over and

This room hasn’t seen itself in a month,

Mouth open with no curtains staring down

At trash in the street. Caught on the edge of

Two cities, the wind screws its

Face into snow while I work.  Make space

Mimic the soul, make the soul make

The soul. Where do memories go

To collide with whiskey slithering

Down the throat, hushed confessions

Of desire terrible and falling on deaf ears?

I am not the one you’re looking for.

Angel’s harp on the one, the one I am not

In any shape to be getting on here--

When you’re drunk don’t hitch, like a child

Stay still in the store of whirring toys,

Know someone is coming to get you.

But out here, west Philadelphia rows

Going down to the hospital noone knows about,

Past the church with the red doors

And the church with the neon signs

And the house with vacuum cleaner advertisements painted

On its ankles that now is a drug store--

When the city grunts and groans and heaves

And keeps giving birth to kids in braids overflowing

Polka-dot tanktops, and lean bodies surging out of beaters

Crashing over each other and hitting each other with cellphones,

And a loud sax hiccupping over sissing sissing sick sicking

It should be known I am not the one. I’m

Starting to know it too.

february 4th

I found the letter you wrote me

In the smoking wreck of my car

On the side of 95.

There was a light rain

And I was reaching around because 

No one knows what to do

When that happens.

I heard the sound

Before it almost collapsed to a point

And the front tin of the hood

Scrunched up like an accordian

Whose notes can kill you

If they go too long.

It didn’t.

You wrote that you would fight for us.

I didn’t have a proper jacket.

I was 3 hours away in white plains

But still, I wanted to curl in a ball

And feel the breeze on my back,

Let the rough voice of that towtruck

Mumble into nothing.

february 13th

Shaking like the holly in winter,

Spines under snow, red lips

Lingering—there she is

Every morning. Dreaming is

Supposed to be solitary, you say,

Already late to pointless appointments

Where the world has already won.

Show more of yourself. Grit your teeth

While they take the white and dance.

You try to rid

Your body of its power, like the 2am

on your knees shuddering,

But it’s in your blood.

You go out to piss in the backyard

Moon with a shadow over its face

Looking at you peculiar

As if asking

What species of heartbreak is that--

That takes the time away,

That rolls the days down a hill

Into memory without your ever moving?

The city trees bear their bones to the wind

And run out to the violet sky like some

Very slow wild thing skittering through the air.

You wish you believed in the sky,

That last free thing.

Something has drained out;

Now you are like the oak leaf in winter,

All desiccated veins and longing for spring.

january 30th

Crying like a bike tire,

Moaning like a bird.

I’m listening to femme-punk

Letting the light shine in—

Almost. All the dust goes

From my hands to my head.

In the shower, everything crawls

Down to the drain as if

It hurt to be alive.

Keep your body strong,

Iron riddled with brown scars from rocks--

Keep the work,

Positive attitude and open heart ready to be shown to anyone in a black scarf grabbing a bus--

Keep the house warm,

Where a hookah lit and couches dragged and windows plastic-wrapped make a home--

Keep going,

This one is self-explanatory, don’t stop

Keep laughing with friends,

It’s why you carved a heart, don’t stop

Keep dancing,

keep dancing, Damn it, don't stop

hot and late but at the end there is just a quiet bed, don’t stop

Don’t you let it down,

Pull up! Sid’s hand on mine, don’t stop.

Someone else beside me,

Come to the open air.

Let's hope

There’s a seasonal fix.

Juke move. Spin.

The space opens up

As if everything is expanding, like carl sagan says

And there isn’t enough subject matter

To fill each moment, and suddenly

Where before you were pushing a grocery cart

And listening to joanna newsom while you looked

At the man behind the deli counter who seems to have had a bad case

Of acne as a child and you were wondering if that was hard for him and try to be extra nice because hey it doesn’t cost you anything and the world should be a place where we can do that for each other, now, suddenly,

You are just alone.

january 25th

I came home to find

You had taken all my clothes you’d taken

Over the years, and left them on my front steps.

They smelled like you.

Tonight, I try to shed my work self,

My constant energy and stories.

I trim the plant you gave me when you went to cuba.

Its leaves are grey. When I am done,

There are no leaves left,

Only wet green stubs,

The raw insides no longer

Behind what is dead and dying.

I drove the backroads to the airport

Where I used to, all those years ago,

By the cemetery overgrown and broken,

By the small road connecting to Darby,

By the river I promised I would fish,

By the broken bottles where we celebrated

our union victory.

That road always floods, the cars back up,

Red headlights swishing in thick mist,

And they crawl ever so slowly through the bottomless pool,

Almost swallowed, but then miraculously whole and dripping,

They are on the other side. Like a baptism.

Tonight, I was hoping it would rain.
I hear the car wheels chewing maple leaves,

And not spitting them out.

january 24th

My world is stacked in bars of light.

On the highway, everything turns gold

And my body is hurtling through space

15 of my own lengths a second.

Over a white boxtruck with graffiti

At its ribs, the sun doesn't hurt anymore—

My retinas burn and what was a storm that took

Over the city simmers off.

Even though I’m going somewhere,

I’m here.

The door is always open here,

Cool winter stopping by to pay respects

Where I keep reminding him

“you do not live here”

but he does.

Why can we hurt the ones we love?

Thanksgiving over smashed potatos,

Talking into earbuds while riding a bicycle

Into work, standing 3 feet away in the kitchen

Not looking at each other.

It doesn’t make sense to me.

Maybe it’s all those tabs of acid

Or maybe it is just grief

Or stress or lack of sleep

But my world is stacked in bars of light

And the bulbs have gone out

One by one, so that on the hill

Where the city winks and wiggles,

Stuff is not so clear.

like

Are we supposed to be alone?

Why is the world build of things

With nothing in between?

Slats of light and dust crawling through

The air, an empty envelope

with ragged edges, red sox

mug with crusted yogurt and a silver spoon,

Sheets stained with soy sauce and cum,

Books leaning wounded against each other

On the floor, black shoes with worn soles.

Eileen myles asks repetitively and

With a bit of distain “am i

Alone tonight?”

Come greek tragedy chorus

In multiple octaves, disharmonic

And over the tiles of some distant bathroom

Where you spit into the toilet bowl because you are drunk,

Come labor intensive small tasks

In which we might for but a second forget our—

Like when trying to put up a poster I fold

My lips tight over four thumbtacks

And one stabs deep into the skin.

Here here here. Always here.

With eliot water, Gertrude fish,

When I was falling in love

It was green leaves.

Damn but it’s hard.

I wish I could pack a tent

And an ax and a book

And enough water

And a solar charger for my phone

And some of my favorite foods

And a few friends

And my recently deceased grandfather

And myself as a 13 year old football player

And everyone I’ve ever loved

And just head into the woods for a while,

Figure it out.

But with everything happening so fast,

And with every city cutting left to get open,

And with that door still open,

And with my eyes that won’t let me sleep open

I don’t know if I’m going to figure it out.

If what I did today was right.

I don't know. It’s hard to go on

Knowing that.

Things end. And at some point,

The poetry stops and there is just that

For a while.

ceaseless oceans 5

I came to your house for selfish reasons

And when I got there,

I dodged past trash bags filled

With your old polos and sweaters,

I opened the closet where you recently found

Your souvenir pistol from the Korean war

And I looked for hidden treasures.

Your jackets are very puffy.

The house was dark and quiet.

Behind, the woods have thinned

So that I could almost see the neighbors house

When I pulled my pants down to pee.

The boat was covered in snow, which tonight

Will turn to ice. I heard a whipperwill,

Driving in with the windows down,

But it could have been somebody’s clock.

Almost no one is home this time of year.

Nobody recognizes me.

I went to nauset fish like we always do

And he treated me like a tourist,

Gave me the whole bit about how accurately

He can cut salmon.

Small objects hold you.

That glass bobble with black and gold splattered inside,

Your canes stacked in a corner,

The view from your bedroom window

Which I have hardly ever seen in my life but I imagine

You knew so well by the time you were gone

You barely looked at it anymore.

I am looking now at the branches like upturned hands,

At the clouds scattered above cedar panes all the way to the ocean.