malaise

Orange. Green. The blue bursts unpredictably across the square
the 28th forms an X only because its neighbors do
(inference by association)
you have to toss that marker, felt tip crusty with age,
one more survivor of the nine-year-old bunch
bites the dust.

Vague recollections of wandering the aisles under
fluorescent lights, finding one hundred colors, consuming,
adding them to a black canvas bag of paints and origami paper
things collecting dust and cobwebs and tiny tumbleweeds of hair
things intermittently resurrected
things let go: there, but no longer part of your life.

Thick orange like the skin of a clementine
has been your weapon of choice for this countdown
with no endpoint
and the bold lines simply remind you
that time drones on and on and the present
offers a brighter source of hope
than the future.

an ode to things and wisdom in places

Jangle the lock
like an incompetent guest entering your own home
push the door and stumble in
to a fresh breath of warmth and marijuana
seeping in from the neighbors

upstairs holds
plants and nailed planks and furniture
wooden tables, a wicker chair, flowers
things that shackle you to
something like a comfortable prison

things you thought you wanted
material, ideological
things you can no longer keep up with,
things now meaningless

respite is an ironic rocking chair you
can't leave on the porch untethered
due to weather and
the high incidence of crime

books on the floor
evidence of your fading heritage all too real

the doorbell rings and a deliveryman with a soggy box of roses
hands you a clipboard and collects your half-inked signature

that pen is dying, you muse, because of the cold
and the vase goes in the warmest room
because here the food won't spoil
and the mung won't sprout
like it does in the summer

our androgynous gods

something compels you to reread those letters.
the snow dripping down the glass panes as the
temperature teeters between thirty and thirty-two,
your cold feet over the vent snugged between
the couch cushions your dad never wanted until
he loved them, the confusing phone call that cast doubts
on your doubts and left your heart hollower but still
churning out its boring rhythm as if nothing were amiss
something compels you to reread those letters.
cleverer than you remember them and funny
in a way that nothing has been for months
the smile spreads before you can control it and
your cheeks are flushed and that genuine joy
embarrasses you, troubles you. you were always guilty
of falling for the written word.

London

what you have is the forward march of time
these rains come and they pour
the three black-coated strangers with blue plastic bags
on a foggy street punctuated by cars going the wrong way
guffawing, barrel-chested, smokers in the winter

for those fleeting seconds you wish your souls could trade places
transiently escape things that drain you
but you are stuck with leaves in a gutter after a thunderstorm
browning, rotting, an unanticipated natural decay
in this place you thought had no seasons

the only respite from self-smothering angst is
one foot in front of the other
the forward march of time

Then and now (and then again)

Times change
like handwriting, painstakingly
formed straight lines deliberately dragged
perpendicular to two solid green lines
and one dotted,
metamorphoses into scribbles, illegible scrawls
on napkins and post-its and prescription pads,
cursive the nuns would have rapped your knuckles for
but now you lost the will
time, precious time, has robbed you of the discipline,
the neatness, the straight laces and the luxury to sign your whole name.
"What a shame,"
your father says, as even he
behind the fog of cataracts
perceives that something has been lost.

Times change
like love in its infancy, replete with letters and melodies
dripping with rainwater and snow and sleepless nights of poetry whispering itself into your idle ears
romances fade with distance and masochistic employment
until sweetness is gray and kisses
are neutral clouds that may rumble emptily and carry storms out west or simply
dissolve into bland blue skies
(until the seductive lock of hair caresses your temple
like fingertips whose ridges you never forgot
and you wonder
if your heart will ever be more
than a music box,
a curiosity in an antique shop
with a cracked lid
a scar from when containing yourself
contained you.)

oh unlucky thirteen

oh unlucky thirteen, they tell me the next one
will be better but I don't believe in stars anymore.
the rigmarole was finally too much for the spark of
hope to bear and like an anvil it squashed the whites
of my pupils. that bright light is buried, much as
the one who loved me, cradled me, birthed me by proxy
told me, warned me for the last two decades and now his
sorrow has strangled him into silence. below this
interminably gray sky and the incessant mist of a confused
foggy threshold between seasons I beg you to usher in
a different ode to the new year that the flame of my soul
might shine through, resurrect his beloved toddler and
wash away the disappointment we have etched into his face.

I accept peace

when the air starts to bite
your lungs like horseradish
your breath goes only so far before your chest
stops rising against imaginary hands

block's a ghost town and that
industrial wasteland by the post office tumbles even more weeds.
step by step, one sneakered foot
hopscotching its way in front of the other
--step on a crack and you'll break your mother's back--
until the chalk like fairy dust encounters a used condom
sandy, gritty, the residue of cement and a bright blue
wrapper a few fractures later.

the gray sky rumbles over the games we play
but our daring paws call heaven's bluff
and we pad up to those streets with the big
houses and trees and ivy snaking up bricks
curvy vines hissing like a snake's tongue
--look, but don't touch--
go home to your dead neighborhood
because here the anaconda strangles
the fat man who walks his tiny dog
the viper's venom intoxicates
the anorexic mermaid staring out the green glass window
wasting down to the floating ribs
of the turret of your childhood dreams

if you're here after dark they release the hounds
so your cobra traces its spiral
downwards into the woven basket towards
a quiet cul-de-sac
where quiet crimes
and broken windows
and boarded-up doors
and rotting porches
disintegrate in stilted
stifled time
companions to a sullied rubber who resists a million years
of the flautist's invocation
to biodegrade