Funny Boy

For Jimmy

part of the palate old mannish
that’s the may of music industry
failure of the kidneys in whiteness
manners under privileged wagons
awrapped in cheap blankets widowed
by that angry generation of the stolen
organs that are connected to elements
how inhumane we die of lack of neighbors
absorbed anew in a stationless blue
i’ve screwed a muse or two
but never in the dark of the business day
repaired by the careful animation of roadkill
the best of our own circles and why we are here
if that’s what you want, funny boy

I Never Could Get the Hang of Thursdays

not still enough to front the storm
a too familiar scent of altoids and beer
hangs the rye anniversary with Dave
real man full of trouble here in Philly
on tender hooks in radio silence
kills the aliens, the little man in the room
for what i did for half-erased billboards
that commute sentences from 50 or 85 years
those mechanics of clairvoyant cartographers
there is no lastly in the resurrected city
payment is due before that drink is over
and like any professional, take time to stretch
because in a former life, i took your money
i still know what to hold close to the chest

When the Laugh Track Starts

sour hour starts here on cue
drenched in april diminished
returns an east coast survival match
to one career too many of statistics
sometimes it’s our job to hold
hands of the dying on trains
those smartest men who left stationless
we fit in to public spaces
at risk or proving ourselves free
in a future redundant with Hamlets
not enough ghosts to keep us
anodyne with civil unions untold
pacts with devils in unflattering light
when radio is on, then the fun starts

The More You Know

like any breaks on the jesus wagon
is not to remember bust lines of praise singers
with rucksacks of gen-x-ers who employ
100 monkeys who write “it’s not you, it’s me”
to be cut like a rival gown out of glam curtains
under kliegs that bring to light this city’s challenger
of unpopular romance culminated in the nineties
that harken to bone dust in my pill bottle
a shade of manic merlot on a morning commute
who can remember to spring forward?
in my defense it was the chinese grocers
who feign interest in major league sports
and stand crooked as an englishman’s teeth
against the loneliest parts of the day

Because I am the Tortoise

at risk the gloved little girls
roll geometrically suburban halls
untold by lesser arcana reversed
to ends stuck in this dust bowl
while an automatated seventh calvary
shoots at audiences of everyday plumbers
who keep their technology ornamental
in broken records of first baseball games
we are botanists when the sun comes up
busy reasoning under nine mile cedar shade
no one should be blamed for survival
what is lost in migration is found in photo albums
past the tourist tests in august mankind
we converse with the spirits of campfires

This Wasn’t in the Brochure

once past february, catholic sex has
too much detail to be in midwestern states
under clearest light in eastern philosophy
where city is now an adjective
to have a diet, caffeine-free coke with you
out flower picking in the xeriscape garden
speechless with rock and rye in hand
where she fingered the illegals & loved
to explain what it is to have a donkey
to jean valjean & his clockwork children
who post their fantasy truths on the net
in earnest efforts for world unity
to palm the invisible cool hundred
dressed in their best johnny cash

Future Hazy, Try Again

life in the back row is past related
to dancers that fancy trauma sisters
where they count pieces of blood
in latin from a sampling of sequoia
that i am bound to donate like it’s a tithe
when skin alters into dragonlike feng shui
only to find a jar of salmon and old scarves
in yearbooks of times i chose to give up
from pink admissions of the working class
on paperwork meant to be read by 4th graders
who run away in the independent cinema
busted, like exploitation in the 1970s
cut in two to be sewn with ceremony
one foot on the boards, one foot in the book