There is half a spider on my desk. Encased in resin.  Right next to a picture of my grandmother.  Somehow this feel inappropriate.  It's macabre and terrible, the chambers of its abdomen laid bare like some unlocked diary.  I am ashamed every time I look at it. 

It talks to me: "This is your fault,"  it says.  "I'd be skittering about a desert floor somewhere, smashin' crickets and spinnin webs like spider man, cuz I'm a spider, man." 
"You're kinda corny"  I tell it.  "Corny?" It retorts, "You have me here, flayed on your countertop, my heart leeching into this plastic dome... for what?  To hold down this paper?   Why don't you just let me go?"

Of course it doesn't say this, but half of its eight eyes accusingly stare it right into my brain.  Sometimes I daydream about hurling it into the ocean, but that's no place for half a spider.  Sometimes I think about burying it in the backyard, but that feels so formal, and we've gone way past formality at this point.

The truth is, there is no spider inside that resin dome.  There is exoskeleton and bristles, that is all.  The spider is sitting on a faded bench on a cliff somewhere, watching the ocean with my grandmother. She is wearing white sweatpants and a crocheted sweater with a scottish terrier on it. The spider is holding her hand while the sun slides into the water like a goodnight kiss. It is so appropriate.  It is so alive.

10/30 2016

With the back of one hand
he wipes saliva & Icehouse
from his lips, spits into the dirt
and contemplates the quarter
he's about to toss toward the
cement curb.  "This mother
fucker right here,"  he mumbles
to no one in particular, "is
my god damn salvation." 
Then, with a flick of his thumb,
the silver disc flies through the
air, arcing like the hands of fucking
God or a ballistic missile,
flipping end over end and glinting
with each stuttering grab at the sun.

9/30 2016

the dust has been washed
away in rivulets down the
windscreen of a car.  Probably
from the 90's, probably a
Honda or Toyota - missing
half a fender, trunk held closed
with wire and duct tape.
inside, a woman waits out
the weather among the detritus
of decades; only the driver's
seat is not piled with wax
paper wrappers, empty cups,
things that used to contain.
Her cigarette droops nearly to
her chest, unlit.  There is no
power in this car, the battery
died three nights before.
She contemplates a droplet,
staggering its way down
the window, changing direction
with abandon.  She reaches for the
handle, rotates, and breathes in
the damp air.  

8/30 2016

The last evening he was alive
was warmer than the night
before.  I sat outside with my
mother on white plastic chairs,
drinking wine from stemless
cups. I had said goodbye
many times in the days before,
sitting bedside, watching his
bird body cave in on itself,
not violently though - more of
a soft curl, like a child's ringlet.
His voice, when it came, was
muffled and hushed; a sheet
pulled over the ears on June
nights when the still air is too
hot for sleep.  When his voice
ceased and his breathing became
rote, we spoke with our palms,
rested on his forehead like
promises or prayers - soon
his hands relaxed their instensity,
lay open, books waiting to be read.

Dylan Thomas told me one should
rage against the gentility of death,
and I loved that.  Imagining a sparring
partner that dodged and wheeled
trying to pull me into the the good night.
The truth is, a gentle death is beautiful -
the night is velvety and delicate,
I want to ease into it like a hot spring,
with a warmth, a whoosh, and a sigh.

7/30 2016

Sometimes I wonder if he's in there,
somewhere, 5th of Teacher's Gin
halfway gone, way past the point
of tonic and lime.  Sitting on a
couch in cut off jean shorts,
too-tanned legs spread enough
to make everyone uncomfortably
aware he's sans briefs. Telling a
story too loudly, interrupted by
snorts that could be laughter or
blunted cough, peppering references
to his intellectual prowess and
life's constant unfair raining of
shit onto his shoulders.  Running
like a fucking marathon racer,
from anything that might actually
depend on him being himself.

I wonder if my hand will
lay heavy like his on the back of
some child's neck, the comfort
intended lost when it feels like
a pythons constriction.  Will
I understand the stage so well
that I can't ever leave it, will
the boards grow into my feet,
the characters inhabit every
sinew in my body, the words
I say scripted and flat.  I wonder
if I am strong enough to accept
what I do have, and to celebrate
what I do not.  

6/30 2016

Five foot assassin

ever notice how
headphone jacks look almost like
insulin needles

5/30 2016

Triolet


I know it's true we all will die
our bodies fail, our stories fade
Upon these bones we cannot rely
I know it's true we all will die
so stomp feet and shout " I defy!"
or shuck through life like a charade
I know it's true we all will die
our bodies fail, our stories fade.

4/30 2016

Spring cleaning dusts off
remembrances of betrayal
and new beginnings.
Fifteen old paper ream boxes
bulging with the words of
so many children who trusted
I would keep them forever.
Maybe I will, maybe these
scribbled lines and typed
pages sitting in my garage
will animate, maybe they already
have - each graphite mark
elongating and escaping it's
cardboard tomb, stretching
like some horror movie parasite,
writhing into my veins as I slept,
slowly twisting and dissolving;
double helix ballerinas, maybe they
wake me at night sometimes.
Maybe the voices calling from
those boxes are Korotkoff sounds,
the urgent tap of arterial blood,
the whoosh and click of pulse
as it propels abandonedly forward
through this network of meat
and nerve and bone and brain.
I am mostly made up of those
words I have assigned to others,
but don't we know that every story
has been told already?
Don't we know our blood sounds
like the whispers of ghosts?

3/30 2016

Awash in spring heat,
the town nearly sweat itself
into a nap.  Streams
of ill prepared tourists
bent glistening necks
like Chinatown ducks
toward expensive baubles
hanging in windows.
A man, middle aged,
hiked his paints up above
his ponderous waist,
commenting on a painting
in a gallery window.
His wife, under a wide
brimmed straw hat
turned her oversized
sunglasses toward him
and sneered something ugly
at him. He lumbered on,
as she lingered near the
multifaceted light reflecting
from a windchime, transfixed.

2/30 2016

It was the sound that did it,
the dry twig snap -
somehow louder than the
voices shouting in the yard

Her face, blanched with shock
upturned as she rocked
with the movement of the
webbing on that trampoline

My chest rending with
each caught breath in
her own, each tear an
elevator shaft down

She never weighed much,
my little bird, but she seemed
only air and sobs as I
carried her to the car

She held her arm close
to her heart, I could see
in the rear view - as if to say
you can be careful, dad

you can be by my side
even, holding hands even
and I will still break,
these are my bones

this is my heart.

1/30 2016

If I could carve her bust,
I would etch every wrinkle
as they lie. The tiny furrows
at the corner of each eye
would be last, beautiful
spiderwebs, they deserve
the steadiest hand,
the lightest touch.

If I could paint her countenance
I would adorn her hair with
each gray streak. Every
heathered runnel will be
defined.  Cinereous and slate;
the shade must be exact,
these have been earned
they will not be subdued.