Questions

Questions

I’m sick of songs

And poems

And words

About girls

Have all our questions been answered?

Where are the philosopher kings?

Where is Plato?

And where is the good?

Or the God?

Or the sun?

Where are the questions?

And the bullshit answers

Where is Hume?

Telling us cause has no cause

And there is no effect

At least the bullshit broke the silence

Where are the virtues?

Because I see the vices

And where is the justice

That’s sought at by all?

And where are the words?

The ones that held value

And substance

And beauty

Apologies and Republics

Right are wrong

Where is truth?

And what happened to people

Trying to find it?

Pine Hill #3

Pine Hill #3

I stare down at the makeshift dam

We built in the creek last summer

The rocks stand tall unmoved

By the barely moving water underneath

It was once a raging river

At least it was to us

As we would wade in the water

Waist deep in creek

Rivermen

Rolling logs and rocks

Perfectly into place

Letting the water build up

Until it crashed

Over and through

Foaming like the crests of waves

So we would work

Until it got cold

Or too dark to see

And we’d pile in Chris’s Jeep

And head to big boy

Or to DJ’s basement

To play Eucchre
And drink cheap gas station vodka
Unplugging the clocks

In a futile attempt to stop time

In a futile attempt stay right there

In the creek

Where everything was easy

And our shoes were still wet

Pine Hill #2

Pine Hill #2

I found a notebook of old poems

In the basement of my parents house

And they were filled with an angry innocence

And metaphors of the sea

I have never been to sea

I read the words

As I sat on stone

Tearing out the pages

One by one

Letting them drop out of my hands

And into the water

Floating slowly with the stream

Away

They were not my words any more

Pine Hill #1

Pine Hill #1

The water in Pine Hill Lake moves slow

Like my days spent at home

When my friends were still at school

I sit on a bench and watch geese in love

And skinny jean couples with flat iron hair

Both clinging to each other

Like today was the last

And I catch myself a cynic

Scribbling the same sad words

On the same sad pages

Each one as dark as the clouds

That surround the sun

And swallow the last rays of light

The pages get wet

Denouncing Petty

Denouncing Petty

Writing words in a classroom

In Ohio

At a private catholic college

No struggle

No movement

No revolution

Just words

About pretty girls

And cigarettes

And broken hearts
But not bullshit

And anyways

I like lemons

Petty

Petty

All the sentimental shit

Crossed out and crumpled up

Lying lifeless around a wastebasket

Trash

I sit stuck

Baraka fought the power

My poems are bullshit

Teeth and Trees and Lemons

Sex and Sunshine and Cigarettes

HA

I’m sure the man will let my words slide

Unopressed

Unchallenged

Unnoticed

Who am I to complain?

Weekend

Weekend

And at once it was all real

The innocent fun

The lights turned off

The only light

A Christmas tree

Early March

Dorm Room Warriors

Dizzy

Sneaking sips and glances

From plastic cups

At plastic girls

They looked like the real thing

Hometown Heroes sitting courtside

Spitting into cups

Shouting out the rules

Futile attempts

To be in the game

This is not their hometown

Princesses left stumbling

Toward some room or bar

Forgetting what the light was

Forgetting what the day was

Forgetting what no was

They’d never be the same

The pounding bass-drop bedrooms

Stood as no competition

To our subtle screams

For we were the kings

Of thunder road

And Whorehouse Arizona

We were safe

 Until it was time to close

To go

To swallow

Pills or sex or smoke

Drinks or God or pride

We just hit the lights

Or closed our eyes

This was never our intention

We woke up stained

Reaking of weekend

Piled into pews

Pleading for our penance

To make us clean again

Nineteen

Nineteen

Nineteen years old

Private catholic college

Wishing I was Ginsberg

Writing Howl

With the angelheaded hipsters

Listening to jazz

Nineteen years old

Wearing Nike sneakers

Wishing I was Dylan

Writing songs

Wearing boots of spanish leather

Smoking cigarettes

Nineteen years old

Waiting on the weekend

Wishing I was Holden

Leaving this

For the streets of New York City

Watching carousels

Nineteen years old

Cincinnati suburbs

Wishing I was Lincoln

Freeing slaves

Saying we will live forever

Or die by suicide

Nineteen years old

All my friends around me

Wishing I was Charlie

Writing letters

Sticking my head out in the tunnel

Feeling Infinite

Nineteen years old

Standing in a city

Wishing I was Vernon

In a Cabin

Writing thick falsetto poems

Come on skinny love

Nineteen years old

Healthy, Happy, Living

Wishing I was Treplev

Shooting seagulls

Hourglass

Hourglass

The other grains of sand

They fell through

Into a pile

A pile

Of themselves

But not I

I I I

That Romantic I

Stuck against the glass

Clinging to a past

Stubborn

Like a wall

But much less respected

Like an ass

56, 57, 58

We’re one on one

My grasp goes weak

The moment gone

My future is a second

The last grain falls

Flipped

Comes a new moment

A new past to cling to

Daydream

Daydream

Catching fluorescent rays

Wishing I was riding in a station wagon

Smoking cigarettes with hippy girls

With beads around their hair

And hair across their eyes

And songs upon their lips

Singing hold me closer tiny dancer

Like Almost Famous

But without the band

No money

No shoes

No map

Drunken teenage haze

Hazy summer days

Poems that never rhyme

Words that never pay

Always tired

Never sleeping

Stealing kisses

In a gas station parking lot

Or the backseat of a moving car

While the others turned away

Head out the window

Let the wind blow

Back your hair

Cause tramps like us

Baby we were born to drive