Feelings Get Delivered

This morning, a meteor streaked through
the sky over Western New York

at the same time I was using my tongue
to peel tattoos off someone's ribs.

I've learned over the years that you must
love your little life, but fill it with experiences

that make it seem bigger than it actually is
like a baby bird that has fallen from its tree

facing the shadow of an Amazon truck.



Radical Acceptance

As the moon paints herself blue
I’m staring at the people
I would've slept with years ago
sprawled out in the parkway
building tiny skylines with sugar cubes.

Imagine desire as a wild horse with three legs.
Then, stop. The less you wonder how it still gallops
along the horizon despite everything, the better.

Eventually, you just get tired of finding things
to cover up your scars, so I keep walking.

In front of the jungle-themed dispensary, an old queen
points at his tiny dog yapping at the wind
and asks me, “Isn't this what happiness is all about?”

I am left with no choice but to agree.

Give In


In a world with no meaning,
you have to fix yourself to a dream.
Become a scarf,
ends blowing in the wind,
an accouterment,
an accessory to facts
that can’t be believed.

Commit yourself
to the insanity
of what you need there to be,
so you can survive
as long as possible
in this place,
and possibly in eternity.

Give in. Give in
to a better sense
of confusion.
Give in. Give in
to a better sense
of it all.

that old number


Pinpricked, the hard dark, 
carved rough by my 
scalpel of light 

I take another slow drag,
canonizing slow the night. 

We conspire, like old lovers. 
In mutual lies we drowse.
Caresses fall in stark drawl
measured by their forced sighs. 

I finish my soliloquy—ever the actor—
as her words, leaden prayers, they fall:

‘This was the prevention hotline,’
     		      she replies.
‘We thank you 
for your call.’ 

Family Lore

My dad’s dad, Zayde Jake, broke his nose long before we ever met. To refer to his nose as “broken” is frankly an understatement. It looked as if it had been flattened, macerated, and then molded into a vaguely biomorphic shape and left to harden. According to family lore, he broke it – or, more exactly, had it splattered across his face – in a street brawl with communist stooges determined to take over the union he had helped organize. Whatever the facts of the case, the truth is he was one tough guy and about as far from a doting grandpa as you could get. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes (Camels) that stained his fingertips yellow. He gambled at cards. He gunned a shot of slivovitz every evening before dinner. Most days he went around unshaved. My mom, who had a bourgeois abhorrence of rough behavior, disliked him immensely. I still remember the bristle-brush feel of his stubble when I kissed him on the cheek.

The Perks of Lockdown

 
During April 2020,
I bought a thousand-dollar mattress

and a wrought iron bed frame
for two hundred bucks

from a couple who ran
an estate sale business
in Bisbee, Arizona.

The bed’s previous owner
had died right before lockdown.

Every store was closed,
and restless shopkeepers
leered from doorways.
hissing like drug dealers.
 
“Psssssst—need some furniture?”

I bought the illusion of normalcy,
a high that lasted only a few minutes.
A tag on my new mattress read,

“Made for active lifestyles”,

meaning recreation,
not fornication.
Not that I was doing
much of either.

 

Self-doubt

 
Creativity is like a clock
That keeps ticking, secretly.

The moment you pause
To look at it
Is to savor it.

When it finds you not working
It must speak to you
In inner monologues
Of your heart.

So, it keeps you on guard.
Let the doubts fly
And your words settle down.
Like the wings
That envelops for warmth.

Experimentation is the science of expression
Self-doubt cuts your wings

You were made to scoop the sky
And taste the cream of the Milky Way,
Creative imagination is the star of the same sky.
It was a wanderer before. 

朦胧
我的爱，
构建在你和我的相处，
朦胧的爱，
不是对陪伴的执念，
是因为你，
你理性的将疯狂困住，
清晰的抽离感情，
制造虚假，
丢弃给我，
你不会主动制造浪漫，
你也被缠绕进来，
也许，
朦胧也是最美好的，
夕阳只是一瞬间的。



Haze


My love
Is built upon every moment we share.
This hazy love
Is not a desperate cling to companionship,
It exists only because of you.
You rationally cage all my wild impulses,
Coldly pull away your affections,
Craft hollow illusions,
And cast them aside for me to bear.
You never take the initiative to craft romance,
Yet you are tangled in this mess alongside me.
Perhaps
This blurred haze is the purest form of beauty.
A sunset lingers for but a fleeting instant.

 “A Happier Thought”
 
The bottle would break itself
before it ever broke my heart,
and that always seemed
a happier thought
than paying too much
for half dead funeral flowers
at the supermarket
or pretending the first drink
didn’t feel like a kiss
after another inoffensive day.



“lowercase versus uppercase poetry”
 
if i can stay on the black decaf
then the poems will stay brief
and professional as ironed slacks
on a monday
but if somehow
the whisky sneaks out
of my cupboard
like a teenager breaking curfew
it won’t matter
that it’s only tuesday
and my words won’t care
about shakespeare
doing it better than most
(according my old high school
english teacher anyway)
or the way a hangover is
the kind of muse
most let die of thirst
even if it means
another photocopied sonnet
sort of day
 

Last Play of Light


Sunflowers swoon
in the fading light.
Pollen gusts have ruined 
my eyes.

Thick hot soup
of summer evening—
a thunderclap follows
a sizzle in the east.

The sun dips off
as raindrops tink
the thin tin roof—
I clap mosquitoes.

Ice cubes rattle a glass,
whisky poured over
slowly so it chills
before the first sip.

Tip my Stetson
to the hombre
on the moon
in his sombrero.

Tip my Stetson 
to the sagging
sunflower army,
defeated and sombre.

Cage and the Birdsongs

During summer of 1974 I hung around the developing Boulder poetry scene. There was a guy from New York  there named George who was going to publish one of my fledgling poems. He was a big wheel from the big world who knew things. One of those things he knew about was John Cage who was going to do a reading from Thoreau’s journals in a couple of days. George told me and every young poet he encountered that Cage loved it when spontaneous sounds, bird calls, cat calls, whistles occurred while he was reading, that these sounds would add to the sonic texture of Cage’s performance.
The evening came for the Cage reading. The great composer projected random words from Thoreau’s journals on a giant screen. There was absolute silence. “b-r-r-r-ro-K-K-Keeee.” Cage spoke in an urgent whisper.
Syllables, vowels, aspirants: Cage proceeded.
From the darkness a sudden whistle burst forth, and then an animal growl, a bird noise, a cat call, farts, a kazoo, laughter.
Cage suddenly ended his performance. He stomped off the stage and engaged the interrupters in the midst of the crowd. An angry verbal exchange ensued. The kid poets said they were just contributing to the random sounds Cage was making. In a fury, Cage screamed they didn’t know what they were talking about. There was a link between intent and the provocative noises. This was different from random sound. At the way back of the room almost in shadow George folded his arms, and leaned against the far wall. He smiled.