The front of the place
Smells like buttered
Noodles if you served them
In a shoe
The carpet is brown
To hide stains
Half deflated balloons
Dance sadly under the
Air vent

"So sorry, food will be out
In just a minute!"
She runs back from
Behind the counter
Into the kitchen
The cooks and her
Arguing in mandarin

That's fine I say
I'm not in a rush

I sit on the leather couch
Across from a cloudy tank
Full of fat bright orange carp
They swim lazily in circles
Bumping into each other
And the glass, not understanding

Breathing their own ****
That tumbles in the air filter
Bubbles at the bottom of
The tank

I think about going to
Sit back at my desk
While locking eyes with
The fattest one of the bunch

There are worse ways to exist
At least my ****
Gets pumped into someone
Else's tank

Reading during lunch
On the screened in back porch
When I notice
Apart from the other moths
That are fluttering and
Kissing the bent, thick
Stems of the spider plants
That grow against the dirt
Stained panels of the porch

A little white moth
Smashing itself against
The inside of the wire mesh
Windows

My book open on my lap
I watched him beat his
Powdered body fruitlessly
Looking for a way to rejoin
His other moths amongst
The spider plant blossoms
Wilted white and
Putrefying purple

Still open
I rested the books sturdy
Spine on the smudged glass
Of the coffee table

It took me a few times
To cup him in my palms
Giving him a wide berth
In his fleshy cell his wings
Still beat furiously against
The worn lines in my hands

I didn't open the storm door
I poked my hands through
A hole the hounds had made
And cracked open the restraints
Of the little white moth

He sat unmoving on the edge
Of my fingers
Wings still
Antennae still
Before fluttering off
Into the syrupy hues
Of the August afternoon

I sat back down
Looked to the open face
Of my book and wiped
The residue of the
Little white moth onto
My dress pants

Like the feverish beating
Of its wings on my hands
The bleached brushstrokes
On my dress pants
From the little white moth
Have since disappeared

You and I
Temporary

This house we sit in
Temporary

The love we share
(As strong as it is)
Temporary

All the skyscrapers in the world
Temporary

The streets and the sidewalks
Temporary

Every law, speech, and right
Temporary

Every person you pass on the street
Temporary

The piles of bills and gold hidden away behind massive vault doors
Temporary

The pain of a particularly bad day
Temporary

Every mistake and every triumph
Temporary

Your inclinations, opinions, and habits
Temporary

The ghost and the shell
Temporary

The printed words of men long since dead
And long since correct
Temporary

Every thick, coppery, snaking trail of blood
Every minuscule globule of spittle
Every boiling, salty tear
Temporary

The hatred of every person in every place in the entire world
Combined into one stinking stream
(As strong as it is)
Temporary

The soil that has run through your hands
The sand through the hourglass before it is flipped again
The rain that falls on humid August days
The whistling of the wind through broken windows panes
The sneaking of weeds tendrils through cracks in asphalt
Temporary

All
Forever
Temporary

My teeth getting cleaned
I choose to hold in a ****
Becoming a man

I browse through jobs that I
Don't want

Test Analyst
Engagement Leader
Enterprise Architect
Device Administrator
Knowledge Engineer
Application Consultant

I look through these meaningless
High paying postings
Dedicate a fraction of my life
To it so that I can accumulate
More stuff

Surrounded by stuff
Shelves and drawers full
Of stuff

My stuff grows exponentially
Like voracious kudzu
It smothers my space
Blankets my floors

It seems
The more stuff
The less substance
But even this simple reality
Doesn't hinder my want of
Stuff

After I die
My stuff will sit
In a room collecting
Dust and maybe some of
It will be worth some money
To someone and then they'll
Have my stuff and the person
Who sold it can go buy their own
Stuff and I'll be in a box in the
Ground and then
Finally then
I will become just another layer
Of stuff

Waiting at the train station
For my girl from new york
With my windows down
Sunroof open
My a/c has been on
The fritz for two years
Now, but you get
Used to it
Especially in a
Syrupy pennsylvania
August

A cherry colored pickup
Swings into the space in
Front of me and a middle aged
Guy hops out
And meets two others

They are speaking german
And cackling
The one is telling a joke
And dangles his hand
Off of his waste like it's
His ****
And they all laugh

For a moment
Every other sound
In the station is drowned
Out by their hard
Language and
Harder laughter

Another work day
As the hummingbirds
Peruse the bending
Backbones and
Wilting blooms of
The tall spider plants

White and purple

I was out the back door
On my way to work

I spotted a deflated balloon
Tumble-weeding across the
Back walk

I watched it topple
Lazily
Too crumpled and
Twisted in itself to
Move much

A strong breath of
Wind moved the
Shining, gaudy
Bladder up and
Off the back walk

As it blew past I
Read the words
"Happy Birthday"
Adorned with exploding
Multicolored confetti

I got in my car
And thought about
How much that balloon
And I have in common

Blame is such a
Contagious malady
It doesn't surprise me
That in our time
We both contracted
Terminal cases

I stopped being
Your son when I
Passed out at the reception
Spilling the pulpy remains
Of my 18th Mimosa
All over the table
While people were tapping
Glasses to makes speeches

You stopped being my
Mother when you
Told me you weren't
Making my birthday dinner
That you had made me for
26 years every August
Because it was more
Of a winter dish

You were my
Best friend when Dad
Was off banging his blonde
On business trips
When your daughter
Was off at college
Smoking *** and
Playing soccer on
A scholarship  

Inevitably
All things that make
Sense must be
Adulterated by something
That doesn't

It's a shame that
You had to seek that
Something out

Hungover in bed
Sharing last night's
General  Tso's
With one ***** fork

We're there early to set up
As they tow the cars
Parked along the street
Adorned with bright red
Tickets under their windshield
Whipers

A man appears from a
Windowed apartment building
Door yelling in spanish
He gets in one of the cars
Gets out and takes the ticket
Off the windshield
Gets back in cursing
In spanish
And peels out of sight
Around the corner

A woman at my work
Resigned
Amid many tears
And bouquets of
Flowers

She'd been with
The same company
For twenty years

She made an announcement
To my coworkers and I
"Tomorrow everyone is
getting together at the
Tap house, you guys are
Welcome to come"

My one coworker
A bean pole with
A ***** blonde
Ponytail and goatee
Agreed to go
Before she had even
Finished speaking
He's 37 and
Still lives with his
Parents and has
No desire to do
Anything
He once told me
That he didn't get
Why people went to
The beach

"Why go to the beach
When I can sit by
My pool? There's nothing
The beach offers that
My pool doesn't"

Anyone that can't tell
The difference between
A chemically shocked
Puddle in a backyard
And
The vast living
Expanses
Of the ocean
Should be considered
A danger to public
Health

Plus
Like people with two
First names
I don't trust men
With ponytails

I figured I'd go
I don't mind most of
The people I work with
Except for the
Ponytailed ***** boy

But then I started
To think about all
The times that this
Woman had:

Purposely stepped over
The morning
Paper so that I would
Have to bring it in

Threw her hands
Up in disgust when the
Copier was out of paper
And told me to fill it
Over her shoulder while
Walking to her office

Told me to fill
The coffee maker
With water while she
Clicked her tongue
And painted her nails

Threw work on my desk
Without a word
Wandering off to a
Higher floor to
Chortle behind a closed
Door with one of the
CFOs or CEOs or
Whoever the ****

But worst of all she
Thought ventriloquists
Were genuinely funny

I figured
That after two years
She was the one
That should buy me
A drink

My best friend
He tells me that
I shouldn't be upset
About that abortion
That I made that girl
In college get
"There is no accurate way
to count ghosts"
He says
His eyes straight ahead
His hands on the wheel

Even as my eyes grow
Heavy with tears
I know that he is right
Counting ghosts
Is a fool's holiday

Later in life
I will ask him
Questions with obvious
But nonetheless
Hard answers
Which he will usually
Answer looking
Straight ahead
With his hands on
The wheel

We speak in movie quotes
And obscure jokes
A true friends
Respite among
Normal conversation
We isolate third parties
On principle

We went to a
Concert in Baldwinsville
New York
And screamed at the
Healdiner to play
Songs from another
Band he was in
That was better than
His solo stuff
Security threatened to
Throw us out
We were high
On pills and liquor

No matter what
I trust his judgement
He has never lied
To me a day in his
Life, let alone mine
When something *****
He tells me
Which is why I trust him
But it's also why
I didn't show him this poem

I didn't want him
To disapprove
I didn't want him to
Point out all the
Obvious flaws
That are part of
My nature
And subsequently
My writing

When I am dead
Maybe I'll carve this
On a scroll of stone
So that he'll be driven
To lay in the same
Ground as myself
And there
In the wet soil
We can share
Inside jokes
And muffled laughter
Away from the dead
And the infinite

I fall like rain drops for you
And collect like puddles under your feet
Fetid liquid hoping just to feel
The sole of your shoe
Or to kick up onto the
Fresh shaved softness of your calf

Even after the rain stops
I will always be present
Like silent buttery flashes
Of lightning in thick clouds
Painting the interior of your car
And the lines of your face

I saw a ******* the train
Sitting in front of me and she played
With her hair for a minute
Looking out the window
And then she looked at herself
In the windows reflection
She slowly moved her hand
Towards it and when the pinky
Of her hand and the reflections
Hand touched she pulled her hand
Away like she had never seen
A reflection let alone
Her own before.

I'm sure that
When the world ends
The sky will be beautiful

One of those days
That looks like a
Dollar store
Painted  landscape
In a chipped and dusty
Golden frame

I'm sure that
Everyone will probably
Have gone to work or
To the pool or
Out to eat or
Just sat like some
Seem to do

I'm sure that fog
Will settle on leaves
And bark in
A forest
Where deer and
Birds will graze
Unseen
Undisturbed

I'm sure that
The people
Will think about
All the stuff that
Sits in their houses
The cornucopia of
Usesless **** that they
Spent all of their lives
Trying to amass

I'm sure thoughts will
Wander to the
Dusty knickknacks
On bookshelves
Filled with those
Books that they
Meant to read

About the
Pots and pans
And cans of spam
The gourmet
Frozen meals
The fridge
The stove
The whole house

Melting into goo
They will think
About watching their
Ambitions
Hard work
Time
Money
Love
All going up
In flames

Subsequently,
It will

I'm not so sure
That you will be
With me when the
World ends

If that's true
The world has
Already ended
And I may as
Well be a pile of goo
In some wall street
**** birds mind
As the skyscraper
Crumbles from
Beneath his feet

Every time I'm drunk
I get really excited
About being drunk

We met our friends
At a local restaurant
They lived in Pittsburg
And we barely saw
Them anymore

Regardless
The embrace was very
Warm as it usually is
Between good friends

She was some kind of writer
He had just become a detective
After working in a drug
Related crime unit for years
Now he worked with gangs

"You see the same ****
Heads all the time,
And they just don't *******
Die."

"They get shot
9, 10, 11, 12 times
And spit on the
Nurses while they stitch
Them up."

"I don't know how
You feel about it,
But those people
Are animals,
******* animals."

I found myself nodding in
Agreement even though
I had no idea what his
Job or the animals
Lives encompassed

I felt bad agreeing with him
But in a way,
I knew he was right

We are all animals
In one way or another

I find that the animals
Born to the smallest cages
Tend to be the fiercest

While the animals born in
Large cages or
If they're lucky
Open fields
Tend to have no idea
How confining a small cage
Can really be.

I have seen many non wild things
Sorry for themselves
A privileged middle aged man will scream and ***** about trivialities
Having felt nothing but sorry for himself.

I'm hunched on our bed
Like a stone unintentionally collecting moss
You are away and your
Side of the bed grows cold and raised
The imprint that you left in my mattress
Is similar to the one that you scarred
On my heart

It is a skewed imprint of you
Like the frond of some beautiful lost flower
Pressed between granite palms
In a museum behind smudged glass

The dips and curves of all
Your perfect and imperfect features
Wrinkled and pressed
Into a *****
Used surface

Even though the ceiling fan was on
I was covered in sweat and so were you
Like full bottles of beer in the sun

I pressed into you and you
Conformed into my body
Without ever waking up

I got lost in the damp folds of
Your tee shirt
The ****** wrapper on
The night stand and
The bundle of sheets on the floor
By the foot of the bed

It's a new guy this time
He has the same jacket and gloves
But it's definitely a new guy
I pull the collar of my coat with
The tips of my fingers
And approach the roped off entrance
Of the building

He stops me with a
Sudden hand on my chest
"I'm sorry sir,
but you're not allowed
in today."

"What? Not allowed? I was
Just here yesterday. The guy
At the door let me right in."

"No matter sir. You're not
Allowed in today."

"Well, ****."

I take a seat on the
Rain painted curb
And stare at my reflection
In a ***** puddle

Some cookie cutter schlub
Comes down to the same partition
I was turned away from
The rope is lifted without a word
From either of them

I un-crane my neck from
The door's direction
Meeting my own stare in
The puddle of ***** water
Again

I push off the curb with
Renewed energy and
Approach the doorman again

"Alright, I think I can go in now."

He pulls his white gloves
By the wrist to eliminate any
Excess space in his fingertips
And meets my eyes
With a smug look on his face
And shakes his head

How the hell are his gloves so white
When all the puddles around here
Are so filthy

"Just because you were in here
Yesterday sir,  does not mean
That you will be allowed entry
Today. I'm sorry, but that's the
Way that things work."

I bend my mouth into an
Upside down horseshoe
Studying the gaudy marquee above
The padded door

The doorman sees me staring at the blinking
Chipped letters
Sensing my resentment
He tightens his gloves again
And stares at the brick wall
Across the alley

I wander off in the rain
To go find something
Else to do

Is it creation
Or are all of our poems just
Cheap emulation?

Early on
My T.V. was controlled
By my mother and older sister
Because of this
I have an immunity
To awful television

Americas Next Top Whatever
Growing up Whatever
The Housewives of Wherever
All the spinoffs
All the three week
Episodic backstory
Specials

Everything

I have found this taste in T.V.
Is engrained in most girls and women
Not all of them mind you
But most

From all of the
Nonsensical story lines
Wooden and awkward acting
Scripted life tragedies
Artificially inseminated arguments
Pointless and pedantic drama
Lifetime movies stick out

They are their own special breed
Because of this
They are beautiful
And I enjoy them immensely

So many meaningless sub plots
Badly framed shots
Ridiculous morals
Awfully choreographed action sequences
That have nothing to do
With the movie at all

In this way
They are their  
Own type of pure

I have no shame
Besides
There is no where else
That I can watch an hour and a half
Of a police woman
Being hunted by her surrogate
Who was her best friend
(Before she psychotically fell in love with
The police woman's husband)
While the police woman is
Haunted by the ghost of her
Dead mother who
Gives her advice
From beyond the grave

Finally
With the help of the ghost mother
The police woman
And her misogynistic male partner
(Who is no longer a misogynist
Because she is such a **** fine cop)
Corner the surrogate
Who now has an assault rifle
And they end up having to blow her
Away
Emptying their guns
As she yells out and spins
Too many times into some faceless
Mansion's swimming pool
Ending with a slow motion splash
And no charges pressed anywhere
On anyone

All of this
Played by the up and coming
Talent of yesteryear
And the same six
Recycled actors
Who butcher their lines and roles
So artistically
That tense and awful moments
Make me convulse with laughter

It is surreal
And totally worth the guilt
I feel for enjoying such
Rancidly composed filth

There is no comfort
Like a Corona with lime  
Shucking corn outside

The movie isn't even half over
And you're asleep

Your teeth aren't brushed
Your contacts are plastered to
Your eyeballs like paper mache
And you're asleep

You had two beers
And no dessert
And you're asleep

There is a rapping at my
Chamber door and a raven
Over the mantel
And you're asleep

You told me how
You only sleep well around me
How hot it was under the covers
You hate when I snore
And you're asleep

Someone broke through the
Backdoor and I drew on him
I ventilated him on our leather
Couch
The shots ringing through the
Silent house
And you're asleep

But mostly
I love you
And I'm just happy that
You're asleep

"Notice that
I am not laughing"
He said this from
Another room
While my stepmom
Laughed

"Where are the jokes
now? Why are you
So **** quiet?"
She asked him this
While looking at me

Silence from the
Other room was
The only answer

She held the paper
In front of her and
Read through it again
Aloud
"Enlargement of ventricles
In the brain
Inconsistent with a
Forty five year old female"
She laughed again
And stared at the paper
Through the paper, really

"Well,
I don't feel bad for myself
I feel bad for you guys"
She poured another
Glass of Chardonnay
And walked out
Onto the porch
The foggy panes
In the double doors
Rattling as she closed it

I stood there
In the kitchen
My only company
The clicking of his
Keyboard from
The other room
And a plastic container
Of week old scones

I thought about
How nice she was
How pretty her
New haircut looked
How well she could
Decorate a room
How she still
Emptied my trash
Cleaned my toilet
Made mincemeat pies

How when I said
"Thank you"
She always just
Nodded silently
Or said "O.K."

I felt the space
I was already putting
Between myself
And her

The sour swelling
In my chest
That seemed to sit
In the back of my
Throat and eyes
Perched itself on
The back of my tongue

As I thought about all this
I heard him stop typing

He was tasting the same
Sourness and
Thinking about
How empty a bed
Can be at 1 A.M.
When someone
Else used to consider it
Their bed as well

They put her in a
Curtained cubicle
Surrounded by
Beeping machines
And all types of
Wires and terminals
A trashcan and
A dripping faucet

When they rolled her in
They gave her
Morphine
Sodium chloride
And a pat on the head

"She's lucky"
The nurse said
As he lowered the gurney
"A lot of people have
No one show up"

And he left the room
Pulled the curtain closed
We were left with the
Tranquil beeping of
Faceless terminals
And the dripping faucet

Another nurse came in
With a clipboard
And started asking us
Questions
Apologizing for
The beeping
"It's like Chinese
Water torture"

Then she left
Pulled the curtain closed
And when the
Heart monitor
Started beeping
We pushed the
Silence button like
They showed us

We were left with
The sterile squeaking
Of the soles of sneakers
And hollow whispers
In the hallway
And the dripping faucet

Good morning
And there you are
Obtrusive
Well I'd rather
Have you and not need you
Than need you and not have you

Time to ***
But the house is buzzing
With activity
Coffee being made
Keyboards click-click-clicking
The dogs doing laps around
The living room furniture

We can do this
Out the door
And we are ambushed
I turn towards the bookshelf
Awkwardly perusing the collection
While drumming you
Against the spines of
Hemmingway
Bukowski
Lovecraft
Murakami
Like a stick on
A white picket fence

Then the threat has passed

We scramble down the hall
Is he in the computer room?
Oh god, he is
And you just stared him square
In the face
"Good morning"
The silent nod
Says it all

I craddle you in my hand
Through my boxers
And do my best to conceal you
Finally
We are behind
The relative safety
Of a locked door

Peeing proves difficult
Advanced calculations
Yields ***** on the seat

Back into bed
I'm sure I'll see you again
Very soon

It's so hard to like the man
And it's so hard to
Dislike the man

He traps me
With his cooking

While I'm eating
He talks to me
About kids he grew up with
In Virginia

About a loner with a short fuse
Who caught a stray
Shot of jello
Meant for someone else
From someone else's spoon
And he walked over
And slammed the spoon holder's face
Into the table repeatedly
Until he drew blood
And then sat back down
Without saying a word

About a kid who was
16 in the 7th grade
Quiet, never fought
Someone asked him
To whip his **** out
My dad
Holds his hands up at this point
"I **** you not Ben,
It was about a foot long!"

We laugh about this
For longer than we should

He also tries to impart his wisdom
Telling me that
Race, Religion, Politics
It's all useless
People are people
And you should take everyone
As they are

Yet,
His blame is missle guided
For such a humanist
It's always
"The ******* Christians"  
"The ******* Republicans"
"The ******* Chinese"

He is hypocritical of
His own self proclaimed
Enlightenment

I can't tell if
It's a weak attempt at relation
Or
If he honestly thinks
That his hatred is implied

I have always been
A bit removed from my parents
After the divorce
And the new spouses

If he wants to relate
He should just
Be himself
And I'll be myself
And we'll both
Still die alone
Him hopefully sooner
Than myself
Not out of hate
But he's older

Still
Oftentimes
Fathers bury sons
If not in the ground
In their ideals

There is nothing
Quite as purifying
As the frustration
Of knowing
What is coming next

And having
No power
To stop it

It is purifying
Because the blood
Boils at such heat
That nothing can
Survive

Sterility through anger
Disinfection through rage
Cleansing through fury

Fists balled into
Ivory white
Wrecking *****
Teeth clenched
Spine rigid

A barbed tongue
Spits silent curses
Into the syrupy haze
Of a July afternoon

A slow day at work
If only these walls could talk
Sighs like falling snow

The A.M. Crunchwrap
How do they keep the hash brown
Crispy for so long?

I never realized
How many birds
There really are

They seem to melt
Into the landscape
As they hop
To and fro
In the manicured
Suburban shrubs
And pepper the sky
Floating in place
Against some unfelt
Wind current

While walking
I locked gazes with
A slate colored dove
And we stared
I don't know how
He felt about me
Or what he felt
About me

I thought he was
Elegant
Even though he was
The color of fresh tar
While it bakes
In the Pennsylvania sun
In some hazy culdesac
In the corner of some
Replaceable
Reproducible
Childhood

He hopped off his perch
A rusty sign post
That had been bifurcated
By some unknown
Bolt or hand

And skittered behind some
Sickly looking ferns
In a dirt patch of an
Unknown neighbors yard

A gang of Robins
Flittered over my head
Landing down the street
Passing a pinecone
Between them
Pecking and tearing at it

I looked behind
The sickly ferns
And found the
Unknown neighbors cat
Doing the same thing
To my slate colored dove

I shooed it away
It dropped the dove
Hastily
In the loose dirt
And retreated

I looked down at the dove
And it laid there
Its breast heaving
Silent
One eye cast into the dirt
The other looking up
Watching the same Robins
Fly back to where
They had come from


And the slate slowly
Turned sanguine
As its down became
Saturated with the
Run off from the
Puncture wounds

The cat sat off
A few yards away
Flicking its tail
Calico and smug

And I stood by
The dove as
The heaving slowly
Stopped
Ground to a
Halt really
And then the eyes
Weren't looking
At the sky or the dirt

I finally felt
That unseen
Wind
And continued
On my way

Standing in a line
Elmo waves behind a cop
Searching bags for bombs

It's the same every time
Waking up in a panic
The hangover's dull
Gradual throbbing
The amplification of existence's malaise
Reducing my feet
To a slow shuffle

My girlfriend has been calling it the same way
For six years
"You'll get up and check your wallet and make sure you have your keys"
And I do
She's beautiful because she's right
She's also gorgeous
But continually right

I get up and slip my fingers into the
Many compartments of my wallet
Making sure I feel the greasy
Cold plastic of the credit cards

The three IDs
One to drive a car
One to carry a gun
One to count as a person

And the flood of relief I feel
When I finger these plastic cards
Is alarming
How my mind jumps from jovial
Drunken thoughts
To hard
Plastic ones
In the midst of sleep
At ungodly hours of the morning

My identity personified
In polyurethane rectangles

I get back into bed
And again
After confirming that all
The clasps that keep the mask
Snug to my face
Are still there

I embrace her warmth
Under the thin comforter
She drapes her leg across me
While I kiss her forehead
"You smell like liquor"
Before browning out again

Koozies keep the beer cold
They keep your hand warm
And your beer cold
Which is nice
When most thing are more complicated
Or more intricately disappointing

I find little to do
Besides stare from one screen to the next
And back and back again
Rechecking the same websites
The same hiss of the tab being popped

Sitting in one room
While thinking of many rooms
None of it really makes any sense
This inherited feeling of unease
Wanting just to be close to you
To actually kiss you
Meaning it
Having some feeling behind something

Not wanting to rush from one thing to the next
Just wanting to be stuck in that one moment with you
Tasting your saliva
Feeling your tongue, probing
Like some rogue octopus tentacle

There is nothing that fills the hollowness
Like you  
You are the echoing clatter of pebbles
Thrown down a dark ravine
Replacing space with substance
One haphazard toss
After another

I self diagnosed
Turns out my bubonic plague
Was posion ivy

My dad asks me if I have ever considered
Going back to school
To teach
"You'd be a great teacher" he confides
This after telling him that
I'd be working a second job

All the teachers I know
Are broke, unhappy, or quit
Or are bouncing around in substitute purgatory

Any bit of progress I seem to make
He treats like a step back
After graduating I guess he felt
That he was ripped off
When I didn't pull the next
Game of Thrones out of my ***
And buy him a Porsche 911

Those who don't create
Usually belittle the process
Acting like the muses
Are constantly rubbing your back
When in fact
They are stopping by
To take a piece of you with them

A buddy of mine
Hes gotten into some real bad ways
You'd never know it by looking at him
He seems nice
Put together
Smells like Irish Spring
Packs his own lunch
Keeps a girlfriend around enough to call her a girlfriend

We grew up together
He taught me about a lot of things
In my innocence and subsequently
My stupidity
His views were always skewed
But they were pure
He just said what he thought
We consummated our friendship by ramming our bikes into each others shins
Until someone bled

Eventually, like most people
He took on a nasty habit
Of regurgitating other peoples opinions

The girlfriend that he keeps around
He got drunk on new years
And passed out on the couch
And woke up in such a rage
That he smashed most of the furniture in his apartment
And bit her on the hand

He never told anyone what he was so mad about
He just pleaded with the cops not to take him to jail again
Last time he was there he was so hammered
That he masturbated in the corner of the holding cell
While screaming about fascist pigs
I think the cops were relieved when she didn't press charges

He also thought that she was ******* her brother at one point
He was completely convinced by a few misinterpreted words
And cried so much at work that they had to send him home
Turns out it was completely fabricated  

Like his mother
He feeds into baseless paranoia
It's eating away at his brain like a fungus
Branching out into sticky webs and toadstools
Choking off the few emerald vines of sanity he has left
Until the ends turn brittle and snap like matchsticks

I feel bad that I ignore most of his texts and calls
But I don't think that friends should try to use you
The way that a panicked airline crash survivor attempts to use their seat cushion
When they're navigating flaming wreckage
In the middle of the ocean

That said
Sometimes I still see the person I used to know
His doll eyes soften and the cataracts of self conviction clear
And it's like watching someone crawl out of a bomb shelter
And see the sun for the first time in years

But then
Half a fifth of liquor is missing
And he's ranting nonsensically
Peeling the paint with his breath
And I do my best to laugh along until I can slip out the door

On my way home
With the windows down and the sunroof open
With the cool air rushing around me
I usually realize how I could have been dealt the same hand he was
And I stare up at the hole punched stars
Until the car drifts onto the gravel covered shoulder
And the rumble strip makes my tires groan

Randy was a roach
Of the american cockroach variety
He was a deep brown and had a sickly shine
To his wings and antennae
And he studied both of us
From a perch in our suitcase
In my girlfriend's East Harlem apartment
In the early hours of a sunday morning

"**** it! Get it out of the suitcase!"
My girlfriend yelled
Flailing her arms
As Randy reclined on our valuables
His antennae twitching

As in most crisis
I hesitated
And Randy burrowed into the suitcase
Past the underwear, collard shirts, and sunscreen

I dug in a frenzy
Rending my girlfriend's meticulous packing plan
And scattering clothes about
All in the name of meaningless destruction

But I couldn't find Randy
"He's probably in the collar of one of your shirts, or in a pair of my shoes"
My girlfriend speculated
And I started shaking the clothes wildly about the room
Wanting more than anything to extinguish Randy's life
To sterilize our newfound stowaways presence
But I never found him
And Randy boarded the plane with us to ***** Cana

While our plane painted dizzying contrails over the ocean
We speculated about Randy's
Most likely devious activities
"I bet he's eating the granola bars under my bikinis"
"I bet there is more than one in there"
"Maybe he's dead?"
"I bet he's laying eggs"
We both pondered over the fact that Randy could be Rhonda
And that we would open the suitcase to a scattering of near microscopic progeny
And we clutched each other in the cold, recycled air of the cabin

When we got to the room
Past all the tin shacks and open air bars
Where the locals sat in plastic lawn chairs
Staring at the tourist shuttles
That carted pale skin behind tinted windows
To decadently decorated rooms where the towels were folded into swans
We opened the bag to see if Randy
Had surfaced, died, or multiplied

But Randy was no where to be seen , a phantom
We unpacked everything under the utmost scrutiny
Not trusting any of the items we had packed so lovingly and repacked
Shaking cover ups and tee shirts like the wind shakes the leaves in autumn
But he never presented himself
And we saw none of his foul brood
We even unzipped the lining
But Randy had simply vanished
Evaporating into the humid, tropical air

I like to think that Randy is somewhere on the island still
That he has impregnated or has been impregnated
That he spends his days under the intense sun
And cottony wisps of clouds
Sipping Presidente
Sitting under an umbrella made of dried palm fronds
Happy to be away from the honking horns and crowded subways
Just like we were

There was a particularly nasty looking garden spider
Crawling up the cracked molding of my window
Not that he looked particularly nasty compared to other spiders
In fact, up close, spiders are one of the wisest looking creatures that exist

But I don't have eight eyes like the garden spider
So I can't see that without the help of a camera lens
So to me, he just looked
Nasty

Buzzing from behind my curtain
A particularly nasty looking yellow jacket
Landed next to the spider
I didn't need a camera lens
Close up or far away
Some things are just
Evil

The spider must have sensed this too
With a leap
He grappled the wasp
And they tumbled
Buzzing
To my uneven hardwood floor
Landing with a small
Distinct plink

And I stood over them
While they tussled

As I have stood over a million things

Watching with glazed indifference
While creatures purer in their existence than I
Fought for their lives

I could see that the spider was doing poorly
The yellow jacket was giving it to him in the abdomen
Jamming his stinger in and pulling it out and jamming it in again
Until the spider started leaking white and green
And started fighting less and less

The yellow jacket
Smugly victorious
Save one crippled wing
Started to putter away
But I brought a rolled up newspaper down on the both of them
Like a pillar falling from the front of some great Roman temple
When the Gauls sacked it

Retracting the paper
They had both been reduced to wet smudges
I felt bad for killing the spider
I wish I could have trapped him in cup with a card over the top
And placed him outside on a leaf in the garden
So he could rule where he was meant to

But I considered it an act of mercy
I couldn't stand to see a noble being end like that
And you should always ***** out evil
If you have an opening

I sat back on my bed
Considering it a wash
A bit of beauty for a bit of order
As it has always been

I guess my poems are a little too
Long Winded
Your interest gets blown away
In a monsoon strength gust of
Boredom

Be that as it may
I'll still scratch those bumps that
Show up on my knuckles from time to time

And I'll still keep that empty bottle of shampoo in my shower
And that translucent bar of used soap stuck to the floor
I'll step on it and pretend
That I don't notice

The clouds will gallop by
Polyps will form in my colon
My hair will gray
And so will yours
And one day
Hopefully
We'll both sit in a home
With a plastic mask strapped to our face
Long Winded
Trying to breath the air of
A changing time.

I wish that I could take the hollowness inside of me
And hold it in the palm of my hand.
I wish that I could hand it to someone
And say to them
"See, this is why I feel the way I do sometimes"
And they would nod
And everyone would feel bad
But then everyone would feel good because
They may finally understand

But what do I have to be upset about?
I've never had a real experience in my life
I waste most of my money
On video games and vinyl
And taking my girlfriend out to restaurants in the city
But I'm never strapped for cash
My bank account rarely suffers

I've never felt alive in my entire life
I spend my friday nights alone
Drinking expensive IPAs
And surfing the web

A perfectly meaningless existence

I work a full time job
And get by by telling people that there is more to me
That I'm working on something
A fantasy piece
Some poetry
"That book will be coming along any time"
When I have never written a single page

The more time you spend talking about it
The less time you actually spend doing it

I have delusions where I am rich and famous
The public grabbing for my alligator boots
My words engraved on great marble slabs in the town square

Delusions are delusions because there is no process
Instead,
The desired effect is already achieved
There are never details
Just the desired ending
Like a fairy tale

There is a point in your life
Where you should focus on the immediate

Job Searches
401 Ks
Retirement plans
Everything that makes you ******* miserable
To think about in the least

But you will always have the id
The uncooperative
You will do the things you want to do
And you will hate yourself for it

You will play Rocket League
And you will watch **** and ******* insistently
Because your girlfriend is two states away
And everyone likes you
But they like the cardboard cutout
The mutant
The heretic

There is the real you
In all its whiskey soaked glory
Behaving
As Elliot said
As the wind behaves

There is no rhyme
Or reason
To happiness
It is a spent cigarette ****
A used ******
An empty beer bottle

It is whatever makes you forget
Let it detach you
Let it separate you
Breathe disgusting, choking clouds

Understand that
No matter how many people
Or how many organizations
Or how many missed strokes you have on the keys >/0-
Or how many publishing companies
Or corporate
******* bloodsuckers
Tell you how useless you are

You are a beautiful mixed bag
Something so complicated and implicit
That you can not be defined by a single term
Take pride in that
And **** everybody else

Leave all the bloated corpses by the wayside
Take vacations
Drink good *****
Play video games until the politicians
Consider you a threat

Stop considering everyone else
And consider
Just once
Yourself

It’s a hulking tank of a car
Copper colored
The emblem on the steering wheel is dented
I punched it when I got cut off on 95
Trying to honk at the BMW that swerved into my lane
Without using a turn signal

The stereo too
The face is cracked
The glass is blemished
It ate one of my tapes
So I caught it with a solid right
And sent a spider web etching through it

The passenger’s side floor is littered with garbage
Cans, wrappers, plastic bottles, receipts, pine needles, pens and pencils
It sounds like a junkyard wind chime
When I break too quickly
And the air doesn’t work anymore
I had a guy I know
Cross some wires and tubes
So that the heat worked
I figured back sweat
Is better than frostbite

The back seat is torn to ****
I had the back tire off my mountain bike when I was driving it somewhere
And some sharp protrusion
I couldn’t even tell you what it’s called
Caught the leather seat and gave it a nice ****
And a few peppered puncture marks

It had a six CD changer in the trunk until it broke
My dad
(it was originally his car)
Got it installed when he bought it
Because he thought people would try to steal the head unit
I have no idea why

He always said it was such a nice car while he drove it
Then he handed it down to me
Now he never says much about it
He just points out all the little dings and dents
Since the last time he spared a minute to look at it

Apparently,
These kinds of things never happen to him

The people I see driving ’03 Sables on the road
Have one of three hair colors
Blue, white, and mustard yellow
I assume the yellow is supposed to be blond
And they have liver spots on their hands
And they wear big wrap around sunglasses
Like Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator

Sometimes they wave to me
And I wave back
“That guys driving my car!” they must think
But they are driving my car
I just don’t have the chance to stop and tell them

I had some high school kid
Who was learning to drive with his dad
Take a corner too quick
He smacked into the back right door
And slowly pulled over to the side of the road with his hazards on
The dad jumped out of the passenger’s side
Pouring out apologies and nervously wringing his hands
The front of their car
Looked like it had been put through a sausage grinder
My back right door
Looked like it had that morning

I shrugged
And told the nervous dad that it was cool
No one was hurt
No reason to involve insurance
I’ve never had my hand shaken so hard
He jumped in and they sped off
I smiled to myself as the kid took another corner too fast
And careened into traffic

It pulls a little to the right when I drive it now
But it still takes me home
Wherever that may be

Well,
You never thought you'd be here
Not at this age
Not knowing what you know
In fact,
Why isn't the whole world
Lining up to kiss your feet?

You know it all
You've been there
And if you haven't been
Someone
A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend
Has been

All your bad experiences
Those are the world's bad experiences
Disregard the child soldier
The **** victim
The mutated and deformed
These?
These are real problems
If they aren't on the surface
They fester below
Rotting away at whatever you could hide away
We all feel so bad for no one

Daddy is too rich
He loves his guns and his motorcycles
And mommy got remarried to some maniac
Who has a drawer specifically for tissues and a sports car

How is an upstanding young man
Expected to compete with that?

On the mountain’s peaks
I will one day live and laugh
With the birds and clouds

Waking up
Worrying about money
Collecting funeral home cards with a saint on the front
Picking up the phone
*******
Thinking too ******* much
Pouring valuable time into invaluable pursuits
Fleeting glimpses of fulfillment
Things that make you feel more empty than before

Complications
All types of complications
Disease
Hunger
Lack of motivation
Mostly, it's a lack of content
That is the real side effect
The thorn with canines in your side
Telling you that it's never done

Be the best
Or the worst
Or anything
Please, be anything
It's better than being nothing
A lack of a person
An oxygen bandit
Another festering fat bag
A talking recycled opinion

Having a few too many drinks
And acting like a sage
The very act renders the desired result useless
Acknowledgment of enlightenment
Can only confirm
That there is so much more to learn.

Life will be better
When you shatter the mirror
And walk the mountains

Many drunken nights
I’ve blacked out with my shoes on
Good night gentleman