If you pretend nothing ever happened
Nothing ever happens

If you watch punditry at night
You’ll turn into a bitter person
With little ideas
And a heart full of hate
For anyone with bigger ones
Or everyone

What I say in Poetry is never important
If it were
I would say it in conversations
With my loved ones
Or my doctor or boss
But it’s never important
So I say it in poetry
So you only have to care
If you want to

i know all the names
of the ways i feel
like spirits conjured
by firelight

i've studied my palms
with strained eyes
in the halos of lamplight
every crevice, every line,
all their predictions

i know the dirt under the nailbeds intimately

i can understand the failures of the mirror

and the resonance of all things
hollow or hallowed

and sometimes i can sing like that
and sometimes i wish
i could sing like that

he
walked fast
chewed truth bare
carried everything
died
long hair
silver smile
maybe like heaven
maybe like a snake

to die
in a bath of movie credits
simply
ceasing to exist
in any sense after
the next commercial break
with all the sins forgiven
and all the meaning
of 124 moments
framed perfect
by the plot

i clutch sarte and guatama
with that white knuckle desperation
cuz my job puts things in my head
and before
my eyes

boy,
souls are clean
spotless
till they muck 'round in the mud

virgins, baby, virgins

now we all wash our hands
the food service industry
for christ's sake
has god damn videos
'bout the proper way
to wash yr hands

in the end
it ain't germs we're tryin to kill
its souls
we're
tryin to clean
and save
and bleach
and wash

make virgins, baby, virgins
out of trash and air

i remember
how she spat words
as knives
machine gun fast
each one with
punch and thrust

now she wears
her hair
long
and someone calls her
mommy

i remember
the scarves whe wore
and the wind that
caught their edges

i remember
that short haired
slender
lesbian
ahe loved unrequitably

and when she requested
99 red balloons
the german version
on vinyl

i practice dissolution
dropping spoonfuls of white
crystal sugar
into coffee abysses

trying to learn all the secrets
of the physical reactions
when a liquid absorbs
solids

the art of a thing
changing state
and becoming one
with another

i been through beautiful wretched drunk high and discarded elegant intelligent marvelous excited new naked thrilling boring and revealing piss poor and rich girl relevant and mean whores, dames without out conscience and names without promise in a race to see just how fast we could find it, this missing old feeling boot marks on the ceiling, the scars and the cars the tattoos and the booze and the cheap lies and razor blades, hot tubes and cold fates, alone in a desert or at peace in her bedroom, shes out by the morning and giving no warning as to what i'll wake up as or where i was going, but the long bitter road, i've been down never ending, to find all this shit and a broad not pretending that every little word i say holds the meaning of all shes been longing for
cold nights spent scheming, some runaway train wreck bounding for anywhere but here with some company, drown me in cheap wine and drag me to bed, i think i fucked up love sugar, but i aint dead yet.

i busy myself with straightening
new skin all over me

he lingers in the vests of the dusk

traveling like an interval

the ready times, clutched by a 

far remembrance,

long

all this economical strain,
I don't even feel it.
I'm back on an elementary
school schedule and all
that matters are state
holidays and the ways
I waste my time.

A Question.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, what does that make the keyboard?






*I just laughed alittle because I heard Sean Connery say the penis mightier in my head.

The Fall of St. Patrick

it wasn't the snakes that did it
and it wasn't the drinking
or the bar fights
it was probably his ego
each week standing in front
of a group of spoken word
slam type hotties
who tried to rap without
the music underneith
and I'm sure he slept
with one or two
or at least got really close
which led to the fall of
St. Patrick
a man we were so excited to see
whenever we thought of Jersey City
and its perpetual ride and
whatever its trying to become.

"Professor Baird, I want a taco"
and suddenly right at that moment
I want a taco too and ask the students
where to get tacos in Perth Amboy.
I give the students
an assignment and run across
the street to a taco hut.
I buy eightteen tacos, nine beef
nine chicken, and return with
three bags. We eat the tacos
and grade our work,
then I hand out a poem
about the body that was
given to me in my Masters Class
but I knew my reading students
could handle it.

It was about relationships
and the differnce between
a boy's wants and a woman's
needs and I felt it was something
we all could relate too.
We got personal and talked about
our own relationships and one student
who was soon to be married
and whether or not marriage worked.

"Professor Baird..." says Stockton.
I gave all my students pet names
it helps me to remember them,
gives me a reason to remember them,
and its a lot more affectionate
that way and shows that I care.
"Professor Baird..." says Stockton.
He was called Stockton because
he lived on Stockton street and
I used to go to Stockton and he revealed one
day that he played piano and I used to play
piano at Stockton so it all worked out.
"Professor Baird..." says Stockton,
"...if their's anything I'm learning
from this class, its that poetry doesn't
have all the answers like I thought
it did, but answers questions one
at a time."
If tacos fuel lines like that
they'll get tacos every class
till December and they'll
all get A's even the ones
that don't show up.

Markers in Your Life

Lakehurst Navy Base, the gas station with cheap gas, the middle school, Ridgeway Liquors, the red light he drove through...

Some of the things my grandfather mentally checks off when I drive him home every holiday and birthday. A list to make the ride seem shorter, I guess, or maybe something to fill in the silence between me and a ninety year old man with his pride in running that red light and making it one year to the next.

I usually grab the blade
of the sword before it hits
me. It slices right through
my hand which makes me
happy that I use
computers to write
one fingertip at a time.
Usually I don't know
the guy with the sword
sometimes its my friends
but only because I provoke them

Walking the Trail

Sometimes they just come with no control
the form comes easily
as you skip this line
and skip that line,
and the ending brings you back
to the beginning.
but sometimes they don't come
sometimes you have to make them come
use your mother's maiden name
for a pen name
not only because it sounds
more literary
but because we all have father issues
that need to be dealt with
at some point.
Sometimes you have to make them come
taking the grown over trail from the 2 mile
path I walk everyday after lunch
finding a dead end or a stream to cross.
Sometimes they just come
and sometimes you have to walk the trail
and find the dead end yourself.

Overtime

John had been driving for hours. He rubbed the dryness from his eyes and took the next exit off the Parkway. His stomach rumbled, trying to digest a meal that wasn't there. South Jersey was eerily empty in the fall months and he drove down the empty highway for some time until he saw a diner. The parking lot was almost as empty as the highway, only a few cars pulled up near the entrance. He parked on the side closest to the highway and walked in.

Inside the diner it was a nice change to the cold wind outside. The regular late night crowd that can be found in any all-night diner were huddled in booths that lined the walls. John took a seat at the empty counter as he was greeted by the waitress.

"Hi. Menu?"
"Please."
She handed him a menu ", anything to drink?"
"Coffee please."
She poured him a coffee, placed it in front of him and walked away.

John took a quick peek at her ass as she hurried to refill coffees and take orders at her other tables. She was too skinny, he liked his girls alittle chubbier. John decided righ then he would only tip her fifteen percent instead of his usual twenty and went back to looking at his menu.

The waitress returned shortly, flipping the pages of her order pad and blowing a piece of hair out of her face.
"Ready to order?"
"Yeah, I'll take two eggs over easy with salsa on the side. Do you have hot sauce?"
"Yes, that on the side as well?"
"Yeah, and lemme' get white toast and homefries with that. That's it. Thanks."
The waitress scribbled quickly, never looking up from her pad ", refill on the coffee?"
"Please."

She grabbed the coffee pot and refilled his cup before rushing into the kitchen to place his order. John sipped his coffee and took a look at his cell phone. It was quarter to three in the morning. He rubbed his eyes again and stretched back in his barstool. A guy with a dirty hooded sweatshirt walked in and sat at the opposite end of the counter. He seemed nervous as he sat, shaking his leg, his hands buried in the pockets of his sweatshirt. The waitress walked back out of the kitchen and over to the guy. John overheard him order a coffee.

Soon, the waitress brought John's food, refilled his coffee and hurried off again. Something about the guy at the other end of the counter bothered John. He didn't like the way he looked, so nervous. John ate his food, glancing over at the guy indiscreetly every once in a while, keeping an eye on him. Finally, the guy threw some money on the counter and quickly walked out. John laughed to himself, he couldn't believe he had been worried about that guy holding up the place. John finished his cup of coffee as the waitress walked up, scribbling in her pad.

"Anything else?"
"Just the check, thanks."
"Sure."

She finished scribbling and tore the check from the pad, placing it face down on the counter ", have a nice night." With that she walked away again. John checked the time on his cell phone. It was three fourty. He needed to get to work. He left the money on the table, fifteen percent tip included and walked out, jingling his keys in his hands as he walked around to the side of the building. The guy that had been sitting at the other end of the bar was now squatting on the curb at the side of the diner.

"Ah fuck" John thought ", this guy's gonna' want money."

John had to walk past him to get to his car, so he kept his head up as he walked, pretending not to see the guy. As John pasased behind him, he felt the guy turn and look up at him.

"Hey mister?"
In that moment, John hated him. He turned around and looked.
"Yeah?"
"Hey, do you think you could just give me a ride a couple miles down the road? It's freezing and I'm out of cash."

John looked up at the brick wall. No windows to save him. He tried to think of an excuse as he looked around the empty diner parking lot but found nothing. It would be easier just to take the guy than to argue with him.

"Yeah. Fine. Let's go, I've got work to do."
"Thanks so much, Mister."
The guy quickly got up and walked over to John's car. John unlocked his door, got in and unlocked the passenger door from the inside. The guy got in.
"Thanks again, sir."

Now that John could get a good look at him, he realized the guy was just a kid. He looked to be in his late twenties.

"Yeah, no problem kid. Where am I going?"
"Just take a left out of here, you'll see MacIntyre's Pub up on the right. You can just drop me there. I live right near there."
"OK. You in some kind of trouble or something?"
"No. Nothing like that. Just out of cash and it's really cold."
"Allright. How long am I gonna' be driving? Be honest, now."
"Fifteen, Twenty minutes maybe."

John huffed and turned out onto the road. He drove for about twenty five minutes before the kid spoke up ", it's coming up on the right. Right over here."

John pulled into the empty parking lot. The lot was spooky, all the lights were out and the bar employees were long gone. It was ten after four. It would still be a few hours until the sun came up. The only lights in the parking lot were John's headlights. John parked the car.

" Thanks again, mister. " The kid grabbed a small book out of his bookbag and handed it to John.
" What's this, kid? "
" Just a 'thank you'. "

John looked down at the book. 'ARE YOU SAVED?' stared up at him from the cover. Something about it lit a fire inside John. He got out of the car as the kid closed the passenger door.

"Hey kid, hold on. Could you move something from my trunk into my backseat for me? I would do it but my back."
"Sure."

John grabbed the keys from the ignition and handed them to the kid. John moved out of the kid's way so he could open the trunk. He put the key in the trunk lock and opened it. The kid stared down at the trunk and gasped. John squeezed one round off into the back of the kid's head. The kid made a small yelping sound as he slumped into the trunk. John put his gun back into its holster and quickly shoved the kid's legs into the trunk. John closed the trunk and looked around briefly, making sure no one was around before getting back into the car.

John got back onto the highway. It was about four thirty, now; just enough time to bury two bodies and get home as the sun came up. John huffed, he hated working nights.