There was a ghost with not a name
only a face and a familiar face
in a familiar place which turned
out to be the ghostliest of place
The ghost could talk and asked
the same question over and over
and each time the ghost asked and
with each nonanswer I became more
of a ghost.

I'm in no mood
to ghostwrite anybody else's suicide note.
It takes balls to compliment
the pallid dominatrix
on the color of her lipstick,
so I expect a little something in return,
compensation for all those years
of polite insincerity.
Look to the sky.
God perfected loneliness long
before we got to it.
To pursue it further
is just inventing the wheel again.
I'm up to here with sadness, yet
I sense there's a lot more room.
Look to the sky. Let the music swell.
I'm in no mood
for anything but.

My first memories are of water. A lone fishing cabin off the coast of a lake on a cold high-winded December morning. Above, purple geese dot the sky. On the horizon, something dissolves. A man speaks to me from below the water, then broken glass scatters green all over the shore and an eye stares back at another eye. A mother cuts up her son. A father turns blood into water. Shrimpers work their trawls pulling up six legged gar fish, only mildly human. A cormorant dries its wings on a wharf. An explosion, its eye unraveling, leaves a residue of gold. Then another image of my losing arms and legs and regaining them momentarily...dolphins begin to sing and take me out far into the sea, to the very edge of the sea.

After a three-day drunk, I
finally showered...
washed the smell of you away
the smell, lust, compassion, booze, confusion, energy electricity, your smell, I'm

walking barefooted on a razor blade tightrope
with a pool of sharks waiting to
catch me if I fall, and

alive feels like this
alive feels like this,
alive feels like 3 am in someone else's bed, feeling
the tiny pin prick goose bumps raising on your
thigh as I touch you, alive
feels like picturing her home sleeping, everything ok in the world,
alive feels like every moment I've ever been afraid of and searching them out

all the small
details
tiny pieces of
life we might otherwise over look, run away from, deny
feels like alive, feels like
walking barefoot on a razor blade tight rope

you had walked
like dried red roses on a victorian floor
through life, hiding, and hiding still while it's no secret
your voice is so much louder then their ears
your you is so much bigger then their fears and
they don't fit so well on you

it looks like
death, and this
feels alive, I feel alive

Did I want to lose it all?
no.
but taking the risk felt like alive, and I
wouldn't have changed a moment to
walk on by

alice is like a little bird
who flits, flies, and flutters
amidst the pine trees

she sings 'lookatmeee' 'lookatmeee'
i can turn, twirl and twist
like a sparrow or a chickadee

Yesterday in Brooklyn
The wind blew a man down,
Down, down, down,
Like Alice's rabbit,
Into a hole so deep
There exists pleasures
Not found beneath the sun.
Of course it's dark,
But you adapt,
Like those little fish that live in caves,
Eyeless, but happy,
No longer evolving into forms
That threaten one another.

Above, the gaping crowd gathered
At the hole,
Calculating velocity and impact.
Police came,
But no one knew anything
Except there was a wind
And the earth opened.
A child said
You must go down and get him,
But the police cordoned off the area,
Making access illegal.

Behind the black bar
the brown bar man
pours clear beer. No.

At the brown bar
The black barman
snaps a painful rag. No.

Eager young man flashes teeth
beneath shadowset eyes shot blood red
whispers to drink. No.

The blue girls are teasing their hair
gearing up for
ice-colored alibis. No.

An old man at a corner table
clocks you with one eye. No.

For a week there, I was maybe fifteen,
My father's favorite word was nugatory.

"Mr. Vachovetz
There's been an accident.
I'm sorry
Your wife is dead."

cause its ugly and it smells
and it has pimples and bad breath
because it is angry and won't tell
you why,
this is a poem that doesn't trust you 'cause
you are all liars and you
have stolen everything I love,

so good-bye to you who wanders here,
I will never talk to you,
no matter how loud you beg, or wail or
complain, or remind me of promises I made.

Well all my promises are off,
I hereby cancel them,
sorry if you don't like it
actually I hope you don't like it
In fact I'm gonna sit here and smile thinking how you don't like it

No one's gonna like this poem
because it doesn't give a damn
because it stopped bathing weeks ago,
because it is too tired to listen to you
because it wants to be left alone.

My ivory tower
reeks of whale
no matter
how many times
she scrubs it
down
with sea salt.

Under Words was the title of the book
beneath your elbow;
hair and forehead beneath
your hand, white-bellied paper arching up
under the point of
your ink pen—writing lists
when,

lifting your cup from
its saucer,
the truth peeked out from under your eyelids; laughing,
you held one palm above the steaming contents

and you said (covering it)
"Blankets
We'll need blankets tonight;
It's sure to be cold."