Slam Poem

I'm a Buddhist existentialist. 

I'm a democratic socialist. 

I'm a Seinfeldian comedy fan.

I'm a Floridian by birth.

I'm a New Yorker at heart.

I'm a funny philosophical poet.

I'm a patient punk rocker per fatherhood.

I'm a busy cancer patient.

I'm an introspective extrovert.

I'm a late anxious bastard without saints,

I'm a well-read idiot. 

I'm late to my own generation. 

I'm never as good as I want to be. 

I'm always with hope. 

My Crowded Hour

everyday we spend

in this jungle

is another day

 closer to death.

I am so busy,

so overwhelmed 

by life that

I welcome a break. 

I keep thinking

it's Friday;

I keep wishing

for forever.

I get really anxious

if I stop moving,

which makes the days

feel longer. 

Death is Not Defeat

my fear leads me to read

the Tennessee Williams poem,

We Have Not Long to Love

the stakes are 

as high

as Heaven

every poem,

every moment

counts

though death is not defeat

and I am not budging, 

we carry these things with us

into whatever's next. 

Blabber Giraffe

my eyes are set

deeper in my skull.

my imagination

sees everything.

the car seat

burns my butt.

I am a simple man,

wishing for more wishes.

Poem About a Poem

Her island poem

shook my all night long,

like an AC/DC song.

I am reluctanly

in South Florida,

but I can see her 

in Brooklyn.

We both walk

with leftovers

in our back pockets.

And the dogs

of the past

chase us 

like rabid rabbits.

One day,

I will tell my daughter

about lost love. 

Hung loose and watched Shrek 2 with Ok Cowgirl!

A Cup of Tea & Sympathy for Me

I think I always

wanted to be a musician,

but I never learned to play music,

so I became a writer.

We were too poor

or my mother prioritized

drugs and booze and men

over her son's activities. 

When I beat cancer,

maybe I will take piano lessons,

learn one of Chopin's Nocturnes

and impress myself. 

everything is death

no matter what I am doing,

I cannot wait until it is over.

wet willies were a thing.

I have never known anyone

who has benefited from a charity.

the service in South Florida sucks.

I have cancer,

every minute of every moment.

Playlist 5526

1. 7:30 by Uncle Strut

2. woah by Hillsboro

3. Dance Wimme by Spins

4. Tiny Raisin by Suki Waterhouse

5. Pepperina by Gus Englehorn

Furtive as a Flame

I am thousands of pages of poetry.

I am currently 11,752 liked songs on Spotify.

I am hands hands hands.

I am a walkable city in which you are lost. 

I am blue sky and cold weather. 

I am fast sad.

I am justified and ancient. 

I am a silver dagger dancing before your eyes.

I am leftovers.

I am death and life. 

Calling all Panda Heads and thieves, join us as we bother Mo Lowda & The Humble!

this is for the snakes and the people they bite...

watching kids land their first kickflip,
drinking coke from a glass bottle,
or watching Bon Iver
sing Heavenly Father live
at the Sydney Opera House.

a reminder:
the world is still capable of soft things

like falling asleep on a couch
that finally forgives your weight

or a fragile person
curling into your arms
like safety was always a language you spoke

you are someone’s sanctuary
even when you forget how to live in your own skin

dipping hot fries into a Wendy’s Frosty
in the passenger seat
on the way home from the beach

sun-drunk, salt-sticky, alive
feeling the heat on your skin
arguing with the wind

pull up to the function late
a minute and a half left
and still sing the chorus
like it’s the only proof you exist

loud. wrong. honest.

and maybe that’s the thing—

you still might see tomorrow
if you stay.

BYOCP (Bring Your Own Chicken Parm)

The aqua green and dirty white tiles
in the handicap stall with the carved up walls
of the nondescript south Florida cinema…

I’m used to this view as I peed three times
during a showing of One Battle After Another
on the evening of Indigenous Peoples Day.

I used to do coke in bathrooms like this
but now I make sure to wash my hands
and hold my breath back to the theater.

Luck lingers like popcorn fingers,

but I go about this a bit different,

and instantly the place smells of garlic.

I once snuck in a shrimp cocktail,
a forty and a gram of blow,
but today I just bring my own chick parm sub.

It's a double feature:
The sheep detectives was a surprise
Devil Wears Prada 2 was decent.

I still have cancer

and I could've used

more Hugh Jackman. 

POEM

Texted her a poem

she left it on READ

Spotted a coyote near the good Publix.

Do I Still Get To Wake Up In The Morning?

I grieve Bobby Cox,

though I thought the baseball legend

had died years ago

Watching filler shows,

like The Rookie,

because they're easy

Scrolling for doom,

during,

finding green guns

Curious how 1999

feels like ten years ago

but 2020 feels like fifty lifetimes

Why me

comes to mind

as I grab at anything.

Skinny Love at Last Call

And the song comes on the jukebox,
and the whole dive bar goes still,
like everyone suddenly remembers
someone they failed to keep.

I remember breakup songs
and makeup sex
in stairwells that smelled like mildew
and bad decisions.

Walls thin enough
to hear strangers ruining their lives too.

I remember bartending brunch,
doing coke until my heart felt biblical,
giving free fries to friends
like generosity could stop time.

I thought my twenties were permanent.
Like neon.
Like hangovers.
Like being wanted.

I remember rainy nights in Brooklyn,
missing the last train,
trying to get the Rumbler back into the city,
freezing on the platform,
wanting the night to never end
because daylight meant reality again.

I remember not knowing what to say
when she said, “I love you,”
softly,
with that fragile Kentucky sadness
that made me want to disappear
before I disappointed her.

Now I remember everything too late.

Standing on the Lower East Side,
watching my reflection dissolve in bar windows,
trying to hide
from the life that kept happening without me.

And Bon Iver keeps singing
like heartbreak is holy.

And maybe it is.

Maybe some people are born
already nostalgic
for their own lives.

Class is in session on this week's very special episode with Julez and the rollerz as it is take-your-kid-to-work day again so my daughter is asking the questions!

meme.rot_18

Endless darkness surrounds us
as we approach a boundary
between what can be known
and what waits beyond it.

Fear loosens its grip
and something quieter takes hold,
a kind of awe
that feels almost like surrender

Ambition stretches past survival,
past reason,
toward something unnamed
but impossible to ignore.

The unknown pulls at us
not as a threat
but as a question
to understand
is to move closer,

and in that movement
there is a strange courage
woven into curiosity itself

as if the act of reaching
is already an answer.

Run for the Roses, Run from the Truth

Watching the Kentucky Derby,
thinking about a Kentucky girl
I used to love

I had her once
or something close enough to lie about

the race ends too fast
like it always does

and she’s gone again
in the noise
like I never had the nerve to keep her.

Rupi Kaur's Flowers

i bloom in lowercase
soft-spoken, afraid

petals opening
like a wound learning
how to be called beauty.

Endlessness

Of course the nuclear radiologist
that my oncologist urged me to see
does not take my health insurance

Of course the liver specialist
doesn’t think surgery is an option

of course the phone calls loop back
to menus and hold music
to polite voices that cannot help

of course the numbers climb
quietly, clinically
as if they belong to someone else

and yet the days keep arriving
with their small, ordinary demands
light through the window
coffee cooling in the cup

I keep waking up inside them
inside this body that is both
home and horizon

as if time, despite everything,
has not decided
what to do with me yet.

Between lost chances & never again.

I have lived so long
in the space between
you and me

where words used to meet us halfway
and now only echo
back into themselves

I still find you in small things
in the timing of strangers’ laughter
in the way certain evenings
forget how to end

there was a version of us
that almost stayed
that nearly learned how to last

but it slipped away
not with a sound
just a soft rearranging
of what we called forever

now I carry your absence
like something warm once was
and i mistook it for mine

and still, some nights
I catch myself reaching
as if love were not something lost
but something still arriving

and then, quietly, I stopped reaching
not all at once, but slowly
like a tide forgetting the shore it knew

I learned to leave the door unlatched
to let memory come and go
without asking it to stay

there is a kind of mercy in moving on
not forgetting, not erasing
just no longer waiting
for what will not return.

the shadows of my doubt

i am a carousel parasite,
spinning round and round
on this blue marble,
doubting when the end
will come and marveling
at my life and demise.

i circle the same questions,
worn smooth by repetition,
each answer dissolving
as soon as i touch it,
until even my doubt
feels like something alive inside me.

and still the world keeps turning,

indifferent to my battle,

light falling where it wants,

oceans rising and settling,

as if to remind me

i am not the center of anything,

only passing through.

Did a little gardening with Young the Giant!