For lack of a better word

I’ve been on the worst side of it. So every poor boy gets none from me. I’ve been handed it all. No poor boy gets to be as poor as me. It’s a shame I’ll have to lug.

In the same sense as old stuntmen explaining that although there’s talent to the spin-outs and wrecks, and that with practice you can actually begin controlling the degree to which you’re losing control, you can never predict the degree to which you land the crash.

It comes down to either bracing or being careful. Never neither because there’s no such thing. Have you ever seen that video of the guy trying to knock himself out with a hammer? Gritting his teeth, pulling it back, and then—no, only hitting his head hard enough to hurt?

What poetry is. But come again. If this is going to be anything more than a draw, we’ll need to swing each other’s hammers. See it through (yes this driveway), though it stings.

Morning Ablutions

When the wind isn’t coming, that’s when

it’s up to us to see it through. Make it

marketable. Step for step, held breath,

when pike is put, rail is run, a step is stupid.

A new steepening in expenditure. Sure it is.

I’ve been beaten some by making money.

More by making a living. Still more I’ve been

soundly trounced by the binding tongue of love.

Lifted even as a cookie sheet, though thin

as a bedspread. Stuffed and insufferable.

My dog is good. Means are met, needs made.

Wait. It’s that I’ve grown afraid to say, in saying

something thoughtless, something meaningless.

What about having kids and making ends makes us

mute. What is it about finding ourselves fully

formed that feels so much like a last stop. Forgetting

that movement is all that ever mattered is still a surprise

when it’s remembered. Even today, babe, reassembling.

Even as I am with you. I love you. This is all to say that

history bears repeating. There is no such thing as this building.

Don’t worry.

I’m going to live forever. Snake

pit or hydra head, and all the awful

drawling. Without teeth (read toothless),

but tongued so sharp it can sever root

from cause—word from mumble.

Just one lash and the separation flies

open. Separation of serpent scale,

though lying flat and happy, welcoming

to knives slung sideways and any hunter

who knows even a lick what he’s doing.

Wedge head under heel, edge placed, peel

or unpeel. Skin clings just only. So it shrinks.