This Year

This year outweighs all
the rest.

I'm a homeowner,
a dog-owner, a
little fatter
and older, a little
colder

my new place has
air-conditioning
that I keep cranked
so that icicles form
on my eyes, distorting

distorting reality into
fragments - like fingernails,
into something I can't count
or hold or know, just a

numb feelings, frostbitten
fingers flying on the keys,
uncontrollable and infantile;
"Let's go down to the lobby

and get ourselves an education
some insurance, a treat, a
job and a new liver; a new life."

Restlessness

When I sit, my right leg
will bounce like an
infant in a swing attached
to the door-frame

I move miles with
my right foot on
the gas pedal
bouncing between brakings

I fast-forward through
the commercials and
skim through the footnotes;
I just read the headlines

the facts don't lie, it's
a fact that I move with no
meaning, write with no reading,
sing with no singing; I think

without thinking.

Atop the Eiffel Tower

Viewing Paris from here
is missing Paris, because
your standing on it;

As if the hand of some
God came down and pulled
the grid of the streets

up into a point, like
a white napkin spun
to the look of a ballerina

in a metal chain dress,
twirling and swirling.
The point of viewing

Paris from here isn't
to get a good view of it
no, it's to be your own Napoleon;

to conquer it.

Before Sunrise

I'm afraid, I mean
truly shaken that I've
forgotten how to love
the written word.

This wasn't some
sweet affair or
solipsistic retreat,
some made-up afternoon

No, this is a love that
still sleeps while I
(Here's where my cpu crashes)
I sit and wait for something

something more than this, but
in that waiting I come up
with poem after poem after
poem, where words won't

betray me or flirt with me,
they won't string me along
after ten years or twenty years,
they just lie there, asleep.

Socks

I have this dream
that I will sort through all
the piled things in my closet
the towers of leaning crap

that I will take out, apart,
and look through every item
and that I will photograph it
and label it well and then,

then I will throw it out.

Steps

promises
the promise
of something more
something to stand on
when the ship is un-docked
and the water's lapping licks
laugh like little anchors on each
and either side of the vessel, nestled
deep in the covers, the crests, the waves
submerged cathedrals in your wake, waiting
like waltzing ghosts who step between the beats
those breasty crest on the starboard lips, pulsing.

The Six-Letter Word

"Nigger," the white
teacher says in-front of
his adult-child students,
old enough to drink but
not to make a living

and they look at him
as coyly as he uses
his fingers, like
bunny-ears, to make
a fence around the word.

He's a large man with
blue eyes who looks
much like I do now,
but younger, and he
thinks he can get

away with saying some-
thing that's fenced in
by quotations, like
a swastika behind glass,
not still meaning a swastika

I mean, not still looking
like a symbol for hate and
death and unrighteousnesses in
the veiled name of righteousness,
because the glass gives us distance,

perspective and so do these flying
not-existing quotation marks that
make the students (the non-white
students) sink lower and divert
their gaze. I would fucking

kill him. kill him with his
books to hid behind and his
other dead white friends who
write it and he repeats it. I
know he's got this job and his

house and his pretty white wife,
his pretty white life because of
this lie, this white lie that he
tells himself: "It's ok to say
nigger when I put it in quotations"

and it's fucking ok to write it
too and to take my voice from me!
Bitch, you have never heard or
seen the sound of a screaming crowd
at a lynch mob or while your brothers

and sisters burned to nothing, for
nothing. How the fuck do you expect
to write this fair or to teach this
fair or the let anyone listen to you
read this fairly. Fuck you and your poems.

Chocolate

Brownies, vanilla ice cream
Hot fudge and sprinkles

That was my thought
I've been waiting unpatiently

Look at the dog, so fluffy
Overstimulated

I am now a part of your we
We laugh, we run errands

We are place holders for
Stupidier children

A tortoise shelf covered
In chocolate turtles used

As your icecream shell
The hull of a ship

Wow, its a new location
For poem writing

You squeeze my knee
And we are a we again

The size of a House

Underneath that
Black and white vest
He's got a heart
As big as a house

It's covered in cigar ash
Cubans.they say all native
Californians come from
Iowa.

He's right down there with
The oil field. I suppose
You'd have to think of
Everything in your business.

I have a little allowance of my
Own, and I don't want to bother
Him. Are you crazy! I think
You're rotten.

You'll bet I'll get out of here
Baby
I'll get out of here quick.
Sour ice tea.

Well La- Ti - Da

You are waiting
downstairs
while I,
I sit in the
chair

at my desk
writing this
poem for
the people,
invisible people

You've got your
favorite program
tivo'd, tivo'd
on pause cuz
you're waiting

on me and my
little penis-sized
ego; I will write
us reversed, I
am in my lettermen's

jacket with my crew
cut and you are
deciding if your hair
should be up or down,
while you run the shower

for noise, just for
hot noise, the tv
guide flips and flips
while we wait for our date
my special someone.

Death Becomes Her

A hole the size
of a shotgun blast
in her stomach;
glassy eyes

no bones,
computers that
make your head
spin like a mantis

a young Bruce Willis
with hair and a mustache,
a french kind of look for
our big touch blackjack

and you, a stressed and
fat, balding man stuck
behind the camera with
a crew of 472 and an ulcer.

Make 'Em Laugh

A Car Accident
coming home
from church camp
where the bus driver's
been drinking and
he's the only one that
lives.

A mother who knows
her husband has gone
out with his friends to
lynch a few other men
while she sleeps soundly.

A suburban home,
with ferns at the gate,
that cost less because
but you just don't want
to know why - let's
just live our lives with
blind eyes.

An unregulated island
of swarming plastic
particles spinning out
in the Pacific, with your
fucking receipts and labels.

The death of a homeless
man in-front of a Manhattan store,
a whore in a motel,
a junkie, an infant in a
metal dumpster, an HIV
suicide; our drunk bus driver

on the electric chair.

If I was a River

If I was a river,
I mean if I were a river,
I would wrap the rocks
in eddies and dance with
moss in my hair

If I was a river,
I would bring fresh
water to your salty mouth
and clean it right out like
palmolive

If I was a river,
I would wade through valleys
crooked out to your sea,
singing "HUSH" on the
cliff's walls but hush pleasantly

If I was your river,
I would be named something
arbitrary, un-river-like, like
Colorado or MIssissippi, not
soulful or Godly, or Killer.

Summer Break

Jumping rope with the sprinkler
waving fans from the grass to
the hot asphalt, an eight-year-old

one-piece, the oak tree, the
ice-cream truck nearby, plucking
his digital song from a tanned bullhorn

braces, fifty-fifty bar, cream sandwich,
sitting in the sun on the curb, you and I,
the sky like the inside of a snow-globe

that hasn't been shook or shaken
in six solid months; taste the summer
taste, where noon is nothing like a

desert, dessert in our fingers and hair,
and man oh man, I wish you tried
my ice-cream sandwich before roping again.