MAKING TAPES AGAIN

I’m not the same detective

I’m already old – it’s funny

I was so old to be so young

and now so young to be so old

(the older people laugh and moan)

but I shake eternal teenager –

and know this will transcend

my skin and hair. 

It’s in my voice, maybe.

It’s in my nervousness, baby.

Emma has a belly. 

The instinct is to see beyond the surface,

feel what’s really going on.

Beneath the impressive rind a new one twists,

and we are giddy to see “what’s up”.

What’s up. You in there.

You might be my newest, oldest friend.

Your mom and I were miserable, but we were happy.

We made each other laugh so long.

We got sick on blackberries.

We dreamed about you on the beach,

on the hill, from the floor bed.

We thought about stealing flavored chapstick.

but ultimately, we were good.

January 2 Poem

There is always a seam of weakness
on a champagne bottle, that's how
you slice the top off explains my new wife's
younger brother who does so with a machete
in his pajama pants on Christmas morning
we flew to Ohio and have just emerged from
her childhood bed we were cocooned i asked
is it strange to have me in this room
she answered yes and no this is where i learned
to masturbate to dream of bodies and my own
and here we are entwined in sheets, our bodies
newly wedded in her bed in her parents' house
in Ohio, a place she once thought she might not
be able to return to we will again and again.
There is always a seam of weakness along the cuticle
of a monarch pupae, that's how an adult monarch encloses
wriggles forth winged and bright into the world. First
it swallows air through tiny holes in its well built embryo
expanding its thorax through breathing and breathing until
it splits the cocoon and pulls itself out, a second birth
a survival, its wings dry out and then it flies off
in search of sweetness.

New Resolutions

I will take better care of my bras
in that I will start washing them ever so often.

I will take better care of my relationships
and try to communicate openly.

I will re-discover what it is I like about teaching
and start to enjoy my job again.

I will be a better adult
and clean my apartment more often.

I will be more classy
and drink more cocktails with pickle juice in them.

Hurt Smart Sad Types

two hurt and smart sad
writer types, you know the
type, took to
holding hands through
a path in the snow

talking around what
they wanted due
to the hurt and the smart

but the sad bled out
through the snow and
the hurt and the smart
and gave, I love you —

isn't that sad,
isn't that sad,
said sadly sad yes
isn't that sad,
the chorus mourning
isn't that sad,
the trees bending toward
the snow
and the two
holding hands
and smiling around it,
isn't that sad. Amen.

saw ou

if its not the fishing line or the hook that makes the catch, what recipe do i prepare
will it be rainbow trout, with jasmine rice, my kiss
sardines on mary's gone crackers as we wait for the bridge to be put in
or bottom trawl roughy, because we forgot to listen

The Science of Love

let me 

put you under a slide

press myself

against the eye-piece

turning the knobs

ever so gently.

I see you

beyond cells and membranes

we exist

purely for each other.