Fallow

Wait until the day says it’s closing, and public is put away.
Write by the light of a pay phone your list of “I meant to
say.” Like, “Winter comes too soon,” or, “Radiators hum
out of tune.” Out under the Disraeli, with rusty train
track ties, we’ll carve new streets and sidewalks, a city
for small lives, and say that we’ll stay for one more year.
Wait near the end of September. Wait for some stars
to show. Try so hard not to remember what all empty
playgrounds know: that sympathy is cruel. Reluctant jester
or simpering fool. But six feet off the highway, our bare
legs stung with wheat, we’ll dig a hole and bury all we
could not defeat, and say that we’ll stay for one more year.
Bend to tie a shoelace, or bend against your fear, and say
that you’ll stay for one more year.

Victory

The loss is always with you when you close
whatever you’ve left open: window, door,
your eyes. The fear that everybody knows

there’s something not quite right about you, grows
from murmuring suspicion to a roar.
The loss is always with you. When you close

your fists in jacket pockets, winter shows…
too obvious to mention. Right before
your eyes—the fear that everybody knows

like their own phone number. Time will not pose
the question in some easy either/or—
the loss is always. With you, when you close

the envelope on hope, the loss you chose
will comfort somehow. Understand. Restore.
You eye the fear. That everybody knows

the full retail price that’s paid when you expose
your plain despair won’t matter anymore.
The loss is always with you when you close
your eyes. The fear that everybody knows.

Lament

Oh when will I get tired of smoking dope
and watching movies I’ve already seen,
exploring one more non-existent trope
in something four hours long by David Lean?
And will I ever really understand
the parts of speech (or is it “speach?” It’s not.
I went and looked it up). I guess I’d planned
by this point to be wiser, or a lot
more certain of my own uncertainties
(I can’t believe I had to look up “speech!”),
to know at least the number of degrees
I am from somewhere I could try to reach
you.

Pine

The greens fool around with the blues,
strangers coughing off their clothes
in a bathroom with a broken lock
and a bulb that flickers
desperately steady tongues of light.
Right there. That’s right.
It will do that for another forty years or more,
pulse sap, shiver,
smell of used car.

Taps Reversed

All the unpaid bills, wrestling interest rates, while past-due
dates wait with their boutonnieres, and the slumping
bike, strangled with a lock that we forgot the combination
to. The old house drinks everything we hide, and hums
sad songs that keep us up all night. With the doorknobs
loose and the pipes that burst. With the fuses blown and
the taps reversed.

The calendar requests a meeting to discuss the time we
waste, when would be good for you? And the sidewalk
cracks spell the way back home in one uninterrupted
palindrome. The old house keeps all of our receipts in
envelopes secured with rubber bands. Oh the blinking
snow, and the dark dispersed with a smeary moon.
With our taps reversed.

Selected from Lyrics and Poems, available February.