words of a people aligned in their perfect order
two days ago the birds were singing
calling out for lovers
thinking it spring
today it is too cold to stand outside
unless you were getting paid
and even then…
Chicago winter in the 21st century
it rained yesterday and then
snow fell all night
but waking only to an inch of it
not worth it to shovel the drive
not worth it to get the mail
not worth it to smoke and look
at the grass peeking out from under the snow
even the windows are frozen shut.
January, 31st 2013
– Hoc Scripsi
Available now at this link – Men in the Company of Women –
I am very proud to be a part of this volume and I urge you to obtain a copy for yourselves as soon as possible, if not today.
idle incognito
rifling closets and clothes hampers
looking for colorful oxfords
tumultuous
and crying with one hand on the bottle
and one foot on the brass rail
(but don’t interpret)
in dream
childhoods bedroom
reading
each written line in each book touched, screaming
magazines screaming, wallpaper screaming
I’m screaming, bloody and wasted
(this is no way to conduct a dream)
I follow her into bathroom, now a party,
we kiss grab ass and I’m hard
when I awake temporarily and tremble
step outside for nicotine relief
refusing to return to same dream
wearing no underwear, underwater
(accept drowning as part parcel)
sweating,
dark,
naked,
sheets, pillow soaked
– awake
retreating to thought and space
(!)
I’ve lowered my standards,
the problem might be that I had them in the first place.
you easily forget when you were at your best
in endless pursuit to surmount each previous work
and your output dwindles until you are
only writing fifty poems a year
which I guess is fine
though it is easier to say more if so inclined
and uninhibited
by meaningless constraints and various medications.
but don’t worry,
I’m still on the medications.
– Hoc Scripsi
life yer life – love yer wife
I wonder if I will ever stop wanting to drink, smoke, take drugs.
I wonder if I will ever want to stop drinking coffee, writing, masturbating, playing with Legos, loving legal voyeurism, among various other bad or dangerous things.
I don’t wonder these things too much because if I allow myself to live in the future I can see that the day will pass when these are not options but memories that I will continue to scribble about.
I look forward to being a dirty old man.
I look backward at being a dirty young man.
Right now is the middle. between two dirty states of being.
my thoughts are often unwilled intrusions, and I don’t act on most of them.
which is good because when I obsess, I obsess with the best of them.
this is nothing new and right now I sit in a coffee shop on my laptop like some asshole with a “for here” mug half filled with black coffee. The music is mostly good and right now plays something I’m not immediately familiar with but it sounds like seventies Cat Stevens as sung by Jack Johnson while drinking. But that ends and plays something else and this I don’t care for.
I wait for the next song and step into the frigid outside to imbibe in a long nurtured vice.
I make no resolutions, live life like yesterday but today and tomorrow.
the platitudes of willful resemblance 