the male loneliness epidemic 

my uncle knows the opening & closing times
of every bar from here to the moon.
he recites them like bible verses 
to an empty car window in the march dark. 
once, when i was small. once when
i still talked to him, we were driving 
& he told me a story of him & his friend
drinking bottomless coffee until
their hands were shaking. they had to see how much
they could down. i asked him where 
the friend was now & he laughed. there are
eyes that open in his ceiling. he presses his thumb
to the lids to shut them. there was a girl he 
painted a mural with back when we still lived
by the railroad tracks & the old autobody factory. 
she turned into a hydrangea all blue 
& purple. sometimes i want to save him. 
i remember days in the summer when we would
go the big mall to get shiny in that light.
he builds fires just to put them out. sometimes
drains the amber guts of every bottle
he can find. then, sometimes, pours them
into the ragged grass beneath the backyard 
spruce tree where all the goldfish are buried. 
there were times in my life when i told friends
he was my second dad. now he is like
a birthday balloon on the ceiling. he buys
a treadmill. decides to eat only steak
until he is real again. flesh inside flesh. 
the blow-up mattress. the must of his doors. 
he keeps the same bright green irish spring soap
as he always did. watches horrible men
on a shrinking screen. i regret not loving him 
harder. i know it is not my fault that 
he worships furious idols. i know it is not my fault
that he walked home across the winding
cornfield roads in search of our house 
when he crashed his car into an angel. 
sometimes an old fragment will surface.
his teeth, crooked as mine. he goes 
almost everywhere alone. gender is all about
whether or not you stay. he has always left.
bottle caps like fish scales. he stays gill-less. 
never reaches the hungry boiled moon.