Poems

The Funny Life The funny life is not what you imagine from outside,it’s mostly driving and forgetting and nowhere left to hide,it’s mostly eating badly in the parking lots of towns,where the club is in the basement and the ceiling fan is brown. The funny life has moments that you wouldn’t trade for anything,when the […]

The Genetics LotteryNobody holds the ticket before the draw,nobody picks the skull under the skin,the height, the eyes, the way your jaweither opens doors or watches them stay shut. The genetics lottery is the original score.Some men pull aces, some pull plain cards,some men get faces that pay rentin every room they walk into.The lottery

The Funniest Thing About Deathis the paperwork it generates,certificates, filings, the bureaucratic gates,as if the universe requires documentation for the end,the departed fills out forms they’ll never send. The funniest thing is the things people say—at peace, in a better place—the way language tries to dignify the absoluteand ends up funnier than any practiced bit.

The Funny Has the Last Word Every tragedy that’s ever ended has a coda of the comic,every war memorial has a story that’s atomic,with the absurdity of what was done by human creatures,and the funny has the last word in the summary of features. The funny has the last word because the funny is the

The Fix The dishwasher made a noise for two weeks before I opened it upThe dishwasher made a noise and I ignored it like a pupThat doesn’t understand what whining costs the patienceI ignored it until you said something about the patience You’d run with it and then I got the flashlight and the toolAnd

The Friend Who Called Exactly Then I was sitting in my car outside the grocery store at noon,Not going in, not going home, just sitting in the roomOf the car and the parking lot and the specific lowThat does not have a label but that certain people know. And then the phone rang with a

The First Rifle Daddy laid it in my hands when I was barely ten years old,said a man who holds his weapon holds more than iron cold,said a man who knows the trigger knows the weight of what it starts,and the rifle found my shoulder like it always owned that part. Walked the timber in

The Exposed Hegemon The heralds shout a frantic lie across the city squareWhile he parades his flabby gut within the morning airHe claims a robe of woven light and threads of ancient goldBut all I see is wrinkled skin and gooseflesh in the coldThe sycophants are bowing low to hide their judging eyesApplauding for the

The Face That Opens Doors He walks in a room and the whole room turnsThere’s a current that flows and the lighting burnsBrighter wherever he happens to standLike God gave the man a specific handOf cards that the rest of us never got dealtThe face that opens doors and I know how it felt The

The Final Accounting At the end of the campaign there is a reckoning that waits,not a judgment or a tribunal behind institutional gates,just the honest adding up of what you said and what you built,the difference between the two will show you where you have the silt. The final accounting is the mirror at the