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.

ceaseless oceans 2

Something ends where the reeds grow sunset.

Starting in pale white clouds of snow,

they brown and shoot dark

raising themselves into shades of red,

then burnt orange and yellow

culminating in almost invisible tips

pointing into the ice blue water.

I am a flea in the fur of the earth

Bristling and waving stiffly in the oceanic breath.

Within reach, purple berries of the cedar

Cluster like crystals in the rock,

Hustling themselves deep in the olive green leaves.

I will make a house like this shadow grove.

When I climb out again to see the bay,

Boots crunching into the prints of deer

And mixing with the coyote,

I am face to face with two swans,

Muscled necks U’ing to fix their eyes on me,

scabbed feet swiftly paddling them forward.

Nothing sounds except their heavy breathing

Through the nose, close to their eyes,

As if some congested giant had thrown their heads

From too little clay.

We would have an unpleasant fight, my numbed limbs

Sluggish and encumbered, their winter-hewn beaks

Accustomed to violence. I imagine

the taste of their blood, thick, metallic.

I go closer.

They stare and stare, somehow warm in the half-frozen

Water. The ducks cackle in my ear.

A cold wind blows and there is the hum

And thump of small birds taking flight.

All the while it grows darker and neither i

Nor the swans will give of our temporary territory.

This is the way of winter.

There is no better life to be lived than this.

Find a way to survive.

Some fly away, others stay

and weather the season.

Everything gives way though.

There is no resisting what you must give up.

Even the geese as they fly

Make small noises with each wingstroke

If you listen carefully, their bodies stretched

To make organs with the wind

Against a burning sky.

This is to be paid attention to.

I worship what is in us that survives,

That wants us to-- the hot muscle

Of fascination, the deep sensual pleasure

Of the thing that we are and the world we experience

Splitting, reforming and combining

Like the half fresh watered bay

Forming sheets of ice along the shore

That at some point, without you noticing it,

Give way to the tender grace of the ocean.

ceaseless oceans 4

What joy there is in the hoofprints

I find in the snow

From shivering deer who after snuffling

Wet noses for green things have gone back

To a place I do not even know the name for!

How good that the world

Is so much bigger than me.

That birds whose species I do not know

Congregate beyond my sight in the sudden darkness

And warble throaty patterns which I cannot

Put into words. That there is everywhere

Around snow and ice that is melting at an imperceptible

And yet precise, rate regardless of my attention.

What a world—where the fox knows the joy of

Its teeth first splitting across the living skin

Of a rabbit whose heart beats fast from running

And I with rotund belly lean back,

Turn on a lamp, and open a book of stories

Within which are references to the names of men

Who have written thousands of pages I have never read

In a language a thousand years old that I have never spoken.

That the earth continues turning this day is a miracle to me

For I have nothing to do with its turning

Its gravity, spin, and momentum predating all human life.

What a wonder, what luck

That I might explore these soon to be ruins

Alone with but a plastic flashlight and goosedown jacket

That I found in my grandfathers closet.

What joy to walk down to the edge of the water

Where there was once only water

And touch the thistles with cold fingers,

And hear the laughter of ducks and the gurgle of frogs

Where once life had not even been imagined,

But where somehow now the imagination grows

So large its worlds expand beyond all comprehension

And infinite worlds of dreams open

Inside this one hovering about every thing and beyond it

Creating like manifold gods things never thought of.

The holly now stings my cheek,

How hard it is, cartogenic skin

And small, bright berries a mystery to me.

I could live a life transmuting the sun

Into sugar, or counting the minute bits of dust settling

And becoming my grey stone bones, or swirling

Bits of glass in my teeth then spitting them on the beach.

How good it is that the world is huge

And can hold within it

A body such as me

Filled with an illegible sadness.

ceaseless oceans 3

I wake late in the still house.

Birdsong drips over the roof as

Ice melts in the cold sun.

The tree I once climbed as a child

Still stands, solitary and with arms

Spread wide. There is another,

Of a kind, I have never noticed,

Protruding from the thicket behind it

In the back part of the house where I have not

Stepped since my memory began.

What if this tree has grown just now

To grant me access to the silent

World of the dead, where mute birds

And dreams build their nests?

Last night, we stood by the ocean together.

All about seagulls cut the sky

And a wind skipped from the lighthouse

To the bridge. You were quiet,

Looking out with narrow eyes

As if you could see all the way to the other side.

I looked at you and you blurred

And I heard the water tapping at my feet,

But I did not want to go.

Lights started up on the waves

First one, then two, then a hundred,

What wonder, whether stars or boats or fire,

But nothing compared to your hand

On my shoulder, your short fingers

Pressing your weight on me

As you turned and mouthed something

That the wind took away

So all I heard was the laughing of the ocean

And then I was alone.

campaigns end

Cup this 2 year bottle draining

light out of the doorway.

it is the cold night, it is the short morning

it is day old croissants eaten by the punch clock

and notes furiously scribbled down on menu scraps

and hidden.

it is the cooks dropping out of school,

cutting their hair and moving back in with mom

in blackwater new jersey and

the gun sticking out of stewards’ belts

when they answer the door unpaused call of duty

triangulating the room in blue light.

He said he could fix anything,

He said he and the other seafarers tossed

Their boss over the railing one night

Because of what he’d called them.

It is midnight but I am sitting down to mint tea

and pulling apart fried fish with my fingers

with a view of the bed with 2 different color sheets

splitting it for mother and son.

Will you walk down this hallway with me

Where the broken glasses pray to the god of forgiveness

And the booms of raucous banquets make them sound

Like chandeliers crying if you close your eyes?

Hold my hand and tell me why Mario keeps getting the kids

Ribcages jutting out of the floor

And Rose must bottle it every night

And play it safe with a legal team

She could never afford.

And after we make love I watch her sleep

For the first time in a year, lips puckered

And cheeks slack like a baby. How close to bliss

We are at times, held apart by inches of breath.

How close to death, tied by our eyes looking

Everywhere else—I hunger for elusive honesty now

When the streets and I, the cold trees and i

Are the only ones awake, I crave the invasion

Of the real over everything.

Oh conquer me so that it might not feel this way.

If I submit to sleep tomorrow will begin,

And I do not know what I will do tomorrow.

Where do the winds go?

How can I flow like water with this loss

In my belly like a snake, the things we did not do

Slithering through my veins, the lives we could have led

Bleeding into me like venom?

I howl with the wolves tonight,

I keen the end of day.

I am collecting dust and moisture to rain down from a great height

I am winters heart beating fall into submission.

It is over and for all my love,

People will suffer. I am leaving them in their rented apartments,

In their vacationless years and scuttling smiles when their boss comments

On the deep cut of their uniform. I am leaving everyone it seems

And may not find.....

Well, forget what I was about to say.

I am with the night tonight,

An end is an end, and this grief will pass too,

Like the gravel moves from the bank and settles

In the bottom of the river.