Oh Man You Guys

If you are going to eat meat you shouldn't over-cook it

I find de-boning, de-veining, butterflying, and shucking all similarly interesting

I'm as much a fan of implements as implementation

When's the right time to break it to you that I lie from time to time

When's the right time to tell you I've been known to write fiction, but that's wholly different

Put your feet up, this month only has thirty days

Treat yourself to the end of an era

Stone or steel or steam or stagnation

These are funny games I play

That you play with me

Just get the mud off those boots before you come in

Location:Maier Rd,North Laurel,United States

Sometimes There's Gonna Be Fuck-Faces

Sometimes things are gonna get political

(Up in here, Up in here)

Sometimes we're going to see what happens when people stop being nice and start getting real

Sometimes people are gonna go shirtless

Sometimes will be the right time for a blazer and singing

Sometimes we'll sit on the floor

Sometimes we'll get along

Sometimes we'll have the courage to tell someone to go fuck themselves in the face of bodily harm

There is this great guy in Michigan named Jeff

He's handsome, sure, but like me he's a normal-sized guy

And once we were wrapping up playing pickup games of basketball at an MSU gym

And a couple attractive ladies walked through the gym on their way to doing whatever they were up to

And this bigger-than-normal-sized guy with his like-sized friends whistled or catcalled or somesuch at the women

And Jeff yelled, "Don't be a dick!" without missing a beat

And that was that

And that's why I wanted him to be my daughter's godfather

I don't think he believes in God (I don't, either), and I haven't seen him in a long time

But man, he'll call a fuck-face a fuck-face when it's gotta be told

He's that Nordic kinda handsome even if he isn't all Viking-sized

He wears glasses, sometimes, and knows a shit-ton about history

Location:Calvert Rd,College Park,United States

These Things Like Facts

What you have when you make a really good copy

Some configuration of digits with a six after the scale has been lost

Letting go of getting someone exactly what they want

The sun is the first star we knew

The Moon is the first moon we knew

Somewhere a ball of ice and somewhere else a ball of fire

The days speed up or the days slow down

We're importing beats from around the world, now

Knock an arrow, pull up a chair, rest cool metal against your cheeks

Repeatable structures deemed perfect because they are repeatable

Brocade, lace, mesh, chainlink

Lensing ever after

Lending to the sky

Aperture upon aperture

Ones upon zeroes

And a well-worn path to the house

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

This Happens All the Time

I'm relatively or what does that mean

Being on time is not the same thing as complete

Resolve has nothing to do with how well you can see

Sky, blue or less so

Ground, all of the clay in Virginia the more to see you with

Cover, blades and puffs and things you don't eat

I mean like putting out the right plates and the right silverware, the right glasses, a nice cloth napkin nothing too fancy though

There is the path through a track and that is where the race is won

The race is run

Prey is run down

Old machines are rundown

This is never the land of old machines, this is where we grow the people

Before the beast needs feeding

Location:W Laurel Ave,Sterling,United States

What Do You Ever Mean?

This is what I've got

Hot house whatevres

Long days before longer nights

Drinks after eight

Working our way out of good and into better

Best is for the idealist

Their towers topple

Wicked

Location:W Laurel Ave,Sterling,United States

Intimacy Today Is Great Weather Tomorrow

Still with the sunlight

The all things that are actually one thing

More resonance and somebody will win

There is a ball and dancing and ladders to climb

There are trip wires to trigger spring-loaded bundles of bolts

Fearless poison darts

Trundles, tresses, troubles, trenches

Stresses then distresses then illness on illness

Fevered, slain is a precursor to oh my god

As in Oh My God

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygosh

Did you see those clouds?

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

I've Got a Job to Do

A tiny post-impressionist faces a massive world

Sometimes, when it comes to arms, splayed is the only choice

Sometimes a giant dog is just a giant dog

A desert is shy with its water

An ocean is more like a desert than a rain forest

Trees are not lungs

If you look at the Earth from space you'd see something special, depending on where you were looking

Even if it was just a bunch of clouds

High altitude lightning that never reaches the ground is the loneliest number

Your pretty light show is its recognition that there will be no rest tonight

These maritime scenes, poker games, jailhouse tattoos

Mounting losses, sore winners, gaps upon gaps

The clouds roll in and we roll out

Somewhere there is a downed powerline

And a home owner is fumbling for the phone on the kitchen wall

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

When Resonance Became a Limiting Factor, No?

Attack and retreat and dead at 72

Free people in a free world alive at 24

Crouching, stalking, deciding and dead at 94

Forever after at 39

I can't remember my first steps or my first breath or my first words

Did you have a brain before your heart started beating? I doubt it

Onward, inward, and onward some more

These are not boxes we are checking

These are not sames that seek complying

There are relationships that need span shores, that's just reality, friend

There are connections that are doomed to faulty-dom

There are fights that need fighting but that's not one of them

There are fights that need fighting that won't be resolved until long after you're gone, but need you to fight them here and now

Layers of skin emerge and die and are gone, but your hand is still there

Stars sit in the sky, but that's just perspective

Things come to be, followed by more things

There is no relationship between small and great when we really dig in

A bridge covers a distance because the distance needs covering

Trust in that

Trust in you're going somewhere

Trust in a speedometer

Any speedometer

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

That's a Lot of Likes

Like no

Like you're not my amigo

Like a picture of the sunset and you with your board shorts and your margarita

Like the worst city in the world when it comes to allergies

Like miracles of modern medicine

Like modern to people today

Like mid which century?

Like liking to swing on swings

Like like like

Like a hushed and somber tone to close things down

Except the game is still going on

And the sheen on the skin of a freshly caught trout

Or maybe a mackerel

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

This Maybe May Stick

Thinking about so many things vs. thinking so many things

If you want to grow potatoes you need to plant some potatoes

Am I getting used to soy milk in my coffee?

And my revulsion at the thought and how that all rubs up against wanting to get back to what was

Which makes me think of this guy I knew in Virginia, Tom Kraft

He's a great poet, and I hope he's poet-ing somewhere -- New York I bet

I learned so much about people and poetry from him and he didn't even mean to, I don't think

You would learn so much, too, I swear

The potatoes I'm roasting smell pretty damn good

Garam masala, onions, curry, cardamom, cinnamon, garlic

They're almost done

I keep coming back to

Food is the answer

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Real-life Strategies for When Something Wants Out

Open a door

Location:Washington Blvd,Baltimore,United States

It's Not Saturday Night

Straw givers

Straw have-ers

But haymakers

Roundabouts and carousels

Carpools and slug lines

Washington, DC commuters and their wildly variable commutes

Do you really not see the difference between the candidates?

Are you actually uncomfortable with the shades of gray?

Or is this some kind of willful Peter Pan thing you've got going on?

Because I could be down with that as long as your willful in it.

I mean, we could hang out

Have a beer

I'm not really planning on coming around to where you are on that.

But I've got my socks, don't worry

And I know where the sun rises

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

You Could Tell Me

Hay at
Ashes to ashes

Plaited mat
Batter, batter

A time machine to rapidly reducing ranks

A time machine to the wave action of waves

High seas

Even up before evening out

From where you're sitting you can see the moon pulling the oceans on a string

Ebbs, swells

The kind of weather that makes a hermit lonely

Would be what?

We'll make our way back when the time is right

You can't get rid of us that easy

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Broadcasted Sound Something

California family shows

Affirmative responses to unclear questions

Signs and other things that mean something

Dangers you anticipate and successfully avoid

The end of a shared resource, like milk for coffee in the office

Other wide shots followed by narrow shots

The things you tell your lawyer when the law is coming after you

The value of your last phone number in a background check

A good meal shortly followed by another or an ice cream sundae

You come up throwing and you make due from there

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

4:53 in the Morning

Raw is a wrestling show on TNT        
Raw is an emotional state         Raw is a way to serve steak or fish or vegetables         Wrasslin'         A shield is a shield is not a way of life I'd recommend         The periodic table of elements         News covers things that happening close after they happen         Your friends share news with you about people you mutually know         News is filled with dead people         World events are comprised of living and dead people and occasionally animals or the actions of the larger planet         Cats often make bread before lying down         Some people say they are making biscuits         4:59 in the morning         Do you hear the same echo as I do         World events also include births from time to time         5 o'clock in the morning         Is followed by 5:01 in the morning         Tired is something you feel in your muscles         Tired is something you can feel in your joints and even your bones         Tired is something you can feel in your brain or your heart or many other organs         We can call this worn out as well         Other times it would mean fed up         Done         I'm taking my ball back         Fuck all of you         All of you stupid motherfuckers         Most times it just means you need sleep or you want sleep         And you probably aren't in a sleep place         Professional wrestling is as real as this when you think about it         Man run by little man inside his head fallacy         End of the day is the best time for sleep fallacy         You have the most wonderful face         The world going 'round         The end of the newsfeed comes when you decide it does         Newsreel         That isn't lost on me for the first time         Newscast         Broken ribs         Newsman         Paperboy         Soul music         Lots and lots of tenderness         Both medical and emotional         Try a little         Going on         I hear some birds outside         Try a little         5:09 in the morning

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Today, My Day Doesn't Matter, But in the Future It Could

We don't really shut things down. We wait.

Sometimes distance matters.

There is openness and there will be more openness.

Clothes will remain the fashion for most of the world's people.

I have nothing to add to this discussion, right yet.

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Before Trees / After Trees

You are aware that the grass came last?

Bleak is a feature of landscapes and world views.

No neck tattoos. Not now. Not ever.

The difference between living on a sphere and working within one.

The surface falling away over time.

The tricks of the sun and the tricks of the moon.

Some things swell into view, other things ebb away and keep on.

Hope and then dashed.

Day and then night.

Right and then damned forever.

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Fancy Cuts

I have until the next round shows up

Carnivore means you live on a diet of meat

Principles are different among serial killers

Principles are different among world leaders

I'm thinking about hundreds dead by drone assassination

I'm thinking about legal precedents

I'm thinking about the cameras they are going to insert into my body next week

In a few days

The miracles of modern everything

I mean contemporary everything

Smaller or faster or more power efficient

Co-efficients, cosines, co-signers to your latest lease

Life life life life

The moon is pretty wonderful tonight

High above the Inner Harbor

The whole Eastern Seaboard

If you are reading this, it means you are alive

And things are hard

But not too hard

Location:Lancaster St,Baltimore,United States

Some People

Some people don't like anything

For a while

And some races involve chance

Changes are for time

In the way that this time of year will happen every year

This day in history

Happened

Your reaction happened, too

And again

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Again from the Top But Totally Different

Dreaming a dream where the boys on the sidelines tell you you're golden

Every transmission seeking a receiver

Every do-over you ever wished for

Sunrise, your keys when they are missing, Florida

Take the difference and bury it

If anyone should see me, this is how they'll know

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

You Continue and You Got This One

I can't stop listening to this Listener song

I can't wait for the Casual Band's first show

I want to be a better singer

I want to have a convincing growl

I'm not so much feral though

And the cats would laugh about it if laughing were more like killing things

Or included wet food

We build piles of papers on every surface

And we tell ourselves things like, I found it in the last place I looked

It's a story because it has a beginning, middle, and end

Or it's a paragraph or it's a sentence or it's a sound

These connections bring you closer; so close you realize distance was never the problem

These connections bring you power when they are wires attached to sockets

These wires bring you so much and bring so much to you

Full stop

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

I Mean, You Have Two Big Toes

Who said that? / Baby how you feel

I mean, count them

I mean, you step back in time and you are a younger you with rounder pupils

I mean, the thing is, all this has been said

And, that isn't the point

I saw this terrible Star Trek movie tonight

Which is funny, because what I really meant to watch was Inland Empire

And I had a rye manhattan, but that didn't help

And I folded some laundry, which is progress

This comes together to lay the groundwork for faster-than-light travel and/or time travel

Light is wicked

While gravity remains doomed

And me, across so many spaces, doing so many things, in a single day

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Because I Don't Eat Stone Fruit

It is like what it was meant to be

Or seemed to be

Dinosaurs became birds, not reptiles

And cats still mow them down

The story is always the same

It isn't a meteor, it is the cats

They do it because it is fun

Just like us

But we don't kill the neighbor's babies

We don't go the bathroom in little boxes either

We like bowls and alleys and backyards

They like alleys, too

None of us believe in eating our young

We have so much in common

This twenty-first century

Past midnight

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

What Is All This Sense

It is what we call it when you run at breakneck speeds over short distances

Devil-may-care is an attitude

Enlarging your lungs is a process

Oxygen is to us as it is to fire

Wood is to fire as it is to little else

Fire, rust, rot

Digestion , breathing

Order stops mattering, symmetry stops mattering, continue

That trick where you throw all the cards in the air, but this time it's all the cards in the air that are your card

51 different cards are your card and the three of clubs, here in my hand, is for idiots

Pick your 51 cards up and shake them off

You're in the air and then you are not

You can't speak and then you can

You are asleep and then you are awake

Don't lose track of everything

Don't let forever go

This is how we'll all move forward

In our different shoes

Location:Emory St,Baltimore,United States

For When the Day Got Away from Me

I had so many ideas early

About the befores and what's later

I had food, too, and drinks

There was sunshine and then there was colder

There were days after days

This balances on the tip of a diamond

This plays the days forward after the dinosaurs because the dinosaurs are all dead

Or birds

This, too, flocks

This, too, circles in the sky

And tells gravity to go fuck itself

Hollow bones and wicked vantage

Old thoughts, old minds, old attempts at old dreams

We keep on and on

We keep the day in front of us where we can see it

Until we don't

Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

On Camden Yards Opening Day 2013

You'll get your game shirt on

You'll walk out the front door

You'll reboot your views on weather and how much it matters

Ahead of summer beach trips and the hurricane Septembers past where it'll matter more and more until the winter slide makes you throw your hands up

Today is American like hamburgers and tacos and sushi

Today is American like hope for the new year

Today is like massive swings in small statistical sets and they matter until they don't

Everyone together and everyone watching and everything louder

Other days are for doing something, but today is for the guys on the field doing it all

Later economics and fate or inertia and more and more numbers

Until then, all of your friends are calling

And let's go


---

I'm having thoughts about the continuum of occasional poems that go from massive, repeated, mainstream occasions down a spectrum of less frequent, more niche, more personal events until you end up at the non-occasional, unique and personal. Maybe you end up at haiku.

Also thinking of occasional poems (before) vs. reporting (during or after) and the opportunities / narrative-emotional something of an explicit before-after form -- splitting composition over time and space, especially across noted breakpoints...

Location:Washington Blvd,Baltimore,United States

Paying My Taxes Like a Motherfucking American Taxpayer, What What

The other day I was wondering whether I was actually a socialist or just a capitalist that (a) believed in different currencies or (b) just have a deep seated disrespect for my own money

I didn't really know how to get my head around that

I'm good with spreadsheets but I'm no economist

Or economic theorist

Have you paid your taxes online? I have

Echoes my favorite Dotty Lasky poem

Or one of my favorites -- the one we'd always quote around the house

And if you are only reading a little bit of poetry these days, stop right now and go get Black Life

And if you are reading a little more than a little bit, flip a coin and get either Awe or Thunderbird, too

I mean, look at the cover of Thunderbird

Shit

And the stuff inside is even better for real

If you are reading a lot bit lately, good for you

Put lots of books around your house and your kids will read more

And you know what that means?

Your kids will look at the insides of more books

For whatever that's worth

I've been reading books on my phone lately, too

I'm staying away from dairy for the moment

Whatever

Go read a ton and have a good day if you can swing it

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

I Am a Man of Rivers and Sorrows

Do we not bleed?
Do we not breathe?
I am a man of constants and sorrows.

The changing of the guard like the changing of the sparrows.
I am a man of injuries and days.

You know how to parcel out the week.
You know how to bundle up the time left over.

Remainders vs. taxing stays vs. gains measured by community.

Decline by priority

Effort by lives lost

It comes down to what you want to know or where you want to get

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

Life as We Know It

Everything I write could have this title

And a picture of a cat

Looking surprised or content or away from the camera or with glowing eyes in low light

Words are technology and whatever your high horse they'll always build one higher

And Victorians will be trapped in time, all afraid of dangling participles and other superstitions we'll leave behind some day

Split infinitives? We split atoms.

We have cell phones and are much further down the path toward racial integration

Our wealth distribution is prolly back to being just as f'ed as theirs, but things come and go

We conquered bacteria so hard it's conquering back

Our jokes are better, silly Victorians

And they are all dead

And so are all the Romantics, and all the Modernists, and the Beats, and most of the New York School

Keep on dying dead people, and we'll keep dying, too

Picture of two cats that have had dinner and are just looking for a warm place to sleep

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

What So Many Halls

So many maybes and so much time

There is a path that is a road on its way to being the boulevard we meant it

There are challenges that are little planets

There are plants responsible for everything even though they are honestly small

Hallways connect rooms and that is what they are meant to be

Today

As in these days that we live in

As in the speed is incredible

On its way to heat and now and now and now and

You don't need to follow anymore

This is breathing

This is the twenty-first century for real

It'll be April a while or forever

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States