Will in the World

A quiet, pockmarked boy
born to a joyless man
in a humorless town.
He learned to ply the family trade
After lessons in Latin grammar --
Gloves for the nobles, the business
took a hit when the market fell
in the Midlands.

Would that you could split yourself
in two and satisfy both sides
of your soul.
You left home at midnight, you
couldn't bear to see the sadness
in his eyes compounded by betrayal.
And what strange creature slouches toward
London to be born?

The Loyal Man

The bonds that make men
can break them too. Your honor was a dagger,
made dull by time's procession. Your mind, dull the same.

What purpose did loyalty serve when you were
locked in chains? Were your promises a key
that granted freedom?

And rotting in a cell, with your pride raw,
an exposed lakebed, you called out again
for redemption.

Your voice had shrunk to the beat of a lamb.
Funny how farm animals talk.

Killer be killed

Death, in her own little way, can make a man bend the knee
years before his time comes to pass.
All the banal losses you take, from the cave as a slave.
Who's to say you're alive?

C+L

Which notes can I play
That would save you from sorrow
We might never know

The Only Thing

I got drunk on thick rum

and shared an intimate headspace with you.

When I asked to hangout on FB chat

Read 1:07 a.m. - No response.

I woke up with a hangover, a hard-on, and an irregular heartbeat

It’s a great time to be alive,

To know exactly when people decide to ignore you.

I love to talk about life and how we pass time,
and all the beautiful, minor ways we kill ourselves in passing.

Maybe I'm intolerant

You look eerie, like the Eiffel tower after an all-night bender and a bridal shower. You look mad selfish, like you sell fish and chips to the homeless but don't tell them you left the bones in it. You look like a crip when you walk, it's a trip when you talk, I know for a fact you come from a stable home but you act like you were raised in a deranged trailer park. You look a little nervous, like I might fuck around and permanently lodge my narrative in the second person, and then I could only ever refer to you in these verses -- that's the type of tension that sends thin-skinned clergymen to an early circus of hearses. I purse my lips for a minute, I don't want to diminish your significance or gloss over the accomplishments, but you're grasping around the apartment asking where the wallet is like you have a claim to the pottage gifts.

Concourse

The new you is 22 and swallows crystals to balance the mood,
but they don't work with your prescription, I think it's a serotonin malfunction.
When you eye this woman from your corner and bounce your legs, lick your lips,
you look like a coyote cannibal, you look lascivious, you cut the figure of a primal predator.
You don't approach because you'd rather not talk; instead you tuck it in for the night
and glue two eyes to two different screens and monitor your multimedia output.
Three channels -- plug up one, two others flow stronger. Plug up two, one flows strongest.
Relax your grip on the chain link for a second and consider the concentration.
Relax, man, relax.

Human swamp

Wake up mad, cum in your toilet bowl please.
Honey mustard stains mark the bathtub wall.
You keep waking up in a human funk,
Remember that feeling - waking groggy
after that mid-afternoon nap? When the sky
is heavy with purple and all those
familiar emotions weighed down by gravity?
You woke up feeling that three years ago,
sweaty neck in your dorm room, and since then
you've never been the same.

Pushing away that depressing Scottish novel,
you unravel your pants, as the afternoon sun pushes past.
You feel your penis and the sweat falls from the small
of your back, printing a Rorschach on the bed sheet
in the shape of a Brontosaurus rearing its head.

Are you still afraid? Are you dead yet?
Did you ever prove your point?
What can it mean to smell, I mean truly smell;
A human swamp?

Malcolm's multitudes

Malcolm always loved to say that people contained multitudes.

And we laughed him off with his books and philosophies and theories,

But he proved it that night in the hotel in Austin, leaning headfirst into

The toilet, throwing his guts in the bowl with the vodka fresh.

And that night, as you wiped the grease from your lips,

You told me about the night your babysitter took you aside

And showed you that you contained multitudes, too.

We left Malcolm crying on the floor of the bathroom of the hotel in Austin,

Staring into each other’s multitudes, chain smoking outside a Denny’s.

Early in the morning, we fell asleep in each other’s arms and destroyed each other with a human stink.