.

You stare a black,

Coal truncheon

Through my empty,

Feeble optimism

.

As you sit there in the bar

You frequent every night

To smoke cigarettes and

Drink Mountain Dew.

.

In you,

I see a hurt little boy,

Beneath your hard exterior,

.

And I

See

What the world does

To little boys, and

.

All the toxic waste matter

You insert into your stomach and lungs

Never seems to change you

.

Because

.

It doesn’t mean anything

To you.

.

Only I,

Your enemy,

Procure you any meaning,

As your old glory heart

.

Spits on into the night

In spite of it all.

Sports bars

And tomboys

Are subsuming my mind

On this gray winter day and

To get through the winding streets of Pittsburgh

And escalate into your mountainous coordinates

Would be akin to the next coliseum of murderous carnage,

Like placing 20 five-ton cement planks

On the summit of our sweat and cunning,

As if watering my own eyes

Like a spout from a decanter

Onto agreeable poppies in daisyland,

Caressed by florid voices in Steelers jerseys.

We were all hung crooked,

In a way,

With the universe composed of gunk

That would seep itself onto our visages

And make the hands sticky

Of all the natives,

.

How we’d pounce

From horror movie living rooms

Into loud, endless mania,

Left to the machine

And the whip,

Proud purveyors of

Well-lit homicides.

The shop still stands

There in my old neighborhood

Of endless, stately houses,

Neat lawns and

Velcroed binoculars

For the leering.

.

The same man still owns the shop

With eyes like splintered wooden blanks

That penetrate your benevolent intentions

And with high school female employees

Populating the premises like

Some off-colored rhododendrons

Out of season.

.

And that

Dark Horse

Fore Smoked Stout

Still

Sits on the shelves in there,

Rich, robust and with

Unmistakably rounded flavor,

A beer I’ve

.

Never

Been able to find

Anywhere else around.

.

And really,

I don’t need it.

.

There’s Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout,

There’s Old Rasputin,

There’s Budweiser,

For when pay day’s coming up.

.

But the Fore Smoked

Napalms on to my consciousness

Like the decadent curve of a

High school girl’s posterior,

.

Like the low,

Moribund, gurgling

Sound

.

That is this world

And that

.

Makes you squint

Or nervously chuckle,

As you change the channel.

I’ve been single for a long time and just today, I was sitting around my room before
work, and thinking about finally actively pursuing a girlfriend. I’m just coming off this
brief string of days where I went out three out of the four, the one when I didn’t go out
laced with what seemed like an increased amount of loneliness and monotony, just
hanging out and watching playoff baseball.
There’s this girl on my Facebook feed I’m kind of into a little. As it happens, too, my
lust for her is outpaced by just the impression that I have of her being a really good girl
— into music, kind, friendly and honest.
She’s got a couple of kids and has been single for a while, I think, no doubt focusing
on them and making their wellbeing a priority, as she should. Another factor, with her,
though, is that, I believe, her last boyfriend was this black dude. And I feel ashamed to
say this, on a certain level, but it does, to an extent, make me less inclined to want to
get involved with her.
Let me explain something, first. This is a person, the dude, with whom I actually ran
track in high school, but didn’t usually talk to. I didn’t get the impression that he was
shy. I got the impression that he was dealing with a noxious set of inner energies and
thoughts that weren’t always appropriate for discussion. In this way, I suppose, he
behaved pretty well, by and large.
But I’ve friended him on Facebook and he never likes any of my posts and when I
comment on his and like, he never reacts back or says anything to me. Now, obviously,
the anatomical malady you’re at a higher percentage of dealing with in a girl who’s
been with a black dude represents somewhat of a pitfall, in certain instances, at least.
But, equally, it’s a depressing realm to deal with in terms of me being white and having
to deal with what sometimes feels like this cultural void. What’s more, I get the sense
that he’s encouraged to dislike me — to disdain me, to disregard my comments as
meaningless because I’m white, and to exclude me from all his ambitions and agendas.
And I don’t think all black people are like this but I do think that if he were white there
would be a far greater probability that I could find some common ground with him and
hence ameliorate the social landscape surrounding this love interest of mine, making,
more than likely, for an improved dating situation. In the meantime, I feel forced to
observe this guy’s blackness as an encumbrance, if not to say, necessarily, a problem
in the larger eye of universal law, if you will.

I seek out asylum,

A respite from the monsoon of

Pop-fizz realities and urgent

Chemical inundations.

.

I find it

Behind the abandoned Target store

On an 80-degree day in summer,

Where I

.

Park behind the store’s barracks

Which block me from Yosemite Sam

Searching me for weed.

.

Off in the distance,

About 200 feet away or so,

A good-looking girl

Of about 20 or so

.

Gets out of her car with a basketball

And starts dribbling

And shooting.

.

I hadn’t even known

There was a basketball hoop there.

.

I sit there in my car,

Which is off

With the windows down,

For about half an hour,

.

Just thinking,

Thinking about my place

In this rat race and

.

Thinking about how to pay respect

To this sunny, 80-degree day off, and

I am doing just that with this

.

Silhouette of my anatomy’s counterpoint

Off in the distance like a siren or sage,

Complementing my soft-bellied lethargy

With athleticism and

.

Committing a sagely,

Unambitious

Act of summer.

How many times do I have to learn

That my self isn’t solid?

.

In all my delusional excursions

Onto a throne in my mind

To

.

Chase a sleazy victory

Of separation and finality

I missed what I really wanted -.

The bone-gristle-cerrating

.

Ardor of fast-paced interaction

Which would yield

The inclination

.

To walk around on the golf course

By the river

With all the geese.

Nobody has an ego

Today

As mother nature has taught us what we are…

Mortal.

.

Today,

We are all identical nodes of spirit

On our own, separate fractions

And it feels ok

.

As the world has turned and

Subsumed itself in volcanic light works

And

Nothing seems the same.

 

My former boss

At the bar

Unfriended me on Facebook

And won’t let me follow her on

Instagram.

.

The last time I talked to her,

She gave me a hug.

.

I’m not sure why,

But her bust has like doubled in size

Since I worked for her six years ago.

.

And now I’m left to think of this video

Of her twirling these flags

In a bathing suit on the beach,

Twisting,

Bending and swaying,

.

With various heavenly

Swatches of copper flesh

Wiggling with inertiatic zeal

Revealing themselves

Scantily or partially, at

Variant times.

.

And now I walk

Down a block downtown

And there’s this dusty feel to

Everything,

.

But the women all seem to have

.

Huger breasts than ever,

Hence, hopefully,

Justifying my nervy quest to

Observe my former boss on social media.

.

I think back to the days of rock concerts,

At the Rum Village Inn, at the Anchor Inn,

And the Wander Inn

(Yes, all these bars are really called “inns”),

.

Of the phenomenon of

Observing music

And really sinking into it,

Like

.

Incurring that phenomenon

Where it feels like you’re travelling spatially,

Listening to gripping music,

And where it hurts a little bit.

.

I think of Wilco

.

And I think of Sharon Van Etten.

.

When I go to this one part of town

I think of Pearl Jam and

I administer my pedestrian facial expression

At any number of punctiliously rendered

Locales around town,

.

All the while,

Carrying what I perceive as

My own sense of meaning,

Inside my head.

I pass the

Derelict candy shop

On West Washington.

.

The shop has been

Closed, from

The

.

Looks of it,

.

For

About 40 years.

.

It is, however,

Secured with an

Armored door,

.

Which looks

Brand spanking new,

Vital, effective,

Impenetrable and non-

Negotiable, toward

.

A paradigm of

Total control.