Before I was Stephen
  I was Steve.
Even earlier: Stevie.
A baby, a boy, an abnegation_
  I was
A pigeon who declared
  himself endangered.

Jacob waits
    with coiled intention.
My rival,
    my friend.
I push through sheets
    through sheets
to him
    and find only shadow.

The night it pulls,
or does it proffer? 

A ladder of streetlamps
climbs uptown 
to a window.

A sash a sill
a hand
belongs to Jacob.

Cam (Scott’s sister): Hey, douchbag, I can hardly read your stupid cartoon.
Scott: Oh…uh
[Scott posts another copy]
Scott: Sorry readers.

Business Class

Eight grand USD
  gets the hi def screen
mousse au chocolat
  duvet for the knees
side table, cognac_
  fifteen cubic feet.

Travel Log

In headlamps
  sidewinders of snow
drift the dry roadway.

Me?

I believe in waiting
  like free association
like all necessity.

a day is an ellipse
of red wine and coffee;
a crucible for
meek pleasures.
now i’m out walking,
looking into windows.
should I have cupcake?

Four chickens have
raided dad’s porch
and are eating 
the cat food. 

I remember
they’re dinosaurs, and
the scene becomes
a bit unnerving. 

    cloud
    tower
   robust
on horizon

is reflected,
   broken
       motion, on
     the bay
    below

here is  a high res
tumblr gif, a man-
o-war,  a  cyclone.
four masts  quiver
in  infinite   ochre,
seven  deck hands
pounce  the  lines.  

Dear patron:

This low-fat
caramel latte
can't dull
the mace of
distant anguish.

But you may pretend
its vapors
aglow
are
the dawn light.

Who said the ambition’s gone?
He’s trying to write psalms!
Three white leopards beneath a tree.
Lady of silence; lady of song.

We hated
every day
of our
Golden Age.

Just shat the cage.

And blamed
the helpless,
the homeless
for our rage. 

contiguous (adj.)

: took us
  one hundred million years
  to stitch these shorelines
: another ten
  to reach the sky 

Will conversion
     be suborned by ambition?
God, give me fame!
Guide them
     to you
     to me,
Let them love me
     in your name.

Here, Halloween,
I've dressed as Dreadful_
clicking heels
past the bagmen,
the four-job moms_
a child once lost
grown numb
to perdition.

Givamene_

Hers were
  cross-wise
strips of phrases

layered
  upon
this simple thing:

Love tries.
  It wakes
and tries again.

die Stadtkatze

eyeliner black,
 cigarette gris,
plum bundled sphinx
 in tabby-color curls.
she squints up at
 the walkers by,
blaming them.

prairie poem:

come winter,
them cloud banks
ruff up like
morning, wolf-
haired mountains.

and Jimmy, me,
we forget
we live in
flatlands.

writing (n)

: the uncomfortable 
  process of organizing
  uncomfortable feelings. 

ampersand (v.t.)

: to conjoin by shortcuts.
: to add a partner but not a corner office.
: to drop a sign where a word would do. 

affront (n)

: affront hides a back—
: a craven arrow shower.
: intended or unintended.
: I’m sorry I hurt you.

obverse (n)

: off the hot pavement
: i unstuck a swallow
: topside feathered
: the obverse hollow

Yet again,
loneliness
     has spoiled
the gift of
solitude.

charity (n)

: the hand that watches itself
: automatic deduction
: an approximate goodness (see also advice)
: a tax write-off

passion (n)

: naïve fervor
: a dulcet form of lust and hatred
: an HR buzzword (meaningless)
: self-deception

Here is an empty shelf.
The shelf is in me.
I am the shelf.

Its emptiness 
Is an offering.

For you.

Dawn.
Mother
went to the
window, left hand
palm up, fingers curled,
as if begging
alms of the
whetted
light.

Thunder echoes
emptily down
walls of city.

L’Effet de pluie
smears, grays

it hastens_

etches figures
dashing towards
dithered awnings.

In the lobby of the Ritz
The housekeep dusts a
Teardrop urn on a sideboard.
Argent, curvaceous, she’s kept
There to be eyesome and ignored.

Out in the septic garden
Hellebore is strangled
By bindweed untamed.

All things subtle wither.
Our crass arvensis.
Inattention disclaimed.

I slept off our
  train ride
hours in the room
  and woke up 
at first of dusk.
Yet, when
  I closed my eyes
I could feel me
  still moving.

Here’s the shelf
  I kept empty for you_
Dust, demitasse,
Ein Gösser, an iPad,
Some damned glam mag
  I never even looked at.

A black glass
  storefront
reflects,
imprecisely, the
  obverse of
a billboard.
I can’t construe.

//Temperance St//

For the utopians
 among us
Remember_
The artifacts
 of our pain
Have borne us
 better_
 and longer_
Than our
 as of yet unmet
Better selves.

Here find
  a topography of mood_
Not ideas,
  not events,
But the tectonics of emotion_
The fret and
  subduction
  of hope and
  malice.

10:32 am.
 1,000 worlds
 blaze through
 my office window.
The tum tum
 of street bands,
 cat calls,
 kids screaming.

Where should I be?

I read you
Until I was able to write this.
A fluid thing
Rightly weighted
Talking back through the ether,
Saying
Thank you.

Meanwhile
At the church retreat we
Went off to talk to God.
And sitting behind
The Rectory, I watched
The leaves of a locust.
All moving.

A window behind you.
  Put Virginie out there,
  Teal Vespa, marron hair.
Scarf horizontal,
  A skirted lovely prude
  Speeding out of view.

A mouth, an arm, 
An upturned hand,
A drop of curd and mist.

An unseen sun
Marks wrist
With its bead.

Again,
I struggle to see
What I see.

it’s not bombs  not Ebola
  not burning in my bed
not even al Qaeda
  but smallness that I dread

The Fates of love are
Fates of propinquity_
The nearness of elbows
Or endocrine surge,
The places where 
Paths narrow,
Nudging us
Together.

Grant’s life story was much like my first book: 
Strung scenes together 
  because he liked them, 
not because they went anywhere.

Running, I see
  The spire at Stephansplatz
Marks but one focus
  Of the radial flip-flop_
This heavy-footed canter
  Of a middle aged man.

Ted Cruz stands for certainty.
I don’t stand for uncertainty.
  I am simply uncertain. 

In Physics,
Work is measured
By start and by end.

Out here,
It is in returning.
Eighth, ten hours a day

We struggle
Back to beginning.

I quoted myself,
  changed the name,
Sat back, and 
  watched it fade.

You see most
  sometimes
When you look
  the other way. 

We lay in low, dry grass.
Watched the clouds’ 
Drifting anatomy_
Contrails pins to
The scolioses of the sky.

I fingered an
Old shoehorn_
Only six euros, 
Ten with the watchband.

But for a world
Of shelf space,
I can’t imagine 
Where I’d put them.

Hold on, Henry,
I’ll play Minecraft in a minute.
I’m making a poem. 
No,
It’ll be good this time—
A tongue of flame.
A chalice of meaning.

A memoir:

The many years 
I spent there.
Simply trying. 

Christmas.
  Uncle Ted asks if I’m happy,
New job and all.
Big Ted, I’d be glad
  to go to grave
  without another breath
About being happy.

Amber amulet ampersand
Further you furtherance.
Donated donuts for plutonium.
Yes, Lawanda, I am gratified. 

Pensées,
  Epigrams_
Cheetos of
  The Interwebs.
Salty, quick_
Leaving out too much,
  Letting in too little.

No.
This is not freefall
  nor inner monologue.
the words you see here
  were picked over,
  certain,
and shall be_

Every mind is a miracle_
A vase imagining
What it must be 
To be a vase.

“I reserve the right to break my own rules.” 
     - Jake Wilson Whitlow 

I drove to work with that hazy,
sad feeling I feel when
I know things are changing
but just not quite how.

First Day of School,
August 2009

Parenthood is like some poetry. 
Can’t be enjoyed 
  but after long travail, 
boredom, 
fatigue,
enervation, 
and, yes, despair.

I wrote this one
  on the way to work.
Or did I just see it?
 
People.  Sleeping
  heaped in piles all around
McPherson Square.

art (noun) \ˈärt, ərt\ our best attempt to bridge, without dogma, the gulf between the universal and the particular.

Where are we, widows?
Is there communion in your tears?
Or are we islands?
Sunblanked waters,
Distant coastlines_
An archepelago of fears?

Khyber_
Chalk line road
  snakes into
the saw-toothed dare.
Breach the
  cross-wise blades_
Test hand. Test nerve.

I quoted myself
  then changed the name,
Sat back, and
  watched it fade.

Even the nearest things
  I hold out 
for inspection.

When he came,
He came wizened,

As if I saw his
Life in a mirror_

Saw it, but
Could not stop

The pain from coming.

Twenty gulls on
Clay-colored water
Bob a blockade
Across the river,

Too cold to care
About Dun Mallard
Crashing the flank
Of the embargo.

Fifth floor hallway
  we sometimes pass_
How goes it?
Keeping busy?

Only these aren’t really questions.
And we don’t really want to know.

I smiled, but wanted 
  to mark it with an asterisk. 
Explain in the footnotes 
  the cliffs I scaled 
  to hang it there.

Joaquin says,
Try to relate to fish.
Here goes_
Tasting trail
In algal up,
Id hone to glimmer.
Bite!
Pain pulls to gasp
Blinding rud.
Panic.

Two coffees
and the daily pang
sends me to solitary_
A brushed metal stall.
And I recall
Elysium_
A beer, a cigarette
Friday
after finals. 

Rex: I hate being alone.
  Know what I mean?
Cat sure didn’t_
There’re more ways
  to feel about things
Than things 
  to do the feeling. 

Daddy come here,
Let me talk in your ear:
I made a poop!
And she did.
And it was_
A gray-green gherkin
Standing proudly in the bowl.

Earn your bones, they say,
  but bones fade.
Breathtaking how fast
  those desks will forget you. 

I’ve never been able to write 
Without looking over my own shoulder, 
Wondering just what it was
I was getting at anyway.

How can you swallow the antidote along with the poison_
To desire so much the end of your desiring?

We hiked until our asses chapped,
Sang jodies down the logging roads.
Thin as fawns, green as ferns,
Learning how to love.

being_
something’s unbearable about it.
not the lightness.

my money’s
on the lifting_

the space left by task,
filled with decision.

I walked away embarrassed. 
	Can’t say why.

But Aldo, the city suits me.
I like the grit,
  salt dried streets,
The natural wonder of
girls going by_
  hitch jackets.
  riding boots.

Nostalgia's
a window
I won't look out_

Those stories
just remind me

What was
undone then
is undone now.

And time
is running down.

It’s hard toward the end,
Not knowing if you’ve done enough.
There’s no finish line, no tape to cross_
You just decide, some point, to stop.

Either or either,
Neither or neither,
How do you say either and neither?
I don’t know,
But my heart says either
And your eyes say neither.

I quoted myself
  then changed the name,
Sat back, and
  watched it fade.

This is how I feel_
  how I hold it together.

You can’t think of morality as a luxury. 
You can’t. 
You can’t. 
You can’t.

On the Via Dolorosa
The crescent mounts
The minaret that mounts
The Blood-wept
Statio septima_
The place where a 
Man-God stumbled.

Look_
The doors close, year by year,
  Doors close behind you.
And the doors in front of you, well,
  Best to seem they suit you.

Nobody reads anymore.
Not even readers_
Only the girls you see at Starbucks,
Wishing so 
So hard over their moleskin journals.

At last
the kid always chuses
his plain old self_
chewses what always wuz_
Why not heed the tug of ambition?
Pick up tuba? 
Learn Old Dutch?

Hitting return will turn you
into a pompous prick.

Twitter’s NOT for poems!

So beat it!

And don’t let me catch you
humming on the subway.

Megabus_
For 27.50
you can sit by Big Mama Menthols_
and though she doesn’t have to,
she’ll give you Nip Chees,
ask you where you’re going.

Twitter counts
  the spaces,

the linebreaks.

That’s just the way_

You pay
  for every pause,

for every slice
  of whitespace.

Tad wore a fitted shirt, epaulets,
  buttons above the elbow.
I spent most the meeting
  wondering just
  what those buttons were for.

Ron put Pam on a PIP_
Ashen,
she came back
to the chaos of her desk.
Called her boy at the bus stop_
  Watch yourself, baby.
In a whisper.

In louvred dark
Electron whisper
Cascades to
Blue flame instinct_
Pipes click / heat flows.

The coldness called_
And warmth was my answer.

You’ve played too long
When you spot an Enderman
10th & Broadway,
Hoisting the block of an ’08 Camry
Itching to brain a slopebacked gamer.

I quoted myself
  then changed the name,
Sat back, and
  watched it fade.

As if I threw my voice
  just to hear its echo.

Old days,
Sleepless nights
were bare bulbs,
lust letters,
rank odors out open windows.
Now it’s all
  Binging Bad_
iPads ruined insomnia.

At the bottom of the well,
  No words will be my rope,
Nor will I think myself
  To daylight.

Say you won’t take them, well_
Two of them are right now
  somewhere on this Earth,
Laying nose to nose,
  toe to toe.
Scheming.

Click here.
Lower. Left clavicle_
OK, now the disclaimer:
99% post-consumer material.
Can’t be washed with whites.
I often change my mind.

Why worry?
I know what you’ve 
  been thinking.
Just think about it this way:
Every day
Just find one beautiful 
  Thing to say.

Tweet?
Is there an echo?
  Is there an end to this maze?
Or just steps in 
  darkness that,
  soon or late,
  will fade?