Acclimatizer

Write some words on my blank page face
They'll trickle down into my mouth
There they'll be slurred, but still flow out--
          now yours? now mine?
          Shared property?
Joint custody of low opinion
Seems ungainly, seems unwise
     when miles of snowfall separate
               by hundreds,
                      tens,
                    and ones.

Miles of squares and cylinders
Of circles, splotches, mandelbrots
in whites and blacks swarming and buzzing
     warring in the hissing static.

Hissing static, searing cold
Underdressed on Tuesday morning. Shivering
chattering teeth mouth curses, shattering
     winter air with whiskey breath
     and wishful thoughts.

Write words upon my blank-line lips--
     "Disloyal," "faithless," "stupid," "shameless."
They're falsehoods, true, but they're tattoos
I guess I'll wear them for a while.

Such lies flow down my throat
Now nameless but for lies, I'll turn
I'll the crawl the miles home.

Bighorn Nights

I can whitewash late night skies
Until they become blank pages
Fuckin' fling my name on firmament
Until God hands out C-plusses
With degree in hand, descend
          to Earth
But don't forget the lessons learned
These Bighorn nights all seem like dreams
until those dreams just don't match up.

No city streets tonight--
      though that might be my locale
The lake's at rest, but speaks with pines
          about tomorrow's yesterdays
And something deep inside of me
     knows names are nothing special
when a fellow writes on The Firmament.

Curmudgeon

I don't know why--but fuck tonight
And fuck this town
And fuck this guy that I'm becoming
And the steel ceilinged sky
     that never changes, night-to-night

And why, when streets all run together,
trickling off to asphalt seas,
     do nights out wandering get me nowhere?
Some elsewhere's
where I want to be.

I'll try to eat my plate of crow
and try to finish
though I'm full with midnight air
and half-cocked guesses
     and a frozen block of messes
 
Pull it off--that sky-steel-ceiling
Grinds a protest
Rusting clouds
     Might flake and rain an oxide winter
Flip the page up, one year down.

Zero Sum

Snowdrifts piling up
as brain melts down to zero sum
Not sure, now, what functions become
but, sure enough, what's piled high
          in streets will become flood

Slide past corners
wash away
These torrents still insistent shakes
The quaking stops, now reach the sea
and rock on shifting waves.

Peer through striations clouding clouds and
                                                     sunlight
Soak into liquid, reach the bottom
                  grasp the floor
Handfuls of silt melt out through wrinkling digits
Withered faces, pickled organs: zero sum

Trickle down through strata--
read the layers
peel them back
Then, at the core, can settle down.

Stop Titling All your Poems "Untitled."

How I hate to be a dick     havering ire and vitriol
But with great bombast    I must barbily insist
That you  stop that shit