New Year's Eve

I was a heady mess
on New Year's
the beer
the water bottle vodka
left me graceless
I paced and grieved
oddities
gum on the sidewalk
I remember
tasted like old snow
your eyes
I remember
punctured like bee stings
and gravel in my treads
would not come loose
it was uncomfortable
there are more things
sadder still
emotions and
ethereal ethics
gradually I forget
what tears are for
they lubricate nothing
but stumbling
I will say this
it was a cold night

Waiting for the First Snow

She wakes before the radio
alarms us of the day.
She turns off the timer
and escapes from the fetters
of my heavy arms. She's gone
for a time, until I hear, "tres bon!"
which could mean a number
of things: that wayward plumber
has finally shown, or the scale
is agreeable, or an overnight gale
has made the weather something
worth a French blurting.

She always seems to know
when it will snow. Her hand
out a window is precise
and I trust it: Why dress
for work, or eat, or shower
at such an awful early hour
if the highways close
before my car's unfrozen?
Why leave this warmth
'cause, god, it's like the earth
and I'm comfortably below a boil
underneath a layer of topsoil.
She will join me soon, after
peeking in with a voice full of laughter,
singing, "Snow," and I'll keep
my eyes closed in pretend sleep.
I'll hear her pick up the phone
and the attendant dial tone
in my ear humming: "Responsibility."
But it's silly of me
to keep predicting immediacy.
She will join me soon.

I Loves Me a Milkshake

Chocolate, mostly, in a large glass
and thick like cream of chicken soup,
no, thicker;
thick like a lazy fog, fat and opaque
and challenging you to keep walking;
thick like the upper mantle;
thick like your illiterate uncle
who really likes Two and a Half Men;
thick like the wax from a candle
balled between your fingertips;
thick like your neighbor's age-old moustache,
which in itself is thick as a forest
of evergreens, and that's where
you can find the lazy fog
and where you fall asleep
against a dank Silver Fir,
waiting for morning;
thick like a sandwich from
a neighboorhood deli,
no, that's too thick;
thick like a chick on Soul Train;
thick like a kitten's hungry purr;
thick like a thought that won't go away,
like tar, like a bloated corpse,
like a blue summer sky that seems
to have so much depth that you're stuck,
you're sucked from your steps,
and all the beauty in the world
won't save you from the fear
of being pulled up against it.

I guess I mean a high density, and
smooth, too, but in normal terms
I can't overstate it:
my milkshake should be thick.
And chocolate.

Whats my mother fuckn name

My name is shit face?
You know why, cause I take shits on peoples faces?
Do you do that shit for a living?
Na. I didn't think so?
You think I was an arrogant prick in the past?
Well, I'm back and I'm here to stay. Yeah!
I just ate an envelope dogs, that shit tasted like garbage
Ya ever tasted dog shit?
I did! and I liked it! and I want to taste it again!
You know how sick I am? I once watched Vanderbilt drink a chocolate shit shake!
He thought it was milk shake.
Vanderbilt loves milk shakes
Kick you in the uterus see what happens, i can rap and rap, till i stop rappin
went to the pre-school with harold ramis' niece, she made me lick her boots. I didnt like that experience. I didnt like the time when will wonka dressed up in a rabbit suit and stomped my Hess toy truck. I feel lost sometimes. Tears comes to my eyes, I fantasize about nanny from the muppet babies sometimes. Leave me alone. Stop, Rolph you god damn black dog. Give me back my toy boat. Lets race, I'll win and then smack youre head into a drawer. You'll cry I'll laugh, and we'll move on.
P.S. I'm French

Elevator Etiquette

This elevator doesn't stop between floors one through nine
and doesn't stop on one or nine either, which is efficient
but awkward in those silent seconds without floor beeps.
I always hope to travel alone, but here comes one fellow
right before the doors slide closed, and another at his heels.
So there are three, three men, and strangely all our hands
are in our pockets. I'm in one corner that feels like the shallow
end of the swimming pool, next to a a bald gentleman
whose stomach hangs over his belt like a dog's head out a window,
behind another man whose moustache-tips I can see peek out
from around his craggy face, even though I'm glancing into
the back of his head. That's a class moustache, indeed,
curled off the lip and pulled out; I can picture his faceless wife
kissing the ends as she does a thread
before aiming for the needle's hole.

The carpet is checkered. Not like a checkerboard, just some boxes
and other more elongated rectangles of white and brown and black,
and this I call checkered. I've seen some "foxes" in here before,
some real "knockouts" whose slippery figures send my eyes falling
to trace the carpet. Even with these men, my eyes hit the floor,
though, and I can tell by peripheral neck angles that we share a view.
It's elevator etiquette, to me, like holding in your flatulence
or hitting the "close door" button after each stop. I've broken these rules
and others. I hate holding the door, and there have been many times
when I've seen an angry face appear when the closing door gap
is a couple of inches, even though my eyes are examining the skirting
or looking at myself in the warped mirrored ceiling.
Then the door is closed and I feel excused.

We stand in this elevator, the walls a shiny gold and paneled with
fake wood, waiting for our floors to light up and ring us through.
The doors are gold, too, and I leave first. It is pure chance
that my number is lower, and I walk as always with my hands hidden
into the steady grey of the 13th floor hallway,
knowing their eyes are still on the ground.

Scientific Proof that Jesus is a Myth

It seems we've been "tagged" by Heather, a funny young woman who Madison and I once met and tried to write comedy with, until I became my lame self and moved on to other projects I will never finish. She's pregnant(congrats!), and I guess the hormones in her body put her in such a foul mood that she's cursed us(me) with having to post 5 items about ourselves(myself), and then "tagging" other blogs. Here are 5 things that might or might not be true:

1) When I was younger I really wanted a box turtle. Then I got older and just wanted box.

2) Shitface's last name isn't really Stevens. His fullname is actually Shitface Lutenberg Lowell IV. He prefers Stevens so the common-folk will relate to him.

3) My first car was a yacht.

4) Funny story: I went to dinner last night with my family. My parents got their food and started eating, and the waiter told me mine would be out in two minutes. I didn't get my chicken fingers for seven minutes!

5) Every pair of brown shoes I've ever bought make noises. The heel of the shoe always smacks the heel of my foot when I walk. I blame the color of the shoes rather than the size. Story of my life!

Blogs that are now "tagged":

The Porch Light
John One Five
A word on the Word

Dumb Stub

Let me see your hands.
How'd you get that tiny scar?
Is that a cigarette burn on your palm?
My left hand is fine, but my right,
it's half-missing, from the door of a car
that slammed a bit too fast. I stayed calm
even when Mrs. McGuire fainted
and Teddy ran out of sight,
into the house to call someone.
I laughed, the way his funny frame
bounced up the three-step entrance.
I could see the crack of his ass,
framed above the curving waist of his pants
and below a shirt a size too small.
And his breath, I could hear him struggle
with his nostrils clogged, such sorry passages.
I never once thought myself lame
like a beggar, not like a teenager
who can't call back his girlfriend.
I still don't think that, even though
typing's become a chore, I'm always
mashinunk,ijk.ml- see right there?
Dumb stub.

Water Bottle

She held a water bottle
	and I could see the water
through the clear plastic,
	and how it stormed as she jogged
past me and down the fallow road
	(fallow because it was flat
and empty; fallow for ambience)
	and I remember jogging myself,
once, when I was live and younger
	and saw horizon instead of gravel,
my sneakers slipping in slick toad,
	flattened, crushed, torn asunder
(asunder for violence; asunder
	for drama); no wonder
I slowed my pace, if you can never
	know exactly where your feet
are going. She knew her way, though;
	I saw she held a water bottle
because that was all she held.

Today's Word is 'Antecedent'

Check your watch, mine enemy.
The time has come for you and me
to find the path to Gethsemane.

Not that one. The one in my backyard.
It's a pit I dug with a single shard
of glass, and filled with bent playing cards,

a Jenny McCarthy poster,
ladybug corpses, a still-working toaster,
an old bucket from Kenny Rogers' Roasters

full with dried-out breasts and thighs,
a pair of used panties, hollow apple pies,
and a porcelin doll that won't close its eyes.

You've got to get in, too, mine friend,
so I can cover it up, and maybe pretend
I never broke this soil. Maybe you'll blend,

your bones and blood and memory cache,
and somehow mix with this trash
to create a seedling, stinking of ash

and compost steam. I really hope not.
There's a reason I chose this flat plot,
so when asked of atonement, I can point to this spot

and say, "This is where I've buried the past.
Dig it up if you like. It's all there, cast
in hardened mulch to the very last."

Night's Natural Shadows

Joshua is sitting home alone. What Joshua doesn't know is what is outside his front door.

Air in a common plumbing pipe, or an air vent, can make a sound, like a thud. And it does. Joshua looks out his window to see nothing but night's natural shadows.

A strong wind can knock branches about, and if circumstance are just right, can bump them into stationary things, like houses. And one strong wind does. Joshua curls up in his blanket, praying for his mother.

But God speaks. "You are the son of none," He says. "You were born of this house."

But there is no God, so He doesn't really speak. An over-carbonated can of Coke can kick about made-up voices.

Joshua will not sleep. He does not know this yet, but he will breath and tremble, awake until his mother is standing on the front stoop fumbling with her keys. Until then, he will jerk with every cold draft. But after, when she's passed through the doorway and calls his name in tired monotony, when the sun toys shadows through his tightly shut blinds, then his trembling will cease. He will be able to sleep.