how do you do it

when disaster comes, it swallows us up in its dusty storm cloud with a howl, and shakes us by the jaws of fate

or other times, failure is manifest in the pungent midnight silence, where breathing is too shallow to be real sleeping

but with my age comes knowledge of the holy us

i can now see the smiles and sparks that make fuckups crumble, pill, and fall like white erase board marker markings

the breaths of timeless compassion, cloudy at the two am station where i wait for your limitless love.

saves the day saves the day

i can shake down my troubles now
into the grooves of floorboards how
they try to pry up my toes once alighted
of shoulders the bad vibes can smolder around

i flipped them out of my body, now scout
for the remnants of rubbish, around and about
on the ground and then pound them out the damn door
they will flounder and ask themselves why and wherefore

don't worry

it's okay to let me go
because we aren't a necessity
i need you like a vice
but your charms i could get down the street at the dusty corner store that carries my smokes.

allow me to flee your memory, all the gestures, appearances, best wishes spinning
my clothes, hair, smell, my worn and tired soles, where my eyes move or don't move.
what i know and don't, what i like and have never tried, if i have a god, or am my own
what i want, what i want of you, what you saw in me, the things i will be

let it all go until you have to claw your way out of clouds to see me smile and ride off

two poems today

you hungry banshee
shooting flames from your teeth
with words bursting loud
sizzle dangerously

i'm falling in love, and not the every day train love
the elevator holding my guts, cable cut, kind of love
wanting you, because you are me
and my skin is across the seat
reading a book i'll never read

my kind of love today is the love
where i've met you and you've met me
a smitten kind of swooning of
unknown enormity

*********

you're the old america
in mother of pearl buttons and teeth
birthed by that aquatic sea bitch of beauty
holy laughter rolling along her clamshell
as she parks the bivalve, dipping into
the glory, wonder of a 57 bel air
thinking about her son in a jukebox
and the way his hips churn waves

ode to the sleeping train lovely

darling, in all your religious stillness, did you miss your stop?
do you have a destination? dusty callused hands show your travels well.
slumped over like a crumpled puppet, dark red hair limply hangs over the rail
a stale late stratus sunset.
your silver shoulders, the highest point in a sloping arch
shine, a summer moon, shiver then are still.

sweetheart, the day is too cold for your waves of aqua chiffon,
pleated and needing the sway of walks way.
but your endless skirt sea ripples with only wind, then is still
i won't see your face, and i never will, but i know its benevolence and innocence,
pure and spanning centuries of waxes and wanes, timeless patience of saints.

and like me, you will get off your stop, stream, but too soon return to the big blue oblivion, silent and loving, needing, being all.

blood on the tracks revisited 2

i'll finish the story

blood on the tracks revisited

the holidays were over and the usual group was getting back
to the smokey tattoo parlour, hung over over egg nog and jack
and propped up on a window, the young apprentice saw
a deck of cards on the edge, fixn for a fall
he quickly caught the lot of them, savin for the queen of hearts

the desk girl dolled out five and they occupied their time for a spell
they bet on living real estate, the space below the pinkie fingernail
and whoever won the pot would pick their favorite men
and there put a reminder, where no reminder had been
to canonize their loses, the symbol on the queen of hearts

untitled

i'm thumbing through days
like pages in a book
them flying past faster
the longer i go

18 ctr, 1909

like a thriller
we walk up the steps
and into dusty history
where old town memories keep
like this photo, taken 100 years ago
of the place we have made home
and i wonder what romances died before us
as victorian glasses and combs stare
at these modern intrusions

i'm alive

all day, i thought
this is the day i die
the last day i make my pink plaid bed for the living
before retiring to black sheets of dark unknowing
my big black book i want to finish before i go
which is physical, not a metaphor: House of leaves
i’m reading scenes, navidson, the great explorer, waits for death
and slaughters time by reading House of Leaves [ ]
in my case literature provides no escape

i move to bike rides with a younger boy me
to the big pink bakery to buy canolli's
i splurge on whole milk cause hey this is it
i call and old friend to check up on his kid

no cornet practice, it seems futile
but the day turns to night and still standing, alive
i celebrate my breath, my fingernails, each one a miracle
beautiful skin, attached freckles intact, in place
and aligned with the stars, which are still so fucking far in space

exploring deploring

there's this feeling
of my being idling
wanting relief before
hitting trains home

it's like this every 7 thirty
sometimes i people watch
today i decide, people talk
with homeless youth, 20 like me

i chat near their guitar case
about whiskey and money
quite the opposite of your mommas
water cooler small talk

they take me to junkie city
by the river where harvardites run
but there's no fast moves for the spaced out jaded
in faded black ripped tees

something about glue huffin punks
and friendly dads on junk
or drunk young things bleeding, glass feeling
makes me really real, feel alive, idle subside

come together

wake up in separate beds


you, to a checkerboard chin
natures pattern scratched out a gameplan
in pink and beige
or maybe you started this morning
banged awake by cosmic meat cleavers

what the fuck is this?
i have no idea. It’s perfect. did you sleep on it?
i slept on my back.
what the fuck.

me, i woke up to swimmers ears whisper
poking, saying “sorry, your defenses
were sloughed away by the poolside”
it's all day morning mumbles,
for i fear i can’t hear dear.

what are you poking?
look. I’m pointing to it.
what the fuck?
do you see anything hurtey?

for you i’m grateful

you let your senses play for me
imprint blueprint‘s facsimile
of everything in line in place
my back, for it’s the largest place
a checkerboard for me to show
that prove your kisses come in rows

swooning on the job

oh i love you, thing of mostly carbon
ephemeral boy that will perish, flesh and memory
make your time my time, which is borrowed and supine
elbows shoulders, moving fingers in rituals
that took years of muscle's maintenance
forming gestures familiar to character
let me kiss where fingers meet in a valley
align limb vines of mine and time's
with eyes looking at eyes with eyes inside
you'll find our minds
slip, dance entrance
imagination, fancy to unbind

hmm yess

velvet, red, black gold on display
begging to be released, titian granting.
nudie beauty permanent, unaware
how their faces stare when no one is there
burning holes in the parquet

so you know

so today, i'm walking down the street and it looks like everyone's smiling at me, amused. and i think, this is weird but smiles are infectious so i don't mind. i hear the word "unicycle" from someone passing and sure enough, a one wheeled performance artist was directly behind me, with a spiked up pony tail and a tripod clutched up against his tan bare chest.

i can smell it

tomorrow is a happy day where good will happen and you will see everything and it will be beautiful, and if you cry from it you won’t be sad and you’ll get a little startled when contentment is an easy exhale and came together without a precursory cosmic to do list. the yesterdays full of uncertainty, loneliness, rejection (real, imagined, loud, unspoken), will be laughed off shoulders like old dandruff and dissipate until they reach an outside blue and dance with the clear discs that run along eyes looking on the sun.

you stick, slick

the popcorn, putzing
beers and videogames
past the movies where
you never want to
get scandalous
but you’re a nice boy
with shirts with buttons
and slip on vans
that likes cars and
letting tension go -
smooth it over like
steamed creases
or folded money-
how you make
masses happy
but your creamy cool
crosses my thoughts
days spent feeling breezes
thinking if they could
dry our summer sweat in bed

a mean clean

i can procrastinate for years
but today i turn to one of my non projects
and begin a long road that ends with a clean cellar
to tiptoe past earwigs, ants, alive or dead
i will find old levis that ex boyfriends stained
along with their once prim argyle sweater
shirts that advertise faith, belief in
showing the lord to mexico
petticoats no longer period
now that rains have dip dyed them like easter eggs
old ass memories of people that are fucked up now
or doing really well, in oil paint and skeleton suits
patches to commemorate my relationship with mom
that never did get sewed to a sash
or dare certificates that never got hung up
there are things that haven’t changed
bags of googly eyes, packs of needles
in both cases the big eyes have been taken and used
too many memories, stuffed into three ring binders
and things that, thank god, have changed
like the mess and mildew and ideas i can’t keep up with

it never makes sense

if i could take my brains
and erase all the times you saw pain
at my hands and my feet i hope what would remain
is a beautiful scene that a painter would paint

if my silliest wishes were chalk
i’d draw on the sidewalk us both in a frock
coat and me with a parasol gleaming we’d be
floating through rivers of creamy ice cream

involuntary nap time

foggy grog for days
where i can’t see your face
but i’ll wait for the rays
of clarity to grace

Leo, you don’t deserve what you get
pricking prickly fingers, to test, let it out
brothers throwing punches, spacey sisters
drunk dads and messy moms
Leo, we both lived through it
and we’re pretty fucked

but you’ve got it, little man
you got the grunt of adolescent angst
and i hope teeny mean teens see your swagger and shiver
at the dangerous, dark cool
you know ed cullen don’t got shit on you.

Leo, one day you’ll find some planets aligned
you’ll roar with purpose headfirst down a road
that can’t show where it goes
but you can feel it, deep and clean, as grass between toes

let it be known that i’m not there
most of the time, i’m elsewhere
i’ve got that travel bug and trouble follows
but with what heart i got, i care

i got roots like a tree all day for you
and if i had a band i’d jam with you
cause you’d keep it roarin with that Leo sound
that when found, will make mountains
and fountains stay cool

mind was wandering all day
working, swimming, hanging out
bob dylan, johnny cash
brains remains
estranged, untamed
house of leaves, house of matt

i wanna redo this

i hope you’re happy
cause i am
with a fat lip and a bruised ego
i take your abuse cause when i smile
blood sticks to my teeth like cherry taffy
and i’m laughing cause frankly
this is how it should be

Sleeping in the doldrums of summer. I decide august goes by so silently, humble and clear, these few weeks before the proverbial shit hits the very real and in use fan. Before the desperate online searches for previously skimmed textbooks, before bedframes and folders, older sofas, and crap to slap on bare walls. Before the beauty of beginnings, there is an august peace unspoken and overlooked like a carnation in cement cracks.

fraid i bruised
my ass on a cruiser
i gotta get used’ta
thick pantaloons

bug by land, blue by sea

skin is bitten
plunging in
tickles ankles
inhale nostrils
breathe deep blue
soon, achoo to
swim and sputter
bugs like chew
flutter, falter
under water
quiet anew
i knew quiet

we had fun, right?

timely timeless you
your arms area vortex
smells like soap and sweat
and black leather seats
when our skin meets
i lose me and you and it and all
as sound as the grave
alive as the skies
i breathe out, breathless
restless content

maybe some days
i squander, wander
but days the hourglass
slips sand through slits
and trickles tickle time

but i’m on my side
your sides are mine
when you’re on my side
sandy swirls tip, are still

long longing throng

this is all i have

i am what you have

i have you

i haven’t had enough

i’m not too tough

like pieces of meat
i fall off the bone

crumbling stoned to pebbles
starting tumbling trebles
that groan, settle, moan

passion fit

colors danced to make clovers grow
on a slate gray subway in miles of snow
her sweater got wetter and made brighter glows
hunched shoulders they smoldered, she knew when to go

shaded and jaded, sea’ve sunglasses sprung
became moribund when they saw the sun
oh mothers, don’t bother to see what they’ve done
they’re peeling off feeling, becoming undone.