#1

i was carved from glacial unrest and diesel fuel and the day you looked at me from your roof with a drink i was uneasy i think and decided my problems were too much for your palatial view so i did what rocks do and calved and slammed myself into the cold oil-slicked Hudson waters below and sent riptides and shockwaves that made frequencies you still hear today about yourself as an empty granite shelf had you survived the fall

he claimed he had a medical degree

water
alcohol
smile
gauze
bludgeon
corners
file
burrs
pause
clean
tarp
needle nose
pliers
spackle
glands
leaking
lingers
saline
fingers
crimson
hands
twist clench seize
misshapen
abomination
performs
elective
surgery
autonomously
again
today
anesthesia
optional
forever
always

flight

thoughts get caught
flutter like lost doves
greased on our chins
slick bats of wings
beat the paths in
white flurries of frenzy
trapped on my face
smacking slapping stabbing
picking pulling grabbing
rummaging stubble for nests
purging worsts for bests
to dig up and plunge
feathered swords into my mouth
and softly choke me

i suffocate, i cough

and fly away again

the lovely why

keys are teeth biting into my words
sharpening sentences for forwards
the after long since typed
the vine cut
the line ripe

smiles suck the short sense from you
hardening the present promise
the now since spilled
the glass tipped
the cup filled

love loves lift lids to the sky
can opener eyes pried wide
the some other time
the precious try
the lovely why

lana the bee

stepped into a room full of madness
a slack lounge stuck inside of new orleans
costume night and Lana said she was a bumble bee
her gentleman friend offered stripper dust and shots for free

the band held command and doused out too-loud conversations
i thought too loud of you and drank through my justifications
why you weren’t there, caught lost in the air, still no answer
my cigarette burned, you were more malignant than cancer

Lana said “im’ma blow this town and work the show”
follow Kiss, tat her tits and get her demo on the radio
she played the drums, loved Eric Carr, said he fucking ruled
her trailer park twang had a funny little sting and had me fooled

so madness struck twelve and the band did fade
salt-shaker applause, a girl wrapped in gauze, just another day
Lana the bee, her gentleman friend and me
why you weren't there is why gaslights hugged hot scenery

reach down

found my stigmata
in a cereal box
but the decoder wouldn't spin
guess i'll reach down again
and drag the blue night out
black fist fixed with hope
betwixt blinding white notes
of stars strung on guitars
bending light into old
while playing youth
like a breeze breaks trees
(the hurricane truth)
disaster zones spring up
with each steely-eyed sip
this prize isn't it

guess i'll reach down again

old again

getting old folding cards faster than they're dealt hell awaits dates in a future that sutures past wounds so soon we forget the scars we get when young so fast to come undone and unravel the gravel beneath our feet ground to dust must we trust the next twenty to be filled with plenty of memories fun to me like the way we did the teens and the twenties and parties we screen and drop quick to have kids and cashed checks and 401k days in a maze we traversed and burst through the first time?

(old again when friends drop like flies and compromise is a capital letter word heard best when times stress the young at heart and mind)

old
all over
again

seaside '88

sunburnt smiles
taffy eyes
salted mouths
shout out surprise
boardwalk splinters
yanked out quick
the pretty bodies
the sea is slick
behind the arcade
i fix my hair
(she'll be standing there
like she promised)
she'll salt the air

coppertone steps
cheap coaster screams
salted mouths
shout out dreams
cotton candy hands
a girl's shape
seaside heights, 1988
ring toss kings
behind the arcade
brag about
the girls that came
(to find themsleves)

that's when tickets
became bigger
than the prizes themselves

that's when tickets
claimed all the shelves
and set every stuffed boy

free

mass transit

chain curl fly
link me fast
carry me quick
electric blast
shove me shape me
fit me in your mouth
grease face crawl
belch me south
ingestion
(directional congestion)
she's newspaper sexy
he smells like zoo
(i'm a rocket
a dream come true)
i'm a rat
tunneling to live
decibels of love
i'm showered with
coffee fist shake
long jacket wait

doors don't close
doors don't close
doors don't close

fury metal slow
chain curl go
link me carry me hold me
send me away

don't tell me you matter more

we take music to be something ingested culturally
annually since the inception of time
regardless of meter or rhyme
we should stand straight and revere
each sound that has crawled through an ear
and accept it as factually fulfilling but never willing
to take a cane to the ass of its bloated past
and punish its abusive insouciance
with powerful blasts of the dies it cast
did they forget the outlets they opened
closed shop along with the obvious intentions
of inevitable invention
long ago? for good reason?
seasons change, bland and strange
new days fire the coals of fuck you's and insurgence and angst against both
but music never cares how it's stoked
so long as you step aside as it rolls unabated
extricated like a shadow out from under yourself
to catch lit cannons of history
constantly repeating themselves

don't tell me you matter more