Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

Father and Son Another gray hair springs up on my head: a dandelion in a suburban lawn. I’m getting old. I now strategize how I am going to pull myself off the floor, which result in pushing, but not too hard, cause then my bum left wrist will act up, sending pain messages: "This is a test of the Emergency Alert System. Sometime in the distant past you fucked up your wrist. We don't know why, but it hurts so don't put much pressure on it. This is only a test." Oh, my, I’m getting old. Taking a shit is now a sort of study session, where two hours later I reappear after finishing the latest double issue of Rolling Stone . I'm debating moving a book shelf into the bathroom, so I'm never forced to abort because I finished what was at hand. Yet, I'm peeing every 20 minutes as if my prostate has swelled and now presses up against my bladder like dancing with a drunk cowboy at a Country & Western Bar. Oh, my God! I'm getti...

The Proximity Detector I. For the last year, my smart phone has a dumb, if not annoying, malfunction. The malfunctioning part darkens the phone while the phone is next to my ear But doesn’t lighten it when I pull it away to hang up, access the speaker, or use the keypad. It’s broken. The “proximity detector” is broken. I didn’t even know that was thing when I started researching this problem, And found that my particular brand seemed prone to this malfunction. Oh well, I thought, as I researched work arounds. I can’t hang up, so one workaround was to leave messages, which I almost always have to do, that tells people: “Hi, long message, but the proximity detector on my phone is broken so there is probably going to be a bit of silence on the end of this message.   I’ll tell you when I’m officially done leaving the message, so you don’t have listen to a lot of silence.” And then go on with the actual message. Eventually, the voice mail will fig...

Say his name. Say you've seen him walking down Central, blending in with college kids, men who party early and often and now, look at news stories, social media feeds and his arrest in Roosevelt Park on a Friday afternoon. Say fifteen years ago you and he were regulars in a dive bar on a regular week night and you danced to a band that a lot of people found fun,   just to get away from a lonely life and path that didn't at all look familiar. Say you'd talk on the patios, the bars that hadn't kicked him out and you never knew his name. Say his name. Say you'd see him, run into him at Walgreen's. He'd ask you to buy him beer, hand you cash. He'd lost his license and knew you as a familiar, friendly face. Say you turned away passed off the request, mumbling as you walked by. He seemed a little bit lost, and you felt it just wasn't right, like drinking wasn't also a way that you passed time.. S...

-for Olivia Gatwood Another take out meal, bought lunch, thoughtless consumption of food, my wife asks, "Why don't you eat at home?" Because fast food grease still burns, and rice, potatoes, eggs, beans still blacken pots in my imagination. Because I still dream about food, about restaurant kitchens, fast food shake machines and consumable lubricant, contraptions that slice tomatoes with merely a push, steamer cabinets that hiss and moan as you open them like you are opening a safe, heating element plate warmers melting cheese on full plates that I pull from the "sky" with callused hands, forearm skin that remembers the splash of hot sauces, water dropped in hot oil, and the stench. Because grease coated my clothes and shoes as I scrambled for change in my sash. Because I still dream about not getting to my tables in time, not filling that iced tea fast enough, or about having another conversation with the bar r...

(I almost want to start this poem by repeating the title, but merely typing the above, I know that, now, I don't have to). Language has a way of creating, so here I am...trying to tell you I wore light brown loafers,                 red knee high socks,                                 a brown rayon dress with white polka dots,                                                 a simple, yet elegant necklace,                  ...

Heather. I tried to find you yesterday in the way it’s done now:  typing your name in front of a blinking cursor. But then realized there was no real reason you’d use the same last names you used back then: One--your biological father, absent, and the other-- a step-father, that I always thought was always gone as well. Heather. I tried to remember yesterday; the last time I saw you. Vail-it must've been. You’d relocated on a promise-- a promise of a steady job in a ski town with people you knew from home. Heather. Yesterday, I tried to remember when we met, and how I liked you right away; It took me two weeks-- two weeks to find the spell. You'd  push back playingly, liked being teased and prodded . Behind a stainless counter, you’d smile then hand full drinks through a window to a car. Heather. They gave me the key and never knew what happened. We were hungry snuck in, reassembled the soda machine, turned the...

(for Robert Frost) No bigger than a housecat, a small gray roadrunner has adopted our neighborhood. Almost any morning, I can spot him. Sometimes up the road a bit, turned towards the sun with his feathers spread apart, warming up, or just bouncing from our fence to our roof, then over the top and down to the other fence that keeps our lot separate from our neighbor's. I wonder if he recognizes me, knows how I know his colors:  the red and white stretched out from behind his eyes like mascara how I recognize his stuttered step, his head ducked down so his beak is the first thing impacted on anything that doesn't get out of his way. Strange how the cats don't seem to bother him, and I wonder what he eats, and whether I should spread some bird seed on the wall. My neighbor and I exchange pleasantries and stay in our respective territories-- a smaller part of his territory--a neighborhood in the middle of the city.