I hear you humming
childrens’ cartoon themes
A ghost is born x-ing out
calendar days
Here, though, pages flipping back
in a reverse uncoil
time pressing trees back into soil
Evening slips loose its daylight robe
golden descending
February littered still with firs
A glad man singing in holiday light
sad & popular songs
over dropped mating calls
Temptations crashing, falling hammers
‘I wish it would rain’
burning slow like Motown soul
words ‘tween cigarette glow
vexing words ‘neath waxing moon
Above this bible black sky
heaven’s melting on a popsicle stick
wanting like time
prayers answered only when scored upon
god’s or fate’s or etc.’s dartboard
Gutters gushing, apartments weeping with icicle drip
sparks shower from a muffler dragged down a strip
Bandits, passengers
lives chanced among lightning strikes;
the recklessness of water
History is written by those lacking its memory
Tales scripted in hindsight
myths are cracking under their age
Drinking Joni Mitchell under the table
barrels of you
then stumbling home, an apple bed lit
Dawn dutifully sewn to the sky
ferrying stars westward and fading
no line upon the horizon we’re all nearing.
smith intersects johnston atop beacon hill
thirsty with an eyepatch and a $10 bill
diagrammed a solar system
on a tavern napkin
the axis is slipping
bodies in limbo
hearts and limbs akimbo
Sisyphus on a speedtrain
his futility reprieved,
meditations a blur
summer showers
an outdoor ampitheatre
stuck in a honeycomb
your time worn teddybear
and a melting ice cream cone
dimly backlit in dusk
deny this night landing
in a tailored prolonged fuck
emptied fuel
fires extinguished on the sands
thumbing someone’s initials
etched on a zippo
and skipping it into the sea
far above the cities below
apartment lights flickering
SOSes under a sheet
of air conditioned drone
the economy of language
a migration sans return
our slogans are the first to go
the poets soon to follow
~”The devil is in the details”~
opening line, monologues
all end as a howl
dress rehearsals, laundromat
spin cycles; on a turntable, the Faces
smiling actress, the braking trains
screeching deserters’ names
the buzz before it slips into its groove
Tuesday weekend
almost independence day
this will be our year
the arc of infatuation
crimson and clover, chardonnay
rose-tinted lenses
the dead Otis whistle on the dock of the bay
vinyl melts in tenement heatstrokes
the tracks of tears dripping slow like Motown soul
dusk smothers orange magnificence
vague angels facing west
tattooed rainbow wings cross their backs
harboring deferred drifters’ dreams
to Silver Springs, New England
or Amarillo by morning
actually, don’t the plural nights pass slow
pink moon hanging over Los Angeles
The tunnels rumbling below
shake & rattle today’s pay
Pagan angels, Christmas shoppers
toss nickels & quarters our way
on the sunwashed Broome St I play
in a sidewalk brother bluegrass duo
the snare and vocals are mine
backed by our father’s passed-down banjo
sons of the steel valley, every
one & thing split by rivers
patient lovers construct bridges
with the verse-chorus-verse we deliver
with streetlight eyes and high heels
clicking on concrete like pistols
songs for those hearts we don’t yet know
and probably never will
lyrics sketch a supporting
actress for the scene
massage me with your words “______”
& may your lips kiss me clean…
Come on out, if for no other reason than to see that ridiculous outfit I’ll be baring my soul in.
The 10 most popular names for girls, based upon Social Security Administration statistics as of May 2010:
1. Emma
2. Isabella
3. Emily
4. Madison
5. Ava
6. Olivia
7. Sophia
8. Abigail
9. Elizabeth
10. Chloe
…..
Stabbed last night in the guts
Barefoot in a suit colored smoke
Dropping your blue bodega tulips
And awaking with hands clenching
An unscathed midriff, unable to speak
Noon on a Tuesday painted headache grey
1/5 of the office left sick the day before
A collective something airborne
Number me another victim of the temp work war
Sore and slowly pour myself into a
Leonard cohen bath, lethargic and viscous
Like Nyquil consumed just prior
My modern day unemployment jukebox
Croons to Suzanne, and so long, Marianne,
You know that’s no way to say goodbye
This medicine haze, and steam, and thoughts
Like fog upon the lake
Names, these names are lost and foreign today
Names standing like myths, sung by the monoliths
Of before my youth
Where are they today
No glorias coming to the room upstairs,
No marys on the front porch longing for escape
While the wind cries her name
All the girls would love alice
If there were any around these days
Where are the judys, with eyes of blue,
Who should I write this suite to?
Clearly I don’t fit in this apartment tub,
Nude, rubber legs pretzeled, while
Soapy waves crash onto my white belly,
Looking like a sandbar in the keys.
Rosanna & Cecilia picked up
Sweet jane & Ruby Tuesday on the corner
Witchy women and brown eyed girls
Cooking up what must be by now
The 87th way to leave your lover
Diane left jack alone behind
The tastee-freeze, alone with
Visions of Johanna, visions only
And those in my mind, my modern
Day peggy sue, my aim is true
I will pen your song, an ode
To the 21st century American girl
With the interchangeable name
a narrative in verse,
memoir fractured & reset like bone,
but twisted
Broadway, the artery of an island
the length of the hypotenuse is
approximately the same as the
geometric volume of my desires
swelling within
valentine hangovers
metronome hearts frozen midbeat
a generation in pre-spring restlessness
I’m named for a saint
I’ve been told I resemble that
desert island TV time traveler
gonzo leathertramp, his personal
cartography trek begins uptown
cataloging the 1000s of species
of passersby, and compiling a
mixtape commissioned for all
burgeoning romantic imperialists
we all shall soon sing that
heaven is whenever we can get together
On fat tuesday, his south ferry goal
sore shins rested in a revolutionary pub
where a dame with a nosering crochets
while the Irish poet relays sold stories
& haikus
“love conquers all (unfortunately)” he warned
everyone chuckled, half-hearted & uneasy
alas, love is the king of the beasts
a lion parading upon the savannah
of manhattan avenues
& we, love’s prey, lent ignitors on the
sacrificial eve, three sheets sailing
upon the holy water, dabs of ash
between our eyes, and cigarette
smoke within
in the sentences of us, there
rests creatures we long to exorcise;
parenthetical & accesory, but who
would choose life tamed & leashed?
there is no love where there is no
obstacle. our fears become nooses
tightened on the veins we wish to feel
pulsing in another’s contact
& once, she was.
the light of her eyes, shimmering
& wishful, like shopping mall
fountain pennies tossed,
her eyes housed an academy of
angels, ascension, heavenbound inchwise
a man on ash wednesday shakes a
paper cup of dull pennies on
79th and Broadway. I replay
the songs that deliver me elsewhen,
better times past, and pray I can store
your image away ‘til Easter.
the samson reversal..short & sparse & animal..i have not yet begun saving for my million dollar funeral
hold fast to the mantra in ‘the orchids’
the weightless charge of sparks
creates the rouge stars of
a streetlight consumed sky
drink deep the light, daybreak stability
breathe your fears into my mane
rest your head upon my palpitations
stormchaser, shapeshifter
in and out of tune
certain songs, they get so scratched
iinto our souls, goes the line
spin the black circle, the needle
skips on our scars intertwined
They just don’t censor like they used to…
Scuffed stories & cartoonish states of mind
my shoes fray & my head wavers
rEST
transparent charity
cylindrical chambers
splintered museums
Created space, the drawn room
stars align to question
misspelled flags unfurled
misspelled constellations
scribbled patterns of humanity
scanned
artistic overcoats
At some point everyone will be a blur
indistinguishable (I want to witness
indecipherable the ant’s
incoherent masterpiece)
in a constant state of flux
indetermined
intertwined (tortured
incognito souvenirs)
Should I suckle on the pit of Prufrock’s peach,
or let the juices of WCW’s stolen plums dribble down my chin?
I yanked the sweater from the pile
and entered personae reconciled
disguise the day in plaid
the world looks thinner in vertical stripes
darker shades mask pain but show dirt
it’s enchanting the way the light bounces
off of each bathroom tile, though I can’t
say I agree with the placement of that doorstop,
and will someone please halt that 3-toned rhythmic drone?
sprawling webs where is my monolith of noise?
cascading spirals twirling bullseyes spinning
enter (get blurred in) the grey whirlpool
Life can be stacked & bundled or intricately
diagramed step-by-step in chalk
The bible is bluffing
the bodies in mounds are positioned next to this shirt stack
& I can see her underwear (straight flush blush)
a couple of stray bucks
and my pirated guilt will cease
I wish I had the black man’s hat her fragrance still is lingering in the crevices of my fingerprints
expected appearance expected appearance?
a sad man pontificates a bag of kitty litter, a desk of felt. coarse slabs of intrinsic emotion documenting traced interstates on my atlas’d heart
How
can I blind Pinsky’s inward eye?