bag is hot

windows

Windows

I am looking at you thru a window

And that’s as close I get

Your skin is glass

The things you say are panes to hold it in place

This shield between us

I tap at it

You bring your face up close

Look at me with one eye almost

Pressed against it

Then you pull away and we smile

And that’s as close as we get

Even your breath is glass

I feel it sleep on the back of my neck

But I am just dreaming

And the small stones you throw from the street outside

Only ever bounce off and never break thru

We all live in these tiny theaters of isolation

Neighbors in solitude is all your lovers can be.

2.

How lonely is the spider when he weaves his web

Or the lightning bolt that sings thru the sky to shock protected children in suburbia

How lonely is their father

Driving the mini van to their baseball game

Or their mother who is sneaking a cigarette in the parking lot of a grocery daydreaming of perfection in a kiss

As the turkey thaws in her trunk

Looking for his neck next to old shoe strings and a deflated ball of a game lost by everyone.

How lonely is the trunk

Or the steering wheel

Or the light holding the pulse of life together by some intergalactic slight of hand the creator performs for the atheist who lead the chaotic chant of fuck you

Aimed at the wings called oblivion

3.

Yes I am a savage

Wearing an alligator on my chest

His mouth around my neck

I stab his back

My heart

With your pen knife

You wrote

I went back to the cocoon

I was a butterfly but always wanted to become a spaceship

There is needles all around your feet

Let’s dance you say

And smile into your missing teeth

You bring your eye back in

And nearly touch my glass

I tap right at your pupil and you blink

Like a child

Threatened to be tricked by the hidden dynamics of darkness

(the things none of us touch but rather steep in)

I look away

And you are gone

There is nothing now but the fog of your breath

Slowing disappearing

Revealing a heart

That you wrote with your finger

After I gave up trying to touch you

Before the abyss

We are all trapped here
Me in these orange shoes
You on this plane
Me between pages of a book
Like an old leaf found by a child
Or a feather given to a sweetheart
Before he went out to the battle
And found God in a bullet
Pounding thru the air
To the front part of his skull
We are trapped here
You with a flat tire
Me with the nozzle and the air
You drinking water in mexico
You in the wine glass of Paris
Me wearing that watch you gave me
Holding grace by the neck
And looking for relief in a shoeshine
I used to be a poet but gave that all up
To use my soul as a battering ram
To become a fire ant
Looking for wilderness before the sleeping/snoring nostril of time
And there I am trapped
As you are trapped
At the bakery
In front of the television
Exploring your loss
On a digital device made to lock secrets
And expose the rituals of the damned
For you to make fun
To help you to make fun
Of what they are
Of who you are
I visited my heroes grave
And he died young
But then we all die young (if you think about it)
Here in these traps
Where like prayer candles
We explore to the best of our ability
The will of the tiny flame
The will of the tiny flame we are
Spitting our fire at light
Against the air
Which gives us life
And the air which takes it away
The lips of our lover which comes to blow us away
The soldier falls
The feather waits
The dry leaf crumbles
The bullet goes thru the skull
And falls on the mud
The child cries
The plane lands
We are all the nucleus of nothing
Trapped on a planet that gives us a small reprieve
Before sending us to the abyss.