Words I Can't Afford

Sometimes I wonder why I never seem to use the words I say properly,
how they always seem slightly flat or sharp,

and why, like the bend of a guitar string rising and falling to a melody
it never quite seems to be in time with,
I take so long to get to the point, only to fall off of it again.

And yeah, even the poem isn’t immune.
What time is there for poetry when there are so many dishes to put away,
so many piles of cat excrement and vomit to pick up?

Just this morning it took me an hour to clean everything up and take out the trash
and empty the dishwasher and discover the dishwasher was broken,

cat diarrhea on my fingers, my hand in the garbage disposal fiddling
through the foot my wife and I put our mouths on the night before,
sopping the cat puke off the floor,

over and over I walk out into the morning
stench of shit-steamed garlic piled high on a plate of darkness,
and question how I haven’t gone crazy yet, and then it dawns on me: I have.

But then crazy is too exact a word to use in this song.
If I persuade you I’m being haunted by sensations I do not want to experience
then I’m trying harder than I’d like to admit at figuring out how to be more imaginative.

Right now I’m entertaining the idea that if start this thought believably enough,
some part of me will be so impressed by the immediacy of my dream
that it will go out of it’s way to bring me home with words I can’t afford.

Not Poetry Material

I woke up this morning,

and I’m going to do by best to describe this, but

I looked at the light encasing the bedroom door,
and thought of absolutely nothing
except for the fact that I was looking at it,

just sort of spaced out on that frame of light,
and then it occurred to me,

my wife had gotten out of bed,
had turned on the light in the hallway,
I could hear her in the bathroom, turning on the shower,

and I probably shouldn’t worry about dying unexpectedly,
this frame of light is not an out of body experience,
it’s probably not poetry material,

but you’ve got to make use of what life shows you,

and permit me just one more self-help moment, but

when it shows you a door encased by light,
well then I guess you better figure out
if it’s a frame of light
or yourself that you’re going to walk through.

It's All a Bowl of Broth

Every day, one way or another,
I hold my mother’s knuckle marks on my face
up to the flash of my dad’s Nikon,
so the marks can be snapped
like so much else has been snapped.
That’s just the way I’ve chosen.

But it’s when I think about having to record
what beatings I’ve chosen to take
in order to be listened to these days,
that I find myself becoming depressed,

a lot different than when,
noticing the marks are on my soul,
I take a picture of them
and hold them up to my faith,
where they disintegrate into something like truth.

Today, I was simply looking out the window
hoping my faith would come find me
and prove to me once and for all
there was no need to continue looking for happiness,

but I became ashamed for thinking that,
since I knew any hope of being happy all the time
would never make it by this faith I have
in the human spirit’s ability to remain hopeful
even when all has been lost,
and maybe even because all has been lost.

Then, all I wanted to do was reflect upon the way
I was reflecting about everything,
only I became afraid all the light
would hasten my own death,

a small pool of water
basking on a sunlight warmed rock,
reflecting the sky
and the lake resembling a larger version of it,
until I evaporated into the passing afternoon.

And so reader, I’ll say I’m thankful for the clouds,
for those moments, and there are a lot of them,
where I can’t tell my ass from my elbow.

But it’s all a bowl of broth.

Wizard & Dragon

Catapulting myself back to that long walk down Americana drive
I used to partake of every day
on my way home from school,

where the heaviness of the air seemed to become the blood inside my body
thickening to a likeness of cement
with each footstep toward the front door of our trailer,

I’m reminded of that gray-bearded Merlin fellow,
who’s standing at the top of a mountain
and shooting fireballs out of his fists
at this dragon that’s somehow magically part of him,

every fistful of fire landed on scale equivalent to a year off of his life span,

and how, in one lightning bolt of glory,
both wizard and dragon find themselves plummeting
toward the earth from which they were cast,

much like the way that,
when the world seems to turn its back on me,
the earth inside me sort of magically opens up beneath my hands,

and, like the wizard and dragon,
I find myself returning to the only mother I can count on
always being there to preserve what ancient sense of self remains,

not for any subterranean reason I can think of
but simply for the sole purpose of getting a kick out of putting an end to things,
knowing things never stay ended for long,

until I once again feel the air calling me out of my waiting
and into this hunger I have for making nothing happen at the hardest cost.

Basic Training

Tom, the Vietnam War veteran,
who lived across the street from us,
emptied the contents of his medic kit
out onto the lawn.

I asked him what each was used for,
while I slipped in comments about how
my mother was hitting my father and I
and getting away with it.

He went right for the smelling salt,
as he told me a story about how
he brought this
one guy back from the dead with one.

This was followed by a demonstration,
myself the volunteer,
and a warning not to breathe in too hard.

He snapped the salt under my nose,
and I hit myself in the face
with an open hand,
jumped up and down,
cried,

the only thing on my mind,
wishing I could be dead at the snap of
a finger, but not her finger.

Fame

Every poem I say means “I’m worth being paid attention to.”
But I’m not really into poetry for the matchbox size fame there is,

nor am I into it to exact the last, loyal, honor-gleaming word
of respect swinging so low complete strangers want to owe it
a debt of service,

no, it would seem I’m into poetry
for the way it throws its iron hand in through the window,
and pulls me out of my little box of “I,”
kicking and screaming

before I have one more chance to hope myself on fire
for the sake of a higher, and ironically, more egotistical display of
“I’m worth being paid attention to.”
But then it would seem I’m not really into poetry either.

Right now I’m into wishing I could remember my father back.
Right now I’m into wishing I could keep my memory of him from going
out.

I Don't Know if I Love

I don’t know if I love.
I’m not even sure
I know what love is,
if love is God
or if love is my hand.

But I am intrigued
by the idea that love
can exist beyond
my understanding of it,

and for that curiosity
I suppose I can be thankful
that I rarely if ever find
what I’m hoping to.