STATIC



Heroin
zombies
sit on
sagging
couch
Stare
at nothing
Air itself
drowses
No music
no video
games
no scent
of food
cooking
Pantry
bare
Just
an omni-
present
high

Makeshift

The men I’ve loved
or at least had sex with

slept in parking lots,
woodland patches,
basements owned by
another girlfriend
and her husband,

shelters run by the
Catholic Workers,
abandoned cars,
the beds of their own
pickup trucks,

distant relatives’
unfinished garages,
and countless couches
inside the homes
of well-meaning friends,

shortly before they
became ex-friends.

Such clever ways
to avoid that pesky
rental vise.

What’s wrong with
a bit of inconvenience
if it saves a few bucks?

Churn

Suffering makes you a churning cauldron.
That alone will not make you a writer.

It takes more than that.
Practice. Failure. Going at it again.

We all have enough suffering,
Twisted memories inside us,
To become a writer.
But not everyone can do it.

There’s luck as well as hard work.
You need a mix of that
Along with the pain

As you stare into the cauldron
And stir, stir, stir.

“Reasons to Drink Alone”

They want angel wings,
even if they think god is dead,
then joke about dying
until they realize the blankets
they bought from the thrift store
make up their deathbed,
and believe redemption is as easy
as turning off the lights.

Test of Patience


The first tint of light,
The buried seed
Never dies.
Memory is a cage
If you never
Think ahead
Where the road lies.
There is a way out
Just look where the tunnel
Ends.
Before a sentiment,
Now an emotion.
A waking constellation
Is a night walk
Like holding hands
In December.
You can borrow heat
From the stars
Just look at
The power of imagination.
We are each one of us
The chapters close
The book is your
Test of patience.

FIRE OF LIFE

Cover me with your beauty
Fill the cracks in my heart
Without you
I’m a dried-up source
A standing river
I’m the road which
Leads to nowhere
Silent in helplessness
All alone without a splendor
Impersonal views
Staring at yesterday
Blind for tomorrow
So, don’t leave without
Turning your eyes around
Stay close
The night is descending
It’s too black and I fear
The shadows of darkness
Stay with me
Be the fire of life
That shines in me.

The Walls

after The 10547th Apartment, artist Osnat Tzadok

drip with the blood of ghosts
who have rented this cell before.
I can feel their eyes, straining
to break free of anonymous
wallpaper, beige. Tattered carpet
matches the inexpressiveness,
the mood lingers, whispers
in my ear. This is all you will become.
I cover my head
with a blanket I do not remember
buying. I am already losing
this life-war of attrition. Tomorrow,
I will be nothing but a dust pattern,
a footprint fading, swept off
the balcony without applause.

My Social Life at Nineteen

When a date pats my forearm,
tells me I’m a nice boy,
I know the next time I call her home
she won’t come to the phone,
probably because she’s sprawled
inside a souped-up Chevy
sharing a cigarette, a shoplifted beer
with a high school dropout
on furlough from the county jail.

DEMOLITION, 3:17 P.M.
Once the excavator takes the front wall,
the house becomes honest about its rooms.

Second floor:
pink wallpaper,
a brass bed frame,
one sock behind the radiator.

First floor:
green tile,
a sink still holding
the shape of its faucet in rust.

The stairs run upward
and end in weather.

People stop on the sidewalk.

We are suddenly allowed
to see where strangers slept.

A bedroom wall has pencil marks
beside the doorway:

MAYA 6
MAYA 7
MAYA 8 1/2

The half is underlined twice.

The machine bites the kitchen.

A cabinet opens
without anyone touching it.
Three blue plates fall forward
and break where the stove was.

Dust crosses the street
and settles on our cars.

For twenty minutes,
a square of bathroom wallpaper
hangs by itself—

small yellow herons
standing in blue reeds—

while everything around it
is sorted into wood,
metal,
plaster,
trash.

The excavator turns.

The wallpaper lifts once
in the bucket’s wind,

showing the white wall
that had been behind it
for however many years,

then tears clean
from the top.

Death Comes Knocking

loaded handguns
and loaded syringes
when you’ve stared both of them in the eye
the nights become different
the heart dies
the mind races
nothing makes sense
yet everything becomes important
death knocks
I don’t mind answering the door
tequila and bourbon shots
drags from glass pipes
loaded handguns and loaded syringes
they make most problems seem insignificant
they make most days seem quiet
death comes with a deck of cards
another night of betting my soul
as always, I end up with the winning hand