Once, there was a boy
in shorts running
down a hardwood floor
crashing into another
boy running in
shorts down
on the hard wood floor
the impact, hard enough
to luxate his eyeball
into his two hands
screaming in shorts
running off the hard
wood floor.

And I will be the chicken
(boneless and large breasted)
in your skillet butter-soaked
searing, envious of the carcass
I once (so very long ago) was
part of – simmering for hours
in spices and salt. (perhaps
with rice, with roots softening
and taste deepening slowly
so slowly)

I see the lines – slipped between
the verse hidden in the new space
below the picture of who we are
when we are no one else at all.

Fly my friend, fly from those fears
that hold like tendrils to our feet
like roots to the bad cold earth
where darkness becomes so very us.

See with me the lines – painted
upon these new horizons where we dawn
like a thousand haiku whispering
louder than thunder.

Fly my friend, fly with me away
to that silver oh-mouthed moon
singing out the poetry we become.

If Mark Doty ever read my poetry, I think he’d
shrug. He’s a kind man, a good man, a loving man
and a great poet. So, he’d shrug.

If Mary Oliver ever read my poetry, I think she’d
puke. She’s a kind woman, a good woman, a loving woman
and a great poet – but she’s old enough
to have a sensitive stomach.

If Charles Simic ever read my poetry, I think he’d
… never mind, he’d never read my poetry.

a goddamned sunset or a fat frickin’ chipmunk
I dunno, whatever. it’s all too stupid-cute for me
i want the sick scent of antifreeze and rotting olives
the feel of rusty razor and baby kitten stew under
my bleeding toes while I scream for some ugly chick
to come out of the alley and make me feel
something twisted and broken like a taffy-pulled
body from twisted steel before it became a junkyard wreck
i want the truth – if there is such a thing as that –
God in the agony, God in the irony, God in the shards
of broken glass, where everything I love became
… God
I don’t know
anything at all.

at the top of a pine tree
on the top of a mountain
at the top of New Hampshire
is the little boy
i was
swaying east
to west, to east hoping
the cracking sound
does not portend a fall
only the fall.

the little boy that wished
the sharks would leave
the ocean so he
could swim
at the bottom of a pine tree
at the bottom of a mountain
at the bottom of New Hampshire
i was a little
boy once playing
north to south to north splashing
the crashing sound
portsmouth tide springing
in the spring

summer, where are you
i can not see you from this dream
from this stream
from this conscious place
atop a pine
atop a mountain
atop New Hampshire
where, I am still

i am still

still the little boy.

2012. I don’t even know what to do with that. Does anyone have any advice for me in the new year?

Oh Solitude, you are a sunless sky,
a vast gray need, unfilled and wanting
without hope or lyric.

I call you from the stoney ground
come to me, steal away these dreams
that bleed my soul.

I call you from beneath the oak
come to me, eat these words
that reveal my heart.

Oh solitude, you are a cold queen,
a crown-less ruler, dispassionate and unloving
without prayer or poetry.

Fly, Solitude. Fly to the void
where the moon falls
and we can both forget.

what do the angry people see
through the squint of their third eye
as they rage for a cup of something
hot, or cold, or devoid of ice?

what do they dream in the Godless dark
where the bats are fluttering
but they can not make them out
through the stars?

what do they know, truly know,
when they scream out, out to the red pine
slumbering in the almost-winter nights
amongst an earth blanketed in the sharp tender
needles that were once them?

What do they love, these angry people,
when they slaughter all the little sacreds
that burble like a soothing brook
upon their soul’s torn edges?

she lied when she said
every poem is about sex

i tell her this through
her long tut tuts
her short tsktsks
her midland shhhhh’s

you’re wrong,
some poetry’s about love

same thing
she says