you ask where we should
go and I say drive me
to my car so you
drive me to my car
because I tell you that’s
where I live and of course
you wouldn’t follow
up on this my Ford
Fiesta still smells
sweaty even though
I rent a home now
a compact is too
small to fit what
we’d have to
live with
(originally published in Nauseated Drive, Winter 2022)
bar
Same as It Ever Was
I am reliving and reliving the remote
control buttons then buttons
in your bed, golden room of silk
and how many times did we drink
like that? Dropping beer after beer
at Zeno’s then groaning summer sleep
right after. What were we dreaming
about? The cat was snoring and
what an endless loop! Blinking
awake and wanting to crush
night back with aluminum eyelids
(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Summer 2021)
Condensation
We used to be the same, used to
dance in living rooms in Grandview
houses, drunk on homemade Moscow
Mules in copper mugs, and then
you said you would no longer.
With a glass of emptied ice
water, you’d drip out the fronts
of bars without a noise.
(originally published in Live Nude Poems, Spring 2019)
Diffusion / NBA Finals, 2016
Pacing around the bar crowd, watching
the Cavaliers transfer heat to one another through
bullet passes around invisible perimeters, Kurt
and I keep drinking the strangers toward us.
“Gaseous diffusion,” he offers. “Alcohol
is only molecules bumping into each other.”
Our bodies generate more heat with every swig,
the atmosphere tense but warm through
our gullets. We chug chaos in the blur,
invite a thousand basketballs to bounce up
and down halfcourt. The players don’t notice
our dribbled words in soundwaves processed
a million different ways in the space between
earlobe and brain. Endlessly the spectators
chant go to sleep because no one we want
to talk to wants to talk to us, our zigzagged steps
combining with the sound of a team on the verge
of climbing a challenging mountain though
the peak is steep so we try nothing more
but the drinks that keep us moving. To stop
would be to hear the room’s haunting cheer.
(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Fall 2018)
Bars Are Getting Louder
I only know you in the dark
of music colors the big gray
tavern alive with chatter as
much as us as much as alcohol
which could let us roam
out to a new trail a morning
hike where we would talk a
quiet place and let jays
be the playlist for once
(originally published in Kettle Blue Review, Fall 2018)
Notes on a Poem at a Bar
Here is my true intention / inability:
capture your beauty in the whites between words.
I scribble words: egg, mountain.
Neither the creamy expanse of an egg in a pan
nor the peak of mountain in twilight
conjure the essence of you.
I’ve searched for stars in the dictionary.
And your brown eyes search me for answers.
I have none. I’ve scribbled out
attempts in red pen.
Only if I rise godlike out of body will I (perhaps)
in the sky simplify / complicate language enough
to describe your infinite(simal) beauty.
These plentiful dice roll combinations of words.
These few.
I don’t rise. I’m here beside you
wondering if I should utter my thoughts
like a prayer to you.
Then, years from now, maybe
I’ll guess what I said and write the poem then.
(originally published in Delphinium, Summer 2018)
January 28
I really want to drink today.
The sun is shining. It’s warmer than usual.
I should try to ween myself off, right? None of this cold
turkey shit.
I haven’t drank a drink this year, the miracle
of it. Today, I am alone.
I scrubbed white the kitchen tiles, but there are
always dirt stains, smudges when you look
a little harder.
Sanitized the kitchen table with towels,
swept its crumbs from the floor.
The cat sprints from one end of the room
to the other over
and over, imaginary laps.
What every day is, these days,
running a relay race, handing
the baton to tomorrow’s me
with the trust I won’t– today,
it’s a sleep’s worth heavier than yesterday.
Long minutes the placemarks I pass
I can’t make time go faster. It is my day
off work, and in its nothingness I trudge
through sludge. Old habit,
you don’t die hard because
you’re not dying. You’re
as alive as me: refreshed yet craving,
gazing through the window to the light-
stained street, the shadows cast from trees
out toward the river.
(originally published in Stickman Review, Spring 2018)
Earth Angel
microphone in hand
the gutter of volumetric gain
to finally sing gin (out of the system
sky an ocean of lights)
the star made of you-matter: gold voice hot collision
where bar’s empty souls listening clink glasses
then rise in song to celebrate your living