Poems June 2011

In manner born
more like flowers, less like lions
We apologize for our collective weakness
Which has us second guessing our own worthiness to even pee in your bathroom, or share in your cake

In summer it is always worse
Planes fly over the house
As you drive in
And part of me runs after the plane
yelling
Slow down, I'm coming if just for a moment of peace

Summer is upon us
Like before the deepest sleep
Weary, trudging upstairs

Sleep sleep until fall
And let the sleep bring dreams

The branches
don't move at my passing
All is
quiet animals hiding

A slow tick dribbles out
of the clock
Night and the big bed
are a southern porch at 5pm
Languid and lazy
Like abandoned cars by a river
The mood cut by a flyover jet
A winsome blond alone in a window
A boy wishing he had a dog

Morning birds mutate
Into creatures lurking
'round my car

I rappel down the side of the house in a suit
Thus begins my commute

Once inside I lock the doors
Back out of the driveway mad quickly
Fly past stopped school buses

And dream in the parking lot of a real life that looks like it was shot with Hipstamatic

Do we live this exact way
or to some other
plan?

Does the morning embrace us
and am I a turtle?
Or do we embrace the day
and spin around the world
our world
and are properly mystified
enthralled by everything from
spiders to bill paying?

Lord:
for the sake of more interesting times
let me rediscover who I love
why I work

A slimmer wardrobe would be nice, too

Where the sky meets the ground
Look for my hands
Where the sky meets the ocean
Look for her smile
When the boy runs across a field
Look for the tracks of a pony
And where the little girl's heart goes
Turn it over to find a tear, or a star

By then the wind will have carried our ashes home
In a mist around that old mailbox
And, quietly, music plays
Small - as from a tiny, hidden radio

As the morning breaks like a dish hits the driveway
You can call your friends
To conjour up stories
Of once knowing you long ago.

Yet again
Slow to make tea
Not enough water
Mad at me

One more time
Didn't read your mind
Where's my tea?
Mad at me

To: feet to the fire
What's been doesn't have to be
Vote by walking
Mad at me

To: lady of the lava lamp
Cool your ire
Here's your hatchet
Love,
Mad at me

Mirrors lie if we let them
And steal from us
Bribe and blackmail us

After hours of pleading
Cajoling
With a nose that just won't go away
The person, abandoning hope,
Walks out into traffic
Hit by a car
Lays in ICU languishing
Finally
There's a face transplant,
Which gets very involved, by the way
And a year goes by, and puffy and blind
The world applauds the unveiling on Oprah

There are patterns that cannot be followed
Lines of thoughts scribbled and crabbed
With that full empty head of hair and them big manly shoulders
To wear your dick on your sleeve.
Once, twice, three
Thousands of times I've dumped the ashtray with bits of him in it
Always the next morning it's butts and matches
And tacky orange lipsticks
And stink in my remaining air