Can’t go to sleep

The bottle’s not empty
Yellow jackets 
Sneak in
Through cracks in the window
Like drunks thrown to the curb
Begging forgiveness
In the dead of night
while the living write blurbs
for the apocalypse

For Guy Saunders who shares the night

FOR HANK who is too dead to argue.

WHO THE HELL IS A POET

the dog with the pen
and the Harvard penis
may or may not be
a start or halfway to finish
empty telephones are poems
for the blind who relish
smoking pupils see fire
in your beer stained breath
fathers raving in alcoholic
splendor have danced
on the typewriter making
poems with their toes
if only someone goddamn
knew they wrote witty prose
the dead are poets they
read for the worms the
living are left with
consonants and vowels and
the sickening job of making
sense
battered children cry with
poetry and flowers can’t
give a fuck because they
themselves are the rhyme
the poet nailed to the
wall with the rose in
his teeth only THINKS he’s
a poet who has bled on time
nails pounded by lovers
are weapons
mistaken for poetry
they come dressed in rhyme
biding their time
in rooms hidden by longing
watch when the dust that
begins to speak with disarming
idiots make lists
fathers are storming
the gate of the poet
what the hell is the warning
who the hell is a poet
my father my longing
who the hell is a poet
the man with the warning

what we forget to remember

are the flat tires fixed 

by roadside strangers

subway seats given up
softens elderly anger

we forget when young we 

snatched the cane of an overlord

and righted the protest
with no intent to defraud
like a swan necked round a lover

feathers laid back in alarm

are you my hero

are you here to do harm

this is the universe crawling begotten

this is the friendship

we are faced with uncertain

how many times have I drunk

elixir well spoken in language
I know when I’m drunk and broken
it comes back forever
this drink this reposting

welcome the bulls when they
crash through the wrong
I am drunk and unhinged

bored with bleating song
nostalgia grows like mold
on a slow-moving worm
it shutters the new
it comes dressed as harm
what we forget to remember

are small kindnesses each day

gathering the strengths

in pockets to say
make a video of this
you sad panting poseurs

this city ain’t dead

though it leaves some alone

beware of the dog that steals
all of the bones

this city ain’t dead

though it makes a great poem

this city ain’t dead

when we call it home.

Darling Girl

this year of eighteen
child not nearly adult
abseiling through life

shadows become you
growing faster than you can
in this brief moment

windows are ageless
doorways to understanding
to look is the key