Food Chain

Along the Saturday morning road,
the lean, sun dried leather vectors
of pavement and gashes of curb water
fallen free of bladed unwatched lawns,
they are out in force.
They run their bellies sweaty,
they pause on hilltops to catch breaths
and whisper love songs to their limbs.
They stare down the straights and
tell themselves they are making
progress.  Tell themselves they are
beams of light tilting hard against
flat sprayed modernity and
the fattening shackles of success.
They fire their musket balled calves
against the grades assaulting their bicycles
worth more than the cars
they ride the sidewalks on to avoid
and feel alive
as far as they can know living to be.

I try to keep straight.  Try to stay out of their way
as they rally their spirits in the rising
unconditioned heat of breaking daylight.
I try not to laugh, my feet touching lips of pavement
unforgiving and familiar as the hairs on my knuckles,
while I see them revel in triumphs
now too small for me to notice
more than a hyena
would make a particular note
of a light snack of field mice pups.
I applaud them briefly.  Go getters all,
while I log my 11th mile for the day on
shoes whose tread has more in common
with a baby's ass than a tire.
I cannot remember the last time I understood the problem
of eating good and sitting in one place so long
that I had to set aside time
to make sure I worked my body hard enough
to stay one step ahead
of those who would eat my flesh
if the world ever came down
around our ears
and pushing numbers and papers
was as meaningless as it sounded.

The morning light sings
like a blade against a sharpening stone
and I thrill with the fineness of my own edge
chirping back to her harmonic.
We have been here.  We know each other so well
after these weeks, months, and years of
hardening musculature, bone, and joint.
These are my hills, my chiseled ridges, and
time blasted valleys.  Along the Saturday morning road
the cattle have come
for their hour long taste of difficulty and
"I can do this", and a slice of discomfort,
and I will allow it, partly because it is
so fucking funny, but also because
without the cattle
there is no meat.

Mac Versus PC

I was born in a ditch.
I learned to live in that ditch.
I learned to fight off
dire wolves with a sharpened stick and
a torch ripped from my own fabric.
I learned to dress my own wounds and
steal my own meals from
mother natures basket.
I grew from that ditch.
I walked on the grasses of the open country.
I sat in the shade and
swam in the quarries and
drank from the streams
when I could.
It is not that I would want or
have wanted ease.
It is that I would never know
what to do with myself
in a world where everything is accounted for.

Captain America

I have spent a lot of time trying to piece together
the memories of my father
that can be detailed in short songs
and littered with vibrant colors
like paint by number novelties
sans numbers and touched off
with enough cups of oil base
to make a pyromaniac shed tears of joy
when he sees a government subsidized apartment complex
slated by parks and planning to become
a farmers market and rubber soled playground.

I thought I had one.  A good one.
Snug Harbor on Staten Island.

You asked me if I could remember
the time you taught me how to throw a frisbee and
I said no,
but I was lying.

I remembered how you showed me
how to tuck the plastic disk in tight to my armpit
and let my arm whip forward
across the plane of my shoulders,
thumb loose and index finger pointing
to where I wanted it to go
and then I remembered
how you'd throw it to me
so high
I thought it would never come down.

The red disc carved air.
So much air.  I thought you were
the strongest man in the world, watching it go
and running
as hard as my legs would take me.

But it stopped up there.
It hung like a plate dancing on the end of the staff
of a circus performer and
cut backward
and the little cups of paint ran dry
before the canvas could begin to coalesce
into something pretty
when my ears heard your laughter peal out anew
as the frisbee returned
and kissed the back of my head
like the flat of your hand and
it was all I could do to not cry
and pretend it was an accident
of memory.

Gravitas

"What goes with authority
must also cum in similar fashion."
I do not know who said that,
but I used to.

What right do any of us have
to the authorship of history.
None.  I am
no pretender.

A place for everything
and everything well reasoned
in due time.

I have been waiting
for quite some time
for the poetic turn.

I do believe it will be,
the waiting,
the death of me,
but a boy can dream
and possibly
as aside from death
as a bless you is to the involuntarily generated sneeze,
or more accurately
the sideways glance
of a driver through split peaed fog.
taking in a wrecked semi
tented over a sub-compact
on it's way to a date with sun and surf
and little enormous dreams of elaborate castellated sand
and roy gee bivved plastic balls,

the turn is still to come
prolific as a September walk in an orchard
rife with the droppings of another summer late
and I've only to circle the edges
one more time
to taste the true complexion
of the air I've been breathing these short hours.

Cutty

Take it on, take it off, take it back to the one who sold you
dancing shoes to play worker bee.  Take it on, take it off, and wander
the bigness of this thimbleverse in your ill apparel
and then hook and lateral it all into something
no one thought was possible, but remember
I was rooting for you to make the upset,
the long bet sure thing, if they only knew
what you were capable of pretending to be.
They've already seen me do my thing
and get swerve crazy in venues
where the only respect due
was the respect commanded of
clothing expected in the lots and bars
of the salvation army, but us carnies can do
other things besides the explicitly advertised and
truer to form than them other humans born into
establishment - oh establishment - the brute
in the beauty of form following
high function, you dance like
a song ripped lo fi and eight balled, late midnight, higher
than the dumbest most dubbest stepped dub,
but the track playing in your mind
has taken off and taken on the challenge of
the preponderance of long heeled country
with the grace of - jesus christ you can't do that here
in front of cameras designed to catch
the cut and scratch of the real and the greasing
of corporate self preserving twheels
so feel a little bad and be glad
there is someone to reel you back
when the urge to cut moves attacks and attracts
the kind of attention that can get a boy fired
if he were to say two words
about the way you've moved
the definition of stupid, balls out,
wear it on the wrist to the hilt, idle minded, sexy.
Is my tie still on straight?

Smoker 18

How ridiculous was it,
the change I made
for you?
How ridiculous is it,
the change you made
in me?
I still cannot drink
whole milk.
I still cannot eat
white bread
without feeling small and cheated inside.
I still cannot smoke
without thinking about
the rent I could not help you pay.
I still cannot run
without thinking about
the pat pat of your foot steps
racing ahead of me
and your laughter
at my flat footed, time consuming, warm up
dancing loose into the winter blacked Chicago morning air.

I am glad
for the newness.  The still
newness of it all
after all these damned years.

Complementary Parts

I had this idea
about trying to write a poem
from memory
with my fingers located exactly one key
off
and see what the shapes would look like
and if there was someone
who could still read it
as though the words came
straight from my tongue to their ear.

And then I woke up
to one of the worst hangovers I've known
and drank
until I could forget
tidal ambition
and the tide pools of the dead and floundering
pieces of things that should never
grace a human eye
that dwell in the depths of
the fatty creases of my head.

Empty Sets

The set of things that I want to express.
The set of things that I want to press
to single play records.
The set of things that I want to impress
on singly played moments.
The set of things that I want addressed.
The set of things that I want left
unrighted and
the begged dichotomy standing proud
in the gap, demanding redress.
The set of words I thought I had to say
and the waking to another morning
half said, half played, and understood
because an "un" could not stay
the course before an "un" already made.
Expressed presses impressed on
thoughts already addressed leave
little wiggle room to left and right and
redress is optional and understood as
a stay of elocution can relate to
a stay of execution's proud stance
on the natural order of call, response,
cause, and affectation and where
the sets are empty we lay
our heads on pillows and beds unmade and
wait for something
to make us do
something we have not.