Cancer, like a wave

Cancer, like a wave,
We’re just like that, she said
Like what? Insecure, fearful
Her short brown hair reveals
A blessing in disguise
A revelation, irradiation

You’ll make it through
As i almost cry in my sushi
Forgotten how beautiful you are
Your eyes so deep, even if your boyfriend
Is a scientist, you’re calm as a cucumber

needles

thinking of her spine
and the tiny little ones that
are going in mine

tried to put my head down to work
and it came up stiff,
want so badly to call her on the phone
and it do it all again

but i am here
drinking magnesium and getting
acupuncture from half-baked
half-asian imports
with massage chairs in their waiting rooms
and dark eyes that invite you in
to the wretched worth of the world

jewels

i push people in ways they’d
rather not be pushed
by stating the obvious to me
and there they all are,
in a line, frustrated
at giving me their trust
for I betrayed
when first I got a chance
to cut them down
for not being in excellence
wanting, calling for the same

success begets success
and that’s why now,
they manufacture their company
only those jewels who shine
back at them
only those jewels who shine
back at them
not those covered in a thin
silt, those that have been  
buried for sometime
those that have been
buried for sometime

and who am I?
to join the ranks of those,  
enabled, flanking smiles
the odd inability to forget
about the clock, our mortality,
our greed, our blindness,
our coward, our crow,
our endless bits of information
we’d never let you know

for the strangest feeling
that of letting go,
a barbed wire caught in the fist,
a band-aid to peel,
when the world is ending
I think of her and know  
just how to feel
when the world is ending
I think of her and know  
just how to feel

a brother

on the verge
of crying
every time
i think about an old best friend
and how much
things are different
now

i can’t run into his arms
embrace him with the fire of the future
instead
i pat his back
and tell him he’s a brother

it strikes me hard
only when i think of it
how much of our guts
were spilled on the same
bored nights

setting ideas to flame
projecting somewhere
out into the dark hills
that surround our old town

it’s a box in the sand
and we locked it
kept it secret
and poured our passions to dust

i gave you a look before
you got in the car
or maybe i looked away
i couldn’t bear to look, probably
behind both eyes
i’ve seen the sad side
and it’s never present
except always

we live in rain
and spite a coat
wondering why
we ever left
that place
it was all we had
and it was here
things are different
now

Train conductor

Train conductor
Looks at a kid
Too young to know
He’s making too much noise

The same kid in 10 years
Is lost riding the rail
Lost in domestication
The conductor looks down on him
Like scum
Old enough to know
The real world is cold
Polite, quiet, no feather of noise
Can ripple this lake of habits

A family rides together and a young girl
Falls in love with a boy she sees on the train
The grandfather who always is yelling
About his damned bad back
Frustrated to red forehead
By how old he’s become

sick sick sick

sick of everything
every word written, every play
every chance of characters
the drama, the drama!
why do we dwell so hard on these minute details
of our lives, clinging to memory like seafoam,
destroyed and being destroyed

sick of all creation, simplified, simplified
simple is beautiful
simplified is not

i have hatred in my heart
for what i’ve seen of this world
and overflowing love for the luck I’ve had
but i can’t live in a place with no air,
nor can i solve myself for you
in mountains of madness, 

are we famous yet? “a distorted reality
is a necessity to be free”

wrestle

i bend down to stretch and see an ant
carrying the body of another ant

and i zoom out of myself
and think of yesterday morning
when we held each other and wept all morning
wept and slept, and wept some more
i dried her eyes with my fingers and my mouth
and felt her sunlight spine as she cried
and we cried
and i cried

i, the stupid man i have become
closed like a port of a border town
if i think about it for even a moment
the thought of never touching this spine again
kissing every vertebrae like it was the
last time
i make it look easy, well
she makes it look hard
both of us possibly
over-compensating
perhaps,

a dusted tome from which we read,
words in circles; themes
from which grasp we are never fully
clear of
specious probable lies, an innocence to grope
if only we made love
we would have stayed together
if only we made love
we would have stayed together

to the brink
we go and i hold her sobbing frame
and look out the window
the succulents she watered so i’d see
the run down the wall, still dripping
where the water comes in
putting on display
exactly what i would be missing
by having her slightly
by my side

into a contest he goes
to wrestle with himself, mostly
few saving throws, but his almost
wretched confident feeling
still burns in the face of utter defeat
and it is what burns now
he cannot remember words
only feelings, gestures, the eyes
she looks so tired and beautiful
right now. never so emotionally drained
she needed to sleep in my bed while
i made her food she did not eat
and the strawberries in a white bowl
by her side untouched

and i try to lay beside her
to hold her and shape myself
to her curled drained body,
almost perfection with a white sheet over her
i kept trying to put the white sheet over us
and she pushed it off,
none of my tricks are working now
this is it, this time she says
i can feel it

she taught me

she taught me how to dance
at least, how to bring it out into the
damning public
to remember not to care about that stare
and when i met her, that’s what magnetted me to her
that innocence, that simplicity
she embarrassed me, flushed my face
at the dimly lit concert
and following me outside
drunk as hell
i found it very cute, but wasn’t trying anything
i don’t know if it was on my mind
or if i knew yet how hard i would love her

but i know i did think
as we walked and looked for the bats
how adventurous this one
showing up at 5am to do sound for me
cutting my hair
i loved her already
and wanted to pull her aside and kiss her right there
what if I had?
what if i had avoided this slow start?
she was so kind to me
laying on our backs at the swing by her house
i told her all my self-doubts
and she lifted me up
and still i was afraid to kiss her
afraid to kiss her until we fell asleep
like magnets, on her floor together
finding her lips in the morning 

and what a smile
beginnings bring

the mediator

the mediator
as a drummer
keeping time
like a clock on the inevitable
creative dispute
two daggers thrusting
excellence at each other
like brash citizens,
subjugating,
becoming bridgeless,
selfish islands,
hoarding plenty
sting my hands
and fuck my art!
silence
listen
talk some sense into them.
they just don’t see
how to help each other
they don’t see what gets each other
off
and why would they? they
never talked, only chimed in
as if telling someone
something was a sin.
Rinsed; repeated; how to win?
a pleasant afternoon war
picking cards out of a closet
splitting head
basically, do you love yourself
enough to smother the love
of another?

conference

i talk to myself
in hopes to finding new answers
under the same stones
hoping i missed something
the first time i turned them

but when it’s the sixtieth time
it’s probably not there.
and i should look somewhere else
altogether

perhaps though, it’s not the looking
searching a room for something  
i thought i lost
but seeing something new
where nothing has changed

we are putting our fears
on each other
the name of the band finally makes sense
dirty projectors pulling hair
and making fist

look at yourself, fuck.
you act like your best
isn’t enough
you act like they keep you down
when you burn time
to avoid life

shakespeare finally calls my name,
all of love’s labors lost
despite the incorrect use
of my apostrophe
it’s the best way I can describe it

and so, not withstanding understanding
i will simply stop using
my now shattered muscles
to lift a rock of this magnitude
simply start over
and run for shade again

driving fast the pedal

Driving driving fast the pedal
Releases pain
The pain of happy voices
Murmured in a wine glass
Local bar and pretend to
Fight the jukebox
Sitting next to admiration
Admonishing what you’re
Seeing, nothing special
But special enough to hold
A placeholder in the heart
That matters, the word
From high valley
And smashing a glass and
Put the shards to his neck
Barely scraping you
Feel, can get away with anything
You are protected in a capsule
Moving fast and steel over wheel
Pushing pills on rear view
Stopping only to see
The carnage of nature 
Engine sounds, familiar guts 
Splayed out across concrete 
infinite and forever is all 
it can be 

strong

was always strong
as a kid forcing others to be out there
on a whim like me,
hurt by love & other accidents
shelled and shocked,

some spoiled by the dance floor
others gas lit stone faced
tumbling into ineffable madness
she screams my name each night

used to be lucid, charmed and harmed
spoiling delight for nothing and no one’s
dirty habits
no smoke would float my way
on my watch,

not without an arrogant
monologuing did you pass
by my house,
out of love, i didn’t want you to die
so young, and i saw that spinstered
trajectory so well written
in the high school novels
we proposed in opening paragraphs
to stand up for what we are,

as dirty and delightful as we are,
can’t carry a tune except the tongues we wore,
sliding amongst greatness and figuring ourselves
a genius, piling upon piles and milestones  
recorded to Mini DV in hopes of Mini glory,
the penetrated rules of this place we loved,
this golden room where sex was still new.
where he grabbed my neck and angrily showed himself
to the world, the stagefright necklace of pointing poetry

observations are culling the ones I love,
presiding like strong winds upon fruitful harvest
words pumping blood out like stones in forest fire,
always leaving us hanging around his neck,
his signature etched in beige monolith,
worship his spirit and smile like he was
the last survivor of sediment wisdom,
accruing like interest unseen,
a mountain built on a slogan and a smile
so wild and true we knew we had to know it up close,
so true we knew we had to have a handful of
that rainbow, though
greatness is admirable and leaves us stunned in
chattered silences,
how much of an asshole do you have to be
to change the world?
how many friends and chats walking to your car
will you give up in haste for better marching
towards a goal hung from high mountain
perched unlike the monks stoic and
priceless in their castles of raked sand
following gutters to peace and a
simplicity not yet found anywhere
but the mind of a man
so wanting that he made us want it too –
so much we wanted it all
to be true.