Nostos

Coming over the hill that no floor feeling 
I haven’t always known the right way to say I miss you
too many suitors in the head. Too many beds
whose boards fall apart during sex, a closet apartment 
in a mythic city. I made a boat out of poetry and I rode it.
The mind of the chorus speaks in its divisions, ropes run round 
my waist like omens, ears open up and the music rushes in.
I have been to many fences and poked a finger 
or a tongue through the slats and been bitten.
I have thrown rocks at cops and powerlines
chased dogs that wanted to be caught
conversed with giants and ghouls, I have never left the country, 
I have read some books, watched far more movies
you asked me for the ones that changed my life
and now we’re always here, three hours later. Home 
was a place that existed to be left and returned to 
having crucibled down, vocation a rope around my neck
then my finger, then my heart. Dante never read Homer
but he felt the hole left behind. I made a boat out of poetry, 
perhaps ill-advised, but the future asks no council
only petty results, unheroic, pathetic as possible
I mean that poetry has taken nothing from me
this world would not take anyway, poetry loves me like a dog
the funicular of time fuzzes up my ears 
like a mirror full of blossoms, the hiding under pews or in the belltower dark
a cabbage full of love or a new way of talking to crows
and falling asleep on the parkway back from school
nights by the rocking chair dreaming
I have returned so often to where it started
onward and upward I ask myself the password 
and the porch door slides to meet me
put down my rumpled coat and lay in the soft yellow loft
I wonder what I could give the myth back tonight
what I’d sing to the boy who left long ago with a whistle
and came back taller and quickened and giddy as the stars

Terror is a giant / It is the color of your eyes

Through my worries of being unseen I took a drag
out my window. I was naked. I was fresh
from that Smith boy with his very sweet cat. It must be very lonely
to be a man. And the window letting in Springtime
allegedly. Allegedly it had snowed while we made love
or whatever that was. I miss the thick blonde fur 
that covered my arms when I was virginal and 17.
All poems feel lonely tonight. Only poets feel sane,
my personas coming out of me like bolts of green light
I can’t get in front of. At night,
pre-pleasure is the only real thing. I’m told
good art can’t replicate it, but still it fills its million little capsules
with something red for anyone to swallow. That’s enough some nights
but not right now. I felt a menace, asking the boy zipping up my jumpsuit,
tying my boots for me to leave what he’ll do 
in a couple months when he graduates, and he shrugs me off,
takes a pill, goes to bed. It’s none of my business 
what people leave behind. Oh I too 
have lived my life as a drama, John, the thrill and shame
of a man on the MTA, acid breakdowns in the park,
the girl whose amphetamines I never took,
addictions I admired
until they took them from me. I love you.
I really do, speaking your poems through my throat,
full of smoke I love you tonight. You keep me going
on like a green-eyed girl on the night I finally quit 
this strange facade I’ve insisted on running.
The wind feels yellow. It flies from my window
like a footless bird. I smoke naked, gray-eyed
and small as you never could have been, or were, or wanted,
and not even God could own these stars

Not Me

Arthur 
woke me up
hammering 
that cello again
a sudden chill
I stomach 
each morning
A’s eyes 
still shut 
her adorable
eyebrows
the two little gashes, naked, hickied I
love her 
though it’s still unsaid
so who knows
at first 
I thought 
she tried too hard 
but I think I get it
I get it and I shake her
awake to say
I’m leaving
her 
and her associations 
there that tremble
her lip gets 
waking
God
or before she cums
the thinness
of her arms
almost a waif
her interest in tilapia
and video games 
and giving head
she’s not
my girlfriend 
might 
as well be
an aspiring pornstar
spectacle being 
the oldest profession for girls like her 
and me
she says I’m a muse 
I say you’re cute
but fuck off
tug on underwear
earrings, unitard, carhartts
and tear
the bridges in this town
are no goddamn good
I need a copy of your book 
for class
I text you on the bus
get frantic 
for a drink with Joe
get nervous, it’s noon
the best ideas come
flooding past houses
bright at the legion
we swap stories 
with Stan
with no front teeth
whose by-line is Noah
Body,
columnist, drifter
he trades me a cigar
for a poem and a spirit
I read him the one about my uncle
and he asks how long
it took to write
and I tell him when I woke
it was kinda just
there        
lost toe 
and everything
or maybe that means
24 years, or nearly 60
by then you text back I’ll see
what I can do
Thanks
I’m losing my patience for poets 
who don’t have torsos,
heads, or sex 
in poems, poets
who can’t stomach anything
heavier than wind
through trees, I need 
a dock to sit on
and appreciate this stein 
of yuengling
2.50
the price makes the taste
so much better and I wonder
what I can do 
with a cigar though
I guess
there’s only one thing to
do and wonder 
if A is in my bed
with the nightmares 
about getting disappeared
by the psych ward again
as I chomp on
cheese balls and wasabi peas 
coming back I’m flavored air
Stan’s cigar
stinking holes in my pocket
and by the time I’m back 
no A
quit my socials
for good
ignore skinheads
marching on Ohio, think
of Leonard
who’s probably shoveling gravel
or wrecking some masochist
in Springfield or dealing with
their senile landlord
I think about them
putting out 
to pay for A’s surgery 
my typewriter
I worry about publishing,
money, and B,
walk upstairs
light some incense,
make a cross, browse the treeline
for animals, auspices, whatever
all the people in this town 
love parades and hate their fathers 
I guess 
I could be
one of them now
but that’s not me
I’m working hard
to love 
as much as I can
my astrologer tells me
I have problems with
boundaries between my body
and my work 
and that was fine 
when life 
was a poem 
but now I’m angry at the bridges 
and the psych wards and the poets
I’m angry 
at the distances uncovered
by life, my analyst
tells me
less queen of wands,
more swords
and she’s right
I’m out of cash
but have a cigar and
it’s late, I’ve been drinking,
need a switch and
make a list 
of things that would kill 
a Victorian street-waif out of shock
I-91, Death Grips, surround sound,
Suspiria (‘77), the MTA, Miles Davis, 
Douglas Kearney, Gertrude Stein,
sirens, Videodrome,
Ibrahim’s lamb
over rice, half a bowl 
of flavor blasted goldfish, 
the St. Louis Arch, Kobayashi,
Kansas, and me
I’m very wistful tonight 
for Xi’an famous foods
and a bench to make out on
when a man says
kids these days
don’t know
how to dance 
I say learn the violin 
you fuck 
I’m great at running
I’m great at kissing
on the go
don’t talk 
about my body as if
I’m not flammable
they’re burning books
in Missouri, Texas, Kentucky,
and I’m here worrying 
I’m too sensitive
and puffing 
on Stan’s bad cigar, Stan
with no front teeth
worrying this poem 
will never get published
how dull, how relatable
I’m tired
of being broke, it is late
but I’ve got the hang
of cigars 
and the bridges still drive me
crazy, Arthur
is pounding my head again
a promise
I’ll take this time
and love you with it
on repeat I miss Charlie
trying to fuck me
on the bench after that hookup
that broke me
purple, I miss
convulsions
exes rode
as they re-lived
rotten childhoods
I miss losing my lighter
each week to men 
we make live on the street
the two hours
in my van where you and I talked manically
your sneakers
on the dash as you asked
about my father and New York
and you told me you wished
your friends could get it together 
the thing all my lovers have
in common is that we are all afraid
and we are mostly still here
like miracles
I don’t expect anyone 
to try and explain it
I expect them to listen 
to the river beneath me
behind me
caught in constant passing 
I expect you to count 
the lack of stars
like leaking buckets of glue 
I expect you to learn
when I say this shit
worries me
having a problem-body
in America
I only rage 
in quiet rooms
Eileen
I’m not expansionist,
I don’t want to be
a threat or intimidate
but I do
I woke up 
to Arthur who died
30 years ago last Spring, 
the same time my father
entered the ministry this 
first night of Fall
I’m smoking a cigar
like a newly minted dad, it is late 
and I check my phone
to see your text amazingly
I just got it and I love
you for that, the pdf and 
your faith in me, 
Eileen,
I don’t know what to do
I’m lonely
tonight practicing
Qabalah on the Calvin Coolidge bridge
and what a stupid fucking name,
who was that? I’m working
up the nerve to be more 
of a bitch, and me
and Louise Glück aren’t even 
in the same profession
I’m an oracle
or an alien or a fraud
some days 
my body feels like a column 
of boiling wind
rushing deep through 
my willows and
groin and 
God
today 
I fucking love it