This is the first line of a novel

I've told so many lies in
my life, I'm not sure how this
should go,

I remember Hoffman park
with its old green
bridge that seemed taller
than anything I could think of,
it was worlds away and I never
dreamed anyone could reach
its tracks or know where in
some magically dark world it
traveled,

There were those large cement tunnel
pieces outside the picnic gazebo
strewn about and like Franklin's snake
scattered but whole,

There was something of another
time about them, something old, like the gods of
our forgotten imaginings dropped them there
to wait for us and I could stand inside
without touching my head,
they were so incredibly big! I remember my
Father would chase me, how he could
block each end no matter which
I tried and he would grab me
and yank me out,
I could never get away

until I found out where the tracks led
and I rode them everyday to
gray, worrisome destinations
and guess what, they painted those
pipes green now,
they're so small and sad
sitting solemnly amid the cigarette butts
and broken glass of 20 years,

I looked the park up on
a map yesterday, it was a green square
and there were no pipes and
no children,

tho I still think of it sometimes
in the loneliness of night
and I wonder if maybe my father does too

untitled

O! fall from brick-fired sky
and soak the earth,

I've waited with sleeves rolled
all day for relief, and
tonight barefoot, I watched pure
earth and darkness in
lingering humid solidity,

I felt it bite at my arms and rest there,
a heavy contraption plummeting steadily,
as one form, as an image obscured by metal and concrete,

from above,
the rain
and below,
the rain--

O! Drowned America,
wandering unaware,
virtuous, plain, penitential, Ah--

I watched the world flushed
away before the night,

I followed it swiftly.

IN dreams i'm MAD, have VISIONS

Once I wrote it all out, tho
you won't believe me,
it was splattered on my floor
in rich, vibrant colors and non-colors,
non-existent breaths and streaks of sky,
I stepped around the letters
each morning when I awoke
from heavy sleeps with hair
tangled about my sweaty face,
everything was there, all we wished to say,
it was perfect, beautiful, a world unto itself,
the etching, the care, each curve and straight line
of it a truth much like death unavoidable, each fucking
lettered space unbelievably serene, I'll tell you
I kept each thought in pristine condition,
never dropped a sandwich crumb,
and it was hard, and it weighed on me
until I forgot
and I scuffed it, until I hated those old gashes and
lovely curls, that truth I'd seen enough of,
I spit on it this morning, in the cool
light with the toilet running,
I wrote your name on the walls.

There's too much paper left

three months since I finished
the last draft of that novel, that
first novel, and I can't really get
anything else going at all,
long, tremulous hours of writing
and deleting--
all I've managed...

a few measly pages
a few hundred words

I fear I may not have
enough blood left inside me
to stain a page

Whit haiku to carry in your pockets

Sleeping cat
open your eyes
see the gray rugged morning

Where were you kitten?
six years ago lost
when mother left you alone

There's no food
you check anyway
licking the empty bowl

my finger struck your nails
blood rose to surface
you were afraid but smiled

without a clock
you mewed for morning
until I rolled from bed

on the table sprawled
we watch the streets
with different memories

Scar down your nose
a white furry schism
between sad orange eyes

rumble of cars on street
an old obstacle ignored
your upturned sleeping belly

in your thick coat
I see the sad alleyways
rainy nights of the past

Notes

A photograph of me throwing a couch cushion.

Jamie on the floor, a rolling, uneasiness in his eyes. He smirks, hesitates, glances at the floor, smirks again, drunkenly teetering.

Tommy is an elemental, a conjurer of this whole deal. A giant tossing glory like it was a thing you could grab and crush or vomit out of you at will. He is a breaker of walls.

Steve is in his glory digging it all, engrossed, grinning, gunning for the girl, or her clothes. He looks at me with wide eyes bearing his teeth, his soul. I love it.

I'm a ghoul exiting that plastic image carrying a stick torn from an alley and a tree.

Vitaly is everywhere, nowhere, appearing, disappearing, nodding. He gently rests his thoughts on the hardwood floors. He has a god out there. He dodges it.

Eternity dodges too.

Joe's on the couch, somber, assuming this is how it's all supposed to go, trying to disapprove. He can't though. He's had a beer. His arm is around the girl covering her face. Forget about her.

There is time. I've counted it and kicked it off the curbs,

I've squandered it on that Hurricane.

I dare you to

Try to act somewhat
surprised or happy even
when you escape that building
with its fucking marble water fountains
and labyrinthine hallways that
lead you in circles for an hour
around the same 10 rooms
that remind you of your old "new"
high school, the one that'd make
Bentham jealous and Foucault shit.

Try to make it out of
there with your soul
intact.

I swear.

A song of leaves and crying

Whit:

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p[;'['

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These are the things my cat types to me while I'm away

Promise Bop

That guitar would be
meaningless without
her voice,

I write that down
checking behind my back,
see, I prefer to write in secret

and I'll hide
that note in my pockets
forever, or

until it crumples into obscurity
on the next laundry day

because it isn't supposed to rain
for the next few weeks

Limp

The ladies in the cafeteria
jabber on in Japanese eating with
chopsticks and the hallways are filled
with languages I can't even discern
there's so many speakers and voices
and all of them are helping to rape
some country that they're probably from
or maybe they've reserved their witless wrath
for some peasant or pilgrim or refugee
they'll never glimpse but to pity them
on National Geographic pornography
and they're all uncle toms
or hypocrites or bleeders and probably
accountants too
fucking everything up.

Adoption

his blood, bright red and new,
dripped onto the soft
lambs wool bed leaving
stains like miniature brush strokes,

from his trembling eye,
I saw the wound, a sad gash
on the pupil unnoticed,
he lay still, unmovable, stoic,
content in that silent pain,

I called a women walking by,
told her about the injury, the blood,
the urgency, she thanked me
and ran to help,

I watched her for
as long as I could, then headed
for the exit
to buy cat food and litter.

Celebrate

Under the crystal blue sky
with a chair back
as loin cloth I take my
leap off the curb and into
rush hour traffic, the
cops are gone, tired of
wasting their fleeting hours
sitting at the corner
of Broad and Ritner,
I'm running to the opposite
side with a hockey stick in
hand, I'm conjuring the ghosts
of the past, the little time I've got left.

Trying, typing, trying

Couldn't find a way out today
or a reason to write
anything worth noting or
worthwhile, I just watched the sunrise
and slept and read in the afternoon
heat and then the sun set slowly
over pink hued Philadelphia
coating my room in thick soupy
darkness,

Whit ignored it all
except for the shade on
the porch and the food in
his bowl,

he sleeps soundly at my feet
retracing his steps,
ready to take them again
tomorrow
and I'll be there
trying to do the same.

What's piling up in our city sewers?

I was standing in
the bathroom the other day
watching the wall on the other
side of the window
daydreaming,

recalling the faces and memories
of the past, drifting in and out of
experiences,

tho I can't for the life of me
remember now if they
were happy or sad, I smiled tho,
several times,

and I know that I wanted
to write about them
and made mental notes

the poster on the bathroom wall
melted like burning wax,
it was the summer heat and sweat
gliding to congeal on the floor,

I washed my hands and face in the sink,

and burdened with those thoughts I
carried them to my room
like rolled maps and old tomes
tucked tightly between my arms,
pieces seeping, dripping out onto the floor
tumbling down the stairs,

I tried to save as much as I could,
as they splattered the hardwood
and leaked through the boards,

I listened as they hit the living room floor
the rugs, the conquistador,
I heard them wash up
against the front door like unstoppable
tides, sat at my desk and imagined them
coating the sidewalk, rushing for the sewer
to vanish forever in the mud and gunk
beneath the brown streets,

holding my breath
until the sound abated, I remained
still in my seat, frozen, delirious,
my daydreams flushed and gone
in the darkness of the city two
stories down,

finally after the last sweet memory
had been sucked into the void below,
I  pulled the string hanging from my ceiling fan,
cutting the lights, and threw myself onto the bed
to watch the invisible specks of dust
collecting in the corners of my eyes
until I could sleep,

time careened imperceptibly forward,
hung like twisted vines from gray clouds
I remembered seeing on another night long ago,
a night without stars or moons or sound,

On the afternoon of the next day
I wrote this poem.

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