Spring Collections

Everyone is so happy
when seasons turn from
snow to sun. I see it
as I chance to catch
up with buried friends
see what’s become of them
after the melting away
has done its work.
What stories will
their weathered bones
tell that their skin
never did? I’m all ears.

1/31/11

Morning Blood After Coffee

She woke me
for a sit-down
warned me I
needed coffee
first, but the spin
cycle in my stomach
already hit before
any caffeine comfort
remedy. Braced
for another talk
about my various
addictions, news
of a bleeding ceiling
came as relief. Melted
snow seeped its way
under the rubber skin
into second-rate wood
communed with metal

and dripped through a hole
drilled to hang our
witch ball. Drops spattered
the alcove walls and floor.
Blood is much easier to clean
when it’s not your own.

1/27/11

Frostbite Transfer

I felt my soul bleed
out of my fingers
on a bright morning
in January Wisconsin.
After pouring seed into
feeders for seasonal
guests, feeling at my tips
began to slowly drip
onto the fluff of snow,
its heat draining down
to frozen ground beneath.
Still having to secure
my industry, I sheltered
my hands inside feathered
pockets—their souls
replenishing mine
one quill at a time.

1/23/11

Preparation

Shadows flicker on my billboard
as sun gives life to forms outside
my office window blocked by slitted blinds.
Sparrows come to feed through winter,
knocking each off buffet perch.
Fluttering balance, rapid wings
disarm the fixed forms of pencils,
pens that stand as battlements
inside a giant Daffy Duck mug.
Chickadees wait their turn,
eyeing up a peanut butter banquet
more fattening than any black seeds.
The swaying tube feeder betrays them all,
soon to run empty with setting sun,
well below zero.

1/21/11

Six Pills Plus One: 7. Fighting It Off

My immunity system needs filling
up, especially now with all those germs
blitzing through the hallway, killing
what they can without pity, strictly on their terms.
Cold hands say I shouldn’t fill feeders;
sandpaper throat whispers that I should stop
my blustery yelling and read more.
With middle-age eyes I can see germs dropping
out of nowhere onto my flesh, into my bloodstream.
They surround me know, festering with disease.
Induce the orange juice dream,
Quarantine this husk to unconscious oblivion
and choke down a multivitamin.

1/20/11

Big Head James

Today is a day

I can’t lift my head.
It’s not that I don’t
want to see, not
anything I can
no longer stand.
I can’t lift my head
because it has grown
too heavy from
rejections, pressures,
memories forgotten.
My neck, once strong
with rebellion, is
now brittle with
skepticism, defeat.

Someone please get me a pillow.

1/19/11

Missing Parts

Pop my arm off
as if I’m a great
unwanted action
figure, an assemblage
of plastic parts held
together by molded
forms and metal screws.
Snap my leg held
in place only by
brittle rubber strands.
Twist my head from
the shell of my torso;
leave what remains
to crack under age
or melt away in

prolonged sunlight.

1/18/11

Tongue Piercing

Mondays are
the splinters
you get
licking an
ice cream
stick, trying
to remove 

last remnants
of chocolate.

1/17/11

This poem will be published in an upcoming issue of Verse Wisconsin.

Bundles of Energy

Peripheral vision locked
on to a dark streak
against white canvas
of snow—a mink
like a runaway
ball, bouncing down
a lonely road
disappearing from sight.

1/16/11

On Reserve

Two chairs on
reserve at Community Resale. Mid-
century. Good bones. Half off
at $10 a pop for
the pair. Not
sure if they’ll fit
in the back seat.
Not sure if they are
her style. I know
we don’t need them,
but we don’t need much.
They sit low—too low.
Do they deserve
such a reserve?

I can’t tell anymore
and I’ve already shown
far too much.

1/13/11

Six Pills Plus One: 6. Heart Health

Settled nicely into routine
methodical middle age. Peaks
and valleys leveled off into serene
horizon lines—a steady progression of learned techniques
through errors in trial, successes in intent.
Now it is my heart that is being choked
out by my parents, grandparents
without their knowledge or consent. I’ve been poked
by needles, dosed with radiation,
forced to evacuate on an empty tank.

I’ve since abandoned all expectation,
wiped the tarot cards blank.

Comfortable in my falling apart:
graying beard, balding head, flabby belly, hard-pumping heart.

1/16/11

Six Pills Plus One: 5. Will Not Cause Drowsiness

Moving away from lifelong friends made over
the past few years to a space and time
became a polemic shift worldview. Guitar
gave way to fiddle, concrete forest to swamp slime,
burger to crawfish. She was the one constant
from old world to new; we would both cut
our hair and earn new tattoos by surviving fire ants,
hurricanes, bouts of madness that slammed too many doors shut
right in our face. Thirty should be a turning point,
but I forgot to put on the blinker. Smart enough to evade
accidents though. I can’t quite remember being clairvoyant
about it, so I have to be reminded. If not, it just fades
into forgotten recesses. Must stay awake. Must stay awake.
Much too much at stake.

1/14/11

Six Pills Plus One: 4. Muscle Relaxers

They come in liquid form
bitter by the dozen
$2.44 for Mad Dog, Boone’s Farm.

Braved the worst of frozen
winters just to get a different
kind of numb, impervious to pains
from failed attempts at romance, absent
of any assisted relief. Sustained
drunkenness at three dollars for three hours
three times over. Magic number
cubed. Wolf waiting to devour
Little Red, but intoxication is cumbersome

When you’re the last one standing as that urinal trough.
Time to retreat back to the cave. Sleep this one off.


1/13/11

Six Pills Plus One: 3. Pain Relief

Alice Cooper has it right. I gotta get out
of this place.  Petty grades, petty school, petty
crimes. Brothers, sister all leave with doubts
of their own. Mark, Rob, Steve, and Lenny

become Dave, Coleman, and Ron

but still no girls to speak of. Metal
shined most bright; stage lights are on
the horizon.  I am painting my kettle
black with broad strokes, splashing

and dripping across my bedroom floor.
Random streaks and puddles flashing
potential will always remain, however obscure

the design. They are all ultimately hollow

in use and meaning—a tough one to swallow.

1/12/11 

Six Pills Plus One: 2. Alleviate

It takes much more than cartoons
and mad athletic skills to create
an identity. Out of touch, out of tune
from any reasonable harmony; sedate
in my own tofu persona. Experiments
in puberty gone awry, attentions
of a cat at a Spring migration lament:

intent, but wholly unfocused. Ascension
is just around the bend.  A few
more years in the struggle of where
this will all lead, Scooby Doo collecting clues

and staying away from Medusa’s glare.

Ten percent luck, ninety percent attitude.
Twice a day/take with food.

1/11/11

Six Pills Plus One: 1. Fish Oil

Once removed from birthplace (birth nation),
my siblings save me on a cross-country trek
out to land o lakes in our sickly green station
wagon, mile markers in the dark to connect
where we’ve been to where we are going.

Storm falls and my eyes roll back
flicker, rain on windshield, without anyone knowing.
My brother sees foaming, bubbling white on sickly black
screams and cries, frenzied desperate.

Convulsive spasms ensue. I match
green of vinyl interior, the same but separate—
one artificial, one becoming more so.  The catch
is that it’s taken thirty-six years to return

to Minnesota. Side effects make my heart burn.

1/10/11

Self Expression

An inch-long scar rips
down my wrist, right
where a vein runs across
the main tendon. Not a
failed attempt at suicide
but a bit of the old cat-
scratch fever. I have many
such scars, but this one
wants to tell everyone
a story. I’m just not quite
sure whether the fiction
or the nonfiction would be
more interesting.

1/9/11 

Zombie Zombee Zombi

There is a standing tradition of zombies
feeding from the world, from the creativity
of others long gone. I am the first
zombie of my family, a parasite that
festers on the thoughts and actions of
the courageous dead. I can only nurse
off of their perspective in order to say
something, anything.  So much left unsaid.


1/8/11

Mischievous Words

Attention must always come first.
Intention is rarely rehearsed,
but spotlights shine hot
when meaning’s forgot
and translations can only get worse.

1/7/11

My Cat, the Author

As I try to type words on
the wasteland of this blank
page, my cat obsessively paws
at the back of the laptop screen,
needle nails scratching on hard
plastic. Struggling to write what goes
on inside my congested, thumping
brain, her penmanship says more
than my keystrokes can.  This is
all about communication and she
is often better at it than I.


1/6/11 

Grumples, Grumples

Winter holidays often
have adverse effects.
Suicides become popular
methods of escape from
forced parties, required
to make nice with people
we don’t like, awkward
gift exchanges that just
take up the valued hidden
spaces we all need, food
that fattens us even more—
speeds us towards self-loathing.

But
there is
ANOTHER WAY

Champagne by fireplace
hungry for more fuel to burn,
cats batting loose ornaments
hanging low on the Goodwill tree,
embracing who we actually are,
wrapped in pajamas and each other.

1/5/11

When the Dead Come Calling

Accountability is all the dead
will ask for when they call my name
Ask me what I’ve done, what I’ve learned
and all those many failures.

They will ask if I deserve to be with them
if I want to be with them

Judge me on my vision of reunited Heaven/Hell
or festering ooze of bone and muscle

There are no promises I can make
none that they can keep

When the dead come calling
I’ll answer the door
naked and ready

Invite them in

for a drink or a smoke,
see where the evening takes us.

1/4/11

Cleaning Up, Changing Out

Inside tires that support
empty boxes in case of flood
were two dead mice. Frozen
in form, they still had fur
but little else. Even maggots
left only a shell. Did they expire
together? About three inches apart.

I had to peal them off the cement floor.

Picked them up by the brittle tail,
tossed them outside hoping that
they would serve some purpose,
some use. One fell flat—a good sign.

The other was held up vertical by
frozen blades of grass. I’d have to
fix that if they lasted the night.

Early Sunday morning
they were still there, unchanged.

A proper burial was in order.

Scraped off the debris of winter
and placed them side by side.
Covered with a leaf, a few cedar
discards, a fluff of lilac blossom.

1/2/11

Down the Drain

Shaving kit passed down
to me years ago. Small cup,
a blue stagecoach embossed.
Broken plastic case held together
by a dried cracked rubber band
doubled down. Inside, a sculptural
Gillette razor, the kind that gives
both sides of the sliver of blade.
The old fashioned kind.

On day one of the new year
I thought I was ready. Headed
into thirty eight over

twenty years of practice.

Enough of man now
kicking screaming cursing
slicing bleeding bruising
trying and failing along the way.

I replaced the blade, surprised
at how thin it was for all the damage
it could do—has done. First strokes
removed three days growth, tracing
down the muscles and veins.
Working my way to the center
the first nick, just to the left and
below that bulbous growth of bone.

I decided to cut my losses.

The right side suffered the same.

One vertical stroke. Clear. Rinse/Repeat.
Second stroke. Clear.
Third. Nick. Wash the blood and foam away.

Can’t remember grandpa ever having
this much trouble. Maybe he just hid it well.

Shaving is as much technique and patience
as pretending to know what you’re doing
and being able to cover your mistakes.

Nostalgia is a bloody bitch.

1/1/11

Exploring the Body

When I reach
inside myself
I never know
what to grasp
for—what I
will find. A buried
memory of
discovering death?

Boney fragments
of limitations

Tenuous sinews
of failed potential

Bulbous cancers
that I can never shake

Convulsive passions
occasionally embraced

The muscles are tight

a snug fit inside this place

not much room to breathe

anymore, suffocating
from inside out.

12/4/10

Graveyard Manifesto

A silly little type
remains
an error that
will stay, linger
long after hammer
falls and blood
spatter dries
on the wet
stone or frost—
tickled grass:

nature journaling.

12/4/10

Laptop Glow

Arent you cold

kneeling there like that

shirt off, pants down

on the hard wood floor?

No, you don’t look cold

or even awkward

I’m the one that’s cold

fingers frigid, toes numb

poor circulation through

my insides. The extremities

are the ones that suffer

the ones that are best

kept to myself.

I am jealous of your warmth,

your comfort. I am incapable.

This laptop has even more

warmth than I.

11/10/10

Gentle In the Process

You’ve always had the power
to rip me out, rip me off, rip me up
even with your eyes closed.
Your fingertips alone
can gouge me inside out
like cutting a steam slit
in the sealed plastic.
I’m leaking away already
just from the pressure.
Your spit can be as damaging
as acid, dissolving my skin
rendering me helpless, defenseless
No potion for your poison
No cure for this disease.
I’m being eaten away
and that’s what I’ve been
yearning for all along.
Just try to be gentle in the process
that makes me yours
all yours.

11/10/10

On My Way to a Better Place

Waiting on the platform

for the train
down to the city
a cross-section
presents itself:
the shiftless in
sneakers with holes,
unshaven and unkept
the business woman
in skirt suit with her secrets
the balding onlooker
who tries to hide his growing
beer belly and forgets who
he was ten years earlier
the New York Post
unread on a metal grated bench
cold and impersonal.

No one talks on the platform
like an extended elevator ride
but some of us are comfortable
enough to scratch our asses
in front of perfect and imperfect
strangers. I’m not sure who is
better off.

11/3/10

Cracks In the Surface

I can’t seem
to fill myself
can’t stomach
the void
that has become
a chasm
after all
the gut rot
erosion

bone
without
marrow
alcohol
without
intoxication
passing out
without dreaming

Frost is crystallizing
on my skin,
a layer of ice
coating over
the emptiness
preventing anything
to seep through

11/3/10

Momentary Need

There you stand in my hand
fingers holding the weight
of guilt and failed potential.
We’re both creased with deceased
dreams, veined in a desperate
momentary need and sequential
death. It’s just a matter of time.

Our worlds collapse, perhaps
explode, and inevitable drips
and drabs are the last breaths.
Messy business this mental illness.
No justifying from these lips,
no life left in these little deaths.
It’s a crime, a fucking crime.

11/2/10

Collecting Skulls

I don’t keep the carcasses
of birds that crash into
my window—flight
cut mid-wing by an invisible
force. They never see it
coming. Death is instant
to them: soaring, then slammed
to the ground neck snapped.

Whenever I see one, I pick it up
place it by a tree
under some brush
a few leaves. Sometimes
it is still warm. Sometimes
it is rigid with maggots
already at work. It’s going
back, contributing rather
than taking like myself.

I go back after a time to check

on the progress. I’ll keep
the skull if it hasn’t been stolen
by opportunistic grave robbers
looking for a trophy of their own.
There are four on my cabinet,
one with a tuft of feathers still
attached to remind me of the hurt,
the life now gone.

This Spring I put two more bodies
aside for the process. A cowbird
and a woodpecker. Maggots did
their business. The rain
washed them clean. As clean
as carcasses get. I snapped off
the heads for preservation
additions to my cabinet of wonders
and noticed a peculiarity.
The woodpecker’s tongue
was still in tact. The thin
tongue, like a sliver of bone
slid outside its beak. Even
in death, the woodpecker
reaffirmed that it had answers
I longed for, that it had won the race.

10/23/10