All the money in your pocket
for a brand new ’79 Ford truck
with custom ordered everything
with a radio that wails
nearly as loud as the gasoline motor
burning rubber beneath a Carolina moon
You’ve been drinking a little
and so has the man to your left
but you get home safe regardless
and didn’t hurt that truck of yours
as it sits rusting in the driveway
just like it has
For decades
It’s 2017
and you haven’t seen your oldest son in 4 years
poetry
Billy
poetryBilly lost his thirties
To hard drugs and cheap booze
And a wife that didn’t love him
He lost his money because
He couldn’t stop himself
When the crack-pipe came around
And besides, the boys on Cork street
Always treated him right
Billy lost his stride to gas station food
And he lost swagger to head trauma
He even lost his luck on pawn
And now he’ll lose his forties
To the tumor that’s growing
In the roof of his mouth
But he’ll never lose that look in his eye,
not that horrible broken one.
Not til the day he dies.
if time could travel backwards part 6
poetryI would knock you over
before your new soft skin
ever touched the fire
I would let you slide
when you needed to
even if I hated it
Instead of snapping back
or head-butting
I would take more hits
more stoically,
I would take your lashing
with much more grace
But later when your skin was tough
I’d let you take your scrapes head-on
without an unsolicited word,
with all the fury of a desert storm
Fury there would be
And I would hope and wish and dream
that when a cold-front came in
you would thrash beyond it’s milding
You would burn bright forever
and sometimes I would light my torch with yours
If I could make time travel backwards
and make you whole and even
I’d give you everything I could.
Everything.
Summer Cold
poetryIt’s the cough that kills me.
‘Too warm for this.’ I think
to myself out loud as the shiver
sets deep in to my bones
– just for a moment –
as the crickets chirp
just outside my window.
This old blanket serves
just as good as new
for to swaddle me up
and keep me warm in this
65-degree-Fahrenheit night
And I lay awake wheezing
and wiping clear snot
on to the back of my hand
until it’s saturated enough
to flail to find my kerchief
– an old cotton T-shirt
that I’d already worn.
The chirping seems to swell
with the unconscious chatter
of my arms and guts – and
everything, as far as I
can tell – and it would
fade again, I’m sure,
if not for this headache.
‘Ain’t it just the way?’
I yell to the uncaring crickets,
‘Sore throat in the middle
of Goddamn June!’
It’s the cough, though,
the stupid fucking cough,
that gets me every time.
Cold Patches
poetryI am a considerate sort,
I promise myself.
Shuffle papers quietly
ignore shouting next door
We’ve all got to be mindful
while the tough parts get sorted
I don’t want to do any sorting.
The wind blows through the old sill
near where I lay my head most nights
sometimes my nose is cold
when I wake up to use the restroom
When I come back, I just tuck deeper
in to the blanket that I keep
in spite of differences of opinion.
The rest of my home is warm, I guess,
except for 5AMs with eyes wide open
ceiling fan spinning above
a recently interrupted dream
It isn’t a very bad one
but it always makes me feel bad
anyway
Datestamp
poetryI think I think the world of you.
Unpaid parking tickets resting
in a drift of melting snow.
I think I want you to get
what you think you want.
Every moment lined up
in a digital calendar
in someone else’s database.
I think I think I love you.
Analog clocks
clicking every second
overhead.
I want you to get
what you think you want.
‘Art is never completed;
only abandoned.’
I love you.
The sun comes up
six hours sooner
than it seems that it ought.
Worlds are visible
from orbit.
Water Poem
poetryPools are fine to tarry in
until the weather cools
and you are forced to drain it
half-of-the-way down
and add a mix of special chemicals
and wrap the top with a thick
taught tarp until springtime
The river becomes quite attractive
should you have a proper vessel
and though the ice won’t form
so heavily to stop your cut
the cold will be close to unbearable
at times, and there is always
the fear of rough rocks and
hard current and capsize
I think I’d like to brush up
on my sea-faring bends and shanks
The pool was perfect, after all,
for learning how to swim
Almost North of Town
poetryIt is early in the season
The leaves have slowly begun
to turn and fall and scatter
You cut a fine form in this
chill, half-covered moonlight
You don’t want to hurt anyone
(you don’t make any promises)
I mention I have toughness in spades
(you assure me I do not)
When we turn back down the trail
I am not cold or uncomfortable
(but I shake sleep from one leg)
When we return from the trail
I think we are both smiling
It is early in the season,
after all
like math or gravity
poetrythe summer is hot but there
is no winter in wichita
because like in all parts
of existence you get what
you pay for i came here
to skirt the laws but as
it turns out they are strict
like math or gravity
Do you know what your problem is?
poetryYou do not understand passion
So, when it overtakes you,
you feel as if you are crazy
and you became disgusted
in your uncontrol
Then you make up reasons
that you hate yourself
and you sit quietly on a sofa
with the television loud enough
to dull your senses
and you wait for every feeling
that you do not understand
to slip away from you,
not realizing that they
are what could save you
all along
the ant trap
poetryat what point do
you know
that it is poison
that you are
eating?
you stupid bug
that smelled
your way here
as you were born
to do
looking for
something sweet
to take a little
for your
infinitesimal
self
while the lion’s share goes to your master
it was i who put that poison there,
you bastard!
for you and your kin
because it
disturbs me
to see you
i am repulsed
by the
very site
of you
you should know better
than
to be soft
and dumb
and fall for an easy trap
placed
conveniently
within your
reach
on 27
poetryyour bed is broken
and ants crawl across your desk
900 miles and 20 years
compensating for the earth’s spin
you do not move to see them
if something is not in it for you
just like the ants
when you go outside they are
there, too
the sunlight hides
all the terror in the night
that is still around you
peter pan
poetryyou’re not even the shadow
of peter pan
said the old man
as time stood still
in the place where you
wake up and are not sure
if you’re still asleep
and he lifts you
a bloated codfish, you
off the ground with just
the one hand, that
of an old pirate
and the other a hook
while you look around
frantically and feeling helpless and lost because no one
knows you here, anymore
are you
peter pan?
or are you
peter panning?
last night you remember
leaning on the balcony
drunk on whisky
or nostalgia
your childhood dreams crushing
under the weight of you
a bloated codfish, you
so maybe you jumped
or maybe you fell
or maybe you flew
off the balcony
t’ward
the second star to the right
until morning
maybe you woke up a changed
man whom saved his children and
the whole neverland from
the scourge of the adults
the pirates
the hook
are you
peter pan?
or are you
peter panning?
but you fell
and didn’t get up
another apparent suicide
round christmas time
being white is to wish to never have been born at all
poetrybeing white is to wish
to never have been born at all
it is necessary
to apologize
to defer all understanding
of real suffering
being white is to be wrong
and to grovel in apology
to be born a foreigner
bereft of origin
on stolen land
with borrowed time
inheriting bloody tools
meant for laziness
being white is to be guilty
by association
of placing guilt
by assocation
on those guilty
of associating
with your father’s
brown brother
neither of whom
anyone has ever
met.
i am now exactly how i was…
poetryi am now exactly how
i was in 2005
gripping a metal bar
my face flushed
with fear as i rush
toward the horizon
of sandusky
atop other metal bars
that drop you
and pick you up
before you fall
but the difference is
we ride the back
of a falling dinosaur
crying “there must
be more”
all billions of us at once
locked in by nihilistic
tribalistic
denial
you tell me symmetry is
overrated
as i even my bill out
tipping the waiter
finally finding out
face flushed and
terrified
that my death
is the unremarkable
kind
rubatosis
poetryat 12 am you notice the sound
of your own heart beating
teeth rotting out of your head
you decide not to sleep tonight
and get high instead
you’re in love with a dead horse
these glasses cost you a million dollars
what do you do with your own time
but say what’s all been said?
are you your own fucking body?
is your body fucking you?
are you going to waste our fucking time here?
do you know what means what to you?
you make me feel like the bad guy
poetryyou make me feel like the bad guy
like i’m not good enough
you want me to lick your shoes
it’s fucked up that you keep asking
you pretend that it’s not fucked up
that you keep asking
everyone knows it’s fucked up,
but you keep asking
like i’m not good enough
you make me feel like i’m the bad guy
like i’ve still got something to prove
like being a failure isn’t bad enough
you make me feel like the bad guy
and like i’m not up to your standards
but you couldn’t care less about me
and it’s fucked up that you keep asking
for me to lick your shoes
i know that i’m not good enough
to be a friendly fucking robot
and i wish i didn’t care
i wish i didn’t feel like the bad guy
and my life wasn’t all fucked up
i am building a home at the
base of the mountain
because i couldn’t make my way up
please don’t visit me there.
The Ceiling Fan Is On
poetryAs much as I love each waking day
there’s a laying night to match
often empty and these days
clouded with not a star to see
would that I could trade in
all these laying nights for
all the waking nights that
had come before instead
I think we’d both be happier
or I think we’d both be
a little less sad,
at least
And you were ready for me this time
poetryBut your smile and laugh
were as sweet as my memory
had ever over-exaggerated
You were the bullet-point
at the beginning of the word
‘beauty’
You shined bright enough
for me to shade my eyes
but not so bright to blind me
And You were ready to say
what you had to say
when I did just the same
And I’m not sure
that I’ll ever be ready for you
yours is a selfish war
poetryyou rush forward
in simple straight lines
bayonets readied to
receive the deathly gasps
of your fellow country-men
of your enemy
and after
you close your eyes
and bury it sharply
into their chest
you look back
desperately for some type of
approval and see nothing
but a general
atop a horse
yawning
You must be logged in to post a comment.