you can bet life is weird
weird life on a lawn mower;
mountain streams, water from the earth's center

the western parts of the new england states,
everyone we know is from the north or the east
lads, a shared memory of long hair
and smoking in the back seat with dark snow and mud
like dad sent us out into the fog
for a full tank of propane
long hair and bacne, driving past sunken islands
everything flew out like confetti and we chased it into the hills

its no joke being 400 years old
other things pre-date, bubble out from earth's center
life is hard, good god

i dont believe in cities and i get addicted to drugs in the country
well, i get addicted to drugs in the city too
but i'm scared of young professionals

these fuck boys with white hands
write poems about going into the woods
then they cry about wanting a maid
like you just call a maid to your doublewide

 'stack my poems by the bucolic props
we'll lay them out in the morning
and perhaps
a kindred soul will pass and see'


its enough to make you disrespect old guys
i drove out here and talked to a man about renting an inner tube

what he sold me was more like a firestone
but i never feel like a fool after i've been jipped
who am i to worry about $15; i partially float, sort of sink
by myself i guess, all poems should be about lads and rivers
who am i to explain drinking too much and burning easy chairs?
blissed out on this rock


























here i'm jogging, an old man with packs of young dogs
all my friends here want to do is get drunk and clap
my daughter turned into this parisian bitch

along the highway are rubber gloves, they in the slipstream;
you forget how green the world can be


i never had grandparents, i dont know old people
i remember my dad's dad wearing suspenders
uttering incomprehensibles,
he would say

'tinker to evers to chance'
and 'uno, do, tre, quattordici'

all mommies and daddies,
you really beefed it now,
here's our house on the map, and if you were a cop
nearby you would see lime green dots, glowing;
thats the little poets copping the bad guy,
the smell of plaque, the shrill horns
cutting the mountain

these guys are almost in their mid-20s
should it have gotten like better or something?

ha! like we have a reference point,
we're full of walnut shapes, riding the caboose
come through rooms into darker rooms,
we'll be in the mummy bags like a frankenstein

peeping out with the easy smile, conspiratorial
winking and walking like a spy towards doom,
walking the corpse that wears a white mask

the wind blows and what is dead falls out of the trees
why would we bother mourning,
the branches like clasped hands

crawling around in tide pools

the yellow grass where the birds live, it slices you
theres something that bugs in the air and makes me sick
the clouds swelling with the blue blood

old people echoes, things that stay in the halls
then they all seemed like where the ghosts were
i was pretty small then, walking around with a flashlight

the light shone down on the dead mice, dust winking like time
the mice are dead next to the pile of rain boots
the mice are dancing in the spotlight, shimmering brilliant

'here squirt, spondoolies for you'
'gee, 23 skidoo!'