It’s a hulking tank of a car
Copper colored
The emblem on the steering wheel is dented
I punched it when I got cut off on 95
Trying to honk at the BMW that swerved into my lane
Without using a turn signal

The stereo too
The face is cracked
The glass is blemished
It ate one of my tapes
So I caught it with a solid right
And sent a spider web etching through it

The passenger’s side floor is littered with garbage
Cans, wrappers, plastic bottles, receipts, pine needles, pens and pencils
It sounds like a junkyard wind chime
When I break too quickly
And the air doesn’t work anymore
I had a guy I know
Cross some wires and tubes
So that the heat worked
I figured back sweat
Is better than frostbite

The back seat is torn to ****
I had the back tire off my mountain bike when I was driving it somewhere
And some sharp protrusion
I couldn’t even tell you what it’s called
Caught the leather seat and gave it a nice ****
And a few peppered puncture marks

It had a six CD changer in the trunk until it broke
My dad
(it was originally his car)
Got it installed when he bought it
Because he thought people would try to steal the head unit
I have no idea why

He always said it was such a nice car while he drove it
Then he handed it down to me
Now he never says much about it
He just points out all the little dings and dents
Since the last time he spared a minute to look at it

Apparently,
These kinds of things never happen to him

The people I see driving ’03 Sables on the road
Have one of three hair colors
Blue, white, and mustard yellow
I assume the yellow is supposed to be blond
And they have liver spots on their hands
And they wear big wrap around sunglasses
Like Schwarzenegger in the original Terminator

Sometimes they wave to me
And I wave back
“That guys driving my car!” they must think
But they are driving my car
I just don’t have the chance to stop and tell them

I had some high school kid
Who was learning to drive with his dad
Take a corner too quick
He smacked into the back right door
And slowly pulled over to the side of the road with his hazards on
The dad jumped out of the passenger’s side
Pouring out apologies and nervously wringing his hands
The front of their car
Looked like it had been put through a sausage grinder
My back right door
Looked like it had that morning

I shrugged
And told the nervous dad that it was cool
No one was hurt
No reason to involve insurance
I’ve never had my hand shaken so hard
He jumped in and they sped off
I smiled to myself as the kid took another corner too fast
And careened into traffic

It pulls a little to the right when I drive it now
But it still takes me home
Wherever that may be

Playing hide and seek
A twisting vine finds purchase
Reaching for conquest

Sun warms dark water
Wraiths of mist dance on the lake
Waltzing through the reeds

Patchwork of birdsong
Dead leaves dance through hazy light
Kissing the lake’s face

Serpentine river
Winds through orange, yellow, red
Catching sun on scales

Invisible mist
Falls on herons’ folded wings
Statues in the reeds

Geese cry in the fog
Feathered steamboats bob listless
Herons watch from shore

Chain mail of green moss
Blazing paths on slick tree trunks
Damp armor of shade

Shadows of dead leaves
Drift silent over creek beds
Babbling of water

Fence post forced to bow
As gravity and ivy
Pull it to the ground

Crimson maple leaves
Thinly veiled by sheets of fog
The smell of damp earth

My sunlit white walls
Pockmarked by shadows of leaves
Caught in morning wind

Clinging to chaos
Remnants of a spider's web
Catch the morning sun

Onion grass hangs limp
Bedazzled with morning dew
Cold jewels in the sun

Geese gather in pools
Fissures cut out by the sun
In the frozen lake

Creeping between blades
A pair of unseeing eyes
Looking to ascend

Bird song peels back night
Insects play solemn music
Wet lawns still at dawn

Face open to sky
A life of darkness exposed
Drying in the sun

Letting fresh air in
The gaze of two pale emeralds
Searching for the sun

Bird’s songs at sunrise
Rain working down from perches
Gathering puddles

Gnarled ancient oak
Crows hold court in high branches
Dew clings to the trunk

Swollen with the cold
Flowers peek into the street
Between fence pickets

She is hunched
Over across the aisle
From me
A balding man
Sits against the
Window next to
Her speaking
To the girl
In between them
In spitting whispers

"I'm going to throw up"
The hunched over one
Says staring at her phone
The balding guy and
The in between girl
Laugh

I can taste the
Beer on my own
Breath and my
Coat is too hot
For the train
I fidget around
Waiting for her to
*****

The balding man is
Mad at the in between
Girl now cursing her
Out under his breath
And she laughs in
Gasping chortles
And the slumped
Over one is pale and
Crumpled like a
Saltine in chili

They all start to sing
A song I don't know
And get off at some
Stop I've never been
To

They bother me
I don't know why
But I could tell
You a million
Reasons why
I ******* hate
Them

It is a superior
Trait of mine
To be able to
Hate what I
Don't care to know
While most
Pretend to know
And hate anyway

Please
*****

If you've never pressed a gun barrel against the side of your head
It feels like
A dime or a quarter (depending on the caliber) that you put
To rest in a freezer
It's always cold
It could have been sitting in a car baking in a
Humid Pennsylvania July or the
Harsh southern sun
But it always feels like you've pulled it out of a freezer
And it always feels like its been made to sit in your hand
Pressed against your head.

I had a sick thought the other day
That I'd put that cold barrel to my head and pull the trigger
And the gun wouldn't go off
The hammer would fall and the cylinder would rotate and I
Would have a story:
"Imagine if it would have gone off!"

It's a weird self serving fantasy
Some otherworldly power saving me
Me admiring a primer that was dented but unfired
Putting it on a chain and wearing it around to say
"I'm serious, it could have gone off!"
And people would say
"Wow, he's deep, he feels things, he know what pain is"

But the truth is
We all know what pain is
In one form or another
Whether it's a inattentive parent
A drinking problem
A stressful job
Or no job at all
A spent shell casing
Or believing that your
Life is worth saving.

In reality
There would be no dented primer
No necklace
No veil of pain and deeper understanding

It would be my brains as a greasy stain over the
Poor paint job of my apartment
A screaming fiance
A job that would scold my absence until someone called them
And told them that the primer was fine
The life was over
The position was open.

It's odd
To weather some of the hardest things in life
But a minor slip up or mistake
Can make you fantasize about it being over
It's the minor inconveniences that make
The abrupt ending all the more appealing
Like wind rustling a dead leaf from a
Barren branch.

On the mountain’s peaks
I will one day live and laugh
With the birds and clouds

Ah **** man, my bad
I wanted to write something
And now I'm too drunk

Who knew that the cure
For a mind stricken with grey
Was leaves on the breeze?

There was a particularly nasty looking garden spider
Crawling up the cracked molding of my window
Not that he looked particularly nasty compared to other spiders
In fact, up close, spiders are one of the wisest looking creatures that exist

But I don't have eight eyes like the garden spider
So I can't see that without the help of a camera lens
So to me, he just looked
Nasty

Buzzing from behind my curtain
A particularly nasty looking yellow jacket
Landed next to the spider
I didn't need a camera lens
Close up or far away
Some things are just
Evil

The spider must have sensed this too
With a leap
He grappled the wasp
And they tumbled
Buzzing
To my uneven hardwood floor
Landing with a small
Distinct plink

And I stood over them
While they tussled

As I have stood over a million things

Watching with glazed indifference
While creatures purer in their existence than I
Fought for their lives

I could see that the spider was doing poorly
The yellow jacket was giving it to him in the abdomen
Jamming his stinger in and pulling it out and jamming it in again
Until the spider started leaking white and green
And started fighting less and less

The yellow jacket
Smugly victorious
Save one crippled wing
Started to putter away
But I brought a rolled up newspaper down on the both of them
Like a pillar falling from the front of some great Roman temple
When the Gauls sacked it

Retracting the paper
They had both been reduced to wet smudges
I felt bad for killing the spider
I wish I could have trapped him in cup with a card over the top
And placed him outside on a leaf in the garden
So he could rule where he was meant to

But I considered it an act of mercy
I couldn't stand to see a noble being end like that
And you should always ***** out evil
If you have an opening

I sat back on my bed
Considering it a wash
A bit of beauty for a bit of order
As it has always been

We met our friends
At a local restaurant
They lived in Pittsburg
And we barely saw
Them anymore

Regardless
The embrace was very
Warm as it usually is
Between good friends

She was some kind of writer
He had just become a detective
After working in a drug
Related crime unit for years
Now he worked with gangs

"You see the same ****
Heads all the time,
And they just don't *******
Die."

"They get shot
9, 10, 11, 12 times
And spit on the
Nurses while they stitch
Them up."

"I don't know how
You feel about it,
But those people
Are animals,
******* animals."

I found myself nodding in
Agreement even though
I had no idea what his
Job or the animals
Lives encompassed

I felt bad agreeing with him
But in a way,
I knew he was right

We are all animals
In one way or another

I find that the animals
Born to the smallest cages
Tend to be the fiercest

While the animals born in
Large cages or
If they're lucky
Open fields
Tend to have no idea
How confining a small cage
Can really be.

Lurching over
A river that flows
So slowly that it
Becomes the sky's
Mirror

A bridge is stretched
Easily over it
Staring at itself
In its entirety
It's meticulously
Constructed arches
Become hollow mouths
In the rivers silvery
Surface

I want to visit
The river one day
As opposed to
Just passing over it
So I can watch
The belly of the day
Skip across the river
Like so many flat stones

My dad asks me if I have ever considered
Going back to school
To teach
"You'd be a great teacher" he confides
This after telling him that
I'd be working a second job

All the teachers I know
Are broke, unhappy, or quit
Or are bouncing around in substitute purgatory

Any bit of progress I seem to make
He treats like a step back
After graduating I guess he felt
That he was ripped off
When I didn't pull the next
Game of Thrones out of my ***
And buy him a Porsche 911

Those who don't create
Usually belittle the process
Acting like the muses
Are constantly rubbing your back
When in fact
They are stopping by
To take a piece of you with them

I was on a freezing
Train platform when
A cursing man approached
Me
His smile already queued up
"Hey man,
I tried to ride the
Train with an old
Ticket"
He turned the ticket
Over and over
In his hand
To accentuate this
Point and continued
"And i have 9 bucks
Could you spot me
For the rest?"

"I have no cash"
I lied
As most do
When confronted for
Money by a stranger

"You don't need cash
You can use cards on
The machines"
He said pointing
Towards the bank
Of awkwardly standing
Ticket kiosks
Our only companions
In the chilly night air

"Nah man, i'm good"
I said

His expression changed
Not to anger but
Disappointment
"Well, thanks anyway"

He walked off cursing
A broken trail of white
Breath twisting dizzyingly
Away from his head

Standing there I felt bad
That I hadn't helped him
He only needed 7 more dollars
And I had six crisp twenties
Folded neatly in my wallet
And two credit cards
Nowhere near maxed out

For some reason
I started to interpret myself
As part of the problem of mass
Apathy amongst men
In turn feeling slimy
Unnatural  

I made a point to lap the
Station multiple times
To find this man and give
Him more than he needed
Not to help him
But to prove to
Myself that I wasn't
A phlegmatic  
******

I caught him inside
With another young man
About my age
With a softer face
Giving him a sandwich
And a few crumpled bills

They traded a few words
And laughed
I returned to my
Perch on the platform
Alone in the
Freezing night air

Later the man came out
Smoking a black and mild
And waited next to me for the
Train

When we got in he only sat
A few seats from me
I saw him take the
Ticket he told me was old
And hand it to the
Attendant
Who punched it and moved
On

Later we made
Accidental eye
Contact down the
Aisle
He queued the same
Smile and turned away
From me

"****** Death, alright!"
Sunburned smile reclining
On plastic pool chairs

There is nothing
Quite as purifying
As the frustration
Of knowing
What is coming next

And having
No power
To stop it

It is purifying
Because the blood
Boils at such heat
That nothing can
Survive

Sterility through anger
Disinfection through rage
Cleansing through fury

Fists balled into
Ivory white
Wrecking *****
Teeth clenched
Spine rigid

A barbed tongue
Spits silent curses
Into the syrupy haze
Of a July afternoon

I saw a ******* the train
Sitting in front of me and she played
With her hair for a minute
Looking out the window
And then she looked at herself
In the windows reflection
She slowly moved her hand
Towards it and when the pinky
Of her hand and the reflections
Hand touched she pulled her hand
Away like she had never seen
A reflection let alone
Her own before.

I never realized
How many birds
There really are

They seem to melt
Into the landscape
As they hop
To and fro
In the manicured
Suburban shrubs
And pepper the sky
Floating in place
Against some unfelt
Wind current

While walking
I locked gazes with
A slate colored dove
And we stared
I don't know how
He felt about me
Or what he felt
About me

I thought he was
Elegant
Even though he was
The color of fresh tar
While it bakes
In the Pennsylvania sun
In some hazy culdesac
In the corner of some
Replaceable
Reproducible
Childhood

He hopped off his perch
A rusty sign post
That had been bifurcated
By some unknown
Bolt or hand

And skittered behind some
Sickly looking ferns
In a dirt patch of an
Unknown neighbors yard

A gang of Robins
Flittered over my head
Landing down the street
Passing a pinecone
Between them
Pecking and tearing at it

I looked behind
The sickly ferns
And found the
Unknown neighbors cat
Doing the same thing
To my slate colored dove

I shooed it away
It dropped the dove
Hastily
In the loose dirt
And retreated

I looked down at the dove
And it laid there
Its breast heaving
Silent
One eye cast into the dirt
The other looking up
Watching the same Robins
Fly back to where
They had come from


And the slate slowly
Turned sanguine
As its down became
Saturated with the
Run off from the
Puncture wounds

The cat sat off
A few yards away
Flicking its tail
Calico and smug

And I stood by
The dove as
The heaving slowly
Stopped
Ground to a
Halt really
And then the eyes
Weren't looking
At the sky or the dirt

I finally felt
That unseen
Wind
And continued
On my way

**** you Halloween
It's Gobstoppers and Sweet Tarts
For breakfast, I guess

Broken people
Broken lives
Cheated on husbands
Beaten down wives
Living in a fresh hell
Every day
Daughters are *****
And sons are gay
Broken people
Broken lives
Swallowing fire
Sleeping on knives
**** your ******* world view
The cancer lessens without you
Broken people
Broken lives
Leave the gap
The great divide
Let us all suffer on in peace
Wear your absence like a fleece
Keep us warm with the thought of death
Such a waste until your last breath

It's the same every time
Waking up in a panic
The hangover's dull
Gradual throbbing
The amplification of existence's malaise
Reducing my feet
To a slow shuffle

My girlfriend has been calling it the same way
For six years
"You'll get up and check your wallet and make sure you have your keys"
And I do
She's beautiful because she's right
She's also gorgeous
But continually right

I get up and slip my fingers into the
Many compartments of my wallet
Making sure I feel the greasy
Cold plastic of the credit cards

The three IDs
One to drive a car
One to carry a gun
One to count as a person

And the flood of relief I feel
When I finger these plastic cards
Is alarming
How my mind jumps from jovial
Drunken thoughts
To hard
Plastic ones
In the midst of sleep
At ungodly hours of the morning

My identity personified
In polyurethane rectangles

I get back into bed
And again
After confirming that all
The clasps that keep the mask
Snug to my face
Are still there

I embrace her warmth
Under the thin comforter
She drapes her leg across me
While I kiss her forehead
"You smell like liquor"
Before browning out again

I had a dream
Where I sat in a
Gloomy room
And ate candy
Every different
Kind of candy I
Had ever had and
Some I had never
Seen before

This dream seemed
To stretch for days
Like most do
That strange
Taffy like distortion
Of time in the brain

When I woke up
My tongue was
Sandpapery and
I had a long
Hair tied around
My uvula while
The other end
Hung over my
Bottom lip

The candy must
Have tasted so sweet
Because the hair was
One of hers

I woke up late this morning
It took me awhile to get out of bed
And when I did
I contortioned my body at odd angles
To squeeze all the sleep out of my bones

I looked out on the backyard as I peed
And saw two cardinals hopping around
Bright splotches of red in the overgrown grass
They stood facing each other chirping loudly
I couldn't tell for what until I saw
The female, brown and plain, standing by
On the banister of the deck
Watching the standoff

One of the red males fluttered up next to her
And she took off, not satisfied
The one still in the grass took off madly after her
The one on the banister galloped its length before taking off
Like a rolling lit firecracker
Its fuse too long

They both flew towards the house
Out of view
I scurried down stairs
Mildly overweight, hair sticking up at odd angles
Like a ball of broken glass
Thundering down the steps
The most ungraceful of all creation
Lumbering and over excited

When I got the back window
All three of the cardinals were in a wet clump
Of purple flowers that had opened themselves
To the scant sunlight of an overcast day
The female jumping and chirping excitedly
The two males weaving and bobbing in and out
Of the flowering bush, a pair of dueling sowing needles
Trying to knit the song of success

And then they saw me
My shirt an unnaturally bright electric blue
My face pressed stupidly to the glass
My grin unnatural and dreamy
As I watched this common display
That is still dazzling to me as I think about it
And they all flew off at once
To settle their matters elsewhere

Waiting at the train station
For my girl from new york
With my windows down
Sunroof open
My a/c has been on
The fritz for two years
Now, but you get
Used to it
Especially in a
Syrupy pennsylvania
August

A cherry colored pickup
Swings into the space in
Front of me and a middle aged
Guy hops out
And meets two others

They are speaking german
And cackling
The one is telling a joke
And dangles his hand
Off of his waste like it's
His ****
And they all laugh

For a moment
Every other sound
In the station is drowned
Out by their hard
Language and
Harder laughter

When you make a
Chili dog you never
Forget to slice the onion
Into translucent white
Slices and make sure
Your mustard is dotted
With brown flecks

Make sure you have a tall
Frosty beer the color of
October sunsets
Lay back in a chair
And kick your feet up
For me

When your song comes
On your headphones
Dance like a chimpanzee
Amongst Ikea furniture for me

Don't think of me
When the sky is stained
Pink orange and aqua
Think of something better
Something that is real
Something whole
That doesn't want what
Everyone else wants it
To want

When you stand next to
My coffin
Throw an orchid for me
Or whatever flower is
Cheapest because honestly
I don't know what you're
Throwing

Make sure the soil is
Heavy and wet
Make it clump over the
Cross I didn't want
On the top of my
Pine box

Make sure you think about
How roots and grass
Will grow through me
Eat me and grow
Without a thought

If nature ceased to
Persevere
Humanity would be
Absurd in its
Reckless building
Destroying and poisoning

When you look at my
Pine box think about
Repetition and death
Think about moments
Of brilliance and the years
That beat them back
Remember that hollowness
Is its own form of substance

Most importantly
Remember that a chili dog
Needs onions
And that one day
Your corpse
No matter where it lays
Will fertilize future life

And the circle eats its own tail
Its own tail
Its own tale

Surrender your meager twitching
To the echoing riff of the complete
Watch yourself dissolve
Into the void's cast shadow
Let your panic be snuffed
By the beating of bees wings
And the sorrowful violin
Of crickets legs
At dusk

There is a fire that has burned
Inside of me for all my life
Painful and brilliant
But as I lay here
I realize that after 30 years
The fire is starting to cool
And I am to become
Smoldering embers
And now,
I’m cold in bed

Life makes you feel like
Another dandelion
Stripped clean by the wind

My teeth getting cleaned
I choose to hold in a ****
Becoming a man

I'm hunched on our bed
Like a stone unintentionally collecting moss
You are away and your
Side of the bed grows cold and raised
The imprint that you left in my mattress
Is similar to the one that you scarred
On my heart

It is a skewed imprint of you
Like the frond of some beautiful lost flower
Pressed between granite palms
In a museum behind smudged glass

The dips and curves of all
Your perfect and imperfect features
Wrinkled and pressed
Into a *****
Used surface

Even though the ceiling fan was on
I was covered in sweat and so were you
Like full bottles of beer in the sun

I pressed into you and you
Conformed into my body
Without ever waking up

I got lost in the damp folds of
Your tee shirt
The ****** wrapper on
The night stand and
The bundle of sheets on the floor
By the foot of the bed

They put her in a
Curtained cubicle
Surrounded by
Beeping machines
And all types of
Wires and terminals
A trashcan and
A dripping faucet

When they rolled her in
They gave her
Morphine
Sodium chloride
And a pat on the head

"She's lucky"
The nurse said
As he lowered the gurney
"A lot of people have
No one show up"

And he left the room
Pulled the curtain closed
We were left with the
Tranquil beeping of
Faceless terminals
And the dripping faucet

Another nurse came in
With a clipboard
And started asking us
Questions
Apologizing for
The beeping
"It's like Chinese
Water torture"

Then she left
Pulled the curtain closed
And when the
Heart monitor
Started beeping
We pushed the
Silence button like
They showed us

We were left with
The sterile squeaking
Of the soles of sneakers
And hollow whispers
In the hallway
And the dripping faucet

A slow day at work
If only these walls could talk
Sighs like falling snow

They'll have no carcass
Not when our collective trash
Is up for picking