One Story

It's always she, or always I.
There's always a reason why,
Always a story.
They all end gory.

Might end with me in hell,
But I always tell.
(Or if I don't, you ask,
Keep me on task).

Her tastes are too pricy
To be so cheap.
She had the legs
But I don't have the eggs.

Guts fueled with ale,
Then lower I failed.
There was a headache
Or a flirt-fake.

How long does it take
A fiction to bake?

It's always one story
Or another.
(That's the excuse
I gave your mother.)

Numbers

Age is not a number.
It's an excuse, a reason why.
"No wonder he cries,
He's just a baby."
(Well, maybe)

It's a relative weight of worries.
In life, they come in droughts or flurries.
Weight, as well as cares,
We're losing or gaining as long as we're there.

Age is a peculiar procession of people,
The living and the ghosts.
(I'm not sure which haunt us the most)
Out of turn, they would mean nothing.
They are our shackles and our wings.

Age is a toggle-switch
Feeling in your bones
That you'll always or never be alone.
(If the temperature feels wrong
Now that you're in it,
Wait five minutes.)

Age is knowing the way out of hell,
But having no one to tell.

Age is a long awakening
From a restless slumber.
You can't count that in numbers.

The One Who Goes Without

Too soft to rest his hardness,
Embracing like a climbing harness,
Admits no weakness, and all doubt
(But with a laugh and not a pout):
The One Who Goes Without.

The One Who Goes Without
Goes within.
Then late, at home,
All alone,
Relives his sin.

Poignards

Every word cuts and bleeds,
As I flail everyone around me,
'Til wisdom dulls me down to size.
For this, I apologize.

Against high walls' boards,
Monoliths of culture, institution,
Humor's neon notes mark my words;
Cutting knife-words turn to pins.

Go unobserved, and points turn inward.
What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

Resume (Applicant's Disguise)

I'm not over, but we're done.
I forget when stuff means something.
I'm too old to be so young
At this macrocultural seduction.
For two hundred years,
We've been sleeping with
This mythical capitalist.
Who I am, a resume
Who may exist,
May, if you ask, cease and desist,
Navigating the maze, the lies,
Behind an applicant's disguise;
May go nowhere and be the first.

I have not the endowment
To slake your thirst.

Get

Wherever I go
I don't get anywhere.
The best thing about me,
The worst thing about me:
I'll always take "no" for an answer.

It's There

I'm there when a party won't cover your joy,
When the world is your oyster and fate backs your ploy,
When you lose your girl, and you lose your nerve,
When you ain't got shit, and it's more than you deserve.

I'll always be there, so never fear.



You just gotta love beer.

Thirst for Knowledge

I don't "thirst for knowledge,"
I hunger.

I won't be satisfied by
Thin, dribbling streams
Of economists' fantasies
and theorists' dreams.

I don't want something inoffensive,
Only what the bland can't make sense of.

I don't want something you hold
In a glass and half see through.
I want knowledge thick enough
To sink my teeth into.

Healthy

I see the venerable old masters,
Struggling goldsmiths of words,
I have heard paranoid, unknowable ravings.
Wild eyes, wild words, protect the brain's savings,
and I see the genius,
and I see the illness.

Then I look at myself,
See what's not by anyone else:
The ideas in dimensions divine by absurd,
Conceived in secret grace, so awkward
In words,
See the things I say, think, cannot make right,
Foul words I use, wishes someone might die,
A tongue digging graves that might make mountains fly,
and I see the genius
and I see the illness.

and I see
That I've never been, will never be
Healthy,
Only sick differently.

Opposition

I think
I stand
In opposition
To culture's enforced, infectious submission
To so many destructive acts of creation.

I think I oppose,
But you say I support,
For everyone goes.
It's our final resort.

When You Awaken

Forsaken,
Seat taken,
Finding your bed
Unshared when you awaken.
Alone,
You moan,
Head abuzz, sitting
Beside your silent phone.
Are you a fool,
Or I a fink?
Don't feel or think.
It makes your stomach sink.

You never stand where you think.

Creation's Desperate Act

You are fire.
You dance with
The beauty of death.
I look closer and burn.

I see you with others,
The way you consume.
All this, and good sense,
Could not stop my craving you.

I know scores and odds.  I essay,
Creation's desperate act.
We look back, slink away,
Both our powers intact.

Nostalgia's a fair form of scar.
I'm not afraid of you anymore.

Trite and True

God's gift arrives
Every day at sunrise.
That's so trite,

But some days you
Read something cool,
Play the studious fool,
Spend in good company
Full of good food.

Some days you go with
The old trite-and-true.