i'm gone

hey man, how's things?
not great. but better. i don't know. it's weird.
what's weird? what did you dream about this time?
well, i was in my room.
this room?
back home.
home. whoa.
yeah. i was in my room. trying to read a book. but i couldn't
focus. there was so much noise, like people yelling,
outside my door. but i wasn't there.
who was yelling?
people. outside my door. i think we were at a wake. but
there was someone there who shouldn't have been. like
sand in the outer layer of my brain. i couldn't
focus. i was trying to read.
yeah? and then?
then the yelling stopped kinda, it got replaced
with this big rushing noise like we were falling
down into a mineshaft. like a grand piano
dropped from the top floor. there was someone
in the next room calling the police.
so what did you do then?
i opened the door and wandered out of the room
in my t-shirt and superman pajamas. there was no one there.
and then?
i flew away.

clinical

a glimpse of ancient soured skin beneath
a top button undone.
flesh jutting, hanging, making shapes
i've seen on bakery shelves.
spots cut through with furrowed
streaks like modern art.
youth crawls but age slides like
jellyfish in the bottom of a pail.
and me? don't worry.
me, i'm clinical.

i went to a thrice concert last night

my hair hangs off my head in ribbons
my arms vibrate
constrained in steel mesh that i rage to rip down
rallying cries shoot me up and seal over
the cracks in the small of my back
my lungs will not be lanced
they fill and fill but not fast enough
as if someone was stomping my chest in
so they empty in this rallying cry
and our fists pierce the air like soundwaves

IN SUM: next time dustin kensrue comes up and shreds three feet from your face, i dare you not to go ballistic.

i have a family history of:

stolen typewriters
falling in with the wrong crowd
alcoholic fathers with mangled ears
alcoholic fathers who love their kids to death
and sleep next to denial (her name is joy)
politicking
chauvinism
"i'm just saying."

anyone want to tell me how i seem to have ended up the most well-balanced one here?

Narrow Rooms

(this is an imitation of Mary Jo Salter. I was given the idea by her poem "Goodbye, Train")

I'm standing in a narrow room
packed with adolescents or college-age
kids, arms-crossed, T-shirt-wearing,

staring at the stage like animals
restrained. But when the band comes on
there are no leashes or cages left.

There are open-mouthed snarls, hackles raised,
but not at each other. We are all angry
at the same thing. We all have our reasons.

The narrow room turns into a river overrun
by frothy, heaving rapids.
The kids who get caught up collide

and push off again, hands on on backs
or shoulderblades. Some of them are carried
to the front of the room and collect there,

a small, frantic mass that steadily loses
its constituents to the current. But more arrive,
flung over top in absurd and reckless flight,

held aloft and then borne groundward.
This is not the time to hunker down.
This is the time to stick out my neck

for someone else's knees to clamber on.
(I'll support them on my shoulders.)
I will be one of them. The singer comes down

from the stage. He, too, is caught up.
This is the point. The bars and barriers
are washed away. We are all bruised

from collisions with hands and elbows.
We are all sweatier than we've ever been.
We will all lose our voices from yelling so loud.

I think about how lucky I am to be eighteen,
angry and battered by rapids, instead of silenced
and subject to the gentle predictability of the tides.

to my friends

1.
sometimes i forget you don't like hearing the new slang
and sometimes paint doesn't come out of the walls.
so when you point your finger at me and say "bang"
i'll twist and grab my heart and i'll take my fall.
and yes, i'll stop showing you rugged-looking men.
as long as i don't have to watch "telephone" again.

2.
i don't get it either.
i don't forget it either.
i don't do stupid shit to myself anymore.
i don't sit on my hands or stand in the back.
this is about working at it.
this is about how nothing must go and
we can hold it all up. but only if we work at it.

3.
one day we're gonna go shove some dudes around
and yell a lot and get real sweaty and it's gonna rule.

June Morning (Wallace Stevens imitation)

1.
Your veil darkened by rain, the steady
Tap-tapping on the tent-top overhead, and the
Teeth bleached to blind all conspire to
Wall me in and leave me there. I smile and
Lift your hands, imagining for a second
How hard I could squeeze them before
Your white teeth disappeared in an
Ungainly yell, and you searched my eyes,
Darkened by rain, looking for reason.
I spend hours alone and find no reason.
Instead I make small sacrifices to
My anger, the mangy, restless, atrophied thing
That I have walled in and left there.
The scratch marks have long since faded
Like raindrop-stains on gray linen suits.

2.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I hear a howl
Echoing in its small chamber: "There is no
Reason for you to find. I pad decrepit in the
Bottom of your throat and you feel like growling."
I built this house and now I live in it,
Gritting my teeth at arguments and burned eggs,
Feeling disgust when my children smile at me,
Bored to death before you even open your mouth.
Outside thunder rolls and sickly trails of rainwater
Lurch down the plate-glass doors. In the garden
The soil grows darker in the rain, while earthworms
Convulse in the grass to escape drowning.
My children want to go out and play, but
I growl at them and make them stay inside.