from blow

"so in the end was it worth it, jesus christ how irreparably changed my life has become, it’s always the last day of summer and i’ve been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. i’ll grant you i’ve had more than my fair share of buoyant moments. life passes most people by while they’re making grand plans for it. throughout my lifetime i’ve left pieces of my heart here and there and now there’s almost not enough to stay alive but i force a smile knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent, there are no more white horses, or pretty ladies at my door."

sony atrium in manhattan, for ryan

the conversations we hear,
the ones we make,
the personalities we take in,
the identities we put on,
they sit in atriums around circular stainless tables
and make us spin.

if our eyes displayed motives like holographic baseball cards
displaying the connection of ball and bat plus reaction
i doubt we'd walk away unaffected.

keys jingle beats to the beat of my redemption
as i walk from who i was an often innocent convict
and i confess my time was often wasted as a derelict.
so batten down the hatches boys this ship is going down,
check my pockets once you check my pulse
and change it in town for train tickets.

soap and sponges

she is beautiful
and i am myself
so i flit and bumble like a dragonfly does
at the end of the day, when the words are all said
and the water looks black and calm
like the edge of the world
in columbus’ restless daydream
wishing her to walk along beneath the stars

when plans are only cities and streets
i walk about in my size 10 feet
in tattered borrowed shoes
and make endless scattered paths (like ficus roots)
beneath the ground
of my hometown

when thunder clouds appear
in the north and western sky
i pack my tools away
call it a day
and make the drive
back to where i ate my breakfast
where i had my latest sleep
and think about tomorrow
making plans that are all pending
rainless skies

my life is all but soap and sponges
i hope my brother knows how much i love him
in that distant land with trees
and 95 too far to reach
to make a swift strut
into my neck of the woods

the day on the wharf

The day on the wharf, that day I’ll not soon forget. I’ll not soon forget the day on the wharf and all of its simple beauty. Behind retrospect’s veil I can hardly see that moment at the intersection and our inability to assign a captain or cohesively decide on a direction for that matter. I only recall sunlight, sangria, the Hudson, the wharf, the vending counter, and a third party eating cupcakes at the table beside ours and eventually them giving one to Patrick. Moving toward the vending counter where I saw people buying buckets with fruit around the edge and scattered throughout the contents. Candice told me it was sangria and asked if I’d ever had it. There was a moment when I thought to myself, “that’s too much to spend on a pitcher I don’t care how good she says sangria is,” and I nearly turned back, nearly settled for a bucket of Heinekens…nearly. And something now tells me that all that day hinged, and had we not sangria our memories of that day would have slid quickly into that violent abyss, the one with the rotting sign posted a step outside of its descending northern wall, the sign reads- days forgotten (written in blood-colored ink).

It was grace that said “carpe fucking-diem”- shell out thirty dollars for sangria. It, grace, alone knew I’d need that taste to store that memory deep and long enough for a morning like today when I’d wake up fearing that hope is lost, like Father wouldn't take me back smelling like pig-shit and slop.

Pat and I sat back and threw questions like frisbees with limp wrists.
“How’s D.C.?” I’d asked.
“It’s good, how’s Florida?” he’d asked in return.
We obviously didn’t remember to hold them frisbees level and flick, we used too much arm, we tried to muscle it the way kids do when they’re just learning how to throw. And I wonder why even at twenty-five it felt like the right thing to do; like quality or longevity depended on anything but a gentle, level, motion of the wrist to the right, the release of a disk flatly held.

Thankfully our temporary brooklyn resident friends remembered what makes the earth stay in orbit. They knew to enfold one another, to be unrestrained about living well amidst the pain of prodigality. And we all walked on, down the wharf until pat and I took our loving friend's cues about sharing honestly, revealing what lay shivering beneath the surfaces of our frightened minds, letting all of it get bathed and slain in a blood-red sunset.

in these shoes

In these shoes
I gotta walk on stars to keep them looking bright
and one time I kicked and I shattered the moon,
it became those trillion white specs in blacktop
and now when the sun bends ahead of the earth's curve
It instead reflects upward
and illuminates the dark parts of my night

I'm glad you allowed my fingers to be the broom
that sweeps the hair from your eyes
what I didn't know was that you'd not need my sweeping
until some other froze you paralyzed
leaving your face with water-logged eyes
what you didn't know
was that my bristles stick together at times
and far from pleasant are the feelings I don't share
when I see your gaze stare… real close
but just to tantalize… my hopes… of sweeping round the clock
when winters freeze,
and summer's heat,
and fall leaves
beneath your toes weave
a carpet
but you only permit me to be the rake
when I'm willing to come embrace
whatever tapestry you make
and shake the dust (I borrowed that one)

I define forgiveness as hands full of glass shards
Let to fall
while time moves backward at a redemptive pace
to the tune of amazing
And then back forward to the beat of newness
To the tune of grace
Realizing it had been playing all the while
and the glass doesn't fall it fireflies
overtop the black desert of Kuwait's nights
until oil-wells get poked into the earth's crust like light-brights
like a trillion candelabra dropped to the floor
from the ceiling of one of God's corridors
falling into a bursting oil fire from
oil rigs where the shards disintegrate
into whatever it is we become

and these shoes
ah man I'm going to keep walking in these shoes