"our job on this Earth is to leave artifacts."

I wonder if this is the first time
or the thousandth
I have lived this existence?

Wonder is what makes the jukebox play.

I think about this over lunch,
a house caesar salad
and a side of fries,
and Kerouac's Book of Sketches.

If this is the thousandth, am I getting better at it or worse?

In a parallel life, 
we sit across from each other 
at the kitchen table 
and make a grocery list. 

Our job on this Earth is to leave artifacts.

I am living my own explosion,
leaving books behind me,
as evidence I was here this go round.


Poem

I was going to text you
and then I burned my mouth
on these Bagel Bites
and thought otherwise. 

I don't drink anymore, but it is so cool to walk into a Trader Joe's 
and see words I wrote on a physical beer can!


Keep My Heart, He Exclaimed!

I don't have hustle;
I have whatever coyotes have!

My New Year's resolution is to find
the best chicken teriyaki in town!

And right now I have $36
burning a hole in my Venmo!

Well, honey, right now
I am about as low as a snake in a ditch!

But feelings are wonderfully terrible
so let's go play some pinball!

Fix your hearts or die, baby,
because heaven is a dive bar filled with all my friends. 


Dancing About Architecture

I am closer to 77
than I am to 7.
My forever is only
42 years long. 

I outlived Christ
and Bill Hicks,
and Belushi and Bangs,
but I wish I could be
40 for 40 more years.

I used to care about
new book launches,
and other bullshit,
but now I let the universe
figure it out. 

I am testing the limits
of the human heart
today and every day
with poetry and pain. 

dress shoes.

Riffing on Cleanthes

I am poetry. 

as a lover of literature. 

I am poetry.

as a metaphor for life.


I am poetry.

as a trumpet focuses our breath into a brilliant sound.

I am poetry.

the “fettering rules” allow our words to be hope.


hopefully. 

for people like me. 

poetry people. 

ordinary people.



always welcome, never invited

when the drummer for the band Cold War Kids
checks on you more than some of your friends and family,
what do you do?

nothing.

life is grief
shaking hands with humor,
and I am doing my best
to let go
(but also not to let go).

haven't heard from KJ,
or my older sister.

everything is sincerely, 
deeply fucked up, 
so you (I) need laughter. 

Luckily, Joe Plummer,
the former drummer of the band Modest Mouse 
is my friend
and called just to make me laugh.


I am him

I wish you knew
this version of me;
you'd like him more. 


Umberto Eco nailed it, but...

"I believe that what we become
depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments,
when they aren't trying to teach us."

But what if I didn't have a father?
What then?

What will I become?

Will I gather lessons from the wind,
in the way it bends the trees but never breaks them?
Will I learn from the silence,
how absence can echo louder than words?

Perhaps I will build myself from stories,
from the ghosts of men I’ve never met,
from kindnesses offered by strangers,
from wisdom hidden in the cracks of the world.

I believe that what we become
depends on what we choose to carry—
even when no hands were there
to pass it down.


these tears taste like mormon licorice

when one tab closes
another ten open...

from the busted garage door
to shitting blood,
it never ends...

until it ends, 
I guess...

life goes up
and life goes down,
then it goes round and round...

until it stops,
I guess...

in the next life, 
I want to change my last name to Marcel,
save money and never drink. 


List

Sight: Beach

Sound: Music

Taste: Pecans and passionfruit

Touch: Being the little spoon

Smell: Laundry and grass in autumn



what is the best knife to fight with?

There's reasons for heavy hearts
This past year, I thought I was broken
beyond repair.

This year will get worse 
before it gets better.
You look so nice in a tank top
We should go to Montreal more often.

I never wanna miss you this bad
I never meant to scare you like that
Sometimes I feel just like my dad,
and I never even met him.

I never saw the garden in that.
Why work so hard if you can't fall back?
Then I remember, I rely too much upon
My heavy heart.

I never wanna miss you like that.
I really had to run out my bag.
My hand on the small of your back.

I really watched God in that
Watching how I braced for impact.
Then I remember, I rely too much upon
My heavy heart.


PLUR

meet me at Barnes & Noble
in Boynton Beach, Florida.

we will rip pages out of poetry books
and put them under the windshield wipers
of our crushes' cars. 

like Tristram Shandy,
I was born too late,
but I cough and call it fate,
and then go on living,
which is just dying.

one day she will call me,
and remember my middle name. 

we will write poems together,
and put them under the windshield wipers
of those dumb Cyber Trucks. 


I just want to bop around Brooklyn

read on the stoop.
galavant around Greenpoint.
make out in McCarren Park.
match a matcha with Franco.
go say hi to Troy at The Levee.
pop into The Word bookstore.
shoot hoops across the street.
grab a slice at Paulie G's.
write at Transmitter Park.
meet up with Eric at Moonlight Mile.
sleep with the window open so the sounds of the street infiltrate my dreams.

going back in time via old skate vids!

Story Ave.

He settled into a blurry sunrise
at the heel of a bottle,
an untamable tenor
bringing forth century old notes
while the earth rolls in chaos
and commuters dance on string.

The city is mad,
but packaged in poetry for me
and softly romantic,
proof that we dream and bleed simultaneously.

His guitar transforms the alley 
into a concert hall,
where everything abandoned
now vibrates with life,
flourishing in his refrain,
I reach for my pen
as misfits twirl on concrete,
grit and joy.


Robert Johnson Done Come Outta The Graveyard

Drinking Metamucil
and watching a devil 
of a documentary 
on Saturday's television.

My ears are ringing (ringing);
can't tell if it's from the chemo,
the cannabis or the cancer itself.

Been writing a lot
of rhyming poetry lately;
don't rightly know why.

Been listening to a lot
of soul music, too;
definitely know why. 

The only goal is to live 
a decent life
and look forward 
to what's next. 


anemoia

Whispers of a time I’ve never known,
Photographs faded, a world overgrown.
The scent of a past that was never mine,
Haunts my heart like a ghostly sign.

I ache for echoes, for days unseen,
Dreaming of places I’ve never been.
Anemoia stirs where nostalgia can't tread,
Longing for life in stories long dead.

Beneath the surface, where memories sleep,
I trace the stories I’ll never keep.
A life in the spaces between time’s fold,
Chasing the warmth of a future untold.


open to many potential futures

"We are creatures of consequence.”
– Zadie Smith

I am a neighbor,
a father,
and a hopeful man.

I will be a creator
for as long as I live.

I believe in miracles,
and my favorite color lately is green.

Having a scarcity of time,
I want every kitchen to have an old, cheap, radio
to be used as often as possible.

But the Stoics remind me
 that the best thing to ask for 
is strength

Don’t wish for things to be a certain way, 
Epictetus says, but wish for them to be as they are... 
Because I can handle them.

It's never too late
to sample your fate. 


entelechy

The neuropathy scares me,
especially when my hands don’t work in the morning.
Fingers curled like forgotten vines,
stiff with silence,
aching for the warmth of movement.

I wait. I will them to wake,
to remember the soft press of skin,
the steady weight of a coffee cup,
the simple grace of holding on.

Some days, they listen.
Some days, they don’t.
But even in the numbness,
even in the fear,
I remind myself—I am still here.


Vignes #406

I think being a creative
is a long battle
of figuring out
what it is you really
want to do.


And it can change...


One miraculous minute
you are painting poems,
and the next knee-jerk moment
you are doing comedy
at an open mic.

The third installment of my SLEEPING (aka the List) series is finally out!


Poem

Quiet vulnerability 
and restrained tears of joy
lay bare the universal ache 
of love.