May the winds keep you warm
and your dust always win.
The certainty of time
that justice terrorized.
Counting all those stars,
you won’t go very far.
A hundred million years?
A hundred million more.

I was once a child
and now I’m just a man;
Two hundred pounds of dust;
To the victor goes the wind;
Like that train on the tracks
cutting through the dark.
While tall trees stand still,
the owl hunts the rat.

And I lay very flat
in my bed like that.
A hundred million years?
A hundred million more.

Bactine on cotton balls;
pink beside the sink.
She lays perfect
as a specimen;
Wings pinned.
Beautiful wings.

They just sat out
there and there; On top
of the dining room table
and tucked within drawers.
Planted in elegant crystal,
beside plastic
flower arrangements.
Between old china
and the silver silverware;
An entire room goes
unused.

Driven by fears,
my mother never lit one.
And my father—
it never occurred
that lighting a candle
was something
he should have done.

Fresh wicks; All of them.
Wax, string, and dust.
Generations old— but fresh
and still
with limitless potential
to shine light in the places
where candles never burned.

After they pass,
I’m going to light those wicks
all at once
and sit there in that room
until the house of my home
is filled only
by ash and
by dark.

Brown dishwater and
pink soap bubbles.
Silver plates of meat.
It all laid out there,
sparkling that night
like a deadpan stare
of a poker player,
holding King and
praying for ace.
All of heaven;
Unreal, yet
unyielding.

These games they play—
It all seemed so foolish
for all
too long? “Love,”
she told me; Love,
as she gently knelt
her smile over my face,
smothering me sweetly
inside her folds
as though I were
dying in a dream;
My cup runneth over.
“Love,” she said.
And that made it all
seem alright.

All of heaven; Unreal, yet
they make me want
to believe;
These Christian girls;
These petals of chance;
These perfumed hands;
They all make me want
what I’ve known too long
to be unreal; yet unyielding—
until the dealer dealt down
to the bottom of the deck.

“I call,” she said.

“Show it to me.”

And she laid down
the ace
I’d waited for—
too long.

“Too long,” she said.

Or I suppose
you’ve decided
I am far too quiet
and you require
a little more than I offer;
Or I’m just too loud lately?
I don’t know.

I don’t know. And thus,
this arrives with no reason
to apologize; You or I.

It’s okay. I don’t mind. Really.
This; These things; They happen.
But what rips me
are the people who part ways
without so much as a word.
No transition. No explanation.
No reason. No goodbye.
They just go. They just exit.

Stage-left friends.
Sometimes more.
Once upon a time, my sister.
They all go.
They all leave. Still alive
with viable words in mouth—
but they do not speak them to me.
These people drift as though victims
to some cosmic breeze; Ridiculous.

And so, I part with my ego now
and I surrender to you this—
that it was very much nice
seeing you again—
to know you again
and learn you’ve done well.
I wish you the best
and should we ever cross paths again, please
do not treat me as though we are strangers.
For at one time or another,
we were friends— in this life;
Not just on Facebook
by the click of a button.
But Friends; Comrades; Teammates;
We were, in our youth, something which our future escapes.

A red ceramic vessel
splinters under clear black mirror light.
Wet soil spills. Branches of roots
spring fresh
and new from the skeletal walls
we were duped. And new
bones form—
and we break those. We break
from our habit; We break
from our tradition; We break
from the confines of what we learned
and repeated in a colorful orgy
of tying shoelaces and writing
uppercase dubba-u’s; Bodies leaning forward,
as though reaching toward impossibility;
to be joined with a lowercase q or cue.

We, the human beast; We were not born
to remain plastic. To let ourselves just be
another body of circumstance.
We, unlike our ancestors, we’re not
born to die, but to live— for we do live,
now. And that is all we can ever be— is
now. Now, running circles
through the emotional, physical, mental,
and sexual habits of our enduring frustration;
Trapped; Trapped like beautiful white custard
beneath the rigid ceiling of crème brulee,
burning a blue flame brightly; eternally;
We are waiting for that inglorious spoon
to crackle the claustrophobia. We wait
for that outside intervention.
We wait for some silver Savior.
Waiting to be consumed by Him;
In one long line of human beasts,
leaving behind a trail of confessions.

Who put this soul
inside of my body?
Why aren’t I an ant?
Why do I matter?
Why don’t the ants
matter?
Surely, if they did,
I, a small boy, could
not conquer them
so easily as this.

He plants another loogey;
This one loaded with snot.
He pokes his finger into the center;
The little black mound, wet,
like an anal sphincter.
He pushes on,
past the entrance
to the underground.

Ants come crawling out,
like an orphan parade,
up his freckled arm.
The small boy shakes them off,
stomping his feet, as though
following some perverse
dance-step.
Left. Right. Then right again.

The small boy knows
he is alone out there.
But inside his skull,
he will watch himself
for years to come—
contemplating death.
He feels nothing for the ants.
For years to come—
he feels nothing for the ants.
They would not have grown up
to cure cancer, he decides.
They would not have become
famous musicians.
The ants, he decides,
were born to die.