Eels

I’ll get a tattoo of an eel
for mystery and origin
in honor of Freud’s bane
ironic obsession with
dick shaped animals and
an overactive scalpel
but it isn’t the mystery
it’s the plot twist
an excuse for self-deception
I live in negligent opposition
of what makes me
and regimented chaos to conform
eating time as a commodity then
panicking when I’m forced to stand still
itching for the freedom of
nonchalance and cavalier fantasies
yet my life is full of things that demand my attention
eels would never live like this
slipping into the Sargasso Sea
Taylor told me once that I was an enigma
and I wanted to bathe in the recognition
I’ll return to the sea and consort with the eels

Bedlam

instability
is the picture of a scorpion on the back of my shirt
and thoughts of a hard left turn into the highway barrier
the rosy bloom of annihilation
screaming “There Goes the Fear” with The Doves
until I believe it straight faced corporeal
instability
on the course of my life
I’d like to get lost in someone else again
I’d like to lose myself in the wreckage
and have something to believe in
like faithful bedlam between us
cut softly into the frame of days I used to have
speeding on the backroads
looking at houses and imaging my life in them
looking for an accident around a curve
with the windows down
and the air conditioning on to soothe the humidity
with you in the passenger seat
telling me I don’t make sense
and I squeeze your hand
as it rests in your lap

Ornamental

Sedona
Santa Fe
Taos
obsession is a road trip I’ll never take
calling in the name of Edward Abbey, in the voice of myself in a dream.
it's the year of the desert and ornamental longing
post-luck clarity in memories of the first stop from home in a long list of firsts.
you never forget your first life, and the distance between adolescence and New Mexico.
my first love was a bombing to combat loneliness that circles back every few years
a reminder that I’m as dead as I am alive,
like former lives abandoned in boxes and hangers at Goodwill.
those are my old uniforms, and I don’t like telling people who I used to be.
a thousand futures from a single past, lost
in the perfume of places I’ve been dripping noxious from my eyes
wide open facing west.
you never forget your first desert
the sunset’s yolk sliding into the sagebrush
and the spirit of desolation sneaking years off your life
with cigarettes in social circles.
speeding north on 54
there is no way to read the cracks in the road against the heat
the only surprise on the highway is the constant distance of the horizon,
80mph as far as forever, wide and dry
El Paso
Orogrande
Alamogordo

Solitaire

The plants in the dim upstairs pool room surprised me with their lack of atrophy, growing in the kind of space you expect to be decorated with the lingering fingers of Parliament, clouds and beer breath. I’ve been wrong before. This is life in the desert, and the landscape reminds me that I live in a state of patrolled vulnerability, open at every angle and fortified against the future. You were effortless, the solitaire of Albuquerque, and reminded me of an old dream, something like Dean and Sal. Something like a freight train into places that only exist on gas station postcards. Something like the sun falling low enough into the horizon, drunk on its fire, that you can’t remember if it’s dawn or dusk and you realize they are the same. The train never stops but I got off somewhere between Florida and The Black Hills (deadlands/badlands). You were soft, and asked for things with no thought of apology, a hand, a vast collection of sweaters on your 40th, and company in the sandy hours of fire before night. Time was slow and undisclosed, sitting under the bar library on a one-side booth, watching the room undress while we wait for them to call our names.

Unrest

thinking of buying a cemetery plot
even though I want to be burned
so anyone can visit and
remind me I was a person
because I routinely forget
to slow down
and take it in
with that one breath that feels like home
to bring me down in the dirt
come see me at the stone
and say hi
because I’m probably going to die
doing something I don’t even like
and I’m so scared of missing out
on anything 
that I’ll miss everything
and live in fevered nostalgia 
for my final act of unrest

Stirring

changing of the seasons make me impulsive
I’m stirring too much
to keep up with myself
mad at the sun for its audacity
when it’s 70 degrees
but I planned on it being 42
and have nothing to aspire to

now I’m free to overcompensate
with imagination
and longing on the porch
when dark drank the day
burning pink into everyone’s eyelids
leaving us sun clean
and open for the evening

I poured whiskey directly
into the wine lacing my glass
vestiges of the last thirty minutes
and I’ve moved on to
the idea of traveling as an escape
I want to go everywhere
I won’t go anywhere
that’s too many destinations to overthink

Catskills

you made The Catskills sound like a second home
the way you spoke of traveling,
and showing up unannounced in corner mountain bars
upstate appearances
and growing up at hardcore shows in Brooklyn
I hear The Warsaw gets a little weird
with sketchy dudes, sketchy arms in the air
you wanted to smoke in the rain
before the night evaporated
under both our mid-life bedtimes
and the last of our words dried off
in the April dark

Lobotomy

I’ve been writing the same thing for three years
I’ve been looking at time
I’m finding the time in the people and circling back in rewind
I’m flat out bored of my own shit
wake up, seek shelter
stare at the sun for the chaos, controlled by the holes in my fingers
stacked horizontal with one eye closed to burn a hole in my mind
like a sunlight self-lobotomy
in ode to generational anxiety, indecision, Ativan all the time
but I only like the idea of chaos
a girl on the internet said I should embrace it
because my birth chart is an astrologists wet dream
spent youth, driving around
half-life, strung out
does anyone else hate being asked what their dream job is?
my dream is an apocalypse of hobbies that no job could fix
my dream is a slow morning wondering on past lives
when I was a (flightless bird), probably
distracted, can’t get off the ground
I should ask the astrology girl

Inheritance

I must be cursed
A karma curse
It’s the only explanation
For never sitting still.
Headline news told me that
Half of the population has no internal dialogue
And half of all people say they’re happy
So what I’ve inferred
Is that half of Earth
Has chosen to ignore the narrator they know
In exchange for quiet interactions with the world
And yet
I am cursed,
With unsettled limbs of inheritance

Sunday After Six

a house in the Poconos
a house in Morocco
a house in Philly
are all places to hide
from the idea of my 9-5
when reality rears again
on Sundays, after six
you’ll find me wondering
if this is it
a place to live
a place to hide
a place to fuck
and a place
to rest my shit
pacing a track into the rented floor
in circles, within squares
to the sound of Summer Months on repeat
and conversations
with company I’ve just met

Slut Shorts

I was slutty before the shorts
now I’m a force
with tattooed thighs
and years of deprecating dialogue
strutting around
in my slut shorts

they were a source of power in the 80s
like Burt Reynolds
like Burt Reynolds mustache
like Burt Reynolds in a convertible
people thought that a single decade
could contain the power
of slut shorts

I wear them at home
I wear them at funerals
I wear them at coffee shops, dog parks,
  city blocks, bars, bakeries, rest stops, trains,
   gardens and cars
I wear them at Trader Joe’s
and everyone knows
me in my slut shorts

It’s almost spring
so it’s almost summer
and nothing can stop me
in my slut shorts

Potential

The sun doesn’t set on this side of the building,
but I can tell when the pink air is heavier than usual.
The hearts of the apartments across the street start to glow like
 stage bulbs, orange after the lights dimmed
 in effigy behind the scenes.

Everything outside my window fades around the ocher exterior
 in a filtered vignette.
The building, alive for seconds sucks my breath
 with the hope of never looking away and
 reminds me of my own fragility.

One summer when I was a kid
 I introduced a basketball to a bay window,
 and it shattered in the same way.
A thousand shards, naked in the afternoon.
Blinking with astounded expectation
 that let me in on a thousand secrets about
 the passage of time.
Years later, I learned that
 there is only one secret about time,
 and all those fractured eyes on me.

I was terrified of my potential.
Forced into existence with the
fright of possibilities.
Time versus potential,
means endless equations that made me hate math,
and through a thousand glasses
dancing the ground, I watched myself
alive in each one with my back against the wall.

Tonight, I’m staring out a window,
wondering what else I could be doing,
and in terrible love with everything I’ve seen.

Vigil

There’s nothing here
Nothing left to ease your mind
Five minutes at the bedside
Having half the conversation
And I’m only a visitor in
This little vigil over
The sound of your loud
Breath
Breaking the silence of the room
At regular intervals
There’s nothing left of you
And there’s nothing here to ease our minds

Rorschach

Rorschach waves, crashing out of sleep
    and I’m forced to look hard into the asymmetry of my pillows.
Two realities tethered to the center of my bed,
    I’m confused in the night, cautious in the light.
Two moons in a row on the cold cotton totem, awake in the wash of shapes,
    black against black.

Disposition

I always imagine that I’ll run into people from my past and hear about their life from the point where I disappeared.

And we could reminisce about how we were in love and things could’ve been different instead of difficult. A chance to celebrate old days in our new lives.

Airports are made for drinking, and talking to strangers while I recede from all the realities around me, deeply. A pool of nostalgia.

It’s lonely work to recall all the people you used to know.

I’ve got a morbid disposition, and all my hopes are about what I could have done instead of what I might do.