Monday, June 29, 2015

LAST BUS LEAVING

You can't return a steak to the kitchen
when you're gnawing on the bone,
but you may already be a winner

skimming the leaves from pools
that used to be the eyes you stared into
until you went blind
beyond a love for cash and silver,
elect me late in the evening
when the phone stays
silent in your pocket,

I am always an out stretched hand
groping for a chin to stroke
and a cheek to slap,

one of these days becomes all of these days
as soon as you and I woke up at the same moment
in different cities, on different coasts,

even the planets weep in numbers that confound
the map makers who cannot give directions to Heaven or Hell,
lost in all places
in between every great thing
that's already over and done with,
the road does not narrow, it vanishes,

the key chain is useless
because the house has collapsed
and the doors are only splinters
of their former resistance.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The new comic books arriving late to the drug store




Back in the day
a week was forever,
a month would
never end ,
and a year was
a trip to the moon,
something we wouldn't
be alive to see
unless everything we woke up
to was only another version
of sleep and celestial sets
on a stage that shifted
with each whim of the heart.

Time for a kid
was an mangy story
that was told between
wars, a hard rock under the
pillow, making life
a long sit in hard seat.

However,
Tuesday and Thursdays
were the days the
drug store put up
they new comic books
on the spinning rack,
World's Finest with
Batman and Superman
in trivial pursuit of
a practical joker in
a top hat who just turned
their home towns into
stinking piles of
ugly cheese,

Aquaman is stranded in the
center of a waterless swimming
pool in a desert town rehab
where he went to dry out
for all that water on the knee
that made his surfing
a glide over a foam of
screams for burgers that
sizzle on a grill
where the beach meets the tide
and becomes a shore thing,

The Fantastic Four
tearing down another section
of Manhattan in their effort
to rid the city of Buildings
that might have housed the
homeless who like wise
might have created industry with
lap tops
and elephantine expectation
that shelter  remaining wits
which help them smile at
invisible gods that feed the soul
large piles of rust-hued rags.

There is nothing better
than Superheroes
and their tantrums,

nothing else in
this time of exploding atolls
and Cuban missiles
makes turns a day
into an hour and
a week into a the hours
from when head hits and rises
from the pillow,
makes a month
a manageable
length of time during
which you can plan
to conquer the world
with the dimes and quarters
you've discovered in cushion cracks
after each of your parents cocktail parties,
aunts uncles and insane friends
who have no coins for
the parking meters that
have caught up their errant sense of where they are,

all this glory in addition to the fact that a year
is only a minor concern, a wonderful conceit,
another twelve months of
making the universe bend to your will and whim
is the best thing you can think of
over a new Flash or Captain America,
your breakfast cereal crackling under the
milk and spoon,

Nothing beats a bag full of Marvels and DCs,
except maybe
your mom's cooking
and your Dad's collection of pipes
and his fully stocked liquor cabinet,
the key to which I stole
and could use
when the comics were read,
the TV was off
and everyone else in the house
vanished into rooms
and snores
that rock the blocks that built
the houses in the shadow of a downtown
odd monsters smash with
a snort and big feet
until I appear in drunk dreams
with a towel wrapped
around my neck
and beat them to a pulp
all while the room spins
and lunch and dinner are lost
on every stick of furniture,

the taste of victory is not what it used to be.