the multifacet

one day your pain will be my muse
and we, we'll laugh on beer and booze
remembering freedom in a hand-grenade
bedtime stories and long-gone serenades.
deep within this chest of mine
i know there is a clock and time
they tell me when to loose myself
to cut the rope and flood the well
and houses have no meaning now
they've left us with a field new-plowed
although i'm grateful, i confess
in all this newness lies a mess.

these are good books

so some men never age, cooped up in oils
and pressed in pages while seeping
strains, strings, similes start to take their toll
and some men never think, they only move
these wrinkles, these eyes, these grooves in
twisted metals made to look like mouths
others yet are tired, swallowed whole and stripped
naked on the plexiglass of tangled minds and wits
as for me, i'm falling
and it's purposeful, it's true
there were rainbows on thursday
though i'm still content with blue.

abandoned mont sainte michel

when cavern walls and sandpaper jetties
lose mass and weight, and july fourth
has less value than before, when the graves
of thirty-thousand are just
memories of a hopeful time
i hoped you would write to me
a letter, a single word. crass, unedited
but existent.
when the values we created and the
morals we share disappear i will know
even if you shove it down again

you lied to me
you all lied to me

no me olvides

antes de salir, mirame
por encimo del hombro
debajo de la mesa
en el jardín jugamos, salí y
nunca llamaste, nunca gritaste mi nombre
salvo cuando gritaste a todo
salvo cuando buscaste ayuda
y no tengo ayuda hoy. no tengo nada actualmente.
soy un hombre sin causo, sin dirección
y eres más elegante y profunda para
personas como yo.
ni la literatura ni la muerte
puede conmoverme. para nunca y jamas
para nunca y jamas.
no olvides el jardín.

my hours

i woke up exhausted, after eighteen years
deep frozen and craving deep fried... anything,
it didn't matter. i wanted to fill myself
with culture and couture and savoir-faire but
i am vast and cavernous and this fluff just falls apart in my intestines
grows eery and digested and not at all whole.
at night, all kinds of things happen
but i've never been very good at figuring out what
i mean, what works and what doesn't
what feels good and what hurts
what injures and what heals
what seals and what tears

what floats
and what doesn't?

modest ring

like rain on the window, your flaws
are all slipping down
and leaving prints.
the daffodil sunlight makes them clear,
smudges from a well-worn year.

i felt tremors before the fault
was assigned, before
plato said a word.
the earthquake was just an aftershock,
a secret key to a rusty lock.

without you

sour grapes. these droopy days are like
guarantors for my insecurity, my insurance.
they'll pay me back, slowly, in red eyes
goose-pimples, unnamed medications
they'll bail me out even as i cling to that
last hope, that inside kind of peace
i want to win, i do. i want to be the king and the court jester.

"try looking underneath this printer."
this room has been left unstaffed, unstocked
since time immemorial and all i want
is to plant a seed, watch roots crack through
the computers, desks, people. i wish
this room would yield something, for once.
wrong numbers, wrong names. i want to feel all of this beautiful numbness.