what i was
was an injury
unpatched. i was
unnoticed evil. i was
public good and that felt
like i was a balloon stretched too
tightly, full of air, ready to
pop and leave scraps and sound
behind me. i never knew
anything about love on my own, just
what i felt from the person across from me —
at least until the end, when a glimpse came to me
so late its promise made me laugh
before i wept. too late
i recognized the dead man in my poems
who mocked me — how can you create, son,
if there’s nothing inside you to work with?
i was a wound with a ragged edge
and a stitch or two, here and there, that
had long ago let go and left only
black threads to show the attempt.
i was futile, i was a robe on the bed
without a body to fill it, and when i finally understood
how little there was of me i let even that slip away.
you can read my poems now and imagine
a man who wrote them. i never knew him.
what i was was a script for a poet, not
the poet himself. you can protest
but i won’t hear it. i don’t
have an ear on my head that’ll work for me.

1.
hi i’m new here and thought it might be fun
to keep in touch with friends
and maybe meet some people
come say hi

2.
two vast and trunkless legs of stone
stand in the desert

3.
preferences: children?
love kids, but not for me

4.
shoutout to all the shortyz

5.
don’t send me a picture of your dick
show me a face pic first
i’ve seen cock and unless
you’re the biggest on the site
it’s not going to make me cum

6.
look upon my works ye mighty and despair

7.
trajectories computed
throw weight calculated
impact accuracy determined

8.
hi
i never thought i’d be writing something like this
hi
this is the last place i thought i’d end up
hi
is there a woman out there who wants a nice guy
hi
i’m funny and sensitive like poetry elliot smith and sufjan stevens
hi
any other dave matthews fans out there

9.
statues break because they do not take themselves lightly

10.
what you conceived in a moment of loneliness
lasts beyond your subsequent coupling

11.
i’m currently in a relationship
and am only looking to play as a couple

12.
any hotties looking to chat

13.
someone’s raised a long hard rock with his name on it
putting it out on the web for all to see
email me for a webcam show
email me

14.
see the crumbled state
the war as lover
reaching for the next place
to make a stand

15.
hi
i’m new here

I watched my mother
read a book about it poolside,
her towel dripping now and then
on the aqua tiles.

We had heard about it all our lives — a network of pain,
flat, cold, decolored; mobs of grey men
sucking at cold soup and cigarettes,
watching each other’s mouths for scraps.

We imagined that they
were just like us, more like us
than they were like their countrymen.
We suspected they were our story on ice,

believed that so hard that it hardly mattered
if that was true. They were a slice
of the red white and blue. Freedom
was always an American word back then.

When we were older and prisoners
began to emerge from the gulag
with stories of how it truly had been
we were shocked to learn we’d been close to

right, but still so far from truth. We got a taste
for spreadsheets and close notation. We understood
that some of those people were scum
and not heroes, and heroes

and scum were sometimes so blended
they didn’t even know who was who.
No one reads their books by poolside now;
some myths are made to be remembered in error.

Each day we wake to news
of new islands we’ve filled
with dangerous men. We’re now the ones
punching the clocks and typing the stats.

Honestly, we don’t know who’s sitting there, sweating
out the days in boxes, staring
at the mouths of comrades. Some are terrible
potentialities, some long for their fields and children,

some are all at once a terror and a caution
to us. We punch the names and strike
the boxes. Someone’s going to write about this
someday, and someone’s mother

may read the book by poolside again, taking in another slice
of the red white and blue, but not now. Now
the oceans and the trees are flat and grey to the easy viewer,
and while fewer are smoking, the new soup is still cold on the tongue.