Torment at 50

Nick has a corrupted short-term memory
he'll ask you the same questions
over and over, his long term memory isn't that bad,
he kept talking to me about when we worked
at the Inquirer in the mail room (this was years ago)
we talked about it maybe 15 times,
my heart broke each time I shook his hand,
looked into his eyes, answered the same questions again,

the depression medicine was doing its job alright,
we toasted to his father (a shot of house whiskey together)
under my breath I made a dedication to him,
and his lost soul, fevered mind, unrealized dreams,
un-tethered consciousness,

I thought about it the entire night,
I think about it now with the rain pounding
in the night beyond my window, how horrible it would
be to realize how lost
and helpless we are and
how free he is from time

Coffee Shop

A religious coffee shop
inside an old bank and the owner's
making small talk with me about
the weather and he pours me
skim milk but forgets the sugar,
Crossroads cafe and I heard the
cake is very good from the only
other guy there, and they didn't even
bother to remodel for the cause
but just shoved the bendy straw in,

women, girls, overcast skies, overheating cars,
where do I rest my head
in the spring that's smelling like rain?

I decided not to go back inside
when I realized what had happened
and drove home for the sugar

In the spring

last night I knocked a bottle off the balcony
and it fell two stories and shattered in the
darkness of the alleyway below and I forgot I did it
and even threw two other cans off the building next door
after that Matt wanted to show me his poems but I got lost
and someone was cutting Joe Rossi's hair, there's pieces of
it everywhere, I kicked a book down the stairs and
Tommy pulled me across the floor, in the morning I woke up
shuddering and blearily walked outside to the balcony
drinking a glass of water and looked over the edge

in the universe down there where it was pleasant and sunny
the bottle was sitting unbroken on its side,
I laughed to myself, turned to call Joe but stopped
and instead leaned over and spit through the heavens
down onto the cool gray earth underneath

there wasn't even a sound.

Just a few seconds ago...

I shit
the coffee shit
it was done in a few seconds
I read Bukowski
the poem was long "Column"
I sat and finished it
I was happy

Ya see what I have to write about

He didn't take any shit
and he told Vitaly right off he
was ready to slap someone
to keep them in line, the blonde haired
punk walking with him nodded to the
story, shifted his long-board, "Yeah, he slapped my brother
tonight, this guys great," He was fumbling
down the sidewalk throwing rights into the air
long-haired with a baseball cap and the image of
Rob Zombie somewhere in his late 30s,
Steve was making cut motions at his neck
mouthing, "let's get the fuck outta here," we were
going to get mugged or killed or whatever
but we kept on in the gloom of the West Chester night,
it feeling like summer with no street lights and the occasional
blazing headlights of a lonely car and I kept up with the blonde
cutting jokes when Rob uttered some drunken wisdom,
his house was close, said he'd been just in from California
and was staying in a room at $200 flat with a shared
bathroom we'd have to be quiet to use, he was gonna
play his guitar (which the blonde kid assured he was great
tho told us they'd just met) and had a "huge blunt,"
that I wasn't interested in smoking, just wanted to see
where this whole thing was going, so when
we got to the house he stopped and made sure
everybody was silent, said he knew all the
acronyms, Steve catching my eye going "whatever
the fuck that means,"
he opened the door to husband and wife sitting
Monday night on the couch watching the tv box,
"What the fuck are you doing in my house?" "huh,
I live here," "This is my fucking house! Get the fuck out!"
he stepped pleadingly into entrance way
door in the fight for wandering lost minds and Steve was
halfway up the street already, Vitaly and me backing down the
front steps and laughing our asses off catching up, the blonde kid called us back
and the last we saw of those idiots in the heavy night three blocks back
was their waving helpless god-damned arms

Crack The Spine: Crack the Spine - Issue Twenty

Crack The Spine: Crack the Spine - Issue Twenty check it, I got two poems in it, if you wanna leave a comment it'll help me get into the print addition

Cherry Blossom Festival

outside the soft gray sky watched me mournfully,
on page 419--which I turned to filled with a haunting feeling of sorrow,
somehow knowing there would be unsolvable crimes soon,
a loss both tragic and unstoppable--a single petal from a cherry blossom
clung to unread words, nearly transparent with hope, I guessed,
it was like love pink and innocent and bitter before it could be explained,
or felt on whispering spring winds, I folded my bookmark
absently, tossed the ideas, the foreshadow, the vanity into the ether,
it was all meaningless, just a track on loop, a song on repeat
and if you don't get it, what I'm getting at, then you've never read it
or felt it or denied it, you've never found a helpless pink lifeless thing
under overcast skies

A wonderful world and a burning airship

I'd be dreary on canned heat in
the world that used to pound against
our temple doors, the images screened
on our shaved ugly heads like polished
heretic television screens beaming,
screaming if only we'd admit it's

over over over over
over life over eternity over
paranoia over all ended
over thankfully god awfully over--

the world wavering
like a top without substance,
filled joyously, hard won cold horror
brilliance,

I'd scrape my hands through the weeds
and dry dirt and pebbles and dust
shoving it repeatedly down my throat
growing hoarse feeling my thoughts ebb
thinking ah ah ah--eh--

a wonderful job tonight, a wonderful job
on and on repeated

Throwing insults at the wall

fuck the staring screen
burrow at my soul why don't you
writing ground to a halt, breathing
oxygen-like-desperation too close to
depression and meaningless pounding
the keys kack kick kack ti--  poems
are an escape from responsibility to the
words I've missed putting down (afraid
to put down) for really I fear they aren't in my soul,
heart, blank space stuffed with beer and memory
and dying and age and fetid fuck angels gawd
I'm pulling myself up each day later and later
I won't see the sun soon, waking at night
drowning at night, sleeping at night,
a muck ah man god beast whatever
stop listing oh iris-ed vomiting corpse, stop
listening for good so I can let it all go

Typewriter

I have a typewriter at my feet
Remington 666
no ribbon
red, black, white
8.33 per roll
3 for 25 ain't bad
on websites dealing in antiquity
in something real, in ink
and paper and feeling
still

the wind howls at my window pane
a lost hurt surprisingly sad
gesture,

a careless motion toward the door
to no one
there's nobody here,
I'm waving at my own sunken eyes
I haven't seen

the same eyes I'm trying to forget

Science Fiction Pity

to write to write O terrible blue sky droops indifferent,
languidly above me sleeping head, sleeping body not yet
ready to move, a silly dream tangled and hanging in the
idiot garden of my thoughts, I'm not ready to give it up;
tho it's dead for sure, forever, but only because there's something
to say amounting to a curse, like veiny needles hitched into my arms
spilling the shit junk killer that consumes almost every one, every one
of us, pity, pity fools, what's this relationship about? Going home to
finish, no one needs to stay, the machines would run themselves, or
we could imagine and they would, only the roads would crumble like
they have already, I saw it, the pulsing globe out there beyond stars
together, moaning mournfully, my gods are fools laughing in the gold
morning crumbling cake light that hides the void,
lifting our heads aloft, to the port off the peer, clanging bells of the inevitable finish,
crying atrophy! Be me! Aim here! I'm telling the story of a fevered mind to be ignored
completely for our own good

Cheesesteaks

Car was lost under green, red,
white lights outside twelve
steps down in the Italian market of
somewhere last night, early spring
wind chilled my sweat drenched
shirt, four beers down and forgetful
ghost town street with nothing to sell
but the promise of tomorrow, an endless
tomorrow of the market gawking back at me in the
ghastly mirrors of the night, God's night
on earth and I touched shattered streets
looking for a foothold in the mad swill,
but I was late,
I was too tired

there's an eternity of processed cheese
fallen on the curb

Atlantic City beat

AC is bleak in the night
Phantoms lined up along the shore
fed by highways blowing in from the west
on this cold March wind, we scream out
into the heaving sky that blankets the
Atlantic ocean in inky darkness,

we run across white sand,
it burns our feet like summer in
the chill, we wash our feet in the ocean,
advertisements as background noise,
the hellish casino lights, Steve calls us back
waits back on the shore, it's time to head home
the natty bo is running out, there's no food,
or money, there's no hope

we left that alone inside the Wawa outside town

Portrait of Chinatown this time

Ah, there was no English
but rushing and orange hues
coloring the pink floors and
red cushion covered seats, I
gave a 25% tip to the vests belching
in my pseudo-dream state, I'd forgotten
my notebook so I felt naked in some
foreign country, there was a stark plane,
depths dropped forever in cold blue
wonder, tho I reeled myself back
to the front counter and dropped four
dollars, but my brain hit the cellulose
splat and the man, we both stared a while,
impaled its gelatin ridges on a small golden spear,
and the ducks quaked in unison as
I hit the floor moaning like the afternooon

Moon poems

At night dreaming,

my head folds
like heavy shit,
blurs the keyboard
revolving around the lost moon
with lights out and only
the glow of far away windows
bringing me down