Jesus Is Gay

Now it moves beneath the skin,

Our beloved bear savior

Becoming man with man in mind.

While Nero's fire is burning still

The mother's constant womb is

Every minute changing shape.

This moment is not race but

Every bit as bread in bone,

Knowing not the shape of his robe

In times of betrayal,

Or the comfort of home.

He wore it like leather

And delicate lace,

So when fate took him

He lingered and smiled.

You're Afraid To Sing

Strike this chord
And I'll quiver
My lover of lost things
And drinking
To bind the days together
Like two notes
To one string.

No we never swim
Too close to the shore,
Where sea green hands
And awkward shaped men
Reach out for your dress
That's long enough,
But only enough
To give me a reason
To lie.

The Brave Bachelor

We gambled that night

With the flesh of our forearms

So raw and pressed 

Against the dining room table.

I came home to you

That night not quite

As drunk as you

Wanted me to be,

So guilt could have

Freed you from the mask

of a tired sun and

An empty shade of green.

We threw off our sheets

That night in our bed,

Burning our future hell

And sweating out our fortune.

Smoking slow on the porch

That night spent speaking

To west coast ghosts

And family abandoned,

While waiting is the game

That doesn't end with death

Unless you have the courage

To make it your own.

Real Men Are Animals

Out in a field
A horse at work,
Because working makes all men
With means come alive
And shape the world
For the woeful and weak,
Whose bread cannot rise
And whose fields reap only
Dead stones and red clay.

Our horse is a man,
His till is a man,
The father of a son
Who sweats is a man.
Brilliance of bounty
Will give blood its worth,
So drain those with
Piss, filth, and water inside
And let them live dry with
An outstretched empty hand.

But when a horse falls,
Let it end
And move on.

Now That You Smoke

Come spring
And sweep the streets
With my ankles
In the gutter
And knees stuck thick
In fresh wet cement.
I don't pray,
But I'll beg
Until I bleed
In front of the house
You abandoned just
Twelve weeks ago.

But why not look pathetic
And sick drunk
With this infection,
Spreading quickly from
My blushing hands
That brushed your waist
As we walked in the cold.
You are young
And I am old oak
That splits in summer's breeze,
And falls to mark
The trail that leads
Us both away from home.

That Something Is Me

Something will break you.
Bulge and split
Forking clean
Any foundation for
Hearth and home,
Something will end you.
And the simple ending
Is sought by the
Weak skinned lepers,
With hearts to break
The stone
Your god naively built
On another.

Moments of Love (Apathy)

My pulse could rip
These tracks
From the earth
Tearing my skin
Like the train
De-railed
In this tunnel;
I'm weightless
Still in your
Parting eyes.

And I would
Meet you anywhere,
At any length
Of terror subsided,
In the fountain
Of your breath
That washed me
In comfort
Unexpectedly clean.

So fear give me
Nothing
And future be damned,
I'll be late
For the first time
And dwell in the pain.

They Are Gods Compared To Us

What giant dreams
Stretch thin in red
Streams and needle
The surface of a
Pale winter blue.

Your god is weak
And shakes the wind
In fear at the sounds
Of mountains in the
Steps of one man.

Still forgiveness
For the cowering savior
Will come from
The heart thick bones
of this wondrous soul.

Heights Of Ignorance

I'm pornographic
Sunday sitting ducks
That find their way
With only one eye
To the left side,
And pointing wings
In all directions.

And monday comes
With fearful relief
As we cook
So slowly
In our own
Summer sweat,
Reliving flights
And heights of ignorance
Blessed before
We take the fall.

I'll Never See The Alps

We were thick brush

And shedding needles

As our bed spread

Out and down

The mountain,

Floods savory rushing

Into the valleys 

Of our eyes.

Well-armed at nature's

Passive glance

That makes the bear

With foreign brown eyes,

Run and the hunter

Will never be spared.

You are far

And far is sacred

On the edge of rolling hills,

Towering over with

Arms that close

On the bay.

Sex In The Bible

I've been born again
A thousand times.

Stretched into flesh
Unwilling and dark,
Fearful of a
Violent father's
Glove in hand,

We let lovers be
And give science
To gods.

But I entered
With pure and
Priestly intentions,
Pouring over endless
Skin-tight scripture;

Now burns
The binding
And the knowledge of men.

I Thought It Lasted Longer

I'll do internet
Research
To calm these cold fears.
Quite bare
This straight to a pair
Lying face up
And open
I'm somehow
Younger.

While you speak
Wit in tongues
Like a wild bird,
Half song
Half insult
And heard like
A shot when
We came to the call.

Tragic Dancing

It just slipped in
And let loose
Youths conviction,

The commander
With his life kept close
And his lifelong
Death companion closer.

I'm seasick
Of people and
All of their ends
While a quarter spins
On a boys lunch table

On and ever on,
Tragic dancing
To a swollen song.

But it's all been
Gentle bombs,
Satin shells
And a whisper wet knife
Parallel with my eyes.

She Is Iron

I like to think
You wouldn't be
Good enough for me
Now anyway,

But I felt the bay wind
In the violent calm
Of the afternoon,
Watching it break
And carry her low.

That beauty that scattered,
That you loved
To hate
And hated to lie,
She is iron
Welded to our
Crumbling frame.

People Don't Change

If I write
While you're talking,
Or shouting,

It's because
The sound of your voice

Makes me want to die.

I'll back into
The far corner
Of the room just next
To yours

And we'll fight
Through the floor,

Or hanging from the edge
Of the doorway
When we think it
Might end,

But it doesn't.

You Miserable Child

If that smile
Could split my age
I'd become
A confident man,
Less solemn
In my youth
For years wasted
Not getting wasted
And spinning drunken
Webs to catch you.
So my color now
Catches up with my
Old soul as they say
And I'll willingly lose
Twenty years
Each day,
Just for the taste
And a way
To avoid the crowds.

Of A House Rebuilt

A man gives up life
Like an old radio
With a cracked leather case
That's left unused
In the unfinished
Cottage basement.

What a perfect place
To bury yourself,
Among decades of sawdust
Left from a lifetime
Of tragedies,
All so punctual
And predictable
Like the sound of the train
That woke you up
Every Wednesday night
Until you were nine.

And I'll relive it
On those mornings
When time bends back,
And the whiskey
Gets me wandering
Through halls
Of a house rebuilt.

All Wars Lost Within

By you I will meet
Hundreds of thousands
Of men.
Men in uniform
And tattered scraps of skin.
Men who bore their
Hearts to God
And enemies of them.
Men with years
Of majestic mountains
In their eyes
And a soft sea
In the ones who
Can barely understand.
When the sun speaks
To them of the life
Left created,
They will cry
Desperately for death
And the devil
To take them.

When We Used To Love Winter

This is sickening
Life like a dead set
Bead on the line,
Drawing back
To a pale face
And firing
With closed eyes.
The arrow flies
So swiftly into
A mans painted pride
That's framed like
The portrait
Of a stranger in a suit.

The mark
We don't remember
When we used
To love winter,
Like the creature
That devours its young;
We are faithless,
Faithless father
And living evil nature.

Women Like You

Women like you
Break homes
With their bare hands
And pick their teeth
Clean with copper pipes
Pulled from the insides
Of this desolate,
Crumbling frame of life.

Women like you
Bend light to their will
And seek out the night
To pluck each
Of the stars,
To feed and foster
That ever draining
Lack of luster.

Women like you
With no memory of fear,
Can move through
The darkness
Like a spreading disease
With feverish love
And a child-like prowess.

But men like me
So thankfully deceived
As the wide eyed
Whipping boy,
Will bleed into dreams
Of impossible futures
And fortunes
That bind us
With terrible greed.

I Never Finish Anything

We make haste
In the strangest
Of places,
Dark rooms with red dye
And a haze of velvet blue
In the sky.

A father carves out
His place
In the basement,
And puts young hands
To steel
With a short strike
And a steady grip.

Building empty shelves
To leave behind.

Just About Anyone

I breathe and speak
So softly.
Ice shoves
The rugged shoreline
As our grandfather
Grinds a dessert
For evening coffee.

I am the painter's
Groaning organs,
Mine is heart
And his is lung.

I could love
Just about anyone.

To Some Future Lover III

We can wake up together
In Sunday's line of shade
Through the window,
Sinking slowly into morning
We'll make our day.

Thank God For Bad Habits

I can spend money
So quickly
On passing currents
And fresh cut herbs,
On burned wax
And wet ink
Or too many drinks,
Like the night
We talked at the bar,
And your eyes
Told me
You were beautiful.

White American Women

I fall infatuated
With plain white ghosts
And pale sketches
Of barely women,
Discarded skin
From the venomous creation.

They find space
In the front of
A crowded lecture hall,
Shutters closed
To sweat it out
And drain passion
From my pores
With the heat of regret.

I know nothing
Of those shapes I admire,
In perfection they
Draw and repel
As the nightmare
You hope to relive
And fear to retell.

Once tasting the fruit
Of that now
So foreign of places,
It will never
Ever taste the same
In this lifetime together.

To Some Future Lover II

I'd like to take a walk,
And speak softly
As the air moves
Our voices through
The streets
Laid before us.

The warm orange glow
Will drip from the
Windows and lay out
Patterns for our feet
To define.

We'll pass the same places
And rarely change design,
Knowing intimately strangers
That tend to their lawns
With a low and gentle nod.

I'll move my feet,
Set my pace,
Same as yours
Same as ours,

Wanting the color
To stay awhile longer.

We Asked For This

But when she wakes up
The pain is still there
Because you've been up for
Hours blending smoke
And morning fog,
Watching winter
Pass by like fall.
The cup of kosher coffee
She left by the lamp is
Half full,
Lukewarm,
And not sweet enough
For the way she likes it.

In some places people
Only long for what's next,
Like hot wet wind,
Or dry stiff air.

This Sunday Morning

I feel warm
And well rested,

Though I didn't sleep much
With the steady
Gentle pulse,

Beating dreams
In the race to
My fingertips.