
Don’t forget me I’ll say
Come find me bereft of misconceptions
Olden hind-sights
Headlights
Sharing the cup of fortune with blank notebook visages
And floating about on the breath of perpetual winter
The displaced sentry-style witness of less and more
Silent and calculating under fossilized irises
Peering over ramparts of spiffy words spat rapid-fire into the night air
Shaking the trunk of leafless trees
Wasting away splayed out on the terrace
I will remember shame
And inhale shame
And exhale shame
And fall head over conscience down waterfalls of human creation
Down the rabbit hole
Downtown
The hours are counting me down
It’ll be a desert of a different color and beautiful as such
And frightening
Soon enough their hair will whiten
Your face will sharpen
My edge will dull out
And our voices will fade from our throats into ambiguity
Into the depths
In time
Days and nights spent steeping in reverie
My head will spin concentric circles around my ears
Around my eyes
I’ll melt
And so will this town
Indefinitely

Asleep I am aware of the most colorful tortures
Waking up I let the sand slip through my fingers
In consciousness I know not what stories tomorrow’s tomorrow will spill
And so farewell

Infertile

Who is he that speaks of the sea
Without having tasted salt air upon his lips
Who gambles with bare dice and sleeps amidst foxes
With one eye open
Hogtied
He is no man who sings
In foreign tongues to the deaf
Brings to table the freshest kill already digested
And swears by his own soul
Without first weighing it against the blackened smog
Of a char-broiled countryside
No
He is a shadow
A siren’s dying breath
Petrified pasture beneath winter’s pallid blanket
The skin of innocent teeth
Bared in rowdy defense
He walks in vacancy and sleeps thinly at the edge
Of extinction
For all his tarry is vanity and all his vanity is
Infertile

Here I Thought Me a Tower

Here I felt the ocean tide caress each speck of sand
As it slid further and further away
Receding to the far reaches of nowhere and who cares
Each new word like a grain of salt
Dispatched in brevity from my restless tongue
Succinctly to fall upon humble feast
Repugnant and astringent

Here I held myself a fence of iron
Or a box or the string of a kite
That once again my eyes could see
Here I reveled in insipid vacuity
Cool and stale in monotone costume
Here I found solace in ticking clocks
And an empty mug beneath the coffee

Here I thought me a tower
But with the idea of you
I’m no longer so sure

Celestial Soda Pop

Reclining in a tired brown corduroy chair
Savoring each fizzy sip
Reveling in the shadows
Of dimmest amber luminescence
Nestled in a blanket of low chatter
Cuddling with the entrancing strains
Emanating from a modest stage
Flanked by tattered cascades of red velvet
Thinking in lively wishes
Processing as might a calculator
Inhaling the rich atmosphere
Exhaling insight and acceptance
Reading the unsaid
And reciting the unwritten

I think I may have found
My happy place

A Humble Observation

A plastic bag quivers in the wind
Its shrill thrashing hiss
More so imagined than audible
Resonates from across the parking lot

Weak and insubstantial, it coasts
Like a veiled phantom face
In ethereal moonlight
Ready to take flight

On the breath of frigid winter
It departs the callous pavement
Whisked forth from its purgatory
And behind the curtain of night

Heavy in the wake of this escape
Scarred by the breaks and tears
Of taking on too much at once
I see myself

My Name

A cup of black coffee stands atop a newspaper
Vivid aroma in a black-and-white world
Bitter hints of its momentary presence
Season my silent tongue
I hear the echo following each throbbing pulse
“Arthur”

A plane ticket rests in a black canvas tomb
Out of sight and out of mind
Plotting to change the channel in time
Its pallid face and sharp edge
Emblazoned with neatly jumbled words and digits
“Arthur”

A warm embrace is delicately delivered
From the past in the present
Going unreturned in the desolate terminal
As the fluorescence grows violent
The faintest murmur hangs in the atmosphere
“Arthur”

A broken whisper singes the receiver
From all the way across the globe
Its bonfire tongue crackling and pleading
Standing each hair on end
Like the unforgiving chill of thirty-six thousand feet
“Arthur”

It is the sound by which I am called
And the call to which I respond

All is Full of Love

I haven’t been beaten hard enough
With the splintered cross
To give a damn about their contorted features
I haven’t hidden long enough
In the tormented rainforest
To know the comfort of murk and serpents

But yet my knees are giving out
Under the waterfall you send plummeting
Into my animate puddle
Rattling your bucket of spare change
At my window
As if to beckon me
Driving me further and further
Down forbidden paths
To chase the phantom feelings
In the name of frozen numbers
Stitched in a welcoming blanket
An overcoat of generous proportions
And a smile of congealed plaster
Emblazoned with the target
And whisked forth by wild birds
In too many colors to name

Goodnight, my would-be lover
I will know you quietly
While the rest of the world
A spoiled broth of time
Shudders in disgust
Sinking its unfathomable fangs
Deep into the curious ribs
Within my curious torso
Lulling me to slumber
On the highest bough
Of a tenderly collapsing tree

Glorious Chariot

Along the perilous curves
Of a snaking thoroughfare
In constellations of raindrops
Speckling the windshield
And the mewling of rubber blades
Wiping them away
In gentle, protective seatbelt hugs
And their satisfying clicks
Just past the headlights’ reach
In brilliant rearview reflections
Among coffee stains and rock salt grains
And fogged breath on the window panes
In the humming heater
And the throbbing speakers
Beside the pilot’s throne
And within every tiny stitch thereof
Under the sweeping ashen hood
Somewhere between fourth and fifth gear
Poetry hides
Waiting to be driven

A Face Melting in the Rain

It was at the crossroads of change
On a titanic ark of slate and nails
A billowing furnace factory
Caved by the shovels of foreign tears
That I was first made to swallow therapy
To let it squirm in my stomach
And rock me like a landslide

Now, as the hummingbird flies its backward course
Through valleys of sickly depths
Over hills of glass and tension cable
The lump in my throat grows rapidly
To the size of a time bomb or worse
And I tremble in the wake
Of every wrenching gasp for air

Playing with Fire

I remember the initial gratitude
Surrounding a time when the light of amity
Permeated the murk that was my psyche
And how it held fast through
Profound debates over tea
Doleful venting over meatball wedges
And indiscriminate chop-busting at all times

I remember the diverse soundtrack
To a time when problems were mulled over
With a ball and racquet
A time when befuddled strangers
Pilfered Polish pastries
And shameless jaunts all over creation
Were essentially commonplace

I remember the perverse disregard
Of a time when vacuum cleaner advice
Wasn’t at all hard to come by
A time when a nickel and a grand
Were roughly the same thing
And screen names ended in numbers
That immortalized purchases

I remember the grave sentiment
Behind a time when a deceased car
Inspired the re-writing of funeral hymns
A time when the tangy aroma of cigars
Seasoned the upholstery
And speech impediments
Were fodder for too many laughs

I remember the theatrical pretense
Coloring a time when actuality
Was replaced with credible fantasy
A time when fishing and drowning
Meant a successful evening
And ludicrous pseudonyms
Made proper nouns more chic

But the one thing I don’t remember
Is how it all managed to slip away

Ignorance

Falling apart at the seams
Fading and losing their shape
Marked with empty words
Tied up in maddening knots
Slow to unravel
Harboring an indistinct funk
Filthy and scuffed
Torn
Battered
Ridiculed
They’ve seen the world from a worm’s eye
And shrink some more
With each attempt at renewal
These shoes have a soul
As black as leather
As squalid as dirt
But somehow march on
Without a second thought

Apocalypto

What happened to
The feeble race
Aboard that trivial rock
When the lights went out?

Their nimble fingers
Were rendered powerless
Their words struck mute
Without plastic translation

How did they relate
To each forgotten other
As the waves rose up
In the exanimate stillness?

With bright crimson rage
Scathing their faces
Irony festering in their eyes
They all melted down

Once again embryonic
Floundering mercilessly
They awaited its return
But were never redeemed

A Child No Longer

Life is a playground
Littered with challenges
Contorted metal forms
Spiraling upward
Looming and daunting
Horrifying yet exhilerating
A little battle
With every strained reach
For the next rung
Holding on

It is a place that steals innocence
With every cut and scrape
One where woodchips
Aren't always there
To cushion the fall

In this playground
Not every acrobatic feat
Is within our control
The ups and downs
Of the see-saw
The high-flying thrill
Of the swing
And the inevitable fall
Down
Down
Down
The slide

Dear Outside

To be seen
And acknowledged
Even in passing
To be heard
And understood
Even on rare occasions
To be aided
And guided
Even the wrong way
Is a gift

“You are here”
It says on the card
And for that
I am thankful

What I See

I see a
Plastic bag
Translucent
Weak and insubstantial
Quivering in the wind
Ready to take flight
To depart
From the cold pavement
To be whisked away
And escape
The breaks and tears
Of taking on too much
At once

I see myself