for nick

we said, phone conversations are hard.
we said, we don't mind how loud you guys are,
we thought we'd talk over any amount
of hot topics. for all the drinks we set
on our laps, our horrible spit,
the time i reminded you that i had never,
never, never been happy and sat back,
i saw how smart you were, how smart you'd always been.
how you'd never asked yourself,
it just came up when you remembered.
i've never, never, never been intelligent, i said.
we ate that sticky soup, the diet flavor,
and socked our tummies when they grumbled.
we danced and kissed in front of pals
and held our arms, heads in each other's laps
on lawns and at work and you said, too bad i don't like girls.
you're like my last girlfriend in high school,
your blue bra lights up the room. too bad i don't like sex,
i said, and you smiled, smelled my shoulder.
it was spoon fed love that spoiled us, then distance
kept spilling and pills.
oh, to be shaky on a porch with you again,
waiting for the rain to come down heavier.
to braid the back part of your head,
touching all the hairs the way a new love would never feel to,
combing out the tightness in jerky little sighs.
i want, i want, i want, we said, too sorry
for the time.

should you leave, leave yourself a little, leave all these sleeves behind?

ryan and i are getting ready to go away, away, away. and i'm sad that everything else will stay in it's place. like when we leave, a whir should tousle our old world up. like our little toes plug up some wind pipes and when they're removed, the ozone bubbles should suck in and out in readjustment.
i don't like thinking about paul moving into my apartment, even though i love paul. i don't like thinking about how much i'll miss my street. my bar. my bed. my pots and pans.
but in leaving we'll be seeing so much more! ryan has never been to europe and i get to be wrapped up in him when he sees it. i know what it is like to wonder around, saddened by how annonymous you are, even to yourself, in some downtown. then how all the sweet little details catch on your eyelids and you know you're somewhere new, and how important that is.
i have this feeling that ryan is going to be a fantastic travellor. he's experimental, he's exceptionally comfortable.
we leave in one month and ten days and will open our eyes in spain.

on another note, i'm a bad drunk. i hate thinking about how bad of a drunk i actually am.

collapsed, cleansed

to the temporary clean of rooms in homes
comes dry heat, dry lips in hot pursiut, dry fans.
to the elaborate clean in desk and re-shaped heads
comes heavy pallets, assorted sweats, sweet humor
and insistance. to clean the crumbs,
flake away a full afternoon for some the serene surface,
an unclotted mirror, a well-shaken rug,
is to a deeply folded drawer of panties
and all the things that panties may mean to a bedroom,
a body, a pair of pants.
to enjoy a fixed-up living room,
to post your own notices on in the clutch of
a bedstand is the perfect part of ownership,
the last vision before a sleep sets in.

vomitice

it's too cold to have a hot trot in the sweet, softening sun,
though all the imaginary forward marchs are still in effect.
a tempetured motion to wrack each firm decision
with approval,
indefinite steps to tomorrowdom.
just as one pancake comes down flat in a drizzle
of sad gluey circles,
one circle comes tilted and bound by syrup.
i could live off breakfast foods,
and non-dairy creamers
although i know they're bad for my bones.
i could eat every sun flake from god
if it didn't ruin my whole torso,
my smelly organ heart.
i could put every waxy decision in my hat
and mold my head
if the sun were stronger than most shaded
evening dinners.
when the one day comes
i'll be carrying my commitments anyway,
and all i've ate, all i've stood
will come bleating back up.

un-holidayed poems, unfrazzled by contemporary smells.

i'm just back from omaha as ryan and i went there for the weekend/easter/saying "hello" post engagement. it was fun but i'm glad to be home and done with ryan's parents. they're nice enough, truly fine folks but it's tough being in someone else's house. i feel like i'm stealing their son. they adore him so.
thankfully the weekend is gone, and in a fairly non-eventful state i sit with some cheese and crackers while ryan is at a meeting for movies. meeting for movies for life. i really like lifetime movies. i love that they're bad and evoke the oddest emotional trains. they're missing so much that they're painfully bare and silly and interesting. i don't care if lifetime movies are for college jerks who have nothing better to do and homebound depressants. i like them. i don't particularly care for them high but any open afternoon and a tv with cable is pretty much all it takes to sucker me in.
i bought some great poetry anthologies at this fantastic bookstore in omerhaws. both are from the eighties with rocking color themes on the cover. i read poem after poem in the car and then ryan read the first act of "cat on a hot tin roof" for class. reading aloud could be one of my favorite activities and "coahtr" it's shaping up to be a catchy play. little to no action but the characters are magestic in scope and formation through dialogue.
i hate going to mass. ryan's family demanded our attendence in a nice way. i had a dream last night that i was a young boy being molested by priests and i couldn't get a hold of my parents in between rape sessions. it was terrible.
I've been trying to write poems with no avail. maybe no availability in my brain. i have to be in the on/off state. i'm not overthinking but i have my vocabulary about me.
but anyway, here are four poems i wrote today after i found the on/off state.

dedication to a stiff stalker

sure the surge of sad guys come,
at night or after baths,
their tiny eyes, bullying irises
of waiting on watching
on somebody to look for.
always some guy you dated just to see
and found him seated in his jeep all night long,
using questions from jepordy and a false addiction to cigarettes
in a loose person to person formula.
he was apart from his television in class
and after his night or bath while sucking on himself,
rubbing his balls through his gym shorts.
it was like being scared of someone's sickness,
someone's inability to wrap it up and you felt bad for
being so curt.
it would have been nice to fuck him just to see
but his cables were tight together,
his neck was pounded out of sweatshirt's grip.
for the first three days you had to skip class,
on principle and for safety.
then you're phone became a tiger hut,
always pronouncing and purring with angery hunger.
then you left the little kit of distraction alone in a room,
stapled the roses and practical lessons to the door.
it's hard to be the boss of a long and bleeping on-air pause,
it's hard to come across open and flat.



the novelty sweatshirt lady

all the family men in the world touched her,
she asked again how she could sweetly come next to one.
all the while she enjoyed being ponied up,
her favorite position was when her cards showed,
when her hard work graced her face,
her folded skin.
for heaven's sake, she found most folks expasperating
with the entagled way they handled one another.
quick, like a kitchen cabinet
she opened and shut conversations
and eyed the men in hunting jackets,
hung deeply back at the showroom bar.
when she still wasn't that young,
when she still wasn't that old,
she noticed a mustache,
put it softly in her underpants.
she touched her light jeans and flannel shirts in a suitcase.
for all the years she fought her weight for firemen,
for all the times she lost her head over the bunny-type girls
she became a quiet rider.
in the woods we need foxes,
on our plates we need bread,
in our tummies we need butter, honey,
and in our dreams
we plant our legs.


for all the women on campus who knew what to do

two crackers on a tea plate
shackled up in a sunshine room.
three girls, all parted and demented with domed hope,
hairy heat in their seats.
for a slit in the drink they'd pay twenty-nine,
for a slop, a heavy tin of meat they'd come back with more.
for nintey-three times in dormatories
they wanted the hockey players,
the ones who barked into the wooden rink pannels,
the ones whose parents back their cars into a new polaris garage.
being impossible with requests
and inconsolable in badly lit tees,
they were lost like a wave of wheat,
one quick grace of hand behind the head,
door behind the hamper.
once they wanted it they couldn't go back.
just a baby in angora push-up pants.
once they heard their un-names mentioned,
moaned without tone in rock bottom blow-up totes
it was hopeless to pursuade them otherwise.
from moment to moment they rushed,
circular party pants, motionless mattresses,
money under their worthless tongues.


a father not far from here

two men to stand at a golf tournament,
proud of their plucked wives,
the only buzz word open,
the camper they'd never crap on, ha ha!
just a couple clubs and healthy grandkids,
fourth jack in gradschool,
meghan had another panic attack
and all the nature sounds of empathy,
a crack of ball-bat explosion,
stick-wiffel like we did as kids.
tom capsised his canoe at camp,
just close enough to the army hanger that straightened him out.
we called patricia longfellow to carry the extra weight.
two men who shoot a foot behind them
to collapse the fascinating noise,
to chance the steel-toe guarantee.
he wanted a slick black drink,
he like her tits in silver.
they come from all over and here isn't gonna last forever.
for all the low brows in the world these high balls
will fix them, ha ha!
and on the green we see sweet,
a foreign catchphrase to unashame the exact truth,
and always rosey.
we're the nicest guys when the queers aren't so gay
for fuck's sake. who claimed he came in heavier
silk? these requests for simple alignment,
order in an open range.
they'll be gone long before they're dead if they don't
let the old foundations get stoned.