poetry

Short Walk Gone Bad

poetry

Cue cool breeze cutting
through the damp clothes and
knocking hats to flying
and men to running after
hats
and cue the lightening
just before the thunder in
the distance, and yet
always moving closer
to the running and the
flying and the cueing
and the cussing and then
scene

memoria tenere

poetry

there are at least 2,752
reasons to remember
never let our defenses down
to enlist to prevent to
cock the gun pull the trigger
let the end justify the means
wave flags from every window to
call for the heads of those who plotted
who plot who still thirst and hunger and strap
bombs to themselves in the name of some god
or another

but
there are at least 2,752
reasons to remember
that when the call devolves from
cry to battle cry death leads
to death
why can’t we remember it’s fiction that
defeated factions fall into submission and forget
their pain their hatred their revenge for the sake of safety?
why can’t we remember the man who’s lost his brother the mother
who’s lost her son the lover who’s lost love by bomb or bullet
breathes eats drinks
sleeps thinks speaks death?

so
let’s love without hatred
live without revenge
remember the lives of those we loved
without forgetting we just can’t go on
this way

A Monster and a selective little devil.

poetry

There is a monster in my bedroom
locked there every morning until
every evening when I let him free.

He is all the things I did not do
and every ‘I forgot’ and ‘maybe tomorrow’
and ‘I’ll find time this Saturday’
and he is a monster.

Thank goodness I have made
to lock him up each day, or
surely he’d have killed me.
He’d kill us all, I’m sure.

But he has not breached
my sturdy bedroom lock,
nor has he made to open
one of the many windows
(and just as well, for
ground-floor is not so
great a leap).

He is a monster, and he is
locked in my bedroom every
morning until every evening
when I let him free.

For A Limited Time Only

poetry

I’m not looking at the clock
except maybe on birthdays.
Working hard, but
for a limited time only.
For seventy or so years I’ll labor,
and then I’m going home.
And at home is where
I’ll shed my clothes,
shed my skin,
shed my muscles,
shed my bones.
I’ll sit at the table.
We’ll all sit around the table,
like a giant family reunion.
We’ll bow our heads and say grace,
and I’ll hold hands with my Father.

Rasputin

poetry

Rasputin stares at the cold cold ground
and Rasputin walks around
with a sword in his walkingstick
and a bottle-opener in his bible
Rasputin walks around on the ground

Rasputin cast a spell on his stereo
and Rasputin never lets a record spin
but he listens patiently
for the music he would like to see
Rasputin walks around on the ground

Improv

poetry

Free-styling,
Free-wheeling,
spilling out impromptu thoughts
that somehow fit,
that somehow hint
at an intelligence greater
or a greater intelligence,
whichever the case may be
in which the mystery
is somehow solved
of how to not make an ass,
whilst standing on stage.

Though I try.

poetry

The mood gets heavier
just as the curtains close
on the window to the world,
blocking and blurring the
big back yard of ours
by vision only.

The rodents sleep deep
and underground, while
the dogs and deer and things
roam and wander overland,
looking up now and then
at the great birds flying.

But the mood is the important thing,
and I can hardly lift it
when those curtains are shut.
no, I can hardly make
anything better
inside.

untitled

poetry

gaudy curves that seemed filled
with sugar
perfect like the rolling hills
of tennessee, only pleasantly
excessive

lawless dark brown hair
matching her face
with metal pertruding
through her lower-left lip

she was lost, her figure
filling out a mold made
from fantasties grown stale
and muddied by years
of dissilusionment
and cold

and in the middle of
directing her to muskegon,
after my eyes had travelled the
breadth of her voluptious
body, i told her about it
i told her about her beauty,
i said “you’re gorgeous…
by the way”

and she paused
smiling
with one foot out the door
and didn’t say thanks

she left me for muskegon
with something hidden
inside of a smile and
a pause
perfect like a picture

one reason to never write prose is the fact that run on sentences become bad form, but not so poetry, nope, you can sort of just ramble as long as you’d like and include only one period if you are so inclined, because hey, this is your dang poem, you’ll do with it whatever the stink you want.

poetry

i cant feel my toes when
i numb them from the run from my
fears which i hope i can escape in
this here present reality. the naturally
deposited ground would feel gritty
if my feet were any more capable
of feeling but instead the sandpaper
texture turns silk and the catharsis
from the pain i attempt to induce
becomes something much more like
a back rub or lullaby slowly rocking me
to sleep.

Difficult.

poetry

I crack my bones
but do not grind them
as I have no need for bread;
my sustenance is
the particulate
that flutters through the air,
from all the grinding bones
scattered about.

No, I do not grind my bones.
But Surely, you can hear them crack

Pedals

poetry

Life is a street
On which we travel
Pedal over pedal spins the wheel of our years;
The end lost in futures,
They fly into our pasts,
We only watch their memoirs, stop/start.

Freighted with bitter,
Crimsoned with sweet,
We skitter around potholes to our bright potential;
Their cunning edges,
Their filthy centers,
We never shall know. And the bicycle as it goes
Navigates away,
Each one is overcome
Each beyond the turning spokes.
We alone pedal
While time journeys on,
The pedals churn wheels, though the memories remain.

Descent

poetry

From the brow we point—
‘Aye, they’s many a sea monster in the deep,’ we say.
Waves loll and rear-end one another.
‘Got to keep a wary eye out,’ we acknowledge, ‘they there.’

From cabin we clink beverages,
Jangling prisms refracting in the light.
Drinking down and never knowing until we go down.
Gazing between bars and goggles, our self-imposed captivity
Descends.

Down, the water swarming our feet.
Down, the green hues grow darker.
Down, the shattered light suffocating.
Down, the fading briny hull forename—Bliss.
And we are swallowed.

There are no more intermittent fins to marvel at.
No glimpses of accusation to position our supple fingers.
Consumed by teeth of an insatiable, blood lusting hunger.
Surrounded by sharks, swirling in a spectacle of slaughter.
Engulfed in a liquid grave, should we have stayed any longer.

And upon reemerging—gasping not for air,
But release from this elevator into a living hell.
‘They is monsters down there’ we say,
But it’s different this time.
‘Almost got me, almost plunged.’
Fins carve the waterline like serrated knives.
‘Them poor souls. You’d never know they was like that.’