You Have A Thousand Problems

If you had been me, and it were me

on my one year anniversary,

and you were stuck

cleaning out the closet,

would you have been ready

for a question like that?

The grass is wetter than you

will ever know, the morning

still every reason I have in

the world. Oh, except now

I have a special button

that lets me

touch her hand.

Skin or silk. Love or zilch.

Credit or doubt,

I wonder which?

Keep it tucked under your tie,

because I think after sleeping

out that unpleasant ride,

and acing that test

with my eyes wandering

to that poem I just can't show yet,

I think I have an answer

to your question:

Even if I didn't need the button

to feel that hand,

I'd write anyway,

and every damn day.

Sun Carp

I can't believe you didn't read my diary.

The pages are still a little heavy

from all the time it spent drifting down

the river, just begging to be fished

out, like a wriggling sun-carp.

And to be truthful I don't know what

a sun-carp is, except that I imagine it

as a particularly shiny fish,

one who would maybe tell you

exactly what you want to hear.

A Lesson In Rhyming

MAY
The ice is grey and the leaves are grey and the streets are grey and the people are grey and the words are all grey and the skirts of the little girls are grey and fifteen flowers fluttering in the fall wind are grey and lots of lilies are grey, too, and my eyes are grey and the whole day is grey today and today is today and grey and today is a day, what a grey sun in the sky and what a grey way to say goodbye and how grey must we be and gay?

HUGH
Give way May, to the harbinger of yesterday!

MAY
Oh Hugh, it’s you.

HUGH
Who else but the man who adores you?

MAY
And makes love to.

HUGH
As rarely as the planets do.

MAY
Please say something new.

HUGH
These robes won’t do, the sleeves are baby blue, and they’re touching the rooftop of my shoe, which are blue too, and the dirt is baby blue; the worms are baby blue; the babies of worms are born baby blue, which wriggle underneath your toes painted electric blue, which I licked that one night when your eyes were dark blue, and looking now I can’t see the way that you move, or the places you go to, maybe the cages of the national zoo, but did you ever once think of taking me too?

MAY
Fuck you.

HUGH
If only to be renewed.

MAY
What the hell is it that you want me to do?

HUGH
Take me too?

CALVIN
What I want to know is why you guys are still speaking in rhyme.

MAY
It’s time.

CALVIN
Congratulations, you’re a bitch.

HUGH
One more—

CALVIN
What, stitch? As in, time?

HUGH
Calvin, you're not in your prime...

CALVIN
This needs to end.

MAY
Hugh, it’s time to be friends.

HUGH
But, that depends…

MAY
No. Goodbye.

MAY leaves.

HUGH
Ohmygod she left.

CALVIN
Probably all your rhyming.

Oh wow, are you crying?

HUGH
…Maybe.

CALVIN
Pussy.

CALVIN strolls away. HUGH is alone.

I Was Going To Stop Doing This Shit

I have this condition where I

walk into an empty room and

expect life to burst from the

very foundations. It's not very

funny, or interesting since

every season has its empty

rooms and highways, which

fill up with snow, rain, leaves:

Crunch. There's you over there,

on the far side of the cherry flood.

There's also a certain uncertainty

as to what I should call you, how

about Bud? How about Luv?

I can't believe you read my diary.

I can't believe you didn't read

out loud your final goodbye.

And hey, while we're in an empty

room, there's something I feel

like saying to you, whoever:

Life is actually not a television

show, and it's been a long time

since anything real

has sent a chill down my spine.

The Rain Fell Hard

Is this what you wanted, my sweet butterfly?

Is this what you needed, old friend in the sky?

I'm floating away with the petals that have fallen,

to a place where dandelions aren't made for wishing,

where squirrels always eat from the hands of young children,

where the only games played are the ones where you're missing,

where the folks used to sway to the burden of our music,

where the people only lie when their eyes are too heavy,

where teeth stay crooked, where hair never stops growing,

where the fruit is free, where the drinks are well hidden,

and the only words said have all been well written,

'cause I've waited all my life and I'll never stop singing,

and I'll play in this rose brush until it stops storming,

because no one should have to be alone in the morning.

YES!

The YES moment!

When everything is at the bottom of the pit,

and you're suffocating on the mist of musical tears,

and then YES!

When you're thrown back into the playground

where everyone is audacious and flirty.

Then comes the YES!

Love is our infinite water source, YES!

Love turns us into animals:

A walrus, tapir, golden dog, YES!

The moment does not end until we have

finished it, then we look at what we did

and YES!

We know that self-destruction is beauty

and there is no other way: YES!

Not everything is heightened and

we are not always turned on but YES!

because we'll get there someday, won't we?

We are alive YES! We are crying YES!

We have the power to at least try to heal YES! YES!

Now shh.

It's time to go back out into the world

and do something about it.

Yes.

Sit Closer To Me

Wrapped in a sweater,

with a suitcase full of letters,

with no place to fall to,

I felt quite assured

and slightly disturbed

that I had somehow lost you.

Snails of rain

trailed down the window-pane;

there seemed nothing more to do,

Then you sat next to me.

And oh my gosh looked pretty.

And the day began anew.

The Last Week

This will be the last week of letting go.

This will be the last week that still feels like summer inside.

This will be the last week that I will go anywhere in my dreams.

This will be the last week I flip a coin before leaving the house.

This will be the last week to make any bitter compromises.

This will be the last week to write a beautiful letter.

This will be the last week to be any sort of tired.

This will be the last week I expect so much from myself.

This will be the last week my stomach shrivels at her name.

This will be the last week to be stuck in last week.

This will be the last week to see an incredible star fade in the northern sky,

because I know it's sad but get real, it disappeared years and years ago.

What You Thought Was Yours Is Ours And What's Ours Is Over And Now Belongs To Us

I. What is Yours is no longer Yours and has been given to Ours, the world and each individual creator of Their world, and since Your ideas are communal, and Your depressions are memorials, these Yours have indeed become Our communes and depressions, Our monuments that We have taken from You, creator of Your world, and You have no power that still belongs to You; it's now Ours and Ours are shallow and Ours are terrible and it's not quite Our fault but rather Yours, You, Creator of shallow and horrible ideas, visions, scenes that We never wish We had taken from You.

II. What's Ours is over because You have slipped away and We have continued on without You, the Confused, and We will keep Ours and then turn it into Ours, Ours being We's, which is close to Yours but nothing even the same as Yours, or Ours, because We are stronger than You, and happier and more intelligent too, because We can keep what is Yours without ever losing what is Ours, and We will never, ever – not even if You take what is Ours and make it Yours again, because it will never, ever again be Yours again – ever, ever, give Yours back.

III. Ours now belongs to Us, dead as It or You may be, because look around You, We outnumber You too greatly; We are larger in number than swallows diving off a cliff and We stretch longer than the Great Andes. That is who We are, We are every earthquake and typhoon, and You are the pollinating bumblebee, without any Pollen left for You to make into Yours, because the Honey belongs to Us and the Flowers belong to Us and the Queen, too, belongs to Us and You should never come back here unless You have changed Your ways of thinking and dreaming and writing because We are never going to change and it's up to You to join the ranks of Us that will march onto the shores of Your confidence.

Red Leaves Falling

A woman climbs onto the bus and sits opposite an old man, who looks up at her and greets her; they have met before.

“Hey, how are you.”

“Well… my dad’s in the hospital, and I’ve been feeling kinda guilty about that—see ‘cause I told my brother I’d go see him yesterday, but I wasn’t feeling too good, so I figure… why… bring cold. germs. in there, you know? So I’m going to see him tomorrow afternoon. He doesn’t say a whole lot, but when he does… he says funny stuff."

She looks out the window.

"Yeah it’s been two weeks since last Thursday when he went in, and he has a looong road ahead of him. He wants to leave, he, he wants to go home, he wants to walk home—but that’d be an extra extra long walk. He keeps saying everybody’s gotta be more quiet all the time, but I said ‘Dad, c’mon, it’s a hospital.’”

Two minutes idly pass.

“My dad doesn’t like being in the hospital, at all. But he has no choice.”

“There’s a red tree over there.”

“Oh yeah, that looks like it’s a maple tree, in the fall they turn a beautiful, a beautiful red.”

I'll Bet It Was The Chill

Tonight I sleep with my pants off.

This is either a special event

because it never happens or it's

incredibly dreary because it even

happens at all. Softness does not

satisfy me. I want a street where

all the stores are closed, we drove

on it anyway. Once a week does

not satisfy me. My notebook slash

laptop is spiraling, to death slash

heaven; the lilac walls of heaven

are wallpapered with indulgence.

My pants are actually on, and

Molly Ringwald does not satisfy me.

My desperation would insult her

but would insult so many more people

that I might actually know, if I tried.

Post-Future Jumble

I woke up with the grocery
store in my throat,
and is this really St. Paul

or the thickest brush in
the conifer maze,
where ginormous apples

hang delicately on every
tree, so far out
of our blundering reach,

and everything we passed
over under starlight,
our shiniest little apple seed?

Drowning Ideas

Ignore the fact that I'm being serious. Ignore the fact

that I care so much for what I see coming out of my

memories. I understand that my visions rest heavy

on your shoulders and I wasn't responsible for the

sweetness of the moment; I dangled words before

you, who then whispered into them. Ignore my

fingers pressing hard against my temples; I know

there is life trapped in the skeleton of our collective.

So tear up the manuscript, and pull me up sometime

next week, brandishing your latest works of art.

Create The World

"Language actually structures our perception of reality.

Most of the world goes unnoticed because it is literally unremarkable."

-Emory Griffin, A First Look At Communication Theory

I create the aquamarine clouds,

and the tears dripping down from emerald leaves.

I place the blood in the tempest sky,

where the thunder won't cease, if I please.

I create quarks, marrows, neon cones,

even the pebbles buried in the sand.

The sand buried in the sand, I made too,

along with the veins etched into your hand.

I create daughters with softest hair

and smiles for the forever young.

Even the face of the crumbling warehouse

has more tooth left than tongue.

I create the holes in fishing nets

as well as the eyes of butterfly's wings.

I let the water rush from the rocky inlet,

and place the bell in every creature that sings.

I create the moment in between

being restless and slipping into self.

I reach out to touch my newly minted sun,

and blow the dust off the tallest shelf.

I create vacant spaces of time

through giving never the right to exist.

I breathe feathers into the nightingale,

whose vacant song won't ever desist.

Create my eyes when you look into them,

turn them into something you won't forget.

I've created the whole world before me,

and it's a miracle that you're in it.

Beauty, Every Someday

"Do Not Enter" signs in the pastel morning,
followed by squirrels digging trenches
and girls licking the pavement after falling
off their bikes. The sun kisses the neck
of the tired trees, and hey remember the
night before summer just weirdly ended?
We stopped in at the new Dairy Queen,
where the parking lot is freshly painted
and they appreciate our business.
The basement couch nearly swallowed
us whole, and I giggled loudly even when
that black cat scratched at the window.
The next morning was fanfare and
brimstone; all the houses with triangular
roofs just kept getting taller and it
wasn't until the post-euphoric morning
after that I realized you had not
a single stake in the ground.
The foothills were bare and rolling.
I'm running out of ways to see the
morning but every time I step out the
door I can't help it, it's so goddamn
beautiful and you, and you, you,
that I have to keep on.
The smell of fresh paint helps me to forget:
I'll see you at the winter's circle.

Mantra

I'm not sorry

to say

but whoever

it was

that I missed

has to

go away

for most

of the day.

Clutter

There's a list somewhere

in this mess, underneath

all the applications and

feathers and weathered

dollar bills. There's a list

somewhere of all the things

in the world that I like, and

there are some things I want

you to know and other things

I feel pretty bad about,

like loving when people fail.

Other things on the list:

buying not one but six chocolate bars;

driving all my friends everywhere;

seeing you every night.

How The Wind Feels From A Higher Ledge

He was walking through fields of grey, sometime after the American Civil War and sometime before when four planes were highjacked and flown into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and the fourth went down in a field, possibly this very field, and there was a massive river flowing (some say a river of blood, others say a river of mountains’ tears) directly next to Stonehenge, which holy hell he had never seen before and it was really something to see. The sky was a bit overcast and a gentle breeze was relentless, so after standing there with his hands in his pockets for a few hours he started to feel a chill.

He was staring at his reflection in the murky pool just then, while his flock started to panic and run in all many directions. Something had spooked them. He squinted into the forest to see a great something emerging, in fact it was the same thing he had seen in the pool: It was Mufasa. He had come to warn him of the change of tides and the howling winds that represented a looming crisis in the great countryside: The riots in the south had started the deadliest forest fire that anyone had ever seen, violent with rage over Jim Crow, over the Quran, over blotted past. He had only a day to get out of there.

He tried a couple of things. He tried to walk but his legs had grown weak over the years and he resigned eventually to lying on the grass and trying to get closer to the stars. He tried to fly and that was a little bit easier but he only managed a few inches off the ground at best. Gravity kept him down while the sun was obscured behind a smoky screen, the burning trees from the south reaching all the way North. He had no will to know what to do. He started killing his flock, in a desperate attempt to redeem himself for all the nothingness he had brought the world. Better to be noticed by God and sent to hell than to sit quietly by and watch the teachers and doctors filter into heaven.

The fire was visible now and not a soul cared at this point. The few sheep he had left sat nursing each other’s lash wounds on the hillside while he played jacks with a pinecone and several pine needles. It was funny: as the fire crept closer he could hear fire engines, police sirens and fire hydrants unleashed but he never saw anything; nothing but the hungry, orange flame that sought him out from miles away.

He woke up the next day with the fire inches from his face. It just stood there with its arms crossed, smirking at his unkempt clothes and unshaven face. Oh you should have seen it, he was so ashamed. There’s nothing worse than your fire feeling sorry for you. It wakes up everything inside you. You realize how much of a fool you’ve been for putting faith in the fate of nature, for giving up all your possessions and affections but dreaming about them every night. It was, as he saw then, the stupidest way to live.

Then it ate him, and as his ribcage and thigh-meat and thin skin tissue were being seared and ripped into the dirt of the fields, he saw nothing but the smiling faces of sheep laying their warm bodies before him. I dream about one day returning to that field.

Melting

Did you notice that when you

say melting pot, your tongue

falls heavy on the word melt?

And the air's getting heavy

in the paper-ash streets and

in this room where we find

non-issues engaging (and also,

worth writing about, it seems).

There is no emphasis in our

apologies, because we are bad

for America and America is bad

for the confused with torches.

Tomorrow is another day, and

tomorrow is another nightmare

to remember when the mainland

first met the rest of the world.

Sunny mornings randomly erupt

into our cold continental shadow,

and the floor quakes with history.

You can build a mosque here,

that is, you know, umm, well,

assuming you can stand it.

Attempt #11

I'm not going to hurt you. That is, until you start to

get more comfortable and put your feet up on the bed.

If you ever un-bury your mistakes, I'll have to rip out

your lopsided ribcage and introduce it to the Truth.

There are certain things you just can't do anymore, like

lean back. Look me in the eye. You can't walk to class

without patting me on the back anymore because metallic

clocks have tears running down their faces. Calendars

have been stabbed to rust: Your face is circulating.

I walked into the bathroom and it smelled like a pine

forest, and I knew that wasn't right, see there are some

things I don't fall for anymore. I won't fall for your ears

anymore. How broken, how numb I felt staring at you

for twenty-five seconds as you put your sweatshirt on

after class. Then I walked up to you and gave you all

the change I had in my pocket so you could wake up.

3:25 Is Not Early Release

Our territorial instincts are as vague

as the strangers wandering into the

courtyard, with dull hats and nervous

smiles. We are the failed levees of a

tropical storm. We are the revelation

you've been looking for. What could

being let out early bring besides one

more cup of coffee? Something lingering

in the heart of me? Whatever was

written brief in the sand, let the

waves of my friends wash it away.

Their hospital is full of the heartsick.

Their cemetery overflows with wildflowers.

The Greatest Education

The most important thing

I learned today was the

name of the boy I see every

day sitting on the bench.

Rustling of leaves just outside

the window drowns out the

whispering Professor; the

hum of the bus station whirs

me into staring at the patterns

on your scarf. The white sun

signals rain. They're closing

up the umbrellas on the patio.

It's unanimous: It makes us

apprehensive to be so close to

failure at all times, but we enjoy

it more than failing.

We never learn anything.

Go Round and Round

School buses snake around again.

Fingers freeze

in the September breeze.

Shoelaces flap on the concrete,

morning breaks with bleak sighs;

their heads too heavy to look up

and see a crow climb the grey sky.

We Are The Bloodline Champions

My mind's in the arena,

yes I think I've been playing it quite a lot.

Why don't you come on in

and see what the Champions have got?

I wouldn't read this intensely,

after all, it's just a game.

If anything, it's proof that

we poets aren't quite what we claim.

I've been favoring the Herald;

his bubble, it oughta reflect.

There's my good friend the Ranid,

who you'll have to try hard to detect.

We've been struggling all night

through the frustration mud.

But it's worth it if just once

we can cover our foes in their blood.

We might bring in our Engineer,

though he needs to work on his aim.

His latency's shot to hell,

but he's not the type to complain.

We keep our eyes on the Alchemist,

sidestepping her fatal sleep;

When you see us coming,

you better hide what you wish to keep.

The Gunner just executes

before she can even be seen,

while the Psycho is falling

but then ups and flees the scene.

Volcanoes and Earth Storms:

it's obvious by now we've been had.

I'll stick it out this round

but next one, I'm picking Nomad.

Don't get hit by the shadowbolt

or I swear, I'll wring your neck.

But the Vanguard's on you now

and all I hear is "Aw, what the heck".

The Ravener's spinning;

The Spear Master's launched his harpoon.

Wait, now, I've got my ultimate,

but damn I think I used it too soon.

Two Astronomers are deadly,

but nothing can trump triple Thorn.

When it's two in the morning,

our reflexes are thinned and worn.

Yes, I think at this point

I just can't predict your Wuju.

I'll see you all next weekend,

but I'll see you in my dreams, too.

Grounds To Create

Sunday is the day of rest,

until I found out it was truly

Saturday, and so everything

was not as holy and reflective

as was once thought. My inner eye

shifts from north to dead ahead:

With our melancholy drawn out

from us like worms from the

soft soil, what looming shadow

now do we cast on the stage? One

of doubt; the uneasiness we get

between periods fourth and final?

Or one of our youth, which we

do not have to lean far to

pluck out of our conscious.

If it is escape that we crave

from the shadow of maturity,

we won't have to search very far.

The play's the thing,

wherein I'll breathe sparks

into the bones of spring.

Still I Remember

I still remember you, and all the ways that you lie, in all the departures of evening and
tomorrow that we used to write about, together,
until the clouds gave out—
There used to be so little on my mind except the way you could look into the empty street
And see riots emerging
In the shards of glass, and I’ve thought long about how your hands,
your mother’s hands, are your own and the many times I kissed them were vain intrusions.
You are the great heist of my thoughts; you laid siege to my innocence
when you wrote that note to me about the microscope you used to look through;
and when you asked if I dreamed in color,
I saw colors I never knew existed.
They rained down through the window behind you when we ate at Victory 44:
I don’t know why I thought you’d want to eat at an English pub after having at last
returned from the mystical countryside teeming with
Shakespeare,
But your positivity overwhelmed even my own while we played dark games,
conjuring futures involving unexpected betrayals and dishonesties that
dislocated us with laughter.
We know now that your spoils of war went to the hungriest beggar lined up outside your tent;
I remember now sitting next to you in the luminous dark,
while Wall-E and Eve danced
among the stars in front of us, and how easily my tears fell without your knowledge.
And without the knowledge of anyone else, we pressed our bodies
against the wood of the play room, a monumental wall away from those
celebrating the New Year,
which did you know is going to be better than the last one?
I have only felt so lucky one or twenty times before:
Black dresses must be the vessel for uncontrollable beauty; I have seen it
in The Illusion Theater, where I took the stage against your every
irresistible will,
and I counted myself the wealthiest, healthiest person in the room
to be able to look you into the spotlight eye, and move closer still.
Seven months earlier, your smile grew even bigger as we gave our coats
to the hostess, and they gave us a chocolate dessert free
that we could have spent the entire night on, making swirls on the fancy plate.
However special I could make your birthday, I made it. You did the same
for me, though you might remember my birthday different. You might remember
throwing your shoe into the air, and that it hung suspended for a moment
before landing in the middle of traffic.
All this: The playful picture-taking, the late-night brownie making,
were planted seeds for the cultivation of what you deserve, and in one
feeble attempt in September I did try to sing to you,
Shaky as my voice was: I did intend to hold you for the longest time.
The first time required more determination than raw breath:
I waited up all through the soundless night to whisper you the song
That took your place as you disappeared.
To be fair I too have disappeared. My retreat into the mountains proved
to be fairly quick, yet you jumped into my arms without even knowing my lips.
When we were ever together, we took naps on the couch in your dad’s
basement, sweltering heat much ignored. You read my writing, and you found
the one word in that book that I was embarrassed of— You found
wife;
We found life in ripped up paper you dropped onto my lap,
in letting go of the wheel on Snelling, in holding each other while the
howling wind sought to tear us apart in the midnight backyard.
Landmarks retain their beauty even as the months wear on,
and if I look to the sky often enough, I can see your eyes gazing down on them:
My curb still glows with the intensity of what was once impossible.
I still pass the grassy foothills where your ghost breaks every night. I remember,
An ice-cream truck rolled on by while everything burned down.
But what I will never forget is the way you sat so still
When we rode the tram at the zoo, overlooking all of the animals:
the giraffes, hidden tigers,
and even your prairie dogs, and still you spoke not a word.
I will never know where you went to that day,
But I move through my days softly remembering
every little thing that was once every little everything,
and if you listen to my breath closely enough, you can hear

that last song float gently off it.

To A Clearing

The knoll has become a

minefield of the flesh.

A black mamba hangs

from the nearest tree.

Rabid prairie dogs

lie in ravenous wait.

The egrets have fangs

and there are crocodiles

in the green fountains.

I wish I could keep you

far away from here.

But the mamba spits

your name and my lips

are bleeding for water.

In Search Of Grace

A frizzle-haired woman with a bad

ankle struggles up and limps away.

Two leather-clad bikers sit on the

park bench holding hands.

There used to be a drunk on this

route who lost his mother

and started fights with everyone

but he's sobered up now

and sitting next to me, talking

loudly about the small inheritance

he got when his mother passed away.

Wrinkled Martha tells him to keep writing,

("Martha, is it?" "You've got a good memory"

"I don't even remember my own name,

I have it written here on my forearm.")

while the legally blind man in front of me

is drawing a map on the back of his neighbor's

bus schedule – poor girl seems lost –

a map of how to get back to where we came

from because we've come so, so far.

Born Out Of

I was born out of simple things

like a fresh love marriage that

caved in, just the one I avoided,

but when comes the finger of my son?

I was born out of the morning,

when nurses pass me with grim

smiles, they've seen too many corpses

before 8am, I've heard too many

apologies in my head before 8am.

I was born out of Nana's eggs

every late Saturday morning,

and I wish I could taste them again.

Breakfast is coffee, breakfast is air.

Breakfast is my bored, washed up

tongue, wheezing on the shoreline.

I was born out of basement angst,

and indulgent six-part harmonies.

I was born out of scribbling on the

back of offering envelopes while

the organ accompanied my strokes.

I was born out of losing teeth.

I must have been dreaming last

night because I woke up this morning

with a bad case of the hiccups.

Resist Regress

It was a good day to be insane.

Girls in yellow and baby blue skirts

pushed me into my right mind.

Their legs shone with vulgarity.

I felt like tumbling in the rock patches

and gathering flower buds to create

a bouquet of expectations; freshly

packed lunches exploded into the

attention starved faces we can

only try so hard to ever meet.

I am so much closer to my

micro-nirvana of the triumphant

year, and I can see it illuminating

in every word that fills my cheekbones.

Pear-shaped women at the bus stop

warn me of the danger in not having any plan.

One of them has known me since

I used to sniffle into my lonely hands.

She's watched me grow right before her big, brown eyes.