I’m compelled to remark about timing
as much as anyone we’ve known
After twisting years of this, I’m convinced
that there’s no such thing as order or organization
My high school friends watched me tie the knot
one Saturday between school days,
and I was sixteen
Late one night at a party thrown
by the employees of a local Taco Bell,
I was sneaking around
behind my parents back
The first taste of freedom that summer - unbinding
Fucking for a blind moment too long
on a rubber that traveled in my velcro wallet,
just a few salad days too long
with a girl who needed anything I could give her,
and I needed someone too
Somehow discussions turn in circles
How could we be parents?
It wasn’t a question
Her home broken into pieces before we met
She told her aunt and her uncle, they said
the only logical choice was to abort,
“You’d never even have to tell his folks”
But how could she give up something she’d always needed?
My mother had tears in her eyes for three straight days
She’d never known what teens would do
My father was silent, he said nothing
They were good Christians and what else could they do?
They offered us one choice,
it was their help for our matrimony
And there it was,
a sixteen and seventeen year-old,
with my shaved head and her nose rings,
exchanging vows at a church on a sunny day
in the October of my junior year
I was back in school on Monday
MM 2001 (original)
Revision- 1/17
Marked for life with circles,
longing for circular motion - movement in time
Swinging around,
run around again,
repeating tender moments,
and the same mistakes
Still I ponder at the sunlit window,
but cannot separate the blinds
to look outside,
if the circle is complete
And there I am,
my love for you goes in circles,
it’s never stuck on points of a line
Its tide rises and falls,
but never subsides
It rides like a Sunday drive,
or through minefields in a war
It never stops turning away,
if the circle is complete
Days will turn in circles,
from the alarm that sets you off,
to the frustration, the comfort, the restraint,
to the love, the hate, the fear,
to the compensation,
to whatever puts you to sleep,
rise and fall within it
MM 2000
Another room away from me
Wondering where I came from tonight
Wondering if the distance makes clear
The things I could tell you
The ways I could be to you tonight
The ways I could be right
Take the shit I took today
And bottle up and throw down
On cement watch it blow up
Into my last three days
I can amuse myself with this
You're just a bystander
Can I help myself and who am I
To complain about anything?
When you are just a room away
And in and out of sleep
I'm wondering about timing
And why it takes so goddamn long
To pull together
The things I could tell you
On cement watch it blow up
Into my last three days
I can amuse myself with this
You're just a bystander
Concrete to crack my skull
And bloody my fists
The sympathy I could win from you
It's all I wanted
Concrete to crack my skull
And bloody my fists
The sympathy I could win from you
It's all I ever wanted in the first place
MM 2001
Roll the window down
I want to see the wind mess up your hair
We'll play another silly game
Laughing deeper down into my seat
Rolling around I see you laughing
So hard tears are in your eyes
Will you wake up and get the coffee?
Walk outside to feel the morning
There's dog shit outside the door
There's a car in front of us
That's being driven by no one
Hey pull over here
There's a better view of the river
The lady there in Paso Robles
Whose kids were trapped in a tornado
Just close the door
You know that we could not care
I never had to think of so many
Nouns or verbs or adjectives
Whoever thought that it was something
That had been there long before
To the point that I kept thinking
If it would make it off the ground
I want to roll the window down
Propel this thing forward
I want to drive into the sun.
MM 2001
Got no way to grow out of my skin anymore
Implications are too much and growing everyday
I'm walking away
From when I thought it important enough to have it both ways
And you don't know
not to hear every layer- it's not there
to discover, not unfolding for you
Got no way left to circulate my old smoke through,
filters the clean air just circulates, the circulation spells relief from trying
just to clue you in
Every mystery's not true, or not how you think it should be
It's different every time that you rummage through it
MM 2002
The circulation is speaking volumes
on what is stuck in your brain
The air is thick and splitting
with all the vague analogies
They're vague because I do know
that we've heard them all before
Everyday is vague
so that you can just get used to it
Stuck on our tongue and buried,
hanging around in the air
Released and snatched away
to consume and call your own
Retreads like an escalator
on up to the next floor
An unconscious escape,
just coining the moment.
The air is splitting in my ears
The space between everyone
The distant conversations
to play on or withdraw from
Hissing,
pissing,
and buzzing.
MM 2001
We are all monsters here
out to destroy each other
Looking for holes in the surroundings
Breaking from the inside ---------- sickness!
You are someone else's thought
lying there all broken and bleeding
Give us a chance to catch our breath
Wait for someone to pick you up-
All there in pieces marked with
labels and categories
Claws tear and reassign -----
you are nothing without subtitles!
We will wait right here
We will destroy ourselves
Before we take a step around you,
we will stomp you into pieces
And don't know that you are being picked apart?
Why don't you know that you are being picked apart?
Listening for too long
Bite your tongue until it bleeds
Selective response -----
you are being torn apart
What you have in hiding,
unspoken but always there
All words now are true
We want to give them back to you
MM 2001
