Building Intervals

I
In the city, buildings sit
so close together,
you can reach straight out a window
and place an open palm on a brick wall.

When it snows a giant hand
slides manila flakes between the buildings
like a file.

In the summer voices jump
from sill to sill carrying burdens
and joys to apartments
that don’t want them.

Luckily the windows are staggered
enough so you can’t look out
and see a kitchen table full of dust.

II
The spaces between buildings,
too narrow to use, are like the spaces
between fingers, holding modern histories
unwritten stories. Some clumsy
like chopsticks, others sturdy like a pen.

In the city, building intervals
are small and short and it takes longer
to drive to work and you have less
time to say things that mean,
like I love you and it hurts when.

III
There’s not enough space between
the words to listen
to what’s not being said,
to the imminent sadness
underlying, to the pain
and repression,
to the heavy breathing
of a wordless language.

There’s not enough space between
the buildings to see the sun setting
on the horizon, the child crying alone
at night, there’s no real driver
directing this hive of humans

in pursuit of not one thing,
but chaotically too big
and spinning off the road
on black ice called the 21st century.

Ebb And

Rain falls like white noise
on the roof of the car
as we sit in the parking lot
silent.

She says, “I miss
these moments.”
I say, “How
can you miss them
when they’re happening right
in front of you?”

The rain picks up,
turns into thuds
on the windshield,
it becomes a rainshield,
holding back the roar.

Muffled words are between
us. “You’re not listening,
are you.” She says. “I can hear
every drop.” I say.

We speak like strangers
who have known each other
for years.
Awkward and beautiful
like rusted drops of rain.

Writing Good (A Room)

The trick is trying to describe
A room, without saying what room,
In a house, without saying what house,
In a town, without saying what town, etc.

For example: a couch indicates
A proper object to display where, say,
One might do some ‘living’. Or,

Adding a pronoun to a house,
Which may require contracting
And a temporary vacancy,
May be a sufficient item for directing
The attention as to whose house
The aforementioned is possessed,
Unless of course it belongs to a bank. Also,

One could take the opposite route
And describe the negative area surrounding
The unspecified place in order
To lead, by default, to said room.

For example: the walls are not straw,
Nor brick, nor is there an oak end table,
Marble coffee table or any fluorescent lighting
Of any sort. It is not in Washington D.C.,
Nor is the owner the owner
Of a penis or a black Saab.
There is no broom in the closet
With which to clean the non-dusty floors
Or none of the cobwebs
Not in the corners of the ceiling.

If one must (and this is frowned upon),
One can admit there is a down boat
Covered comforter lying folded
On the floor, but this strategy is only
Recommended in cases of extreme emergency.

The trick is knowing the room so well
And what general characteristics will
Appeal to a larger audience
And therefore be identified.

For example: a heated coil floor
With chalk red tiles may be reduced
To a mere floor as to cater
To the indigenous tribes
Of businessmen in Sao Paulo.

Or, a swan carved Home Depot white
Leafed ceiling fan can merely be erased
And replaced with a plain
Sixty watt light bulb on the fritz
To appeal more widely to the generation
Of Americans not living over the age
Of forty and trying their careers
As indie rock musicians.

There mustn’t be a need for time
As a room cannot walk nor has legs
Unless one is referring to the legs
Of an old avocado plastic covered chair
But even then time is still not necessary.

And if one succeeds and success is measured
By how many nations heads captured
The image like 35mm film,
Then one is thereby deemed knighted
By fountain pen and has proven themselves
Worthy of placing life inside that room,
Without necessity of being female or pregnant
But birthing anyway, a body into a place
With four walls, maybe a door and perhaps
Two windows, congratulations are in order.

What Happened to the Fun?

I am bent over this notebook. The shadow
of my hand covers the ink as I write
words that come out black.

I remember days. Days building spaceships
and cartoon faces, hours spent
sculpting sand scenes

of battling armies and black cats and now
when I write I can’t add a giraffe
and a ping pong ball

without thinking it silly, without wondering
the meaning, without complicating
the paradox of writing

a giraffe without sound and the pock
of the ping pong in the poem.
This watermelon

of a cliché can’t be stopped from rolling down
a hill. It’s too bad I have to think
so hard about what’s funny

before writing down an orange penguin. It’s too
bad the serious has overtaken
the innocent, killed

the feather, driven the fun out of town
and shot the boy. It’s too bad
a joke is mathematical

and a poem doesn’t add up.

A Soft Transition (tentative)

Working backwards from the end
of his life, he started new. He used
his bowling trophies as trashcans
where he set the ashes of his loved
ones. He took his unused golf clubs
and a hacksaw, made palm trees
to remind him of Puerto Rico. He
placed all his memories in a box
and burned them and danced
around the fire and chanted
for rain and got it and kept the rest.
He remembered turning sixty-five
and his living wife giving him
his first free blowjob on the way
to the Laundromat. He called
each of his living kids and said I’m
dying and they said fuck you old man
and then he called his dead kids
and set the phone down and left
it on the chair. And finally,
when his house was empty,
he felt satisfied enough to sit
in the middle of the wood floor
in the kitchen, wrap his arms
around his knees, close his eyes
and feel his century
old bones dissolving
into another life just beginning.

Everyday the UPS Guy Drops Off a Package

He grins. “Any popcorn today?” He walks
over to the popper and starts scooping.
“Pretty cold out there, yeah?” “Yah,”
he says. “I heard it’s gonna get colder
tomorrow and warm up by the weekend.
We’re finally getting over the winter.”
“It’s only February, it’ll be a short winter.”
“You got that right. Have a good one.”

His unofficial job is weatherman.
How many times in how many places
each day does he repeat the words “cold”
in the winter and “hot” in the summer.
At night he must scoff at the weatherman
on TV. “Someday I’ll deliver a package
to him and we’ll talk philosophy.”

A Tree Doesn’t Care if you Fall in the Forest

here
is a place
where we all are,

you are not
there
and what if you were?

would that mean
you do not happen
to be? at all

places
you do not
have to be there

for it is. a place
regardless
of occupation

and irregardless
of who is watching
the walls

upholds the (static)
nature. it is
imaginary until a foot

is set within the door
frame and proclaimed
here (and not there).