//Faith in the Anvil//

//Faith in the Anvil//

Words flounder in decay
-how I wish they'd never flown.

The returning smile of a jackal explodes.

I quietly count my time, even though I know it isn't really there, until they name the hour, and I politely carry on.

These hours, marked by cigarette ash sometimes seem more needed than my mind -and in the best case, I make a discovery in a spare moment or a heavy trance, that's outstripped my time.

//Ghosts that we know//

Cook the animals.
See the cathedral.

Plough the fief, and die thereabouts.

When I was a kid I played all day.
Now, I tire awake.

Ghosts that we know,
chain and feed the sun.

//Start to a noir//

//Start to a noir//

One warm and rainy day in spring
I stood at the bathroom mirror, shaving.

The cat's meow is like an old screen door.

I feel like a dented can of soup,

because I never knew that my youth,

so far could reach.

Headlights, pass over the window,
and seem to incinerate the room.

This came out of the Recession-era a few years back when it felt like I was in total opposition to everything around me. Since then I've adapted: I shave strategically and less often.

//Figuration Nº.8//

//Figuration Nº. 8//

The chaw-stained smile of a hard-hatted scarecrow

turned corporate confidence man
calls to mind shades of a chequered past.

He cuts his Cope with coffee grounds,
farts and smiles
like the Devil,
and bears his old denim jacket the same way.

His dog

-shys away from him still.

“You’re getting older. You’re going to have to live with yourself soon.”, I say, as the lunch hour litter of newspapers, crumbs, and soft-pack cellophane ebbs its way between bathroom stalls, into the parking lot, under lockers -only sometimes lapping at the lip of the trash can. His quick-lipped close-snipped speech for once fails him. He's puckered tight as a dog's asshole.

17:01.3

I’m running

past the old school

so there’s Mark?

Joey’s friend

on the elementary

playground

I’m running past,

maybe eleven, drawing

from a cigarette

he found. Joey’s watching him

and I’m

standing away plotting

how to save his life.

I act,

I won’t just stand by.

I bury the butt in tire chips.

my fingertips stink

like hot rubber.

I shake the memory

but not the smell.

and as I pass her house

I’m still in love with Staci Williams.

I still kiss the stream she drank.

I can still run by her house one night

I even crept into her

backyard but the windows were closed,

shades closed there was a black forest behind

me like a poem.

something about coming home, bicycles.

I thought these people neighbors,

they couldn’t

look stranger.

running through

beauty or close-by you want

to be honest for the sake of a butt

you remember when you keep forgetting the world,

17:01.3 or something; the exact time it took

to run down the hill and come back the same.

if you sat and watched you’d only

ever see me running downhill.