talk about cancer or us,
or pretend while shaking nervously
only to hang up with more questions
and butterflies in the belly.
Poem
and then the inward whisper—
no, not whisper, a soft electric insistence—
of the body’s secret parliament,
of the body’s secret parliament,
cells conspiring in dim corridors of blood,
a small rebellion dressed in silence,
and I, still seated, still watching, still revising the sentence,
as if by arranging words just so
I might persuade the dark to behave.
a small rebellion dressed in silence,
and I, still seated, still watching, still revising the sentence,
as if by arranging words just so
I might persuade the dark to behave.
The 90s are, like, sooooo back!
Britney Spears got a DUl.
Hilary Duff on tour.
New Scream flick.
Scrubs is on TV.
Skinny celebrities.
Middle East war.
Baggy clothes.
Clinton testifying.
NYC 2008
being like 35-50% drunk
on the rumbler is the closest
one can come to the experience
of being protagonist
of a coming of age movie.
Lost or Found?
In the land of cornfields so endless
they become brushstrokes
of green and yellow from a moving vehicle,
where hog farms are more prevalent than opportunity.
while the mornings glisten like porcelain shards,
there is a violence to the meteorological music:
quiet thunder murmurs through afternoons;
haunting chorals suggest inevitable decay.
it’s the high drama of a world
resisting a hostile existence
by finding joy in a community
with a few thorns of melodic dissent.
whiskey is overflowing in every years-worn glass,
blue collars are loose,
and someone’s in the corner shit-faced,
ranting about the government.
sub rosa pericope
Look around.
People are rushing everywhere.
Rushing through traffic.
Rushing to get their kids to bed.
Rushing through work to get to the weekend.
No time to talk. No time to sit. There is too much to do.
There is somewhere to go, the faster the better.
Death is not some distant thing in the future,
not some one-time thing that looms ahead.
Instead, death is something happening to you right now.
It’s happening as you read this dumb blog,
it’s happening as you procrastinate that task on your to-do list,
and it’s happening still more as you sit down to that coffee were looking forward to.
You’ll never get to live what has been lived again.
So why are you rushing?
Why are you thinking about the future at the expense of the present?
Floriferous
Editing the novel,
and watching the Indian Wells tennis tournament
from a fancy country club in Delray Beach, Florida.
Out the window to my right
old people confuse golf with personality,
littering the driving range
with shanks and shortcomings.
Sabalenka is beating
the beautiful Jaqueline Cristian,
and no one here looks like me
with tattoos and club soda regret.
My daughter's theater company
is performing for these boomers in an hour,
so I am posted up in a post-Reagan world,
finding mistakes in something I made.
I’ve come a long way
since the white ghetto, since NYC,
and I feel like the luckiest
despite the dirty looks
I go to the lunch buffet
and steal a bunch of starches,
a couple Kind bars for the road
and get side glances from granddaughters.
And then I remember I have cancer,
and no one here can see it,
and nothing out there changes,
but my flowering evolution is what continues.
and watching the Indian Wells tennis tournament
from a fancy country club in Delray Beach, Florida.
Out the window to my right
old people confuse golf with personality,
littering the driving range
with shanks and shortcomings.
Sabalenka is beating
the beautiful Jaqueline Cristian,
and no one here looks like me
with tattoos and club soda regret.
My daughter's theater company
is performing for these boomers in an hour,
so I am posted up in a post-Reagan world,
finding mistakes in something I made.
I’ve come a long way
since the white ghetto, since NYC,
and I feel like the luckiest
despite the dirty looks
I go to the lunch buffet
and steal a bunch of starches,
a couple Kind bars for the road
and get side glances from granddaughters.
And then I remember I have cancer,
and no one here can see it,
and nothing out there changes,
but my flowering evolution is what continues.
Poem
Hashem asks for dolphin skin
when I have already given her
so much of my pine needles
that I am plum out of positivity.
a memory as evidence of existence
I am open to find the future
but I can't get past the past...
even in my lyrics
I am never present.
my weight in the world
is doubled by distance.
I challenge you, reader,
with an image.
the fragility of communication,
the songs of suffering.
I wish I could do it
with more bravery.
Getting Lost and Finding Yourself in Harry Styles’ New Album ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally.’
one shot of white blood cells,
please
I have my life to attend to!
cheers!
to the magic of hearing a song
for the first time and realizing
it might stay with you forever.
cancer is a journey of selfish discovery,
and I am method, scientifically.
the corners of my map
have always been burned,
and I was born and bred
to fight this battle,
fasces and all.
but, oh, how lost I was
and now I am
found?
Winter, Gone, Forever
As winter fades and spring emerges,
Where did the time go?
It feels like just yesterday
we were bundled up against the cold,
digging out of the snow and ice.
Now, the days are getting longer,
and the air feels warmer.
the changing of the seasons
and how their circular renewal
contains within them a kind of finality.
Winter is over—
this last winter is over forever.
Those cold winter afternoons
when you didn’t want to go outside?
When you didn’t want to do much of anything?
When instead, you waited
for the temperature to go up,
you binge-watched some shows,
you doomscrolled the news or social media?
You weren’t killing time…that was time killing you.
death is not this thing in the future,
but something that is happening now.
It is always happening.
It is the ticking hand of the clock.
It is the spring flowers.
It is the fall harvest.
It is the summer rain.
It is the first snow of the year.
it is the first flower
in a cemetery.
I'd gamble this poem on you...
are you the New York
who keeps reading this?
are you the DC
who keeps up with this dumb blog?
this girl tells me it's better
not to know.
but I am listening to The Weakerthans
and chomping at the bits.
because life is short
and mine may be shorter than anticipated.
the hard black stars determine fate,
but not fortune or love.
that stuff is up to us,
so ante up.
Volcano Chain
in the year of the fire horse,
I am left to wonder...
will I be inevitable
like the basil I just buried?
Will I be gone sooner
rather than later?
In the great volcano chain
that started with fish
crawling out of the wet ether,
and meets me here
on land
in the foul middle.
what is the future exactly
of it is always unraveling?
like a table cloth
under a never ending feast
of fortune and crumbs,
my life is a note on the piano
in the corner of the universe.
Rant #8012
I followed my dreams
from white ghetto trailer parks
in the shadow of Disney World,
in the whiskey wake of an alcoholic mother,
to a wonderfully wild
and wayward decade in NYC,
in bars and basements,
through the battlefields
of sobriety and self-contempt,
through foggy forests of love, lethargy,
loss, goodness, grace, grief, and hope,
into a a garbage dump behind a Taco Bell of cancer,
off a fucking cliff,
and I will keep following them
until my time and adventures expire.
Mind Full
I read a book faster
if it has short chapters.
I get the dishes done quicker
if I take it one teacup at a time.
I like puzzles
but I hate knots.
I loathe people
but I love gatherings.
I like too much stuff.
Being creative is a curse.
I wish I were an ignorant
downtrodden ditch digger.
From hip-hop to punk rock,
sneakers to hats,
skateboarding to basketball,
poetry to comedy to philosophy.
I love Halloween,
but I hate dressing up.
I love orange juice,
but hate eating oranges.
Consider the Otter
Grace you are better
than a bathroom selfie.
I am worse than someone's
rabbit foot good luck charm.
Grace you are greater
than a forgotten Friday poem.
I wanna be someone's
Monday night little spoon.
Grace you are a grave
and I am a new corpse.
What is alive? What is true?
is the zebra true?
are her stripes alive?
we are all just trying
are her stripes alive?
we are all just trying
to change
or fighting change.
or fighting change.
from my blue pen on paper,
inner sensations emerge,
formed at the intersection of childhood memories
inner sensations emerge,
formed at the intersection of childhood memories
and the lived experience of the present moment.
am I alive?
am I true?
Monday mornings in an endless February
Dunking Biscoff cookies into my coffee,
Google-mapping an address:
3657 Broadway, Unit 4B
New York NY 10031
New York NY 10031
I am finally able to listen
to Young the Giant
and the Avett Brothers
without thinking of Biddy's.
After printing out poems,
I go to the hotels near the marina,
and slide pages under all the doors,
then I eat lunch, charging it to one of the rooms.
I guess (I trust),
this is what battling cancer looks like,
and my daughter just got braces,
and the US just bombed Iran.
Emo Song
call me
lets catch up
and not talk
about cancer
I can't change
the past
and I don't have
any answers
but i can
make you laugh...
let’s talk about music
that saved us
in bedrooms with the lights off
when the world felt smaller
and survivable
I know there’s a shadow
in every room now
I know it hums
behind every sentence
but for one night
let me be
the guy with the punchline
not the diagnosis
call me
we’ll sit in the wreckage
and pretend it’s just
another Friday
I can’t fix this
I can’t outrun it
but I can still
make you laugh
like the ending
isn’t written yet.
lets catch up
and not talk
about cancer
I can't change
the past
and I don't have
any answers
but i can
make you laugh...
let’s talk about music
that saved us
in bedrooms with the lights off
when the world felt smaller
and survivable
I know there’s a shadow
in every room now
I know it hums
behind every sentence
but for one night
let me be
the guy with the punchline
not the diagnosis
call me
we’ll sit in the wreckage
and pretend it’s just
another Friday
I can’t fix this
I can’t outrun it
but I can still
make you laugh
like the ending
isn’t written yet.
What the fuck is going on inside my body?
sitting in a parking lot
engine ticking
some old song leaking through the speakers
trying to read
the same paragraph
for the fifth time
chemo brain—
like somebody rearranged
the furniture in my skull
and won’t give me the map
it’s getting harder
to pretend this is ordinary
harder to act like
the body isn’t running
a side hustle of betrayal
i eat crackers
because they’re neutral
because they don’t argue
because the stomach has become
a small, suspicious country
life keeps moving—
traffic lights,
coffee cups,
people checking their phones
and inside me
cells are holding meetings
I wasn’t invited to
what the fuck
is going on in there
i’d just like
to clock out of this skin
for a minute
and come back
to something
recognizable.
engine ticking
some old song leaking through the speakers
trying to read
the same paragraph
for the fifth time
chemo brain—
like somebody rearranged
the furniture in my skull
and won’t give me the map
it’s getting harder
to pretend this is ordinary
harder to act like
the body isn’t running
a side hustle of betrayal
i eat crackers
because they’re neutral
because they don’t argue
because the stomach has become
a small, suspicious country
life keeps moving—
traffic lights,
coffee cups,
people checking their phones
and inside me
cells are holding meetings
I wasn’t invited to
what the fuck
is going on in there
i’d just like
to clock out of this skin
for a minute
and come back
to something
recognizable.
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