Waiting for engagement,
is what war is
isn't it? Waiting for the lights to come on
and show you when
to pull the trigger
because a trigger man
without a light
running at mach speed
is just a cruise missile
with no E. Trying to pretend
everything is on course,
but it's the computer singing
sleep songs to prove it's not
dead yet and the reticle is dancing
like someone in a black dress
from a movie I haven't seen,
my finger on the red switch
waiting for her to light up green
and have the little twitch
that makes flames out of mettle
and metal into confetti;
while I wait, all the while,
closing the distance.
original works of parts
Horsemen of the Sun (LP)
Horsemen of the Sun
I suppose at some point
we are all going to starve.
Bodies halved in quarter selves and
every cell emptied of
its course and scourge.
Eyes full of sunlight and lips parched
to perfect white ironless film,
veins abuzz with the lifelessness of
some kind of reconstitution,
reclamation to the dust that will
cough up our stony bones for a time,
along with the restlessness of
the rest of this existence that cannot be
swallowed to fill the little holes grown large
inside until they burst skin
like looping bits of field guiding rivers of
tensile rage until they overcome
and shiver and balloon free
from the core, left to rejoin
systems by way of one thousand
incisions and severances and
reductions until
the only sign our passage leaves
is a fistful of artifacts and points of invisible light
in the background radiation
in the shadows of corona.
I suppose at some point
we are all going to starve.
We are all going to pluck at our mouths
with the leaves of skin that come loose
like translucent scotch tape
and tongue the sand between gum and cheek
and wonder at the marvels of our
seven hills and the marble struck down
in shapes more compelling than
the art our eyes saw in
the hacks and stabs of pencils to diagrams of
golden ages because this
"this must be
the greatest time we are yet to know."
Teeth hidden
for absence and disuse
our appetites alight on the dream spars of
the tomorrowed worlds and the crunch
of small and bony conquests
at our heels amid our ruins majesty and
in the gaping cages of our inner spaces,
in our kingdom more eloquent
more founded
for it's collapse and
it's weight of relentless night
we will wait with our necks ready
for our earned passage and
the return of the torrent and beating
hearts. The horsemen come sun rise.
Scrapyard
I have been tracking the activities of the scrapyard
on and off
as the seasons go by.
I should have known
warmer weather would mean
more work for them.
More shipments,
more trains,
more hours of smashing things apart.
I did not know
what it would sound like
and that it would take all day
for the trains to arrive and
all night to reduce piles of aluminum and iron
to profit. It has been
jarring
and sleep bereft, but mostly I wish
I could be there to see it happen.
The Docks
I rode to the docks
and "No Fishing" signs abounded.
Apparently you can kill yourself
by eating fish plucked from the Allegheny,
not because they are in and of themselves
bad fish to eat, but because
the runoff of years of industrial abuse
has rendered them poisonous.
Years of yes and aquifers of nos
as they slump to obscurity and
brown lots and planning maps,
and realizing that
taught me a little lesson in
friendships lost and the fact that
dead smoke stacks
do not mean impotence.
"and now we're ready to go public."
I wonder how many years it will be
before I can be fished with abandon
with glittering
hand crafted this and that, but
in the meantime I stand
and pitch rocks across the inch high waves
of her waters and see how far
they will skip and dance and fly like
lame birds at the edge of an F5
before they sink and
regret we found each other.
The chicken legs are so beautiful ,
aren't they,
dotting the lines like-
Simple Text
Whatcha doin?
Nothing you?
Just wondering, not up to anything
special.
Neither am I, watching
the paint dry,
avoiding artifice.
Artifice?
Creation for its own sake.
Dreaming?
Not quite. In fact, wholly different.
Are you coming over or not?
Be there in ten.
No Knives Out
I can say with one hundred percent fidelity
that I no longer sleep with knives
because I slit my wrist in my sleep
and did not realize it until I was
showering the following morning
and now it hurts to
do very simple things
in a way that it still hurt to do
very simple things
except now I can feel it
in my flesh instead of
only in my brain and I was not prepared
at all
for the difference.
Breakfast
One, two, sated.
There is a joy to breakfast you will never understand.
Partly because there is a joy
to waking up that you will never understand.
A joy to being
that you will never get, not because it's not given,
but because you've never had it denied
or even seen the whisper of a promise that it would be
so. You've never heard the hooves of night
riding hard on the heels of your own footsteps
or heard the burble
of the water higher than the depth you could swim
with abandon chuckling at the lips of your ear,
chanting sweet everythings
if you'd only let go
for a minute.
How good does this egg taste?
Ask me tomorrow.
Near Death Experience (Part 23)
What does it feel like to almost die?
Nothing like cinema would tell you.
You don't dream about your past life
and everything that could've been different.
You don't relive the last few seconds
leading up to where it all went off the tracks.
You don't curse everyone who
almost killed you before
whom you wish now will be sorry
when you're gone for good and it's all eulogy.
You don't care about everything that lead
up to the moment or how you got there.
You don't think about heaven or hell
or afterlives or reincarnation or if
you chose the right religion or if
the right people will remember you.
The only thing you think about
when you really are on the cusp of dying
is if this really is it.
Is this really the one that takes me
after all these fucking years
and am I really going out
with these motherfuckers watching it happen
and am I really ever, ever, ever
going to get a chance to live it down,
and really, after every other initial impulse
dies away and it starts to go to black
the only thing occupying your mind
is a chance to do it all over again,
maybe not the same, maybe exactly the same
but time compresses and the one thing
you do know is that given the chance to make
one last decision, that is the decision
you wish more than anything
to be able to make.
Riders on the Sun
Come lances in hand
to challenge the men of earth.
Come bite the steel
gripped against heaven, the boys of earth.
Come watch hands spun
like axes in executioners palms.
Come with it, you
and all of you.
Leave nothing to
the test and interpretation of time.
Let us settle this,
us eyes to another sunrise
and them to the death of another night.
Bring your angels and bring us our hells
and let the ocean tide
determine the difference in the swell
of bloods spilled so thick
it lowers shores. Let the God's
chalk the scores and tally
up the gold and whores too numerous
to speak of in human terms.
Let the Oroboros be the one left jealous
as our combat churns the planet's very core.
May our combat be something
so intense that collateral damage
cannot be fenced and when
the bodies cannot be counted
and hunger still writhes
for more blood shed
may there be given rise
to the already dead
that something might give
and in giving find and end.
Tragedy Strikes at Sunrise
You wake up in a panic in a trap house
on a mattress with someone else's phone
and you can see the dust beneath a couch
and you're catching your breath
but that shit won't stick in your breast
and the sunlight tries to lay back like afternoon
cookie milk snacks, but it's far more
serious because you haven't had food
in at least two days and your skin
is closer to black and blue than winter grays
and you keep shoving the mother fucker
next to you, but he's been dead for hours
while you slept dreaming about super powers
and what you would do if you weren't
being chased and everything everyone
says about you leaves you chaste all over again
like you were the source of original sin
and you want to be in the shower shaving
off your skin, hoping for a chance
to be given a spot to begin it all again
and everything hurts like electric current
from your fingertip to your elbow
and all you can ask is for the sunrise
to go slow that you might get to know
the new self you've woken up into and
the old self still in tow, but you have not
the luxury nor the lip service to perpetrate
any kind of perjury so you wash your hands
and bird bath your face and get the hell out
of there, out from out where, you know not
from here to home is, you know not from there
to home was, where the hell is
everything you knew as the sun rise comes on
like a stampede in too pure a lock stepped song
and you go doe eyed and freeze. A painter
pictured on too poor an easel and
the horsemen of the sun
wait for no one.
I suppose at some point
we are all going to starve.
Bodies halved in quarter selves and
every cell emptied of
its course and scourge.
Eyes full of sunlight and lips parched
to perfect white ironless film,
veins abuzz with the lifelessness of
some kind of reconstitution,
reclamation to the dust that will
cough up our stony bones for a time,
along with the restlessness of
the rest of this existence that cannot be
swallowed to fill the little holes grown large
inside until they burst skin
like looping bits of field guiding rivers of
tensile rage until they overcome
and shiver and balloon free
from the core, left to rejoin
systems by way of one thousand
incisions and severances and
reductions until
the only sign our passage leaves
is a fistful of artifacts and points of invisible light
in the background radiation
in the shadows of corona.
I suppose at some point
we are all going to starve.
We are all going to pluck at our mouths
with the leaves of skin that come loose
like translucent scotch tape
and tongue the sand between gum and cheek
and wonder at the marvels of our
seven hills and the marble struck down
in shapes more compelling than
the art our eyes saw in
the hacks and stabs of pencils to diagrams of
golden ages because this
"this must be
the greatest time we are yet to know."
Teeth hidden
for absence and disuse
our appetites alight on the dream spars of
the tomorrowed worlds and the crunch
of small and bony conquests
at our heels amid our ruins majesty and
in the gaping cages of our inner spaces,
in our kingdom more eloquent
more founded
for it's collapse and
it's weight of relentless night
we will wait with our necks ready
for our earned passage and
the return of the torrent and beating
hearts. The horsemen come sun rise.
Scrapyard
I have been tracking the activities of the scrapyard
on and off
as the seasons go by.
I should have known
warmer weather would mean
more work for them.
More shipments,
more trains,
more hours of smashing things apart.
I did not know
what it would sound like
and that it would take all day
for the trains to arrive and
all night to reduce piles of aluminum and iron
to profit. It has been
jarring
and sleep bereft, but mostly I wish
I could be there to see it happen.
The Docks
I rode to the docks
and "No Fishing" signs abounded.
Apparently you can kill yourself
by eating fish plucked from the Allegheny,
not because they are in and of themselves
bad fish to eat, but because
the runoff of years of industrial abuse
has rendered them poisonous.
Years of yes and aquifers of nos
as they slump to obscurity and
brown lots and planning maps,
and realizing that
taught me a little lesson in
friendships lost and the fact that
dead smoke stacks
do not mean impotence.
"and now we're ready to go public."
I wonder how many years it will be
before I can be fished with abandon
with glittering
hand crafted this and that, but
in the meantime I stand
and pitch rocks across the inch high waves
of her waters and see how far
they will skip and dance and fly like
lame birds at the edge of an F5
before they sink and
regret we found each other.
The chicken legs are so beautiful ,
aren't they,
dotting the lines like-
Simple Text
Whatcha doin?
Nothing you?
Just wondering, not up to anything
special.
Neither am I, watching
the paint dry,
avoiding artifice.
Artifice?
Creation for its own sake.
Dreaming?
Not quite. In fact, wholly different.
Are you coming over or not?
Be there in ten.
No Knives Out
I can say with one hundred percent fidelity
that I no longer sleep with knives
because I slit my wrist in my sleep
and did not realize it until I was
showering the following morning
and now it hurts to
do very simple things
in a way that it still hurt to do
very simple things
except now I can feel it
in my flesh instead of
only in my brain and I was not prepared
at all
for the difference.
Breakfast
One, two, sated.
There is a joy to breakfast you will never understand.
Partly because there is a joy
to waking up that you will never understand.
A joy to being
that you will never get, not because it's not given,
but because you've never had it denied
or even seen the whisper of a promise that it would be
so. You've never heard the hooves of night
riding hard on the heels of your own footsteps
or heard the burble
of the water higher than the depth you could swim
with abandon chuckling at the lips of your ear,
chanting sweet everythings
if you'd only let go
for a minute.
How good does this egg taste?
Ask me tomorrow.
Near Death Experience (Part 23)
What does it feel like to almost die?
Nothing like cinema would tell you.
You don't dream about your past life
and everything that could've been different.
You don't relive the last few seconds
leading up to where it all went off the tracks.
You don't curse everyone who
almost killed you before
whom you wish now will be sorry
when you're gone for good and it's all eulogy.
You don't care about everything that lead
up to the moment or how you got there.
You don't think about heaven or hell
or afterlives or reincarnation or if
you chose the right religion or if
the right people will remember you.
The only thing you think about
when you really are on the cusp of dying
is if this really is it.
Is this really the one that takes me
after all these fucking years
and am I really going out
with these motherfuckers watching it happen
and am I really ever, ever, ever
going to get a chance to live it down,
and really, after every other initial impulse
dies away and it starts to go to black
the only thing occupying your mind
is a chance to do it all over again,
maybe not the same, maybe exactly the same
but time compresses and the one thing
you do know is that given the chance to make
one last decision, that is the decision
you wish more than anything
to be able to make.
Riders on the Sun
Come lances in hand
to challenge the men of earth.
Come bite the steel
gripped against heaven, the boys of earth.
Come watch hands spun
like axes in executioners palms.
Come with it, you
and all of you.
Leave nothing to
the test and interpretation of time.
Let us settle this,
us eyes to another sunrise
and them to the death of another night.
Bring your angels and bring us our hells
and let the ocean tide
determine the difference in the swell
of bloods spilled so thick
it lowers shores. Let the God's
chalk the scores and tally
up the gold and whores too numerous
to speak of in human terms.
Let the Oroboros be the one left jealous
as our combat churns the planet's very core.
May our combat be something
so intense that collateral damage
cannot be fenced and when
the bodies cannot be counted
and hunger still writhes
for more blood shed
may there be given rise
to the already dead
that something might give
and in giving find and end.
Tragedy Strikes at Sunrise
You wake up in a panic in a trap house
on a mattress with someone else's phone
and you can see the dust beneath a couch
and you're catching your breath
but that shit won't stick in your breast
and the sunlight tries to lay back like afternoon
cookie milk snacks, but it's far more
serious because you haven't had food
in at least two days and your skin
is closer to black and blue than winter grays
and you keep shoving the mother fucker
next to you, but he's been dead for hours
while you slept dreaming about super powers
and what you would do if you weren't
being chased and everything everyone
says about you leaves you chaste all over again
like you were the source of original sin
and you want to be in the shower shaving
off your skin, hoping for a chance
to be given a spot to begin it all again
and everything hurts like electric current
from your fingertip to your elbow
and all you can ask is for the sunrise
to go slow that you might get to know
the new self you've woken up into and
the old self still in tow, but you have not
the luxury nor the lip service to perpetrate
any kind of perjury so you wash your hands
and bird bath your face and get the hell out
of there, out from out where, you know not
from here to home is, you know not from there
to home was, where the hell is
everything you knew as the sun rise comes on
like a stampede in too pure a lock stepped song
and you go doe eyed and freeze. A painter
pictured on too poor an easel and
the horsemen of the sun
wait for no one.
Black Stator (LP)
Intro
The high line runs
beside the low line, parallel,
never touching out toward infinity.
Skip dub tractioning like fingers
twined and still separate.
Have you ever seen light bend
your shadow into a shadow's shadow.
Did you know that fire
casts its own in the right lightning. That pyro
mania is not a disease, but a way
of rite. A claim staked against
the face of the Earth like
boxcutter walking across another. A bridge.
An arc. A spark. A collapsed
distance in the space of dark
less science fiction's laugh out
loudness. The high line runs
like a bullet in the dark
super tunneling us all into
high frame rate paper dolls and the low line's slow crawl
is not so much untouchable from there
as it is the fabric that tells us
we are high,
but still in line with the place
we should all be so lucky to reach some day.
By fire. By ice. By grace. By vice.
We are conned and all the while
on point and arrow headed
Tank Versus Tank
There is a low rise of hills,
more sand than anything else,
collected by the wind
turned idle and playful
with no ocean to breath against and
preoccupied with building
castles and too disinterested
to finish. Before starting again
there is a long second
look at the blue grass at the hilltop.
The waves are trickling down
to our feet where the rubber
is crushed by the steel and the steel
by our armor and the tread fans
the ground beneath like cold plastic
against the threads of a screw,
but we fire again and
wait for the thump in our chest,
wait for the mathematics to answer back
through binoculars and sky write
in black the truth of the kill
before starting again.
There is a long second and
the ground sucks the tread a little deeper,
rippled by the bloodless concussion.
So the hatch comes down and the wind
plays with itself to pass the time
and over the low rise of blue topped
sand castles, slumped like drunks, and
animals half anesthetized, heaped
for incineration
while us, tank versus tank, sleep,
another shell comes and misses and tears a hole
in the ground already unfit for war and
it liquefies, but we brace,
teeth jarred, necks tight, heads rattled.
There is no fire inside. There is no smoke.
I know you're there. Trying to see if you've
blown me apart, but before we start again
I am coming up that forsaken hill
to let you stare down the barrel,
before I waste another shot, because I am
more reckless than you have guessed and you are dust
in a standoff fit for someone
we are not.
Stator
A good electrician
can look at just about anything with wires
and see where the weaknesses are.
See where the black tongues of
asking exceeded atomic make up.
See where the creativity
blew in on itself and imploded
hard enough to take a home to its own
foundations in red flames.
See where the stators melted
against the whorl of undeniable speed.
A good electrician
can look at just about anything with wires
and make it better
or worse. See where the black tongues of
asking can push atomic make up
and know when
to leave home
before it burns to the ground,
before the stators turn to fluid
wrist slashing streamers of glass and the only thing
that comes with the touch of a fingertip
is not the tickle of current's give and take,
but black ash.
Trick
What would you do for a gram?
A gram of what?
Does it matter?
I don't do international.
A gram of peace.
I don't do international.
A gram of happiness.
How much is that worth?
That's the question.
Well, I'm happy right now, so nothing.
"Are you really happy?
I'm happier than I've ever been."
You make yourself happy?
When did this become an interview?
Something shines in the wall.
It's a staple, from the previous owners, I see it too.
Why don't you tear it out?
It's fine where it is. Doesn't bother me. Sometimes
you have to staple things in place
when there's no tape.
So what would you do?
To be happy? Nothing. What would you do
for something so valuable its standard unit
was small enough to fit into
one hell of a tacky earring?
Nothing.
Nothing serious?
Nothing serious. But nothing's all that serious
anymore.
Like staples?
Friendly Fire
I did not want to be here
with your face where it is
and my thumb on your chin
wiping away a curly black hair
from my body that caught
itself on the corner of your
mouth before you wanted
me to want to kiss you
and the whole hour has been
a little strained
for me because you
invited me over to see your
cat collection and said
boys kissing boys was
gross
and even your lack
of poesis in describing that
did not stop the answer
to a follow up question unasked,
but I did not want to be here,
here specifically about to do
what you specifically said
you did not want to do and
your teeth on my thumb,
gripping the nail hard enough
to make me wince is
chilling for more reasons than
I think you realize, so
excuse me for flailing at the coffee table
in that moment
because I was hoping something
would spill and I swear to God
I'll buy you a new one.
I just do not want this to end
over something so stupid
as an entirely personal foible,
because everything up til now
has been the cat's pajamas.
Street
I did not come here tonight to state
my ten point thesis on controlling the streets or
a seven point plan on making my next start up
the end of your out of home business, but
I will
place this knife on the table from my back pocket
and this knife from my front pocket
and there are two more in my back pack
in case you think you can get there first,
but I'd be up for a round of "steal the bacon."
I've never been good at talking
trash, much less talking sense,
but I promise you there are two more on me
and I am a one man army
without the benefit of brushes
to aid the art, but mainly I'm not here
to start new canvases
beyond the call of duty, but I am prepared to improvise
and I can see in your eyes the weight
of decisions to make so keep
your gun in your car or the bathroom or wherever
you left it and lets just play some pool
because I know a man trapped
is an animal with a clap trip jaw and
you are sitting far too close to me
for this to end better than it started
and definitions of a good time range wilder
than Jersey stories of Long Islanders
so everybody calm the fuck down.
Now is not a good time
for either of us to be smiling.
Stainless Steel
We had a long discussion.
A very brief
long discussion. For its brevity,
extended across the span of weeks
of think time in between.
Remarks coursed through skin and
threads of comments still
barking back across nerves and
phantom itch. I heard you
the way you were hearing me
and as the argument continued,
speech ceased,
we came to agree on the
points of the matter and shook hands
last week, because we
both needed to be heard
to the hilt of every word.
Interlude
"It is a war. A war in which draft dodgers will
be without toleration. For every man that dies
far afield, there will be two executed
at home if need be."
"Is that not extreme? Is that not the definition
of atrocity?"
"I will leave definition
to the history books and their students.
I will leave what I know
and what I have learned,
what today requires and
what the greater tomorrow demands,
to my hands."
Gated Confrontation
Everything is
so fucking orange. When did that happen?
The sheets. The blinds. It is all cut out of the same
orange tint twill. Your skin. Your lips. I never
tripped so hard
over a thread so thin and
thick at the same time to fall into
a field of flowers sleepy as these
with so clear an understanding
that I am
an artillery piece on a game board
I still cannot see.
Outro
The most beautiful thing about
feeling your own blood against your skin
is the heat. The heat pouring from the outside in
and turning you from engine to a battery
in a charger, sucking the current and spitting
shards of metal and acid when
there is nothing more to add and every addition
is one step closer to violent emission and
an ear placed to listen to the heart's song
of counting down to counting up
to the last bit of slag in the twenty ton cup
turning the foundry into a pyre of more
creative destruction than any one could aspire
to alone and as it burns,
head to the ground, mouth wide in
cries that make devils laugh and angels cry
there is the long exhalation, the long exaltation,
for death's own sake and new seams left
where the split of skin
was the only way forward to make.
The high line runs
beside the low line, parallel,
never touching out toward infinity.
Skip dub tractioning like fingers
twined and still separate.
Have you ever seen light bend
your shadow into a shadow's shadow.
Did you know that fire
casts its own in the right lightning. That pyro
mania is not a disease, but a way
of rite. A claim staked against
the face of the Earth like
boxcutter walking across another. A bridge.
An arc. A spark. A collapsed
distance in the space of dark
less science fiction's laugh out
loudness. The high line runs
like a bullet in the dark
super tunneling us all into
high frame rate paper dolls and the low line's slow crawl
is not so much untouchable from there
as it is the fabric that tells us
we are high,
but still in line with the place
we should all be so lucky to reach some day.
By fire. By ice. By grace. By vice.
We are conned and all the while
on point and arrow headed
Tank Versus Tank
There is a low rise of hills,
more sand than anything else,
collected by the wind
turned idle and playful
with no ocean to breath against and
preoccupied with building
castles and too disinterested
to finish. Before starting again
there is a long second
look at the blue grass at the hilltop.
The waves are trickling down
to our feet where the rubber
is crushed by the steel and the steel
by our armor and the tread fans
the ground beneath like cold plastic
against the threads of a screw,
but we fire again and
wait for the thump in our chest,
wait for the mathematics to answer back
through binoculars and sky write
in black the truth of the kill
before starting again.
There is a long second and
the ground sucks the tread a little deeper,
rippled by the bloodless concussion.
So the hatch comes down and the wind
plays with itself to pass the time
and over the low rise of blue topped
sand castles, slumped like drunks, and
animals half anesthetized, heaped
for incineration
while us, tank versus tank, sleep,
another shell comes and misses and tears a hole
in the ground already unfit for war and
it liquefies, but we brace,
teeth jarred, necks tight, heads rattled.
There is no fire inside. There is no smoke.
I know you're there. Trying to see if you've
blown me apart, but before we start again
I am coming up that forsaken hill
to let you stare down the barrel,
before I waste another shot, because I am
more reckless than you have guessed and you are dust
in a standoff fit for someone
we are not.
Stator
A good electrician
can look at just about anything with wires
and see where the weaknesses are.
See where the black tongues of
asking exceeded atomic make up.
See where the creativity
blew in on itself and imploded
hard enough to take a home to its own
foundations in red flames.
See where the stators melted
against the whorl of undeniable speed.
A good electrician
can look at just about anything with wires
and make it better
or worse. See where the black tongues of
asking can push atomic make up
and know when
to leave home
before it burns to the ground,
before the stators turn to fluid
wrist slashing streamers of glass and the only thing
that comes with the touch of a fingertip
is not the tickle of current's give and take,
but black ash.
Trick
What would you do for a gram?
A gram of what?
Does it matter?
I don't do international.
A gram of peace.
I don't do international.
A gram of happiness.
How much is that worth?
That's the question.
Well, I'm happy right now, so nothing.
"Are you really happy?
I'm happier than I've ever been."
You make yourself happy?
When did this become an interview?
Something shines in the wall.
It's a staple, from the previous owners, I see it too.
Why don't you tear it out?
It's fine where it is. Doesn't bother me. Sometimes
you have to staple things in place
when there's no tape.
So what would you do?
To be happy? Nothing. What would you do
for something so valuable its standard unit
was small enough to fit into
one hell of a tacky earring?
Nothing.
Nothing serious?
Nothing serious. But nothing's all that serious
anymore.
Like staples?
Friendly Fire
I did not want to be here
with your face where it is
and my thumb on your chin
wiping away a curly black hair
from my body that caught
itself on the corner of your
mouth before you wanted
me to want to kiss you
and the whole hour has been
a little strained
for me because you
invited me over to see your
cat collection and said
boys kissing boys was
gross
and even your lack
of poesis in describing that
did not stop the answer
to a follow up question unasked,
but I did not want to be here,
here specifically about to do
what you specifically said
you did not want to do and
your teeth on my thumb,
gripping the nail hard enough
to make me wince is
chilling for more reasons than
I think you realize, so
excuse me for flailing at the coffee table
in that moment
because I was hoping something
would spill and I swear to God
I'll buy you a new one.
I just do not want this to end
over something so stupid
as an entirely personal foible,
because everything up til now
has been the cat's pajamas.
Street
I did not come here tonight to state
my ten point thesis on controlling the streets or
a seven point plan on making my next start up
the end of your out of home business, but
I will
place this knife on the table from my back pocket
and this knife from my front pocket
and there are two more in my back pack
in case you think you can get there first,
but I'd be up for a round of "steal the bacon."
I've never been good at talking
trash, much less talking sense,
but I promise you there are two more on me
and I am a one man army
without the benefit of brushes
to aid the art, but mainly I'm not here
to start new canvases
beyond the call of duty, but I am prepared to improvise
and I can see in your eyes the weight
of decisions to make so keep
your gun in your car or the bathroom or wherever
you left it and lets just play some pool
because I know a man trapped
is an animal with a clap trip jaw and
you are sitting far too close to me
for this to end better than it started
and definitions of a good time range wilder
than Jersey stories of Long Islanders
so everybody calm the fuck down.
Now is not a good time
for either of us to be smiling.
Stainless Steel
We had a long discussion.
A very brief
long discussion. For its brevity,
extended across the span of weeks
of think time in between.
Remarks coursed through skin and
threads of comments still
barking back across nerves and
phantom itch. I heard you
the way you were hearing me
and as the argument continued,
speech ceased,
we came to agree on the
points of the matter and shook hands
last week, because we
both needed to be heard
to the hilt of every word.
Interlude
"It is a war. A war in which draft dodgers will
be without toleration. For every man that dies
far afield, there will be two executed
at home if need be."
"Is that not extreme? Is that not the definition
of atrocity?"
"I will leave definition
to the history books and their students.
I will leave what I know
and what I have learned,
what today requires and
what the greater tomorrow demands,
to my hands."
Gated Confrontation
Everything is
so fucking orange. When did that happen?
The sheets. The blinds. It is all cut out of the same
orange tint twill. Your skin. Your lips. I never
tripped so hard
over a thread so thin and
thick at the same time to fall into
a field of flowers sleepy as these
with so clear an understanding
that I am
an artillery piece on a game board
I still cannot see.
Outro
The most beautiful thing about
feeling your own blood against your skin
is the heat. The heat pouring from the outside in
and turning you from engine to a battery
in a charger, sucking the current and spitting
shards of metal and acid when
there is nothing more to add and every addition
is one step closer to violent emission and
an ear placed to listen to the heart's song
of counting down to counting up
to the last bit of slag in the twenty ton cup
turning the foundry into a pyre of more
creative destruction than any one could aspire
to alone and as it burns,
head to the ground, mouth wide in
cries that make devils laugh and angels cry
there is the long exhalation, the long exaltation,
for death's own sake and new seams left
where the split of skin
was the only way forward to make.
The Boy Knits
I know we've come to blows
for the second time in our adult lives
trying to figure out how to
divide up the love
in lieu of our bodies and I'm sorry
you didn't tell me what you wanted
the first time and I'm sorry
I retreated to a balled up kid
with tears in his eyes and fists for words,
but we're going to figure this out
between the three of us,
if it kills me
after you're both gone.
for the second time in our adult lives
trying to figure out how to
divide up the love
in lieu of our bodies and I'm sorry
you didn't tell me what you wanted
the first time and I'm sorry
I retreated to a balled up kid
with tears in his eyes and fists for words,
but we're going to figure this out
between the three of us,
if it kills me
after you're both gone.
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