Month: January 2012

padded walls

poetry

cradling man-sized ladybugs
and climbing lived-in trees
this is the education we give our children
then we wonder at why they leaveith not the house at 18
“in childhood things were softer,” they say innocently enough, “foam enforced, carpeted, with padded walls.”
the real world they fought over patterned flowers on their mall floors and argued over who could jump to the next butterfly
they cradled themselves in tunnels of plastic, sterile, blue, climbing stairs and exiting slides
we taught life would be easy ups and slippery downs
we taught life lessons when we thought we were encouraging play time
taught padded walls as we cemented the forest
introduced easy-together legos in our rusting, over-heating, perishable, use-by-thursday world
and yet we wonder
we ponder
scratching our heads
eating smooth peanut butter on wonderbread and drinking pulp-free juice from disposable cups

I’m too Old for Nightmares…

poetry

dreams are not real life

dreams are in my mind

dreams are not the future

dreams get left behind

 

when I close my eyes at night

and I see you falling slowly

when I slip into the darkness

and you turn your anger towards me

 

I can’t save you there

I can’t make you smile

I can’t bring you back

I can’t close the miles

 

but the darkness does not last

and when the sun breaks through

those nightmare chains are broken

and your ghostly hold is too

John Everyone

poetry

I have been dead for seven days.

I have stolen away to greener pastures.

My family has eulogized me.

My friends have all disowned me.

There’s a box in a barn up on 10th street.

There’s a book of numbers inside.

I never made those calls.

I could have been a better man.

I should have said the right things.

Now I’m buried and gone.

Now I’m as good as I’ll ever be.

The first train poem

poetry

I want to make bread of my stomach (hungry one).
It has been 40 long years in the desert, and it hasn’t rained manna once.
I have been the sand, and you have been the wind; shaping me in to dunes.

Our puddle has become an ocean.
I want to make umbrellas of my arms.
Your arms are kites.
There is a rain cloud between us.

I want to make a train of my sidewalk.
I will ride it to my neighbor’s house.
If I can lay the track correctly, I will ride it to Brooklyn, and visit you.
If I cannot lay the track correctly, I will hitch hike, and visit you.
(I have strong thumbs.)

I want to paint my hands green.
Sometimes I lose track of them, and forget what they are doing.
Sometimes, I want to call you. Some days, my phone is a gun.

You promised me 50 kisses once.
Please write me a gift certificate, so I can find somewhere to spend them.

If I was a store, I would sell funny birthday cards, with monkeys on them.
I would be next to a train station, so that people could bring gifts from me to the people they were visiting.
I would give them all the friends and family discount.
I would have a guestbook at the register, but I would never call any of them.

If you were a store, I would make myself in to bread, and sit on your shelves.
Then, I could say, “Today, I was part of 7 families’ breakfasts.”
I would not make my hands in to bread though, because they are green.
And I would not my make mouth in to bread, in case I decide to call you.

Frustration Poem

poetry

Fuck ‘adolescence’
and holding standards without
taking measurements

Fuck snow-globes and play-lands
and long driveways

Fuck feeling like you’re dreaming
when you’re wide awake
and the alarm is too far to reach

Fuck cars that don’t stop
and drivers that don’t go
and long red lights

Fuck Solitary, gen-pop,
thug-life death-trap gangbangers
with nothing, and less worth proving

Fuck gas, fuck rain, fuck taxes,
fuck chasing the dog when he gets out,
and having to smack him when he gets back

Fuck the corporate world
Fuck your ‘adolescence’
and Fuck you