Decisions

We were just kids in prison,
groping bars of angry uncertainty:
I am right; we are right.
Just kids in prison, alone facing
the stares of the innocent.

In prison, and just enough sustenance
for ninety days in hell. Hell, we both said,
and consumed each other lavishly,
pleasure marked in paths
like cookie crumb trails. Hell for ninety,
heaven for one: we drank deeply
drowned fear in contentedness.

We were just two kids in prison,
too young to imagine
teeth dropping from desiccated gums
hair laying limp across dusty foreheads.

It was worth it, right?
I am right. We were right.

Ghosts

We last spoke the eleventh of may.
(Lovers never know the last kiss is the last.)
To us it was just one more day
discussing the drifting vectors of our lives,
contemplating impending demise.

Loving you made me wish
I'd never loved before;
made me want to diminish
everything that came before you.

But "her" was not always you, my love.
That pronoun was once elsewhere directed,
and left behind the kind of memory
that leaves ghosts when killed.

It isn't fair to forget; after all,
a love is a love no matter how small
and now that you've joined the ranks
of the dearly departed,

why should your ghost take precedence?

Banana-Handled Memory

I have ridden my memories
like a bicycle one time
too many, and now they are
paint-faded rust-laden
lackluster rubbish no
longer solid colors
but for the brick-
red of iron oxide.

Her Keeper

She was my fountain, my muse;
I was full of her lips grazing across mine,
brimming with hips consciously restrained.
She was not a deep well of joy,
but a wild ocean of an angel--
and I was special too,
because I knew.

I drank deep of happiness, for
the keeper of the source never thirsts.
I continued long after she left,
laid aside without solace but
to squander my remaining fortune.

Then with poetry I scraped it
like jam from a jar,
somehow not realizing
that when it was gone
I would be empty.

Ode to Spaghettios

It's all I'm good at these days--
the systematic input of calories.
A screen and a spoon and I forget
what I cannot input: the smell
of your hair after a shower,
the playful battle for the top lip.

You'd be surprised
at how much I like eating,
and how little I enjoy it.

Television

Distraction at the rate of
twenty-four frames per second
of sleeping-limb numbness
of pureed passion screen-bleeding
into hollow heads or hollow hearts
like a tire-plug, just enough to last
until that heart or head
can be replaced entirely.

Of all the things I own,
I love my television the best.

Dealing with Hard Times

basically I am just
your average superhero
when the stars align
and the pips tumble well

I have had my
square-inches of spot-light
and my
telephone booth moments

so when fate sees fit
on occasion
to tear my wings
in mid-flight
I hold the scowl
drink the whiskey raw

because if everyone flew
the skies would be too crowded.