partly snarly

when i sneer
all the leaves

i've raked up
and pressed

between the pages
where they deserve to rest

just scatter in a rank breeze
and scatter again

along the path and lawns
where i first saw them.

so i rake them again
and i snort some more

and do so until
no one sees the sky.


today's weather is
leafy, partly snarly,

with a 20 percent chance of grief
and night and morning black clouds

that will make the neighborhood
a sight worth seeing


if you were a gnome
under a bridge

loading a gun.

Paragraph Poem

Smoke alarms in the center of the night shift gravity with the shovels full  of noise as the cat knocks its plate of dried meat off the balcony, to the driveway  below,  where helicopters  scour the ground with beams and  pools of light  that scurry up alleys and over parked cars,  there are cans rolling into the streets,  shopping carts  slamming into mail boxes, this is where everyone wants to be,  tight and napping at the beach in a corner room,  over a dumpster,  next to chain smoking neighbors. Nothing to but grumble, shake my head, seek your hand, mumble, light a candle and curse the darkness. 

And just as the night seemed to blink it's last straining Thoughts of fun and give in too its darkness, its warm, heartless interior. 

Parties across the bay, patios that hug shore line, planks that Stick out like chins needing to be slugged with a hand that closes and hardens into the instant weapon that comes in handy as it reaches and unstrings the Japanese paper Lanterns that light up the hard, wet, sand with frantic, dancing light, fireworks, boats on the water, enjoying the music, no one takes tickets in the middle of the bay, there are other things we still aren't done talking about, snore as we might, dream where we may . 

Your news of your mom dying two years ago after the phone was shut off and mail gathered at the front door, in a pile, under the slot, addresses of advertisers selling shares in futures no can see anymore, You hold me and kiss my hand and wonder aloud when the next set of fire works goes off  following the next thing the cat knocks over Complimenting a contrapuntal groan of guitar from stereo on the patio someone was just pushed from to the hard, packed, cold sand below why it seems to be still in the apartment, the air not moving, the dark of the room disturbed only by a Television screen that throbs with images of abstracted passions, sleek icons wet with desire that seems a burden in a time when there is always knowledge, a good guess, of how much time there's left to play with the toys you already have, 

I wonder too, and whistle something that starts off as Charlie Parker and winds up a Sousa March, There are only so many days left that really have nothing to do with Shopping, I say, the cat grunts, spits something up, the fire works stream cross the bay, flames burst from the explosion and engulf the patio deck the rocket it, screams from the balcony, smoke alarms in the middle of the night, screams, electronic bass and rap assuming a burnt tinge that colors the holiday, I kiss you, I wish I was kissing you, wherever you are, there are lives that haven't touched me yet, nothing breaks the calm waters, and no oar violates the lake surface. There is only noise, commotion, a city consuming itself, lurching into the next decade, empty as a can.

THIS THICK SOUP

This is a note about the notes I've written
 concerning the notes you couldn't read
after I passed them on to you in the hallway
between classes or walking past your table
in the lunch room where they were piles of
wax paper, odd meat, bad breath by the current.

My favorite music was accordion metal
with according to guitarists fretting their futures
in commodities they can't scale, is the sort of jamming
that is performed in alleys behind banks while they're robbed
and getaway cars crash after they peel out from between
narrow streets to pile on traffic islands
after they note, still in their ski masks,
the song of the sirens who's only lyric
informs them that George Bailey or the plot
where they'll be buried
wait for them, patient as a vacuum.

Different ways of getting to the same point
is a math problem divided by two coughs and
multiplied with a stuttering attempt to retrace
the footsteps, tire tracks and litter trail
that bring us to the prime number
that makes or breaks how the day eventually turns out,
four cars going four different directions
at an intersection where the traffic lights are out and there are no police around to wave anyone
the right of passage.

How to suck

Watch Miley Cyrus Disguise Herself, Ask People What They Think Of Miley Cyrus:



'via Blog this'

         Jimmy Kimmel Live sent Miley Cyrus, punk-pop twerker and occasional singer, out disguised a  reporter named "Janet" to talk to the man or woman on the street what they thought of this tacky broad, Miley Cyrus. Kimmel, of course, has another on going segment called "Mean Tweets" where famous folks are asked to read the awful things others have written about them. This is a variation on a theme, but it's a smarmy presentation, a cheap laugh. It is, I would hope, the tipping point where audiences have grown weary of Cyrus's self-display and demand that do something worth paying money for.

• Mean Tweets" , where the celebrities themselves read the awful things America and the world says about them, is funny because there is a truly ironic element to it. The ones where the professional actors "get into" the 140 character limit diatribes that castigate them can be subtly funny. It can also humanize them a tad, free of film promotions and internet scandal; I forget who it was, but an actress during a segment read an especially vindictive slight against her and then raised her head afterward, paused for a beat and then said "that's just mean". What was funny here becomes human and reveals that mean things said,no matter who they are directed against, hurt all the same. Miley Cyrus in this bit , though, is just going further in playing her most powerful card in remaining in press, radio, films and social media, which is to be Miley Cyrus, famous for being famous. 
• 
  
• This bit , in effect ( and intent,I suspect) is a mockery of the famously anonymous "man/woman on the street" where there is every sophistication that they are out of the loop, unhip, square, stupid for not being up on Miley or the tacky antics she engages in. "Mean Tweets" at least involves celebrities who are famous for their work over everything else and acts as slight curative for the deluge of celebrity obsessed bile that crowds out a smarter discussion of popular art. Cyrus is becoming like celebrty bile herself, famous for being famously tacky and making her fame the formost part of her public identity. Perhaps she will find another way to remain in the headlines once she stops being percieved as cute in any manner; perhaps she'll go back to work, act, do stage work, write and record songs that can surprise us and makes us thank the lord that the insanity of youth had left her. Something similar happened to Cher when graduated from the relentlessly iirrelevant chains of her Sonny and Cher days and lit out on a film work where she did some memorable work, as in 'Silkwood", "Moonstruck", "Witches of Eastwick","Mask". 
• 
  
• True, her years as respected Hollywood actress were short lived and she re-morphed into a species of professional celebrity shill as she pitched products on cable TV stations, but there is at least a time when she did work even naysayers , or at least a good many of them, had to tip their hats for the fine work done. Not that I really care in the larger scheme of things, but i would hope that if Cyrus ever graduates from being a sideshow freak and makes the transition to the ranks of "working artist" in endeavors intended to be judged on their own terms, that she has a good run and so avoids being a  Danny Bonaduchi for all time.

Unitl it ends

You didn't slam a door
nor get angry with minor yelps
of neighboring dogs
so sad in their kennels,

the streets are covered in leaves
that have curled and turned
many hues of ceasing to be,

there was wind from a window
that kept you cool when
no one was watching,

the phone rings
and it rings again
until it ends,

and silence
is the only thing
there is
to be angry about.

It’s Not Like We Never Smiled Again

It’s not like we never smiled again after the bricks came through the windows and the secrets of the garden had become either dark smoke or something worse and chewed over at that.  There is no pleasure in seeing photos of past lives in present tense neighborhoods, there is the way a chin is caressed by a fingertip slightly familiar both to the touch and to the memory that has fingerprints and scuff marks on  its imagination.

We grinned, rather, turning our collars up to the cold and damp, victorious as battleships rusted an  in shallow waters that are ports that have derricks burning away the stars and turning every flashlight and lamppost glare a swirling corona of diseased aromas that seep through the tarp that separates the refusal to awaken with the sun and the urge to rise from the bed when the mist settles on the lawn and bring flames to the parties that began the year with lost accents and scribbled notes on damp napkins.

d retired

Needless to say, the palms are damp with expectancy, the tongue swells and cannot utter a groan or a wish. And then the screen fluttered, a sudden swerve of lines becoming something like swerves seen on highway signs telling you how typical this road will become in even the longest run-on sentences.

We blame scenery for our hunger and still we see each other thought one of us is not here in the room or any room the other of us has yet walked into. Fading into nothingness is over rated until it happens at last and there is little remaining of what was assumed would always be there but an outline made of mote and mascara.

 The vanishing becomes the light of our eyes blinking quickly to see all there is even faster because the watches and the clocks are set an hour ahead and no one knows what time it really is .

 Why does this take so long? The longer we talk the darker the light becomes, soon every window will be opened and there will be music of marching bands pouring into the opaque neighborhoods that is the hit parade of a movie we saw and mistook for something that happened in this life we shared from opposite places on the map.

For a blue moon

For a blue moon
who wouldn't cut off an arm
and hand crammed
in a coat sleeve
and pant pocket
too tight around the skin and
veins that pop up
like large roots
in old trees,

For a blue moon
you need an eye in each head
and be fast enough
to catch your profile
in each mirror
you walk by
up that hall
that emerges in every dream
you have about walking
through the woods,
the canopy of trees over head
and the light of the house
at the end of the path,
the open window,
the stars over the city,

For a blue moon
we have
lawn chairs
at night
on the lawn
while the fireworks
rattle and boom
in the distance
across the bay,
one chair remains empty
and the other
one of us
intends to sit in some day
depending on
which of us remains
alive
when the eulogies are read.