All My Exes Hate Me
it’s a big gross world and
i don’t know what it wants from me
close my eyes
listen to lo-fi remixes of brazilian disco hits
beats hit like waves
and everything smells so salty
i am so damn salty

Exhuming Luigi
God, we were drunk the night we exhumed your ferret
from the dirt in the grounds of your old school. We
drank mudslides and white russians until the bartender
dimmed the lights and put all the stools but ours on
the bar, the chairs on the tables. Stumbling into the cold,
on a chorus of “Life’s Been Good” and “Marian the Librarian,”
thinking what a good idea it would be to dig some bones
from the dirt.

I Am My Own Savior
Somedays I take my pills gladly, with hope
and juice to wash it down, and other days
I glare at them until they get caught in my throat
and I hate myself for feeling like they’ve failed me
already. Somedays it’s 85 degrees in Phoenix
but I’m caught under feet of suffocating snow
with no one to pour salt on my flailing body,
like drowning all over again, but so weighted and cold
I’m dragged to the earth’s core.

Ode Et. Al.
We still pray to the old gods
changing of the guard:
deity in that solemn face of the ancestors.
Help me through [the moon light]
We still pray in Quechua, Aymara,
Lacandon, et. Al.
Affinity –see the shoulder width of those keloids
scars on the backs of African slaves [marks the above fight]

Golden Shiraz
Everyone here lives in the past
In a golden age of bliss
Living in our own versions of the past
Living in a version of what it all meant
Ghosts of what once was
Before the revolution
Before the loss
Before we packed our bags and left
Before, before, before
When we were all made of gold….

Man of the City
Put red crosses all over my calendar
jam my luggage
til ‘tis too heavy to heave
I wanna be sure I won’t leave

Prepare hot meals
anything warm
for our factory-stomachs
let us first lounge & rest
in the shade of our jungle-lounge
hidden away from the omnipotent eyes
of our western lives.

Forest Nocturne
this drama hums birched, blue,
and pine behind winter-closed doors
where raccoons and rabbits still.
i remember the evening’s autumn
cathedral when amber light
massed in prayer above. i
played over the under of your body.
don’t think Nietzsche would be
angry because under
i explored this penumbra’d path
round a temporary pond jewelled
with drake and hen lusty
in spring swell—winter’s death
finding level.

Beloved Mother
What I want to write
is that I am
and I can not stop being
I want to give back everything you have given me, mother.
And thanks to you I am far away again in New York
But I’ll be fine. Do not worry
A poem for you, mother
is the least I can do
turning my love into words.
Here’s a bit of me and you

It rained in your day today
for you mother. I am ashamed
I can not give you more.