Teen Wolf

At the end of Teen Wolf,
during the celebration,
if you look hard enough
you can see a man
exposing himself;
That is what I want to be:

obscure and aware
of a world through the lenses,
beyond my hour
and a half problems,
jubilantly flailing
my most vulnerable of areas,
offering myself
to an indifferent public
as a private joke.

No Homo

When we won it made me feel.
As the Gatorade container of my eyes
was overturned on the coach of my heart
I rose with the stands,
arms encircling the jubilant meat
of my buddy's hulking frame
and on the screen: a wave of pats:
back pats, head pats, butt pats,
everyone patting tenderly, lovingly;
with a gentle violence acknowledging
the muscular buttocks
of our victorious warriors
so far away and yet
close at hand.
The phone rang.
I tried to answer, but there was a
game-winning touchdown
lodged in my throat.
John's voice broke over the phone,
"We fucked them, Eddy.
We fucked them in the ass."

Thought I Was Depressed, Turns Out I Had The Blues (Song of Myself-ish)

Before you're an old man
let your hair grow long
and sing your reflection
a sad, sad song

cause I won't forgive you
for all you do is harm
the only girl
to ever bring you calm.

When you cracked your torch upon my winter hearth.
When the waves in my veins make their way to the heartland.
With your worn iron mantle
and your oil slick sheets.
When you decide not to go,
but slip underneath.

When the rats have gone away
no longer
rejoice for your ship will soon follow them down

singing O,
go gather your steeples
we'll pierce the bleeding heart
and then we will know-

singing O,
good will to all people
except all those that
mean to do us some harm.

Ice age;
divine plague;
I regret
what I've made.
I'd start it all over,
but it's too late now.

We Left Everything Unsaid

I did an interpretive dance to explain why
I had to leave so suddenly and why
I was never coming back,
but you took my arms,
held away from my body
and making wide arcs above our heads,
as the sun and my lips,
pressed in a thin red line,
as the horizon
and my legs,
blue in their denim,
swaying back
and forth
as an enormous mythical shark,
old as time itself,
creator of earth, sky and sea,
swimming powerfully through
our lackluster plane of existence.

You built a shrine to that shark,
lit candles every day without fail,
bit everything that looked like a seal
with the ferocity of a streamlined oceanic predator.

No one could reach you by phone,
you wouldn't answer your door;
the only way to make you notice
anything was to bleed up to
a quarter of a mile away.

Once I saw you in a shopping mall
buying new shoes and moving slightly
to the drone of conversation. You looked
like millions of years of evolution had shaped you
for buying shoes; as if this was what I had
been getting at all along.

These new developments made me come back,
and stand at a comfortable distance
with my lips pursed as if I could kiss you
at any moment. I caressed your back the right way,
placed my lips on lower left of your exposed neck
and stayed there: away from your mouth,
away from your rows and rows of teeth.

I'm Not Starting Yet

Sometimes I talk like
I'm reading a poem
so a select few
will read into
what I'm saying
even if it's something
deceptively banal,
like the inner workings
of our government.
Or maybe it's because
I see a slash
after the last word of a line
and take pause
to catch a breath,
collect my thoughts,
and mark any internal rhymes.

Drops of Sound

Cicaedas ring:
a twin engine plane with one missing.
Two suns strike me:
one eternal;
the other dilating white hot:
the past's foreign horrors
pasting sunset shrapnel,
numbing down my right side.

-, -, -, +

Walking home from work,
late at night, with a light rain
and a high fever.