Godard Without Pretension (Actors With Tragic Lines)

the breath you exhale,
quiet and sacred to me,
leaves me breathless, like
Godard without the pretension,
and sometimes, it's a choice
between nothingness and love,
where no one is being sincere
-- actors with tragic lines.

I long for your hands,
which hold my heart in place,
Atlas of my universe,
carrying the ugly realizations
of an ugly man, flawed and
scarred. you kiss me anyway,
knowing that winter could steal
us away -- frozen stares forever.

I place your key
inside my chest, being both,
sign and signifier, for timeless
trust in a feeling we both
feel -- the entelechy appearing
entirely outside the realm
of language, drawing the breath
out of me, where, "I love you,"
meets forever.

Silent Devotion

Silent Devotion

the way her hands fit

along the seams of my heart,

like a tailored glove, suits me

fine. the way our mouths

light up at night, glancing back

at the metal moon thinking,

"how did I deserve this?"

never really expressing how

I must've been born lucky

or fulfilled my karmic duty

in a past life, silent devotion

stripping me of my actual love,

leaving behind a bitter shell,

one that doesn't speak when

everything is on the line, watching

her lose interest, saying only,

"talk to me, what's wrong?" 

the hardest thing I do

is not answer.

and the fights will happen,

little things that could've been

avoided, if only I hadn't taken

my vow of silent sabotage

at birth, realizing that it's the only

thing keeping me together anymore

 -- devotion to my own fucking idiocy.

vast and expansive, a Rubicon

of emptiness that I cannot cross

without her love.

as she turns to leave, I

break my vow of silence.

finally saying, "if you decide

to go -- I won't stop you."

Junk-Garbage Writing

alone again -- desperate diner living,
eating cold coffee with bitter regrets,
I'll bet that he's over and I'm over it,
those razors in your eyes, hands
clasping cold kindness, bringing back
what you took away from me before
there was nothing left.

Poem for Alisha on Her Birthday

Of Love First-Hand

there will always be love
the way that there will always
be flowers -- gold blooms on
black days, boys with hard hands
to soften your heart.

there will always be love
from your friends, the people
who bring you sunlight, who
bring you back from nighttime
dreams of the past.

there is always love
from the cats, meowing
softly as you pet them,
not sure who is being put at ease,
but thankful nonetheless.

and I know his love for you
transcends what I have known
of love first-hand. he will always
be your shade during summer;
the tree where you carve your initials.

Alisha -- no matter what happens,
there will always be love
between the stars, smiling
while you read this, thinking how
lucky we are to have you in our lives.

Achilles Didn't Wear Armor

sometimes when the conveyor jams
(often)
I try looking for Jesus' face in
the broken wood pallets
the gears or
the settling clouds of dirt
I make when I rip and tear
apart those boards. and when things
are real bad
(more often than the conveyor
jams), my skin hardens and
bronzes over my
soft pale flesh and I'm
tougher than fuck like
Achilles, yeah like the colossus of
the factory. so when they raise me
up to crucify me from those
forklift beams, those iron
spikes of redemption, for production's
sake, I will not bleed for
them -- no, my armor is
tougher than fuck like
galzanized hearts & pipe bomb dreams.
weld me to your cause and
I will carry everything tonight on
my spikes of pain and lost time -- and
when my olive shell starts to
b r eak I'll remember that
Achilles didn't wear armor and I will
spill my blood like a
tapped well like a
draining sky like a
dead brother like a
granite slab. and if I ever
find that face in the dirt or
wherever it is that face has been
lost -- I will keep raising myself up&
uptofindmyplace.

voices

I remember it snowed heavy
that year.

he said he didn't want to talk
about it.

the ham was cold when I walked down
the stairs to eat.

she talked about their first christmas
together.

they had both just gotten out of
bad relationships.

she cried as she was telling me.
that was years ago.

maybe that's what they're talking about
starting over.

there's a star on top of the tree
we lost the angel.

when Ben was home we all decorated
he left us.

the christmas lights are
finally blown.

maybe that's what they're talking about.
christmas lights.

I walk back up towards
my bed.

and try to count the number
of prayers

I lied during. there were
over 138.

maybe that's what they're talking about.
lost faith.

my father throws a bottle
and leaves.

fragments resonating past his tires
peeling out.

he didn't drink until I
was born.

maybe that's what they're talking about
being alive.

my mother starts to clean
up again.

I wonder if god hears her crying
every night.

tomorrow is christmas and he'll
be gone

again -- downstairs the voices
die out.

they are still buried in
my dreams.

those voices of a dead child-
hood winter.

claws

nice frame.
I'm next to
a hawk, digging
before the great
saltwater altar of theast.
we are old friends,
he and i -- brothers
with bloodless beaks &
inky talons.
he screams out angry
at the sky. i answer -- open
mouthed and smiling.

he
glazes over wings
coating whitecaps -- carefully.
the sun retreats from
the drunken earth; bloody.
black.blue.beaten.

my shameful claws
grow tired. sinking
sand swallowing my legs.
wings
of dirt,
chains of sky.

to be that free.

"Let me take
your picture. This is going
to look fabulous." she
hides behind
the lens and I am still
thinking of my
solitary brother above.

but now
I am reminded of
her summer sweat &
boyish daggers cast
in the fading light of autumn.
softly
her voice echoes; buried
within a haunted hallway
of memory.
her glorious dark claws
slashing silently
at my throat.

cold nights, headlight eyes
beam over open windows when
time (infant wind of eternity,
compass for the sun) neatly
places you awry; fog kissing the
virgin glass, you speak in smoke
and scales -- rippling in your wake.
someday, your voice will orchestrate roses
to a jealous death and
my eyes will not find beaches
at the end of the world. please
-- let me walk you inside.

Parallax
(for john kurtz)

on the soft green calendar
you refused to use, her hand
(quivering branches -- soft pine in
rainstorms) poised, marker pressed
elegant blood into life.

your heart; outlined weakly
two days after the hospital
(fields of snow walking single file
to the firing squad) workers
released you into the sun.

the bored face of God
stole your mirror and I watched
(cinder hands exalted -- raise
your altar of flesh) you sink
into the dead February dawn.

daggers of faith

what they told you was a lie
darling, salvation isn't always on the other side.

heroin moonlight shaking
the baleful blackness away
in umber covers under--
cover, we recite an our father
crumbling dialectic deceit (crushing
hyperbolic heartrates, we'll trade:
prescription beans for magic pills, your
name and mirrors
for trembling daylit daggers of faith)
who carries god's golf clubs
when the angels are on their knees?

go back to sleep and dream
-- the simeltaneous shadow of
thoughtime walking with you, tracing
the gentle curve of your back, whispering
delicate crystalline sunlight into
your overflowing heart til it
s - h - a - t - t - e - r - s
and the fever of faith
is nothing but an unfinished glass
of red wine
two sky tablets and
your drunk ghost screamingrinning at dawn.

electric renaissance

the language
of tiny jagged hooks
growing in my brain.     shimmering
bloodwords falling along
the ceiling of my tongue
spatting litterature, spitting
littleature across the tiled bathroom
floor. pools of
dust and things that never
hurt enough:         the whispers of collapsing
                          stars in the mirror.

those hooks
scrape across my
hollow turtle shell larynx.
rip the soft
phonemes from the stone
cradles and
scream.

   across my eyes these fucking roaring singing hooks
   don't ever stop waking up words at dark o'clock crying
   in oceans of frozen whiskey carrying ships across the
   shit literalture for war for death for christsake i need to
   fucking sleep hooks! i need to speak, set free and span
   the awful coffeeality, blood cracking across the air where
   electric daggers slash synapses in the corpus callosum
   of time, til half-naked crawling, dripping television voices
   the dark honeyed blood of language, crushes me to the
   floor. deadly poetic hooks -- why do you kiss my teeth
   with darkness from your radiant palpable mouth?


my mouth
like a fading point of light
sears the books
i love with white noise -- somewhere
a lion opens his
mouth:

                                                                                                          [nothing.]

heartlight shaking open
shatters scattered
thoughts of flowers -- lillies
and orchids crawling slowly above
your ears, crowning you
in the morning -- you speak,
and my eyes grab you,
hold on to your mouth while
giant droplets of light
crash to a beautiful death
on your skin.

to be that lovely.

a bowerbird in love with
summer, with life
without fear of a little rain
on a new song please
darling, your
trembling smile
is what keeps me
[shining.]

Desperation Song

1.

driving home with no radio
static screaming in your skull
black moonlight shining through
the windshield, you think
about the pills
you'll crush
and snort
when you get home, the pills
that are supposed to
help you -- there's always something
helping you towards
the finish line; the existential loneliness
of the alcohol in the
glass next to you, the baleful
boredom of the woods
you keep driving through,
trying hard not to steer into
the biggest oak you can find, the
family that can't say no.

there are
so many
stars tonight.

you want to be like that
-- cold, distant light.

2.

the tv sits unused in your apartment;
your heart
sits unused in your chest,
frozen like
a Michigan lake in winter -- you've never
seen a Michigan lake, let alone
in winter.

her picture
is turned down; everything makes
you tired now, life is full
of exhausting efforts, this
poem is tired of you,
your dog doesn't come when
you call him, the phone
is dead.

to sleep
forever in a bath
of cold darkness, of
cold stars. outside, the snow
keeps falling.

3.

you make a list
of all the things that have gone right
and start crying because
your drinking alone on
a Tuesday, watching static
on the tv and listening to Elton John
sing, "I Want Love."

you make a list
of all the things that have gone
horribly, horribly awry and laugh
because you know this
is how the night will end
for the next two weeks -- pushing
the light to the edges
and falling into bed, bottles
of pills and liquor
where an alarm clock
should be.

The Simplest

The Simplest

Glass memories, the simplest
beaches, covered like spiders coming
home. Your mother
cries alone after a long day of
lonliness, which doesn't mean
anything to you anymore, spending
your time in the woods surrounding
the park, looking out across the valley,
noticing for the first time the migration of hawks --
coming home again,

Sharp. Stars like points
on a spear, holy piercing light
cascading like blood down the day.
The simplest lovers never quite what
you practiced, always slipping
like minutes and sand on beaches and
always out of your hands -- at last,
the sky goes dark like your heart.

Poem ( The boys you love, hollow)

The boys you love, hollow-
hearted trees, never born that way,
simply a product of acid rain or
tent-caterpillars. You watch them
grow up and out with manifold branches,
budding and flowering for you, giving back
to the people who love their rotten hearts.

You let me go, waited until
there was a star on me, burning heavy
on my head, waited til my blossoms burst,
til I was almost dead, half-drunk on
the hood of my car, looking up at you,
grey eyes crying like the ocean wind.

The Devil or The Drinking

The Devil or The Drinking

it's just the way I am.

The devil, played in this story
but my hands, takes hold
of a cigarette, light from the tiny
burning furnace outlining your pristine face,
as God, played here by my sense
of conviction, tells you to stay.

it's always like this; the dark ones burning bright.

You stay -- I smile. The cigarette burns.
God and the Devil both win tonight.

When you're sleeping, I go out for a walk
among the stars at eye level, feet pressing
hard on the sidewalks made of tin, as
light from the moon reflects in my tired eyes.
Sometimes, it's the small victories.

I step into the Indigo bar.

Statuesque women, relics from Ancient Greece,
and me, pouring whiskey back, past the fences
I put around God and the Devil, letting them
sort things out for awhile. My heart wanders
back to you, putting the pieces back in my wallet.

You woke up while I was out -- made toast.

You cradled my head, sick and drunk and
never sure which came first, the Devil
or the drinking, God or the guilt, laying on the
cool tile floor, blurry bathrooms of my hopeless heart,
not thinking about you at all, your touch
not touching me, physics gone awry in the whiskey slur.

I tried to say

The Girls Who Trade Their Love For Art

The Girls Who Trade Their Love For Art

wear tiny lockets, filled with tiny secrets,
like spiderwebs being pulled from their throats.

The good ones buried under cigarettes
and black coffee, dug up from their graves
in rented Victorian houses, the places where
sunlight refuses to sleep, cradled by darkness,
the musicality of their voices -- ruin.

Sarah sleeps quietly next to me,
and she doesn't know about this poem,

where I attempt some small miracles,
like staying in love throughout it,
the same way that Christ might
resurrect a wilted flower before
he brings Lazarus back to life, except
that I'm not Him and wonder if I'll ever be.

The girls who trade their love for art
are only the smallest part of my unhappiness;

monarch butterflies travel two thousand miles,
migrating from Canada to the depths of Mexico
for love, but you won't travel down the street
for an equal feeling, if not an equal name, but I suppose

that not everyone can enjoy the sunshine and
not everyone can fall in love at the right time.

Fragments

it's raining in Moscow and
I love you. the city wind
cries out for you and
I'm falling off a bridge
towards the black waters of
Canada, clean and freezing, I'll
die with no solace because
back in New York your
apartment is filled with my
things, mementos that will haunt
you, remind you why I was
drinking in Toronto while you
decided that Moscow would be
charming this time of year.
the snow covering the peaks
of the cities I've loved you
in, the caverns where I lost
you and the bridge where
I died, graveyards of glass memories
for you the living, the ones
in Moscow and Toronto and New York
and for those in transit, the dead
freezing in the cold arms of the river.
I'm dying in Toronto and
I still love you.

Poem for a New Year

somehow, none of it matters;
the wine, the company, the new year
itself, crystalline moments before
the world is shattered by the normalcy
of tomorrow and the realization that
it will happen eventually.

on 30th Avenue, none of that matters;
the women are smiling drunk and
I am smiling back, the moon
clearing our cold hearts, brushing back
the darkness,

The Girls Who Trade Their Love For Art

wear tiny lockets, filled with tiny secrets,
like spiderwebs being pulled from their throats.

The good ones buried under cigarettes
and black coffee, dug up from their graves
in rented Victorian houses, the places where
sunlight refuses to sleep, cradled by darkness,
the musicality of their voices -- ruin.

Halo

Halo

There’s a halo around the moon
tonight – it signifies nothing of importance.
I’m in St. Patrick’s Church and

I’m looking out a stained glass window,
thinking about birds, when
I should be thinking about my faith.

The priest is reading: Faith
is the realization of what is
hoped for and evidence of things not seen.

Outside the window, cars pass:
headlights glaring through the blood
reds and forest greens, covering

the ceiling in light. The bells
are ringing out, distinct like the screams
of angels, roaring through the empty

atrium and I feel so alone in
my pew, kneeling and looking up,
praying for the first time

in years, crossing that Rubicon
of disbelief, venturing into the realm
of Faith, the one I’d been staring

at my whole life, always on
the verge but never having the courage
to just go – a child holding

a blackbird against his chest,
crying when his parents
yank his hands and the bird

flies away towards the light,
never to be seen again. I never know
if I’m the bird or the child.

First Post

Here it is.

I'll mostly be putting poems in here, but every once in awhile I might do a little commentary on what's happening in my life. Livejournal was just not cutting it for me.

Leave me a comment and let me know when you're reading, or what you're reading, or just anything about how you feel/ what you think about the writing and such.

Reconciliation

last night, in my dream
you were walking towards
a black Chrysler and
drove it into the snowy woods.
Even though we hadn’t spoken
in four years, there we were
in the car together,
and I could feel the winter breeze
blowing my hair back, as if
I were standing out the sunroof
like a teenager on prom night,
drunk off the majesty of
all things, but instead of happiness,
you kept driving, taking the black
Chrysler past my house into
a burning cornfield.

I don’t know why
my dreams always end like this,
someone from the past dying
in the front yard of my mind,
getting past the gate but
never making it to the door. Why
is it never me who meets with
a gruesome end, are the friends
I once had somehow less deserving
of a life in dreams?
I knew a guy whose father
was beheaded during an accident
involving a tractor trailer,
and the guy told me he pictured
his headless father standing at the gates
of Heaven, waiting for him when
he went to sleep. I like to think
that there would be some kind
of reconciliation between us before
we die, head and body coming
back together through the force of
our love, melding these different
dreams together until we are whole again.

Back in the real world
we still don’t talk, which is a shame
because you’ll never know
how in my dream, I pulled you
from the black Chrysler,
took your hand,
and walked with you into
the burning cornfield, the way
a father walks his daughter down the aisle.