what mother might have hoped for me

After ruining so many jacket sleeves outside the recital hall foyer
myself tucked between the last stone bench and the Eastern wall
I can hardly care about the cold, wet spot down the breast of my shirt
that clings to my spasming chest.

Fifty years, and what’s to hope for next?
What I might have to offer those withering bones
my mere comfort, a brief smile,
I’m too poor to afford.

Sonnet

What comfort, night, what comfort have you the right to dangle
out in front of me, like I were some desperate
shore born fish, lured by such temptations
as this? What salted ambrosia do you hide
inside your inked arms?

Outspread, the sky, like love foretold, enfolds in surface lights
the tense and tide shorn bay forlorn, deceives
the grieving layman maid into believing
she could wade through quieted waters out to sea and drift
unbattered, into divinity.

Conspiracy! Conspiracy! I’ll own the charge
against these natural wonders, large
though they may be, all those who ponder must recall
the almightiest God’s quickest to damn us all.

the everyday things

I can pick out from among the people around me
those whose lives realize my dreams

I need some good news fast
before things get real bad

all the things you think you’re good at
well, you’re not

all the mail that comes
the letters addressed to someone

just outline where someone oughtta be
life like wind happens to me

an incident on a day in a life

When I was twenty two years old I walked down the stairs
to the employee bathrooms and put my left foot up on the toilet seat.

I took out my standard-issue, ergonomic, safety box cutter
and set it for three-ply corrugated fiberboard.

My left leg suffered the twenty four incisions.
My left arm, too, three more.

I rolled down my pant leg, I put on my jacket,
and went back for my remaining seven and one half hours of shift.

After having promised not to do it again,
a few times,

I made a game of writing “suicide” where I would otherwise draw blood
every time I thought to do it.

After writing the word four times in two minutes
I forfeited.

So it came to this, a dull burning on my left inside calf
while I asked passing customers if they needed any help today.

the normal frustrations

the words on this page are sickening
especially the “I”s

I wish to be removed from this setting
lifted letter by letter

and placed inky blot
by spidery bleed

into a deafening fire
so that I am finally consumed by Rages

and made mute, and made unconscious
and am unmade

the normal frustrations

the words on this page are sickening
especially the “I”s

I wish to be removed from this setting
lifted letter by letter

and placed inky blot
by spidery bleed

into a deafening fire
so that I am finally consumed by Rages

and made mute, and made unconscious
and am unmade

"What have you been up to?" "Just working."

I become a stretch of road
I am six miles
I look futureward,
down my asphalt,
my traffic obscured by glints of sun

With my feet
I blot out patches of the pavement
back and forth, in paces,
until I walk
in the Alley of Shadow
upside down on the walls
same as the ceiling and floor