to better know a poet

told dan over white bread sandwiches that i wanted to write a really long poem about college, or atleast my first impressions of the moon. so here it is, uncut so far, not sure what i will do with it. maybe it runs too much, should let it breathe a little more.

into the brittle april wind
two fingers making peace,
choking a snuffed cigarette,
between two ragged blue eyes and
torn socks, inseparable myths
about the slowly declining mitten state,
a woman putting out the candles in
delicate lansing, find myself
with uncomfortable suede shoes walking
down a gravel path where
empty cans of crushed
lite beers spilled themselves
into bushes before falling asleep
on park benches, small
chants of celebration erupt
behind an old brick house, girls
walk by wearing thin strips of skirt,
a beard with no mouth collecting
cans on the back of his bicycle, some boys
in shirts that neither mock or support his effort,
police car with taxi cab lights makes us
pause to consider the difference, everyone
just trying to find a place to sleep this off
anyways, scattered #2 pencils
like the front desk as a golf range, tests
gone untaken, bubbles
gone unbubbled, saw myself sitting
into a lecture hall writing poems
about my mother, the jaw clenching scream
of a fire alarm, jolting out of bed into
my scarred and stretched skin, watching waves
of untamed hair making left turns
down a back staircase, seeing
an english professor afraid of a flickering screen
smoke his pipe beside cowering aspach hall, two neon girls
with matching bags walking back
to the room they used to share, one curls up to her conditioner
and sleeps in the shower, an old letter from you
sealed with a lipstick kiss i found confusing,
it really has been that long
since my last-of-this-era
birthday, catastrophic furniture collapse
in the living room, steel skeleton of our couch
long since given out, threw it down
four flights of concrete stairs while it
lost metal teeth over every single step, kept
ourselves from uncomfortable boredom by running
in nylon shorts through the slush filled streets
until warm weather came and we
abdicated, finding solace in the ten second kisses
that girls would offer up
in bizarre self-sacrifice, then into the
dirt alley behind your house, where permanently
parked cars take communion, finding myself
with no please to walk back to
call a cab and sleep in a vinyl home.