I avoid the conversations,
not interested in hearing
stories scrapped from the barroom floors;
nothing of interest ever happened
while sipping a pint
and waiting for the night to call.
Once, a girl told me she loved me
while my mate went to take a piss;
this, they say, is the tragedy of romance:
two people at a bar,
alone for a moment
and looking to fill themselves
with love or alcohol,
whatever
comes cheapest.
now they can find you
these lost memories of
yesteryears.
not seeing them for
quite a while
has given me a sort of grace
a luxury
to be myself
to do what I always
wanted to do,
but now they can find you,
without even leaving their house,
just a few clicks on a laptop
and voila…
these old memories
come roaring back.
My muse is not a cowboy.
He is a skeleton fish
made of bones and leaves,
stained eyes looking back, but never
staring.
I’ve worked hard
to do good.
The
world could be a heaven…
But I’d be an idiot if I didn’t admit,
I’m
a sneaky sinner.
And when I die,
I’ll be pissed
to find
there’s nothing after my last breath,
my last wink of an eye,
the
last thought that there must be more.
They say you must have
faith…
Oh… I want it. I want it,
while I look for a back door.
the poet Jamison Gilley once told me of his penchant for lying naked
in a fetal position
on the cold tile floor
in the bathroom
of his Manhattan loft.
unable to move for hours
waiting to feel something
anything
and feeling nothing, seeing
nothing, being
nothing.
and I thought
if I could lie down
on some milky black night
and detach my retinas
swiftly, like opening a vein
I could use my mind’s eye
to see
how you pulled me in
gutted me
disemboweled me
and bled me out
how you opened me
skillfully