Family Trait

This time two years back

I figured I could just start drinking

In order to keep it up, that life

Suddenly all those uncles made sense

See, you had sobered up so I thought

I could pick up your slack. 

I was already so good at corking

The bottles you left open to the air

Always there in the morning to tell you

I would always be there in the morning

All I could see were more mornings

And I searched for some way to bear it.

soggy bottoms

I ride my bike to work
but yesterday it froze rain
so I only rode to the train 
and arrived to work with a very soggy bottom
that could only be dried by plopping it down on a hot radiator

Pear Poem 2

you’d tell me tribute is futile ego homage, 
but that’s my work, I’d tell you I’m wax melting 
into a pool, almost catching your heron face  
on fire, then cleaning it up - not wanting to bother anyone, 
not trying to leave a trace but also starved for 
devotional landmarks, just not a singed egg yolk rug that 
belongs to my boss. You screech for a better try, 
flimsy conviction not weak but mutable, 
humble as in laugh at yourself as loud as 

any unhinged stranger 
letting the world bruise 
you true

Keeping The Fate

In my arms for the first time,

the flesh scooped from the machine,

tubes swept aside,

Nurse Chris benignly ghosts

and you must hear my earliest words:

Desperado, why don't you come to your senses

I learned them by heart down

Greenpoint Avenue

earliest this summer

or late last,

I still saw some children

on a stoop in Blissville

playing with a bucket

and thought

yes that's what children will do.

You've been out riding fences for so long now

Yes, says Kevin, we're old to be parents

and I wasn't even aware I was "riding fences"

avoiding my fate and yours, I suppose,

because yes,

at home I'm trying The Long and Winding Road

and 

lead me to your door

tears wet your forehead

I'm sorry, so sorry

it's just 

I remember back at the nicu

where there are no saints or martyrs

literally only the purest light I think I've ever seen 

just these

incredible chimeras of life and death

and how, juggling protocol, ever shifting

as the widening and narrowing eyes

and vital signs -

I looked at you and thought

I know you, I've always known you

and married to

our fate is sealed

and will anything ever seem the 

same again,

now I know this,

it was, a lot, and,

I think, still is.