Monday, April 23, 2018

Lovesick

Hope is a mine shaft
with sagging wet timbers
rotted nearly to the middle
it's dark and black in both directions
and I'm frantically preparing new timbers
to keep it from caving in
I'm so dirty
and my back is screaming at me
but I'm not ready to leave
despite the worsening situation

For her
freedom comes in solitude
the peace of the quiet perfections
loving herself like a holy relic
constructing her perfect altars everywhere
while the moon and flowers secrete
their poetess bait
always surrounded by delicate things
and the delicate superstitions
of millennia ago
her feelings have become
Mosaic Law in her heart
and I am just a Gentile
a simple man with no Kabbalah
and filthy children
unroyal and unequal
unlearned and blunt
I drag too many broken things around
in my broken down old cart
the one I'll drag around
until I'm crooked and beaten by time
I'm made for work
maybe not for courting queens
or for the decoding of souls

Hers is a freedom that is deeply offended
when a man as imperfect as me
comes in to try but fails
with his dirty boots
and clumsy love
and rusted sword
and dirty wooden-wheeled wagon
full of boys and broken things
I came with good intentions
but no turns were right
I could not satisfy her
all the patience I could muster
wasn't enough
all my fallen man woundedness
was too much
all my attempts at witnessing her
were inadequate at best
and damaging at worst
There was my breathing dog
my boyish boys
the dirt under their nails
and how they can't remember
the cloth napkin rule
their warring mom
who sued me with her boyfriend
and the devastation that created inside
to know I had more battles to fight
a fourth tour with no breaks
There were the times I yelled at her son
the time I yelled in her house
my lines in the sand
the lines that got trampled
and the ones that held up
and hurt her heart

Ultimately,
she decided that being alone
was the best thing for her
that I am not up to the tasks she needs
not a man she wants afterall
a man she did too much for
a man she never got enough from
a man that wouldn't
scoop her and her son up unconditionally
so she yelled at me one last time
when I was stuck on my couch
and left my life
with the finality of a guillotine

I have joined a chorus of headless men
I have failed, executed
along with her last long-term man
and if you were to ask us about her
we would easily say in unison

She's a Queen

with a thousand things
gracefully unsaid
because we were pretty decent men
in different ways
and we both understand
that we were rejected
by a woman who knows she is great
and demands greatness in return
many greatnesses
we didn't measure up for her
we weren't enough
for our own particular reasons
in our own particular ways

So I try to keep that hope of mine
for a second act with her
from caving in on me
and it's hard
because I can see how happy she is
I can read it in her love poetry
to her porch and to herself
her songs of life without me
the love songs to my absence
they have sweet Spring melodies
and ring in my ears like dynamite.

Friday, April 20, 2018

Arch

I once tromped right through palace rooms and temples like I deserved to be a statue
I walked right into the elders' council chambers and sounded like a young Scrub Jay
when the blisters started mounting on my spirit
when my smile cracked like thin lake ice
Everything changed

Freedom is a caustic acid bath
turns out
I get to do my own walking
but those traumas will sure stack up
until nobody's heart is clean enough
and I'm breaking up with a woman I love every part of
forced to heal alone
back to the desert wilderness with Moses and the Jews
back to the fishing boats with the gnarled brethren,
away from the women,
back to the beginning of the journey that never ends
burning in the sun, working the nets, working the chisel
back to the search, scanning the shore for the Lord
to atone for these wounds
these little suicides I committed
back when I thought I deserved things
like freedom or access to temples
those years of being so sure of my steps
before I had a bunion
and all this pain.


Thursday, April 19, 2018

Guts

This feeling wrenching my guts

is accidentally stripping a butterfly
of its wings

Running over
an endangered fox

Losing a family heirloom
in a move

Watching the house burn
and I couldn't get the pictures

Watching an execution
Or a dolphin slaughter

The feeling of holding in secrets

The feeling of losing my best friend

Death is coming
And the beautiful things will live on

This is regret
The feeling of not giving enough

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Hurt

I hope I don't push it down too far
but that will also be necessary

How do I mourn this
without falling too far

I'll write her a letter
tell her the things she didn't let me say

I'll finish her painting
to leave some kind of gift

To a beautiful life that rejected me
A tribe that spoke a different language
A woman who decided
that I am not enough

I have a couple gifts to give still
to a woman who decided
that I am not worth
trying to understand anymore

That's how I'll mourn

I hope she can remember someday
The man she threw away
And I hope she can forget
the man she decided I was

Monday, April 16, 2018

New Moves

My lower back turned into an iron rod this week for no particular reason. I was doing dishes at the sink. Quietly and patiently. I had just come off of a very easy week full of administration, client work, meetings, and a little bit of easy construction. We replaced a couple windows and trim, painted the trim, replaced some fence boards, no big deal.

After I placed a plastic cup in my drying tray, my lower back seized and nerve pains shot through my body down to my feet. My hands have been subtly shaking ever since. The deepest part of my skeletal core is struggling to maneuver through the world, so that's bad.

My body has spoken to me before. It's screamed at me sometimes. I almost died in 2010 I think it was, 5 days after I was baptized. Jesus spoke in the Gospels of being baptized by spirit, raised from the dead and born again. That's happened to me. His words are the perfect allegory for my experience, it cannot be said better. It was ultimately Jesus's poetry that convinced me he was God on Earth. 

There was another time when my ex wife left me and I finally stopped drinking whiskey all day. Soon after I met an angelic woman who decided to fill me with love. It was a gift I can never repay. When she entered my life, she began to nurture my bones and I soon fell into a deep and fevered sickness. When the fever spiked my mind stopped working, I couldn't produce linear thought. It was an electrical storm in my head and then I blacked out and woke up feeling crystal clear. I had a seizure, a reboot, one of many to come. Reboots I mean, that was the only seizure.

And now, this. I am temporarily or indefinitely a full time single dad. I'm optimistic that the mom of my children will create her own stability that she can then share with the children, but I've learned to not project into the future too far. I can project my visions for my life, those projections seem very useful, but my projections that involve any other people are totally futile. So in this moment, I'm on 100% for my kids. I recognize the opportunity in that as well as the deep responsibility. So much could go wrong.

The day after that was decided my back seized out of thin air. Amy my Chinese massage therapist just worked on it for an hour, gingerly touching the effected areas. It's so injured it went from hard to soft. I have a disc bulging and will certainly have to see specialists. I'll have to pray again, because life without prayer is a little messier than it has to be.

What is my body screaming at me this time? Find some new moves man. Stay home. Write. Don't unload sheets of drywall by yourself. Stretch. Go for big long walks. Write. Stay here. Lay down. Be still. Write stupid.

I'm pretty sure that's what it's saying. Those things and that I need a bath.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

I Hate the DMV

The DMV
consumed eighty five percent
of my work day
and when you're self employed
that feels like just another form
of taxation
to take me away
from working on my dreams
to force me into
an obedience ritual
so I can wait for hours
to show a knealing human being
some paperwork.

Then I went to Taco Bell
and marveled at how much harder
their task is
to make food and give it to us
in five minutes
in a way that doesn't kill us
from bacteria,
it inspired me.
The workers at Taco Bell
served at least 80 people
in less than a half hour with
8 employees.

The dude who took my order
a high school aged tall black kid
Was all muscular and made direct eye contact
He displayed perfect and clear customer service
listened intently and moved the line along
and the government would just love
to slow that kid down
all that efficiency is dangerous
all that connectivity and the independence involved
in busting out thousands of bean burritos
for car fulls of stoners until 2am

California has over 30 prisons
full of men like that
and they made the license plate
for my trailer
because without an army of slaves
things like license plates
wouldn't make the cut
as something to bother with
the DMV would barely exist
and we'd just drive our cars
and everything would be fine.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Simplicity

I use two knives to do everything in the kitchen
because that was how I was trained
by a Haitian man from Queens
who made millions of dollars on Gumbo

For every new garment in my closet
another garment has to go
that's my rule
it's how I would run
government and taxes
if I was in charge of that
smaller closets are better
just like governments

My favorite way to sleep
is under quilts my grandmothers made
I love how I feel cradled by their hands
long after their deaths
long after I am a grown man
I let myself feel protected by them
I miss their crooked fingers
their sturdy kisses
the way they cooked meat

Life has never been this simple for me
this deliberate
spacious
and clean
there was so much about living
I just had to test
so many things I believed in
but wouldn't you know it
my Great-Grandpa had a secret girlfriend
a secret we know about
four generations later

It's best to keep it simple
best to keep it clean


Monday, April 9, 2018

The Day

It can always be better
and it can always be worse

Tri tip
a martini
nude woman
wood
blue balls
breathy kisses
stinking dog
eight hours of construction
more sun on my face
sawdust in my lungs
everything is a little better now
but everything is fragile
I don't feel fragile though
not anymore
leave that shit
to some other sucker

It can always be better
it can always be worse

Kill

It's about a return
to the sand and grasses
the thorns and blood and ticks
the hidden fields off trail
where dozens of butterflies live
Raven black with the blue of jewels
like almost being allowed to re-enter Eden

It's about the stillness
hiding with a weapon
until your human clumsiness is forgotten
and all the creatures return
hawks in love circling
just twenty feet above

I saw my prey a few times
but not enough for a good shot
the sun made me tired
on the long hike out of the fields
I ate old trail mix
because I was very hungry
and with my unloaded gun
resting on my shoulder
I had the peace inside of me
of love and forgiveness
the peace of a slow and mighty river



Saturday, April 7, 2018

The Center of a Man

This hurts
today there is nobody to share with
I don't know how to be so inspired by little things
at an age where everyone has grown out of that
or had it pushed out through obedience

A simple breeze through leaves
still feels like a temple to me
I count the folds of plastic
in the front of a shotgun shell
I forget how to spell Karen
and paint with oil
to trade speed for alchemy
I have learned patience

My tribe has scattered
every last one of them
so I will go to Wal-Mart to buy camouflage
and tomorrow I'll hunt for the center of myself
down the barrel of a shotgun
pointed at a wild turkey
with another man who's tribe scattered
I will be in my feral center
that only I can hold
this instinctual core
that my culture would see me surrender

But I can't
it's where all the beautiful things
I've ever had
get created and destroyed
Where I make art
where I take risks
where I can kill an animal to eat
where I make love
and where I apply a blood choke

The center of a man
is a little big bang of violence and creation
Without it many would go hungry
and the babies would be too cold in the winter

Somebody always has to break the ground
and I'm sorry it's so hard for me to be sorry


 


Loss

In life
in these waterfalls of frailty and pain
there is the nearly unbearable responsibility
of lacing these boots
there's the heavy load of concrete
how it always breaks apart
the searing image in the mirror
the way it distorts everything
this pain beating in my chest
it's the undeniable countdown of heartbeats
the quickening of the rain
all the impermanence
all the hope, it's either noble or futile

Regardless
I will hang onto it like dental floss
I'll tightly grip it
the memories
of the softest whispers
the brightest eyes
but here and now there's only this windshield
an empty truck
a country song
about lost love that should have been
songs of regret
songs of wishing for better men.

Don't

Don't try to bring me to ruin
well you won't
but don't try

You'll fail

I will rebuild
over and over
until I can't breathe

My organs should have failed
but they didn't
because I willed them not to

my will is stronger than oxygen

that's who I am
in my heart

a man
who will die
only when he wants to