At first was suffocating.
In my throat was a sandbag.
After I practiced pushing the door
to escape, once I learned how to remove tension–
both arms hot dog-style past my head–
I became a floating head in a dead, still ocean.
Breathing itself was a plane running the runway–
the only sound in the universe.
(originally published in Brief Wilderness, Winter 2024)
Sure, I know the DJ at Belvedere’s tonight
but that is all I have. My body is an ocean
liner that imagined a destination when
departing, but lost its way mid-voyage
while passengers scream it’s okay!
It’s okay!
On simple days
I open the window and watch
clouds pass with my long-hair
cat, breathing in the breeze like
we’ve both never been outside
before, trying to find some
comfortable place to rest
with the rail jutting up,
a dull blade.
(originally published in Ink Sac, Summer 2023)
Look at this kingdom of garbage
trucks. A survey underneath
the 31st St. Bridge, where I spend
my horrible days collecting.
It is Friday night and there is
pressure to deliver. I told you
nothing we do here is important,
so take a deep breath. Smell
the compost of contemporary
capitalism. My blue brain
has ceased to need a function.
My winter is every man’s
desire for himself. It is waiting
for my back to give and bear
the weight of the waste:
the compacted nature of my life,
squandering, squandering,
squandering the ineffable.
(originally published in A God You Believed In - Pinhole Poetry, 2023)
IN BOUNDLESS EXPANSE
BETWEEN JOB AND SILENCE
NOSTALGIA AND THE EVER-
LIVING PRESENT I SIT IN FRONT
OF A PROJECTOR SCREEN
COOLED BY THE WINDOW
UNIT I CAN DERIVE NO
MORE MEANING TO VIDEO
GAMES NO
it is the purpose of a stranger to dream
for me to be engaged so in his fever
your creativity is what I want
now that I don’t have the rapturous
privilege of losing myself
but haven’t I
wrestled with every single
whim every whistle
of the wind that calls for me
I answer
for a little while then reach then
ASK NO QUESTIONS
FOR ANSWERS I COULD NEVER KNOW
THE MEANING OF THE STARS NOR
MY PLACE WITHIN MY BRAIN WHERE
THE SOUL SITS
it’s sick sometimes in
how I want to be someone else???
but I look at old pictures of myself
and think he’d be so happy to see
how unrecognizable he is to himself
(originally published in confetti, Fall 2023)
broken wind through bent window
tonight estimates life long enough
to breathe sunlight
(originally published in Winamop, Winter 2023)
& within this vestibule the sighing & side-glances,
demands for just-asked-for jackets, & axes dealt
to execs in their excess, & star-born nephews needing
validation; & on this thin strip of wooden walkway,
in the gaze of dead deer, a floor air bubble that shocks
& wilders passers-by who have walked upon it one
thousand times, beside the gunshots on television
(free film school for everyone!) where we have
seen passive-aggression, passing gremlins, & a red-
state journeyman who lusts for connection along-
side extras lost from fittings (if they just turned right
past the blue truck, an open door you can’t see
from here, here, where we have waited for a call
sheet for hours), & once, there was a heavy storm
& we watched a CATERING cone withstand
the rain & hail & screeching wind & we were on the
inside, too, through the glass, rooting everyone on–
yet hollered in catharsis when it tumbled down.
(originally published in Osmosis Press, Fall 2023)
Projection meaning screen is blurry.
I don’t want any part of.
Correct. I ended improv
class inspecting
my anxious habits–
has it been too long?
my demons asked.
I could not
answer honestly. Walked
away and waved
to the prospective
attention of no one.
Still, when clouds
are classically beautiful
I recall the simple mistakes.
No one counts
their turns, no one
passes their
inhibitions.
I scan the sky
for a piece of absolution.
Such indelicate pertinence,
this honest-to-however-many-
times I treat myself
like a stray without looking
away.
(originally published in Yellow Mama Magazine, Fall 2024)
At Westside Pavilion, I watch shoppers
walk slowly to their Jubilees, carrying plastic
bags of silk and thread to the thrum of Monday.
I shop enough inside my hungry flesh, living
in my Ford, booking tiny television gigs to
replace my shoes. Sometimes, I am able to
watch myself in the lens of a softer society–
playing voyeur to my temporary belonging.
(originally published in Communicators League, Fall 2021)
Randomness is my passion and if only
you knew the extent of it, the dice
I play in my mind with pseudorandom
number generators to determine what
I’ll even eat sometimes. John Von
Neumann said, Anyone who considers
arithmetical methods of producing
random digits is in a state of sin– what
buzz I get wherever numbers fall, on
my tongue, on my landscape, in
the neurons that tickle my hypothalamus
and its many toxins, drugs, memories…
though don’t read The Dice Man, its
misogynistic determination… a PRNG
chose it for me, I have a booklist, but if I had
a talent for acting I’d have an algorithm
choose what emotion I should play next.
As an amateur how can I mope instantly
when the machine tells me effervescence?
Most of my life, undetermined. Now
to shape my own destiny, one to burrow
me in with beavers and slugs while
I wait for a digit of reemergence.
(originally published in Obsessed with Pipework, Fall 2023)
Cycling in you stayed to ignite
electricity dark neighborhood wind zapped
on in your humid house the memory
is orange on the porch by the grandpa
scarecrow who greets all genial hearts
that bump and bleat without intention
tiredly you say we never should
have seen their home we could not
convince the world to move us
(originally published in The Gorko Gazette, Autumn 2023)