Poem
Contrast the destructive cycles
of human vanity, war, and greed
with the quiet, stubborn resilience
of renewal and human empathy.
Lose the fear of death.
Move beyond personal terror
into a state where survival
means looking beyond oneself.
Reject the hunger to conquer.
Make room for what can be repaired.
Understand that what we leave behind
is measured by how well we cared.
Forgive everything.
The damage.
The dead ends.
The years you pissed away.
Forgive the bastards.
Forgive yourself.
Spit out the poison.
Burn the map (burn the fucking boat).
You’ve got places to be
and a life to piss off.
Move on, Ray,
make more noise.
Leftover Birthday Bath Water
life is a race against time
and we are never fast enough
from a rooftop party in Los Angeles
to cancer in bed.
one more dance around the sun
to know where to start again
picking me up, pulling me down,
looking for lucifer underground.
Poem
to a waterfowl wading in the morning flood,
I ask 'why me?' as if i am important to the mallard,
yet she replies 'because, while the glow of heaven
retreat with the last steps of regret, you seek care.'
Thou’rt gone, the abyss of death,
yet I have swallowed my wet pride deeply
to sink into the guide of 'why them?'
to which the bird said nothing.
He, who forgets the zone of the boundless sky,
should never ask why,
instead ponder to one million waterfowl
how is Hashem holding up heaven when I am holding up earth?
The New Geography of Me
My elbows are smaller.
Freud's follies follow me
into self-sticking language
at 3 a.m.
I missed the rain today
while sitting through
a work meeting.
My ribs are bigger.
Somewhere along the way
I have been reclaimed
as a wronged, sad boy.
But I really don't like
being perceived.
My cancer is confusing.
A carnival of surprises,
all of them unwelcome.
My body keeps changing
the subject.
I keep trying to catch up.
See you tomorrow.
My Verrazano Bridge
This is the first year
in a very long time
I haven't watched the clocks
change on Staten Island.
Because of cancer,
and because the marathon
landed the day after Halloween,
I didn't work the NYC Marathon
this year.
And I miss the hell out of it.
I miss the early morning cold.
The city waking up.
The crowds, the noise,
the whole beautiful circus
of New York on its feet.
I miss the runners
giving that energy right back
as they make their way
onto my Verrazano Bridge.
Thousands of people
running toward something.
Thousands more
cheering them on.
And me, somewhere in the middle of it,
doing my little part
to keep the whole thing moving.
Funny what you miss
when life takes you out of the game.
This year, I watched from somewhere else.
But come marathon morning,
a part of me was still there,
standing under that bridge,
with the city,
with the runners,
with all that beautiful noise.
And When the Ashes Settle
"Formerly he had feared the end.
He had twice experienced that terribly tormenting fear
of death—the end—but now he no longer
understood that fear."
- War and Peace (Book Twelve, Chapter XVI) by Leo Tolstoy
Then I will plant a garden
where the barricades once stood,
and feed the earth with what remains
of all that called itself good.
I’ll leave a candle in the window,
a little bread beside the door,
and ask the ones who lost the most
what we were burning for.
For every rose they tried to sever,
a thousand roots will twist below.
For every seed they buried under,
a thousand more will learn to grow.
Let the gilded towers tremble,
let the painted kingdoms fall.
No crown can hold the morning,
no wall can keep it all.
And if the fire takes the orchard,
if the smoke obscures the sky,
we’ll be the hands that shelter seedlings,
we’ll be the reason they survive.
No more kneeling to the vultures,
no more feeding what devours.
We’ll take the weapons from the wicked
and give the wounded back their flowers.
For the snake, we’ll leave no kingdom.
For the pig, no sacred throne.
For the monkey dressed in silver,
we’ll remind him flesh is bone.
But when the flames have lost their hunger,
when the embers turn to rain,
we must build something worth the ashes,
or we’ll light the match again.
So let it burn — the greed, the fear,
the lies that kept us small.
But save the hands that plant tomorrow,
and leave a place for all.
And when the last red coal goes dark,
when the smoke gives way to blue,
may we find the world worth saving
is the one we make anew.
Redetermine
appreciate a window
while you can.
most people don't.
they're too busy
wanting something green
on the other side of it.
but sit still long enough
and maybe the window
will thank you.
you look good today,
it might say.
you look like somebody
who's survived a few things.
I know something about windows.
I used to be one.
I looked out at a hill
and a row of cypress trees
and watched the sun
come down hard
through a chain-link fence.
there wasn't much to it.
the hill stayed a hill.
the trees stayed trees.
the sun kept shining
on everything
that couldn't get away.
and for a while,
that was enough.
ofc
I am the worst person I know.
Besides my mom, and maybe Mike Soviero.
I don't personally know Trump.
I made myself known.
I tasted blood in my mouth.
all that old baggage,
the bloody bric-a-brac, the bad, the gothic,
the coyote scruff, retrograde,
obscurantist hum and drum of it
needs to be swept away.
Impatient—
to make such powerful contact with pleasure
that they will toss back the entire cover of earth,
a symptom of the same infection that was out there,
a mild one, but a symptom nonetheless.
Post Crazy Day Ugly Cry
Just worked a real ten hour day.
three jobs.
and recorded a special episode.
of the podcast.
Didn't think this was possible.
A glimpse.
A blur.
of normalcy.
Had you asked me.
Last week.
If any of this were conceivable.
If any of this were conceivable.
I would've thrown up.
on your Hey Due shoes.
Now my back is burning.
I am reminded I have cancer.
But I am cheersing chocolate milk.
with Abigail.
Insane Blue Star Hope
Before the cat scared me
through the tv,
I got potatoes and eggs
with a beauty,
and made friends with ducks
by the door.
I wanted to march
them through the kitchen,
like a British breakfast brigade,
show the kook in the Jeff Conine jersey
under the Goo Goo Dolls soundtrack.
Hell yeah, dawg,
it is pretty much
already Thursday,
and my anxiety
hasn't eaten me alive!
Writing this poem
while on a work call
makes me feel alive,
especially when playing
it by pain.
After I call Joe,
I will break my back
to be present
when life does its iniquitous
roll call before class
inevitably ends in an AI explosion
by Indigenous Peoples Day.
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, But Here I Am...
Like the main character
in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer,
I am engaged in the search.
The search for what?
Truth. Meaning.
Some practical wisdom
for navigating this confusing thing
called cancer.
In his letters to Lucilius,
Seneca suggested that a good life
might be built by acquiring
one small piece of wisdom each day.
So I search every damn day.
I keep myself open to the universe,
to its strange logic,
its little revelations,
its occasional gifts.
I am willing to learn
whatever life is trying to teach me.
I just haven't learned
how to make peace with the possibility
that one day
I won't be here to learn anything else.
Poem
Every day is yesterday
& I have always
Existed…
like the loneliness
of rivers
that don't tribute.
“I” is forever
insatiable.
Don’t Meet Your Villains Without Their Wigs
[Verse 1]
Fear.
This is my midlife crisis.
Writing poems about pain
at midnight
while reruns of Seinfeld
play on Netflix.
I stare into the ceiling
like it owes me an answer.
I count all the things
I thought I'd have figured out
by now.
[Chorus]
I don't want to meet my villains
without their wigs.
I don't want to know
what they look like underneath.
I've spent my whole life
running from the monsters
only to find out
some of them look like me.
[Verse 2]
I battled a bad childhood.
Battled booze into my thirties.
And now I am battling
for my life
in my forties.
Different war.
Same dumb soldier.
Still dragging my body
through the smoke,
still trying to figure out
what the hell I'm fighting for.
[Chorus]
I don't want to meet my villains
without their wigs.
I don't want to know
what they look like underneath.
I've spent my whole life
running from the monsters
only to find out
some of them look like me.
[Bridge]
I relive my sins
like a half-drunk detective
solving a cold case.
Every clue
leads back to me.
Every dead end
has my fingerprints on it.
And somewhere in the wreckage
I am still looking
for a reason
to keep going.
[Final Chorus]
So let me meet my villains
with their wigs still on.
Let me believe
the worst is already gone.
I've spent my whole life
running from the monsters.
Maybe that's the trick.
Maybe the monster
was never the ending.
Maybe it's the part of me
that still wants
to see tomorrow.
Olives & Football
Fall is officially upon us.
Texas takes on Tennessee at noon tomorrow.
Then Ole Miss and Florida kick off at 3:30.
But I hate football.
Like olives,
I try to like football.
Every year I watch one game
to see if it sticks.
It never does.
I watch the men collide.
I watch the flags fly.
I watch a grown man
get extremely excited
about a ball moving
approximately twelve feet.
Maybe this is the year
I will like olives.
Maybe this is the fall
when I finally understand
what everyone is talking about.
Please Let Me Get Old.
This year I am turning 22.
For the second time.
When I was actually 22,
getting old felt like a threat.
Thirty.
Forty.
Jesus Christ.
Now I am grappling
with a future
that is coming on too fast
for anyone to comprehend,
let alone my dumbass.
How do we take control
of our future
instead of merely letting it
happen to us?
Maybe the great privilege
is simply getting to be there
when it happens.
My daughter turns 13
in 300 days.
I would like to see 14.
Then 15.
Then 22.
I would like to become
the old man
I was once so afraid of becoming.
Please Bleed
Barry always puts on the movie La Bamba
when he gets drunk and depressed.
His garbage Barbie chick
says she is tired of being “punk.”
The drugs don’t work,
they just make it all worse,
when he gets drunk and depressed.
His garbage Barbie chick
says she is tired of being “punk.”
The drugs don’t work,
they just make it all worse,
and I wonder if I will
ever see her face again.
“Haven’t had a a serving dream in a long time,”
ever see her face again.
“Haven’t had a a serving dream in a long time,”
I say, as if they are listening
“Maybe I’ll pick up a shift to bring back the fear.”
"Let’s be Proust," Charles says
with the smile of a drunkard
though he is sober and serious
about wanting to publish 100 books of poetry.
I leave to get a break
“Maybe I’ll pick up a shift to bring back the fear.”
"Let’s be Proust," Charles says
with the smile of a drunkard
though he is sober and serious
about wanting to publish 100 books of poetry.
I leave to get a break
and get a pack of smokes,
say hi to the bodega guy,
and visit Moondog on the corner of
51st and 6th.
51st and 6th.
He recites me a viking poem,
I give him a smoke a a buck,
and we discuss the gang upstairs,
all folly and flare, as if our 20s were for wasting.
He asks me how I am holding up
in all his hobo wisdom,
and I say I would rather worry
about getting old.
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown,
I am just as weighed down by the present
as I am the forgotten future
and my unforgivable past.
Back up in the apartment,
Ritchie Valens sings on a VHS
and everyone has disappeared,
probably writing poetry about me dying.
washing your car in the rain
listening low to Olivia Rodrigo's honeybee,
and thinking about not thinking about
death.
but then again it is raining
on Yom Kippur.
Ay Diablo Mio
I deleted all my old voicemails
including hers.
That felt important.
Not because I am angry.
Not because I am healed.
Mostly because I am dying.
I deleted the photographs too.
The screenshots.
The little digital archaeology
of a relationship
that should probably
be left undiscovered.
Kendra Jean,
you were a beautiful mistake
with excellent timing
and terrible timing.
I will always give you
including hers.
That felt important.
Not because I am angry.
Not because I am healed.
Mostly because I am dying.
I deleted the photographs too.
The screenshots.
The little digital archaeology
of a relationship
that should probably
be left undiscovered.
Kendra Jean,
you were a beautiful mistake
with excellent timing
and terrible timing.
I will always give you
your flowers, but
I wish us both
the strange luxury
of becoming people
who no longer check
if the other one
is online.
And honestly,
I have other things
to worry about now.
Like where I put my keys.
I wish us both
the strange luxury
of becoming people
who no longer check
if the other one
is online.
And honestly,
I have other things
to worry about now.
Like where I put my keys.
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