You’ve stopped up my pen

my well, my pad, you’ve stopped up my pen, for I scribe on you every night,
pinning my anger to the ground, you hold fast

my million pieces, my puzzle, curiosity arousing me over and over
the horizon of this sparrow’s eye,

my perfect, my storm, I am wall-eyed and hooked wallowing
in the night so young an infant, the day still suckles with

my revelation, my special–burned into, an image, cloth
buried in a broken body

my mouthwash, my goodnight, I may never brush my teeth,
and gum your neck at thirty,

my lion, my lamb, doodles on the page became your name,
the softest thorns of the vineyard snag my skin,

my friend, my lover, your experiences, story, and knowledge
poured over an altar for me.
and all you get is I
will love you more than knowledge,
more permanently, more pertinently than life,
for life, for you.

Getting her off, his chest

He’s spent the hour deciding how to get her head to her pillow and off his chest where lay her silhouetted cheekbones, high and smooth, against his sternum rising slow. His eyes–breaths before closing–stay ajar to see his reason–her–to open: sweat with hair, her humid breath undulates love. He’s lost this hour, the first of twenty-four, in thought, recounts this day, ceremony, the vows, her muddy eyes now veiled in sleep, her arms, his, interwoved in figure eight. He grasps for pen and pad on nightstand out of reach to write his joy, his words: hopeful to not to wake his bride from needed rest.

The cork pops and the wine of words bubbles forth

throw yourself through the paper, the notebook, the icon:
load the mortar in the fountain pen’s seeping tip and prick the paper
for the quill knife runs along the skin until
the ink oxidizes the blood and the crisp pulp fibers cleanse the tissue
September 20, 2004

Putting the Parthenon on hold for poetry

Mother put me back in, I dream?nothing is enough
can’t fit on a CD, but it’d be a nice experience
is temporary, truth is
forever catch the spectator, the cleaning lady, not the athlete, the exec,
move to Athens,
move to Mars,
if beauty is in the heartache,
you will be the happiest man on Earth and question your need for God.
now and here will never be again, you know,
but then again,
now will never be here,
anywhere.

scratch a little

you have to scratch a little to start a ball-point,
will this newly found pen take away my angst coupling
will you destroy me?so be it.
nothing is ever great without change
if you are, I will gladly die
I saw the pelican dive and I thought of you
Fatal you may be for I was there with you on a log at sunset
and swerved to not meet the railing.
the I-64 rain drops swim across the window like sperm for an egg, my neurons are to moments of you

Scribbling an idea about an affair with the pool boy

sitting by the window, upstairs, next to our bed,
she envisions him dragging her vigorously onto my favorite sheets,
the navy blue ones with maroon highlights.
She grins, remembering the time she short-sheeted me and we tried to sleep on the floor and we ended up in a pillow fight.

He’s sucking the film off the water, she writes
and collecting it inside a small container that reads “We Suck Pool Service.”
(sounds like a bad porn)?she jots in the margin.
moving between the shed and the house he disappears.
Where could he be?
Is he stepping up the stairs to the door that the husband carried her across when the house closed? (Is this clich?, Stephen?)?she continues imagining the rapture of a one-hour stand.
the film would remain:
when he leaves to pick his motherless child up from day-care,
that night when the husband (help!?need name!) would arrive home,
the next day when he (hubby) wants to dive in the pool.

The teenager knocks on the bedroom door.
She allows the wood pulp to soak up her fountain ink,
before she removes the tip,
love always, your wife?she scribbles and leaves the open journal on the bed for me.
“What was your question?” she asks.
“Ma’m, did you all request the steel or composite Multi-Cell Pressure Filtration System?”

Unpopular as innocence (thankfully)

I still shiver when I consider sex before my driver’s test,
two years before my first kiss a girl undressed closed
behind a door I wanted to remove,
waiting, a scared little boy,
if she would have dangled herself before my nose, who knows
what I would have followed

crowded with the crowd into locked rooms,
as if taped up doors ever stopped them.
afraid to be forced do anything (or anyone)
to be in control I must be out of popular circles and 7-minute heavens,
being unconventional at high school academic conventions
when they called my name,
I wrote, I wrote, I wrote.

The recent mail

if I had just discovered a fresh letter from the post,
there would be more pining for
I would love you more if you had introduced yourself yesterday
or if I knew less grace less often

I don’t see much of you,when I do, we don’t talk.
I’m running–I promise I love you
and I would tell the pagans this–
if I saw some every once and a while.

My pen is a thumb–

I suck
when walking in circles
tablet in hand
deciphering images
caused by pizza,
fornication,
the Divine;

dipping in hydrokometes, comatose in simile
smiling arrogantly, the thought drives the wheels
into synecdoche
Bound–hand in tablet, tightly
the Whole
becomes my fire-bearing part, but only partly:

Instructions for suicide
1. Grip pen firmly.
2. Release pen from hand.
3. Extend index finger and thumb.
4. Place gun in hand.

Instructions for salvation
1. Grip gun firmly.
2. Release gun from hand.
3. Curl in index finger and thumb.
4. Place pen in hand.

Are these words drugs?

Are these drugs? If so I
Am an addict of these therapeutic phrases
that aid my ailings.
They hide the duty of confrontation
Behind the blanket of talking it out
Poetry is not the solution
Though part.
Discuss before confront.
I love the Truthsetter.
Please love me back.
I am weak.
Weaker than my words written.