Checkered choices rise some nights,
play chess with all my frightful failings.
Queen's Pawn to Rook 5.
          Nail my footsteps
          to the concrete season.
          I'm losing pieces it seems.

I'm a sardonic grinner
     and under these eyebrows, it's nuclear winter.
Wending my way through the last
three years, I find no release valve.
The pressure will build and place
its long arm along my shoulder,
pull me far from my friends.
One.
                                         Two.
One.
                                         Two.
                   Step
                 by step
      by hammer blow step
a story is crafted, installed with a lock
          in a circular book.

Queen's Pawn to Ryman Street
                  1:45 a.m.
simmering skin over ice armored innards,
the freezing rain sends up my curses
                                               like steam
                                  clouding off of my shoulders
and into the skyline.

I've castled my way out of checkmate questions.
Not my move to make,
                     so I won't life a finger.
Queen's Pawn to front doorstep,
          then straight on to bed.

About a million prairie miles
roll out slow from sparkling eyes.
Each night, beneath a blanket
of melting white noise
that distance wraps around your
toes and takes its sweet time
          with every
          aching inch.

If I could sell you a story
from pursed lips a half-inch
beneath my reddened, runny nose
who knows if you'd believe it?
But I might get rich if you
were buying
          my slurring, supine words.

I could buy you.
               A new coat.
               With your coin.
And I'd borrow it for the winter.
'Cuz mine's all full of holes
that breathe too hard.
          Like me,
on my long walks home
through streetlights and snow.
          Like you,
in your bed tonight
carving words in your wall,
in the dark, with tongue tucked
tight behind your crooked,
perfect, lovely teeth.

A coat's no good in Summer
(save to improvise a pillow
when I sleep on friends' floors).
But you can sell me back my story,
                                   (half-cost, I'd hope...).
And--just maybe--I could swallow
your million prairie miles,
and stomach five more months
of Sundays...
               To read your wall.
                       Aloud.

City limit space expands,
it's threaded through with veins--
grey-black dendritic strands
                                     span
                        across this moldy brain
of a city.
Our rotting nights spray hits around
           the places players play.
The impulses will whitewash all complaints
'til the glaring day.

I wanna spit-shine every storm drain,
stain the cracked sidewalks in white,
take this town to Sunday morning Mass,
though she was born for Friday nights.

We're gonna trickle past addresses
                                                   now,
Electroshock through habit streets
these crosswalks sneer with snide expression.
Mildewed thoughts we'll hardly think.
A conversation you're repressing
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow
Another weekend's blurred out
blank confession
melts off the tips of tongues,
          I can taste it now.

Circulation space expands,
we're threaded through with veins--
this bio-asphalt plan
                           spans
              all through this molded frame
of a body.
But rotten thoughts, like ships aground,
                   teach sailors how to pray
when impulses have buried all complaints
'neath the foaming spray.

I wanna shade out every bruise now,
paint the dumpsters all in gold.
Missoula, listen: You're a lady.
I don't give a **** what you've been told.

A moldy brain dreams slattern makeup
for a prizefight town each night
so let's take up every artist's brush,
paint shadows on these barroom eyes.

We're gonna flow right through these boule-
                                                          ­          vards.
Electroshock through habit streets.
These dim lit yards and spoiled thoughts
are hyphens placed between each week.
A conversation you're repressing,
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow.
Our city's made-up face is running
off the tips of winter and I taste it now.

"I once thought I had mono for an entire year. It turned out I was just really bored."--Wayne Campbell, *Wayne's World

Pass this
        night un-
*******
                                            wingnuts­.
Opened
        casing
showing
                                 ­            my guts.

Fragmented seconds ticking, slipping
through the widening span
                                     of these small hands.
I've unlocked                         my innards
and the truth is out: it's mostly rusting gears.
I've wound down.                 I've ground up
days and weeks, upended months,
spilled crumbs
                         of my years
on pages, aging fast.
The faces show it's late,
                                        so late.

Time's up.
          Trickling
out of
                                        habits
Gutter
        ­   nights are
washing
                                         ashes
Into
                 Yawning
                                              Faces
fille­d up
                  with questions
                                              falling
f­rom the corners of
their weary, sunburnt eyes.

I'll tick off one more weekend, crossing
panels off a page.
                               Discard a month.
They've opened                    the archives
and the story's old, the golden paper cracks.
The faces,                               blank pages,
rifle past through volumes' deaf--
--'ning greys.
                        Intentions
forgotten, filtered through
the seasons' blurring hum.

                                              It's so late.

An animal shriek
in the snowiest silence
is swallowed by eyes deep and brown,
                        not like mine.
Which're shallow and icy and
                                clouded with Sundays
                                shrugged off of shoulders
from peak down to plain.

These mornings are silent,
constructed from cinder blocks;
skeletal, rusting--yet inwardly
                                     wailing.
Why in the world can't I set those shouts free
when the achiest Mondays release
all their caltrops
               and I stagger through work weeks
on sore, shredded feet?

It's because of the way
      that your shrieks echo off
      of my wrought iron eyelids
      when frost fills your veins.

It's because of the way
      that I melt every Thursday
      and wash down the side
      of the night in cold sheets.

I can't shout out loud
and I can't melt the quiet
that screams from the mountains
to snow on the prairie below.

I know this foreign method
     made my throbbing veins its home
'cuz the familiar's not familiar
     and I'm not fine
          lest I'm messed up on
wine.
     And 9/10 of all the times
I've tried to crack a smile
since I lost you have
turned out as half-assed lies.

I wander streets, worn out,
while I wonder where you are
and what you're thinking about while
     you drive down Henderson...
          I'll try to dry out
          from time to time
        but fall back into bouts
       internal I'm interred in
       eternally--and I'll never win them.
       I'll. Never. Win them.

Not without...

          Sorry...

I meander through months while
     you walk through my mind

--and I'm glad if you're happy?--

     but you were quite angry
    with me that night I took
     and torched our collection
     of 5 years' shared memories
          QUITE ANGRY
             with me.
    And the things you said were mean
          but you meant them.

And you were right
About how wrong I was
how bad I am,
and how I taste
like lemon lies
on the tongue.

     You were right.
     And I'm drunk.

And sad and sorry and selfish
and stupid and absorbed by a
salted skyline of cold, purple steel
          every night.

It *****.

You teach kids for a living,
about the age of 9.
Me? I try to dry out
now and then, time to time,
but it's hard.

And you're far.

And I'd still come if I could,
     but it's hard
     following this heart
     when it's buried
     at the confluence
     of the Red and Assiniboine
          Rivers.

Beneath The Forks...

And that heart? Like the ground above it,
     it's covered
with ******, commercial architecture
and the clothing of bureaucracy,
     but ****,
      we had fun there.

Didn't we...?

The sleet is drawing boxes 'round
our mud-and-snow sashed towns.
We'll check 'em off
                      with crunching footsteps,
slash our gallows grins through static
weather. Nervous laughter fights off winter
while somnambulist nights
                    hold the anthill days at bay.

And each repeated conversation
coats a thrumming undercurrent
echoed by the groaning rivers
in their arthritic fatigue.

     where the ice piles up
              like car wrecks.

And, out of those disastrous angles,
     jumps up and trips back down.
          Blinking eyelids, right then left.
               Sunrises. Sunsets.
Dusks and dawns in places familiar
wading through liminal space.

Circles darkened. Footprints filled in.

The heat just circles lazily.
Our flushed and clammy brows
will **** askance
               and sweat while footsteps
melt our swaying way through boiling
sidewalks. Nervous laughter dulls the impact
of seared, rapid fire nights.
             "Ha." "Ha." Shrug off another.

And all repeated reminiscence
does is hamstring overthinking
of the closing jaws of traps
in these rusting western towns.

        where winds breathe dust
                by mouthfuls

So, into our familiar mishaps,
     ***** up and falls back down
          melting into neighborhoods
               dress down, upbraid us.
'Til our feet do not walk circles
'round these wilting Western towns.