First Man
Empty as the space
on the back of my neck
where the phantom of your
hand rests just
outside the confines of
my comfortable reach
you were this poem’s genesis,
coarse hands and language,
your tongue, like the ash
taking flight from my bluish body
as I self-immolated
at the cliché stake
silver-grey flecks cascading
onto the parched, forgotten fields
who begged for more,
that gnawing need
eclipsing all else
you were this poem’s genesis
and this poem is every
poem I have written since
Deal With It
Deal with the sanctuary
in the neglected temple that is
your head, desecrated and
littered with empties and cigarette butts
smoked down to the filters.
Deal with the footsteps
of the men who have stumbled
into this place, far from God and not looking
to pray. Deal with their names
scrawled on the pews and the piss
soaking the floor and the porno mags they left
scattered all over and full
of women who look an awful lot
like you. Deal with the smell
of unwashed bodies, human suffering,
inhuman rage, unsacred deeds.
Deal with the fact
that you’ve dealt with it,
that you’re smiling and nodding
and brushing your teeth and riding
the train and wearing clean
underwear and washing your face
and your hands and your hair.
Deal with the duality of presence.
Deal with the fact that God is
either everywhere or nowhere, and
all you can do in this fleeting lifetime
is try to deal with that.
The Socks
languished untouched on the windowsill
through the winter as though
expecting a voyeur to burst forth
from the frost and upend
a series of holes and her body
I never understood
the appeal of dressing up
like a fantasy’s fantasy
the imitation
of a woman or a wound,
scabs and tissue and
bruise-colored midnights
a series of holes, a nice body.
And does he still see me
unbushed through the window
frigid in unseemly thigh-highs?
I pry open my memory, its series of holes with
some tenuous connection to
another series of holes and my body.