Longtime

Oh to be nothing with you 

to be in a room with you 

for you to even meet my gaze.

For me to say hello, for you to say it back. 

Oh to even be a person next to you. 

To brush your arm on the sidewalk,

for you to not pull away. 

Inland Empire

It’s funny. I sort of have this inclination

that this has all happened before

except I was wearing a different colored T-shirt.

It’s like looking around and realizing

there’s Hollywood lights in the trees, the grips

are tightening the knuckles of the C-stand

and it’s only after they yell action

that you remember what you’re suppose to say.

NYE

It’s 11:07 PM on a Wednesday. I’m at the bar, 

and it’s packed. 

I don’t quite know what to say. I think

I’ve spent the past 6 months 

thinking I’d be here with this girl

but who am I to assume that? 

The reality is

we never even really knew each other.

Maybe I never even knew myself, and

I didn’t.

For so long I’ve wished

that the ball would drop someplace, sometime 

there’s a countdown and, “Can I kiss you?”

But then what happens next? 

You might say something like

“As if that would fix everything. As if

that would make it all okay.”

Desire

I walk around the block, talk

to others like strangers in line

waiting for the post office to open.

If theres an anecdote to this, it’s no where I’ve checked.

Not in my father’s pockets, or the bed of my truck

on the way to get cocktail mixers

for a drink we won’t finish before

we’ve moved on to

the next great thing.

In fact, I cut our walk home short

for the sake of stargazing, but the truth is,

I just wanted everything to be still.

I wanted you to appreciate me

appreciating something that will never be mine, what I’m trying to say is,

my life doesn’t even belong to me.

And nothing ever just changes, we couldn’t be that lucky.

It’s a long line of falling asleep at eight

and cursing your neighbor upstairs

before you realize you got exactly what you wanted

last Tuesday.

I’m thinking about desire, and the kid whose dad

put a two by four through someone’s head

while he slept in the next room, and me

my home, my friends

and all the godless hours we spent

sitting cross legged and stupid, arguing about

all the small injustices of the day.

Waiting to feel whatever it is

that comes next

and the fact that, the older you get

the more you realize that

whatever this is,

you’ve known it for a long time.

Helene

A hurricane drowned parts of this country last week. A few trees down here, a couple thousand
without power, a couple thousand
missing (or dead).

I slept on the porch. No AC, no streetlights. Got little red bites
all over my body.

My neighbors came out one by one. We shared a bottle of red wine
a communion in darkness.
So dark I could only make out

the softest of figures, their hands reaching

for the bottle.

I asked them then,
“What were the best years of your life?”
The girl on the banister said, “Well, right now.”

Oh My God

I enjoy walking at night,

because it makes me feel a little better

to think of myself as someone who’s capable

of walking at night.

The other evening I threw my loneliness

on top of the tallest building and followed it

to the church of St. John

which has done this awful thing.

They’ve strapped spotlights to the telephone poles

so we can see God and all the bells He rings

every half hour all damn night.

I was on my way to the park,

as I wanted to be someone who enjoyed

laying in parks at night, and

I saw a man asleep

on St. John’s cold stone steps.

I wanted to crush those lights

with my own two small,

capable hands.

I Broke a Mirror

For the life of me I cannot decide

how the world can be so full.

Hot air, the single file line into town

at 6am, reporting for duty.

The vales and gas station attendants and maids for hire.

Congestion, the streets are bulging.

I park in the fire lane and throw my ticket on the ground

carry my cigarette butts till the next trash can.

Now I’m on my girlfriend’s porch.

The hot air has a sound and

it is deafening.

Like a phone off the hook

a broken TV

a car alarm going off down the block.

And I can’t help but keep count, 47 times now,

is nobody concerned?

Now I’m screaming.

I don’t care who hears me

I want them to.

Yes, I am crazy.

Finally.

Mary comes outside, she lives next door.

I’m Mary, she says. I’m from the Bible.

I hang up the phone on my Father and,

I can’t look at her. I don’t deserve to.

I’m sorry, I say.

I look down her hallway, where I imagine Tony

her husband might stand, or has stood, and one night

he woke us up drunk

banging on the door.

We parked too close to Mary’s car and

she’s late for her shift.

We’re standing under a god awful fluorescent, the empty lot.

I’m sorry, he says. He’s yelling.

We try to leave, we have a party to go to.

“Wait! I told your parents I’d look after you kids!”

We leave him there.

And I’m sorry Mary, but I can’t say why.

I just keep staring down the hallway

and thinking about how he went to prison

for beating a man to death.

Last Plane Home

I think I’ve only ever been born for someone else.

Any picture I’ve taken was just another way

of showing them what’s been left

and I want to catalog it all, first by alphabetical order

then by shape size and color

yellow would be my brother’s apartment

and the china cabinet of stuffed animals

pink is my neighbor who walks her dogs

with the flashlight pointed behind her

red is my roomate and the cord he tied to the fence

to keep from getting lost in the caves

I guess grey can be the wall clock back home

the way it would just get louder

as soon as I forgot it was there.

No one gives you a trophy at the end of this, but

is it too much to ask for a dance party? Or maybe

a small gathering. And they can dance if they want.

All I am is my love for this place

I don’t think that makes me weak, and yeah it’s true

that everyone is their best quality to a fault.

Have you ever sat in an empty airport and wondered when it all started feeling so far away?

Dare I ask why?

Jill

I’m tired of so many things 

I’m tired of being tired.

I just mean the other night, it was raining and

all the coffee shops were closed for the night.

The only thing I could think to do was

make friends with the barista from the Bronx

busting the tables outside.

It’s like I wanted nothing more 

than to just talk to Jill from the Bronx 

because lately it feels more like I’m playing the idea of myself

the record is skipping 

and I can’t turn the lights on.

He wants to talk to you, Jill.

He wants to hear more 

about you stayed overworked for 10 years 

because you loved the people 

how you decided it was time

to go be overworked somewhere else.

The weather sure is nice down here, isn’t it? 

She carries a table inside, I’m unsure what to do.

Do I make her uncomfortable? Wait out in the rain? 

She returns and

“What’d you say your name was again?”

I’ll remember that.

“Oh, it’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

No worries. And when I leave, I can’t help but

feel entirely worse than I did before. 

So I skate home angry.

Not at Jill, and only kind of at myself.

By that I mean

the tires are making that sound 

against the wet asphalt

and I just really hope I fucking fall.

The kind you don’t see coming till your legs are already 

over your head, your

backpack somewhere

behind you, goddamnit.

There’s a homeless man up the street 

pushing a shopping cart.

I see him

like a shadow

sees light 

and for the life of me 

I wish I would have left myself there

for one more 

goddamn

second. 

Moodright’s

If we didn’t exist in a place

below language

I would say that

you walk into a room, and

I am completely undone.

Sometimes a shock treatment is just what it sounds like

but I swear.

It was only after

they turned the lights on

and shouted for last call

I walked you to your car and

locked the door behind me

that I realized

I have never truly talked to anyone

until I talked with you.

When nothing is named,

things have a habit of hiding between

this kind of thin thread.

And you know I could stay there all night with you.

Oh, but god. For the life of me

I cannot find the words to describe

what the hell that was.

Dishes

I asked her, last night, after

the man she loves left in a fury –

why not me? Can I ask that?

She said, you can ask me anything.

And I’m too good for her, she said.

I’m not sure if it’s bullshit or not.

I said, well maybe when we’re 30

we’ll end up together.

She called me delusional.

I said I know.

We talked about this at the bar,

the sun had just set.

I rode the train home with her

to do the dishes.

That’s all I want really,

to take a pretty girl home

and do the dishes with her.

The Loyal Opposition

And that’s all I’ve ever been, just some big dumb idiot

who wanted to give you the world.

And yeah, some days I wake up

and it takes an hour just to know you again.

Some days it’s next Wednesday till I even remember

that I have a mirror.

Yes, I know

if you wanted the world as it is, you’d have it by now.

Everything is changing. I hear it

in the way my neighbors close the door

the way their doorknob sounds

as it hits the floor.

And if I were to bite into it all,

I’d know to ask you if you trust me.

And you’d know to turn the lights on

when we get home.

A Recursive Wish 

I think there could be 

some advanced formula 

to quantify this –

a star folding in on itself.

A brown paper bag on the subway.

How do you know without knowing? 

Speak without speaking? 

How do you look so good walking around like that? 

That song from the other day

I might have circled back around 

just to dot that I you speak so 

fondly about. 

I think I knew 

from the moment I saw you 

that you would end me. 

And I’ve rewound the whole thing 

just to remember what it sounds like

to make sure it wouldn’t be me this time

the guy who forgets to pull the pin.

How do I tell you to be surprised

in a language you don’t already know? 

Blueberry

The world feels like it is moving
into corners that haven’t been built yet.
No grass, poles
protruding from the ground
so the men next door
can slap brick between concrete
between brick
slide the wire through the holes
of the cinder block
it is a delicate task.
Meticulous.

I see the man
sludging the dirt and mortar in a wheel barrow
divvying it between them.
The young man in the same muscle T
and saggy pants
looking important.

The men stopping along the sidewalk seem
to know them

and the boy
belongs to someone.
He sits on-top of the truck 

to watch the dance.

My mother and I use to explore the developing neighborhood
next to our home
on Sundays, after church and
before I could drive.

We’d make comments on the floor plan and square footage
and why they couldn’t build the Walmart
someplace else.

Coronavirus 

I could be sick right now.

The Civil War could still be happening

Oglethorpe and Gwinnett could be fucking 

in the bathroom

Washington’s teeth are plastic.

The Confederate flag might as well

have been pissed on 

black people might be racist too, maybe I’m racist, maybe 

I’m a lesbian.

I could be transgender

like the History Channel and Hitler’s dead body

like I paid to learn about the female photographer

who did the job.

Maybe I am Native American.

3/8ths? 1/15th? 

I could be Alexander The Great. 

Maybe he cut his dick off 

with a broken window and kept it in a box.

Maybe Cleopatra topped that white guy she ran off with

maybe he ran off with her.

The cops could go home to their wives and

blow their brains out, fuck their brains out 

fuck their kids

I could be a cop one day.

I could be sick right now.

Y2K

If the world I was born into no longer exists

then I’ll just bring it with me.

The only reason we’re still here anyways

is because we believe that we are

I’m told that they all thought

the planes were going to fall out of the sky

because the machines weren’t built to quantify

a back to zero situation.

So then I think about all those people

standing still in the streets

while everyone else ran for their lives

the wall of smoke, all that dust

all that debris.

How they held their cameras up to the sky

almost in a kind of awe, under

a kind of spell.

That woman with her camcorder

and the deli man who pulled her inside

by the straps of her purse.

How she scolded him, “Excuse me?

I was doing something out there!” And then

the way the walls shook as it passed

opaque and cancerous

the way the lights flickered

and a sound adjacent to thunder.

How she fell to her knees then

“Thank you! Thank you

you just saved my life

oh, God…”

She turns to the other refugees

peaking out from behind the front counter

every one of them with their own camera

pointed out there.

Wherever we are,

and whatever we’ve brought with us,

it came to be right outside that window.