foolings fulfilled from far
are foolings not fit for the flag
fool

any fool can fool with tools
true foolers fool the fooled
face-to-face

it is always there

but i often don’t hear it

ticking life away

it always comes at worst of times
& never when pen in hand 
& seated at an antique table 
grandpa used to woo with words 
his heart’s betrothed inspired by trout’s 
brook bubbling on to finally rest 
like glass reflect perfect world 
back through this window to 
parchment perched atop aged 
mahogany its scent hugging me 
& dad’s old chair creaks waltz with mockingbirds
while poems pour from endless fountain

amusing how the poet’s muse
pricks where paper’s weight 
cannot be born as hands
bear dinner to a wife 
for whom words were made
to speak what can’t be spoken
for emerald & eclipse were
fashioned from her eyes before 
they cleft the maker’s mold 
& in my head a verse unfurls that 
falls forgotten onto pavement 
long before a year would pass
between this work & the last

& even then i lamented the
time that disappeared to quick 
& stole each poem that
was to be a piece of me that 
lived in words imprinted 
but now a boy who bears my
name shall carry what of me 
is unique & some of that which isn’t 
like the need to write & struggle 
with each line & learn not 
how to be a poem’s master

a poem never comes when poet
solely inward turns to pull
one out like unwanted dandelions

a poem cannot come from wrestling
its heels & pinning it with pen nor 
by will or might can it be summoned
or stirred form its waiting to pierce hearts 
& a poem cannot come when it’s 
expected like a 5:10 bus

a poem never comes from 
insistence rather savoring existence 
& from colors & smells & 
sounds & cassettes & funeral homes 
& undisguised stares & from rocks 
& trees & birds in the air

it is not a thing taken but one given
& belongs not to the poet &
it lives unshackled by scholar’s 
chains or historian’s veins

it lives by those who breathe its 
syllables & syntax & story 
& survives through those that leave
what they think they know
& explore what they know they 
don’t know but know might be

to them a poem comes 
& they are poet

excuse you! i heard him snip
after my failure to deliver
train-car-hip-check-box-out
gave away last open seat
and i left myself that moment
to watch me unleash
rabid explicatives blushing
even Carlin’s dead cheeks
and squeal how not one
fucking guy has yet
lifted lazy ass from subway
bench and offered my bulge-
bellied wife respite for
wearied human-making bones
as train cars herk and jerk
bride and baby like raggedy
mom and ann/andy (its
gender remains mystery until
midwife waves salts
under swooned noses)
while tons of recent gym time
and tiny elements of surprise
suggest i beat propriety
into men unregenerate and
hand out whoopings
aloof fathers should’ve
long ago for chivalry’s
sake yet instead sat
fattened keesters on couches
scotch and seven in left
cigar in other hand and watched
Archie verbalize Edith and laughed
through chauvi-misogynistic teeth
with little regard for the day
their kids would sit and stare
at mine still scrunched in utero
while great-with-child legs labor
to hold balance round curves
and i now back in body see
i’ve done no such things
maybe out of fear or
christian restraint or
gleams in lover’s eyes
begging me don’t

it never ends now the
music in my head an
ostinato senza cesura
drowns out
me
and epiphany so my existence
persists in that twilight where
desires seek satiation and
i no longer know what wait
means as i am overrun
by access and wishes granted
and touch or tap or slide
a single finger to have
what for that moment i
think i lack though all
i need is stillness and
a silent mind or a nothing
between just one crossfade
between stop and play
when plastic sounds mean
a cassette thumbed to b-side
is all that is and it makes me
pause
and in those seconds
hear my own song which
betrays an unquenched longing
for limitation as gift
which gives me me again
when whims see not limits
cravings pursue satisfaction
by tireless shuffling for
perfect quaffs which have not
come and will not until
i awake to remember that
what is next is vaporous if
i pass over what is here
and cannot find peace in
hearing a tape deck click

i wish i would read the new yorker
on the subway and appear as smart and
savvy as she next to me from whom
i hide these words as i write

(tilting my notebook leftward
with an ever-increasing incline
forcing pen ink to defy
gravity to stick to the page)

as i write
about her and her reading habits and savviness
while a homeless man delivers his verse
in the land of the blind

In the land of the blind
no one sees the forest for the trees
so they’re all cut down in the name of safety

delivers his verse with all the panache
of a homeless man

In the land of the blind
a haystacked needle pricks before its found
and that fleshy pound might be two or three

of a homeless man singing
poems on a subway car

In the land of the blind
people still get on their knees to worship their celebrities
and broken eyes stare at tvs anyway

and i wonder if my verse

In the land of the blind
stars go ungazed; plays unplayed and
trails will forever be unblazed

if my verse will one day be read

In the land of the blind
crooked and straight seem the same and
every leader leads mankind in vain

be read by the smart and savvy

In the land of the blind
every cry for help is words and everyone
is unsure if the suffering they heard is true

or heard by another young stealth poet
as i beg

But in the land of sight
these things are plain and we all see who is lame
and hear me asking “brother, spare some change?”

exiled from your brethren
and your maker by
those who hate your voice

i almost didn’t find you this time

banished there to rusted
desolation under dying tree
a single leaf falling
brings no life to your iron stillness

though you still call
come and sing with me
take hold of me and ring
for do not touch does not apply

a less naked shade might conceal
your song more to their liking

but winter is my friend

i move in that barrenness
toward slivers of cold sunlight
cutting cross your name

for chris 2004

i am chris now

my hands drag fraying rope
and the tolling sprints
over brittle grass acres
to fill their ears
with rebellion’s sound
a triumphal siren that
drowns protestant screams

if i took a rational
only-fools-think-people-rise-from-the-dead
position

if there had been objective witnesses of the
disinterested-in-the-deadness-or-aliveness-of-the-party-in-question
variety

if paperwork had been filed by an authority of the
professionally-certified-to-confirm-death-and-or-life-remaining
type

like for Jarod who
hangs an official certificate
written by a paramedic
above his desk
a souvenir of his resurrection
from a three minute absence and a death cheated

to have been gone three days and
then at supper sunday evening
would mean he’d have killed death and
taken from it keys to (dare i)
eternal life

that is a hope far too great
for the rational
only-fools-think-people-rise-from-the-dead mind

are you

abandoned abused bitter
broken depressed desperate
gay lonely poor
self-loathing spiteful
tragic troubled

yearning for change
discontent dejected
rejected injected
insane (though only a little)

egotistical egomaniacal
pyromaniacal nymphomaniacal
or otherwise sex-obsessed

abhorred by
culture church family
or struggling to function
in society at large

if so

send in a lifetime’s expression
of inexpressibles and wording wordlessness
send in your soul carved
black blue red and
bringing life to sheets of dead tree

and languish on poet

(happy people and lumberjacks need not apply)

Kitchen’s
Ambrosial
Refreshment
Ever
Needed

Bellies

Languish
Amid
Cookie
Yearnings