Dip me and swing me and sing me things
Take me home at eight
Box me some rocks and I’ll buy your socks
Remember our first date?
Saving our change and changing to save
Our savings that went amiss
Settling in with glasses of gin
Remember our first kiss?
Wailing and crying, birthing and dying
We enter the wrinkled romance
The impassable past has passed us at last
But remember our first dance?
I like creating haikus, but with titles. And though that might be cheating, Kerouac did that same thing already, so I don't feel that bad about it.
Safe Word
Let it be "I love
You" so we can scream it and
Soften at the sound.
Beating Your Wife
Bruises no wider
than two fingers? Buy a horse
whip. Wait by the door.
Coming to Christ
Fucking the preacher’s son
Means no obscene words
On a Sunday morning.
For Gregory.
I.
Amidst gyms smells of socks and sweat
And grandmothers fanning themselves in southern strife
He bobs up three irrelevant steps
To cross the stage on which he was handed his life.
Cylindrical. Bold faced typing. Tied with a ribbon of red.
Proclaiming his accomplishments, announcing his manhood,
Prophesying a darkness that lay ahead.
II.
He kicked the center so hard
Embers shot out like roman candles
Into the air. The broad shoulders
Of logs broke and scattered, timber
Into timber, shattered and sunk underneath
The heavy evening heat. Squinting,
He tracked the spider-veins
Winding up the wringing wood,
Carving blood images
Into his eyes.
In a circle of stone and a pit of ash,
He kindled his flame,
Fed it birch and maple leaves in a crackling rush
Of underbrush. It was calling
To him, asking for food,
This hissing child, his sifting
Shifting infant, his burning
Baby boy.
It turned.
And in a flash it swallowed
And burned black everything
It touched.
But, with leaden shoes, he gleefully
Trampled the flame, eyes
Shining, teeth bared
And ready to bite.
‘I built you! You can’t touch me!
I made you first burst into flames!’
He watched the insolent fire writhe
Beneath his shiny rubber boot
And turned his glowing face to the sky,
Its constellations, subtle patterns
Lighting his last night in the backyard at home.
III.
His exodus was unrelenting and quick.
T-shirt and jeans hung around adrenaline and muscle,
He dove into closets, emerged with suitcases, and
Was gone.
He smoked the whole way to the beach, wailing
“Fuck this town! I ain’t never comin’ back!”
He left a trail of butts like breadcrumbs
On I-26 that day.
Believing, beneath the deafening bass
How he might return that way.
IV.
I am dreaming.
I am in a gown, floating down a channel on a boat.
There is music everywhere, and stars.
Each note pinpricks the silence like a bell,
Incessant, calling out to me from the dark.
I blink. The stars turn greener.
I blink. The stars are numbers.
I blink. The numbers are my clock.
I blink. The clock reads 4:02.
4:02 in the morning.
And the song is my brother screaming.
Shrieking my name through my ringing phone
In the dark.
V.
A sober night.
He sits and picks a collection of strings
To say what he was never meant to say.
His lies begin to harmonize.
His eyes, still swollen from the crash.
His bleary smile, hating the world,
Through ecstasies of alcohol, nicotine,
Heroin, coke, and sprinkles of hash.
Our father has turned off his phone for the night.
The loving become few and far between.
VI.
Like the branches of the wood he used to burn,
My brother’s black veins pulse against his skin.
On the other side of his elbow, a tunnel
Has formed.
A wound that knows not how to heal itself.
Like a belly button, it sits in longing
To reunite with the cord that’s gone away.
He swigs and smokes
And pokes it with his thumb.
‘It doesn’t fuckin’ hurt at all.
It’s pretty goddamn numb.’
VII.
My sibling has a midas touch.
He has been in this house
and has not returned.
A silhouette of my childhood sits framed
beside the front door. Upon it,
scrawled deep into its fibers, a slip
of paper proclaims me 'The Golden Child',
carved by his weak hand. Above this,
scripture, printed in lovely typeface, reads
"Blessed are those who have faith
and have not yet seen."
The paper is discarded.
My picture still remains.
Election night and the Heights caught fire.
The women shouted in a different language, the men
Offered up cigars and tears.
Hope, they cried, hope is here.
I slipped into an empty chair next to the poker game,
And watched the victory unfold.
A plump, jaundiced man cut and lit the thing in my mouth.
“Puff,” He told me, holding the flame to my face.
I sucked and sucked the smoke and blew it out.
He smiled and slapped me on the back like a father.
Small glasses filled. Men breathed and touched.
Bodies merged with bodies in that room.
A victory, and all of a sudden we knew each other.
Nothing else existed but the music and rejoicing
Of something we didn’t fully understand.
It's been a while since I last posted, but since I'm stuck in my apartment with a sprained foot, I figured it was time. Something new.
Bad shoes on a treadmill
Mean a month on the couch.
I know every pattern of this apartment.
Portraits on the wall change expressions.
The futon and the bed become different worlds.
Delivery men come and go, hollow eyed
With pens for tips.
My mother’s voice is calm and far away.
Inspiration rises from bad TV shows
And a sometimes hangover from the
Cloistered nights before.
Cigarettes are delivered and I smoke them.
Friends on facebook ask me to poke them.
I count the number of times I go to pee.
I could live like this forever and no one
Would know.
A mouse crawls across the kitchen floor
And I thrill at something happening.
I spend the night beating the walls and
Researching exterminators.
Delivery boys come and go.
I tune in to another show.
My foot looks up at me, smiling
A clipped and toothy bruised smile.
My body and mind are ready, except
For this.
The night comes again and hands me
A glass of wine. I wonder how long
I can stay here in my tower.
How long will it take without the world,
For every single person to forget?
