Distances and Time

poetry

You have a crown,
made of twisted-up straw wrappers.
It sits awkwardly and is
sort of getting pulled apart
while you wrestle at the table
with your boyfriend.

You are smiling and
everyone is watching you smile
and hoping you keep smiling
and John, he’s twisting you
a new crown because
we all see that the old one
isn’t going to last.

I heard you got your papers
and you’re stuck here for life.
Or years – close enough to life
for you.

We tried to tell you that this city,
it’s not so bad really.
We tried to keep your eyes
away from travel magazines and
glorified computer desktop
backgrounds. You’ll just right-click again.

And you cry so much these days,
darling, and we don’t know what to do.
You breathe the air and swear it’s
not as good as it was a month ago.
You spit up your cakes and candies
and have nothing to say for it.

But John is twisting a crown for you.
If he has to keep you smiling one diner
at a time, He has no qualms
getting famous in those restaurants.

But I, my dear,
can not stand your self-inflicted
wounds any longer.
I swear, this time.

I wash my hands of you.
I will scrub very hard, at least,
and I will keep a towel with me
for the next time I get dirty,
because damn it,
You never really do come off.

Of the World with Mr. Hugo, Part 5

poetry

The road was narrow and lined
with beautiful Spruce trees on either side,
and the clouds were thick
as the sun came down ahead of us.

We drove at a comfortable gait
floating around curves and breathing
what must have been the taste
of Heaven On Earth.

We must be dead, it’s too perfect
I chided to Mr. Hugo, and he smiled
and reached in to his pocket and
tapped a couple pills from the bottle
that he’d found in there.

Heavenly at least, he replied
as he took the tiny capsules
and gazed more easily in to the densely-packed
woods around us.

There were mailboxes going by
on the left side of the car,
and a few handsome houses
we could see as we rolled onward.

I mentioned that these Heavenly bits
are a fine piece to spend a lot of
hard-earned cash on.
He questioned the part where the cash
was ‘hard earned’, but we could only
make assumptions of the virtues
of the owners of these parcels,
and so as the great, beautiful sun
set before us,
we digressed in to admiration.

literally impossible

poetry

your overwhelming enunciation does nothing to
numb the pain of the words you’re speaking.

a call to inconceivable action is nothing but that —
inconceivable. and you must know resistance to
the painful truth yields unquenchable discontent.

tim is in a bubble (part 5)

poetry

the company wont pay
these machines must run on
through the powers of man
through the night and these
are not cheap
machines
ma’am

and unless you can afford
your sun will fall past
the horizon a last time
forever nighttime
forever more

(in this universe, far away
tim was unaware
of conspirators
itching for the bed on which
his mortality still lie
and of his mother’s love
being trodden upon
by the company
and the hospital)

and in this moment,
she noticed the ticking of
the clock for the first time
and with empty bank accounts
and an empty heart
she said goodbye.

Killer

poetry

I heard him call you a
clean cut kid
paying no account to those
things you did

I saw the blood stains when you
washed your sheets
I see you size up every
girl you meet

I got a phone call from your
Ma today
she just don’t understand those
tunes you play

And we don’t know where you
go at night
but we never tracked you
down, in spite.

seems like whenever that
news comes on
they got a longer list of
folks that’s gone

While I havn’t proved
anything true
I got a feeling that
the problem’s you

I know you never say the
things you mean
but I bet you make your
cuts real clean

Don’t you?

You don’t know What You Know, you know?

poetry

Rode a back-draft to a bad part of town
and kept my hands to myself when I was down there.
I didn’t sing too loud. Nobody knew me.
Nobody knew I was a singer either.

Had a necklace on my chest,
under a black T shirt that I’d stolen
in my younger years. There were moth holes
and a paint stain on it. The color was faded
and the cloth was sheer but it fit right.

Some guy, he looked at me, didn’t ask for money.
He saw me a bum too. Saw down deep.
We’re all bums, I bet he thinks.
We all just want change.

There was a diner on a corner and an alley just behind.
Got my sandwich from a Spanish-speaking man.
He dressed it well and fast and took my last 5
and I ate out back. I drank the coke too,
that it come with.

I smelled that smell that garbage has
and figured it was time to head back northerly.
The buses don’t run down that way so late
and there wasn’t no bread to score no cab
so I waited for the birds to stop singing
and I caught another backdraft.

Those birds didn’t know I was a singer either
but they would.

You Mess.

poetry

A gun is all you need
and you’ll be whole again
and ready
to do what must be done.

You’ll fight the good fight
and send them marching home.
You’ll explode characteristically
and run yourself ragged.

You have no spirit
but a beautiful soul
and I met it once in a bowling alley.
It rolled perfect spares.

When I asked you what you wanted
you didn’t have an answer
only a shopping list
and a phone book with
numbers circled here
and here
and there.

When I gave you what you needed
you shied away and I thought
that you might cry but you didn’t.
You ate your greens and you
worked your shift and damn it
you took your medicine.

If you plan it right
your coffers will never run dry
but that gun isn’t loaded
and your pantry’s still empty
and I don’t know who the hell ‘Amy’ is,
but she’s not calling you tomorrow,
that’s for sure.

near death by cannonball ≠ near death by dirty looks for dirty rides

poetry

i envy these men who dodged cannon balls
and bullets for their faith living every day
on the edge in the places they weren’t
allowed to go speaking to people who feared
them for the color of their skin, and while
i was born for this time here and now and have
come to the same place, these people are
no savages, and they respect me for the color
of my skin. and i can’t help but think my
choice in a very old and ugly vehicle for
transportation is not at all equal to a cannon
ball flying inches away from my head.

it does not require or yield the same kind of
faith. i labor every day wondering if i’m doing
what’s right rather than wondering how i’ll live
through tomorrow, and with my family this seems
wiser, but that part of me deep inside – that part
all of us men cannot seem to shake – that part
of me just wishes for a little more excitement
sometimes. all the while wishing my wishes don’t
come true.

I spent a day waiting for my life to change

poetry

I fished a nickel from underneath the couch
it was a buffalo nickel. It was worth five cents
and I threw it in my nickel bottle.

I got downtown at 8pm and wandered
with nothing but a dime in my pocket
and a set of keys
but I couldn’t buy nothing from nobody
and that nickel at home wouldn’t help.

So I got down to the viaduct
out South street way and I
tossed a dime in the murky waters.
I made a ten-cent wish, then,
and headed on my merry.

They hadn’t processed many
wishes that day, you see,
so those odds were probably
stacked up for me and I’ll
take what I can get
and nothing more than it.
And it it won’t be much
‘cuz after that nickel
I’m fresh out.

Traditional Florentine

poetry

I hold my dagger
Traditional Florentine
for to cut and parry
while the other blade
does the dirty work
and I keep them on edge
by means of my edges
and thrust and push
and slice and stab
so you stay just out
of harm’s deadly reach
but somehow with
my dagger held Traditional
Florentine you snuck up
right beside me and
you’ve been inside my
deadly arc for years now
and I don’t think that
I’ll ever cut you now,
just as long as you don’t
cut me,
first.

the intensity of the lack of the crowd

poetry

for a few minutes He brings torrential freezing rain and
as if just for me
He clears the city out.
so i book it through these streets alone
listening to a loud silence of the kind i haven’t heard
in months.

the masses flee inside as if afraid of the lack of people and
as if just for me
this city is empty, and for once, no one is cheering me on.

apathetic title

poetry

the world-famous guitar extrordinaire
played some hendrix upon a mexican
stratocaster
oh lord
he was so good
i could barely tell
i thought those songs were his

and neither of us wanted to tell
the secrets that were so painfully
clear

that he was high on crack cocaine
and that we both felt like the
weather outside

and he’d never been world-famous
either

and i wanted to just go away

we wished otherwise
like the people driving down cork street
and all the people in the hardings
and at the day-cares
and everywhere

somewhere in each tune he changed it a bit
original, i thought
unrecorded, too

he played on, and on
la la la
and it rained outside.