AROUND AGAIN

most of those vain
vagabond bombshells i chased in

youth wanted nothing to do

with my abstruse poetry,

its pimpled pain. now older,

shelled by the abuse

of less sensitive men, here 

they come around again.

ANIMAL NATURE

the first people you made out with

were defined almost wholly

by willingness – their hungry mouths and yours,

blessed, holy “whores” who pulled your

sexuality loose from its moorings, attacked

the mysteries of the body

and the boredom of religion.

you feared them then, for sure,

until years later you thanked God

they accosted you first, helped you over-

come your worst fears

and regain your lost,

innocent animal

nature.

(image courtesy of Ryan McGuire)

COLLEGE

i had no use

for knowledge.

i ran wild then curled into

the protective ball of the gifted child.

i preferred to under-

play my true potential,

rather than prove it

was illusion. hiding, everything

seemed so binary.

everything. i craved

grayness. i confess

i wanted to stay

in between

kid and adult,

dabbler and professional.

i wasn't ready to practice

a vocation. i was so young.

it was

awful.

it was

wonderful.

it was

college.

BORN (for Stuart Paul)

you wake up in a soapbox
derby car released

on life’s steep slope,

picking up speed

hurtling downhill,

no steering wheel,

for god’s sake

keep your head down
and be very still.

VACATION

what passes for work these days has us
up in the air too often, getting high
enough to hurry better, wi-fi minds
keeping us tethered to whatever
priorities can be pursued most
profitably. wanna get away?

EXPOSED

we call it business because
it really is just an abun-
dance of busy. keep moving, you,
musing isn't performance,
we do do-ing here, not
intellectual indulgence!

how badly all of us wish
we could drop the whole charade,
this seemingly real hand-
wringing parade past meaning-
less numbers and goals.

nobody needs any
more of those. tell you what,
only on this sale, we'll throw
in a brand new
garden hose. how naked
must ambition become
before it gets exposed?

START RUNNING AWAY

for years i was a squirrel
whose nut was engagement;
i would send your mixtape back
with track-by-track reactions. not that

you asked. i would dedicate this poem to you
to force you to read it. i would not give up
until you did, and then i would

blame you for your will-
ful refusal to parry.

i was a content
machine always chasing
the world, begging it
to marry me while burying it

beneath my neediness. mean-
while, over time, i unearthed
a better way: if you want someone
to run to you, better to
start running away.

LASSITUDE

i hate spoken word
poetry -- i prefer you

crack these puzzles,
sculptures standing in

for meaning. make your own
head music through your eyes.

i'd rather leave your ears
alone for now.

REMAINS

i have awaited my un-
expected death since the first
night i woke up to it.

i found myself giving up god
like a loose band-aid, stuck
in vain over a blister of doubt.

i chose pain over impossible
stories, inherited a prayer-
ful longing, and now

i cling to the kingdom
of worry that remains.

DOWN THERE

let go your dead-
lines, your expectations
and good intentions. be
as bad as happenstance
and wayward plans can
make you. and lo,

so shall you grow, your head
straining upwards toward pure
air, the better to escape
all the accidental manure
that always seems to accumulate
down there.

KITE

i am growing fear-
less as i get older.

all that i consume
eats away at me:

music, drink, the fucked-
up friction of attraction, chasing

satisfaction, everything becoming
fertilizer for the next

generation, sucked in
by mortality's churning,

relentless anonymizer.
try this: let go

your memories, your babies,
your wives and your wise ideas, go

fly a kite while there's still time
and wind and trivial string

to hold us aloft, tethered
to life, dragged up by love.

THE PAIN OF PARENTING

the pain of parenting isn't so much
personal, physical suffering. it's more
referred ache -- a blurry, persistent
stress that puts us on
sea-legs, makes us feel

like we awoke on deck
in a nightmare, a drunken ship-
wreck imminent, a portent of falling
that never comes true. our children
don't really grow up. they move in
and out of clarity, of being
able to answer what exactly

is wrong with you? with me?
and so finally together we
reconcile ourselves with this sad
fact: quite often it hurts
simply to be. life itself is
a queasy shared malady.

GROUND STOP

running through life and airports

we dream of nothing
more than a moment
to pause, an instant

to reflect on every other  
harried happenstance
that has left us

bereft of perspective, cut off

from our souls; we are like

tops staggering as we near

the end of all this

spinning, still straining to go

round, willing these final

revolutions before everything
stops and we go

to the ground.