All my dreams obscured by the necessity of bread.

A possible tomorrow in superposition
the poetry of life lately distanced and veiled,
the world is ill in a temporary affliction.
Yet still, under the torment of rain intrepid seeds
strengthen
and audacious prayers
are sent toward heaven:


Hear our cry.


And lo I rest, now fore to toil
all my dreams obscured by the necessity of bread.


The arrow of time flies forward and on
today's harvest becoming
the remains of
a bygone
season.

Yet another for M

If for too long I am left to my ruminating solitude, I become my own prisoner in a cage of redundant thought. Behind every corner lies a shadow, every intention is cruel, But one word from you and I believe in tomorrow. I remember to handle humanity with a gentler hand. You're not a breath of fresh air you're what freshens it. All the utterances of love I have are for you alone. Without filter, without condition, subject to none. The only way you could harm me is if you were no longer to be the human you so beautifully are.

I'm not interested in love. Not the way you say it. You make it look so heavy. I only saw love clearly once, and in a moment it was gone. If I always try to hold you then how will you ever grow? How can I see who you are when there is someone I need you to be? Beyond the fear of loneliness and the prison of expectations its a joy to be alive.

I have no want at all to own you, to steal a raven from the air, coil heavy rope around a whisp of smoke, and place a veil before the waxing moon. My one desire is to simply live naked on the very same Earth, my face cast skyward to drink the rain that was once your breath among the clouds. I will never find the word my only fond rememberance for the alchemy that was our neon nights, in a thunder of silk, tasting every inch of you warm, wet, and wanting. Now your phantom face is an analog vision nightly I die to your dark silhouette. I'll see you again, and when I do, I'll remember why we live at all.

I stand on the shore waving, as you drift away slowly on the wanton crystal sea.

The ground is the same cracks in the sidewalk and holes in the ground the sun has passed over in multiples cubed and my bones still hold straight my skin. I'll never stop missing you and I'll never stop missing her I'll never stop missing him and I've made peace with the future not realized. There is no purpose there is no plan there is only the good that potentially we will one day do.

I don't know why I sent that
instead of
"I need you."
I just can't trust a tree with such shallow roots.
My years reach down to the center of the Earth
and you have so much room left
to
grow.

I never really understood the new generation
the drugs just made it seem like I did,
no allegiance to anything
no responsibility to anyone.

I love you wholly
you love me despite my ignorance.

If my new life suffocates me this thoroughly
how can there possibly be air enough for two?

But anyway,
that is what I meant to say
but you'll grow tired of me
and slowly drift away
as I continue on
aloof.

shall we go west?
but Los Angeles is burning
shall we go south?
but they're dying in the streets,
in hospitals and
in town squares.

shall we go to the river?
we'll surely drown.
shall we go outside?
we'll catch our death
if the sun
doesn't get his
first.

One day on dry land
and on barren hillsides
under a nuclear fallout sky
we'll bite our wrists
and say we knew it
all
along.

I have a feeling that I disappointed you
I have a feeling that I let you down.
I didn't react the way you wanted
when you put it out there that one time.
What did you expect me to do?
I don't know the way you think,
but I think
that I could smell your pussy from four states away.

I've always been a booty call,
I've made peace with it,
but getting on a plane...
I mean,
that's one expensive slab of
bacon.

Just give me five minutes
and I'll work my way from bottom to top

Forget about coffee and eggshells
bread in the box
forks in drawers on their backs
oranges
apples
pears and
palm oil.

Let your fingers grow as roots do -
fistfulls of sheet,
shoulder blades retract,
arch emerge.

Press in,
give up,
let out.

Morning.

Driving along the northern border of Massachusetts
imagining an existence less severed,
when beauty,
upon me,
is no longer wasted.

It has been years since I've been breathless.

Can I guide a son toward kindness
without hypocrisy or
an air
ironic?

Is the possession of my own life an illusion?

If I retreat to the forest will there be anything there to find?

One day I will relinquish my name
and my memory,
then polished or dull,
will sleep mute
beneath
the feet of foxes
and
fowl.

Every now and then you come to mind,
clever little thing.
I heard that you traded in your pills and powder
for your natural color
and a wardrobe that covers your
curves.

Everyone deserves a chance at happiness,
even if temporarily,
it comes at the cost of
mine.

Somehow I never hated you
though you more than once deserved it.

A consequence of long nights trying to keep you safe.

Cards on the table,
I cared for
but never actually loved
you.

Love is for when you love what they are
instead of what you want them to be.

But there we were side by side at night
me naive
and you trying to find yourself.

I hope you finally did.

I remember we weren't alone


who was the third?


I remember jealousy
I remember whiskey
I remember wanting to kiss you.


I remember sharing a cigarette
bright orange traffic cones
and then































































silence.

The sky falls most heavily on the heads of those formerly winged.

One by one they come to their senses
through the tragedy of an unavoidable compulsion
out of the thick hungover fog of midnight
finding nothing,
finding no one
familiar.

Oh theirs is a family now,
vegan and dry,
hair thin
flesh thick.

Me,
I feel like I am still on fire
in taxis at all hours
in every manner of condition
running toward
chasing down
running from.

At some point we looked out of place
because we were out of place
and now
after everything
here
we
are.

All the best S.

You used to call me drunk at 4am and in the background I
could clearly hear the sound of your vibrator
humming away deep inside of you.

You usually only managed quick bursts of filth,

"please please please daddy, tell me how you'd handle me,"

and so,

never being one to disappoint,

I would set quite the scene as
I cut perfectly uniform lines on the nightstand.

You would whine and moan until you reached the big finish
making sure to tell me exactly when, where, and how much.

Then you'd hang up without saying a word
and I would finish rolling up my last dollar bill.

I hear you got engaged today.

Congratulations.

You were always a good one,
and I never minded answering your call.

I scraped your face off the ceiling
and hung your eyes on the walls
so I could I feel like someone was always
watching.

How do you want to be seen and
how do you see yourself at thirty-aught?
I want to throw dice onto your bare, ivory stomach to
see how you roll.

The thought of setting eyes upon you again
fills me with want
and a rush of blood to the extremities,
a tonic for my
one
track
mind.

There is more honesty in raw overtures than polished ones.
How much time is spent dancing
around the crux of
the primal
matter?

I could, of course, weave silken words
and say
that 'I dream of you darling, a vision
wrapped in satin at the edge of the shore,
your silhouette drawing me toward infinity.'

The reality is that I want to fold you like origami
into a naked paper swan
for an anarchic acrobatic copulation,
a river of salt and sweat.

To kneel before your body in the boundless depth of woman
a servant and master
ably tasked with administering animal pleasures
until your eyes are blind,
your limbs uncontrollably shake,
and all resistance to the moment and self-awareness
dissolve.

And in the resultant silence
as the room swirls back into view
you offer up a breathless
and almost imperceptible
"Thank you...


...thank you,



thank you."

There is no nostalgia in the wreckage
grey matter particulate wallpaper
iced steel toothpaste
my damage held no art.

A narcissist with a taste for pussy
turn your ass out
I'll ride yours
you ride mine
spit on your stomach
piss in my mouth.

Dark
under a lemongrass moon.

It's all there in the bottle
I would die if the sun slept in
and every day would melt into candlewax
the morning Raven nevermore.



































"When this is over
when this is under
a foot of water..."

I thought about it and it doesn't surprise me.

The twists and turns aren't news
you can't be that way and not see it coming
the world has a jealous hand.

But which way is better?

I have no opinion on the matter,
I was once so solid in my conviction
now it feels like ducking low hanging tree limbs
under the weight of the wet blanket air
on the same walk every afternoon.

We should accept our own hand in our dramas
our ideas are bigger than our realities
and we are people and
people are
small.

The best way seems to be,
to me,
to always know whatever it is will die,
that I
and you
and we all
will
die.

So love it while its there today
but come tomorrow
don't cry when you find its
gone.

Just one indulgence.

I lie with the curtains drawn in the afternoon
silent and dull,
devoid of music and
my soul as stiff as wood.

I tell myself it would be alright to endure it,
to let a little slip,
I can handle it
for a moment.

I start to think of Josh,
I see myself on the subway platform at five thirty in the morning,
I hear the soft breathing of a faceless newborn child;
the days without warmth,
nights without heat.

I recall Rian's deceiving eyes,
Taylor's espresso skin,
and remember the ubiquitous whiskey dawn
when Natalie's breasts
would rhythmically rise and fall
as she rode in ecstasy
on top of
me.

I opened my eyes and
nothing moved.

Nothing
made a
sound.

Outside my window
are sounds of what?
Endless marches to nowhere,
the unkempt captives of virulence.
All caged in while
the world reclaims its divine heritage
sighing relief and
laughing
last.

I am watching the passage of time
questioning everything up until now.
It all felt so serious
I smile at how naive.

I've gotten better if it helps you sleep at night
but you can stay where you are,
I let you down in a moment once
wrote the story and here we are.
I'll forgive the author on your behalf.

What matters at the end anyway?

Oh the hopeful currency of morning,
oh the evenings inside my mind,
such a blessed,
blessed time to be
alive.

I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know what I'm doing and
I am starting to wonder
if I've done anything
at
all.

Where would I even rather
be?

There was a girl I knew before,
she took more drugs than I did
she danced to loud music
and she never slept alone.

Now,
bathed in quiet sunlight,
she makes flower bouquets in her kitchen
while listening to Joni Mitchell.

Take from that what you will.

There are no memorials in times of peace.

There doesn't seem to be enough room in here
for myself and anyone else.
I'm in the corners and I'm in the cupboards
and I lie horizontally across the floor.

I step over myself when I pass between rooms and
I'm forever waiting for me to finish before I can
begin.

But I've had long talks and
(even) longer walks with
myself
and myself and I have gotten rather close over the years
and
these days
I would recommend myself highly
should I
ever
ask.

When I met you
you were so wonderfully young.

I couldn't believe that
so much body and ass
could somehow fit in a twenty-one year old frame,
it was like you weren't the final product of sex
but rather the spitting image of it.

When I pulled you into the bathroom and spun you around
I had never seen anyone go down on it that quickly before,
like you were starving
and you hadn't been so delightfully fed
in
months.

They don't make enough soap to wash all of you off,
but baby,
you're still the best
I ever
had.

But these things really happened and I don't know how to shut them out.

The rain falls on hillsborough
on the stone and cement.
The rain falls on fayetteville
over the awnings and the doorways.
The rain falls on wilmington
as you drag in more smoke
lost and romantic
waiting for the bars to open.

There is nowhere to go when
nowhere is home.
Cast out by former friends reformed
sometimes rightly so
sometimes not.
Gaunt from hunger,
needing for sleep,
mumbling about angels and
dreaming of sex.

There is no sense of gravity known to the falling
until the bottom comes into view.

Then in March
they'll collect your bones,
sending whatever is left of you

North.

I am almost out of memories
watching the stitches we wove into our hands and clothing
unravel.

My friends are dead and the world is often cruel.

The times and I were often dishonest
trying to fight our darkness and what we really were:

fleeting.

The spice of life.

Seeing your face again,
irrational,
I masturbated violently -
oh shame of my failure
you thing left undone.

Last I'd heard your ghost went to Denmark,
a far cry from Franklin St and
an untimely end to our star-cross'd affair.

Now here I find you are
barely two hours south.

The irony is palpable.

So much so that I came,
cleaned off,
and wrote a poem
all about
it.

A love song.

Would you taste the same if
wet with surrender
you parted your legs for the length of my tongue
and I searched your flesh with my fingers
to fill in every void?

I would show you what was taught me
in the decades as they passed
to push your head back toward the pillow
and grip your golden moaning throat,
keeping time until in waves you cum:
into my mouth,
the sheets, and
on the
floor.

Oh to revel in that sweet abandon
vulgar and depraved.

Meditating at the temple of
your tan and timeless
ass.

There is nothing to say because we have forgotten who we are.
there is nothing to hear because we have forgotten what we sound like.
We have traded in the tactile for the faux and abstract
and the rejuvenating fire of truth
for the familiar comfort
of
lies.

Here lies our once boundless potential
and best of
intentions.

Somehow it still goes on.
In solitude and in separation
in fabric that hides our smiles
and in the memories of those I will
never see
again.

The ink on my arm is a reminder
of your face when we were both
so
young.

I think about you sometimes,
in different ways,
ways you would and
ways you wouldn't
want to most likely ever
know.

I watched you grow up with him.
You watched me get older.

You told me the truth that
I never really had a child after all
so
I stopped planning to kill
myself.

I think about you sometimes and
I hope somewhere you're singing
and the sky is always
blue.

Downtown diaspora.

I chew these sour stories and spit them from my mouth.

Perpetually projected upon the dark of my eyelids,
the diagonal streetlamps cast shadows down the blurred lines of
West North's neon corridor.

Distant ghosts cry out as they begin to fade away
the names and faces I can no longer quite recall.

Tell us, was it really all for nothing?

Were we not angels tempted by the careless fires of hell?

Were we merely orphaned children needing to belong,
finding comfort and hope in
one another's likewise
unspoken
resignation?

Look at us now:
Downtown diaspora.

Post traumatic and
moving on like they told us
we had no choice but
to
do.

I whisper to the intangible silence of no one
I loved you all completely and
I love you all completely
still.

For K.

I live repetitious in unremarkable routine
and out there, alone in night, my compatriots lie dying.
Take me to where news ceases to travel
and I, in the bliss of the ignorant, will live out my mortal days
satisfied
that the saints of my sinful past
likewise count the stars of heaven without
becoming
them.

The city,
devoid of the burden of my memories,
offers up the bodies of my brethren
instead.

Social media.

Two decades in limbo
every night with the faces I'll never see again.

No hard feelings
no kind words left.

Cocaine and conversation,
molly, sex, and sunrise,
tonight I burn to death in deafening
silence.

We are born alone
we will die alone.

So if energy cannot be created
and it cannot be destroyed,
then where will that leave us
when isolation and
divine justice
intersect
at
last?

Pointed
aloft on bone decaying
how deep do heels at times dig in.
Youth with one eye always toward the mirror
measuring life in postures
measuring life in seven and then eight
my chest caves in around an aging ballerina.

Once she danced to please her fathers,
then she swayed for the applause,
now she moves for the heavenly imperative
and the transcendental escape.

What good is a body when no longer used?
What life is there beyond the fire?

One eye always toward the mirror
measuring time in sundowns
bouncing babies and birthdays
pointed
aloft on bone decaying.

It rained in the City when I met you for coffee and
it rained as I caught my reflection
hungover
despair and depthless grey
merging seamlessly with the concrete clouds and sidewalks.

Then suddenly came color:
your face.
Suddenly warmth:
your voice.
Suddenly delicate:
your touch.

Momentary safety from the spray and the steam
and the sirens of the City
streets in endless agitation.

I don't remember what I drank
I don't remember what you ate.

I stood outside of an Asian restaurant waiting for you and
I don't remember why.

Later that night, you tried to kiss me
drunkenly in the alleyway next to a faceless Brooklyn bar
and I watched you walk away an innocent
amidst the cones and car doors
defeated again by my careless commentary.

To ride a sour candy tin
back home to Flatbush
and mercifully away from
me.

Trying with great effort to
call forth angst and
finding quiet contemplation in a
quiet room
count blessings like
bank notes
cascading.

Make it rain.

Blessings for
a fortunate man with
enough to get forward
and
enough to get
by.

No one said it would be graceful but
we are out here
nonethe-
less.

"Can I believe in the me before I knew you beautifully?"

What can a whole page relate that a single paragraph cannot say?
The paint on the wall is white and the top of my left foot is burned,
a hot drop of oil gone rogue,
a new scar to mark
the passage of
time.

This is how I have been for the last two years, I
didn't need the clown behind the podium
to tell me to keep away from strangers and
stay inside.

It's always been this way,
just this room and these same ghosts,
hope and shame,
long walks and thoughts alone.

Today the sun shone down and
I raised my face to see if God
was
listening.

Tuesday.

Rays of peach foam sunlight come through the open window
across the edges of the curtains and over my legs.
I watch the evergreens swaying in a rolling rhythm
to the music of the universe,
a song that is forever sung though
never really
heard.

A family wanders by beneath me,
their child in some monstrous invention
that steals my serenity and silence.
I don't particularly mind.
We are together in the enormity
of the ever changing moment.

The things I had wished for my hands

Were not weathered skin
nor aging joints.
Not knuckles broken and
nails bitten too far down.
Not as the instruments of debauchery
nightly sacrificing my once good name,
opening doors better left unopened
to inner rooms
better left
unknown.

But, to lack obscenity
and vulgar display.
To often lift and rarely destroy.
To bring forth rather than deny and oppose.
To guide and to lead,
to carry the torch and
the
weight.

Callouses by honest,
hard work wrought.

Commanding to cum,
yet,
offering a calm reassurance of comfort.

To now and again have,
to now and again hold.

To fold humbly in prayer
for absolution
and a promise of peace
everlasting.

I don't know what the point is,
I just don't feel it anymore,
it all seems like compulsive duty
and I think that maybe I'm
not as important as I thought
at all.

I want to take a night drive
look for possums in the trees
neon lit up on the dashboard
find a safe place to pull over
have sex with all the windows down
and smell the grass after the rain.

Fireflies and cigarette cherry glow
why didn't we fly before these burdens pushed down
our bodies
into this black water
deep.

"Love was a disappointment my dear
it was a fever dream in a foregone season,
children playing at grownup things of
which they knew little if at
all.

Eventually your eyes adjust and
all the polish and the shine,
it just dulls,
and a loaf of bread is
more meaningful
and
the rent is due.

Good intentions don't balance the books
so you just get on with it.
You grow up
because that is what you
just
do.

That is why I say it bores me
and the youthful dalliances of little girls
become tiresome.

I get tired of playing daddy
and I'd give up one hundred orgasms
for one evening of intelligent and worthwhile
conversation."

I was reminded of imperfection
as I once more dipped the blade
into a careful pile of sugar and shame
cutting myself down,
cutting myself open,
filling in with sex and
abandon and
dark.

Curse the eternal lure of chaos.
Curse my bacchanalian disposition
and my Caligula-like
appetites.

It isn't the sin
and it isn't the flesh,
its the void.
Its the comfort in depth and freedom from form
to answer to nothing and,
going forth in wild spirit,
to burst the moral dam.

But we were sent from the Garden for
reasons such as this
and though the snake coils round our fingers,
we must maintain our conviction.

A child's unprovable hope
that there is a brighter
and comforting life
beyond.

One day,
without your knowing,
you invite death in and
he
stays.

He goes to all of your parties and he is in all of your photos
and you wonder
if he was such a bad guy after all.
Until you wake up one morning and there is one less
face to recognize
and death
is still
there.

Once more set sail, heart, for the pinewood South.
I hope she remembers you,
you loved her for so
long.

I heard a song that I think you would have liked,
for all I know you do already
somewhere out there.

"Black as the kettle, the hypocrite pot"

I imagine such a line making you smile.
Clever girl,
how rose colored you are.

How damaged you were.
How lost you'll always be.
I'll never know you again
and isn't that just justice
for my narcissistic
youth.

While I accept my sentence
I call upon the mercy of the court
to have your ghost, ever haunting,
visit me
no
more.

Age poaches mystery and chastises the youth that your sullen face no longer fits.

None of the memories of her I have are
gentle.
Brick covered corners and concrete crosses.
Sat in the rail yard high on her face smoking cigarettes.
Neon will never be our costume again.
We grew up compulsory
We went out of her arms unwilling -
to work the earth and
perish.

But that is just how it is
the constant of change

Someone else is inside of her.
Someone else is tasting her soul.
Someone is opening her doors
and someone else is closing her
windows.

Her face is tattooed on my shoulder
but that too will die
and be buried
with
me.