John Reed

8.2

I walk with the dreams of the child I was,

who walks with his father, handsome and hurried.

My mother is young as the first wish of love.

The ember of youth is a crumbling fury.

A man is a paper sack full of sins,

greasy with donuts and coffee twice brewed,

calloused in hand and sodden and ripping,

pale as his vision and bruised as his muses.

Dimwitted, dull-eyed, the ember gone dark,

dollars to donuts and donuts to dust,

liar to lover and lover to jerk,

child to father and father to shark,

a man is the door, the car and the lot.

Men, in the end, are their work and their luck.  

68

Every once in a while, I get a hall pass,

which is good because I need enemies,

and they're not always easy to locate.

Sometimes, all it takes is rolling over.

But other times, you need to look alive,

you need to scrub yourself down and turn on

that last vestige of charisma, madness,

that fatherly recoil, over the line,

that smile onto the not-so-great beyond,

where all of us are used-to-be lovers.

Every once in a while, I stay out late,

well past the limelight of these memories,

inscribed with the choler of these outcasts.  

67

We can't hold everything, but we try

sometimes, to hold them longer than we should.

Over there in the windowsill, you'll find

a bicycle and sidecar made of wire,

and an obling stone from a beach in France,

as if, as if, as if I remember,

as if I could look back with these glass eyes.

Some things, you'll hold as long as you can stand.

That jar, I tried to fill with the river.

In this scar, I would have fossilized fire.

But look, I've held my breath under the ice,

and I came in here alone and naked,

with just my feet, my voice, and my blue sky.   

66 

(China shop)

Ok, you didn't need to break something.

When people come into this china shop,

they tiptoe around, they oo and they aa,

and then when they walk out, they slam the door.

I spend my whole life sweeping up the glass,

rethreading crystals onto chandeliers,

trying to crazy glue the porcelain,

telling myself that it was just an accident,

and I'll crawl around and find all the gears

to reassemble the two grandfather clocks,

which maybe needed cleaning, and then I'll

fix the doorknob, which didn't even lock.

Tomorrow, I can reattach the sign.

originally published in Vice

65

I don't think I'm ready to talk to you.

It could be that I'm afraid of something.

Well, it must be that I'm afraid of you.

But when I hunt for fear behind my eyes,

I find black slate, or maybe it's marble.

The fear, though fear is a weak word for it,

threads with a bodkin, into my abdomen, 

and coils back out.  It's the knot that pulls

us to tomorrow, slings us past our gifts,

and drags us through undiagnosed diseases.

If I'm afraid, I'm afraid of the future,

of you, on the far end of this ribbon,

tired of pulling, with something else to do.

64 

(I'm not mad, beautiful)

I'm not mad, beautiful, that would be

like blaming the sun for casting shadows,

like cursing the ocean with a threat of rain.

The worst gift of sin is hypocrisy.

The better gift is stinging forgiveness,

like pigeon pecks in morning vomit,

because wrong to wrong, all of us are leaders.

A few more hours of my silence—

you won't be bothered to think about it.

And why should you?  There isn't any we.

But that look of yours hurled me from heaven,

me, who for your grace trades to live below,

who for a glimpse of sky, lives in the sea.    

originally published in Vice

63

You show up when you want me to help you.

You show up, talking about all you've done,

since the last time you sent me your bio.

You show up, not knowing I have children,

not knowing that I've fed the hungry world,

soothed lions that tumbled in rose bushes,

plucked their thorns and plastered the komodo,

who, just sleeping in his lair, was scaled

under the chin by the wild lunges 

of one more hero with one more dungeon

and a hex on one more magic chateau.

You show up, still sick, still hunched, and still drooling,

still mooning over your handful of crumbs.

62

I might have a present for you, this time.

All gifts are lies.  But I don't think you'd want

for me to come here with nothing for you,

with nothing when I've already given,

when you've seen the somethings stuck in my teeth,

when, well, really, it goes without saying

that, well, I think we both know I'd be right

to point out that we don't need a story,

that the songs we know are the songs we sing,

that this for you is—well, yes, agreed then.

So what, you can guess what I have for you.

All the better the surprise, because

the biggest present is the biggest lie.

61

She got every single thing she wanted

by avoiding smiling liars like me.

She knew better than to trust these jackals,

with their arrow eyes and teeth like cold air,

with their laughter, their true-sounding laughter,

about lions who didn't make the kill.

The lions, they say, don't come until dawn,

long after the last child has been felled,

after the loin is stripped from the giraffe,

after fear cuts time and shows time to fear.

But Elizabeth, when you spoke to us all,

book in hand, not sure who would save you,

you turned right to me, reached just for me, "John."

60 (little miss)

Little miss, little miss, don't you miss me?

Miss me, miss me, miss me, little me miss. 

Miss, miss me, little miss, miss me a little.

Put on your sunglasses and miss me, lips—

lips and sunglasses, and wicker baskets,

and a picnic pattern two-piece with ties,

and yellow sandals from the dollar mart,

and never flown, high high, never flown kites.

Little miss, little miss, sealed with a miss,

with a glass of wine and handful of spit,

with sun, sunglasses, and hair in a mist—

little miss, with hairspray under a tree,

miss me a little at the count of   

59

Just a few minutes after eleven,

and I won't be sorry until sunset,

when you have chased the horizon

into a black laugh and unblinking sleep.

My wishes scatter infinitive verbs,

cast to your feet like bruised wedding petals,

to your eyes looking, looking for the herd,

afraid that you girls—you woman,

you—have strayed too far on legs too weak.

What will we two knead?  The flour and leaven,

in a kitchen where the sun rays no debt,

where we are not (s)old, and we are not burned.

You girls.  You.  What happens if you don't turn?   

58 

(?)

Didn't you come looking for trouble, and didn't you find it?

Didn't you wave to the twelve apostles?

To say goodbye or maybe ask which way,

to not a dozen but lucky thirteen,

to the baker's gift of wanting too much?

Not what you asked for?  Twelve blades and a razor?

Not what you wanted?  The smooth touch, rough?

(I know you're not sorry we've lost our way—that we're children still walking upstream.)  

Haven't you and I seen the holiday?

Aren't the guesses free from their bottles?

Isn't it June, the year of Quezacotl?

Isn't our best suit birthday and hazmat?

57 

(13 lies)

The truth is, I only tell 13 lies.

Lie no. 2: I lie in praise of heaven.

Three: this is between just the two of us.

Four: in the silence we share, we are whole.

Yes, I heard you (five), I was listening.

Of course it matters to me.  Very much.

No, it doesn't bother me, it's nothing.

Da-ding … lucky 7s, ding, jackpot.

For every lie, I'll give you a nickel.

A lie is a live heart, hopping in dust.

Just a few minutes after eleven.

You and I, we are a dozen goodbyes.

A better lie is a fountain of youth.

Without lies, none of us are beautiful.

originally published in Pen Poetry Series

56

She didn't get it all, but she got most.

What little there is now, is as salt,

decreed to black the street, the ice all melted

     to white once stone in tidal stains of tears—

the summer already lost, freon spent

on rooms cooled enough for college sweatshirts,

and loveless nights, nettled, fresh as spearmint.

If she thinks of one thing, I am the worst,

the first smiling visage of her own fears,

human, briefly, as velvet to velveteen,

as a flashing dagger to the dull hilt,

as a virus to a p-zero host.

She left me the lie, but she took the boast.  

55

This way madness lies.  This way madness lies,

in the blue volt of an hourly motel,

light of Tuesday's ensemble for casket,

on starched sheets dishonored but still welcoming,

enseamed, lascivious, but maybe clean,

maybe a profession to the "orderlies."

"Orderlies," for the torn charade, in heap, 

for the card you have, while they have the key,

for the ashtray tip you don't think to bring,

for the paper slippers, left in plastic,

for knowing one doorway opens on hell,

for the front desk, stop watch, signature, price.

We lie mad in our bed, made free of lice.  

53.2

Why would I lie when I can just be wrong?

I've fallen off course, drifted from orbit.

I'm here, paddling, pushing off the stray neutrinos,

casting excess weight out of the airlock,

asphyxiating and decompressing,

but more afraid of the nearing planet,

Earth, mundane, mud dispelled from Saturn's rings,

to the sun, as soulless as a magnet,

cracked, tossed in dust, in sorrow's second look,

made know noledgeable of the know nown.

as bereft of birth's promise as spit.

The stars, stars, while we find the long way down.

What better invitation to the ice?

This way madness lies.  This way madness lies.

originally published in Pen Poetry Series

53

Why would I lie when I can just be wrong?

I've fallen off course, drifted from orbit.

I'm here, paddling, pushing off the stray neutrinos,

casting excess weight out of the airlock,

asphyxiating and decompressing,

but more afraid of the nearing planet,

Earth, mundane, mud dispelled from Saturn's rings,

to the sun, as soulless as a magnet,

cracked, tossed in dust, in sorrow's second look,

made know noledgeable of the know nown.

as bereft of birth's promise as spit.

Wouldn't you rather have a fool, a clown,

than a bashful liar, faithless, untrue?    

But actually, you're crazy, aren't you?

52

But actually, you're crazy, aren't you?

Aren't you on the corner of the bed?

In the daylight.  Saying I'd better hope

nobody comes in through the open door.

Your square glasses can't hide your drifting eye,

and I know you've answered the call before.

"Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride."

I can hear the rattling of the freight door.

I know you have a secret, bound in rope,

that the gold band on your hand, in your head,

is a knot around your finger, your youth.

What part could I have in this divine plan?

A liar, a liar, is a good man.

51

Our little losses just the cheer of crows;

a laughing sheen on the face of the cliffs;

the wet limestone, gray and white, cold as eyes;

the still dance, wind, in wait, in praise of winter.  

There's no siren.  There's no siren, blowing.

We are given unto autumn's bargain.

Our lives of snow to fall upon the sea.

Nobody turns back to home on the grange.

We are the break in years, the splinter

between December and January.

We're the shaky step into the skiff.

We're the five fingers in the puppet's clothes.

We're the promise.  We're what the liar knows.

50 

(the barmaid's freckled hand)

Let me tell you what a liar I am

I'll tell you now, right here, everything,

or, well, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't.

I'm more interested in you, anyway.

And isn't it always there? In the tinkling

glasses, laughter, and the barmaid's freckled hand?

Isn't it the grail mix of the mixed drink?

A liar, a liar, is a good man.

These men with the porcelain on the quay,

are trusted all, never not innocent.

Who could love a man who won't dance, won't sing?

Trust a man who trails his bowels, who knows,

our little losses—just the cheer of crows.  

36 → 49 → 45 → 46 → 47 → 37 → 48 

(first crown)

Dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.

Have we not always known of this visit?

Betwixt between the vagaries of when 

we first me, eye to eye, too curious.

It isn't dangerous that I'm handcuffed

driving through this wide wide state on a bus,

the danger is unbound, furious,

inviolate, the blossom of chaos,

Zen, to your selfish, lonely inquisitor.

Are we not the old matchbook, struck to fire?

Rouge not, dear girl, and no more careful bangs.

I promise you darkness, and blinding sun.   

 →

I promise you darkness, and blinding sun,

and a carnival wheel at twilight,

and in death, a ham atop the maypole.

It will be everything I've promised you,

our lies like fatty fish under the ice,

pendulous, waiting for their fishers to come,

in dead winter, when lovers speak in white,

honest as they are cold, as sundown sun.

Honest as idle lies, promised in twos,

fat as double boasts, and spoons of fishroe,

I promise you the boardwalk and the crier.

("Step right this way for edification!"),

and that we will marvel, blissful, behind our bars:

"Is this the exhibit to the conquered?"

 →

Is this the exhibit to the conquered?

Is this where I come to see my old friends

chopped to messes, plagued with poxes?

Is this where I find strangers I don't like

crucified on refrigerator doors

that aren't mine, that nobody will touch,

that sanitation just leaves on the corner,

bloody and mildewed, handle set in rust?

Is this where someone else's palsied life—

shrieking and whining—is better left mocked?

Is this where I come to kick the sickbed?

Where the gumball machines dispense skewers?

Is this the place for the miracle cure?

→

Is this the place for the miracle cure?

Here, sitting round this veneer table,

where we all hate each other, like family.

Like we know, which we do, the sad, sad truth.

Like it's thanksgiving in a hotel room.

We'd better spend our time on other lies:

chasing flesh in the corners of this tomb;

finding the airshaft by following the flies;

     blinking at the black night and cured by rue.

Better we two saved, than all of us dull.

Better two of us born, than all of us still.

Better we are spawned from these doors and halls;

the asylum rescinds the naked law.

 →

The asylum rescinds the naked law.

Given that we've woken to the surprise,

of these hospital walls, these glazed brick walls,

these residents and orderlies, all eyes,

hairs, teeth, and hands that grab handles all day.

Given our sorrow at this arrival,

given the initiatives underway,

shouldn't we exercise our proviso?

Shouldn't we shudder in this breach of lies?

Climb these burnished tiles into the warm maw?

Into our own teeth, hair, and darting eyes.

Aren't we beholden to one jest cause?

Don't you smell the fumes of our mores

on fire at the apothecary?

 →

On fire at the apothecary,

all that effort, melting in sealed boxes.

Aisle upon aisle of hot ashes

on robin-speckled linoleum tile.

You, still running in your rubber-sole flats.  

Me, vapid in eye, ever here, hovering,

watching you fly through the teetering racks,

down and back, manic, lover to mothering.

You look uncomfortable, all that crying.

Maybe no need for lipstick and lashes.

Maybe it's best you take off your stockings.

Maybe if you ran in your lingerie ... 

     or maybe it's best that you just strip down.

Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

 →

Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

The workers are gone, flown off like vultures.

The embers are oily and stark, as black

and vengeful as the eyes of once lovers

now soulless to you in your soulful eyes.

Isn't there something in this heat, this white

ash from our bed of stinging, flightless flies?

Isn't there some flint of wet delight

apart from the fire?  Some cool other shore?

You know that our resolve is lusterlack,

that we, tweenbe, are combusted sutures,

that this blueprint, charred, this foundation, ruined,

this best guess, blown, this parting of the briars,

dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.

49

I promise you darkness, and blinding sun,

and a carnival wheel at twilight,

and in death, a ham atop the maypole.

It will be everything I've promised you,

our lies like fatty fish under the ice,

pendulous, waiting for their fishers to come,

in dead winter, when lovers speak in white,

honest as they are cold, as sundown sun.

Honest as idle lies, promised in twos,

fat as double boasts, and spoons of fishroe,

I promise you the boardwalk and the crier.

("Step right this way for edification!"),

and that we will marvel, blissful, behind our bars:

"Is this the exhibit to the conquered?"

48

Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

The workers are gone, flown off like vultures.

The embers are oily and stark, as black

and vengeful as the eyes of once lovers

now soulless to you in your soulful eyes.

Isn't there something in this heat, this white

ash from our bed of stinging, flightless flies?

Isn't there some flint of wet delight

apart from the fire?  Some cool other shore?

You know that our resolve is lusterlack,

that we, tweenbe, are combusted sutures,

that this blueprint, charred, this foundation, ruined,

this best guess, blown, this parting of the briars,

dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.

originally published in LiveMag

47

The asylum rescinds the naked law.

Given that we've woken to the surprise,

of these hospital walls, these glazed brick walls,

these residents and orderlies, all eyes,

hairs, teeth, and hands that grab handles all day.

Given our sorrow at this arrival,

given the initiatives underway,

shouldn't we exercise our proviso?

Shouldn't we shudder in this breach of lies?

Climb these burnished tiles into the warm maw?

Into our own teeth, hair, and darting eyes.

Aren't we beholden to one jest cause?

Don't you smell the fumes of our mores

on fire at the apothecary?

46

Is this the place for the miracle cure?

Here, sitting round this veneer table,

where we all hate each other, like family.

Like we know, which we do, the sad, sad truth.

Like it's thanksgiving in a hotel room.

We'd better spend our time on other lies:

chasing flesh in the corners of this tomb;

finding the airshaft by following the flies;

     blinking at the black night and cured by rue.

Better we two saved, than all of us dull.

Better two of us born, than all of us still.

Better we are spawned from these doors and halls;

the asylum rescinds the naked law.

45 

Is this the exhibit to the conquered?

Is this where I come to see my old friends

chopped to messes, plagued with poxes?

Is this where I find strangers I don't like

crucified on refrigerator doors

that aren't mine, that nobody will touch,

that sanitation just leaves on the corner,

bloody and mildewed, handle set in rust?

Is this where someone else's palsied life—

shrieking and whining—is better left mocked?

Is this where I come to kick the sickbed?

Where the gumball machines dispense skewers?

Is this the place for the miracle cure?

44

Death is a twenty-dollar holiday.

The first dollar buys a seat on the train,

then a dollar on lunch and a redcap,

and at the stopover you send a drink

to a tall pale woman with red lipstick,

who slouches when she laughs but laughs and laughs.

Her legs are crossed and she scratches her calves

     with her heels and her bitten fingertips.

But it's too long a trip to sit and think,

count pennies against a line on a map,

and spend your days on days, three meals a day.

So you decide you're going to the grave

with this woman, and nothing to save. 

43

I keep waking up in this burlap sack.

I'm on the edge of the Hudson River.

There are rocks in the bag with me.

I'm naked, so I hop back to my place.

My wife is upstairs, working with the ropes,

which she says she needs for an art project.

The other day, I found these two buckets,

sitting right in front of me and the couch.

Floor was mopped, and I didn't want to traipse

around the wet cement, which I'd have to clean up.

So I kept testing it with my finger—

waited until it was firm, but still tacky,

and then I dragged over to the kitchen tap. 

42 

(old friend)

Applebees and a strip club, all for free.

Isn't that heaven to us, old friend?

Old friend, who stood with me at the divide, 

knowing, just briefly, they were just one cliff,

just one crashing chasm of heels and jeans,

and decades, and children who understand.

The children can forgive, unlike the man

who saw the face of Satan in his spleen,

smiling, sanguine, exposed in his white ribs.

If it's not right, what then?  If it's not right,

what then?  If it's not right, what then?  What then?

Heaven is a strip club and Applebees,

and it's all for free, my friend, all for free.

41

All I really want to do is stab people.

Once, I got a chance to do it.

But the guy kept trying to get away,

and I'd stab him where he was moving.

He'd reach out a hand, a foot, I'd stab it.

After a while, he moved less often,

so I stabbed him a few times in the back.

I talked a little about the woman,

but I wasted the opportunity.

It's just an accident to hack, hack, hack.

To stab, stab, stab is intentional, will.

Resort to speculation is a shame,

but the point, I'd suppose, is intention.

originally published in Vice

40

She smelled like puke and a bar, and childhood;

where love is a dozen thoughtless handouts,

and old women you don't know ask your name,

and slip you money rotting with perfume,

like your parents are children that left them,

and you're all they have, and they're all you have.

Smiles like that, on the bus down seventh avenue.

She smells like my ex-step-father's girlfriends,

barmaids that laughed like porch paint and bourbon,

and looked at you like you were more of the same.

You and your friends and your miserable hopes.

She'd seen your type before, and wouldn't budge.

They all came into the bar, with a bulge.

39

Is that you again, standing next to me?

Wearing last night's dress, missing a button.

Rolling through the city like some big lie

moves the traffic this side of the freeway.

Wouldn't we be better off in three hours?

Wouldn't you have some of what you came for?

Aren't you looking ahead much too far?

These years come off with a drink and a shower,

and the choir observing a song of praise,

and in words, in acts, living in defiance,

no longer shadows of our professions,

drifting in the aphonia of beasts,

inchoate, excepting laughter and sleep.

38

Possession is nine tenths of the law,

where I come from, where city met meadows,

in lots of rubble and praying mantis.

I was sent from there, with my dirty hands,

to dig to soil through the crumbling asphalt,

to discover species long thought extinct,

to name the garden tended in neglect.

Or is wind the origin to the call?

The sick sunrise, the desert sand.

Is genesis a stale breath of aspic?

A prick of nausea in the shallows?

A formal invitation to deep waters?

Where the seas of our lovers, as by the tide,

may be taken as possessions from inside.

37

On fire at the apothecary,

all that effort, melting in sealed boxes.

Aisle upon aisle of hot ashes

on robin-speckled linoleum tile.

You, still running in your rubber-sole flats.  

Me, vapid in eye, ever here, hovering,

watching you fly through the teetering racks,

down and back, manic, lover to mothering.

You look uncomfortable, all that crying.

Maybe no need for lipstick and lashes.

Maybe it's best you take off your stockings.

Maybe if you ran in your lingerie ... 

     or maybe it's best that you just strip down.

Why not?  This place is burning to the ground.

36 

(dangerous)

Dangerous, is the smiling face of desire.

Have we not always known of this visit?

Betwixt between the vagaries of when 

we first me, eye to eye, too curious.

It isn't dangerous that I'm handcuffed

driving through this wide wide state on a bus,

the danger is unbound, furious,

inviolate, the blossom of chaos,

Zen, to your selfish, lonely inquisitor.

Are we not the old matchbook, struck to fire?

Rouge not, dear girl, and no more careful bangs.

I promise you darkness, and blinding sun.  

35 

(falling)

Warm from the cradle of God's presence,

rushing in the breath of upper atmosphere,

first air, and inhalation, and welcome

to the Terra, where God only glances,

and remembers our names with detachment,

meeting our prayers with shattering glass,

in shards of sorrow and fleet fulfillment.

The sun is branded with our mortal cast,

flesh derided, bereft of time's expanses,

made gentle to the lie and rolling drum,

and the trespass of the righteous in fear,

our brethren, banished to forbidden senses,

to the crime, delight, of the Godless trenches.

34

(one for the team)

We are all children here—against the wall

of the gymnasium—smelling of fat,

waiting for our turns, bellied with futures.

Nobody knows how and we're all afraid

of the principal, who doesn't love us,

who prefers the other group of children,

who waves us to the foul line, the ashes,

and gives us our punishments, one by one.

We know better than to cry or complain

and stand like the nurse tells us, lips sutured,

wondering if we're really that bad.

As best we can, chest out, heads straight and tall,

shaking from the shower of gasoline,

we strike the match, and take one for the team.

33

Little did you know about the implant.

You thought so so hard about the couple,

about the made beds of some kid's parents,

and how it was we two—there—stayed the same.

Little did we know—drunk, sleeping children—

about the aliens, eyeless, hairless,

regarding our embrace from the distance

of our futures, craving torrid zen,

and the perfect turn of a bent lifetime.

They drew their razor on our teen intent,

and seamed into the felted, virgin wool,

the undone, the unmade, the unpliant.

Don't you remember what they said to us?

"Good children, hold hands and run in the house."

32 

(paean)

    We of waste, waisted we, who would squander 

    sorrow, squander the rich trash, the morning grinds,

    the pears over-ripened in the fruit bowls—

for we are gardenless in Eden,

naked in the shadow of forbidden trees—

    we, who would lower our child gaze, to age,

    to fall unwinged from heaven's favor, seized 

    with cheeks of grief and mouths of bitter sage,

should we not stake our spite, grow weeds in bins,

    to praise creation, render heaven whole,

    and sow eternal mercies of our strife?

    Wastes tended, pears halved, in an alms of rapture:

    is it not to us to ivy the arbor?

31 

(sorry R)

Sorry R.  I am so so sorry R.  

Immodest me, modest of modesty,

giving you so so nothing, and so knotted

    a so so-not de nada denial.  

By whiches bewitched and witches beshrewed,

    so so not the case for the trial.

    Sorry R, you know who you are.  How rude

that the heavens would offend a child.

So so a pear and a skirt disregarded.

How so do I creep in my prosody?

So so sorry R, you know who you are.

I’m just one drink at a martini bar.

So sorry R, this crying old, and far.

30

Me alone, dear God, in these hills of flesh, making

nothing of something, something of nothing.

Do you hear my prayers?  Or here, do I pray for

nothing for nothing, something for something?

Are there no gifts with heaven's broken promise?

Nothing to something, something to nothing.

A ribbon in wind, this motherless aching.  

Nothing no something no something no nothing.  

I am tidal need, and break-water spray.

Know something, nothing: a know-nothing something.

A minute abyss of bleavenly hiss.  

Some know know-nothing.  No, some no knowing.

We dear know God, no Godless know nots.

We dear, no God, know Godless, know naught. 

29 

(2B at “The Tannery”)

You and I.  Then we, on the railroad tracks.

walking the blue-gray and rusty byway.

Rocks to throw, spikes to keep, and nuts and bolts

to wonder how it holds, what fell apart.

Beyond the houses, the valley, the pond,

the farms, the charred foundations of the school:

a distant mountain of shining diamonds,

much farther than we thought, and up close, coal.

We sit in the shade of a mining cart,

wish for kaeng khiao wan—strip by the high voltage

of a bulldozer cab.  That end of May.

Once a day, once a night: thunder and clack,

teeth rattling in our gums, as the freight cars passed.

originally published in the Coffin Factory

28 

(your name is Slim, slim)

I am more gaunt than my slender zero,

counted not ghost among the living doomed.

Who but you?  Jackdaw, rover, sister?

Slender sickness, me, and we rotting meat.

Flyer, no flies, from Bangkok, Germany,

or here, where the lies are collected,

hovering at the curbs in white July,

flittering former addresses, texted.

Do you miss the old town, the frozen sleet,

the small white car and bridge on the river?

Your old furniture and organized grooms?

Elysium fields.  But not gull, not crow.

    Prey above, little sister, or below?

originally published in the Coffin Factory

27 

(Queen of Ice)

O bitter light, O queen of ice, O wicked flicker 

candlelight, blue snow to touch, "too much

too much," the queen would melt with my delight.

O laughing sprite, O smirking spite—icy

lips and me on fire.  Heat to scald and hate

to tire, lust to lies and lies to strife,

glacial teeth meet slushy need—frost to heat,

love to sleet, and we not we just fire free.

    In sleep, the cold is sorrow blind.

    By day, I push the tempest, tossed. 

Unto death do us part, pneumonic quickened,

queen to stricken, life to meat and meat to ice,

won't you, cold to coldest strife—stay my wife?

26 

(more Ann)

How is it you would rely upon me?

I would lie at your command, relied upon.

The words of the promise, I read, writ large,

to meet the larger vow to the larger read—

and provisos and riders shall rest in peace,

assured safe keep, and devotedly prayed upon.

Rely upon me and the harder reads with ease,

hour on hour shall be reliably free.

Rely upon me to honor my wards,

to be to you doubly true, or true to none,

to undertake the blest and the holy.

Rely upon me as if the ice age

moaned the vow in a chorus of moraines.

originally published in Wordriot

also published in Vice

podcast by InDigest

25

Heaven descend, wash over this ocean,

wink at the wretched, and leave us islands

unbreached by the banks and shoals of time,

with keeps of steep cliffs and uncharted shores

pocked by shiphulls and corpses on the rocks,

where sins may flourish unremembered,

where flesh is first and time is tender,

where fog wets the granite which streaks our hocks,

where wind blows, boughs break, and limbs pour,

    and the measure of measures is brine.

    Divine Heaven, perfect, eternal, grant us,

        in our short, broken lives, your origin,

for under surrender is devotion.

originally published in Thumbnail Magazine

podcast by InDigest

24

Smash smash smash, sex and half, sex and half.

Woman and a man, woman and a mask.

    Crash crash crash, the lady's in the trash. 

Half half 

        half half never shall it ask ask.

The luckless in life are lovers divine.

Win    

        win but God will take the loser's side

and Venus will love the sick Saturnine,

    and rub lessterlust the life satisfied.

Not me, him, not you, her, not us, us,

not love, love, not loss, loss, not bad, bad.

And it's never never enough, enough.

What we have we had, and have and halve.

        Never last, never last.  Check out the trash.

    Petty the inn and pity the cash.  

23 

(double R)

Double R and you know who you are.

And I'm the friendly among the enemies.

And more dangerous than you know, you know.

You know a child can climb onto my back,

and I can get myself up from all fours,

and I don't feel the weight of the body.

You know I'm born with an X against me.

But when you look up at me sex is sour,

sugared candy in a see-through wrapper.

Better the start than the end of the show.

So.  

Imagine you and me, hated we:

me, wrecker, dancing on the bar;

and you, rocker, breaking your guitar.

22 

(seated at her table)

To a woman like that, I'm nobody.

But this other woman says that's not true.

The first is Harvard, summa com laude.

The second is Vassar, professor's delight.

It used to be a real victory,

to get myself adopted by the first,

to get myself admired by the second.

Now it's something else, something more like thirst.

Despite themselves, they laugh like I'm funny,

like my urban blight is a city of light,

like one day I won't dry up in the draught,

and I'm still a dirty, charming youth,

knowing the alleys of the hymnody.

It's not what we want now, but we're still stunned,

and we turned, she and I, to what beckoned.   

21 

(just years)

She leaned over the bar to arm wrestle.

She'd pulled me to a stool to let me win.

Red hair and green eyes and I lied and lied.

It was some other kid's birthday party,

but she wasn't anybody's mother.

She had a tanned, freckled, sunburned bust,

    she wore a low-cut, rust, v-neck sweater,

and I said that no woman could beat me,

and boasted of other women who'd tried,

and she let me win again and again,  

    and said "Ooh!" when she felt my muscle,

and she smiled, part with love, part with disgust,

knowing that just years had come between us.

20 

(John John)

John John automaton, born to never, 

never learn. John John automaton, born

to never never learn. Born to ever 

ever urn.  Born to burn and born to scorn.

John John automaton, got nothing,

nothing, nothing done. John John automat,

nothing winning, always spinning spinning

spinning. John-a-folds his wrinkles flat.

John John automatic. Panic panic

panic panic. Needs to needs to needs to naught.

Needs machined, by house mechanic.

John-O-John, ought-to-John on auto ought.

Not John-o-ton. John John, not John-o-ton.  

John John, not John-o-ton.  John John, not John

originally published in Vice

podcast by InDigest

19 

(saints and winners)

She shows up, hangs around, and smiles at me.

I hover over her hair, and she knows.

They visit like this, when they’re in-between.

Hard to say who’s putting on the show.

You can see any part of a woman

if you look hard enough at her face.

To see her lips move, you can’t listen,

and she knows you can’t hear her from her waist.

Good trick: the overcoat then all that skin.

No matter how it goes, I break and break,

and I count the delights, for saints and winners.

And if I could just say what I can’t say

I would say and say and say: words to air,

and what a woman should know when you smell her hair.

originally published in Column

18

Sea-moon blue.  He marries the Paris sky,

her eyes, and a loose knit dress of fine wool.

Just the color, and she’ll never know why—

their love no more lie, their life no less full

than a marriage for pride or weeping want.

A boy will always miss the beach, the gulls—

the thoughtless gaze, the begging and the taunts.

And at low tide the city is wet sand

and the seaside town of seventeen-fifty-five

and buckets of beer and cherry stone clams

and poorhouses, oysters, apples and dives.

          And love is long or far between us:

the distance between New York and Paris.

originally published in Column

17 

(life unweaved)

You live on the other side of the world,

and somewhere between us, in the ocean,

me with my crutches and you with your curls,

and the green coffee house with big muffins,

and the fanciest restaurant in town

(that used fresh basil and canned tomatoes),

and you and me in sex till we drowned,

and running through the corn to scare the crows—

we stay there, still and always wise young fools.

Bruised, raw, scratched, bitten, and frayed at the sleeve.

You and me, together on the lambswool.

And even now, now, my chapped lips still bleed,

when I know … that we have lived lying, not we,

     and that we are still we, in life unweaved.

originally published in Column

16 

(a long night)

A long night, my love, my sweet sick sunrise,

my drunken dawn, my pearly, priceless doom.

Who but you?  Waiting in my blinking eyes,

churning in exhaustion—my reckless fume.

Dirty feet, white thighs and somebody's bride;

divorcee, chapped lips and laughter to lie for.

We had no shame but we both had our pride.

Never were you mine, never was I yours.

Never came the nevermore, the sorrow

for the lost cold war, the bickered, battered

bedroom sores, mascara charred and marrow

bored.  I hate how they knew we would shatter.

     And whoever invented the promise

     had no love, made no concession, for us.

originally published in 1AM

also published in Vice

podcast by InDigest

Before 

(15)

Before, before, we are children afraid

of sleep, of the hallway behind the door.

To keep, to keep, we are bickering traders,

offering strong for weak, and peace for war.

Meek, meekly, while the choristers swing sweetly,

we weep at the ribbon of our one reward.

We cry beneath our mother's hand, preening.

We vie to exhaust our contented steward.

And the pretty, pretty darkness is our

cooing, caressing, ever-hushing mum.

We cry in minutes, and she waits in hours,

to lay us down to sleep when we are done—

to dream the wordless weightless dreams of children,

to voice the voiceless, and sing among the wren.

14 

(eleven)

Eleven years later she comes to me

and remembers she said "in ten years."

I remember I said we'd never speak,

but two children since I've nothing to fear.

She tells me she has a story to tell,

about the dream I gave her, which she lived:

there was wealth, a poor girl and art to sell,

and a rich man, an artist and a shiv,

and an engine left running at LAX,

and leaving behind a new way to live.

She wears high leather boots and shakes with sex,

and decides that we'll write it as a script.

Will it be all right, she asks, with my wife?

She knows that it's something her boyfriend won't like.

originally published in Vice

13 

(holiday)

Whatever is there to explain, my dear?

The tinker of regrets and little lies?

The suspended breath of holiday drear?

The needs, the dreams, in our sticky surmises?

We are too smart but we are still children.

We are too much grown and too far apart.

So little time is given our brethren,

we are toddlers in eyes, and broken hearts.

And how, my dear, might I detail the day?

Perhaps with the memories of the old

and the dead, and all I've seen from the train.

What would I tell, dear?  And what would I hold?

What little, my love, could I take to you?

Just a green blade of grass, frosted with dew.

12 

(Never Forever)

In Never Forever we live together,

eternal in terminal wanderlust.

The jokes aren't old and the coffee's not cold,

and we don't know the end of the end of us.

Should it always be roses and amorous crimes,

or tragic foreclosures of youths in their primes?

In Never Forever we love each other

estranged from the bridge at the terminus.

The wind isn't high and the river's not wide

and nothing is rattling under us.

Should it be nectar and honey and thyme,

or sirens and sirens and torn valentines?

Huffing and lusting and never enough—

hate tastes of iron and love tastes of blood.

11 

(joust that hack built)

Cruel crisis, and we, dusty dividends,

are flies fleeing, black mist, from the horsemeat.

Tuck your money into large plastic bins,

and hide your interest in moirée pleats.

There's still time for lifelong love, or a mistress,

or to make new friends with the newly human—

or to elect a new death queen or goddess,

or empress or temptress, or vampire granddame.

We are all of us ample and simple:

fat and stoopid happy with our horseshoes.

We are all high fashion and unpimpled.

Luckless, the lucky, who can't sing the blues.

"Viva!  Touché!  And take that, vile viper!

You shall quench the blade of this window wiper."  

10

Sad, alone, she is reaching for the world

with the mist of her breath on the window.

She wears a double string of tarnished pearls

and her wan eyes are punctured by sinkholes. 

She flies first class to Rome and Venice,

summers with vintners in Napa Valley,

vacations from thought in Los Angeles,

and hops the first copter back to the city.

She's tennis white and can read a sonnet,

and pretends there is youth in my stubble,

and writes of corsets like a baroness,

and can pluck a rare bloom from the rubble.

All of it lies, but what does it matter?

Poor boys like me are easy to flatter. 

9 

(seventy)

Seventy-seven ladies of sorrow,

dear hearts, cruel hearts, broken hearts and true hearts,

none of us saints, all of us hallowed,

for all that we teased, and picked life apart,

for all of our dreams, like flashes of dark,

for all of our heaving, gone with a puff,

for lipstick-rimmed crystal, greasy and stark,

for ashtrays of filtered cigarettes, snuffed,

for the little we took for far too much,

we shall be inurned in chambers of want.

For the youth we lost: be mingled in dust.

Be one dying breath in a shell of conch.

Seventy-seven, ladies of sorrow,

farewell my loves, and wake me tomorrow. 

8

I walk with the dreams of the child I was,

who walks with his father, handsome and hurried.

My mother is young as the first wish of love.

The ember of youth is a crumbling fury.

The fire is siphoned away by the wind;

the last wave of heat resolves into night.

A man is a paper sack full of sins:

greasy with donuts and earthly delights;

dissolving with coffee and factory work.

Calloused in hand and calloused in vision,

dim-eyed, dim-witted, the ember gone dark,

he kicks the gray ash for black coals to shun.

A man at the camp pyre, boy laid to rest,

donuts to dollars to donuts to dust.

7

Her breath catches.  I am white heat and ashes.

"I tore it outta the flesh of the world."

I am thundering to the annexes,

mad like a king, but only a herald.

My house is broken, cursed and divided. 

My lands are taxed, levied and barren.

I stand in the dancehall, a dimeshow crier:

"Visions of hell and glimmers of heaven!"

Not thrifty, not cunning, not friendly, not well.

Not nice to the in-laws on family picnics.

Promising all that a lie can foretell:

snake-oil massage, and vinegar vinic.

Recanted tropes of temperance forbidden,

as my seeking hand lies half forgiven.

6

Come to me like tomorrow to a child.

Like the day is cradle, blue world below,

to the misty, tussled dreams, half wild,

of cherished seraphs in cloudy furrows.

Like the dawn will wake us to memories

yet unknown, waiting in our baby brows.

Our lives of snow to fall upon the sea.

Our little losses just the cheer of crows.

Wake me, my sweet, to our pinky bodies,

like newborn pigs in sacks of spiky wheat.

Like she is, she is, she is she: a tease,

an angel, and a laughing whiskey neat.

Wake me, baby, from this too too solid dream.

Exit the woman, and enter, the steam.

5 

(little loser)

Nobody loves me like my little loser.

She would lift me, love me were I less man

than the clenched fist and busted-up bruiser

and tearless deaf-mute Führer that I am.

She would love me if I let the luckless

in, let the little villain believe in

all the suicidal wreckers of his

rotten youth (and onetime glimpse of freedom).

Let the backhand swing and the frying pan

break the window and settle in the trash—

two stories thick with black bags and old cans—

that's there at the bottom of the airshaft.

My little loser doesn't ask for much:

just to love me until I self-destruct.

4 

(adieu)

She comes like a wrecking ball in winter,

razing the old tenement and with it,

plink-plinking, she shatters your ice to splinters.

No one expects the foundation: the pit.

But you always recognized the ruins,

the crumbling walls, the painted hearts—you knew

it like a child alone will know to spin.

When you lie down, the weeds will take their pews,

and the white sun is too far to warm you,

and only the wrecking ball, your gray moon,

laps the empyrean for bloody dew.

And whenever she comes, she comes too soon.

And you will love her like the broken glass

loves the wind that blows away the ashes.

originally published in LiveMag

3

Vainglorious somethings undone by time.

No time for lust or enlightened delusions,

no time for sweaters and scissors and wine,

no time for sex and regrets and seclusion.

All of these mountains and mountains of nothing,

and life expeditions and reasons to climb,

are dross to the flesh and dust to the touch.

A dollar exchanged for a shiny new dime.

Spare me the treasons and rhymes of our youth.

We'll wake to the teeth marks with nothing to say.

We'll sit at the window not wanting the juice—

And tear, like we're dying, for air from the day.

My polymer china porcelain doll,

we'll deck you in finery plucked from the mall. 

2

Tire me with white lies and petty pretty 

complicity—we've never ventured far 

far from here, preferring civil to the city.

The summer streets don't smell of death, and tar

crossed avowals on mortar and concrete

are dusted away by hairspray and money.

The women walk fast, low cut and high cleat—

and men turn their heads, eyes sunken and puny.

Point to me, starlet, with newer good lies; 

watch my eyes receding, beady and dead.

Lie to me, lie to me, lie to me bride.

Gaze into the sockets of slime in my head.

We are all friendly and heavy with flesh.

Touch hands together, and pray we are blessed.

1

Sunshine or gold on a family urn

is a hue hard to hold, so I just stare.

How far did I come to have my brass turn?

Seventeen courtyards, with a cross to bear.

Beyond the churchdoors, she straddles the stairs.

The wind doesn't roar, the branches don't wave—

I am grounded with woes, leases and cares.

All of my kingdom for a little grave

where the happy pair are the fair and brave.

The grass is greener and the sunlight floods.

Nobody needs more, nobody needs saving.

The morning is sweet, but love tastes of blood.

And we are just weaving and she is just 

heaving and headstones are fevered with rust.