259/365

doing the things you love
when you don’t want to
show real intention.
the slow grind of devotion:
strap those running shoes on.
pluck the strings.
mix that drink.
consume those pages.
scratch out this poem.
everyday. one. step. at. a. time.

waiting on a book of poetry
i’ve ordered. hoping a few lines
will act like grenades to blow
my limbs apart and shatter my heart.
everyday i wait patiently at the empty
mail box to be obliterated. and they say
poets don’t have any power. 

257/365

had to hit
pause today.
mix a brooklyn.
order a pizza.
don’t look at email.
on the couch with first born
watching my team.
pure distraction
bread and circus.  
looks like
sometimes things
do go your way.

241/365

woke up without an alarm,
the air thick with threats of a storm,
gave my mother some advice
that felt relevant and adult and needed,
wondered if my own kids will some day
guide me through ambiguous stages.
followed up on helping a friend’s friend,
an afghani refugee stranded in a warehouse
outside the airport in tehran, concussed and paranoid,
wondering if he accepted the call that might get him out.
locked into in a book about the attica prison riot of 1971
and fiddled with the opening dropped d intro of drown.
fought the nap energy seeping into the room
by going for a short run in the rain, no music
but the splat of the puddles and drops from the trees.
made a grapefruit cocktail in a coupe glass
and read how the word julep is rooted the persian word golab
which means rose water and that margarita is daisy in spanish.
excited to embark on these cocktail seminars.
dinner. tv. bed.
another sunday
in the books. 

211/365

friday night
one o’ six am
forty seven years old,
half glass of pinot
a stale brownie
and phoebe bridges
on the ear goggles.
finished clean up
after pam and martin left,
washing dishes and packing up
the left over cheese,
listening to pink floyd and bob marley
brain damage and bablyon system.

before they came,
i brewed raspberry syrup and
squeezed fresh lemon juice,
ordered pizza, laid out the cheese plate
with home made pickles,
made a clover cocktail, a mojito,
a gin and tonic, a manhattan, and a few
brooklyns. we drained three bottles of
cabernet sauvignon, ordered pizza
and listened to an acoustic
indie spotify playlist.

the conversation settled into familiar pockets:
children, concerts we went to, television shows we’re watching
the authenticity of reading books versus listening to them.

earlier, i watched a video from a nineteen ninety seven.
a road trip we took across the country. i’d found an
old vhs tape a few days ago and transferred it to mp4.
in it i am young, skinny and jittery. ears pierced,
a few fewer tattoos. anxious.  full of life.

it’s a miracle how we live in the past, this moment and
in awe of who we might become in the threatening future.

there is no way that boy in nineteen ninety seven
could have imagined this man, constructing this poem
twenty years later- fat in belly, white in hair and beard.
how will we look at sixty seven?
how will the promises weather the storms?

i don’t want
this night to end,
but tomorrow
is closer than it looks
and these days
there is little need
for such reckless chaos.