if i am true

if i am true, will the universe
bend itself toward me? is life a fair
game? how are humans
any different from all the other
disgusting digestive systems which
simply happen to have sprouted legs?
where is the infinite you
located? is it anywhere near
the infinite i? do words make sense when
you shove them right up next to each other
like this? if i am true, do i get
a lollipop when i die? will you
make sure of that? if you are true
i will try to keep you
from collecting dust. and i
will try to hold you in my heart,
just so. if i am true, if you are true.
if the world is made of truth, if atoms
are trustworthy. if electrons, if ecstasy
and empathy and everything else. like a
stained glass window, if you could ever trust one.
what kind of a god
likes
stained glass windows? what kind of
god are you? or i? and yet
each time we sneeze, we create a million
billion universes. if i am true, maybe
they will be true too, and maybe
the entire spiral which is constructed
will not collapse
just yet.

straw that breaks

there are one too many
liars in this world. one too
many who have no true
face. and if i were one of
them, would you let me
know? of course not; this
society is a machine built
solely to hide truth. one
two three weeks ago i
was lied to, and now the
lie is shown for what it
is. a true face is not
something that you
glimpse in a night or
post on a bulletin
board. face: it’s
all i’ve ever
had and
no one
will
ever
take it
from me.

put a church key in your pocket

I'll steal a hacksaw from my dad
And cut the braces off your legs
-Tom Waits, "Kentucky Avenue"

the criminal kept on getting caught.
and every time, he'd lie and look
for all the world as if he thought
he was innocent.

he was a thief, but not
by any stretch of the imagination
a very good one. he had a wife,
and an only son who once looked at him
as if the world hinged on his words.

and he always kept a church key in his pocket.

it fit into the lock on the door of a chapel which no longer existed:
a fire had claimed it years ago, and by now
even the rubble had been removed to make way
for a strip mall parking lot.

he said that the key kept him safe.

he'd do his time in jail, and his son
would grow older while he was gone.
each time he came back, the son
was just a little less interested
in what he had to say.

the criminal was an innocent.
he committed crimes but deep down,
somewhere, he wanted to understand
the world and make his peace with it.

the son did not see this.
he did not see the searching glances
his father was unable to stop
himself from sending out toward
the unbroken, uninteresting midwestern horizon.

the son was a teenager when the man
got out the last time. when his dad came
home, he wasn't there. he was away
at a friend's place, listening to music.

the mother and the father ate, and fucked,
and went to bed. the son came home
at 3am, and stopped by the door
of his parents' room. he listened to his
father's breathing in the darkness, and then
he went to his bed and slept.

a few hours later, the father woke up
and got out of bed. he walked down the hall
and watched his son for a little while, from
the doorway, in the early morning light.
then he left to go out looking for a job.

the son soon formed a habit of looking up at the sky.

it was a freak accident, really. the criminal had
been working at the garage for just a few weeks,
and he was walking home late after
closing up shop one night. the driver didn't
see him, that was all.

at the funeral, if someone looked into
his pocket, they would have discovered
something surprising: the church key was gone.
and somewhere, someone's son
had a hand in his pocket, was humming
a tune, and looking at the sky, and
thinking of the father
he'd tried so hard to love.

lipstick translations

You on the balcony, my future wife
O who could have known, but no one
-Nick Cave, "Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere"

We were ourselves for supper tonight:
chewing a toothpick, I wore my favorite
straitjacket. She left her labial pencil
at home. I apologized for being slow.
Her lips opened and a short current of
words came out. She touched her stomach;
I saw her eyes shift, glanced away, saw
the valet, and dropped a set of keys from a set
of nerveless fingers. Her eyes were otherwise
occupied; I thought of the attorney, the doctor, the
possibilities. I had a sudden urge to cry:
our wine arrived and she sank into
her chair. Watching the bubbles break
from the sides and spill upwards towards
the surface: a doctor, a lawyer, a professor. A
short stream and then gone. Touching the stomach
once again: uneasy habit, nervous twitch just
recently. I thought of my parents, my
grandparents, and I held out a handkerchief,
for she had spilled
a single drop of wine.

human hands

she touches me with her
human hands
and i feel each contoured
corridor on the flesh of
her fingers. she starts to see me for
what i wish i
were. where we might
be led is another matter,
down the haunted hallways
of our human hearts,
hand in human hand,
soft and sensitive with
a lather of lotion. my one
and only heart next to hers.
human skin entwined in
parts. this is what keeps
me here, as we keep winding around
the same old sight-stunning sun.
human hungers for human,
human hands and human
hearts. she will hold me slowly,
sweetly breathe me. we
will seep into each other’s skin
and simply vanish. like a
lullaby, like a song sung
softly in the nighttime: i am
here today, here am i.

upon rejoining the ether

a moment to pause and reflect,
upon rejoining the ether. a single
electron hurtling through space
with no apparent destination suddenly
finds a positive force to attach itself to.
there is a group here, awaiting this one
little electron to make the construction
come close to completion. they form a sort
of shell, keeping to themselves. eventually
codependents are connected, and
the group becomes a gathering.

expanding outward, the molecule is transmogrified
into a single speck of dust.

dust clings to dust, and the dust
grows larger.

it grows feet, grows long,
floppy ears.

soon enough there is a soft
little puff of tail.

soon enough,
this itty bitty dust bunny
will be something to truly contend with.

new gruesome

a new kind of blue:
somewhat bitter, angry
and spinning out of orbit
on an axis i have never known
anything about. with things
like hair, and a face, and
stuff like that.

a new kind of beautiful:
somewhat set, almost moody
or maybe something else entirely.
ego or confidence or what’s-
the-what. she’s got
hair, and a face, and
stuff like that.

this is the new gruesome:
this is the new way to waste your
brainpower and think too much.
here is how you might learn better
to obsess. just try to find someone
as fucked up and lovely as yourself,
and you’ll be fine forevermore. someone
with hair, and a face, and
stuff like that.

high school yearbook

here is the map that will chart out the rest of your life.
half that life so far, shrunken down to no more
than a few inches in either direction.

here is the girl you sat behind in homeroom
because her last name was next to yours.
here is one of the ones you believed you were in love with,
that you thought you would die for.

here is a crackhead, and over here is his dealer.
this one's pregnant, and that one's married.
the boy in the plaid jacket lost 100 pounds.
your good friend lost something much more important, six years ago.

you don't know what you yourself have lost,
and don't think it's that important that you don't know.
you're not a crackhead though: there's always that.
and you're not pregnant and don't plan on becoming so.

here is everyone you think you've outgrown, and some
who think they've outgrown you.
here they are in flat little photographs, like
little plastic action figures neatly wrapped up
in cardboard boxes, always awaiting your arrival
so you can take them down off the shelf and play with them.

samantha

if i'd ever known her i would
have told her hello, just for you.
i would have shouted her name
from the rooftops, just to see
what you'd think.