Hooly

flinging heartbreak around 

until it becomes an art medium 

set to ’80s new wave, string-swollen hooks, 

and aughts Britpop. 

I was strolling around Crown Heights at golden hour, 

a little book-drunk and hopelessly infatuated with a girl 

who’d “I used to work with” 

when I realized: this wasn’t a love song,
it was a limerence song, an anxious attachment anthem.

The late fashion designer Alexander McQueen once said 

there’s blood beneath every layer of skin, 

and barely concealed
under the cheer was a scrabbling, clawing desperation.

Here am I  

a boy clinging for dear life 

to one perfect moment 

for fear that another may never arrive.

sneaky peaky death

death keeps peeking at me

from behind books, 

from the back of movies theaters,

from social fucking media.

it is everywhere,

reminding me of TIME!

death pops out of the medicine cabitnet,

finds me alone at restaurants,

follows me to the bathroom,

being all coy like it is inevitable. 

oh, precious time,

reminding me I am alive (for now).

death keeps dancing 

in the shadows of concerts,

in the corner of my office,

everywhere I try to hide. 

I miss haircuts

I loved me hair,
Was proud that,
At 40.
I still had it all

Unlike some
Of my friends
And most fathers
Here in the burbs

When my hair
Grows back
I will visit
My gangster Puerto Rican barber

Get a good fade,
Trim the beard
Which will hopefully
Be back too

Grace & Hammer

I’m excited to write
A terrible sentence:
The workers sing to themselves
And I want to cry.

This is how
The bracelet is made:
Whiskey, an old skateboard,
And the glue of experience.

I have a heart,
It attacks me every day:
Filling with rain
And crackling with a wildfire.

Elvis is dead
But I am still alive:
Summoning dumb poems
In the misty morning time.

Go Knicks!

Watching game one
Of the 2026 nba finals
Painfully aware of
How short life is.

Should I be doing something
More with these hours?
What should I be doing?

When I think like this
A shiver shoots down my arms,
Warm and unsettling,
My entire existence in thought.

I’ll read all those death books
Which are piled near where I sleep
When I beat cancer.

I hope the Knicks win,

so at least I can say

my second favorite NBA team

won a chip in my lifetime.

Poem

so many pills.

so many doctors.

so many aches and pains.

so many sleepless nights.

so many fears.

so many reasons to live. 

Listen to me become BFFs with Edwin McCain!

perforce

I use a concert ticket as a bookmark
in a book I would love to send to her,

but I have sworn off any correspondence
with ex lovers when I got cancer again!

The concert ticket is from seeing Tokyo Police Club 

in Santa Ana, California

right after I was diagnosed with cancer
the first time.

The book is called The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
and it is all about a writer with a conscience, 

something I have hidden

in my wasteband like a gun. 

6.6.26

Poem

Look in the midnight mirror
and say "Run, run, pure beauty"
three times fast, one time slow,
and I will write you a poem
in the steam of the same mirror
about love, life, and death.

and the infinite versions of earth

Float, sink, pass the time
We fall into a truce that's binding

Sell me a little bit of luck
In the summertime of care

all of this is so pointless
so might as well make a point.

where the past still exists

under the marble stars.

in stolen-kiss stairwells.

in blue dive bars.

listening to emo music.

in stolen cars.

just shy of 21.

long lost among short days

in the poetry section of bookstores.

in the crease of her collar bone.

Walking the dog, watching Pocahontas, and selling bromance with BIG SPECIAL!

June Initiative

June arrives like a soft decision,
light leaning longer into the day,
heat learning the shape of the world again.

I meet it there,
in the slow return of sun on skin,
in mornings that feel almost ordinary.

The body keeps its private negotiations,
quiet wars I did not choose,
but still I get up,
still I open the window
and let summer in anyway.

There is something stubborn in that,
this reaching for warmth
while carrying what I carry.

June does not ask for certainty.
Only presence.
Only the next small yes.

Poem

my past is as polluted 

as a river in Pennsylvania.

my present is perfect

aside from cancer.

my future is...

found in a forgotten forest.

the silkworm notion of existence

interrogating what it means
to “choose life,"
for it is not the rejection
of fear, but
I am just not ready
to face the sonic extreme
of my own death.

I am not ashamed of searching
my mother's ghost
to see if my sadness thickens,
if my face colors her gone ground,
no one is safe from death.

radical surrender to presence in expression

the bills still come.
the cancer still grows.
the sink fills with dishes
and somebody downstairs
won’t stop fucking at 2 a.m.

meanwhile
the moon hangs there
like it knows something.

I quit trying to transcend it.
quit trying to become
some glowing wise man
floating above the wreckage.

this is it.

the bad back.
the cheap coffee.
the blood test.
the woman leaving.
the dog barking at nothing.

I light a cigarette
I probably shouldn’t smoke
and watch the morning arrive anyway.

that’s all holiness ever was.

LoFi Nights

lofi beats at 2 a.m.
the city doing its quiet bleeding
through cheap speakers

I don’t know her
not really

just messages
just timing
just the way she disappears
and comes back like nothing happened

I sit in the dark
pretending this is connection
and not just two lonely signals
passing in the same frequency

the song loops again
soft static, soft lies

and I think
maybe love is just this

waiting for someone
who never fully arrives
and calling it enough anyway

Interlude in D Minor in a Diner

Eating pancakes today

after getting stabbed 

in the liver yesterday.

Let 'er R.I.P.

watching Marc Johnson skate video clips

remembering I used to be able to 180 anything.

I still have a board

and push around from time to time,

but no more olleying down stairs for me. 

life kickflips right past you,

and if you wince 

you miss it. 

With a voice like a choir of angels, we welcome Tyler Ballgame to discuss really "important" matters!

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.