V.H.S

Based on Actual Events

My past is becoming a movie

that plays on cable in my mind,

complete with commercials.

No need for Netflix,

I want to just flip channels.

In a universe filled with stars,

I am just a sitcom actor,

my memories are half digested by life.

I jumped a fence today. 

When’s the last time ya jumped a good fence?

I can’t tell what is true

and what is just a poem

perpetuated for the myth of love.

'Cause someday we must return 

to the movies in our brains.

My life was on pause for so long

that I lost the remote

And resigned to relive Grease 2. 

But these moments we can't fake,

and the angels never leak the expiration date.

Vignes 281

Listening to Eleanor Rigby in the rain.
Double parked under an old oak tree.
Wondering about the fading future.
Hoping for the past, redoing my youth.
Through the questions of my child.

I have no desire to visit yesterland.
Nor any urgency to meet the tomorrowville.
I’d rather los present last ten years.
And perhaps Peter Pan the rest.

But I have a way of losing track of time. 

Look at all the lonely people.

I used to be one of them.

Singing sad songs on sad afternoons.

Missing the moon's magic.

It was all right in front of me. 

Lonely people, like me.

Come from the forest for the trees. 

And either grow or get chopped down.

We get lost forever or get found for now. 

Because it never ends, does it, dear reader?

So grateful to be hoopin' again!

Buyers’ Remorse

Do I matter?

Like really matter

in the grand scheme?

This question–

This feeling–

Eats away at me

on selfish Sunday nights.

Maybe I need to work out more.

Maybe I should stop smoking weed.

Definitely gotta log off social media forever.

I am terrified of death

Which makes me terrified of life

And so the ouroboros goes.

If I have it all

To do over again,

I wouldn’t change a thing.

Just return to the beginning,

Flash my mortal receipt,

Cash in my chips and go for another ride 

on the merry go round.

Exit Vendor

she cleans her Ray Bans

with the laurel of her dress

in the passenger seat

of a Subaru Forester

as a sexy saxophone solos

on the song on the satellite radio.

I put my blinker on too early,

our exit isn't for another mile,

which makes us smile, 

because the rhythmic click,

matches the next tune.

we are in the hood,

and two mockingbirds fight or fuck

on the hood of my lesbian car,

we laugh at this too,

because there is nothing else to do. 

rock and roll

and go kart racing,

ignoring all the problems

we are facing.

a date doesn't have to be

romantic, it can just be

a silly escape 

from the days that plague us,

can't it?

holding hands doesn't have

to hold the weight of hearts,

it just just be a gesture

instead of a symbol.

getting back off the freeway,

a brown woman sells flowers,

so I roll down my window,

hand her a twenty,

then hand the flowers to my friend,

who smells them once, 

then turns and asks something 

I appreciate so much.

"How long do I have to 

hold onto these tonight?"

We can sell them at the next stoplight,

for all I care, and she dares me

to give them to woman we see

who needs them more than we do. 

Poem

Sitting outside listening to wind chimes
 with my eyes closed,
burning copal, making warm, 

 sweet tea and watching the sunrise,

orienting to hope 

 and softening into love, 

always.

the uncaused cause of existence

666.

Numbers mean nothing.
The mark of being.
Blueprint of life.

Carbon made conscious.
Inverted by fear.
Keepers of order.
Faith weaponized guilt.
Control through story.
Protons neutrons electrons.
The divine equation.
God remembering god.

Larceny

I am centuries of stolen love,
the kind that emperors hollowed out horses for,
creating borders and wars.

A fine gone ghost, I refuse
to write about Kendra Jean anymore.
A gorgeous flake, I can't give
Lauren Grace scars and shitty poems.

Maybe in another life it was you and me,
a Union Square morning, a Brooklyn street,
and maybe we’ll meet again someday,
somewhere the rats and the angels play.

Despite the ghosts of Duane Reades past,
I am down here, in this life, dancing,
still welcoming connection of the collarbone kind.

Today will be taken from us too,
like a pie cooling on a cartoon window sill,
and I keep stealing time,
pretending it’s still mine.

My New York is fading song,
taxi lights and right turns wrong,
and Florida’s still in my lungs
with summer’s never-ending tongue.

Maybe I’m cursed, or maybe I’m kind,
either way I’m still rewriting the lines.
From Rockaway Beach to A1A,
love was the crime we got away.

We are all just different eternities,
pocketing what we can’t keep,
kissing ghosts beneath the streetlights,
singing our favorite places back to sleep.

This episode is chaos in the best way. The audio? Terrible. Mike’s truck? Victim of a hit and run. But somehow, in the middle of it all, we got to bothering the legendary Norwegian free jazz monsters (just kidding; they are pure rock-n-roll) The Thing!

Getting Into Heaven?

I collapse with the weather.
tired from tearing through.
Leaking love from my ears.
When I am sad, I want loud silence.
or quiet thunder.

the video of you salsa dancing in the black and white dress...

your hair starts out up,

in a bun,

showing your sexy neckline,

and the collarbone I loved to kiss...

but as you twist and spin,

your hair starts to loosen,

as does your always-guarded smile...

and that dress 

tight and elegant,

showing off your incredible hips,

and strong legs...

I could watch this forever,

and I did watch it 3 times;

okay, four!

I am not jealous

of your dance partner;

I am envious

that he gets to see you move

in that wow dress

in real life. 

How can you not be poetic about baseball?

as postseason baseball begins,
I lace my nerves with pinstripes,
ready for the Yankees,
my early October heartbeat.

but before their first pitch,
I find myself watching the Cubs,
and suddenly it’s grainy afternoons

in the white ghetto of Orlando, Florida,

watching WGN again on stolen cable

my grandmother’s voice rising and falling
with the broadcast and cans of Old Style.

the Cubbies always make me think of her,
how the game felt eternal,
how the slow passing of outs
was an afternoon comfort in the chaos,
like knowing someone would always
be there at the end of the inning.

tonight it’s the Yankees,
but in the static glow of simple ghostly joys,
in which I am a boy again,
sitting next to my grandmother,
proof that the game never leaves you.

this episode of bothering the band with grandson will rot your brain in the best way!

Airplane Poem

Over New Mexico

I realized I don't love you anymore.

I love the past

re: the adventures of youth.

Some things you just can't get back

and for what it's worth I am sorry.

Caught in Culver City.

Falling Into the Future

every skull is a set of thought

the eye sockets saw

and the jaws spoke and swallowed

life is precious in that way

but bones will crumble

with time and decay,

a spiked hand

Alas poor...everyone

we are chosen a place 

by fate

and a god by circumstance.

The Habit of Action

I am the product of time and motion,
and while I don't drink anymore
I still know the best dive bars in Brooklyn.

I crashed a funeral in the rain,
while a Chopin sonata played,
and all the black umbrellas swayed,
like the wind was slowly driving them insane.

Living in the universe’s echo,
I am the total inventory of the cosmos,
and yet I still get heart hurt.

Little things and low-hanging fruit,

the habit of action is the only thing

that hinders the progression of doom

that is always there, hiding.

My social media days are numbered

once I promote the novel

and the podcast really ends,

I am fucking done

and I can't wait!

$2 for a Broken Vase

Like a family of rabid ferrets 

at a cul-de-sac clam bake,

my anxiety devours the day.

From trying too hard

to get the right windshield wiper

to rain ratio 

while driving in the sunshine state...

To haggling over a broken vase

at a yesterland yard sale,

just to save it from the same fate.

I can sell the moon from my bed,

as an episode of Seinfeld fades to black,

a panic attack in dreams,

it is a wretched relief to believe.

 

Poem

life is fleeting 

yet part of an eternal daisy chain;

any joy is hard-won these days,

so take it where you can.

I used to have a passion for jaywalking…

darting into traffic drunk on neon disasterbation,
as if the cars would part for me and my problems
as if I were owed safe passage or dared death.

in a certain eastern city,
where crosswalks faded like broken promises,
I stopped looking both ways.

sometimes my self-pity was selfish.
I’d cross against the light just to hear it scream.
my all-the-time foe is self-consciousness
made every horn sound like Hashem clearing His throat.

now, smoking weed on a sobriety zoom,
I tell myself and others that jaywalking wasn’t falling,
but the asphalt doesn’t care about semantics.

there is no substitute teacher for time,
no crossing guard, no late bell,
just the endless traffic of new days and age.

I need to stay focused on being present,
but the present is a street I keep stepping into,
backwards, blind, hands in my pockets.

it doesn't come easy,
for I must fight for optimism,

but thank God for gratitude.

Dive into this awesome episode with the endlessly witty UK band Sports Team, recorded remotely around a pool in the Hollywood Hills while they were on tour with Supergrass, proving dreams come true for both sides.

especially during these dark times

we should start punk bands,

and put on shows in old warehouses,

where we get the crowd to chant FUCK TRUMP.

this is what Joe Strummer trained us for.

 

we should open bookstores,

and host meetings and readings,

where the only rule is no phones. 

this is what Joan Didion proposed in her prose.

we should bring people together over pizza,

and slice through divisiveness, 

because that is what will save us all. 

this is what Mr. Rogers encouraged us to embrace. 

we should be light,

especially during these dark times,

and shine as bright as possible. 

P

I look out the window

while I am waiting in car line

to pick up my daughter from school,

peer up at the trees, 

pick out one leaf dancing

on the branches,

shaking off its leftover rain drops,
and know that nobody else, 

in all time,

will ever see that one leaf like I do,

here and now. 

somewhere in France.

as long as they have us fighting a culture war, they have us distracted from the class war

they want you talking about talk show hosts

so they can keep filling their pockets. 

they want us debating trans rights

so they can consolidate power. 

this is the Machiavellian playbook,

and they are running the old divide and conquer play to a tee.

we are weaker when divided

and they are stronger.

algorithms provide an accelerant

for the flames of division.

the only people who are benefiting

are the tech companies and the ultra wealthy.