Discored

If you have to ask then the answer is "you're not."
If you want to know then start
with knowing who you're not.
If what you know is what you don't
then you know very little,
but more than what most got and
when it comes to reading meaning,
making sense of your dash and dot,
all you need to do is trace
your negative space like abandoned plots
and face up to the vacant windows,
pockets full of rocks,
and throw them at the glass as hard as you can.
The act itself won't magically turn you
into a new man, but if there's music to your ear
in the smash of boundary's last stand
and you can move in, cot and cat on hand
and sleep good nights in your no man's land
then you need not ask a thing to anyone
about who and what you are
because you know what you were not.
What you are is changes
what they perceive is
stills on a rotating drum's cut slots.
Ahead of you is dirt dusty jungle
and behind you will always be
a trail of needles
between the wings
of all the butterflies you've caught.

Get Up

Get up and go,
let's rhyme, let's shine
like Glory Days
Jovi used to have
when he was
twice as relevant
and thrice as mad
with his ability to twist the kids,
mangle language
and flip the lids.

It's a day of days and
fuck what makes
the world go round
or who finally pays
when the tax man cometh
in springtime days.
We're travelers
looking for monsters
to slay with broad swords,
shields, hit points, and more

credits to play than
Trump in Chuckee Cheese.
With ease we leave
the world behind and mind
your business in back seats,
churn up your lawns
with laid away cleats
and thoughts that make
your chiefs beat up war drums
and hum tunes to appease
the falls of feet

on war paths
warring against
sore pasts and
more glass breaking
in micro street riots
with pilots targeting
gaggles of us
gathered on corners and
looking villainous,

but really all we want
is a place and time
to turn stunts and
stunted growth
into things magnifique
and a chance to dream
bigger than the span of
street to curb top
because we may not be
the best or the worst
at everything we do,
but we are

living in the shadow of you
and to deny us agency
in the face of all we've been
and are going through
is a crime truer to
reality t.v. and made more
unreal by the cut of
your blunt tooth, so

let the p.o. box stand empty
in some black and white and
let the rusted bike by the
unfinished porch be photographed
in poor, nude, draped light,
because we don't care
and couldn't give two
for the visual artist's plight
because we are five hundred horses
draped in gold sheet metal and
when you're pens and brushes,
paper pushes, and finance crushes
make you sleepless by absent daylight
we don't ever give a fuck
because what we do is write.

Mixed Drinks

so does whiskey
poured into a 12 ounce beer can
sink
on its own,
or does it linger
fart like
in the butt of your pants
in line for an amusement ride,
unable to mingle
with the breeze
of fluid dynamics?

Play Nice (we could never be together)

I will not be happy
until I have your hair in my closed fist
pulled away from your scalp
like bandages to wounded thoughts.

I will not be happy
using words to say
what my body has
always said better.

I am wearing a
poorly fit mask
every time we bed and I
play you slow and cool like

an unfamiliar bicycle or
something brand new and liable
to be the death of
one or both of us.

I will not be happy
without demarcating
the edges of your envelope
with drops of your blood,

sweat, tears, and safe words
unheeded.  If you thought
for a span of seconds
that I was not looking

for a whipping toy
I am sorry for you.
Never mind the privates,
your skin is what will be blue, and

eye blacked.  Though I am
flattered you would choose
to fly my airy lines,
you should know

There is no such thing as a free lunch,
hunched body to a body,
when I am done you will wish
I buried you, calm and quiet, like Gotti,

but I am not a complete super villain
and I will never leave you
for dead
because what am I without you?

A lush with an affinity?
A mirror with clouded infinities?
We could never be together
for blood and razor wired history

but I can and do love
you with the me
that can and does ask nothing
farther than set boundaries,

but if you have testicle and testosterone,
marrow and muscle enough,
to step into the circle
marked with arrow and raw intestine clutched

know that I will not be happy
until I rip your skin away
and with my bared teeth
your heart touch.

Smoker 20

When you are down to your last
and we are out back
with nothing but bricks and stars
and jobs we could not love
if we were the ones responsible
for creating them,

I am in love
with the fifteen minutes to be had

because I feel close
to discovering the god particle
every time you pass me
your cherry chap stick tipped happiness
and I know I will not owe you
a single cent
in the mean time
and you are

so kind as to dream
with me, and feel
the Tropic of Cancer's sands
between your toes
in every moonlit contrail
over our midnight bleary eyes.