You Are Setting the Table

I am no man to stand up

To my feelings, initially disruptive.

I am a man to write it down and wonder.

Your face, in dealing with labor,

Proves beauty to be so rare

In the face of another.

You work, taking my thoughts

By surprise with the innocence

Of strong things, serious eyes,

Pursuits of which I value

More than the infatuation

That is the love of something new.

You are not new, but rather timeless

As sighs beneath sunset or sunrise,

That familiar perfection in the face

Of good dreams, where hours after

You stay under the tide of romances,

Affections, and well-taken chances.

Maybe my overcoming these feelings

By way of bold action is in contradiction

To my nature to crave

That which is out of reach

Or taste that which will destroy me.

I may need help,

For you are setting the table

And I am making much of you.

Note to my child on his or her first day

            I’m only 25 years old and it’s summer right now, but I imagine that I have learned a few things so far as a person with nearly 20 first-days of school.

            Keep your head up in every situation, whether you are wrong or right or unsure. Smile at people, especially if they look lost or sad. Not everyone is going to like you. People are going to treat you badly, and at some point, you are going to get hurt. That’s kinda the point of life. It’s hard and you are not really going to fit in.

            Some people will like you, though. They will like you for who you chose to be. Those are good people. Some of them will be your friends. Others will just be good people to you.

            Be good to the teachers and faculty you see. They are brave, lost, scared, loving, and hard-working, lazy people. Respect them for trying to take care of every child in this area. It is not easy. Your grandmother poured her heart into the lives of children just like you and me. Treat teachers like they’re trying to do that.

            I’m not sending you here to make friends or get good grades. I’m sending you here so that you can learn. Making friends and grades are parts of learning, but so are bullies and failures. I’m sending you away from our home so that you can learn something outside of where I teach and care for you. I hope that by doing this, you will learn to care for and teach yourself one day. Go learn something about something.

            I love you so much that I will allow this pain and happiness into your life. These days will change you, lift you up, and try to drown you. I pray you will reach out to me when you need a father and ask if you need a friend.

Loving you before love will bring you to me,

Dad

No One to Retrace My Steps with Me and Ask If I Remember

It can't be said that it can't be said,

And I, for that matter, would rather instead

Wake to the basics which fascinated,

Like cherishing burns and returning to bed.

The light in the cave overlapping the mind

As dreams, ever-tapping, come up from behind.

Bedded by a slowness of thought,

I empty my shoes of reminders.

spider in the road wandering between

slivers of woods in velvet dark green

like tentacles gripping hard against stone

warning of danger beneath what is shown

the shadows in flight swollen ignite

the moon the road and charming delight

black cage sways burning above me

bizarre as voices that echoed they love me

sweat on the mouth and mud at my feet

a hug from behind as only you’d greet

whisper my name your breath gives off heat

you flee to black water through fields of dead wheat

Then again, there is no again.
A glance at the face of the state that we're in,
Lost now forever to predilection
And dreams that dissolve just as they begin.

Steel Wool

If I am a cage of steel wool

With heart of rubber, swollen black,

And you are a torch, a light from heaven,

Fleeting across my back,

I'd feel you call through, heart-like shone

Upon my neck as temperance dries.

I'd wonder if you'd closer grown

Or flames just grew in size.

The radiance of your presence being

Enough to melt my immured heart,

And I only to face the flames,

Look down, feel it depart.

With hands across a chest of mesh

Stinging from internal burn,

Through holes between my shaky flesh,

The love from me adjourn.

When the Mad King Relives Fairy Tales

There is no hell like serving a King,
To grace his sickening fantasy.
What a proud beast, this poisoning King.
See how he coils in his stagnancy.
He fills his head with towering halls.
Empty spaces replace his reason,
Believes a ghost, his queen, haunts the halls,
And sanity becomes high treason.

A beast and beauty trapped in their dreams,
One in love and one in confusion,
See not the potency, how such dreams
Caress with each breath an illusion.
No screen or mirror reflects beauty.
Loneliness leads to self-obsession.
The beast gives his life for some beauty,
As if his weakness were perfection.

A fairy tale from golden pages
Now rests upon the King's looping mind.
The same soul which reached for those pages
Is tangled behind foreign eyes, blind.
With pearls and jewels of violet and blue
Reminding him of beauty's embrace,
He droops down to the garden in blue
To reflect in green pools his proud face.

The roses hold themselves together,
Sturdy through tempestuous weather.
The empty fountains will be refilled,
Yet in his poisoned mind he is killed.
Seven days spent alone on a stage.
The King buries himself in dark sighs.
The audience is far from the stage,
So he sings like the swan as it dies.

Stunned in a Stairwell Near a Wheelchair Well-known

He had to sit and so

He dies by suicide

Of broken skull, heart, pride.

The sun stood tall in their minds

As they sat on a step,

Twilit in a stairwell.

Two faces swore he fell,

And wagged back and forth between

Shoulders tightly knotted.

They slowly turned to stone

As it glistened and shone,

The blood drying in twilight. 

Seeing Madness And the Sea

I awoke to myself choking me
the walls as soft as bread
and light from the street

In my step sensitivity sewn
deliberately on my descent
I drew from darkened drawer
to leaves aching at my door

I climbed into a coat
and managed down the street
peering through the window

A foggy trip I know not where
possessed me spill my memory

The ravenous voice of heaven
mumbling into lives before me
mother and child recoil
and fathers with dry hands
soaking in the soil

Crows in trees frozen wings like fruit
chosen to hold on for fear of death
to fall into the air or to suspend where
nothing remains by one's own hand

Two thin men with eyes burning in love
lead me away set sail from bed to bed
and smiled right into the aching at my door

They shook me roared and took me to
a figure tall with lips light blue
crimson nails and smokey hiss

The sky was damp pink
glowing pink long after
the last cast of light did sink
a colorful warning I slept through

One bird flew into suspense
and from below I saw him slide
driven mad straight to the sea
the wind pulled him instantly