poetry

You me and an art gallery

poetry

A fat cram of color in front of us
Screaming like a flat footed baby
For attention. Or worse, appreciation.
You muttering something about
The brush strokes, as if they were
Exotic birds no one had named yet.
And me embracing the smell of oil,
Freshly polished brass, coffee, someone’s
Over-applied day-out perfume,
And the comforting muttering of
Museum voices, pressing their backs
Lightly against walls and pushing off
Again, to rest in softly lit corners,
Beside the gallery attendant, a
Mysterious beekeeper. A wise man.
You had found something on the
Seventh wall, something that itched
And amused in the way only a close-friend
Can. So I walked over to get a closer look.
There it was. A painting of the very gallery
We stood in, one hundred years before us.
So we took it in. Savored the snap-shot
In time. A chrysalis around us for just
A few moments. Until the bell rang
For closing and we left through the
Royal roof-scraping doors.

When shopping, make sure you read all the silly round labels on the boxes

poetry

Genuine is
leather, gold, sugar, diamonds, Kentucky bourbon,
You.

Coats need tailoring,
gold the work of practiced hands,
sugar only comes from canes
and Kentucky Bourbon is one thing only found in
Kentucky.
(check the label).

Oh, so pay the man and
buy that stamp on his degree.
Buy the gold medal on the
Barbecue sauce wrapper.

I’ll drive an hour and sit
singing loud enough to
wake the neighbors. And we
won’t say anything of substance
until we’re safely set away.

But we’ll say it.

And the only genuine I’ll pay for
is the only one I get for free.

cliches

poetry

minutes, hours, days pass
stretching into weeks
of glassy eyed starring,
just starring at the screen
searching for something
searching for anything
searching for creativity
but finding only befuddlement
in the never ending quest
for words and ideas
that i haven’t written before
and knowing deep down
that i have written this all before.

Alchemic

poetry

Sprigs of spring,
uncut, uneven,
twitch in the breeze,
I distribute myself in particles
abandoning anchoring roots.

As the oak watches the world,
stony in its indifference,
so I slip into the wind
airily ignoring.
Nothing is as quiet
as the blossoming redspire pear,
as the wisps of cirrus
reforming.

The surrounding red brick buildings
hold their tongues as they always have.
Infused in the soil, I feel everything.
The nervous skittering of the squirrel.
The slow shifting of growth.
The soft weight of supine bodies,
like fingers checking a geologic pulse.

My molecules
having drifted so far,
the shadowy rustle
of last fall’s leaves.

8.14am blues

poetry

The mayhem of morning
with its black black shoes
and white white shirts
and extra shot this
and three sugars that
and freshly applied
hairspray- ultra hold
and please move further
down the carriage to
make room for other
passengers, thankyou
really just
stresses
me out so
much that i
want to
commute all
the way
home again,
open the door,
get
inside my
warm bed
and
listen
to
prince.

Deference

poetry

It was never a specific night,
I don’t think.
I can not recall the moment our
deference occurred.
Perhaps,
the job a summer
(A lifetime?) ago,
where you met an
entirely new
sort of situation.

They were big plans
and long nights and
days and days and miles
and miles and miles
together,
our words still
worth a good god damn
weighed up and even,
with twenty dollars between us
and a quarter-tank of gas
if we were lucky.

But millions of screaming insects
drown even the strongest
swimmer, and even when one
puts to port, there’s
never any guarantee
of safe and greener
pastures.

The soul tends to shake
-and violently-
when suddenly ripped apart.
I’m sure you both screamed,
but trees fall every day,
and no one hardly
hears a sound in these
forests.

But deference is a fickle thing,
subject to wit and apt to whimsy.
There are a million roads
all across this great wide planet.
Some run long, others but a
zig-zag.
Maybe these paths will
jog again together.

Then again, perhaps,
we have ever and finally
Deferred.

upon reading a poem titled “upon my demise”

poetry

i saw the poem you wrote
and figured it fancy
and although i’m a poet
i’ve just got to say
no words are proper,
upon my demise.

that is at least to say
that upon this day
my command of language
and knowledge of words
and understanding of death
and thoughts and processes
are not sufficient,
i suppose,
to write a thing
about after i die.

let us hope that i do not
die soon,
because all that’ll be read
is the poem about how i hadn’t
made up my mind about what
to say upon my demise
(along with everything else
i have not made up my mind
about yet).

daily ritual

poetry

i wash dishes
in the low yellow light
of my small evening kitchen

while my lover’s voice
paces and animates
the ins of the day
and the outs

i wash dishes
with my back aching and
my shoulders rounding to my core

my mind rushing and
utterly still in the
warm water and suds

i wash dishes
in the atmosphere of music
on a bright weekend morning

while enormous white
clouds roll through the
wild blue in the window
behind me, bidding
me to live abundant
always

with help of course.

poetry

i cannot hope my feelings will wane
with my fever leaving me once again
healthy. in charge of my emotion.
it’s april and the sun has yet to shine
leaving me today groping around in
the dusk from dawn until the end of
dusk as there’s nothing between.

in three months i’ll have a city. but
for now i’ve nothing but a thread to hold
so weak it would break if i used it to
floss

i cannot hope tomorrow will change
with my switch from beer to gin in
hopes for something better, stronger.

but when reality hits three months from
now and out from under your thumb
i emerge stronger and brilliantly naive
ready to engage in something like battle
ready to do something like conquer

Elevated Trains

poetry

Caught the last train to Belmont
then the expressway back to Granville

Cops in their cars and
drunks in their gutters
with the wind just cold enough
to keep the stepping lively

and the jazz was swinging all night,
I can assure you.
From the diner on Irving Park to
the Green Mill down on Broadway.

The jazz was
swinging,
I can absolutely
tell you that