Poems April 2017

Car full of strangers
Where are we going?
Why, down the tracks
Easy answer
But we ride a metaphor
The steps across the gap
From platform to motion
Irrevocable now
And what follows
As inevitable as
Rosedale
Laurelton
Locust Manor
Jamaica
Woodside
Penn Station

Old buddy
I'm melting like a cloud here
or like a dog toy or something
Look at this face in the mirror:
The face that sank a thousand ships!
This little sucky room
This garbage can with nightlight

Shoulda been reincarnated as a tiger
I got a tiger's heart

************

The moon has a cloud over it
and when it's full I can become anything I want:
The tiger
The leaper of mountains
The deer
The bird in the winds

The film out of focus
The camera miss-set
The director is desperate
The guests all upset:
"There's not enough finger food!"
While they empty the trays
The waitress is lost
But there's no script for the play
They're all trapped in it
Actors and audience both
Confused by the plot
It's the story of a ghost
That went on a trip
That turned out quite badly
Stuck on a train
With a horrible family
That spent all its money
To go visit Disney
Discovered the whole thing
Was bullshit and chintzy
Now the director and ghost
Are getting quite drunk
The waitress shipped herself home
In a trunk
The audience leaves
As they always do
And the actors send headshots
Because that's what they do

The phone rings
It's night and
the phone rings
Pick up: hello?
There's breathing
like after someone has been crying
shuddering breaths
Or maybe
It's that wheezing breath that comes after a long hard laugh
A laugh that hurts
Check the number...
!?
It's my number!
Hello?! Hello??
Hello I say: is this a call from my future or my past? Is this a warning or a reminder?

There's no answer.
The breathing is quiet, but someone is still on the line
Pretending
Pretending they're not there!
I fall silent, too
And for a while we breath at each other
My heart does a weird gallop and suddenly
I know it is in sync with the heart on the other end

A thought blooms: this feels like...
Love
This
Feels
Like
Love
And I start to laugh - this is what love is I realize! This is love!
And I laugh for joy, my body aching from it
And then I hear a click

and I think:

they've hung up.

They've hung up? They've hung up! Hung up! And my heart does a strange gallop, as if it stumbled on a loose step and suddenly I know
I know

I know it beats alone

There is a catch in my throat. A blockage... a lump... a chunk of heart or a falling thought lodged there
Alone. Alone again. But now... I know it's forever
Forever
Doesn't something have to be something to be forever? Can nothing be forever?

This is loss
pure loss
A space made for something never to be there again, an alter - a box! An ark of a covenant but it's empty and hollow and the inside is missing and
Nothing is sacred
I start to cry! I'm crying!
Desperate! Desperately!
Cruel! Cruel!
I press buttons all over the phone
Please! Please! I must reconnect! Pick up! Pick up!
A click and a ring:

Hello?

a face
still
the surface of a pond
the twitch at the mouth's corner
a damselfly's touch
while you sip
your coffee
contemplative
lonely
blind to your own footprints that walked you here

Any morning you wake up alive is a hell of a lot better than a morning you wake up dead m'I'right?

It's a simple philosophy but I'm a simple guy
Too simple for the word
Philosophy
Such a big word, and for all the BS and Europeans
It basically says,
Here's what I think about some shit that can't really be thought about
but we can pretend

Here's a good one - try this try this:
Wake up somewhere half-way
Between dead and alive
And choose which
Way you're going to lean
for the rest of the day

Today I'm leaning towards dead
I don't even want fricken' flowers -
just walk by me like
like
like I'm a drab tombstone of
a drab couple that seem
to have done nothing other
than get born and die
and you never knew them

My dear friend
It doesn't end the way you think
Romantic
Heroic
Battling the rising water
The sun leering down
Or a blast then a wind
then cliché images of rusty bikes and swings

It ends cold ass on a couch
Lipitor commercials and QVC
Re-reading picture history books
That just don't give any clues as to why no one visits anymore

Would that this was pop-able
But it's improbable
Because it's invisible
Like a grey never ending sky
With black trees cut out of it
It's a burn-out fabric
Found in a thrift store
Tom behind the counter
And a lilt to his accent - a lilt to everything he does
And you walking on the edge of something
And me holding your little hand, waterbear
Always invisible
Quite possible
So lovable

Hey Fella

Just a quick one
I'm sorry
You're forgiven

All those years ago, when you dropped that dish - that expensive heirloom plate
What grade were you in? Well, never mind. Doesn't matter. I digress.

Digress. Digressed all over the fucking place - Ha! The lost tribes of Israel had a GPS compared.

Whatever. It's about Kintsugi at this point, right? Like the waterbear.

Anyway - that's it for now.

Men like us
Having a healthy breakfast
Healthy bacon
Laughing at that dick Billy Squire
Still pathetic since 1984
What's his net worth these days?

It's the Plantars Fasciitis that makes me so bitter
My soles hurt
So we don't walk much anymore
Men like us

Old men like us

How scared should we be?
Scared to death?
No - we should be scared to life
Jump up and run like hell
Yaws open behind your slow fat ass
So scared you shit out problems like raisins
Fear! Awesome enough to strike
Dread into our personal hearts:
WHAT ARE YOU DOING??
Schnell, man! SCHNELL!
The cancer is coming
So put yourself like a shot
As far down the field as you can
The starting gun - take it in your hand

I will wake alone
in a strange city
before it becomes my home
was out the door
to the streets
to be the first in line at the door
of a new coffee shop
(looking for one that fits)
and holding the door open for people
bodies younger than my body
but not so my spirit

By the fire can be hot
Not warm, not cozy
But hot, burning and sweating
Consider where you lie
Old dog of me

I want to skate across the surface of the soup
And fall into the broth, barley and carrots
Huge mouthfuls - it's so delicious to drown
And choke coughing and spitting out gook
While dying facedown in the bowl

Loneliness you are
A kidder, you smart bastard
Dropper of standards
Fall into something, not love
Dumb regret as one looks back

They will wonder:
How does he live with such a heartbreaking fate!
Truthfully,
There will be no such Romance and Tragedy
There will be the slow grinding down, like a pencil

Bleak morning a few weeks before Christmas
Trees reduced to various sticks
Decorations just wires, plugs and sockets
In a neighborhood of drab old women with thinning hair
Done up for a party and waiting for the dark

Waiting
Some invisible person
Will blow up your balloon

Meanwhile
You dangle from a wire
Bone china in a blizzard

There is no possibility of not work
So I am content to work

There is no possibility of other houses
So I am content to clean

But there are endless possibilities
So I am not content,
and I choose to perch
the bird between barbs
singing in the winter light
the spring the invention
strictly of my song

There is the toaster
And the coffee
And the egg becoming solid

These things happen
And the universe goes on
Collecting the particles it loaned out for 69 years

That magic arrangement
Of luck and energy
That was you

By the fire can be hot
Not warm, not cozy
But hot, burning and sweating
Consider where you lie
Old dog of me

Rain came down all day
Ms Luck visited the house
Sexily gave me a mop
And, her lips puckered, she said:

A) Here, life's a squishy orange

B ) Here, the basement is flooded

C) Trump won the presidency

D) Both A and B, but not C

the island in the sun
the rooftops in the morning
the boys at the bus stop
the girl in the window
the dog at the stoop
the flower he sniffs
picked by the girl
given to the boy
left on the bus
he leaps from a rooftop
on an island
in the sun

Nib Sizes: 0.5, 0.3, 0.05. 0.03 (tiny!), brushpoint
Med. Fine Sharpies (x4)
Copic Double sided C4 (+refill)
Alvin Retrac 0.7mm

They sit in their pocket, waiting
for drawing that seldom happens

They will wonder:
How does he live with such a heartbreaking fate!
Truthfully,
There will be no such Romance and Tragedy
There will be the slow grinding down, like a pencil

For just a moment
One frame of video
I had a good smile
My eyes lit up with delight
To see me handsome for once

In the world of men
we drift by on bicycles
and pile up dishes
It's a cruel catechism to be alone
to be alone in this world

Jealous
Of young parents
In Vinegar Hill
And the decisions
over which they agonize

I've not seen a friend
In years but he tells stories
I figure in them
Somehow I have forgotten
My own life as I lived it

The road this morning
Is straight and the color of the sky
The end vanishes in the clouds
I'm driving it
To my own disappearance

What would be brave
Would have been speaking up
Rather than nodding
Seated at the table
With the bombs going off

A little rice
A lot of wine
A bit of cheese
Taste the talk of the kitchen
The silent clean-up after

If we paint the green with frost
And hideaway every single leaf
Will it pass us by
The way parents know
the children are pretending to sleep?

To cross the gulf

In big boy boot across the snow

And stand at attention

And the father cries while on YouTube

The son hugs the tombstone