Rising early with the breath of day,
shoes still soaked with yesterday's rain,
socks sopping it up.
I like to take my bicycle rides early,
to be among the first arrivals on the levee,
the sunlight just beginning to lean against the trees.
My company includes a bunch of swamp rabbits,
grazing in the sparkling grass, taking no notice of me,
other than to turn one ear my way.
Farther down, a mating pair of red-shouldered hawks,
perched atop a navigational marker as it were a citadel,
keeping vigilantly their river kingdom.
Among the bright array of detergent jugs and Coke bottles
washed up by the recent high water,
even brighter still a flock of wood ducks,
the red-eyed drake and the moon-eyed mama duck,
her ducklings lagging behind, still lacking their full plumage.
Stalking through the tall grass, a great blue
heron heaves a snapping crawfish from its mudhole.
He shakes his slender neck and the crawfish
reduces into segments, which the heron quickly snatches.
Here and there beside the path, explosions of cowbirds,
the last few drops of night evaporating in the daylight.
Yes, I like to take my bicycle rides early,
to see and know how many other lives are going on without me.

Tender Kindling, Little Fire

Preface: The next thought is completely unoriginal. Don't be turned off by the cliché.

Life is change.

It's a Buddhist concept, that life is change, growth, death, rebirth, and the whole point of it is that trying to hold onto the past is exactly what causes suffering.

Today I told Jonathan that, so long as he continues to hang around Lauren, he shouldn't bother calling me.

I received a, "Fuck you," in response.

A quick flashback: Jonathan and Lauren dated for eight years and were engaged for nearly two. He proposed to her in the Superdome during Katrina. Last spring, he broke it off with her because her behavior had become completely erratic, she was (likely) cheating on him, and her life was generally a shambles. Last fall, they started seeing each other, occasionally at first, just to have sex and maybe fight a little. Since then, he's begun sleeping at her house regularly and (for all intents and purposes) dating her again. Though they do still fuck other people.

For the most part, I don't care what my friends do with their dicks. I'm usually happy for them if they're having sex.

The problem for me has been that Lauren has not changed her habits a bit since they broke up and, in fact, has only gotten worse. More drugs, more fights, now physical, more lying and underhandedness, more manipulation and selfishness. I don't judge her -- God knows I've done my share of bad things -- they are simply not good for each other. They enable each other in the worst ways. Jonathan knows this, he's told me himself, but he continues to see her and continues to come to me to bitch about it. I just can't hear it anymore.

The reason I mentioned the concept that life is change is because I see that in life there are two types of people: those who embrace change and those who are stagnant. If you're not growing, experiencing new things, learning, than you are stagnant, a waste of potential. Like fish, we swim or sink.

Jonathan is a person stuck in the past. In high school, we would of course discuss our dreams and wishes and create capers and plot ploys. That's what boys in high school do. We were green then, and the world was ahead. But now we've reached an age at which we can truly pursue dreams and create the lives we always wanted to live. Life is change and we should embrace that change and grow.

Now, Jonathan has dreams and schemes and grand plans for the future, but he never acts on any of them. He is all talk. In high school, it was cute and funny. Now it's just sad to see a man whose life peaked in high school and who has no hope for his future.

It's gotten to the point where I'm embarrassed to bring him around my other friends because of his braggadocio, and the lack of anything to back it up.

The thing about people like Jonathan isn't that they're bad or immoral or terrible people. They're just terribly boring.

Other people don't want to hear about our high school glory days any more than we want to hear about theirs, yet that's all he has to talk about, really.

He drinks all day everyday to keep himself sedated. He thinks one day he'll be able to simply stop, but he won't be able.

He has ceased to change, drinking away all of his braincells and stunting the growth of a mind in its prime. He has ceased to change and so has become stagnant, boring, insufferable.

I didn't say what I said to him out of anger or to cause tension between us. I didn't respond to the, "Fuck you," and I don't plan to. I said what I said for my own happiness and mental health. I can't watch someone I care about slowly self-destruct. I feel like I've done everything in my power, and now I have to distance myself.

I used to be annoyed when my mom would tell me, "It's easier to pull someone down than it is to raise someone up." As I've grown, I have come to understand the wisdom in that saying.

My sincere hope is that Jonathan wakes up and changes his life for the better. I see in him such tender kindling and so little fire.

We Grow Up Kissing

I just remembered a girl I kissed that I had forgotten completely. It was by a pool at a motel off the interstate in the summer. I was in high school and I was cheating on my girlfriend.

Back then, a kiss could still make my stomach quake.

I can't recall exactly when kisses ceased to stop time for me, but it is a feeling I regret losing.

When you're a kid, a kiss is so important, a precious object to stow beneath your pillow. The funny bit is, you're terrible at it. I've never really cared for the phrase "sucking face," but to describe middle school make-out sessions, there isn't a better one.

Yeah, my first real kiss was in middle school. Sure, I'd stolen pecks from pretty girls on the playground, but by real kiss I mean a kiss accompanied by a discernible sexual feeling. Not just a peck, but a kiss to make your pecker erect. Maybe other people's came sooner, and to them I tip my hat.

That kiss was with Laura Fincher in the campers' lounge at summer camp during one of the dances. I was in seventh grade. I even remember the awful song that was playing. I don't know the name or the singer, but the lyrics are "Come baby, come baby, baby, come, come." I felt like I could at the time.

There in the middle of the dance floor we licked each others' faces. Luckily, no one slipped on our mingled saliva. My knees were so weak I'm lucky they didn't give out on me.

Like I said, I don't remember exactly when a kiss stopped feeling that way for me, but it took a while. Eventually, you start to lose count of your kisses, though. They turn into headsup pennies, once rare and fortunate, now a novelty.

I miss everyone from my old universe, the one
that collapsed and shrunk beyond the beyond.

I am terrible at keeping in touch.
First friends disappear, then their faces follow.

Large parts of my past I cannot even remember. I have never
had a good memory. Makes it hard to be a poet of any merit.

All I recall is a forked tree, a lofty home,
and Jesus whispering, "Talk softly,
but carry a big stick."

To Fight My Father

All your red eyes can scream is, “I never
want you to be like me!”
My fist is swollen, my fingers
purple and plump as sausages.
There is a goose egg growing above your eye.

For four years you have not let me forget
how you bailed me out in my time of need.
How you sold your boat, bailed me out.
Told me, “Take a different dusty road. I did.”
But your black eyes were lying then.

My right ear is still crusted with blood
where your thumbnail took a hunk.
You told me that after you shaved,
a shiner shone through beneath your left eye.
We are such a pretty pair.

The list is long of traits I inherited from you:
your love of home, your looking back,
your swarthy skin, your curly hair,
your cauldron eyes, your flashing temper.
Your high school buddies still call you “Snappy.”

You told me that my boot in your gut
woke you up once and for all.
You said you were aware I am now a man and
you must greet me as a man.
Your nickname for me was “Man-o.”

I reckon my wrist will not be sore in a week,
and your face will reform its shape.
When our injuries heal, so will our bond.
Our differences will be as distant
as the hot blood pulsing now beneath our swollen skins.

Steak Line

Someone once told me a story about Maria Shriver screaming,
trying to cut the line at a restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Screaming so hard her face fell into her purse.
Rich people just can’t wait for steaks in the West.

Hall Closet History Lesson

What should I find while rummaging through the hall
closet in the quiet late afternoon?
A dusty old confirmation Bible and a box full of forgotten poems.
“So there you are,” I grunted, hefting the box from the back of the closet.
I banged the Bible on the side of the bed and it came alive,
turning pages and talking Gospel:
“Be transformed by your renewed mind.”
Then the poems woke up and started sighing,
I was on the bed, listening and laughing.
I remembered an earnest boy, driving and crying
tears in the tearing wind and rending rain.
The poems cut, folded, and pasted themselves into amazing shapes and figures:
first cars, secret mountains, paperback books, a sack full of love letters,
a shaking hand on a milky thigh, ten toes curled in delight,
a young heart, happy and heaving.