Starting

simple
like a jump
fingertips tips
quick
the map is changing

I miss some of my enemies
Voodoo man doused his cheeks in
Olive oil and could not stop
Checking over shoulder
For his car
I don’t miss the woman
And her daughter dog
Test tasting
Everything expensive
Letting the golden seeds
Roll to the floor

Roof Goddess

If you understood anything,
would you be stuck
in the corner at
a jazz club without
even a drink on
your table - the
table you co-opted
from someone else
because there's not a
seat in the place and
none of your friends
seem to be coming
and the band is not
playing either?



If these were other days,
you would pull out a cigarette
and ask for a light and
that lovely gentleman would
snap open a lighter for you.
Then you'd lean back in your chair
and pull existentially
on your cigarette and blow
coolly out, having every
reason in the world for being here.

But with no music and
no friends and no cigarette
and no drink, you're just a person
sitting at someone else's table
while they turn their back to talk
to someone they came here on purpose
to talk to.

You might be sitting in a late night jazz club forever.
It might be purgatory.

just 6

six years old
your little angel
with four good friends
three play dates a month
six candles on your cake
six hugs a day
five smiles a minute
two favorite toys
one best friend a day
zero favorite vegetables
six favorite candies
two loving parents
six bursts of laughter
one day disaster hits your home
four days later you're gone
six years old

TWENTY-SEVEN

I went and walked where I had gone
many times before, to round the park's perimeter
and get some thinking done. Without thinking
where it led, I took the path along the stream
and came to stand between two young, denuded trees.
The trees stood for two people, brother and sister,
who both had died before they completed
their second year. Stella to the left,
Noah to the right, the stream behind me,
babbling its ceaseless baby talk, my walk
came abruptly to a halt. The stream
is ceaseless, the dream is endless, our thoughts
deceive us, our friends defend us, our hearts
depend on the ceaseless belief, the season
of grief is upon us, and friends
have no say in the way this messiness ends.

the teacher

there's a story of a woman
a teacher i was told
she lived down south in Georgia
teaching science to the high school crowd
why would you teach teenagers when you are deformed?
they do the same impressions of her
as they contour their face
the right side of their mouths lifts up,
their noses scrunch and their eyes squint,
they slur their speech and spray saliva as they go
it's hard to have the classroom under control when they say she's a freak
she's grotesque i was told
one year she transferred schools and never taught again
they found her body with a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the face
the moral of the story: be nice to your teachers, no one else is.

Last night we spoke face
to face across the country.
Your sleeves shorter than mine.

Remember the story of the
guy who gave himself surgery
so he could stop wanting.

Time was I wished I
had his resolve. And will
I fly to L.A. to

be let down? Dear friend.
I know what that means.