golden opportunity

You came out of the womb

Jumproping

With the umbilical cord.

Born of endless night

Into a Creation scene

With opened doors and beloved metrics.

The nurse was scalded, uglified

By the blistering moisture

Flying off your arms and legs.

Already

The grisly chords began to chime.

This taste,

Assuming it’s of death,

Only made the

Afterlife

Seem like a Golden Opportunity.

You skittered through

Two and a half

Decades;

Leaving strained smiles

On those who didn’t

Know you well enough

And lacerations on the hearts

Of those who did.

There are no pictures of us together

Now, when every fingernail bite is an

Immaculate Conception

We exist only in memories.

shooting the elephants

I have been searching for a home to shelter my friend elegance.

In doing so I have learned that fidelity is not bravery;

You have to savor in order to succeed,

Not blindly implore the notion for a regurgitated piece of a slaughtered ego.

If it is on the floor, leave it there.

I have been yearning for a loose floorboard to use as a catapult.

A new age alarm, breaking up the moments to judge, lifted and launched above lip stings.

If it is on the floor, leave it there.

I want to box cut to the foxtrot, but there’s only emptiness in contribution.

None of my feelings or resentments have ever changed, they’ve just been replaced by new feelings and resentments.

In a cockeyed assembly line, the former hang lowly in my gullet.

Here at the party, I will try to relax now.

Bending the rules like a virginal shoelace—

poking in holes I just don’t belong in. A deep convalescent blue

is adjacent to my memories. All this time, I could’ve been with you

shooting the elephants. I am still here, sitting at the open window of

disillusionment.

I don’t blame you, or me, or the rifle; someone had to go down

and plummet into one of our bombastic essences.

ageisms

The changes of the season are feverish.

Just after the stroke

of midnight

the murk surfaces. A kinship, once

agleam, its innocence is losing luster

faster than the accumulation of ageisms in the dark.

It was only a matter of time.

Standing in the shower

praying like I did before I knew better

that I am knocked unconscious

by the flimsy, peeling bar horizontally torturing me.

Paying the empty to beguile themselves

with another listless tale of useless mongrels.

Coating the floor with an invisible sheath, I want to watch your

gleeful trips and tumbles

each time you come over and take a piss.

Parkway exits, cheapened leather, tired hands

empty but full of disdain.

The dog shit smell of paralysis and

nothing for dessert except rotten fruit and melted candle wax.

no concern for the damned

there is no concern

for the damned,

because we’re already vested

inside playgrounds

of our own design.

left to our own devices;

playing hopscotch on

the shadows of our idolatry,

smoking cigarettes

in desiccated horizons—

the ants and elephants march!

walking loudly

(to hear their own footsteps)

one destroys the late-night crumbs

swept from shattered jaws

while the other carries what’s left

on his back

because someone has to clean up

after the handicapped bottoms

give out and

their remaining limbs

are too busy

swinging from bar to bar,

ready to drop into the

coastline of their

own creation.

the long

I don’t have you, but

I do have the notion

of a night sky, shared.

I can remember the

sounds of your exhalations

so easily, they drown

out the sheepish bleating

of those not worth

mentioning. these days

I am whirl-winded amongst

self-indulgent explosions of

irrigated, oozing salivations.

suck it back up I tell them,

I am just as bad as you.

take me to the house

in the woods, every inch

covered in coniferous

fashion. I want to lock

myself inside the attic,

my heart warbling

between frequencies of

emotional consciousness

on opposing ends

of the same avenue.

happy birthday to you

happy birthday to you.

I hope that you’re not

on a rickety boat

amidst a violent storm

but rather,

canoodled around

a campfire

contesting embers.

Mary is there, and

so is Jane—

the one you need to

sing songs to and embrace

because her stories

aren’t well written

and she needs your

arpeggios

to sleep at night.

this isn’t, exactly,

what you’d call love;

it’s more of a travesty

in the realm

of inconvenience.

happy birthday to you,

even though

you’re about to drown

(or so I’ve heard)

thanks to that

heavy engagement ring

lounging, idly

alongside the answers

to my inquisitions

and the morning

call of skylarks

in your tattered pocket.

there’s no question

of whether

or not you’ll sink

straight to the

bottom,

facing fear

for all of us

in caves of artificial light.

those that are

familiar,

usually

call them dreams.

the welcoming