This is an attempt to say goodbye without actually leaving

My windows and doors are open
the food and milk in the
unplugged refrigerator has turned

How does meat turn?
Does it curse and rebel against
the apples in the crisper below?

I don’t understand why
there are so many ways to leave
wherever I am at

I have rebelled against enough people
But this couch knows what it did
when I leave it nailed to the carpet

If you would like to surprise me
climb the patio and come in or
break through the kitchen wall

Earlier, I salvaged two apples and
when I am eating one I am noticing
how red and crisp they can be

If I seem powerless or rotten
when you enter and I turn it is
because I unplugged myself

I am saving the other apple for you
but it is possible I may slide out the window
before you get here

I can’t promise the apple will remain
red and crisp, loyal to the milk and meat
Close the door on your way out

Times When I Notice I Am Turning Into Walter

-For my Father

It's January and I am outside of my car in twelve inches of snow. The car is running. The doors are locked. Did I really just fucking do that?
Clint Eastwood walks into a bar. All my dreams are fulfilled. I punch the nearest living thing.
I open a forwarded message. What’s in the forwarded message? Fuck me. Fooled again.
Almost up to a pack a day.
Beard!
I am tired of Indiana too, and Missouri does sound nice but I’m not sure why.
My mid-midlife crisis running parallel to his midlife crisis, and pornography.
I tear off the labels to plastic bottles and stuff them inside the bottle when I’ve finished the drink. What the hell am I doing?
My mother is dull sometimes, but is beautiful all the time. I don’t spend much time with her.
New music is boring and old music doesn't sound like it used to.
Beer starts reminding me of my stupidity and tastes like wasted youth.
A steady job is respectable.
I hate Hillary Clinton because it’s also respectable.
I just need somebody, somebody, anybody come to me. Oh, sorry, I guess I cheated on you. Somebody else, please.
I picture my son rebelling against me with chewing tobacco and cowboy hats only to realize that I don’t suck and that it’s okay to go to school for journalism because that’s what I did and that might not be amazingly original but it is respectable and I made sure that word slept beside him on most nights.

Exorcise

I spent two kinetic miles
in white sneakers and blue shorts while
My headphones struggled to wedge
themselves beside my eardrums as the
sweat moved into my canals like oil
being drawn from the crust of the planet. My
feet could taste the difference between the sidewalk
and the parking lots. It was hot and that asphalt might
as well have been rubber cement spread over
cracked linoleum. My eyebrows were sagging
from the weight of the salt in the sweat. I reminded
myself that after I finished the second mile my lungs
would feel like they were full of used matches and that
the fourteen cigarettes and seven beers I drank
the night before no longer counted. I drank
to counteract feelings of loneliness. My running and
my drinking are performing their actions in opposite
directions. As I sweat out the potential tumors and cysts
that are eyeing my organs, my neck fails to support
my head and the smell of alcohol and nicotine
are leaking through my pores. My nose is
stationary.

Trashcan?

"It doesn't count as littering if you write on it first"
you said to me after unwrapping it with your tongue
As the yellow and red dyes seeped between your gums,
the wrapper floated lazily to the ground. The phrase
"I don't like chocolate" written on pink wax paper was
all I saw before you grabbed my hand and said
"Now the bugs have art, too"

RAAADERRRRRR!!!

A girl wrote her phone number on the back of my right hand today. I know this girl likes me because she referred to me as "Ryan J. Rader", and only girls who like me do that. Girls who didn't like me in high school just called me "Rader", and that annoyed me. They might as well have called me ugly or short or overweight, which in high school I was all of those things. Fuck them anyways. I am still short, technically, but people don't call me short. I don't know why. I think it's because I wear clothes that fit now.

Whenever I look at the back of my right hand, like I just did, it makes me smile and I want to show everyone I know. This is more important than sex. This is better than sex, right now. I don't even know if I should have sex with this girl should the opportunity arise. Should I? Yes. I should. I didn't have sex in high school. This will make up for it, like the other seven did.

High school is actually more important to me now than it was then. Lots of those girls are pregnant now with fetuses of unnattractive men. I almost want the number tattooed on the back of my hand. Those ugly children will grow up, and I will be old and cool like Lou Reed and they will see my tattoo and I will tell them this story.

Is high school over yet?

Soaked

Soaked, standing in the shower
I don't get the wrinkled raisin fingers and toes
and the soapy fingernails of childhood anymore
No place for the Stormtrooper vs. X-Men wars
fought on my round, hairless belly
My navel was a prison for building blocks
My knees were fleshy glaciers that rose from the murky, hard-water ocean
My toes were buoys
My legs and elbows controlled the tide

The tips of my toes are useless now, I tower over
The porcelain and chrome fixtures where I learned how my body worked, accidentally,
But soon becoming an engineer of myself
Now I'm working on a degree in women's studies, becoming
A bachelor with a masters.

My aim is impeccable unless I've been drinking
I suppose there is room for a fifth next to the aftershave.
Batman was an alcoholic even when he was five inches and plastic in a bathtub.
I should drink in the shower. I should take showers
with Catwoman and Supergirl now and teach them
what I've learned, but no.
Childhood ends when erections begin.
Cold showers from now on.

2008

Before I drove to the liquor store
my grandmother slipped
on the ice and shattered her ankle

After I returned with the bottle
I opened my whisky and saw
three black children running on melted snow