Four Years Prior.

poetry

It was a flashback.
Too much noise,
not enough VOLUME
but everything was turned up
all-the-way-and
there you were just
slamming
but it was a flashback
and I don’t know where
the time went. and I’m
not sure if I’m wrong
when I hate it, or
if that’s just the way
flashbacks
are supposed to work.

Chartres

poetry

Aye, the fateful French
Never anticipated
That centuries later oui would have
Such perverse portmanteau,
Creating a word akin
To flatulence and excretion,
And markedly similar to their city.
So needless to say
But said nonetheless:
It appears something was
‘Lost in translation.’

trying to find the center

poetry

alone is different than lonely
but god I tell you I am both
and am walking ’round in circles, here
trying to find the center

and this is a true account of my days
written here for you to see
as usual, and of course
I can’t let go of the words, oh

what’s more is you can have all my stuff
i don’t care about much anymore
but i miss your dog, i miss your dog
yeah yeah, yeah yeah, etc

but if you wanted me (and you don’t)
I would’ve saved you yes I would
but your love is such a weighty lie
your love is just a sucker game.

Like ‘PIG’ or ‘HORSE’ without a basketball. It’s not ‘500’ either

poetry

Let me state obvious things.
I will speak your mind as the words
form in your cranium,
for I can read them from the gestures
that your hands make
towards your feet
all the way down there on the pavement.

I will work out a points system.
I will score when you have had your story
laid out before you before you can
utter a word. I will reign champion.
You will lose.
My points system, though,
is slanted.

honesty

poetry

on the ride looking for my home
there were so many things i didn’t say
the sun dipped low, our shadows grew
you dropped me off but i was lost
losing light behind the crooked horizon

after you left, i took a walk
and got back to the city by sunrise
through the lonely woods and dusk
and dawn and sterile landscape
where i waited in a parking lot

i stole food from the ants
i pretended to be superman
my soul flying through the clouds
i pretended in all honesty

In mourning

poetry

Everything around me
looks like a children’s picture-book now
and this is how it’s going to be
and this is how it’s going to be seem
until all the Pulitzer’s come back from Hawaii,
with their pens between their lips
and their suitcases bursting like the ocean.
This is how it is, in mourning.

There was a day when you smiled,
with your mouth that had two lips,
two peeled peaches, opening and closing
like the heartbeat of a hotel lobby.
There was a day when you sat perched, quite remarkably,
on a rung of the great wooden ladder,
that stretched upwards, like your arms, to the boardroom of Trinity,
where three wise men sat, and drank red wine very slowly.
There was a moment, quite suddenly,
when you declined their invitation
and stepped down from the slippery-slide to glory
with your hair a dripping mess.

Surely this makes the six o’clock news, I thought
But the novelists had already boarded the plane.

There was a day of endless superlatives,
of Latin and prefix and light.
Half torn now in front of me, the mundane are setting up camp,
so I’ll wait, until the real world that came attached to your hip
calls up its publisher and says, ‘’it’s time, I’m coming home.’’

Three on the Eve

poetry

That very morning,
Before the bell rang, I denied him three times.

Now sitting in a desk a peer turned to ask me,
“Hey, ‘carry the light,’ what does that mean?”
I don’t know, nothing, I denied.
But he asked again,
“It’s a cool looking shirt; you don’t know what it means?”
No, I don’t know. It’s just a shirt, I denied again.
“So it’s just a shirt then?”
It’s just a shirt, I swore.

Just then the bell rang.
Just then the rooster crowed.

a list of things which constipate me or give me the Hershey’s squirts (in no particular order)

poetry

green leafy vegetables and milk un-aged
or bowls of oily spiciness though with
most cheeses i’m in the clear. provolone
or mozzarella is seldom rotted enough
for me to get by but most swisses work
no magic at all. broccoli is not an issue
but a single slice of cabbage brings disaster
to an otherwise painless two hour trip in
my car. oh and while most peppers cause
no ruckus, the juice from cooked beans
bring me to my knees – from which i rock
back slowly onto the circle in my bedroom
which i call my bedpan.

The Drunkest Man in the World

poetry

He drank down their smooth yet firey
misnomers and falsehoods until he was
the drunkest man in the world.

He is devoid of logic and reason.
He would make it to the top one day,
hell or high water all that could stop him,
spurred ever onward by new casks
off the foul stuff bottled by the fellows
down the way.

But once or twice he sobers up
and starts in to thinking, as he once did.

I met him on such an occasion.
There he was, confused and befuddled,
just beyond an open door.
I went to him. He said he had troubles.

I said that life was hard.
Tell me about it, he replied.
But it’ll get better some day, he said.
I won’t be around to see it.

He left then, to drink more of their foul draft,
so I told him to take care.
He said you got to.
So I do.

Stalking in the tall growth and stepping on the masonry

poetry

Someone’s mist just
stumbled through the doorway.
No footprints, no strange
melodies echoed on frozen stairs.
Just an impression
left indelible, yet invisible.
These are not wise thoughts
to think of you. These are
Dangers, completely self-imposed.

We do not talk of tigers
in the cornfields down the road.
The tiger, you see, stays native
to it’s home in Wildest Africa,
and Furthest India, and certainly
not in the cornfields down the road.
Yet I speak of you,
and your mist ever stumbling,
and I know you to be here,
indelible, yet invisible.

Like a tiger in a cornfield.