Phil Lane spends his days working for a private tutoring company, and thus becoming disillusioned about the future of humankind.  However this does afford him the inspiration to write, which he does not necessarily on a daily basis at his home in New Jersey. 

Three Poems (November 20, 2009. Issue 11.)

I Started Out on Burgundy

The more I drink
the more I enjoy these
  orbital hangovers,
A dangerous proposition,
         to be sure

the same thing happened with
opium and women
      I once believed myself
a shaman,
        swimming in the river
behind the river

but it’s not the drug
                  that makes the man,
awake in pools of lithium
with my tangible demise
     Fun, Fun, Fun
‘til morning takes my T-Bird away
and the lizard is sick
     in some hospital ward
           wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper

gotta get something strong
           before it all comes to life
and the adding machine cuts me
  with her steel erection—

I'm Glad You Are At Peace

Don’t care
if you wait for me on Hope Rd.
I will meet you in the middle of I-99
beyond interchanges of sterile desert
the carnal crunch of wrecks
on the highway

Don’t care
if you see me in the clouds
young naked toeing the tightrope
dancing on the storm
above your seething garden party

Don’t care
if I never reach the mountain with you
the peak obscured by my dancing
love poisonous in this climate and
my fear of heights suddenly returning

Don’t care
about the blood on the bathroom tile
the rat inside the ceiling fan
my convenient disease helps me
forget to remember—

Forgotten Things

the smell
     of cigarette smoke
and
    the inside
    of your legs—