Category: Poetry

The wind blows tonight from out at sea,
and the 20 something with the fake tits
is not for you, but her outfit looks better
even though they feel like sandbags and
make teepees when she sleeps,
and there’s the boy with the Gary Matthews problem
(20 somethings only have too much time on their hands),
and the sand is powder and fails to get hot
even under this unfailing sun, and tomorrow
the tide will not rise or fall and
the frozen cocktails will not fade or melt,
and we will walk down this beach again to some place
named the Whale’s Tale or Jupiter Joe’s or some such thing,
where we will have language struggles with the Slavic waitresses,
with bleached blonde hair and bad acne scars,
whom will not understand what our order
but will think you look like her boyfriend,
at home across another ocean, or just down the beach, we do not know,
and we’ll pretend like life could be like this forever,
and for better or worse we will wish such dreams,
somewhere in this world, could possibly be true,
at least for a few minutes longer.

Tonight I am shaving like my father,
after the shower in my underwear,
briefs to make the experience more authentic,
or just because I refuse to wash clothes until the weekend.
He asks me today if I can just accept
that you are unhappy, to not want
to change you, to realize that I
am powerless with regards to your dilemma(s).
So I play tennis, and sweat through my holy
shirt that I have been wearing for days,
the mosquitos are out and attack my ankles
if I do not move quickly enough.
My shin is scratched to a bloody mess,
but I fixed my car myself, this weekend
I will repair the garbage disposal and
take out the trash and wash the counters.
My shin will likely be healed by then,
and maybe there will be rain,
and I guess I will wash clothes,
and I will buy more soap too.
Before the shave, I walked
across the dangerous tiles, naked and soaked,
and retrieved the last bar from the bulk supply
that I learned from you.
I wish I could clean everything
before my interest goes away.
I always wanted to make you happy.
There are things that cannot be cleaned.
You will never remember to put a new bar
in the shower until you are already in and soaked.

Tonight the ukulele cannot play latin tunes,
the flamenco band has all bedded down in the third wheel,
Chad coddles his daughter who cannot sleep for want of her mother,
and Robert half-sleeps hoping the men will not come again
to steal his money, and take his cigarettes.
The ten dollars from earlier in the day
has been used for one Big Mac, a regular fries,
one bottle of Wild Irish Rose, and a new pack of cigarettes.
The rest was given to a friend who seemed
like he could put it to better use.
All of the beer bottles are empty and
the refrigerator can offer no more.
There is nothing left to say
so you and I sit across the kitchen table
and stare at the wall behind each other’s head.
On the answering machine awaits messages from strange men
trying to take what’s left of the money.
The moon seems full in the sky,
even as it appears a sliver.
The knives are all washed and tucked neatly away.
When I was a child, on nights like this one,
we would run naked through the woods and down
to the little tributary full of crawfish,
and even further through the briars,
torn flesh flapping, down to the lake shore.
The sliver of moon then, no matter how sad,
would prove to me the night sky smiling at us.
We never ran out of things to say back then,
even if I don’t remember any of the conversations now.
The quiet of that wilderness left no room for silence.
Now my legs hurt too much to take that walk.
My tongue is swollen stiff with talking.
I just stare at the wall behind your head,
thinking of the wonders of paneling and paint,
and wonder when you will get up to leave.

It’s storming in Elijay,
and in Antietam the blood
still seeps into the ground,
and in that stormy place the water
will seep, once the storm abates.
And out through my bladder,
and further through the urethra,
the chemical remnants of the medication
will make it into this city’s water supply
and it too will become null.
You see, I am up
to my old tricks again,
falling apart for the night,
wanting something that
I cannot seem to provide myself.
And there is no game I can
play to bring me my heart’s desire,
as its aching is for something
otherworldly and indeterminate
that I thought could be found in others.
Alexander Graham Bell,
creator of vexing things,
beautiful things, things that
bring bad news, frustration and
such great joy.
I am looking at myself
in the mirror now where I find
a stranger just as I did
when I was 11 and first became
estranged from myself.
The battlefield was apparently muddy there,
after days of rain followed by foot traffic,
then the blood came and mixed
with that rainwater, and medicinal salves
for the wounds in the souls of men.
I am trying to conjure spirits
when they want to sleep.
They speak to me long enough
to beg for peace, and
I try not to hear their pleas.
I want those soldiers to rise up
and pity me tonight,
when I should find my way to tomorrow,
when I should just let them have
a well-deserved rest.

Veins of the world reach up to heaven

The weather forecast is ominous
in this city tonight as the
tornadoes are impending and
the sky has given up its full moon.
I have the windows open to either
avoid the crashing of windows
or to feel the storm come inside
to become part of me.
While the maelstrom boils
my heart sits here, content finally,
and wants nothing more than a kind word,
if even that.
I am a transparent eye
through which all things do,
or can, flow unimpeded.
And I can feel the cleansing
spirit of the night, or
this time of the year, as
I ask another questions without
asking that question to you,
and you do not hear the question
or you do, but choose not to answer.
Am I talking to myself? or is there
an echo in this place where I sit alone.
I look on the face of God tonight,
the face of that full moon, and think
of sacrificial stuffed-animal lambs,
and even more, the spiritual awakening.
A coming whole in the middle of a tempest
in a teacup, as I want nothing more, and
I want everything. My mind can pause as
the blood pours over me.
I become washed in that blood.
I feel free. Tomorrow
will be sunshine. I will flash
this crooked smile upward toward you
as you hover there glowing, beautiful, and complete.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…
There is a juggler just down the boardwalk there and he has been doing it for six months or so now. Every day. Every day adding a new item: bowling ball, helium balloon, toaster, ping pong ball.
How he keeps these things in motion. Always just one in the hand, the others in the air. How he keeps the birds above entertained, and the sandal-and-sock-wearing drunk old men, coming out of the casinos, so very enthralled.
At night, when the juggler is home alone, in his attic appartment overlooking the alley where they filmed those fight scenes in Barfly, he sometimes dreams in an Irish accent of drunken perambulations around another city, another time.
His hands finally rest. His arms can luxuriate in cotton, and springs, and sleep.
He dreams of a girl distant and lost now, that once meant something to him, but he can’t remember what, can’t fully remember her. Not a mother, or a lover, just a girl, and a footprint, and a gale blowing up the face of a cliff.
He dreams Hollywood car crash scenes on the rocks below. Or Holden standing there catching VW Squarebacks full of grade-school children.
You would think his muscle memory would be such that even in his sleep he would juggle, but every day it is like learning it all over again. Learning the tricks, how to work the stilts, where to hide the canary. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Where do the ducks go when the lake freezes over? What if instead of keeping them all in the air, he lets them all fall to the ground?
The crowd will disband. There will be no tip. Rent will be hard this month. Things will be broken.
What if all fall to the ground but that weathered baseball from childhood? What if that’s the one he catches as the bowling balls, and beanbags, and World Book Encyclopedias, and diamond rings all fall and shatter or thud? What if, better yet, he throws all of these into the ocean, except the baseball? Never the baseball.
Would the center then hold?
He could sleep for days with it under his pillow, as the drunks and hookers and lights take over the night.