Music Enough to Make One Mad

i walk in a line and shoot and shoot i walk in a line and shoot and shoot i walk in a line and shoot and shoot i walk in a line and shoot and shoot i walk in a line and shoot and shoot i walk in a line and shoot and jump and shoot and jump and walk in a line to music decadent in my brain on a loop a loop and through the gates it follows wherever i go wherever i slide i slide i slide inside and walk in a line and jump and shoot and walk in a line and jump and slide and the music is always the always the major key hooks and bridges no matter my life the music the same and i am so close and i am so close and i walk in a line and jump and

miss

 

(originally published in an alternate form in Dangerous to Go Alone! – a video game poem anthology)

What I Want

Your limb fingers pressed
on the stairway keyboard,
wanna see you move like
you used to, feel your breath
close to mine in new places, say
the same words we said, even if
it was a stupid Sunday,
hear the words,
hear them again, pink erase
the drinks
and listen, hear the words
in my head, I want to feel
the air shake again electric,
the clacking marimbas, I want
your fingers, all of them, pressed
again like whispers
I like to explore,
want the minor chords
out of my head, want your blonde hair
in the ridges between my teeth,
strands in my curled tongue,
tell me what the stars are like
in your own words,
want to hear them,
want to hear their twinkle
in your voice

(Originally published in Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Issue Forty-One)

Theory of the Universe

Did we learn ourselves from the mirror
after we studied constellations
in ragged almanacs… we rotated mechanical
with a hiss of the so-slow
slowing axis…

No equation… can yet rebirth
a cooling star’s impending supernova

If the family cello were given to you
as it recovered from basement dust…

the bowstring part of me
moves… without asking
to the crescendo of ripples…
and F-minor weeping, the lake
awake not as often at night

the big bang must have stemmed… from a desert string
nervous tremolo through the ages, expanding
like a lung just before that first breath–
whole note for the endless meter…

 

(originally published in 99 Pine Street)