In the final year of my truce

with time, I gather my everythings
and take inventory of what I'll surrender
as humble tribute for another year of peace.

There is a front-leaning shelf
stuffed with words and
words. Pages, pages waiting
to be read. Books bought
because I want to have read
them but am lazy enough
to let them form my friends’
opinion of me without altering
my opinion of myself.
I want to finish
what's started and,
in the meantime,
keep up the ruse.

Roughly twenty times
each day, I pull fire
through and further down
a cigarette and I
snuff it on the sole
of my right shoe and
can’t imagine how burnt
and sour and raisin I
smell to the bright and
eager souls crammed
next to me
in an elevator.

My right eyelid
some afternoons
gifts itself with independent
motion and I wonder,
of professor and side-walker
passed just now and
the girl shooting me
glances from across
the lecture hall, who notices
this piece of skin ticking
each second against my vision?
It is impossible to ignore
the passage of time.

When the reelings of a day
overwhelm the prize-fighter
hidden in my brain, I
crash through a wooden door
and make way to the spigot and
trade identification
for a pint and three darts, drag
foot against line,
elbow sprung like a trap, fingers
a flickering blur, and steel-nose
throw after throw like silver
sprinters off the blocks
to the dartboard, and later,
the wall, and gulp
the last amber finger
of liquid from the glass:
live goldfish squirming
down my throat.

High in the corner
of my little bedroom,
a silver bowl the size of two
heads with mother
of pearl inlay on the inside
of its lip, a bowl mother
gave me the day I left
home. When I look inside,
I am upside-down,
I am buggy-eyed,
and this always sends me laughing
like the time mom had too
many margaritas--pole-dancing
in a subway car in Manhattan.

Nightstand, an aluminum
notebook with the name
of my father’s company
etched on its face
in thick, straight type.
On odd, particularly ambitious
nights, I write: to-do lists
on its pages and cross
off some (but never all) of
the items. Most nights
it’s used as a coaster
for glasses of bedtime
water, collecting dust--
peacefully stagnating--
until sunrise.

Before splashing
into my pillow
each night, I burn
the greens to brown
left-to-right, until
my brains are empty
bowls of ashes, until
I believe sleep
is my friend, not
a crouching inevitability.

When morning comes,
I chase the night
sip by black, hot, sip,
one hundred milligrams
of packed powder at a time
and, acid-tongued and anxious,
feel my heart beating
its fists against my breast-
bone. We are monsters most days,
and we fear each other--
and the torches and pitchforks
we carry inside our mouths.

Off-white and brown
stained coffee mug stolen
from work after a drill bit
of a shift, top shelf, cupboard
above the cutting boards. It is
heavy, and thick and the steam
rises across my face,
elbow stuck straight
out to raise the mug to my lips,
angular and methodical,
I slide a pen behind my ear
and a newspaper under my arm
to enhance the effect.
I feel so grown up that
I can feel the weight of our son
someday sitting on my lap and
offering pitiful suggestions for
the answers to my crossword puzzle.
Maybe his name will be Logan,
I will be supportive of his sexuality,
I will kiss him goodnight even when
we’re both men, I will create stories
for whispering, I will use Wikipedia
to answer all of his minute questions,
and I will try
so, so hard to be a father,
a father who loves
his son
as well as
my father loves me these days.