wait outside my window

i saw you staring
twelve days ago
five days in a row and i couldn't
help but wonder, am i
the messenger or the evidence

blood-red snow like twelve
days ago, come on
looking for a good time?
the piecemeal moments of our lives
just don't fit
snow on the ground
i'd only let lincoln suspend the writ
(not this strange, violent
punctuation)

i don't want to be the one
they see at eight
five days into the week
too stupid to care -
but hey,
that's paranoia for you.

pauli

dear life,
there's nothing wrong
just an empty hand
and ten dollars lost.
i'm addicted to cash,
to doing well.
got a light? go to hell.

and inside your soft remains,
a sister too i saw in you
and we walked for miles wide.

please write me back.
i'm tired of hating,
of jealousy
addiction.
i'm tired

in the winter's when you really know

i am loyal
on the barren wastes we call
big surprise, the world
waits for you.
baited breath for
logic we can only pretend to
see;
the snowflakes fall
around me, one by one they prove me wrong.

christmas one month late,
but now you're here.
therapy
for our bleeding lips
drying hands,
i wish i had more answers.

down the road,
i hope i see you every day.
in the winter,
you really know
a partner's all you ever want to know.

there's nothing left to say

and the bagman falls away
lonely cold and blue-bell flesh,
for a funeral pyre,
it's pretty wet.
so friend, got a light?

we scattered our problems
in central park,
steelworks and skyscrapers and
back home, longview
for your troubles and my headphones
overflow with sine cosine
tangential to the point
but i lack reasoning, i guess

to make this work out in the end.

i'm getting tired of funerals
that aren't mine.
(who's game for soup and hot chocolate?)

christmas lung fungus

so,
this is where the ice-filled anywhere
stops and meets horizon,
where no matter how hard we try,
we rip at ourselves,
we tear us to pieces,
but we always come out alive.

to tell you the truth,
the air up here is so thin that
it might be easier to just
give up.
and if it weren't for the clouds,
the funeral shrouds,
the blood pumping through your eyes -
well, i'd lie and say i wanted to.

in the corner of the couch

sleeplessness is like hypnosis
or alchohol,
intoxicating and redeeming
and it gets me nowhere fast
except for awkward
uninhibited remembrance.

stolen time,
i'm running like a land mine
(that is to say
explosive but stationary,
bound to be underfoot).
do i stumble merrily
eke out my life
like some people that i occasionally admire?
or do i chase abstractions,
try to grasp the sunset with
misunderstandings and twinkling eyes?
there's nothing like believing lies.

for now i huddle
blanketed in snow (and blankets, too)
and content to live with you, you,
and you,
and you.

cucumbers, disheveled egos

snow white would lay
the battle-hardened soldiers
in their graves,
the tears streaming down her face;
that's the way it works.
life is a poison
when i tend towards the worst.

i'll feign grace
for the sake of moving
hoping somewhere
i'm good enough to go ahead.

but if this is my forte -
well, i'll never succeed on the
piano.

this place

rolling down. no, spiraling-
take your candles and your words
and that thing
above you.
i've got my own, and they are
warm, special, mine.

i hit my head on the floor
on the way up.
that's how low i was,
lost in silent sound like
civil war heroes mashed up
with the tall grass.
but the rights ones had the
two-thirds majority this time,
and now clouds are
everything.
and life is beautiful.

i'm alright, really.
i bleed ghost blood, seeping scars.
i hope for love and
please, let me leave.
this place is not my own.

underneath the tree, spring

you once talked of
turning back to find the colors
ebbing up the walls, down
your spine,
chasing you into someplace
you did not want to be.

spring,
years past. those words,
they would be my last.

if i find solace in a flickering screen,
why does the world recede
when i stand on my tip-toes to touch it?

i don't know.
the world seemed so sure, so
knowable,
until i took off the blinders.

raggedy andy

windswept
like your damn smile
piercing contagious,
washed-up drunkard like.

the snow falls as though
1954 sits outside,
flashing lights

and maddening grins.

who wins?

five minutes.
no empress stopped time,
this is no jester's joke.
this is
five minutes,
every second a wrecking ball.

i guess that in the end,
all that mattered
was our smiles.
(still, i can feel your guilt)
.

sun shines black every night

i
i left this land three years before,
i took my clothes
and
i
i dreamed up a pet to love me
unconditionally,
i
i walked for miles alone in your arms,
i thought of crying,
but it seemed too hard.
i
i always wonder why i can't remember
what it's like to feel.
i
i stutter in my sleep, but only because
my bones are so cold.

i'm starting to see

bad poetry is like
the wrong note in the right song,
full of expression
(maybe a bit too long),
crying way too much like the
best friend who's always drunk.
everywhere.

i could sit alone all day and wait
just to live,
alone and unsure.

wait.
just live. i'm sure.

off the tip of montauk point

i never saw the lights
until they all went out.
i never lived until the water filled my lungs.
i'll take my risks,
wring my shallow wrists
until they're blue
and i can smile again at you.

they call 'em rogues

in the somewhere
between my eyes,
lie lots of lies,
wrapped in the mystery of
where did i go?

sandy shores
left to the martyrs to
bury themselves,
parapets flooding with
cigarettes and booze and the like.
i'd drown if i set foot
on that land.

or
broken lands,
a burning strip of sunset
below the confederations lines,
where movie stars walk
with their eyes behind their minds.
i live in bombed-out huts,
stuck in ruts
'til the bureau forces me alive.

where did i go?
among stars and the moon
i've lost me too soon for goodnight.

i wouldn't

it's cold among the sludge.
i can practically touch my
self loathing, inspiration, desperation.
get me out.
it's been so long since you've let me out.

life between bites

you don't even hover
when this happens.
you fall slowly, like sludge.
you grab at the oil on my skin,
you ridicule me from within.

on these nights,
i find myself lying
just to catch some sleep -
escapism in a capsule,
morsel, syringe,
the remnant of brevity
(exclusivity)
and the bitter part of the start
of something new
(i still haven't seen that with you).

i would die for you,
if i needed to.
(and not in some petty way. i would weigh
your mind on a scale and protect you all).

a thousand barrels of waste
(add that to your waist)
and now shower will rid me of it
(except this acid rain)
only you
(but not really)
can pull the sun up again.

inhibitions

the same old song
ringing through the same old flame,
rhyming with words that stick
to the roof of my mouth
like your name, your games
the fun wears away
when i realize how much
i don't know,
like the smell of your breath
in the morning-
roses,
rancor,
whose book is this,
anyways?