Bricklayer

No, I can’t make it,
but have fun anyways
I’d be there but my maturity’s delayed
you know how it is
with brick and mortar
it goes up fast and stays forever

Life part three

Scrape it out and
bury it
I never want to see it again
Festered and soiled
black tar
so hard
to push far
scrape away and be gone
I want to be new
forget what’s done
slip in the womb
back from so long
no space to breathe
Seething demons
screaming
me
hopeless hope renewed
are you new, too?

Los Angeles, circa 2006 A.D.

I am the statue trapped in a block of stone
on the side of the freeway
And when you drive past me going sixty-five
on your way to work
do you think your block is less immobile?

All the palm trees know only know one thing:
that the best view in LA is from the tops of their crowns
And as an ant I can tell you
that I don’t know what a palm tree is
nor do I care
my path was laid out before me long before I was born

So burn your tongue with a hot cup of coffee
with all the lesser men that comprise my friends
Our minds are smaller than our dicks
and our thoughts are dimmer than the LCD’s on our PDAs

I’ll try to be perfect like Jesus Christ
and leave my halo behind
‘cause I don’t need it in Hollywood
And you’ll try to be like Orson Wells
‘cause you think you're perfect
you can eat yourself to death since you’re never wrong
just don’t choke on the fish fingers –
you and I have a lot more of nothing to do tomorrow

how I lost Armenia

When the windows opened
There was a big hole inside her
And blood was everywhere
And I couldn’t fill the whole
Even though I selfishly tried
And the way I love her
Is a part of me that only is
Because she’s here
And when I find myself the happiest I’ll ever be
Staring into new windows
With no holes inside her
A part of me will hurt
Because for a split second
I’ll remember what it was like
To look into her eyes

no more metaphors

yes, I’ll grow up it’s true you know
and she will too
not like before but different
and when we meet in my daydreams
we’ll be different people but better
and we’ll start again
and pretend our past was a first draft we threw away
then we’ll regress again
and blame ourselves
for connecting in the first place
a couple of random electrons obeying the law
but I promise
no more metaphors

A Sloth at the Gates of the Water Cooler

>>I have nothing to do at work today
>>Staying awake has made me quiet
>>I'll put it all off until the sun goes down
>>And berate my tendencies tomorrow

Riverton

Designs by Chrysler
And timelessness like
Joni Mitchell
Interrupting sips
From what Alyson didn’t want

Sisters of good friends
Took out their needles
In exchange for
Discarded furniture adorned with
The trusting profiles of
Churchill and Stalin
Under the banner of Time

Mexican families mourned:
The mothers and fathers sat and ate
And the children rode their
Skateboards laughing

The sun was half-way to tomorrow

In a chair I broke under my own weight
I sat ineptly twirling a baton
He told me it was an invention of the French farmers,
A story as half-cooked as the origin of the Bartlett Pear

Life on Riverton is nice
Happiness finds itself here
In the perfection of these people,
My friends,
And the Mexicans next door