Poems

Everything Hurts But That Is Funny Everything hurts in the morning, the back, the neck, the knee,the consequences of a life of hauling comedy,the physical toll of standing wrong on stages for decades,and the funny thing about it is it never quite degrades. My chiropractor has a nameplate that says comedy adjacent,because half his patient […]

Everything I Did for LoveI learned to burn the map of safer placesand drive my hands into the soft geography of wanting you,reckless as a man with nothing to loseand everything to prove. I traded silence for a highwayand took every exit that smelled like your laugh,leaving receipts of small crimes foldedin the glovebox of

Entropy HymnEverything falls apart. Everything.The house, the marriage, the cells that clingto cohesion like a prayer,but entropy does not negotiate or care. The second law is the cruelest scripture ever penned—the universe sliding toward its disordered end,and the body is a temporary argument againstthe chaos that will win, the only real expense. The roof goes

Every Night [Verse 1] The microwave clock reads twelve-double-zero I’m washing off the day, no villainand no hero The bills are on the counter,the news is on the screen Another day of running the modern machine I rinse the coffee cup,I lock the front door tight I turn off the TVand kill the hallway light

Eat shit Eat shit and die, piss off and fry,Go choke on a cactus, you crusty crotch pie,Sit and spin, you moldy old trout,Fart in a hurricane, let the wind blow you out,Up yours sideways with a chainsaw grip,Suck my rotten toes, take a salty drip,Blow it out your ass like a busted exhaust,You dickbrained

Effort Report I made the bed this morning — that goes on the ledger as accomplished,I made the bed and washed the single fork from breakfast, unpromisedby any external standard, just my own reduced-capacity commitmentto the visible surface of the life, the functional and sufficient. Two emails before noon, both answered in the first pass

Driving Nowherein Particular The tank was three-quarters full.The evening was ready to submitto something other than the apartment,its ceiling,its news feed. So I drove the long way—past the grocery store,past the agreed social contract of the stripwhere I might be recognizedby someone who requires a performance I’ve not sizedfor tonight. The warm smile.The current-with-my-own-life conversation.The

Early Clock Out The fluorescent ceiling buzzes like a dying fly trapped inside a glass jarThirty seconds remain until three fifty-fiveThe air tastes of bleached plastic and cheap cigarsI watch the second hand stutter and finally arriveHe sits inside the glass office scratching his fat greasy chinCounting my minutes like pennies inside a rusted tinA

Drive-Thru ReliquaryI park beneath a buzzing streetlight,engine ticking like a verdict in the heat.Paper sack on my passenger seat,smelling like comfort dressed in grease and sweet. The wrappers crack like little sermons,and I answer with a hungry kind of grin.One more bite to hush the questions,one more bite to keep the quiet thin. I eat

Doorway Mathematics The hallway narrows at the kitchen doorand we both try to pass at the same timeher chest against my chest for one full breathher hip bones hard against the ridge of mine We stop, suspended in the wooden frametoo tangled up to simply step asideher hands flat on my stomach, pushing backbut pushing