Death in the Family (why'd you throw me out)

You picking tea leaves off of the fence
for morning tea while I was
unemployed
and banking,
happy to do you
right and let you shed light on
backward history
telling me all the bad things Eric used to be
lips to his bottle and hands on his model
wife and kids black and blues
to music that only he could hear
being with you then
in that short time span
made oh so much
about the tree
all.  so.  clear.

Meeting up with your
religious addict friends,
your watch towered
back handed
complimenting bends,
pretending like I gave a shit
and playing it well
acting like I didn't hear
the side ways glances and the tells
hearing you try to be
everything you thought you out to be
to those second hand fiends
using you for your
good will and sapping your means
watching your children
neglect all your needs like
come on man
can't you see she's on her knees

not even a last leg
not even a place to beg
but you still saw it through,
a way maybe because
I am from a time too new to be clued.
Too new to be glued,
too late to be thought through
why, when I was
happy to be all about truth
did you see a way
preserving bullshit bridges
to burn the last one
standing over
water
between me and you.

I said goodbye once,
I won't do it again
what is is the beginning
little pieces toward my end
and I'm happy as hell that your gone from this Earth
because life's too short
and I ain't got time
to stay hurt.

Check 'em off.

Fixed Camera

Photographer banter gets
what it gets.  If you can't turn a phrase with your face
it's not something you learn
out of the blue
phone calls are beautiful things
when there's nothing pressing
harder than,
"now I want you to,"
tune it out.

"but I'm here all of the time
I don't understand"
because you clearly have not fallen head over heels before
yourself, trapped to reels
and reels
and reels
of tape.

Gone through the little door and
down the staircase
to dreamland where everything is as real on its face
as you deign to flow
out of your skin.

"Now this... now that... more of the first... okay, now the second again."
I don't care where it goes.  I don't care
whose eyes it greets
as long as I am laying,
camera gone,
in high gloss,
splashed across the floor
in 8" by tens
forty prints at my feet.

Orthogonal

Seeing your smile has been great.
Products of you and you and

the world on slow tracking almost pause Woo like,
except the doves

were smoke drifts around the room, Saturned.
I'll pay money to see

that any day is a good one
when friends are close and enemies are

far the fuck away.
The difficulty comes

when I start to see
you, me and them as a collection of organs.

Little more.  A holdover from Kindergarten
has not changed.

"Will you come with me to the movies on friday?"
Okay, maybe no.  To see your smile

in common and not
through the run and shoot offense of conversation

sticks with me
over the coffee table and meteor impact empties littered there.

We used to meet up to play tag
because there was nothing else to do.

I don't miss it so much.