Waste
white thighs spread
against the plastic rim of the toilet seat.
a relaxation, a release
and yet – a lack of control.
I couldn’t stop it now if I wanted to.
under the crack in the door
leak voices from the screen
muted sounds telling of a child
gone missing, another life snuffed
in a fusion of metal and asphalt
I sit so long [...]

[Read more →]

But you like forests better.
How, in the same breath
that passes through the crooked bloom
of your mouth, can you sigh exhausted,
“Oh Christ!” and then ask if I ever wonder
what sound a deer makes as it’s dying?
You feel roots ruining proof of humanity:
The mattress rots beneath trees,
its white cover melting into constant snow.
The springs rust.
The wood is [...]

[Read more →]

Curtains
Closed like blinds on an afternoon of what
Is going on beyond, could be a musical,
Could be a massacre, or an opportunity
To fall in love with one or two selves
That illusion best kept in place
By a velvet rope that frames
That heavy, satin curtain, collecting
Splices of memories, condensed
With aspirations, the music of a long
Drive soundtrack, or an [...]

[Read more →]

As we waited, his wife watched
Sleeveless arms pump
Gas into a small pickup
And write a check
For a case of beer
“He ran home to shower”
She said, he had closed
The shop for the evening
And was on his way to relieve
Her from the cash register
From the shoulder
Of this highway town,
Came a canopied golf cart
“Being your own boss
Isn’t all it’s [...]

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Life is death unless danced and sung
not rushed through as means to an end.
Raptured, continuing through him and her
unencumbered, they dance on together.
“Happiness, not real-unless shared!”
with tremendous hands, The Stars watch in care.
Life, the purloined music from which we play
wreaking more of dust, but danced on anyway.

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

so there’s this guy with two shopping bags. and he walks in front of this tank.
as if the great big eye of god or history were an engine of simple destruction.
of social change roaring for war. and this armored goliath shifts gears
from crowding peasants to eating students. cracking small bones
while affixing its iron gaze upon [...]

[Read more →]

Do I take my pale pill today?
In the side pocket of my backpack
It peers through the mesh
I have no food
No drink to assuage its chemical dispersal
Do I take only half and taper down the dosage
Until just these two eyes confront the day?
A little lighter from a clear plastic cup of chardonnay
And this, my fourth [...]

[Read more →]

god is not imaginary, you are not a child.
and television is tiring.
it is a weekday evening, probably you are
watching the christian network. there
are hands reaching to cross the cosmos, but
it feels like a sunday, sorry we’re busy they say,
someone went to war they say, surprise they say,
we’re an irrelevant empire. there are two, no
three, make [...]

[Read more →]