The broken one
dreamless sleep while housesitting
going to bed tired and waking up tired
visions suppressed now by invasive reality
a harsh wind whipping in through a cracked window
raindrops on the potted green houseplants
steam heat squealing and hissing like a teapot
preferring to spend hours lying on the long red couch
reading one book after another
text and moon
marking the passage of time now
rather than the endless walks across the city's lunar surface

The courage to become an artist
Lies in shedding feelings of shame
(however legitimate they may be)
That one should be doing something more productive with one’s time
Like working at a non-profit
Or writing journalism or starting fair-trade endeavors
Something that makes the world a better place
Being in the world
rather than sitting around apartments
Translating the gooey machinations of one's inner life
A life to be found in
the sublimation of sexual desire
in not losing yourself to drink or aimless walking around
and blowing up the bridge to your bourgeois ambitions
embracing your own pneumatic device
you can get into the pit with the twin snakes

Obligations to others
shunned or left unfulfilled
Brings shame and anxiety
Alcohol and exercise help dull the pain
Late night comes
and the world heads off to sleep
you finally have an excuse
To climb inside that coffin
That you call a bed
and go to sleep
Not to rest yourself
but from exhaustion with the world
you are in hot pursuit of non-existence

Awakening
from a night of disturbed sleep
all my troubles so distant now
covered over by the green moss of days
generally content with the passage of time
and the early morning Brooklyn trees budding and birds chirping
a kind of joy here sprouting forth from concrete
a resigned religious passage to the days
I think of Peter Taylor
that 35 year old Tennessee bachelor in NYC
and all the others who hated their provincial small towns
stomping through the endless smoggy Brooklyn night
defectors
eternal exiles
lost
a little bit of concrete having been soldered onto their hearts
in the morning light there is a glimmer of hope
for the damned like myself
showering is so pleasurable
the breeze through the open bathroom window
memories of Portland ten years ago--different coast, different bathroom window
dead times I never recorded
so many dead times that will fall away into oblivion when the bodies that experienced
them die
memories like the black boxes
of slow-crashing passenger planes

The suburban dream is a crescent moon, an empty street, and a wood-burning fireplace
Boy running across the street and into a backyard
Like some kind of horror movie golem
Men taking out the trash with flashlights
A car pulling up into the driveway
And idling there, not getting out
Until the solitary night-walker shambles past
Bare trees and a crescent moon
The lonesome train whistle in the distance
Cars streaming down the highway
And all the Christmas decorations still up even though New Year approaching
Multicolored lights draped across rooflines
The smell of chimney smoke
Inflatable santas lit up, casting ominous shadows on the brick ranch-style houses
Two books in my hand
Cigarettes in my pocket
Long after midnight
Another good night alone loving up to G-O-D
And his freshly-trimmed grass
And this hometown

Time to face up to certain truths
Time is rushing by
Faces aging in mirrors
Time taking its toll
A love for family
A love for cemeteries and weather
If I had chosen one thing
Perhaps I would be there by now

Diversifying and hedging
refuge of the scoundrels
And the creeping sense
that people have been having these kind of conversations
For a very long time
“You know Flaubert was supported by his parents”
“You just don’t give yourself enough credit"
all artists,navel-gazers, playing at it
circling the same unnamable thing
never saying it
but living the feeling of it
live so quietly that no one can hear

Hidden world away from the eyes of man
Back in the woods behind the mall
Where the moss grows on the stream banks
And there’s no sound other than the trickling water
And the unseasonably warm breeze shaking the spindly pines
The moon in twilight ozone clouds directly overhead
Big red sun sinking west behind the coptic white structures
Walking back out of the gully
Into the parking lot
Past the stolid exteriors of Belk and JC Penny
The tall parking lot streetlights like lights on an airport runway
A gaggle of ROTC boys doing push-ups in a well-trimmed grassy knoll on just up from the concrete curb
And the sky endlessly blue, except for one black cloud
Hovering over the mall
The familiar Van Gogh impressionistic sketchiness of the green bushes
The dark walk through the grass
Past all the ranch houses, headlights of all the passing cars illuminating my back
Thinking nothing, at peace with my lot
with my lonely march home
an old person now
having made this march for fifteen years
I turn down a dark street to my neighborhood and shamble past all the floodlights and lit up kitchens and kaleidoscopic play of lights in the windows of living rooms
And the green electric night glow
all the buzzing streetlights
Covered in kudzu
Dogs barking in the distance
street I grew up on
The home stretch
this same story over and over again
I'll be telling it til the day I die
Walking in the rut of a quiet little suburban neighborhood street
Overtaken by nature
Home to ranch houses and old people
A car creeps past me headlights on
And a big black limousine with tinted windows
Drives past
an ominous foghorn sounds somewhere nearby
a death knell
Fog creeps in from vents hidden in the sewer drain
Turns to green slime under the pale glow of the streetlights
The creaky sound of a door opening and closing somewhere up on the hill
And the black limousine
Like some kind of undulating wyrm
drives into my cul-de-sac
when I get down to the bottom of the hill
the cul-de-sac, my home, where I know everybody and everything,
the limo has disappeared, vanished into the night.