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 |  a journal in short bursts that might occasionally even rhyme |
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I am not much for journal keeping. So consider this less a recitation of daily life and more of an attempt to capture a mood, or moment, as it strikes my fancy. For the easily offended, I should add the disclaimer that there is a fair amount of profanity, sex and/or politics. The words are stuck, lodged uncomfortably between hands that don't touch and the rush of cold air ghosting between lips that won't kiss A stuttering cough to dislodge them, wet and shiny with the mucous secretion of heartache, and they tumble forth, end over end, before you |
| non-union members have eight-hour work weeks overtime hazard pay job safety requirements legal protections from harassment and discrimination because union members have unions the public sector is the police officer the firefighter the paramedic even the DMV government spending is why we have roads K-12 guaranteed clean water air food taxes equal national security as well as earmarks cuts to the public sector are additions to the unemployment rolls which we all pay for in the end one way or the other |
An after-party how lovely at a local restaurant you say oh what a shame! we will not be able to make it the children you see a babysitter? do you remember honey what happened the last time we tried that if it were not so alarming it would be funny thank you for the invitation we could not possibly the children you see oh nothing like that we would give them away I am sure but who would take them? they cannot be left unsupervised more than twenty three minutes at a time or they get into serious trouble oddly specific is it not? please believe that is not a number we came up with ourselves it sounds like our older son who is a prodigy you know a real whiz with the math he claims they get bored very easily because it is hard being too smart for their own good that they are scientists upending the world in order to understand it we have tried explaining that exploring and exploding are two different words but then he got so mad I know honey I am rattling on about things no one needs to hear it is just so nice sometimes to talk to another adult you know one that might understand even a little bit but yes you are right we should get going at any rate thank you again this was lovely we should do this again sometime oh excuse me please put that down sweetie you will hurt some- |
| The present we already met sparked flamed burned to cinders despite desperate firefighting warm water wormed into the foundation Your eyes in mine hands at our sides awkwardness creating almost a half-foot of room Your eyes on mine what is was we already knew quinquennial of the day you or I left What would be we could not know silence boding well and ill at one time or another The present the heat of complicated lust the heat of everyone else soaked through your shirt melted the ice in my gin My eyes in yours a push from behind sweat that tastes of tears gathered in the corner of my mouth My eyes on yours yesterday we groped in corridors tomorrow a graduation a wedding a birth a death today we master the art of artfully careless hellos |
Not meant as a command but a request a little tenderness on your behalf a simple behest a scintilla of kind any part you can spare a bit of poetry if you wouldn’t mind the sorts of words that never make any sense unless they’re lies Not meant as a demand (I haven’t any left) it's an appeal to better natures better angels it need not be forever see I don’t expect fidelity only definite gestures a pretense to civility a bandage to seal the skin worn raw |
When you wake feeling blue remind yourself of me lapping gently at the secret parts of you under drunken stars and an orange moon. We laughed the first time I asked if I could kiss you “down there,” best friends suddenly navigating the unexpected shores of sexual attraction. Two bumbling adolescents secure in nothing but our mutual admiration and a determination to get laid. When you wake feeling blue remember how perfect you looked splayed across the guest room rug covered in nothing but diamonds and me. You wrinkled your nose, squinting adorably without your glasses, trying to gauge my seriousness by asking if I thought I’d be any good at it. You knew that any red-blooded man and quite a few yellow ones would feel compelled to take up that gauntlet. When you wake feeling blue remember the muffled squeaks of a bed hastily covered in towels, not wanting blood-stained sheets to give us away. I nodded almost assertively inordinately proud of my scratchy stubble and newly deepened voice – for a whole year now – but stalled for time by posturing. "What are you waiting for?" you asked, and I screwed up the courage to unbutton your jeans with shaking hands When you wake feeling blue roaming empty rooms in a house his money paid for remember that I have never not found my way back to you. Supremely self-confident, even then unafraid to grab my head and shift it to where it needed to be, you were a wet dream in pinks and reds moaning harder, faster, please and finally, incoherently, in exactly the way I had always imagined, my name. After I came you laughed softly while kissing my cheek and squeezing my ass. When you feel blue you have forgotten that the moments you spend alone I too am alone with arms that flail strangely without the heft of your body to guide them. Years later, at a gallery opening for a mutual friend, you told me how hard it was not to laugh that first time and spoil it all. And that despite our inexperience we acquitted ourselves marvelously, using the right amount of touch and tongue and teeth. Instead of tears for distance give thanks for crisp hotel sheets for the infinite possibilities inherent in a cyan thong for a DYI stripper pole for a thirty dollar camera for the worldwide web for the freedom his indifference brings for having someone who loves you in all the shades of blue. I had to confess it was hours of lonely masturbation to lesbian porn no less that had taught me my technique – when to move left when to press harder when to introduce fingers into the equation. I had to laugh when you confessed to the same. If you remember how can you still despair? |
Danger beckoned. A bonfire gave off heat. Traveler beware. Heat singes; meat burns. The night was riddled with ghouls and littered with stars. Her skin, opalescent. It rippled with the possibility of violence. Fear of one could not obscure the charms of the other. What warnings there were he ignored. He gave himself up. In return, she swallowed him piecemeal. A parting gift of pain, and the words to wield it. She said the heart often forgives. The mind forgets. The gauze of distance softens. It was not true that time blunted the sharpness of grief. Thus he learned they could lie. He had loved her. Loved her still. A lifetime of nights to come and one question loomed. What was he brave enough to wager? |
Sauce a demi-glace of undiluted espagnole The herbs annatto, dried sage, medicinal bergamot crumbled with age into dust Vegetables, of course wilted kale russet-tipped asparagus buttered browned spinach Meat. Bred true on simmered sorrow, what did we not know of bitter? The sum of this meal, this meat, bitterer still. An answer resides in the braised innards. Our hearts we ate, limned in cruelty; Our tongues we ate, biting and bestial. They were bitter. They were good, much as the poet had said. |
Helplessness is what we learned in the corridors of be anything you want to be, follow your dreams, find your passion. The path we followed was graveled with boundless ambitions, limitless enthusiasm, unworkable talents, limited aptitude. Introspective, navel-gazing, foundations aquiver with praise, we failed to notice the path ahead was paved of playwrights and profiteers, painters and politicians alike, of the once and future leaders who, undivided, trod confidently into the future. We failed to notice that only the earth endures. Failures all, and flailing. Were we not the cream of our generation, the educated children of liberated parents? Failures all, and flailing. We marched onwards, voices quiet, anthems dampened, loosed onto the world in search of victories long since vanquished. We marched onwards, bludgeoned bloody, heads bowed, having squandered those yesterday hopes and tomorrow promises on a series of not-for-me, not-todays. |
Rain, enough to crowd the sidewalk with umbrellas. Wind and wretchedness slide in between a turned up collar and subway-flushed skin. This is the weather of missed connections, of exhausted discontent. No puddle waders. No upturned faces. Water aplenty, but a gloom insufficient for atmosphere. Heathcliff, alone on his moor, would not have ventured forth. The storm spins discarded cadet greys and blues dispassionately, observing the forms. And thus, autumn, keeping company with melancholy, sulks. |
Words fail us, only you, to be honest, more often than not are for naught, our indoor voices decibels above the freight trucks I never got used to zooming underneath the window; a poor trade, trees for cement. We wound with sex you lay there dry, unappealing, gouging rings tucked into your palm as we come together or apart ferocious, furious couplings that never satisfy (neither of us come anymore) the urge to break you. |
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