Dreams

Will I remember all this,
or will it be lost,
like a dream
slips away in the night?
Many of those I have known
are now gone,
I almost hear their voices sometimes.
There are many of them
I still long to see,
many I still wish were here.
As long as I breathe I remember,
are they still remembering me?
They’ve all gone away
and are lost to my senses,
still alive in my memory.
All of them have fallen asleep,
some say never to dream,
except in the dreams of others,
able to awaken from dreams.

The Bats

I’m out with a buddy Kirk tripping all night summer of ’84 we get chased into the
woods by the cops flashing their blue and reds spotting us drinking beer on the
monkey bars of a local school Kirk freaks running from tree to tree smearing
his face with dirt and stuffing his cap with leaves like a couple fat cops are
coming into the woods to wrangle two teens off to the clink there’s no talking
sense they didn’t even stop to grab the beers still in their bag under the
monkey bars calm everyone right down so I sprint out to grab them but when I
return to the sand pit in the woods Kirk’s split I try my luck drinking a warm
one for direction then slink through back yards between trees across town
unlatch the fence in my backyard it’s nearly morning I think I can get in the
house after mom leaves for work at 8:30 supposed to be sleeping at a friend’s
what are you doing coming home with the bats smelling like a drunk what’s wrong
with your eyes you’re not leaving that chair until you tell me what the hell is
going on pretty cold for a summer night I lift up the bottom boughs of the big
back yard pine to check if there’s space for a body to curl feel around in the
dark with my hand for roots and crawling things find crushed coffee cups
cigarette butts balled up paper bag greasy to the touch wonder if it’s another
man’s warmth I’m feeling in the dirt or the lower end of the chemicals kicking
off the hair on my neck standing on end like sparklers

After Long Years


After long years, the words still come.
Pages are filled, manuscripts sent out.
Books appear and are met with silence. 
Wasn't this always the way?

When spring comes, the soil in the yard
Needs to be turned. Seeds must be planted;
Fruit trees, vines and bushes tended.
These growing things mean more.
They always should have.

That's where life is. In green leaves,
Lengthening stems, flowers budding,
Before bee magic turns them into
Tomatoes, peppers, long beans.

The children mean more than the garden. 
They always did. They always will.
So much more than words
Or dreams that fuel the writing.

How strange this compulsion
To scribble and type. It must be
Some kind of allergy
That bothers a soul all year round.

I didn't ask for it. It came to me.
Part of the baggage of life,
Rotting fruit from my childhood. 
I could have done well without.

Friends, wife, the little ones,
Before they grew up and went away,
That was all I needed but did not know it.

The garden now fills in for what was lost.
Life is all there is, all that ever matters.
The words must learn to understand,
Since they won't go away,

That what little is left is not for them. 
It is for others and what can rise
From cold winter mud after longer days return. 

US vs. THEM


There is no them.
We are them.
Just as we are us.

Stardust hurling through space
the odds are stacked against us
all of us; so at least be kind.

COINCIDENTAL DISREGARD OF A LIE

Where are the convergent
figures of a Like
etchings in water closet
lewd doodles assemblage
bordering initials and dates
divided in spacetime as an actor and spectator are?
Or vibrant lantern nights
from sweating day through Luzhou wine,
Passengers winding avenues
Dull glinting fireworks
Pixelated sunbeams on the Yangtze.
Could these quintessences—
red molten buoys surge
numbing the lips—
Be carved    a subjected populace
out of an infinitely pliable block?
The algorithm of a landlord may count on
faceless compliant yield
while art can never net a fraction of a cent

On satellite view the percentages confirm
this vantage is the exclusive domain
of the dictatorship of all that is consumed,
Shells take on ghosts
Cash grows a taxable brother big
Consciousness sees flame flicker in a mirror
rather than participate in ecstatic revels
tracing volatile contact
in leaps around a fire.
A person no longer meets
as though Anarchy were a solution to
a future where the past
was only a conceit. 

“Just Another Tuesday”
 
Not even strong enough to drink
beer to numb the day,
but instead surround myself
with the dead
in a desperate attempt to feel
alive.
 
There’s classical music
(more false gods
we believe are immortal),
the letters of a writer
who died thirty years ago
(written to people I never heard of),
and a reflection in the bathroom mirror
that looks like an inmate reflecting
on art lessons on death row.

耳朵
房间里刺耳的吵闹声打破了大门的底线，
门快要承受不住了，
声音传进了我的耳朵，
我想关闭我的耳朵，
它不听我的话，
就像个小孩子一样，
小小的身躯，
非要听话，
耳朵是肉长的，
却像个花瓣，
撑开自己的身躯，
一生都在倾听，
人们的耳朵似乎总不太灵敏，
听不见空气的摩擦声，
听不清钢琴声音的跳动，
听不清风的心情，
耳朵只被迫听到了，
工厂里的机械声，
家人激烈的争吵......

Ears

The piercing noise in the room
breaks the door's bottom line.
The door can barely hold on.
The sound passes into my ears.
I want to close my ears,
but they won't listen to me—
like a little child,
a small body
that must obey.
Ears are made of flesh,
yet like flower petals,
they stretch themselves open,
listening for a lifetime.
People's ears seem never keen enough—
they cannot hear the air rubbing against itself,
cannot hear clearly the leap of piano notes,
cannot hear the wind's mood.
Ears are forced to hear only
the grinding of factory machines,
the fierce quarrels of family...

General all over Ireland
 
dirty as bedsheets
torn tattered to corners.
and wrapped around lamp posts
and cracked garden walls:
 
the snow dropped three
days ago; now
nothing's left but the cold
and an all over ashiness
of aged granite architecture
and dusty wrought iron.
there's a moment in falling –
a beauty and the silence –
the muting of palm-
down guitar strings.
 
but here it falls thick
for perhaps just
a day or two;
then weeks
of wet pavements
which ring like a bell
against traffic.
 
I walk to the shop
for a bottle of wine,
a carton of milk
and some chocolate.
the pavement is brittle,
the evening air
teeth. my hands
in my pockets
curl like crows
under wings against rain.

IT WAS ALL I EVER LIVED FOR

Back in the wilds of March 2019 I somehow
Thought a week without getting shit-faced in
A pub deserved a poem of its own but now,
Some five years later, I can’t even think about
The waste of all those years, hell it was more
Like decades, now without getting sick &
Most certainly not the hungover kind but
Then it was all I ever seemed to live for.

Stop

 
Elise always knows when I am drinking
because of redness in my cheeks,

the glaze in my eyes. After a New
Year’s party, I sleep on a rough

cotton couch a couple
hours before leaving. I do not lie

to the cop when he asks
if I have been drinking. He tells me to stop

at the next gas station to buy coffee.
How lucky I am to have this warning,

to not be tested. My life’s trajectory
at the mercy  of a strange man’s fingertips,

his tongue, the kind of night he is having.
I drive into the darkness, to the next

exit, where I wait for that same darkness
to pass, to turn the key into the ignition.


---

June, 2020


Standing in heat in the protest
masks preceding vax
      followed the chalk outline
to the school bell
ringing     I didn’t touch
the concrete     (fear)  
rough scrapes      toothaches    
edges of social  
-ization    of June   in June
whatever  time we made
work in the throngs
of a fervent following–
spit in the air
everywhere it
glistens in the grass


---

After High School, Ian Got Ripped

 
Soon after, he was arrested for fraud–
both surprises, though every day

he lugged a tuba down the long
green halls of high school. Ian,

who had no friends, lived in
the gym after graduation, smoking

weed to heavy metal tunes, tatting
up, bulking. Before that, though,

I was in the restroom with him
once when he picked up a rock

on the top of a urinal cake and–
to show that he could– swallowed it.