A summer's Worth of Poetry

Taxes

I push sales
i sink ships
i’m sailing out
mail to the government,
claiming my dependency
declaring i deserve
Pay Back -Bitch.

They lynched the poets
and tied their next to tanks
and dragged war into the
townhouses of middle aged America
Middle class suburban hysteria
A hot flash, A heat wave -tsunami
of yellow ribbons...
Strangling the oak trees
till the sap dripped out thick secrets.
I’ve been washing the stick off my hands ever since.

I’ve been stacking the tombs upon the sofa, postponing soap operas and cartoons till i dig up the remote control from out of the cushions... and that is the greatest metaphor of all.

I push sales
I sink ships
I am docking at the edge of channel 36
excepting, -expecting- that they will take what they take
and they take.
and they take.

Potato days

Three days have turned to one afternoon for comfort.
They’re sitting in a row watching television
Trying to escape the ruckus of their own lives.
All of them have been stood up by sleep
and eat pints of ice cream in self conscious remorse
Sinking into the couch cushions and
buckling down for reruns and hollow laughter.
And despite my best efforts I have sat down beside them.
None of them turned to me till a commercial,
and when they did all that was said from their throats
was just another harsh remark about another uninvited sunrise.

Lisa

Yesterday I painted a thin layer of darkness under her eyes
The oils dried impossibly fast upon her skin on that sunless day
She whispered to me through her canvas face how each expression
Felt more and more real
The greys of her cheeks sunk into the once familiar peachy color
And just before she went to speak, She licked her lips
Swallowed down the maroon of my freshest coat
Paint me young she said, paint me happy
And I gessoed over her eyes in thick unforgiving strokes.

Home Insurance

“I felt she was walking in a circle about me,
turning me end for end,
shaking me quietly, and emptying my pockets
without once moving herself.”

The things my mother never told me flood into the room all at once. The unspoken words of “what now” and “are you ready?” -“are you scared?” soaked the drapes and seeped into the couch. At this point re-upholstering it wouldn’t even be an option. After this, I wasn’t even sure if home insurance could cover this level of damage.

I hoped the baby would have her caramel skin and love the Phillies.
She hoped the baby would make it out alive... Fears I never knew existed were suddenly my whole life.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets, finding not even lint. I had nothing to offer but my mother’s questions, pooling at my ankles, ruining the pergo floors.

End of the Night

The whole building hums this time of year.
It is some off beat song from the early 80’s,
And the neighbors are rocking out in their crocks and jumpers
Waiting for the wrinkles to settle more deeply into their skin.
It is like all other mornings here on spring st.
The cats are looking out the windows
The hallway has been vacuumed twice over.
The newspaper is read front to back before 6 o clock rolls in
With all it’s glory and heat and chirping birds.

But i’m not there right now, Spring st. Has kicked me out again for another night by the creek. I watched the sun slink it’s way up and over south side Bethlehem, searching for me, checking to see if i’ve slept yet.
The evening lent itself to my imagination and poor eye-sight’s wrath. Pretending that the water was filled with snakes or that the ripples are actually the bobbing shoulder-blades of misplaced people.

When I get home I’m 72 again and listening to an old album work it’s way across it’s own aged surface, jumping over the scratches, sliding along the oil of a fingerprint.
And I’m in the kitchen rinsing out coffee mugs humming right along with the building to track 3 on side 2.

Colored Poems

Blue Bills
today,
which has already become
a different day.
I broke
down and turned on the heat.
The grays in my skin
have rose to the surface
on this occasion
of negative weather.
Two degrees below,
“i’m already frozen.”
solid
Bone marrow has
hardened into tomorrow.

Black Coffee
I am reading into this with a new level of depth. I took his words and put them into my morning's
coffee. In mourning I drank in slow painfully
hot gulps. It chard it's way down my throat,
leaving me tasteless and stunned that
even when reading them from the
bottom of the mug, beyond the
few and floating grounds,
they still say the same
thing. They still read
in the same stained
and bitter
tones,
“your mother didn't wake up.”

Orange Life
I’m managing my life time
like this:
delicately holding the lighter to the coal;
checking to make sure the sparks don’t light the spice rack on fire;
blowing it softly till it hits that perfect glowing orange.

Teal Trend
Now, I was one with the
flowingJerseycrowds.
Swelling back with the coming
of a new wave.
Trend.
My knees caught the breeze through
Their ripped
exposures.
My waist sucked itself back to a
Lesser dune.
A former self.
I road the teal seagulls bareback
by my hip bones.
My calf muscles quivered in
a clenched state of denim.
Cali wrap.
straight jacket.
Jeans -of the twenty eleven,
Now.
I was one with the Hollister Girls.

Amen

This is that salted feeling
And I’m walking in the fucking desert
In my jesus shoes,
Picking the rocks out of my soles.

I’m deeply engaged in some bizarre endeavor
Searching for a breeze some ease of air
The only think I know to pray for is to learn to breath
I fill my lungs with sand
and dissolved into the mirage of an American dream
I’m divorced and fat and wearing my shirt un-tucked to church
I’m sweating balls through the sermon and
Licking the salt off my lips after every amen.

Table Cloths; a Dry 2009

Between the first cup of coffee and the next
I had realized the day had already soured, -Black -Burnt -Bitter
I had realized the table cloth was too white.
I had realized he was gone.
Standing back to me at the counter, waiting for toast
The timer clicked impossibly fast.

I tried, desperately, to pull myself up from the fabric in some form of fighting contrast
white on white never looked so forgotten.

I tried, I tried, throwing rainbows over your shoulder to get your attention. To get you to turn. To get you

-But the day was too dry,
and last night was still swaying dangerously between the glowing hot bars
like the bread that just popped up the rushing toaster... Done. Pushed Out. Finished.

I sipped my coffee in silence and dissolved back into the tablecloth.

A Drawer By any other Name

This junk drawer is my vessel
I open it up on week nights and climb on in. Aboard
Amongst gum and paper clips and a roll of three year old scotch tape
We are emigrating to the new world order
Illegal immigrants
Docking on the silverware drawers boarder
The knives are not having it
The big spoons cradle the little ones for comfort
The forks fight for a better view of the intruders
The butter knives are away on vacation again

The paperclips gain entry first
Squeezing into the back corners trying to remain discreet
The scotch tape and I have a harder time
We beg our entry explaining how our drawer has overflown it’s territory and the
Threat of being discarded has grown eminent
It is here, it is now
The tape gets its green card to the butter knives spot and I am shut out.