thirsting for the win like a true loser

somewhere on the cosmic circuit
i misjudged my momentum

and my shadow overtook me

prologue under pressure

back from job
done a good job

got a ride home
soaked to the bone

black matte polyester
comes off in an instant

the grub slapped on a plate
riding round in the wave

the mirror check
yep i am still there

still lookin like me
today was not the day

of my metamorphosis
rather expected

grab the first soda of the day
from the fridge with

undue excitement
munch on a lil weenie

ok call off the meal
look out for number one

number one has a problem
the room is blank as a page

it looms like an unwanted lover
what else is there for you to do?

Watchdog

This is the touch of an untried pencil,
This is the preamble to my life's new constitution:

I will never again slight a stranger for being needy and hungry,
for I am needy and hungry.
I will no longer take the absence of kindness as a token of malice,
for kindness waits in everyone.
I will no longer string the yarn of my sadness in hopes that it bats
the eye of a passerby.
I will no longer dilate my eyes to speed the passing of light
through my body.

I go to write in the field, and plant my feet where the ice once started.
I step to the plate and hear the cheers of forked leaves and knives of grass.
I step onto home. Anywhere I step I step onto home.

I walk the one minute walk back to my door, take a shower, losing myself,
mess up my hair precisely so, and walk towards the coffee shop.
Oh the trepidations of affording the cocoon!
Would you not welcome steam in your face if it was offered?
If it was offered would you take the nearest exit?

I am not making this about me — this was made for me.
I am lucky to be awake 'cause I routinely resist the resetting of the day.

My ankles and shoulders are weary and wellish
but I betcha can't tell just by lookin'.

I am sitting on a bench now made for watching,
no longer the bench for those sitting waiting to play the game.

I walked straight past the coffee shop.
I cannot afford to sit where the delicious sun does not embalm me.
This wind is the best hug I've had all year.

Was this the truth of me that you were after?
Truth be told I am glad I passed the coffee shop:
I saw a baby reach to touch a flower.
And if I could contain myself,
nothing would be lost except you reading this.

Friends that are firm, and friends that are forgotten!
From this moment forward I suffer no distinction!
I invite you all to reacquaint yourself
with the one you once loved.
I am told love is a cuckold in him.
And if being insatiate sounds savory,
quit wasting the limelight of your life
before it puckers in on itself.

(That same old thought! My god,
how did you get in— how did you know
where I have been all these years?)

That here a patch of sunlight descends
upon this patch of my life
and I must make of it what I can—
will I when the darkness advances
realize my whole life was made of sunlight?

And that I at every corner fussed and grieved
over every inch of shade I happened upon?
Rapidly aging relentless fool.

I know I am meant to arrest my idleness,
to prolong my purpose until I have
achieved a completion, but what for?

The farther I push myself,
the heavier all things unsaid weighs on me.

I push myself to stay awake some hours longer,
waiting on a completion. Will I strike out in search of it:
a sharp purchase, a calculated meeting by chance,
a journey where every step presses pins to my back
and my limp learns its language word for word?

The filling of my lungs with air,
The filling of my heart with the reasons I want to live—
They are useful, I have had their services contractually employed.

Never again will I be convinced by the word never out of my mouth.

Are these not the thoughts I have thought before?
Are these the same thoughts of my father, my mother,
my brother, thoughts my sisters will someday find?
What are these but the thoughts of my friends codified,
the thoughts furrowed into strangers' brows articulated?

In the blank spaces, as I try to pull lines
like pulling teeth without anesthesia,
I hear the milling of my teeth gently grinding.
I return at once to my body to scold myself.

You may notice for all my talk of the light and dark,
that I keep at the fence of tragedy.
My life has been my own, I have known no other like it,
yet it is far, far removed from tragedy.

I do not avoid discussing tragedy because of that distance...
Or because it has no place here, because of course it has a place here,
I just have not found it. Perhaps it is because tragedy
is best felt, heard, held and known from within.
What is expressed more than the smile of that man or woman suffering?

sum drugs

i do not know the sum of these casualties
i never heard a guarantee except this ends
the days they all look so pretty
when you're forever on the mend

plucking penitence

this is the partitioning of my well-practiced smile

i recruit recognition of me tooth by tooth

these are the particles of my problems

inhaled at my leisure

the limitless windows of beautiful pictures

i am sure somewhere their story continues

who brings the eyes that burn a lesson in me?

who knows but i am meant to die unlearned?

when i rise long before my time is required

i strike out to make the aching worth something

to turn tribulations into well-intended tribute

but i forget in the forgery of my character

that i am quite simple, unforgiving, a brute

go die! and other lies my fingers seize upon

frighten and affront my humanity

the charges levied against me each one 

trumped up to be my final say

and i say it is easy to lapse into the lap 

of one itching to scratch your head

but licentious and mangled memory

does no justice to the decision

does nothing except lapse recovery

resisting resentment one finds an existence

so rooted in failure it cannot fail

i accept that i have made an exception

that there must be no other way

by now the aching has turned chronic

would my words behave and settle

into neat rows of pleasure

i would have always been cured

but imitating the life breathed into them

they fester and ooze contradiction

making me wish i wrote fiction

clutch sentry mission log #2

i am bracing the slope
of the seesaw at the top

of the ferris wheel
disassembling my fear

for the acrophobia of others
there's a sunrise in their eyes

but they haven't noticed
there's a way they've heard

to hasten the sickening orbit
it's there the longer you look at it

i haven't got a clue how to lookout
my telescopes are all full of mirrors

and i'm going rogue on the outlook
i once carried in my chest pocket

dropping my hankerchief
so that i may recover it later

running out of lines waiting
for the scene change