Being with Alison

I was almost her

Before the bony fingers 

Of time

Began to tug my face

Like putty, sinkening 

Under his merciless groping 

Pinching and plying my skin into

Mean, furrowed clefts 

She’s beautiful 

And when she laughs

Her hair lifts off her breasts 

Her eyes search for the vulnerable 

And the yearning.

We suffer while   

She occupies the space where we all breathe 

I feel myself disappear.

I examine with lumbering dread 

My hands 

As they evaporate 

My legs that blur into a vapy fog

The contours of my face soften into obscurity 

My mind is a flurry 

Of distress 

And in the wedge of space 

I still possess 

I perch on my haunches,

A vulture, 

Brimming with despair 

She is my torment 

And I am a creature of remorse. 

The Road You're On

You don’t have the money to feed your kids  

And you worry all the time  

About how you will afford the gas to get to work each day  

The backyard needs mowing  

And the carpets are spotted in filmy grays and browns  

Legos beating up the bottom of your feet  

And toys you didn’t realize were around anymore  

Plodding in clustered corners  

Like forgotten weeds  

While you struggle vehemently  

With your insides  

Wondering if anyone can love you  

Really love you  

Because the apocalypse of age  

Looms recklessly closer  

And your veneer of confidence  

Tired and beaten  

Verges on utter collapse.

You thought maybe he loved you  

So you gave and gave  

Until you were handing out offerings  

From your internal cesspool,  

Still giving, nonetheless.  

He doesn’t love you after all, does he?  

And slipped away in the dead of night  

With all your cash  

And your last stick of gum  

That you needed  

Because you are all out of toothpaste  

And don’t get paid for another  

Week.      

You don’t give your love away for free  

Anymore and now your heart darkens  

Just a tiny bit more...  

And you’ll never get over this one,  

You know that,  

Because you gave him everything  

And now you have nothing left.

Scissors, please

I ache for freedom.

For that cold, metal key

Just the right combination,

Just the right fee…

I want my soul free

From your malevolent strings

I’ve been gripping for life on

You’re severed, stripped wings

Spiraling quickly

Into your chemical sea. 

Who can love an empty vessel?

Who swims those venomous seas? 

I labored in your death camp

Let you strip my dignity

Let your perch upon my shoulder

In stoic sovereignty.  

The Family Meeting

Your eyes, pleasantly cloudy,

Idly indifferent

When the case worker

Brings the child into the room.

You pull out your phone

Browse through the latest

Slander on Facebook

While your child

Lays placidly

In a lively pink car seat,

Oblivious to your estrangement.    

We all watch you from our seats

And with impeccable determination

Refuse to criticize

What we don’t understand.   

What you Want to Read

There are some I write for you

And some I write for me

The ones that hurt me most

Are the ones you’ll never see. 

We write to express oceans

Our turbulent, tender seas

But the wounds that truly rift our hearts

Is our unseen poetry. 

We write what we imagine

Others want to hear

But sores that ache too long or deep

Our readers cannot bear.  

Mistress

Your lady perches

On a rusty throne

Broken and ugly

Her vigilant, swollen eyes always

Watching me…every move

Waiting for one more

Moment of disparity,

The edgy scepter of doubt,

So she can move in

Be your savvy she devil

With the razor studded whip

Her grip

Brutally stitched

To your marrow

Your central nervous system

Your mangled spine.

I imagine one day

I’ll open the door

And she’ll be there

With a glass of whiskey

And a barrel of bullets

She’ll pull the trigger

Because she loves you...

Without causing a tremor or ripple

In her glass

Of Windsor Canadian North American Whiskey.  

There was a pile of dirty towels

At the bottom of the stairs,

That I had to step over

Find you in the dim lit basement

Sleeping on a dirty couch

Heavy in despair

I lay down on top of you

Wind my fingers through your

Auburn hair,

Oily from neglect,

Trace your damp skin

Your crepe thin eyelids

Skim your tender lips

With feathery fingertips

While you pretend I’m not here.

I press my heart into yours,

Cautious arousal,

Mutual affinity,  

That shouldn’t be

Indignant cruelty

From indulgent deities

That for eternity

Bound your soul to mine

The little cement block beneath
The roses, glistening pinks and whites,  
A sentimental thank you to the donors plate,  
Looking more like a gravestone,
And I had to for a moment
Work hard to remove
Your bones from my thoughts
Because there you were
In your coffin
That I try not to think about
Too much.
I kept walking, keep walking,
Past the roses
Past the gravestone
And really should work harder
On seeing you as a furious beam of light
Rather than a body in a coffin
Forever decaying a little each day
Because the air will never
Fully reach you
And properly dissipate
Into the earthy breaths that
Created you.  
It’s a little too much
To think about
For a bright summer morning.

The Rehab Group

The women are heavy and doleful

Still curling their bangs

And wearing pleated jeans.

Or the skinny ones with tight,

Unforgiving buns piled high and austere,

You’re not fooling anyone, sweetheart,

Squeezed into acid washed pants

Leering at everyone under several

Coats of midnight mascara.   

The men slumped in their chairs

Gripping their hands together

Slouching in defeat,

Outwitted, dimwitted,

Checkmate,

Mother fucker,

You’re done. 

But I try not to judge them.

On the Richter scale of trauma   

They score 7.5 on their good days.

I listen to their stories

And in my gut

I know

That this is life’s meanest

Selection

The thwarted cogs in humanity

Caught between the fucks

Of kin and fucks

Of sin.  

Those Pictures

An aging beauty queen’s frigid smile

Coy, stupid smirk

The superficial, terrorized look

Of an animal just before

The car careens into its impotent, lazy head.

That’s the face in those pictures.  

We will all be there someday

Make no mistake

With our heads bowed    

We’ll grasp, without acknowledgement,

Our reaper’s hand.

No sense in flirting

With the reaper,

He will cleave you in half

Before sending you to hell

Or wherever you’re going.  

The cat sits outside my bedroom door

Pawing to be let in

Not caring, like cats do,

Of the crisis tensing the molecules

Thickening the air in this room.  

I fucking hate

Surrender.  

But beauty withers

Always replaced…by something bigger

And better and more alive

Before it dies  

Again..and again.

You Want to Write A Poem

That’s brave…

To take my life

And eagerly, spitefully

Put in on a page

For others to ogle

To study the ugly corners

And the littered floors

The filmy walls

Brave and bold

Like removing someone’s

Underwear, turning it inside out

Reveling in paltry stains

That aren’t yours

Will never be yours

Will not be yours

You fearlessly stand

With a golden halo

In front of Heaven’s Gates

Waving a white flag

Freshly washed

In my urine

And for that

You will easily be

The heralded hero

Bold and true

You beat this shrew

And discovered the witless charms

Of martyrdom.  

Theologian

You circle the periphery of clouds,

A vagabond of the firmament.  

Perusing the sun’s corona,

A specter always pining

For meaning

But never needing

The touch of a woman

Or the feral scents of intimate urgencies.

I want you...I want

To be the pungent indecency

That binds your feet to the earth

Inhale the seedy pleasures in dirt

The artistry of sin

Lubricious offerings

And corporal sufferings

When desire consumes you whole. 

All this

Before you go drifting back

To your heavenly elopements.  

Knowing Your Past

Look at you

Buried deep beneath the covers

Your nocturnal aroma,

Musky, red blooded, the hard

Acidic smell of a man.

I’m standing at the edge of your bed

Performing a study

The hard lines where the sheets

Fall against your thighs

Your chest

Your face cringed painfully

As the violence of a dream

Clutches your backbone,

Diminishing you into the frail

Skeleton of a boy

Every night

I ache for you

I want to climb into bed beside you

And with my hand,

Smooth your ruffled skin

Break into your fractured thoughts

To piece the fragments back together…

Make you whole again.  

Paralysis

I didn’t get out of bed

For two days

After you swept in

With torrential rains

And bleeding winds

I gave you

My vulnerable, riverless veins

Aching for you  

To persuade the vultures

Circling up ahead

To abandon their quest.

And for a moment

The needle plunged…

I still see you

Peering so deeply

Into my soul

That the air around us

Paused for breath.  

How a Poet Sleeps

Our minds don’t stop

On a perpetual treadmill

Un-ordinary tragedies crowding out

Other emotions

Like hope…light fading in bitter  

Interactions, a mutual attraction  

Conversations that will never happen

Stories unwinding

While we lie between sheets

Of anxiety and prostration  

Brimming panic

Because we aren’t what we want

To be

And we will never be

What we want to be

Tragedies in the brooding night….

Hovering

…a figure

Stands stoic in the doorway

Just staring, standing

He’s not real…  

But we must keep our eyes closed

To fool ourselves

Because we fear the fatigue of

Tomorrow.

Death on a Stairwell

This kind of exhaustion

Belongs on a billboard

By the side of the freeway:

“Stop by our clinic

Before you die from  

Emotional prostration and depravity!

 Get the help you need IMMEDIATELY.”

I am required to walk up and down

These flights of stairs everyday

Delivering this document to that person

Or this person

All of them girls

With short, bouncy, brown hair

Typing and hustling, giggling  

In this busy, assiduous work space.  

But my head

Is static,

Permanent anesthesia

Sometimes thinking about how easy

It looked

When he died because though his breaths

Were stunted and labored,

He didn’t know anything….and wasn’t in pain

Slack jaw and dead head

And maybe that’s how everyone should go

Wrapped warm like an embryo

In an intimate darkness

Where the hearts and panic

Of others are comfortably meaningless

Maybe the rest of us are actually

 Fools

To wait to see what gore

Will claw in to our bodies

And grimly seize our breath.    

I’m going to deliver this document

To this bitch

With the short hair

And the perma smile

This document about work shit

That no one really gives a rat’s ass about

But  

What I am thinking about

Is how easy it is.

That maybe I wish I were dying

Right now

How inevitable the process

How easy the pace

Particularly when you are the vector,

The deliverer,  

Of your macabre but inevitable fate.  

Two More Minutes

Let me tell you what it’s like….

To have a man

Die on your couch.

Mouth full of un-chewed pizza

Poised to slide with easing grace

Down his throat

So loaded up on blue oxy’s and Xanax

Crimson red wine

He’s stopped breathing

And moist beads of death dew

Patiently spread across his skin

I think I am screaming

“Wake the fuck up!” and shaking him

But his head lolls and rolls

Like a marble

His fingers turning a lovely, lavender blue

While I stand there

With a phone in my hand

My soul and body shivering

Being adjacent to HIM:

The venerable. The dazzling.  

EVER OMNIPOTENT death.  

I hear myself screaming to no one

Alone with a dead man

And then

And then

His mother arrives and we fold him

Knock his lolling head into the

Stone cement stairs

Push him into the car

Curled and sagging like a sausage.  

And before we left,

While I stood inept and shaking  

I felt his soft, strange heart behind me

Alive and Alarmed

Auburn hair, bright and beautiful,

Begging me

Nudging me

Pleading with me

To get him off that couch

Because he wasn’t ready

He wanted to stay

And death was not his companion.