poem

 The Mixer

Every good novelist is a good conversationalist

You find them at parties thronged by crowds

Shouting out answers to every question he poses 

Bad novelists are just monologists

By the end of the night their audiences

Have all dwindled away

Poets? Poets are good to have around

Depending on the quality of the verse

But don’t think of it as a free pass 

Outside, misted in the darkness, bad poets

Make the sound of bony fingers

Tapping on thin windows 

The good ones stand alone in corners

And wait for the silence that arises

When the stories have all ended

Just when we think there’s nothing

Left to say the poet comes forward

To salvage the evening 

He takes the awkward silence and squeezes

It into a compact ball that fits in your palm 

And before long

We all begin to hear the beat 

Of it bouncing, a sound 

That has been there all along 

Everyone is already dancing

1/11/26

poem

 Writer's Group

I’m in a group of other

Failed writers who meet

On Tuesdays in coffee shops

To share our latest scribblings.

You’re not allowed to laugh

Or tsk or scoff when someone

Reads but you can ask questions.

This is supposed to be a safe

Space where wounds are revealed.

Roll up a sleeve

Show me your chest.

I’m the guy who always pisses

Someone off by asking how

It got there, what caused it, and did

It really hurt and they always say

You should be able to

Tell by the shape of the scar

1/11/26

poem

 Side Angle Side

There are many ways of proving a triangle

Exists. Side angle side.  Angle angle side

Angle side angle. Side side side.

If you put your left leg here

And prop your right ankle

Straight as you can, on my shoulder,

My body, ramrod stiff,

Forms the hypotenuse

Of a right triangle architects 

Of the future will use

To design structures holding 

Up everything left of value.

No one can draw a perfect circle

But we insist they also exist

1/11/26

poem

 Levels of Maturation

1. I’m a special boy

2. I’m a piece of shit

3. I’m actually a little of both

4. Forget about me. It’s boring

5. Tell me about you

6. I think you’re very special

1/11/26

poem

Sleigh

There’s an empty sleigh in our front yard

No fake presents stacked in back

No reindeer team harnessed to the front

We never got around to decking it out.

So it sits out there as film school metaphor

For the hollowed-out decadence

American Christmas has become.

Even morons are insulted 

By the heavy-handedness of it all,

Rage honking their horns as they drive by.

One night I tried to sit in it, a little drunk,

Fell over and broke it.

Laying there in the snow, in my underwear,

Pin-nippled, ball-shriveled,

I epiphanied a vision of meaning

While the stars swarmed above me

Like a buckshot black screen. 

Since that night we decided to tell

Some people the empty sleigh represents

A void we’ve all given up trying to fill

And others it’s there to symbolize

The one person we all notice is missing

Just when the rest of the world insists

We ought to be most happy and joyous.

I hope you don’t ever get what you want

Most things are conjured myths

Quick to melt in your flushed hands.

I tell her it means nothing, really.

She whispers, in my ear, an answer

We now tell ourselves

If either of us asks.

I had never thought of it that way.

Wouldn’t you like to know?

poem

 The Seminar

Who are we?

The question haunts the audience

Like a pending diagnosis.

But the doctor has called, wanting 

To discuss your recent results.

Is now a good time to speak?

You step outside the room, your work, your life

For the moment it takes to receive the fate.

Everyone knows the answer from the beginning.

The seminar goes on as if it were someone 

Else’s turn to speak.

More people are arriving.

There’s coffee in the back

Next to the sign-in sheet

1/11/26

poem

 Black Cloud

Some surgeons are black clouds.

Disaster follows. Thunders down

From the dark mountains

In waves of cumulonimbus.

Sturm und drang. Waves of pain,

Shivers and rigors. 

Perforated colon in a cirrhotic

Internal hernia in a hostile abdomen.

Mesenteric ischemia.

Intractable bleeding.

They wait in the call rooms

Like angels of darkness

Who emerge when beckoned,

Wings extended to block out 

The warmth of a sun 

Only they ever feel

1/11/26