Bachelors

I'm not interested

in being loved.

It took too long

and I've disowned the classics,

the way they show

my education's age.

 

Kissing my pillow,

I felt like a popcorn hull

stuck in God's gumline,

trying to irritate a fantasy

until it made me a pearl.

Nothing washed over me,

shining.

 

Now I want to hoard

the perfume of my disease

until I can name all the flowers

it resembles and plant them

on a mountainside

where I shatter my femurs.

 

I was always trying

to refuse my body

but not the world—

to be exhaled

by a smoke machine,

my powdery tongue

all over and inside

everyone, and then

filleted by a glance

from a mirrorball.

 

 

Eephus (2024)

I started the game

and my second self

finished it, although

I have no recollection,

just someone else’s scorebook.

 

That couldn’t be me,

driving out of the parking lot

unconsoled and clear-eyed, offering

my body and my fellowships

to be defaced by history;

 

that couldn’t be me,

asleep in the outfield

pissing golden Narragansett

until it met the Lord’s own dew

 

 

407 Poem with Ghosts

Already too low to see

across the aisle

of the intercity bus,

the sunset was reflected

in the top half of the window

while the real light struck

the new townhouses

along the side of the highway,

hammering their windows

into rows of blazing shields

and that's how close

another world is

and I was grateful

it couldn't touch me