Bike Lane

Bike riders who wear full racing regalia,

complete with sponsorships,
bright colors and racing cleats

just seem like dorks to me,

fetishists who should be mocked

at every turn like trekkies

or a lonely man who lives in his mothers basement

dressed up like darth vader.

I don't know if this is a poem or not,

But that just needed to be said.

Sharing

Her brown eyes were eating us both right up

"I never know you liked to do yoga,"

(or pilates or making sand mandalas or baking brownies for the victims of this or that war

it doesn't matter)

I never knew either

but as those words, "sure

I do," poured a soothing cocktail from my lips to hers

it sounded like it was making sense,

whatever it happened to be that I was saying.

We were sharing.

Stage Fright

we were forties' movie stars

at the top of the stairs

playing our songful Irish drunks, our

way and jumping back forth and into the air

figuring each other out

where the pauses would be, our lines, our blocking

and when to bow

taking her ether by the hair letting her slip through my fingers and kissing a mouth

that was never in one place long enough to kiss

before we descended

below

to learn how to play our parts again

The Bukowski Department,

Looking back on poems and stories from when I was 19 or 20

or wallet sized pictures of girlfriends, or a letter from a fat girl in

Gary Larson glasses, or those damn senior portraits,

none of it is how I remember.

I had my Bukowski,

read it dogeared and wrote my own poems

in the margins.

it was a suit of amror and

a rosetta stone

There was so much,

I felt, to be

hurt about.

Now

like a condom ring worked

into an old wallet, I can't remember

who or what I was saving it all for.