Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Karma

There is a gun
in the kitchen drawer and 
ants in the pantry,

your is husband ,
drunk on the couch, as always,

'though sunshine
expected in the after life

unless it's canceled
and replaced with reruns.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

In fishing stories I read

In fishing stories I read
a slither of histories that peal
drying on the gray wooden deck
and get pried loose by a youngster
who has no idea that
there's anything more important
than finding a dollar
in the street and putting it
in his back pocket, for keeps.
As is, flies buzz around
the lights in bow-tie formations,
poised at a minute in history
when I couldn't do anything else
except watch as they dive bomb
they seem to worship.
Detroit cars and sand dunes
in towns forgotten by interstates
pull down my eyelids
like the whispered fringe of Andrew Wyeth drapery,
wheat fields surrounded by large sky and spectral maps,
someone tonight is in the highest building
on the water front playing cards
as the cow jumps over the moon
and the spoon finds a drawer
to sleep in until a meal appears
as if by a magic that makes
the heart sink.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

An Idea of Fantastic Moonlight


An idea of fantastic moonlight
on the water's wavering surface,
we are concentric in our desires
for the rest of the meal,
it's only during full moons
when the dogs feel like singing
and the trains and trolleys,
running along parallel tracks,
to screech and whistle and yowl
into the black slants of downtown
in the iron grey sheen of lunar gleaning
that makes the arid
and thirsty with desire as all the cars
rattle in line and the steel wheels
grind around the bends of the tracks that
move between buildings of cracked brick
and scarred, grey cement,
cutting through old neighborhoods
where trains are go to and come from
places distant as the face of the moon
rippling and quivering in snaking white lines
from the horizon, over the water,
to the beach and the mirrored hardness
of the sand,
I want to you scratch my back
and rub my neck,
you are saying, turning around in your seat,
your computer screen on a web page decorated with
floral print and drawings of naked men,
there is so much left to write about before deadline,
there's a mountain of data that needs indexing and
some other line of scrutiny, you place a finger
over my lips, you say Listen and there are barking dogs,
car horns and train whistles sounding
in cryptic orchestrations, shrill,
and thirsty among the ashen hues
the full moon brings us,
it's time to let data just pile up
so we can pile on each other
and books fall to the floor
as they would in perfect love stories,

The camera pulls away and floats to the window
to settle on an image of the full moon,
the full moon would be smiling, yes
but no, not that, clouds drift over the orb
and the world loses some of
the grey glow,
yet the sound don't change,
whether trains, dogs, cars stalled on an over pass,
both of us stuck on each other,
noises stuck on the black tarp of evening.
You turn your head,
you cough and recover,
hand at your throat,
the mike buzzes but not before,

You shuffle your poems
and read yet again,
you go on in a room
where everyone has a first line,
I would read about your eyes,
Wide as they are as saucers,
cups that are deep as pans of bread
that come from the oven
and into my heart,
and that's a start, I think,
You fold your hands
on the podium as you read;
you've got this memorized,
yet it all seems extemporized
from the bottom of your heart
which hasn't a bottom at all,
Now some one else reads,
a guy with tattoo of his tongue
across his left cheek, he screeches
to hip- hop clicks of a clock,
but he's young and
not far from done as long as
His homies throw their signs
with fingers that cross a language
of quieting the flutters of the untested heart,
I will read you later, on the phone,
with every court and hand gesture,
you wave goodnight, I know the line,

You'll see me in the funny papers.

Friday, July 15, 2011

NEVER THE SAME

All this time standing here
waiting for a man
to step through his door
to catch the air he couldn't breathe
from his windowless room,
half hours and then hours
of vapor trail and jagged cups of coffee,
my fingers cannot feel

the edge of my papers
through the calluses and gloves,
we'd been experimenting
with pronouns,
the way "I" comes after a catastrophe,
and how "they" are invisible and ubiquitous,
how "we" are strong through the week

of the ugliest possibilities,
the man was late
and so were the buses,
things were never the same.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The old drawers are pulled open

You worship the ground
that took me in full shovel embrace,

you wished me well
as I trekked past
skulls on post
lined up like
road signs
advertising a place
to sleep for the night,

I dreamed of you
while in hotel rooms
in cold cities,
steaming breath
twined with steam from the coffee,

I wrote your name
a hundred times
on stationary paper
in a hand I couldn't read,

We remain
in present tenses
with senses confused
by what where we've been until now,

in photos
drinking cocktails
waving to ourselves
when the old drawers are pulled open.