16/52

Tweaking this - find some new value in the game of it.

I often found sparring sessions

to be a terrible affair

glimpses of success listed in the endowment

of a dull headache 

My ears became cotton lined bells

filling with the fluorescent chatter 

of my new all night city I call home

It always rained on those nights

or the street was always wet

too much moisture in the air

something else to blame my stiff joints on

Figuring out why you got punched is easy 

The solutions as immediate as the aftermath 

and there is something wonderful inside of that ache

having gained the knowledge and the answer

My jaw got jammed because I dropped my left hand

because I got tired

because I never woke up early enough to do quality roadwork 

because my hands got heavy

because I never ate enough to do quality PT

These are all things I could fix

These are all aches with answers

There needs to be sparring for every problem under the sun

Lovers with headgear and 18oz gloves

Accidents that only go at 50%

Roadwork for loneliness
a stranger to punch your heart over and over and over again

till you were ready for anything

ready to pick your self up off the floor
ready for nothing to hurt
or at least
ready to stand there and get hit

14 / 52

Smushin' some old stuff together.

There's very little romance in the wait for a text message

It probably would be better to stare out the window 

red eyed and forlorn

It'd probably be better for there to be a pony racing towards me

its rider with weathered baseball glove skin

soaked from rain and sleet and hail and the whiskey 

that keeps them warm at night

If I were waiting on a pigeon to fly in from Peru

it'd be easier to go on about my day

easier to do the dishes, ride the bus, wait for my coffee 

If I were sending letters I'd probably ask less questions

My correspondence would dress up a little

before it descended the staircase out of my brain 

it would practice dance moves

the kind you reserve for ball room floors

My correspondence would get its haircut

and you could show it off to your friends

Instead my correspondence is a sweaty marathon runner

My correspondence is thirsty as fuck

My correspondence is a sink full of dirty dishes

and a windowsill of dead house plants

This wait is as stupid as swimming with a backpack on 

and the backpack is full of useless shit anyway 

Let's hit the bars, then

Let's get day drunk 

Let's go diving in the ocean for all the messages in bottles that cracked and never made it to shore

last weekend  the heart was cocked back and loaded
and this weekend all four chambers are exhausted

last weekend was a bag of potato chips and now it's a pile of crumbs in my sheets

the weekend before was a stomach pump every hour on the hour

this weekend is a tidal pool full of fish with disco ball scales

and a mermaid who decided to start dressing in all black last month, all the way up to her lipstick

this weekend, i will be the island boy searching for pearls

who keeps mistaking the reflection of stars for white treasures beneath the surface

13/52

Sean been telling me to put something out there
my name on the cover of a book
or the bottom of a publication I keep
signing my name at the end of emails to my mother
like I were kindly applying for a job she keeps
asking me about my name on a plane ticket I have
a fear that I do not exist anywhere
I am not
            I know
people have climbed mountains to tie their flag to the peak
           I know
there is a flag on the moon there is
proof positive that they were there I am sure
there is someone carving their name in a heart on a tree that is
one among thousands in the forest and maybe it is
carved and lost and never to be found again Or
those two names hate each other
shudder at the thought of ever having shared a bed
or space in a heart scratched into an ever green But still there is
a record of a love that once was

Before they stepped out onto the main stage of the killing floor
gladiators at the Colosseum had to nervously wait in the wings
behind a metal gate
Maybe barfing on the toned calves of the man in front of them
while a lion ripped the whistling guts out of a familiar stomach
Still, some of them kept their humor, and managed to carve penises
and yo' momma jokes into the walls
While, "VIND", for victory, was common, maybe if the character were an honest man
an inspirational quote about hope or carping a diem were tolerable
but I'd imagine the most popular guy in the gladiator locker room
was the guy who had the best one liner about
how much the emperor liked the smell of his own farts
or sucked at playing his fiddle

Archaeologists have also found messages in Viking caves
scaling unstable ladders on cavernous mud slicked floors
they deciphered mysterious and forgotten runes
for things like
"Sven was here" or
"Johannes climbed this"

It would seem we were made to leave our mark somehow
and so we march, flailing about
casting actions out like each dance is the dance
to put us over into something more than human
like firing a shot gun into a wishing well

but what of the wishing well?
What of the coins that echoed down and back from the water
just once
never to be heard again
how now their corpses are piles of dulled silver lost in the pitch black

What of the stars in the sky?
How each one must have been someone's
first  wishing star
how the sky's soft but merciless dark is too vast for an echo
how it swallows our voices whole and without event

How so many of us may have tried
only never to have been heard of at all
our lives passing, slowly, and inevitably
like the a city bus lapping the same old scenery day after day
till it was time to sleep

How about screaming our guts out at the night sky anyway
like we were telling the bands tracks to play next
or screaming the lyrics to our favorite song

How about the one gladiator who never killed a lion
but juggled swords instead?

How about the story about the traveler who got lost in the forest
and, having only one name to carry

sang that name over and over again
till they turned into a fox
till the birds in the forest learned the song

the song of that one name

12/52

This isn't finished, but it's midnight here and I told myself I'd throw it up no matter what shape it's in, just to get going again. I'll definitely be working on this so I can move it from "sketch" to "draft". 

I thought about you when I started this

about sitting across from you in the midnight bar

hidden in shadow of the art gallery

Of how the light carved your cheeks like a fire licking porcelain

How you were so beautiful, I couldn’t stand to look at you

         my least favorite habit

I watched your reflection in the window

which made me think how it would snow when I was a kid

and then the next day it would be warm enough to melt the top layer

and then at night

the cold would come with the dark like a salve

to sooth everything wet back over to ice

on my way to school I knew it was ok to be late

if it meant I had spent extra time

watching the sun roll slow orange mornings down the lonely country side’s hills

slick as glazed pottery, the ice,

glittering beneath a thin gauze

the color of the hibiscus, the dahlia, the chrysanthemum

residents of my mother’s garden

my mother’s garden: that summer song trembling into heaven now

playing its own remix in the winter

Obviously, this started as a love letter

but some time in between then and now

I lost sight of your reflection

It wandered into someone else’s smile

and I never wanted to  play the part of the anchor

I’d never try to block the wind you been

tryna catch in your sails so

I left or I pretended you were a ghost

and I’ve never been good with spooky stuff

so instead, I drank so much the room

became a black moss

lathered across the soft dark forest of night

I drank till I couldn’t feel my hand banging itself

against aluminum doors or

my knees shaking apart on the bathroom floor

I was a childish shipwreck and it’s OK to laugh at this.

        

                    at my least favorite habit

This constant coming apart at such a stupid little sadness

I cried when we lost one friend to the chemo, yeah

and one more to the pills

and another to the belt around the throat

Telling yourself not to be sad is like being a boat

with an anchor you’re constantly dragging behind you

Or maybe you’re a whale

So now sadness is a harpoon someone lodged under your lung while you were coming up for air

You’re a marathon runner with a limp

this sort of endurance

to live like this is as brutal as it is beautiful

but I don’t think we deserve that

Telling yourself you deserve to be happy is like being an airplane

and knowing that there is a runway all lit up for you

waiting for you to come home

11/52

Continuation on the Names

Before they stepped out onto the main stage of the killing floor
gladiators at the Colosseum had to nervously wait in the wings
behind a metal gate maybe
barfing on the toned calves of the man in front of them
while a lion ripped the whistling guts out of a familiar stomach
Still, some of them kept their humor, and managed to carve penises
and yo' momma jokes into the walls
Yes, "VIND", for victory, was common, and maybe if the character were an honest man
an inspirational quote about hope or carping a diem were tolerable
but I'd imagine the most popular guy in the gladiator locker room
was the guy who had the best one liner about
how much the emperor liked the smell of his own farts
or sucked about playing his fiddle

Archaeologists have also found messages in viking caves
scaling unstable ladders on creaky mud slicked floors
they deciphered the runes for things like
"Sven was here" or
"Johannes climbed this"

It would seem we were made to leave our mark some how

but what of the wishing well?
What of the wishes that echoed down and back from the water
just once
never to be heard again
how now their corpses are piles of shiny coins lost in the pitch black

What of the the stars in the sky?
How each one must have been someone's first
someone's wishing star
how the sky's soft but merciless dark is too vast for an echo

How so many of us may have tried
only never to have been heard of at all

10/52

Took a scalpel to this, but not's changed much. We're doing  a big show in June, and I think this is one one I want to polish up for it, but I'm worried it feels a little too sentimental. You've seen it before, and I won't post it here again, but I did put some polish on it, and it's been a while, so I'd still like your feed back.

As a child, the basement was a death sentence.

Filled with innumerable phantoms lurking in the moldy dark

A urine colored fluorescent tube

Tossing sickly manila light in

Fits of maniacal laughter

across the eager tongues of the handsaw

The growling stomach of our water heater

Possessed with the tortured souls

Of innocent children it probably burned to steam our showers

The dusty rocking chair where sat

The headless ghost of a Confederate soldier

The box of holiday decorations

Where an evil clown was probably just waiting to erupt out of

And stab you in the eye with the Christmas Tree Star

To do laundry, you had to brave the descent

My only choice was to

frantically dump however much the fuck detergent

I  had the guts to pour into the machine

while some dark shadow mopped its cold tongue across the back of my neck

till I freaked out and punted the washing machine closed

Launched into a dead sprint up the stairs

Into the quiet light of the kitchen

That haven for refugees

from the cursed chasm

Wherein slept the half empty paint cans

And the spawn of Satan himself

And it was so silly

Being afraid of things I knew were not there

I am walking through the neighborhoods

That I abandoned

After it was decided that you and I were a terrible “we”.

Here lurk vicious figments

Hanging knives in my throat

Like tombstones for all the names I would call you by

I am riding my buses home

staring into an empty window

But feeling the weight

Of a second head asleep on my shoulder

I am shutting the alarm clock off

Reaching over the empty half of a mattress

Where sleeps a patient ghost

In cafes, and movie rooms

In bars, and restaurants

On street corners where good-bye lived

At bus stops, my front door where it was always

Your knuckles rapping

Anywhere I buried kisses

In the soft fire of you

Those places are now dance floors for phantoms

Twirling shipwrecks

Empty bellies growling song requests at the band leaders

So, here we go I swing like flunked outta ballerina school

I race cliff divers into the haunted dark

My heart wants to sprint out of

the basement in my chest

Into the light of my mouth

But my throat keeps slamming the door shut

So it lives there now

And it so funny being afraid of things that are not there

An old love that’s not even a memory

It’s just this fun idea

Like a city you could never fly to

Like I got plane tickets to Atlantis
Like I got an express trip to the year 2009

– I’m gonna get out at the stop where we kissed

the door frame of the kitchen

and everyone at the party got mad at us for blocking the way to the beer

It is a scientific fact

There are a small number of stars that are dead

Who are just reaching us now

But there are sailors that still navigate the path home that way

There are still the hopeful that wish on that flickering light

Pinning hope on Apollo’s dead horses

There are still people trekking through dark neighborhoods

Staring at all those dead stars

Like it were safety at the top of the steps

9/52

Added some stuff to the field notes on the midnights poem. I feel like this is the final shape of it, but I'm not sure if I want to trim or tighten or expand before I trim some fat. I think I'll expand it as much as I can and then end up with something shorter than what's in front of me now, because I like the length, but I don't like it feeling so thin.

Field notes on the Midnights

Of course, at first, it was the oceans they came from
Quiet colossuses with whale bone guts
they had plastic bags for scales

What songs were the ones for summoning?
What were the spells to awaken them?
Where did they grow in their slumbering?
and how could we lure them to sleep?

Spoiler alert: We couldn't.
They lived with us now
in every background
soft and lolling mountains
casting deep shadows across every window in our cities

In Korea, the Midnight is a crane
who glides in slow laps around the borders
we know it lays nuclear eggs but we don't know when
it will land to lay them
so we do our best to live
and teach classes and smile
and should the egg hatch tomorrow
then I will be glad to have learned enough of the language
to say I am sorry

In America the Midnights are hooded horses
or snapping turtles the size of armored wagons
They are slug kings pressings themselves out of oil lines
They are coyotes pissing in desert water

It’s not like you wake up choking
but picture a weighted fishing lure hooked on the throat of your heart
Picture a man backhanding a porcupine
picture a swan dive frozen before splashing into cacti patches
Picture the sand in your car after a drive to the beach
how you might find some grains in your living room later
and think it came from the hem of your pants
Picture living in the bottom of an hour glass
Each grain, another midnight
each grain, its own little horror