11/30: Knives For Sale

"Why on earth would you ever need a knife?”-- Concerned Younger Sister
“In case I need to stab someone. Duh.”-- Me.

This collection of knives
For sale to not the highest,

                But first

Bidder.

I want them gone. My wrist action

Is tired, I don’t fancy a quick garrotting

Any more.

They are sharp, clean, in good condition,
they should go to someone I know,

Who will use them well.

I’m neither as tough
Nor noble

As I thought.

So here, for  a reasonable-- I’m not
Asking much; pick them up or walk.

We’ve been having this conversation too long.

And either way
You’ll get them.

10/30: Other Types of Light Fixtures or Interior Design As Blank Slate For Disappointment

Coat hooks
Foot rails
Bench backs

(important for convenience
and productivity and urgency
and calm)

the efficacy of sweaters
the efficacy of casual tennis
shoes for efficacy in the puddles
constantly thwarting slacks

(transitioning from greeting
to networking to flirting)

hanging lamps
barely
sway

(indie business casual
ties optional, rare,
no overriding aesthetic
excepting default cleanliness)

Exposed pipes
Exposed brick
Buffed, sanded,
Knots in the wood.

(everyone is writing up
proposals in their handshakes,
hoping the next check that comes
their way is
blank)

9/30: Half Lives of T-Shirts

Some are for life, or until some future

spouse's disgust makes for disappearance.

A nice clothing swap in the country. 

The big vintage store in the sky; just

tell me it went peacefully,

without a lot of fraying, or rips.

Some are for a summer, or 

an afternoon-- the joke so inside

It defies explanation, let it context

those photos from the time in

suburban Winco parking lot,

the one-off picnic you swore would

become tradition.

Some are goals. Ten fewer pounds.

A greater familiarity with the band's discography.

Twenty fewer pounds. The right blazer to

accent. Thirty fewer pounds. The roughly

same amount of pounds but arranged

better. I'll wear this shirt again some day.

But most, in this pile on the

clean hardwood floor of an apartment too

small for a lot of clothes, are for the memories,

and false promises. No heart for the trash bin,

the good will pile, these identities I no

longer wear and must admit; I'll never

make that quilt, that wall hanging, these

shirts will never be patches.

So they gotta go. If it's supposed to happen, I know I 

hit enough second hand shops, ruffling through

others heartfelt discards, I'll find them again.

8/30: Dinner at Aaron's

Sweet with the veggie sausage, stirred, fried, boiled to the right
Crisp, a pasta eaten past fullness. Little Norah already shows
A grasp of politics, though she admits she’s not quite sure so
She’ll listen to Mom and Dad, for now. Oz is every dog who
Drives their owner crazy while stealing your heart.

New Adventures in Hi Fi. Old adventures in combat music
Journalism. The netflix cue is abandoned for the evening,
The beer all made at home. We are both after all these years,
And before the next all those years. There’s a planet spinning
To burn beneath us, and daily calls to arms, and a wave
Of prospective parents giving up on their bands and publishing

Houses for livable rent in Burien. The effects of which remain
To be seen. Doubtless someone three months in is already penning
Semi-epic poetry about the “Ghettoes of Ambaum” after three drives
Through. That isn’t me. I came for the company, stayed for the girl scout cookies.

7/30: Father John Misty Kills Me In My Sleep

If it was the maintenance guy
                    you'd think I'd recognize his voice
even stirred from sleep, the
soft blankets in the wash the
                     scratchy ones I keep because memories
waking me up when sirens
                      or neighbors fucking don't.

In the A.M. I listened to
Father John Misty
play the same two chords
over roughly the same beat
expressing largely the same
sentiment
                    (but putting forward different evidence)

and I had to agree
that it was brilliant.

                    At least, at four a.m. -- when will I
drop back off? five a.m now

shouts down the

hall, around the corner, I'm guessing, I've gotten

good at the guessing

but this one sounds more dangerous

and my window is not an escape

window, so if this is a rampage, this is how I go,

naked under scratchy

blankets, a folk singer roughly

my age

mocking me for living.

Eh well. The slow click of a vacuum.

Those maintenance guys really don't sleep, do they?

Safety

                             unless horror rules apply, in which

the vacuum

is also

                              the weapon.

Once you're in the halls, there's

a variety of stairwells, but if

a killer bursts into your studio

you're fucked.

6/30: 40th and Edgeward

if not for the steel and railings
would all those cars just swerve
into Lake Union on the rainy days?

the slush of wipers, daily driving
like the treadmill pull of car wash
visuals on hold, panic, take the wheel.

if not for the high barrier spikes
Aurora would still hold suicide capital,
with it's long, cold drop,

and high walkability score. if you
want to plummet off I-5, you'd
need to steer into the void, end up

crunched in concrete. some could
try it. those cross-country trucks,
those eighteen wheelers, every

time they roll pass, a low quake
in this house beneath the bridge,
the angle not quite sharp enough

to quell windstorm thoughts of
getting crushed beneath freight as I
lay in bed rainwatching,

the trucks that break through freeway barriers
to plummet, spinning, and cave this roof
and end this speculation.

5/30: Broken Boards

As cloth, as thread, as mothfood
folded in a mother's closet, the white
tae kwon do uniform and a year's procession
of belts,
white
         yellow
                   green
                           brown.

a paper-route, as income, as check, as responsibilits,
short of another year's tuition. one photo, as proof, as marker,
of the tail end of puberty, the awkward lip-open gape
and curls parted down the middle. It was just one
year, the last one for years, I ever got in a fight.

It was at church camp, with a much bigger camper, a football
player, I hit him over the head with a broom and a counselor
broke it up. As resolution, handshakes by campfire.

As time went, it  dawned it was a fight I
would have lost, but continued anyway. As
middle school honor dictates, as fear and bravado
lead in equal measure, as I'd not yet learned to
joke my way out of things.

Fight or flight never leaves,
just takes different paths.

As memento, as reminder of my own fists,
of splinters I never caught, of the black belt
I was a month and a tournament away
from, two halves of a board,
tucked with keepsakes, marked with
sharpie, in thirteen year old
handwriting.