Have you read about condoms?

"I can still smell you on my fingers."

To catch,
capture blood in skin,
to see the only remainders
of an hour's work: only
plastic, latex, and crust;
scent and must.

However many deep breaths
and "fuck"s you may mutter
whispered in her ear,
talk dirty and make it clear
that you feel secure in her arms.
But know that it
is usually only rewarded
with emotion.

Connecting human lovers,
(sex is) on the surface
tending to the young.
We as lovers (here)
do not comprehend the remainders
that an orgasm leaves behind.
Beyond simply sickly
white, yellow at the tip of a condom
but a permanent imprint
of the cock or cunt
left in the mind
like the favorite song or line
from a favorite movie.
There is nothing cinematic
in the way we bounce on a mattress,
cinematic, no,
but emotionally beyond
all other things.
I love my family,
I love my music,
I love my life,
but I fuck you
and I hold that above the crucifix
that has taken my place
on the wall, in the bedroom which I was comfortable in
my youth.

Will told me to post this and I still don’t want to but happy new years to all of you who read my shitcan poetry

I’ve been stood up.
I should have left a message.
I’ve put myself out there.
I think it’s because of my moustache.

We could have been great you know
I’m not like anything you’ve ever had
(I probably am). But I have brown hair,
do they? Do they trim their nose hair?

Or give you great vanilla sex?
Cause I can do that.
Have you read about condoms?
Cause I do have them.

And I’d love to lay with you
and I’d love to cry with you
just in case you have to
and sometimes we all do.

Have time to procreate?
I own a queen sized bed and some really nice shirts.

And at your work
I knew I was struggling
with my face
and this thing above my upper lip
that you most likely despise
because of your father,
who molested or beat or babied you
had a thing
on his face like mine.
And I’m sorry I like theatrics
and facial accessories
because baby, just tell me
I can shave
and I think you’re worth it
and maybe I’m not good enough
right away. But I’m more than
an apron wearing shell
that makes you great sandwiches
and gives you that extra cheese
cause, baby I feel for you
and I want to know what makes you tick.
I want to know you
crazy.

Good Christ
Are you this lonely?

Cause I sit in certain corners
of my room and get cold,
I mean really solid,
frigid.

I can’t move against
these things that have been happening
beneath ice clad sheets
I can’t get up

in the early morning
although I like that time of day
for falling back to sleep
in what could

and will never be of our memory.
Now I sit and watch the cold
dissipate on the big window
that acts as my mind's sentry.

Scraps From Microsoft Document, "Going Home Rituals," Written December 22, After Work, 2007

Tonight I prepare to go back home
Like so many times before
A six pack and I
Will unearth a royal blue suitcase
and fill it up with my nicer shirts.
The ones I only wash
when I’m at my parent’s home.

These same shirts, collectively,
don’t get clean for weeks,
sometimes months
because I’m too old to tell
my mother I don’t know how
to get them clean myself
But I think she's finally caught on.

Sometime in the next week
I’ll be in my old bed
with the shades turned down
but open enough for the moonlight
to come in.
And I’ll see the same view
I’ve grown up with;
a frozen lake,
a couple pine trees,
and light pollution
from downtown Minneapolis
and I’ll think about things
like where I’ve been
and where I’ll be.

At that moment, I won’t be
at my home
any longer
for I know nothing
of the city I grew up in.
Now that I’m older and
living four hundred miles away,
I feel all Chicagoan and grins
in vintage tees with jeans
but my heart will always be stuck in
Minnesota winters,
even if I don’t feel like a native
In my bed room,
In my heart, I always will be.

Now I’ve drank half the sixer
and packed my weathered bags
and I'm ignoring the other brews for
my scavenger roommates
like I usually do
twelve hours before I leave.

And in my wake a woman,
no, the thought of what could
And never will kill me
Sometime in the
next week I imagine it loves me.
I imagine it lulling me to dreams.

I told you that you would never believe me

There at the embankment of a highway overpass
runs a fearful friend of mine,
away from a car crash
and what he has recently decided is a "drinking problem,"
but what is most likely the same pressures we have all considered,
now embodied by what he does at this very moment:
running from that potential threat,
be it unaided social interaction
or clear-headed consideration regarding the state of our lives.

But I love him, like I love all of you
and if I wish you anything
it is the ability to stop running across freezing Minnesota highways
at three in the morning,
or maybe the strength to drink all day,
everyday,
and never think that you have a problem.

to be unfettered. transcendent.

someday
i'll live alone in the forest
afternoons spent
tossing around in my bed
losing the hours

the rain
it comes
almost everyday now
the forest trees would take me in
and play keep away
from all the rain

the leaves above
they have there way
of keeping us dry
making us safe

who knows?
i could be forfeited in caverns
or find the path and walk away
away from the ghosts of legend.