inside voice

It’s all too much

the rush of the calendar 

the dust of the clock, 

blue skies and bare limbs and

a house that can only grow 

colder, a name that doesn’t stick

on someone that doesn’t matter,

an argument that begins and

ends in words. They always say 

you got to go for it, they say

you do you, they say live it

like the last day then

the last day shows up at your door,

champagne and fireworks and

all the fixings. You hold

your breath so close 

it feels like love, it feels like

falling, like you could

let loose, this saved up sound

a shouting like a celebrant, 

rending garments and 

wailing— gone, gone

this one, never to speak

again aloud, offered up to

stars that never change

while we all keep counting 

down to the drop.

paint the wall

Never mind the way

the wind will move, forget

how the light keeps 

changing the frame, you’re not 

a piece they need. The extra

parts aren’t a problem,

your little wishes are not the world 

we live through like a movie,

hiding from monsters, hunting 

loot and clout, the guy the girl

the roundabout, somebody forever 

sentenced to just be themselves—

the long awaited alone at last 

outlasting the conceit or the plot.

So what if you missed your mark?

You were never great with punctuation.

These stops and starts, all shouts and 

stabs and moving parts 

best left to sharper minds and

better machinations. You know 

now the words won’t stop 

no matter where you put them or

which blots and scribbles 

you throw under their wheels while

the real insists, awaiting the inevitable

call back to the act one gun.

open stance

It’s not what you know it’s what

you’ve learned through brick and

bone and the all alone when

the sky falls down and the heart

dies from the ungodly cacophony,

the way the world is only here

until something chases everything away.

Mostly we won’t let our limits 

tell us our truths, the facts

helpless before the faith we go 

all in on. It still falls as hard,

the equal of any storybook hell 

smacked right on top of us,

the mountain without the invitation.

History arrives at the insistence of

a telling, this witness 

lost weeping on the road.

Everywhere thieves and murderers

work their angles unopposed,

so we turn the world offering 

an empty hand to controvert 

the forces that would destroy.

So go the gods and monsters and

devastations of that ilk, defeated

with one long breath and

a simple step to the side.

shtick

It begins with me choking 

on the bones of my last breath,

the other shoe, the old one two,

relics of rhetoric rising from the grave

as if a given, as I cough

until I see stars and sparkles,

the wheel of fortune somehow 

always set to resurrect, 

the compass of a past iteration,

the punchline another round of jokes.

It ends in the guts of thrift 

and privation, the poverty of things and

soul that sets in the mettle 

of a certain type, turning over stones

searching for the words to make

it work, all to take a spill

the slapstick to ring your crown, 

cartoons all have their form—

to try and tray so hard

hilarious constellations appear so fast

it hurts so bad to see stars.