HOLIDAYS

In an art house cinema

we sat in a dark space

your thin body

folded into a filthy chair on wheels,

my limbs propped on a ledge

with wine and crumbs on a wobbly table.

This was supposed to be

our only interaction.

I was sure that the 16 years between us

could in no way bring us together.

Then it’s Halloween

in the French Quarter.

It’s a midway

of robots, werewolves, zombies, drag queens, men in suits.

Of the two of us

I was the only one in costume.

That was a big difference

between me and you.

I was

willing to dress up.

Then Thanksgiving

when my greatest trick

was cracking eggs with one hand

and serving up a roasted turkey

while wearing an apron

and my best skin –

the one I bring out on special occasions;

the one I used to wear to church as an alter boy.

The one I always show

when I want to hide the muck in my veins.

We eventually meet in Chicago

on New Year’s Eve.

We’re swept away

back to an elegant hotel room

where the mirror

captured, with the determination of emulsion,

our forms, my hands on your hips,

your flawless waist, your boots still on; elated and drunk.

Then Baton Rouge

where the crumbling starts to gain traction.

The traffic pours

directly into my lungs.

Being lost for mere minutes

throws me back into the body of a young boy

under my father’s belt.

I’m lost, crying on the streets

of my home town.

Doorbells go unanswered.

Sunrise highway

groaned with screeching cars and horns.

Sometimes I day dream

about travelling back to my younger self

so that I can tell me

don’t grip so hard – you’ll choke everything.

Would it matter?

Does the ghost of a mouse

morn his demise

after a snake lunges from the weeds

swallows the fur and the tail whole

coiling its limbless body

until the ribs crush the organs

the black, glossy eyes

stop blinking.

Should either regret such a religious experience?

Eventually, it’s Valentines Day

and I show my love with a cactus.

Something that doesn’t die easily;

that needs very little water and attention.

I think those thorns

sent the right girl the wrong message.

I think the wrong message

was all I really had to send.

The timeline

is also marked with Los Angles.

A small, flimsy padded card table

with candles, wine, and our last meal.

The last photograph I would take –

the one I can’t bring myself to delete.

The one that no longer looks like you.

The one that tells me nothing of who you are now.

Too permanent

and too hollow like bird bones.

Finally, the birthday present to you

from you

was to no longer

need me.

It was the best gift

you could have given yourself.

The one, in a moment of clarity,

I insisted you take.

I should have never invited you

to that movie;

not the one on the dull screen

in Orlando, Florida,

but the one that keeps replaying

over and over on my bedroom wall

with the repetition of a zoetrope

and the faded plastic slides of a carousel.

THE LAST SUPPER

On the day of Kim Jong-il’s funeral
North Koreans openly wept on television.

They flailed in state issued uniforms
grasping each other’s arms.

A haze of snowflakes
dusted their shoulders before melting into water.

The YouTube videos
looked as if the procession,

snaking through the streets of Pyongyang,
had taken place in the 1980s.

They are flat, icy, the color of an albino’s eyes
textured only by melodrama.

Thousands of identical women
incessantly sobbing, falling to their knees

as the polished black hearse,
glistening with droplets of rain, slowly drove by.

The herds of people –
undulating black flesh –

like the skin of an eel 
stretched across neighborhoods.

A grandmother shoved a handkerchief
into her left nostril.

The footage is poorly edited.

Newspapers wondered if he would be buried
or put on display like a sausage in a deli case.

Now, there is a fish shortage in North Korea,
and starvation is a constant static

in the bellies of children.

Stoves remain cold.
Dinner tables sit barren.

His son Kim Jong-un
walks an isle of food

in a pristine new grocery store
stark and fluorescent.

He admires the cases of fish;
their scales shimmer like ornaments.

On the radio in America
a Korean man tells a story

about a mother and father
who had nothing left to sell.

The rooms of their home
lifeless, without a rug or a chair or a toy.

They managed to get some rice
and cooked it in a cast iron pot,

boiled it until it floated
like a sheet of ice on top of an ocean.

The children scooped large handfuls
shoved it into their tiny mouths,

chewed it with complete gratification,
felt it fill their deflated stomachs,

unaware of the rat poison
used as seasoning.

HOTEL ROOMS

In New Orleans

at the International House Hotel

I’m on the edge of the bed.

Your slim body
is plastic sheeting stretched
across the angles and corners

of stones –
your thin elegant legs
in fraying jeans.

The rectangle lenses
of your glasses frame
each autumn leaf shaped eye.

This was before you learned
what feminine clothes
will do for you.

This was when
I was one of the very few
that got to see and touch
everything underneath.

Sprawled out
arms stretched
toward the head board;
the bed still made
underneath us.

Your smile
black ink
painting Chinese glyphs
with a soaked horse hair brush
I just knew when it dried
it would disappear.

Then there was Chicago.
I came in on a long flight –
you came by train.

a 20th century mechanism
on a crash course
with a 19th century machine
that moves by devouring the landscape.

When you opened the door
you were revealed
and we pressed our lips
with the force of feathers –

a bird’s wing

settling against its body.

And there was also
that suite in Mammoth Lakes
without air conditioning

Where I found you in the bathroom
straightening your sheen hair
long, nearly metallic,

black as the belly of a plum.

These hotel rooms
anchored to earth
rotating with our memories

coming to rest on the bed spreads
the carpets, a corner

in an empty bathroom.

Now I travel alone,
see the interiors,

request a wake up call,

and slam the drapes shut.

Too many sheet rock walls,
too many laminated channel guides,
over bleached sheets,
tiny plastic signs
about saving our planet.

The purple sun

setting over mountains in Denver,

the hollow moon

rising behind the St. Louis Arch,

in Alabama

everyone stares at me

while hunched over waffles.

Sitting in these rooms
seeing so clearly
ever key I've ever held
in my palm

every lock I've clicked
or replaced after so many things stolen
or hammered a flat head screw driver into.

I seethe at clocks

airports

distance

depleted bank accounts

work schedules

reports due

the anchors

the call times

the tolls

taxes

taxis

Atlas has dropped the Earth,

stretched out his arms

and shoved us apart.

The hardest
is packing to leave.

It takes convincing

that getting on my feet

lacing my shoes

collecting my tooth brush

will eventually be worth it.

That eventually, if I just outlive

these check ins

the limited view of the peep holes,

the industrial air conditioning,

the twisted blankets

the bad ideas

the meaningless conversations –

I’ll some how

traverse home.

The zipper on my ragged red suitcase
its crooked teeth
barbs that don't fit but hook.

Shoving everything
I've brought with me inside,
flipping over damp towels
to make sure a sock or t-shirt
or novel isn't abandoned.

Shutting down my laptop,
jamming my work into a back pack
downing the rest of
a water downed cocktail
from last night

with the blond from Canada
who invited me into the hot tub
but not her bed.

Filling my pockets with keys
earbuds, a boarding pass
receipts, a tinge of anger, hope
regret and a wrinkled thought of you.

I'm dragging it all behind me
as I kick the door open
yank my suitcase
by the handle
adjust the camera bag
on my arm

take one last look
over my shoulder
into the past

where you sit
smiling on the sofa
eating mushroom pizza
translucent
content
all perfect

white teeth.

It's green outside.

Christmas trees everywhere
over sized rabbits
a sextet of birds
the buzzing of every insect
I've come to know

I scan the empty
mess
make sure nothing
escapes
so I can leave
with most of what
still belongs to me.

AIR TRAVEL

For over seven months

my eyes have seen
the coal-colored tarmacs
of several cities.

Long, hot runways of Los Angeles,
dusty, dry landing strips in Las Vegas
wet, frost laden jet ways in Denver
landing gear shrieking in New York.

All have these things in common:

They've all have seen me

drunk and stupid
lonely and frightened
angry and lost
worried and wishful

twisted and yearning
standing on steel stairs
leading to the door
in the skin puncturing rain
praying to the only deity I know:

the filthy gray-white floor
made by the tops of soft clouds.
This prop plane
glides over it all.

There's a planet down there
uncharted, frightening,

over-paved, uncivilized - 

I'm told I'm from there.

They've assigned me a social security number.
They say I've had a childhood.
They say I've been in love.
They say I have a job, debt, and a mortgage.

An ex-wife, bank accounts –

apparently I enjoy mountain biking.

But I can’t believe any of it

even though they offer undeniable evidence.

According to them

my mother did run over my child hood dog,

I did publish my complaints
on the pages of their bible,

there is a parking spot for my car marked 42,

I once got gut punched by the handle bars

of my banana seat bike from JC Penny.

I gasped for air;

feared for life.

My phone number to my child hood home

was 516 669 7587,

my first crush was

with a blonde named Kristin in the 6th grade.

But all of these memories
are fed to me by fraudulent printing presses.

Safety deposit boxes cannot be opened –

they contain their own keys

The fields have been delineated
by the geometry of
an all too specific
draftsman

Below is a patchwork of rich green disks
rows of wheat in postage stamp shaped fields
strip mall parking lots - 

abysses to the center of the world.

Everything shaped by an unforgiving trowel
invented by the occupants underneath me.

Its atmosphere can't possibly
be safe for breathing.

Of its billions of life forms
of all the happiness squeezed
from their guts

all the wishes
rung from their soaked dreams

the wind of their souls
swirl into the spinning and chewing
centrifuges.

They are all hovering.
Their organs are molded gas.

From up here
none can reach me

none can grasp
and yank the weeds from my gut.

None know
how to drain the acid from my lungs.

None except you
in Albuquerque.

I can't even pronounce it
without feeling my flight
drop through the turbulence –

me grasping the arm rest
knowing the clouds
are not dense enough
to stop my fall.

Landing
would be a fiery explosion
of wreckage

scattered across the surface - 

the embers
first formed on this rock
so many eons ago.

THE GREAT WALL

I think of you in a yellow floral summer dress

Wearing a woven cow girl hat

A gleaming white smile, brown dimples

And a Miller Light can in a blue foam koozie

In your right hand

And my memory in your left

Scales have tipped

And I’ve pulled the thread

Knowing all along it will end up

A pile of hopeless yarn in the corner

Of the bedroom I designed for us

Over and over in my sloshy imagination.

Unnecessary complications

On such a simple planet

We live in the same country

Exactly 1,841 miles squeezed between us

From my floor to your bed

From my heart to your smile

From the crushed chalk of my drawings

To the yellow cupcake mix

In a cardboard box

In your cabinet.

Militaries have marched right through tapestries

Like football players taking the field

Like medical scissors cutting through gauze

Like two lovers tearing through

The skin of spiky words scribed

On a black board.

It’s the vocabulary of the vicious

And the grammar of the heinous

They are to blame for the tectonic plates

Which have smashed against each other

Forming ice capped mountains

No elephant, man, or empire can cross.

It makes me wish

We had just built one home

So that when the earthquake struck

We either slid into the ocean

Or were swallowed by the gaping earth.

I don’t care which

As long as we are together.