1

Want someone you cannot have.

Admit you are powerless
over the piece of your body
bouncing around behind your lungs
on a spring made from
melted down bottle caps
and aluminum cans.

2

Hesitate.

Know that believing in God
is just as effective as believing in love.
Both feel like hold yourself in
and only exist to people who remember
how to hope.

You forget:
you lost hope in the wind
last year, a bright red balloon
that floated up
to the dinner table
where God pours wine
for the people who remember him.

3

Get drunk. SoCo and Colt 45
make it easier to turn your will over
to the part of you that knows how to hate itself,
so drink up babydoll. None of this gets any easier.

4

It's time to take inventory.
Your kneecaps gave up on you
and now your legs are open safety pins
stabbing out from your hips. You have forgotten
your pride and you can thank step three for that.
You did it to yourself, little girl.

5

Write poetry. Know that no one will care about you
unless you make them. Wrap your sadness into
the eyelashes you find on your pillow that aren't yours.

6

Get into the bathtub. Shout
up at your balloon. Say I hope
God treats you better.
I'm sorry. I am so fucking sorry.
Turn on the water. Let it be cold.

7

Write letters to your kneecaps.
Beg them to come back
so that you can close your legs.

8

Stop pushing.
Make a list of the people you love
then cross off every name that didn't love you back,
that didn't know God, that got drunk,
that did the right thing.
Those left are the ones you don't know anymore.
They will not be in a supermarket
or a strip mall, they will not smile
when they see you staring,
they will simply leave.

9

Befriend the bathroom floor.

That spring is finally resting now,
only fluttering every time you trying to breathe,
so stop breathing.

10

Write letters to the open doorway.
Beg it to stop asking so many questions.

11

Pray
to the shower head.
Pretend it is a microphone
leading directly to that dinner table
where your balloon is drinking wine
and your kneecaps are skipped rocks
falling to the bottom of an undisturbed lake.

12

Write him a letter now.
Slip it under his door
when you think he is asleep.

Please,
don't be better than this.

I've got trick-playing knees that bend
backwards like the necks of ballerina swans
when I've had the highway for a lover too long.

I made it from Manhattan to Providence
on a quarter tank of gas and half a pack
of Pall Mall hundreds. Before today,
that would have been impossible.
But now, I've got arms like the wings of a 747
and when the window breath drags across my skin,
I fly in spite of the rocks in pockets, ones picked up
for every bed I've laid my head in.

There are the sharps that break bottles like blank stares,
break skin like eager fingernails. There are the gravel teeth,
that gnaw through the soles of my shoes, the ones covered
in the furnace's steel stringed nosebleed.
He burns rust into dust and grinds it into my neck
as if wishing for it hard enough would put us both
second star to the right and straight on
til midnight sidewalk dancing, pulling secrets
out of mothballs to stash them between couch cushions
so that when we sit on our hands we'd still be touching
each other in the most private of places.

I ran here lead footed, with the curb-stomped, bruised toes
of work boots in the window box. I had been loving the highway
but she had stopped loving me back. The furnace and I were sleeping
face to face, open closing bullfrog eyes and his steel stringed nosebleed
fell into the ridges of my sneakers, clotted there
like the music that furnace stirs into his bath water
and clotheslines out his Downcity window.
I find myself spluttering in summer air that glows
with the toxicity of neon signs and though I have stopped
dragging the lakes of my lungs I cannot summit hills
or cross thresholds without choking.

These days, I am only footfall. But sometimes feet carry you
more than hands ever could. This place has found its way into my shoes
like rocks skipping up from the sidewalk and even flying,
second star to the right and meringue with the pie filling clouds,
I am torn apart by broken glass and gravel teeth. I am playing slide
on that steel stringed nosebleed with the bullet casings of thieves' kisses.

We sit on our hands and our secrets and now our promises too
and the furnace spits music out the Downcity window
like brushing teeth without a sink
and we touch each other.

We pretend it's not the same thing as running away.

Sometime in the mid 80s guitarist Johnny Ramone of The Ramones ran off with Joey Ramone's wife, prompting Joey to write his hit, "The KKK Took My Baby Away"

Johnny I woke up
In the middle of the night last night
And my bed was cold.
Not just where she used to sleep
But the whole thing- you know
I've never been a warm guy.
My body is pulled so taught
My blood is in such high
Demand in so many places
My heart doesn't have the
Time to think about anything else.

But I looked out the window
And I saw the moon over the city
And I hated it, John.
I hated it because it looked like
Everything beautiful i won't ever have.
It looked like all the good things
That guys like you take from guys like me.
You know me, Johnny.
You know how hard it is for my type
To love somebody.

Difference between me and you
Is I'm smarter than you.
I'm smart enough to see how
Ugly almost everything is all the time.
That's why I don't mind looking
Like this- it's not my problem
If I'm as bent out of shape
As everything else pretends
That it isn't.
I'm smart enough to know
That ain't nothin gonna get better
Until everything goes to hell.

And you been playing that
Same song this whole time
Three chords and not one upstroke
And I told everybody that
It was punk rock and that
We were making a statement
And that you and I were in this
Together but the truth
Is that you're just one more
Too pretty dumb mother
Fucker who don't know how to
Do nothin that I didn't teach you.
You ain't even smart enough
To realize that pretty people
Such as yourself don't have
To work hard to be special
And you’re still not special, John.

I'm not like you, Johnny
I'm brave enough to hate the moon.
And I'm strong enough to punch
It out of the sky.

Loss
Is a strange
And complex language
That a person can only
Learn through immersion.
The vocabulary of paralysis
Of MRI of neuromuscular
The sentence structure
Of helping someone you love
Put on an oxygen mask.
These are things that I know
In a way that most people never will.
The nurses, the social worker,
The doctor, they come every day
To teach me things: bed rail
Feeding tube. Lab work.
Lately they’ve been trying
To teach me words
That I can say but that I can’t
Comprehend the meaning of.
Words like ventilator.
Infection.
 Hospice.
 Resistant Bacteria
I know the Precise grammar
In the injection of morphine
Under my mother’s tongue.

Finding out that she might
Make it through the summer
Was the happiest I’ve been
Since the wheelchair arrived
My family’s definition of good news
Changes every time her breathing
Gets shallower.

This is why my friends
Think that I’m completely
Impossible to talk to.
Every day, the language
Barrier grows and grows.
Soon, I guess, we’ll just
Have to stop talking.

There is a cardboard box
In the back of my fridge
That contains a dose of
Painkillers strong enough
To remove a person so far
>From their body so they don’t
Feel themselves die.
It’s called a Comfort Kit.
From this I have learned
The difference between
A euphemism and a lie.

From my family I learn new depths
Of familiar phrases. The complicated
Assertions of simple things like
I couldn’t sleep last night.
How is she today?
You need to leave the room.
She can’t move her legs.
She can’t breathe.

Every time my high school
Got bussed out to a funeral
The adults would sit me down
Afterwards and say
“The best thing you can do
For your parents is survive”.
So every day the odds
Of me being able to give my mother
The greatest gift
I could possibly give her increase.

Every time I visit I sit next to her bed
And we talk like we could still go
Out to dinner if we wanted to.
When I leave, I kiss her once
In a way that means
I will teach your grandchildren
To love you as much as I do.
And she kisses me four times
In a ways that say
Survive for me.
Survive
Survive
Survive

A head-on collision with the iceberg
would have saved the Titanic. Still a disaster,
of course – her first hundred feet telescoped
in, crushing people, allowing the ocean
entrance. But she could float with the first
four compartments flooded. The choice
made, the wrong one, was avoidance.
Avert disaster by swinging to the side,
let the iceberg scrape holes into the hull,
too many for the lackluster precautions
that tried to earn unsinkable.

But who among us would not have made
that choice? When confronted with an obstacle,
do you keep to your course? Do you flinch?
Do you go down with the ship, or do you run
every time your life is about to collide
with something bigger than itself?
Who among us has a contingency plan,
enough lifeboats? I will not be a survivor

of my body. None of us will. As long
as we try to avoid the crash, we will
succumb to it, every time. James Cameron
had it wrong. That is not the love story
to write for a sinking ship. Let me tell you
a true one. A man who survived lives
to be a consultant on a movie about
the Titanic. On the day they film
the sinking, he sneaks on to set
in costume, poses as an extra, tries
this time to go down with the ship.
He is discovered by the director;

again, he fails, is escorted off
the model deck before the cameras
roll. What compelled him to get it right
this time? Who among us would not
relive their darkest hour for a more
fitting end? There are things the heart
does not go on from. None of this
is unsinkable.

In my “storytelling as performance” class,
I am memorizing a book about cats, millions
of them. At the end, only one is left:
the best cat. It did not fight the others
because it was scared and small.
This makes it special.

A week later I am in New Orleans.
I’ve never been this far south before.
I eat fried alligator and buy the cheapest
cigarettes I have ever seen.
On the third day, we are gutting a house,
pulling rusty nails and killing palm-sized
roaches. I rip up carpets, knock down
drywall, and the irrefutable facts
of a family stare back at me. Playing cards.
Buttons. Dimes. The possessions our houses
swallow and save.

In the last room, the wall comes off
in chunks, filling the air with foul-
smelling dust. We carry stacks of house
to the dumpster, pitching them in
as the neighbors watch. Behind the last
chunk of wall, hugging a corner: a folded
sheet of paper, front and back.
I recognize the words, do not need
to unfold to know: “They took the kitten
into the house, where the very old woman
gave it a warm bath and brushed its fur
until it was soft and shiny.” I slipped
it still folded into my pocket. A tiny,
selfish miracle that will not help
anyone.

From a static filled window,
we watch the Chicago Bulls
win the NBA Championship.
Men move about the court
like Hermes, playing vertical
double dutch with our eyes,
their energy turning the basketball into Sol.

Jordan leaps into the sky,
air molecules are steps,
feet are climbing,
hands set the sun.
He stands under the hoop,
engulfed in a tsunami of cheer.
I never knew angels wore sneakers.

The TV flares the crowd's passion,
changing the magnetism of our jaws.
We scream his name, and for once,
this apartment is peaceful, almost honest.

The next morning,
courts are filled with Project boys,
New York's abortion,
perfecting lay-ups to escape inferno.
The swooshes on their sneakers is Jesus,
and the ball, church.

I find myself scanning Michael's movements,
integrating them into my bones.
I am practicing jump shots, praying for swishes,
but callusing backboards.
With every missed shot, you hack up anger,
stand behind me, a bastard Virgil,
your words, tangled marionette strings,
my body, a broken puppet.

Another shot rebounds and
your eyes turn into mandorlas,
pushing out rage, its umbilical cord
wrapping around your neck.
And the father becomes Judas,
breaks into me like a vault full of silver.
I lie on the ground, twitching,
this image hiding itself in life's
filmstrip, shown only when water
floods tear ducts.

When someone asks me about basketball,
I freeze, rewind, try to find the good,
this scene playing over and over behind my pupils.
I used to envy the neighborhood kids,
how puppeteer-less they were.
Jealous, they saw me as lucky Dante,
But we were all just after thoughts of orgasms,
and when you left, I became
an eleven year one night stand.

We have grown into bearded boys,
trying to escape the shadow of absence.
We are jigsaw puzzles God forgot.
Do you ever think of us or have
we dribbled out of your memory
We've never wanted to rebound
into anyone's arms, but yours.
Because the swooshes were never anything.
They were just fucking checks.

The first bite was a gift,
teeth burrowed in skin,
your body shaking
like a beggar's hands.

Veins sighing with every sip.
You were a fountain I couldn't
stop mining.

Your neck looked like home,
my mouth, a doomed village
living off your hope.
There were no promises there,
just regrets in gulps.

I wanted you then,
the meat of ourselves intertwined,
nothing at stake,
no splinter of reluctance.

In your chamber
we mixed like clasped hands,
collapsed at your bedside,
falling like rosary beads.

What a messy prayer we were,
broken on this floor called religion,
your body, a crucifix that stopped working.

When your lover found us,
he howled, jaws glaring
at this nocturne sonata.

I could have clawed
a fence into his chest,
showed you the sheep inside.
There was no hiding who we were.

When you wed, dream of us.
Think of me with the bible for a heart,
the only book worth reading.
I will picture you as macabre scripture,
my favorite genesis.

Remember how my parting
mist said goodbye.
How I told myself to stop loving things
that look like sunrise.