Vagary

No one every warned me
to fear my hands
but they should have
-Paul Guest

I.
My oldest nightmare
resonates like wooden floorboards
shifting in solemn hours
where a tune is played
a closet door opens
and inside darkness
calling me to it.

You were white
and it was white
all over again
in the shower
and on your bed.
Drawn out
like a funeral.
Three gun salutes
then quiet.

Honestly
I slept walked
from your room
to the sofa that was
a veritable twin mattress
of red cushion
until it got weird
and your roommate
saw me naked.
That moment
is dead now,
at least for a while.
Family continues
to reel without
not that you were present
the last five years
anyways
brash honesty
is an unfiltered cigarette
smoked whatever
wells try to hide
during daylight.

II.
A simple kind of emotion
services the crowd
as the benches are drawn
and the people begin to kneel.

The lake is quiet
(give thanks and breathe)
again
then interrupted
(give thanks and breathe)
by crappies breaching
in the dream
you were trying
to sleep
with the bedroom door open.

Mutually Beneficial or Not

I spend most of my time not dying…
I climb on a woman I love
I repeat my themes
-Frederick Seidel

I read somewhere
that most human body heat
is regulated
through the head
and the feet.
My three limbs conform
with yours, all together.
Four hands excavate
a lode of unfelt memories
that coyly bite on an earlobe
as a deposit of sleep unfurls
an orgasm of quiet honesty.

Down on you
and you’re down
further on the carpet
than I could expect.
Green shag melted
into green: a wind blows
a grove of trees.
You’re a stone building
with a temple front;
a Corinthian column of curves
mouthing unlit funeral pyres

Lightless for hours
then morning
until a crow sings
and you kiss me.
Mouth sweeping
into a bite of lower lip
and until a sigh is returned
I think about the uneffort
of a tributary: A body becoming
an entirely new body:
A thread being sown
into a seam

The moon…
or could we talk about
you again?
A breath
then two moan
an outline of shoulder blades.
A tongue tasting
the humble repetition
of a thunderstorm
in tomorrow’s lavender blossoms.
I could count freckles
on your body for hours
when you are asleep
or I could count
the Canadian Geese
hurling themselves
toward migration
to keep their bodies
warm at night.

Your hands
gave me something
I haven’t had a chance
to receive.
Still, they know
how all roads end
at the bluffs of your shoulders
and intersect with your hair
straightening.

For Lauren

Wait

The base of the Chicago river
is pavement
ushered in whenever
to direct the flow of used things
south
where locks and sewage keep
waves from bleeding gently
into the larger body of a lake.
I’ve seen it flood
seen the police drag
its smooth stomach
in search for those swept
and held against it.

The house on the lake
is all I can remember.
I could breathe day into a ceiling
smitten with stared water marks
or talk about politics while drunk
at a four a.m bar.
From here to this
now is not too far
(what day is it?)
then I’m finished.

The river moved
truncated doubt.
A small segment
engorged
and fell out.
I take it apart
to pull it taut:
more next to longer more;
an inch first
then stone on stones
magnified and developed
like a photograph
of modernist architecture.

Dear Pacey,

I nearly died last Monday. I thought it was daring to be riding so fast through the graveyard. I lost control hitting a curve and thought the brakes would stop me. Instead they stopped the bike and my body flew over the handlebars and my head slammed against the pavement. I guess I just lost control. You know, the way Mitch died when Dawson left L.A. to chase love in Boston. I expected it to hurt more.

I could feel both my arms and my legs and stood to brush myself off, but I just spread mud all over my pants. I wanted to take control of the situation, Pacey, I felt like I had to decide my next move. The bike was in no condition to ride. The back wheel was bent into an oval and lodged against the brakes. I tried to carry it along the steep downward path, but my wrists gave out after about a hundred feet. Some of us are men now, Pace, for us the worst pain is to just ache and stand in one place. We can’t all stay something like eighteen forever. I was running late for work.

Oh yeah, I wrote a poem and I want you to decide what it’s about.

I want it to be sudden and intentional.
My legs are long and muscular
and I want it to blow me over,
to be destroyed and taken.
It doesn’t matter if I know
that it’s coming or if it takes
the wind all out of me. I want
the bricks to break and the
support beams to twist and crunch
under the pressure. I’d rather
it was thorough that way.
I want it to happen while
I am still young enough to
appreciate the melodrama.
Some of us are men now, we are
assertive and furious.
We are insatiable and inconsiderate.
There will be no fade to white,
when it comes I hope it looks
into my eyes while it takes me.
When I see it coming I want to feel it
in my joints like a storm,
the way my hands and legs get after
a larger than average orgasm or bike accident.

Next Season

She had a lutheran look to her; the chubby christian aspect of the privileged- a bible bound into a ben franklin planner as the ultimate schedule: creation, birth, death, redemption.
The bible belt is hidden in the west under cliffs in trailer parks overflowing junkyards of broken aspirations rusted over by wishful thinking; 'Ill get er ta turn next season, I reckon'
Im sick as hell and the reeking petulant perfume reminds me of the satisfaction Huxley's Staithes takes in that acknowledgment of your own human stink.
I take none.
'Who is that?'
'A girl I once loved'
That chubby christian aspct of the privledged, reeking petulant and acknowledgement of your own human stink. Frowning in the eyes and smiling with the mouth a toothsome grin and wrapping arms around eachother in nonchalant dissapointment.
She must've heard the stories and oh god, im sick as hell. Trailer parks and junkyards stinking and oh god, the chubby christian aspect all overflowing wishful thinking.
Petulant stink bound in a ben franklin- acknowledgement of broken aspirations: creation, birth, death, redemption.
'Ill get er ta turn next season, I reckon'