still, there was so much salt
in so many wounds

 life got stuck under the wheels and desire’s language smacked into cliché, death came as Chet Baker crooning love, almost blue

40 Year Milestone

            I had a dream where
I found a way to look at your
Instagram through one of those hilarious
                        Nebulas
            Dreams
Afford, wrapped tightly with a regal

things will get harder before they get easier

the movement of our bodies had rubbed the edges of my right knee completely raw.

I was naked and felt like Elvis after six banana and butter sandwiches. It was a very dark time.

I want you to see this as romantic

A unneutered preteen breeze / loiters around the trees / this morning. 

I am no longer interested in the world and know that it is not interested in me.

Because the trembling lashes are ready / Cuz the door cracks like a whip

We started off as strangers,
you and I.
And I’ll always wonder -
if there had been others
would I have picked you?
Your brothers were already gone
by the time I got there
so I paid for

Me sitting down before a cheesecake factory menu
and seeing only letters.
Me fucking without even a hair as much the enjoyment
I get from a waffle--

In my earliest memories, I am building tall towers out of indigo blue picture books

Because cigarettes are one thing, 
but my baby won’t have me smelling of shame.

I did not raise my glass in toast to the passing of Gene Hackman.

I don’t fully recall when I realized that the smoke detector was going off

Other times it’s about motels in Nebraska or 
gum ball machines or a close-up of a woman’s 
face.

They always think I’ll wave to them.

The glass always refilling / and fracturing his life

I have been waiting to become a better writer so that I can understand them.

The forecast predicted devastation,
So I scattered sandbags around my house,
Closed the window,
And waited for the deluge.
Fingers gripped my hair and
Yanked me back like a bucking

The first shall be last and the last shall be first, Frank said / that’s from episode 42 / 
of the telly series Kung Fu, /  ‘This Valley Has Terror’

Sex is the opposite of being a novelist, and I would rather live between them.

Being an artist is just another phase, / like a kid who eats the glue sticks