poem

 Bloodwork

The doctor has ordered blood work. Vials and vials of tests. They take so much blood you feel dizzy. They give you a snack. When you call for the results she refers you to a specialist. He shakes his head in disgust and redirects you to the proper subspecialist. It takes 6 months to nail down an appointment. In the meantime your blood counts fluctuate. You laugh and cry and rage. The price of gas dominates the front pages. None of your friends ever had to give blood. Something seems amiss. On the day of your appointment you get lost in the parking lot. But there were never any spaces. The valet is rude and demands to see your papers. You never see your car again. Just inside the building you have to hand over everything you own. Your pens and poems and scraps of receipts. Your wallet. Your keys. The list of names to contact when you’ve passed. The password to an account containing $17. The matches from a restaurant in the valley.  Your phone. Your memories. The waiting room is a large hall with a high arced ceiling made out of treated wood like a midwestern non-denominational church where the pastor plays the guitar. The chairs are all broken. The line for the check-in spirals around the room 3 times like a chambered nautilus. A man behind you is crying. He keeps saying I’ll never leave over and over like the words to a morning birdsong. None of us actually do, says the sparrow behind him. When it’s finally your turn at the window you find out your appointment has been cancelled. She tells you to go back to the end of the line. The look on your face halts the clouds. Her finger hovers over the button to summon security. But the doctor feels bad. He remembers what it was like.  He ushers you into a special room where you wait and wait. Here, the walls are pure white and the ceiling looks like an upside down well. The only way out is to jump straight up as high as you can and hope you land in water. 

9/28/26

poem

 Weather

No wonder I bury it.

When it surfaces

Everything breaks

Like porcelain figurines—

Delicate, but fierce beasts

Barely bridled on narrow muntins.

Shame passes through 

Me like the militant winds

Mistling down from northern lakes

In a hail of steel arrows.

I’m never ready for it

No matter how often 

It winces my defenses.

Just the other day,

Startled by a howling squall,

It bucked the bit

And dragged me 

Where it wanted to anyway.

How quickly a small crack

In the frozen foundation zig-zags

To the opposite shore

And we all fall in.

It’s best to relax

As it moves through you,

Let it have its way with you

Like any regular weather.

Then when the sun

Pulls back the shades

And shines down on your life—

Look around for fresh sediment

That’s how you bury it 

9/28/26

poem

 God Complex

My glutes are nobody’s business

I’m everything I purport to hate

Trees are not property. Nor the stone nor the

The rushing winds.

Look you’re a man now

And I haven’t finished 

Telling you everything I know.

Only one tree is left

The others have been evicted

Absence pending appeal. 

When you come back here

Someday you’ll find

I never stopped trying.

In a way we’re all biding our time

Waiting for the great technological breakthrough

That obviates the necessity of our own lives.

In my dream home the staircases

Are all spirals. Straight up, straight down

Curving round and round 

Until I’m just where I started 

Only higher or lower.

When the pilot light goes out

You can either call a professional

Or get down on your belly 

In the haunted musty basement 

And ignite it yourself.

The theme for Christmas this year

Is the O. Henry story 

Where I suddenly become very lazy 

In order to spend more time with you

While, unbeknownst to me, you 

Take on a second job in order to afford

To take the certifying exam 

That, if passed, will allow you 

To come to the hospital and work

As my personal surgical assistant.  

To salvage the holiday season, 

I give up alcohol in order

To be on my best behavior

While you agree to laugh at all

My mean-spirited, unfunny jokes. 

That woman will never be enough!

Says the woman who will never

Be entirely satisfied herself.

One teaspoon of total protein

Three pinches of the salt

That dries on the crook of your neck 

After you’ve been working out.

On the down low I have been

Lifting some weights myself

Focusing on biceps and pecs

So I can overhear some kid say

Hey, he looks pretty good

For an old guy.

After hours of deep critical thinking

I have decided to save only the photographs 

Of me taken in black and white.

If I start with geology

And then move on to higher maths 

(While sprinkling in St Ambrose of Milan

With a spritz of Julian of Norwich)

I will have become the most interesting 

Grandpa no one listens to, of all time. 

I would have liked to have changed the world

For the good but

Nobody ever asked me that.

I would have said— just give me that chance!

Like a prodigal son whose

Father now suffers from dementia.

Then I could prove that failure 

Is also a great redeemer.

Yessir, I take full responsibility

For everything that has happened 

Lay your sins upon me 

All is forgiven

9/20/26

poem

 The Gift

When it’s first received

We play with it 

Like a toy

Then we want it to be just like

Everyone else’s toy.

So we dress it up 

In costumes and wigs.

Paint on a new face.

Voila! We can all pretend 

To have fun together! 

Then comes a long period of

Growing very attached to it 

No, we realize, it isn’t just like

Everyone else’s.

So we treasure it. Protect it.

Seal it in a laminated box.

Tend to its every shrieking need.

You have to. To save this world

You’ve come to think of as home. 

But it isn’t fun anymore.

Then one day you see it 

In a brand new light and fall in love

All over again, only this time you’ll 

Do it right, not like the last time.

This time you see it doesn’t belong

To you. It’s everyone’s. 

Your error is a common illusion.

Hearing this articulated out loud

Reduces you to ictal laughter

Which, if you’re lucky, 

Goes on for quite a long while

Until you settle down and start

Paying closer attention

To everything that surrounds it.

Then, just before giving it back

You play with it

Like a toy

9/20/26

poem

 Versions

In one version of events 

I sold what I could and gave

The rest away in exchange 

For one single moment

Of absolute clarity.

Then I found a clearing

In the woods 

Where I set up camp

And waited for it 

And waited for it 

To never come.

In the other version 

I locked it all away

In a secret drawer

And swallowed the key.

Every night I’d tug

On the handle 

To make sure it was safe.

In the fake version

I had lost my faith

And started to wear

A crown of qualms 

That pressed new sulci 

Deep in the folds of mind

In my version 

I tiptoe around the edges

Of an infinite series

Of abyssal trenches

Without either falling 

Into the dark fathoms 

Nor rising to the surface

To breathe 

9/20/26

poem

 Mr Handball

Dad was happiest down on the court

Surrounded by 4 concrete walls with me

Up in the balcony watching every shot.

I sat with mistresses in the bleachers

Next to half drunk men

Who had lost in the first round

He was the Ohio Open division

State champion

In 1979 

The year before, the Canadian National runner-up.

He keeps his trophies in boxes

Which follow him wherever he goes

One match I pissed a yellow tracing down the back wall 

and they had to call a time out to clean it up.

One tournament I fell in the locker room while he was showering 

and woke up straightjacketed to a rigid backboard

while they stapled my bleeding scalp.

Then he had to move far away,

Too far to watch me when it was my turn to play.

Then the distance got so far 

Neither of us knew where to look.

In the hell I imagine for him

He’s condemned to spend eternity

In a damp

 poorly lit 

YMCA

Picking up wet towels, 

Mopping the sweat soaked hardwood floors.

In the heaven I envision 

He’s up there in the balcony

Watching me dive for killshots

No one else would ever try to get.

Whenever I look up between points

He smiles

And pumps his

Fist

poem

 Holocene

Relax!

Touch some grass, they say.

So I lay down on my back

And watched a series of clouds

Slide past on an ocean of blue mantle

Like tectonic plates sliding to dooms

At the bottom of a distant trench.

Then I saw a white jet pass through 

The solid core of the earth

And suddenly it was clear—

Everything here comes from the sun.

When I went back to work

It was no longer the holocene,

Not a trace of a hospital seen.

Strange plants and a burning in my chest

Confirmed my worst suspicions—

In the grand scheme of it all

Each life, at most,

Is a minor orogeny erased 

Over the course of a single,

Uneventful,

Late summer afternoon.

9/17/26

poem

 Win Some, Lose Some

Every poem both fails and succeeds

That is the nature of the business;

These reckless attempts 

To capture the flash of now 

As a series of changeless things.

It would be a mistake 

To consider it ossified,

Fossilized in sandstone

Someone stumbles upon

In a road cut while broken down

On the freeway to whatever happens

Just before you get to Enlightenment.

It moves as you move.

If you allow it, it will follow

You wherever you go

Like a dead religion haunting

Its living, breathing god

9/17/26

poem

 Moon Phases

The moon was a suture needle
That lost its thread
And all the constellations fell apart. 
The moon was a sideways smile
Some asshole turned into an emoji
That means “I don’t give a fuck”.
The moon was a finger nail clipping
Yellowing behind the electric toothbrush.
The moon was a smudge 
Of thumb dusted in chalk.
The moon was a pocked face 
Pretending to sleep, 
Too ashamed to show
The sad in his eyes.
The moon was my best attempt
At drawing a perfect circle.
The moon was a strange glyph
Signaling a sudden shift
In the perception of being.
The moon was the last lick 
Of a flame you no longer
Have fuel to feed.
The moon was brand new,
A dark hole in the fabric
Of lightlessness.
The moon was eclipsed,
A forgotten toy 
Rusting in the backyard.
The moon was a friend
I hadn’t called in years.
The kind of friend who
Always sounded happy 
To hear from you. 

9/17/26

poem

 Death Day

Like birthdays, everyone gets a deathday

Lucky is the man who senses its arrival

Usually by then he’s old enough

To have lost all interest in birthdays,

That old traditional occasion

By which we celebrate the living

With gatherings and balloons 

And presents and cakes

And so he meets this new dawning 

With unexpected excitement 

Grateful to have been gifted

So much unearned life 

That even the end could be celebrated

Knowing it is a celebration

He will only get to experience once.

But nobody ever celebrates a death day 

When we’re gone, preferring the old

Familiarity with the day we were born 

To mark the memory of their mourning.

Most survivors can’t even remember 

The exact day their loved one died. 

My mom visits the grave of her mother

Every year on her mother’s birthday.

What about the day she died, I ask

When was that? And what was it like?

Oh, I don’t know, she says.  It was cold.

It must have been winter

I’m happy to start a new tradition

Where we celebrate the actual deathday

Not like we would a birthday, of course

With the humble good cheer, smiles and bonhomie

Nor does it have to be

So dreary and somber gray 

Hours in the stacks of the university library

On a Saturday night preparing a 10 page paper 

On the ceaseless nature of human suffering.

No, the target is somewhere in between.

Instead of ice cream and cake

We suck on fingers of ginger.

Instead of ribbons and bows

Everything is as beautiful 

As it is.

Instead of gifts 

An old empty wallet pressed

In the shape of his bony hips. 

Instead of singing happy deathday

Someone tells the story of the rental

Car lost in the maze of Madrid

Set to the swing

Of a Bourbon St dirge.

Instead of blowing out the candles

We let the fires burn all night.

9/17/26