America and I

She said striking "We live in a me-society"
and that I should consider how it's "all about them."

and how foreign I am in respecting
the rights and needs of others above myself.

She said "You need to grow some balls" to my face
which was weird because, y'know, she's my mother.

But she's afraid I'll always give in, smiling and nodding
always, always getting walked all over and all that jazz...

So I compared myself to Jesus, saying
that I love everyone, but I have a haircut and jeans.

And I don't mind being the help, but I am all too often
the only guy to carry an old lady's groceries. Goddamn.

I am the hands all the fucking time, and that
return policy on my good karma is well past due.

But I'm more than an invisible hand (an invisible man),
I am also patient for a pie and a title: prodigy.*

So our discussion ended with tears and iloveyous,
yada yada yada, but at least now I'm proud of my accent.

*DiFara's Pizza on Avenue J is by far the best pizza I have ever consumed.
The prodigy refers to Michaelangelo saying that "genius is eternal patience."

Gazing

Corridored distances, one
two
three rooms the distance.

You wanted to see an artist
and I wanted to see you
smile and think and otherwise.

So we AlbrightKnoxed* and while I
read about popes and politicians
screaming and weeping in coarse colors,

You gazed for hours. Hours standing,
concentrating, peering. Eyes and mouths
agape rudely, and you didn't care.

So while I read about violet
violence in paintsoaked bedrooms
and tossledhair homosexuality,

You saw about it, and wondered
quietly. You didn't pay attention
to how far away I was at all.

But you blinked and owlturned, and I
soon found your smile at my shoulder
thinking quietly, looking quietly.

*Albright Knox is an art gallery in Buffalo, NY. This particular exhibition was for the dark oils of Francis Bacon.

Pissed at the band...A Monologue

"Listen, nobahdy heah's any respo'sible. Y'all gots this complex about the assu'ptions and expectations of othahs. Or, y'all'ah jus' hidin' behind the masks of othahs to say what'chu' want, so that'cha don' soun' selfish. In any case, why don'chyall jus' fuhgeddabadit an' lemme have a voice, eh? This is my band too, y'know."

"We're not talking right now. But I don't know why."

I'm no idiot, but I am (yes) ignorant.
And the confusions and questions
driving my mind from mind
from day to day to day today (I am)
curious of finding responses and A's.
that might come to mean
somethinganythingsomeoneanyone.

And those C's and Q's are only stop-- by my
obscure and countableononehand
securities and alrights.

Children The My's of Idealism

My query an innocence,
young and with brightlight eyes

my asked "Where are my friends?"
and the talldark booed, booming

"What friends? You've had none."
"So the none I had are gone?"

Quick to reply, my confused, amusing.

A Dialogue

*Intended to be recited in a single exhalation*

The other day you asked what was wrong
and i told you i couldn't tell you
and you said why not
and i replied can we please talk about this later
and you said sure I guess
and we waited until later came
and you said later has come
and then you asked what was wrong
and i said i'm going to ask you something and i would
really appreciate it if you could answer yes
and you were hesitant
and i was hesitant too
and you bit your lip and looked down
and i just looked at you
and so then you said ok I think I can do that
and then you waited
and I asked if you still loved me.

"It's not boredom, at least--I don't think."

So I'm just waiting
for a tap or a glance or a pout
that makes you more than a friend, anything.

Anything to show--
because I'm too weak and small and quiet
to just out with out it out this for to out for you...

You'll know (then)
just what I've lied about all this time.
Hiding and lying and trying and being and needing them.

Them are the you
that I don't care for, embracing the
universalities you deny that aren't your unique you.

There Was A Wedding Earlier

Who knows what chance will bring and who will sing and who will dance?
But I Do know what love is, and
___I Do Know what love is, and
_____where it is abundant, and
_________where it is not, and
____________________the pain in knowing that
___I love ohwhatstheuses: rarities, fantasies, improbabilities, impossibilities...but

Who knows what chance will bring and who will sing and who will dance?
______Perhaps you could find them, these
__abandoned celebration decorations, these
unpredictable, irrepresable treasures, these
___________white roses in an alley, these
____________________white roses I helped you carry and
_____________prayandprayand pray that you'll love me...like you used to...but

Who knows what chance will bring and who will sing and who will dance?
I believe the jester could probably dance, and
_____________the princess could sing, and
_________the bitch will no doubt doubt, and
_______________the jester will laugh, and
____________________the jester will fake a smile that
__denies what is, what will be, obsessively, desperately clenching to what was...but

Who knows what chance will bring and who will sing and who will dance?

If The Trees Had Legs

If the trees had legs, their bark would
crack and break, and we could see their
skin behind all that neglect.

If the trees had legs, they could run, and
they'd run collectively to where they're
appreciated. Not here. Never here. Too many humans.

If the trees had legs, children might be
crushed and killed, chafing between the thighs
of an Oak, witnessed by the clouding sky.

If the trees had legs, then when the wind
shoves, they could shove back. They would
stand up for themselves strong and naked

against the bullying blusterings, strong and
naked in front of the onlooking samaritan sky.
The 9th* and the 1812th** will have their day then.

If the trees had legs, all that was once preserved,
conserved for the sake of the livelihood of everyone but us,
could attempt to escape our fools that've made "that was once."

*Id Est Beethoven's "9th Symphony"
**Id Est Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture"

"Check the glove compartment. Yeah--therey' go."

Sometimes, when I'm driving,
with the blur of the street in front of me,
I can't tell if it's raining
or if tears are welling up in my eyes,

my saddened, fatigued eyes.

And when I think of why,
all the cursing and meaningless
scorches and shrieks,
the wincing and glaring of

our saddened, fatigued eyes,

You touch, then I touch,
but not in the same way
so that you turn away
and the rest of the drive is

awkward and silent, too much like

our saddened, fatigued lives.

White Ceiling

Some kids really do stare at the ceiling.
As a matter of fact, I did this evening.

That white ceiling really is quite beautiful

*As inspired by William Carlos Williams's "A Red Wheelbarrow."

my dearest love (15 words)

my dearest love,
I love you like I love haikuish 15 word poems,
only more.

"I don' love you no more"

I

"I want...to be a good woman.
And I want...you to be a good man.
And this is why...I am leaving you."
is what Chan whispered into the mic,
lamenting over untouchables
with silver strands and wooden bodies.

'The song is…It’s just, I mean it’s
sad but...but it’s beautiful too…so--
I--I'm sorry I'm not articulating my.'
was Chantal's gentle and eloquent
reply to my asking 'What's wrong?'
She had wept in the moments I was gone.

'I know. I thought you'd...like it.
Her voice is delicate and wrinkled,
and those chords drone somethin' low'
was the paperthin comfort I covered
her arms with. I kissed her crown,
wiped her lash, and waited for another song.


II

No plans, but its serendipity
made us like it more than others.
It was already a marvelous lullaby, bow against
guitar, metallic whispers on the snarehead, and
the gleaning falsetto of a twelveyearold man.

But when we would wake up together, our ears
stretching arms and squinting crusted eyes to
a single note on a lo-fi xylophone bell,
we knew we were in love. With one another
and the song; It crept into and out of my mindmovies.

So we chose music with a language we don't speak
and synaesthetic colors we don't recognize as our
cut-palm playinears togethering. Now that we're apart,
separated, I can't help but think of her and there,
where we were in love, where I was in Iceland.

*I refers to Chan Marshall/ Cat Power's "Good Woman."
II refers to Sigur Ros's "Svefn-g-Englar."

The Journalist (Rising Action)

Without the kindofs and littlebits,
I almost told her she was beautiful.

"You're kind of a little bit attractive.
Just a little." she wrote to my morning.

And her half-assed sweetness was not
enough to keep my chauvinistic distance.

She thought she knew what she was doing,
slowly shaving my bare barren masculinity,

each razorstroke a call she did not pick up,
trying to teach me something unlearnable.

So I began to submit to her subtle saveface
insecurities like petals to a sweltering day.

I would reply quietly to her two-am texts of
"You up..," a question without a questionmark.

And no matter what she thinks, she is not
Just Another girl to challenge me because of

the reality that too few do. Too few girls
are actually slouching women. So she acts,

and I counter with my equal and opposite reacts,
our arrogance serving as both trench and bunker.

When I saw her again, I didn't know which would
suffice in satisfying our apparent awkwardnesses:

tenderness or antagonism, tenderness and antagonism;
a hug and a peck-- or a smack across the face?

Drive with You

You can drive
and avoid looking at me
by looking out of your side

and I can
sit on my hands resisting actuality
as my phantom hands caress your cheek

and your phantom
smile turns to my adoring eyes
and softly whispers anything beautiful.

Necessity

Hedonists never die crying.
They live and laugh and dance and dance and come
and smile as they lay dying.

We do what is poor for our health.
Why love you, though, why get you off this time,
when I can love and come myself?

Nothing is necessarily necessary, but it's all so
spectacular we'd be fools not to take advantage.

A Flat in A Nowhere

The stars
and
the thruway
and
the darkness that surrounds otherwise
remind me of our wonderful once.

A one time
that
I had with you
that
was defined by the ecstasy of nostalgia,
holding you when we both knew you didn't need to be held.

Our eyes wandered
but
our fingers brushed and stayed
but
our fingers still fell to their own sides
later in the night, and the moment was only the moment.

Euphemism

I call my procrastination
insomnia
to help me to sleep at night.

It gets the job done as
I get my job done,
awake and alive by nothing but hope.

Dima and Anya

With the gentle blade of a single finger, Dima and Anya exchanged petal caresses: he her bare, fair thigh in those denim summer shorts, she his mobile wrist. And, staring at them out of fatigue and fascination, I thought quietly Isn't she his first cousin? Have I ever touched my cousin like that? Certainly not.
Later that evening, she retreated to the bathroom, a subtle smirk of some random satisfaction across her face and with panties and a faded shirt (XXL, perhaps an ex's) underneath pinched between her forefinger and hidden thumb. I marveled at the delicacy of her hand and immediately the word "prim" came to mind. As she prepared for bed at 3:30am, we three men-- a Russian acquaintance, a Russian cousin, and an Italian nerd-- saw in awe her petite and smiling mysteriousness.
"Iee do naught know what eet ease, but when sheh step-pid off the plaen from Moscow, Iee could naught help myself."
"Waddaya mean, Dima?" I asked with precedented suspicion, noticing how our eyes (including his) trailed behind her ass as she exited the room earlier.
He thought how best to respond, and with a finger on his lips, he looked up at me and replied assuredly "Iee haff never met her before five days ago. She ease my couseen, ahnd Iee--," he puts an arm over our shoulders, "my friends--haff indulged een forbidden pleasures...."
The ellipsis is for me, not for him. I couldn't think of how to make out what he said.

The toilet flushed, the door squeaked open, and Anya came out in nothing but the large faded shirt with Russian pop culture written on it. Her blonde down and her makeup off, she was more beautiful.
"What?"
We were all huddled, standing and discussing her (a raucous subject), and then interrupted by that very subject of our juxtaposingly quiet dialogue.

Anton didn't react to her presence beyond turning to acknowledge her.
I reacted with a blink and an inaudible and timid "--nothing."
Dima smiled.

I wondered at that, too, squinting my eyes at him as if blurring my vision would brighten my mind.

Anton slept on the couch after smoking cigarettes he rolled himself.
I slept in the bed sprawled and alone and aware of the floored air-mattress below my side, and the sounds I was hearing on it.
Sounds of Dima coming to bed after Anya had fallen asleep, to wake her up and corrupt her. I heard zippers though-are there pajamas with zippers?

They were gone when I awoke, and the mattress looked deflated. I shuffled to the living room, scratched my head, turned it to see Anton waking to see who was shuffling. We smiled at one another, at our incredulity, and went back to sleep.

Train stories: Hick

A sad woman lost to herself sits next to me, and I don't know how when or how I'll tell her to move, but I know why. Her escapes and by-no-means-purifying catharses are seeping into the senses of those whom she surrounds.
The children one seat back can smell her cigarette breaks in the train car's bathroom (though their mother smokes, so I doubt they'll notice). The Red Dog can she pulls from her bag and cracks between her thighs makes me wonder how long she can go without drinking. Makes me wonder how long it's been since she'd been content and sober.
Her attempts at small talk with me, interjected with coughs and hawks hither and thither, make me question how far she allowed her education to go, and whether or not she's ever discussed more than the weather with anyone. I don't mean to sound so pretentious and lofty, but when you're stuck answering "So how about Britney shaving her head-what the hell was that?," it's arduous to agreeably assert that she's an avid thinker.

A Muslim woman walks past and she had to remark "looka that get-up!" nudging my elbow with her own--boney--as if she were a happy uncle of mine. She is not a happy uncle of mine.
I only smiled and nodded, doing as little as possible to cause any sort of advancement on what could potentially be a confusing and/or prejudiced conversation for her, and phantomly responded "It's not a "get-up," as you say, but a head scarf or hijab, I think, symbolic in the Muslim faith of obedience to God and appreciating women beside thei--you're not even caring, are you?"

She got on at Stop A and--an hour later--left for Stop B.
In that time she downed 3 beers she had brought on with her and pulled five cancerstick breaks.

Sometimes, I love America.

Knock Knock Click Squeak iloveyou Clap

Our love was made in the afternoons since
we had school
before

and could only smile and touch
in passing
notebooks and glances

notebooks and glances in hallways
and separate dinners with separate separated parents after,
after dusk came

and I rode my bike back,
racing against Ma's impatience and her readytocrescendo temper
post-sunset.


And this one afternoon
before
we ever kissed on the lips

but after
we had lay in the center of your impoverished
living room,

harmonizing "feelin' groovy..."
for hours without a clock in the house,
I had left

while it was still bright.
We exchanged our shy goodbyes (the omnipotence of our
mutual infatuation realized),

and before I stepped from but after you had closed your green door,
I hesitantly knocked twice, put my ear to the other side of your soft steps,
heard the deadlock click in

the knob and hinges squeak open, and said feverishly
"iloveyou"
and clapped the door shut myself

with a grin that could light the heavens a hundred times over.

Sunflowers and Stars

I used to go with a girl
that saw Sunflowers in my eyes.
In their iridescence, she could focus on the "hazels and dots."

The first time she wore a summer-nothing,
I saw Constellations in her beauty marks.
"Little Dipperish for your arm and fair chest," I marveled.

A Dusk Raining

Just as the rain may emerge
from a drizzle and static to a
PouringDown and LightningStreaking,
I look on with passivity and a bitten lip
as your sniveling and gaze become
BurstsandPops of SobsandTears.

And we know so well,
so well, it is, that we do know this,
that things like this cannot be recorded.
Things intense and paining.
Too intense and Too
paining.

And in spite of me,
and all the woe I've come to cause,
we know so well, so well--
it is--that I know,
I know how much it
hurts.

Waves away waving to us, but to no promising avail.

The shoreline is the most honest edge,
its messages written innocently by children and lovers,
cruelly washed away by the incessant insistence
of the calming, coming wave.

The calming, coming wave,
running feet from feet away, trickling down and calming
as it comes closer to us, to we--the naive--ignorantly caressing
those massaged messages of ours smoothly away.

And as we walk into wading,
waiting to die with rocks in our pockets,
we think of only "why?" and so end the poem one expected line short.

You and I

You and I paralleled our onlysomanys and
___perpendiculated our otherwises.

But I was no pretention-intention
bound to the position of an antithetical-you.

And though differented and separate, your fingers and my
fingers decided to mingle and caress, and weave like they do

and now no words are needed. For so long,
hatingandhatingand hating until, of course, you and I became we.

[This is poverty]

This is my first prose entry. I've yet to really write something coherent, cohesive, and complete. All of my prose thusfar have been sad attempts at beginning short stories, only to succumb to the lacadaisacal attitude I have that turns these attempts into masterpieces of Flash Fiction. That was a joke.
____________________________________________________________________

This is poverty. This is poverty and winter. This is the attempt to salvage leftovers from three nights ago as a decent dinner tonight and tomorrow's breakfast. This is shitting in a can that hasn't been flushed in a week to cut down on the water bill. This is cold showers where the faucet is turned more off than on (to cut down on water and heating bills).

Step in.
Turn on.
Rinse.
Turn off.
Lather.
Turn on.
Rinse.
Turn off.
Step out.

Easy peasy fucking freezy. And I'm sorry: not cold--lukewarm (I've gotta offer myself some kinda break).

This is Ramen noodles every night and every night sleeping to the smooth rhythms of a disgruntled stomach churning and decaying and mashing nothing but the opposite walls of itself. This is not being able to sleep because all of the sweaters, socks, blankets and hats can't save you from shivering yourself awake. Shivering yourself awake after your fatigue kicks into stage-desperation. This is attempting to sleep next to the heating vent on the floor of my one bedroom-one bathroom closet, trying to scrape a breath that feels like the crust of a burnt out sun. The downstairspeople aren't as tiphungry, or aren't as careful.

Ignorance might mean smiles and dandelions now, but it'll mean change cups and wet socks later.

That breath helps, but it's so shallow. This is staring at a bunch of smoke-black bananas as your last resort for this weekend's meal, a gift from some dismissive and inadvertently generous coworker received earlier this week.
"Here, have a ball. My son bought too many for a Boy Scout Sundae-Sunday...thing."
This is no family.
Junkie and phoneless "friends."
It's not the 30s.
I'm not in the city.
I'm not--...
I'm trying to get by and failing.

If I Say When...

When it happens
(and I hope it's a when and not an if)
we will be ecstatic.

Our eyes will glaze
(with ours seizing hours, no alones notting moments)
and our gaze will run.

War

In honor of those who have suffered the horrors of Hurricane Katrina.

So this is what war looks like.
Sporadic bright whites behind a distant graphite sky.
Days and nights in which the morning and evening horizons
will have no color, only ashly anvils gliding forward.
A ceaselessly downing wall of bullets shooting the earth,
breaking its skin and evacuating its strivetosurvive inhabitants--
if they don't drown, they'll die drying, but at least they died trying to survive.

So this is what war sounds like.
A crescendoing cacophony of lo-fi booms pocking vast grasslands.
Of airy whistles both shrill and groaning and pops and screams falsetto and tenor.
Of near-ear cracks that make you wince and of a voluminous static enveloping all.
And the sounds abound remain around so long as
the defense's steadfast and passionate as the defenseless
offense idles in its convulsing cowering.

So this is what war feels like.
A cold that'd put a blanket of ice to shame.
Sharp stings everywhere like a guerilla militia of bee pricks.
A blowing pushing that'll have your body in a hypotenuse if it can,
and blendering with wood and glass torpedoes if it can't.
A cracking and snapping whip-tail whipping if you're too close.
A subtle and sly breeze if you're too far.

You think this is false, that wars like this are mere battles?
Or worse yet, that wars like this do not exist, do not happen?
Tell that to the blitzkreig conniption fits of our dear Mother.
She is spontaneity-incarnate. She is merciless and spectacular.
She is nameless as a whole but we name her wars and battles.

We live in her home and if we keep kickin' up,
she'll keep kickin' out.

An Observation

So long as the wind kicks,
that leaf is a brief (fleeting) butterfly.

And Though The Horizon Burns Spectacular

I'll walk you home if it gets dark,
but we both know that
you've only just arrived.

And though the horizon burns spectacular,
wailing rain drapes
will goad us to stay in and kiss

until the fire is out, when oranges and pinks
fade to hues of blue, cool and smooth
steam reaching from the street to the jaundiced moon.