sometimes we send messages to those we didn't mean

to receive such words, emotions, threads of meaning in our little, carefully plotted knots.

like living in a house where most of the mail comes addressed to people you assume lived there before yourself.

like living with roommates and trying to guess from the dried crusty colors on bowls and knives which one ate what.

(eventually all of our furniture becomes extensions of our selves.)

the messages we compose to the ones living in graves are perhaps the most easy to deliver, and the most difficult to compose. of course there's the knowledge of the decomposition of the meaning between thought and send, and then there's the obvious --- i am only talking to myself if the person i love is no longer physically able to hear these thoughts?

but if they were alive, would they really hear? would they take the time laid into the pauses between vowels and punctuation to get the sense our little language is tooled to deliver? that's why dead words -- songs, poems, emails never sent --- are perhaps the best words. they can be called up at any time, quoted, referenced, by the individual attempting to re-compose, to re-connect. but these words too, like the people to whom they are referents, also live in a time and place of introductory experience that has already passed. ... what i write here is never meant to be sent to anyone. that is why it lives in a world of strangers with back buttons and search capabilities. a wide world of access means that those meant to hear are rendered silent by the cacophony of software traveling pairs of eyes to a one-way conversation with a mirror image that can't see the black beyond the glass.

too many and too few. that is all i could ever give to you.

if the bare bones begin to break

like damp toothpicks between frustrated fingers
and the wickedness of the wind
begins to match
the color of your mis-matched socks,
the anger between your intestines and your spleen

let nothing but the cold fill your gut
and reach the top of your head
slowly through your toes,
xylem to your phloem,
wood to your whisper
conducting all the memories that have turned to mud
and laid themselves into the graves of cracks
between poured concrete

step on a crack
step again

leap, look, laugh, lunge

your lungs are nothing but
tracheids you'll never use
vestigial only because
you still live for regret.

when will the old me

when will the old me
meet the new me
that's already having
the tea you hate to drink
with the me from the past
the one that used to agree
with everything you said
until the new me
had that, and a lot more
to say
to you, and me
whatever versions they may be

did you read this month's edition
did you catch that post?
me neither.

let's leave
before that last train.

someone said something

someone said something
about art
and the making of something good
if it's not perfect
(there is a perfect)
there must be something
in a reaction, a gut-spoken response
maybe a rage
maybe a silent silent long look
to communicate to another
"yes we both know."

in the knowing do we find
what we think we are looking for?
no.
absolutely not.
it's just the closing arguments
to the always already stated
"this confirms the self.
through others we define ourselves."

give me that conversation
that word
give that look that says

..."we are for each other:
then laugh...
for life is not a paragraph
and death
i think
is no parathesis."

I am my own moving target

i am my own moving target
in a shooting gallery
made of glass

clay pigeons beat me
to the finish
and i'm running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running
running

running
running
running
running
running


out of time