Fear of falling

It used to be suicide was a private affair

a lone moment

my mother had in a carroll street kitchen

a bottle of pills in one hand

a glass of water in the other,

she looking down at me

playing with my toy air plane

on the scratched tile floor

Or my uncle who used to 

take his weekly walk to
the Wall Street Bridge

where he deliberated his next move

to plunge into the deepest

part of the river

or even rock groupies seated 

in my car after too much cocaine

aching over the guitarist

or drummer who hadn't

taken them to the motel

having found pills to mix 

with booze they hoped

might let them forget

forever,

these days we stage the event

take a photo days ahead

then issue a press release 

that a dramatic moment

might be hand for the right person

at the right time

and don't forget to bring 

your popcorn

no one to blame

no one to take credit

just pure drama

the private moment locked

in the victim's own imagination

never actually experienced

always at the edge 

always living with the real

fear of falling

In high gear

She coughs in the dark

The door cracks open

Cringing,

The light leading through

Into the hall

Illuminating nothing,

Just the curved rails

And splintered stairs

Alone,

She says she is

A cigarette lit

Lancing the darkness

Like a witch’s

Wand

The music comes

Like bars to a cage

Almost creaks and groans

Chains rattling

There is music, too,

In her head

That nobody hears

The drip and slap

Of rain water

Melting snow

From a passing season

Already lost

She has dust and oil

For blood,

And bleeds it forever

The river laps

Distant motorcycles

Vibrate under her

Like old lovers

There are moods

Budding in her

Like sour flowers

And dripping oil

Like blood

Into a dented pan

She coughs in the dark

The baton waves

Like the arm of a speedometer

Frozen in high speed

She sitting

On the edge of her seat

Roaring through the dark

Without moving an inch.

Out in the desert again?

I didn’t always hate deserts

The outrage came to me over time

Getting stuck in Death Valley

On my way to Phoenix

At a corner where the light blinked

On and off for a highway

So empty I saw nothing for miles

Except that fenced in warehouse

That felt like a graveyard to me

Or the time between Phoenix

And Las Vega when

I learned deserts could be as cold

As they were hot

Blistering stare shine offering nothing

To keep out the chill

Then, I got this photo in an email

A face, a woman in a gown,

Looking as stark as desert polished steer bones

Her stare looking through me

Over the long years,

Making me ache to have been there then

Making me learn to love deserts again.

What you got to do

When my best friend freaked out

One day over something I did

And put a gun to my head

I didn’t hate him.

Sometimes you got to do

What you got to do

And had he done to me

What I did to him,

I’d have pulled a gun out, too.

I didn’t stop liking the guy.

I didn’t think any less of him

For what he did.

But I spent a long, long time

Convincing him why

Pulling the trigger

Was a bad idea

After that,

It was easy to be his friend again

We had an agreement

I didn’t shoot my mouth off

And he didn’t shoot me in the head

Back to square one

Sometimes,

You’re lucky just to get back

To where you started,

Not over thinking or

Looking for too much

Just a voice on the telephone

Laughing

Or a string of digits telling you

You’re no longer in exile

Someone or something

Yanking your back

From the edge of extinction

That dark abyss

From which

There can never

Be a return

Sometimes,

You have to try harder

To make certain,

Things never get

That dark again

No more petty jealousies

No more insane swings

Just the slow, steady, predictable

Comfort of standing

On square one

  2012 menu

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Fish food

The rope tugs on me

As if I’m hooked onto

Some fisherman’s line

When all I wanted to do

Was saving a friend

From drowning

Nearly getting sucked in

Weighed down

by the detritus

of my own life,

those flaws that always

make me vulnerable

to moments like this,

I’m always trying

To swim against the tides,

Always seeking people

To save

Who can’t be saved,

Leaving me to dangle

From the end of the line

Like food for fish.

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Thorn bush

Everywhere you turn

You get pricked

The pain jerking you

This way, then that

You know you need

To stop moving

To make the pain cease

But the pain jerks you

Into another thorn

After each jerk you say

“I won’t do that again,”

And yet you do,

Pricking yourself on

Imaginary thorns as well

As those that are real,

So that after a while

You can’t tell

Which is which.
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Suicide note

Sometimes,

The only thing I really want

Is a way out,

The fact that I wear

Doesn’t seem to suit me

It crinkles in the wrong places

It laughs at the wrong jokes

It tells stories it thinks

I need to survive

I wear to selves these days

One on the inside

Watching and waiting,

The second on the inside,

Hungry and impatient

Caught in a net of importance

And it is this self

This gross misinterpretation of me

That people see

I cringe in here

And listen to it speak

It says things about me

Which are never true

It preaches and bullshits

In the same bloated breath

Making me live my life

Inside out,

With my wishes and dreams

Exposed surrealistically

On my face

Contorting my image

And sometimes

I see you laugh

At its foolishness

And cringe from its

Egocentricities

I watch it offend you

At the same time

It hurts me

But I don’t always

Know my twin

I can’t always see

When it wavers

From the simple

Single self

Which I had

Always planned

I see you react.

I see the touch

Of disbelief in your eyes

Stinging me

Angering my twin

And then

I guess what my twin

Has done

But it’s hard

It is the sound and fury

On it’s not Christ

Sometimes

I read Durkheim

For the quick way out

A turn of the gas key and sleep

But public service has raised its rates

And I can’t make the payment

I can’t raise the courage

For that or the couch

So here I am,

The silent majority

And oh,

How small I feel in this

Large, large

Bloated house

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I am the egg man

You breathe a lot easier

After you come that close

To inhalation and survive,

Knowing that for eight

Or more hours

You’ve walked around

Strapped to a backpack

Of nitro glyserin

And that any false move

Any odd word

Even a mistaken glance

Might set it off

And scattered

All your organs

So that all the king’s men

And all the king’s horses

Won’t get you back

Together again

After that,

A few cracks

In the old egg shell

Don’t seem

Too bad

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The Wall

As a boy

I found one time

In the corner of the room

Crayon slated heroes

Dressed in badly shaded shine

And water colored dragons

Spread on pealing plaster hide

And there I saw

With mired hands

And a guiltly face

Laughing cruely

alone

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Tight Rope

Some things are irresistible

A high wire act

You must engage in

Or life life

With regret

Of having passed it

Knowing how much

Is at stake

How in falling

All is lost

You don’t do these things

For love or money

But for the thrill

Of defying death

Knowing full well

You might not make

The other side

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Sailing

He wants to sail

An old man

Perched on the porch

As if made of stone

He once wore a ship

Rope burns on his hands

He rocks gently now

Embraced by the redwood arms

Of his chair,

His wife making

Lemonade and lunch

He hears the splash of ocean waves

The creaking planks,

The screeching gulls

His wife talks about

How good life is,

Home and safe

Living with houses and trees

He sees the flickering

Of the distant

Harbor lights

Stars winking at

The edge of sight

She weaves his hair

With her fingers

And talks,

Unaware that he
has already sailed away.

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Does anybody really know you?

Does anybody really know you,

The moods that wear you,

The hair you groom,

The smiles you hide behind,

Do they even know your real name?

Does anyone believe the words

That flow out of strangers’ lips

To strange ears like mine,

To describe why you laugh

Or why you cry?

Does anyone recognize the you

That you become when day

Breaks into dusk,

Sipping the wine of evening,

Getting drunk on the night,

The horizon stretching before

You window

As if you ruled it all,

Storm clouds floating

Unseen in the intense dark,

Bloated heroes

You can’t ever count on,

Rain splattering

On you’re the floor

From your open kitchen window?

Does anybody know you

Or care?

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Never enough

Cold streets slick with rain

Footsteps tapping along cobblestone

No gas light, no moon light

Only strangers sleeping alone

Can’t find the ticket for success

Never knew life could be so hard

Playing games with others lives

You never know where you are

In the dark a match snaps to life

A pockmarked face stained with dirt

It’s always hands to mouth these day

Hands clutching hard to mother earth

Someone somewhere recalls your name

And whispers to someone that you’re insane

You say it’s only a temporary condition

But in you know in your heart it’s a game

Looking back for home, you can’t see it

Strangers sit at the tables tonight

Hunger is home, but you can’t feed it

Just a crazy craving for a normal life

Ice forms on the windows of other houses

But inside you can’t see quite enough

Can’t see the caring or the tenderness

Can’t see that other people really do love

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Do rocks talk back?

Insolent bastard children

Whose eyes have melted

Sit dreamily in the street

Staring at blank stone

As if in a mirror

They see empty stages

Weary fingers clutching broken strings

The street lights above them

Stark empty sockets

That no longer shine,

The music in all in their heads

Played by ghosts

A memory of what was once there

Creaking melodies

Whose echoes ring

But not of truth,

Filled with muddled reasoning

Repeating the same tired phrases

But never certain

When to come

To their end.

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No one owns their own life

No one owns their own life

Especially when they spread it around

So that it spills over onto other people’s,

I spend my life collecting

The pieces of people’s lives

They dump into my life

Often struggling to sort out

Which pieces belong to me

And which just jab me in the chest

Like shards of someone’s broken dreams.

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Temporary

If only you could see it

This speck of dust, Love

Eked out with pen and paper

Hardly the stuff

Shakespeare would ink

Running line after line

In eloquent rime

There are so few rimes in mine

And perhaps no reason

Only dust and desire

A heart drawn in the dust

Of a car windshield,

Or in the sand

For rain or sea

To wash away,

Always temporary

And sometimes invisible

Slipping under a door

Like smoke

To dissipate and vanish

With a slammed door

Or cough

Or breath breathed too hard

Sometimes, all that’s left

Is the dust,

Waiting for some

New poet

To eek out

Rime or reason

Or perhaps

Even love

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Tail Feathers

You never know who you’ll find

In the next career your choose

Someone to take you under a wing

Show you had to take flight

Before you spread your wings

And fly away

Someone is always there to catch you

When you land, a new wing

To cover over you

A new lesson to teach you

So that you can fly again

Each face flashing behind you

Each fading into memory

As if they never existed

Some clinging to your tail feathers

But not for long

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Walking with God in Woodstock?

Ron, who sells jewelry next to the information booth in Woodstock

Told me I had God inside of me

He wasn’t one of the Jesus freaks I had to peal off me

In the days when I sold drugs on Hollywood Boulevard,

He meant if I came to Woodstock looking for answers

I should look inside myself,

“We’re standing on holy ground,” he said. “Native Americans

Buried their dead here.”

I never met Ron before and won’t likely meat him again

At least not soon, but I could feel the crack of bones

Each time I took a step near that space, and cringed,

Wondering why all the tourists that filled the shops

Along all sides of the square did not hear the bones

Cracking, too, and blame me for that as well,

I didn’t need more guilt heaped on me

Since I’d come with a back pack loaded with me own

Needing an answer to spring up at me,

Rather than off some dark roof some night

All I wanted was for someone to tell me

I’m not as bad as I think I am

And what I got was Ron, telling me

That I walked here with God,

While I could hear in my head was the cracking bones

And the falling body of an angel

From some roof top somewhere

An angel without wings

Who probably had God in her, too

And I just didn’t see it.

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Roof top

I stare down with you

As if I would fall, too,

No one can take credit

For this insane leap

Me, wanting to hold you back

Holding my breath

As I drive home

Scared I might run off the road

Never realizing the crisis

You are going through

Never able to make up for it

Later, when it’s already too late

Me staring over and over again

as the photograph with your face

and the fall behind you

uncertain, what it means,

and why you sent it,

and what I can do if you did,

hoping it is some kind of joke,

that the expression I see

is not of doom, but of

love-making's aftermath,

and that some other man

is holding the camera

and you,

so that you won't fall

after all

Stalker

I used to write stupid poems about friendship

Irritating diatribes about how loyal friends are

How I would always be there,

How undying my friendship would be,

Eternally walking side by side

Tonto and his Lone Ranger

Batman and his Robin

Poems dripping with such saccharine

You needed insulin to read them

And a lie detector to deal with their untruths.
Friendship isn’t sweet, isn’t a kiss on the cheek

Isn’t a midnight whisper of faith,

It is a kick in the teeth, a punch in the belly,

A rubbing of salt in a wound

It is hurting and being hurt without meaning, too,

It is a search for truths that might not exist,

Ripping open the other person’s chest to the core

To find an empty space where you thought was a heart,

Threads of something else clinging to your fingers

As you pull your hand back out,

Something perhaps more valuable than bits of bone and blood

Or even love

I keep wanting to write nice poems full of sugar and spice,

Closing my eyes to everything, never saying anything

That risks anything ore means anything either,

Life walking on egg shells that I fear might break

And send me into an exile of silence because my friend

Really doesn’t want to hear what I perceive as truth.

But I can’t write poems like that any more

 needing to feel real even when it hurts

Always trying to say what I feel even when I’m wrong

But in the end always stalking real friendship,

Even when that means exile,

Living my life as an unwanted friend, aching for the chance

To spring into action, Batman leaping to Robin’s aid

To defeat demons he can’t defeat on his own,
knowing the whole time that moment may never come

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I hate being wrong

I hate being wrong

And I’m wrong so often

I sometimes believe I hate myself

But I don’t

I hate doing and saying stupid things

And I do and say stupid things

So often I sometimes think I’m stupid

But I’m not

I hate hurting people I like

Being a Jekyll and Hyde person

That acts out my fears at inappropriate times

Lashing out at people I love

Because they put up with it

And this makes me believe sometimes

I might be a mean person

But I’m not that either

I hate losing friend,

And I’ve lost so many over the years

You’d think I’d gotten accustomed to it

But I haven’t.

I mourn each loss

As if I’ve lost

A brother or a sister,

A lover or the dearest person

I ever knew

And all that’s true.

I hate losing you

Not because I’m any less wrong

Or any smarter
or any less afraid so to strike out

But because without you

I have a lot less than I was

And can never been what I might have been

And know I’ll never know you well enough

To get over being wrong, stupid or afraid

And I hate that most of all.

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No vampires, only me

This page bleeds poetry,

Drips of blood filling out

Each line as I write

Smeared because it

Won’t dry fast enough

Before a new line starts

Poetry is not supposed

To hurt this bad

Or cause so much pain

Ripping out my rib cage

To find the heart

I forgot I had
Ripping out your heart

When I can’t find my own

Drinking my own blood

Then blaming you

Desperate to keep filling out

These lines in order to

Keep on living

Hoping with the last line comes

I might find peace

Hoping that all this blood

Wasn’t spilled in vain

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So far from home

So where in Germany are you from,

She asked, as if intending to make their

Trip to New York City

Worth their while for a night

Or was that wild?

They seemed lost in this world

Where everything seemed strange

Even to me,

And she seemed to want to comfort

Them in a way that would say

They had been somewhere with someone

And perhaps

The two of us might help them

Get over the jet lag

Where are you staying?

The German woman almost shy

Looking long the bar at us

Her gaze wondering about us

Almost as much as we wondered

Where was this going?

Why were we being so friendly

When most Americans were not?

How did you come to be in this bar

So far from home, she asked?

And I wondered how far we could go

To make them welcome

When in the dim of light,

In places such as that,

Where lonely people wandered

Their whole lives like wraiths,

Weren’t we all strangers looking

For comfort?

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Nectar

A sip of wine

Spun gentle in crystal arms

The scent rising

From its wide lips

You sit there

Drinking me in

With wide eyes

Deflowering me

One petal at a time

Until I stand

And empty urn

Stained and naked

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Soft summer days

I never felt how hard this bench was

When I came here as a boy

Lingering over the softer places

My fingers found employed

The buttons of a too tight blouse

Hiding a wonderous joy

If only I could get them loose

But I was but a boy

Less hard is the bench these days

Now that age creeps up on me

And fingers have much less to find

When I can let them free

and all around the birds still sing

and stare down from the trees

and I struggle to bet loose

what once was easy for me

splinters dig deep into my bones

my soul aches for those days

when I could sing like bird

and let my hands find their way

into softness I have not felt in years

or let myself make hay

and now I live with wishes and dreams

from those half remembered days

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Mist

Nothing is every clear,

Even when the fog lifts

It leaves a haze

Over these meadows

And me,

More dream than real

Me always scared of the unknown

The shadowy shapes

That leap out of nowhere

A shoulder that rattles

The reeds in the mists

The footfall that splashes

In pools I can not see

My own feel struggling

To find solid ground

One step this way or that

For every two I take

Searching the haze

For a familiar face

Finding only wraiths

With heavy chains

Dickens once shaped

With me an everyday scrooge

Struggling not to give

Myself away,

Scared of all ghosts

Past, present and future,

And to what end

They might lead

My life inscribed

In the fog

Destined only

To fade away.

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Sorry won’t do it

You can’t always say you’re sorry

When you want to say you’re sorry

It’s like bailing out a boat

That’s always sunk

So you sulk in a corner

Maybe even suck your thumb

Kicking yourself for the way you’ve acted

Unable even to convince yourself

About it never happening again,

Aching over the details of it

Staggering more under the guilt

Than the load of booze

You used to get there

Bailing out this sinking tub

With a thimble

As the sea pours in to drown you

Going down, more than just

For the third time

And knowing no matter

How many times you say you’re sorry

You’re still sunk.

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