
Category: books
Ha!! Me, too…
Poof* Take MY water

i blame robert frost
his cold methodology
his need to fill disused graveyards with
death’s dazzling white snow glamour
a slow creep crystalline across
an already shattered windshield
i blame robert frost
as i cannot blame
my father
my friend
or an absent god
for them forgetting
they had promises to keep
shock jock
there are times
i feel like the only person alive
who feels that
one Bukowski
was enough
master class
i suppose you could say
i’m one of those people
who has seen more than their
fair share of things
you will certainly find
me adept
in a broad range of topics
from culinary techniques
to obscure music
embalming
comic books
addictive substances
and
lesser know shitty diners
of the northeast
some of it owed to college
and my need
to join the rat race too soon
mostly it was my proclivities
my insistence on taking
a master class
in dating old fucks
what an education
we were four madcaps deep
in a ratskeller bathroom stall
stoned
within boozy historic walls
one of us pissing
three of us smoking
all of us drinking
3 queens and a king holding court
in the men’s room shitter
gods were made
mushroom euphoric
k-hole bar bouncers lamented
upstairs Nagasaki
our glee
our group dynamic pee
a urinal patron
chimed in
with delighted confusion
so
my lips began
to recite a poem
summoned at will
about buying tickets to the show
spoken word,
nay,
spoken turd, i say
he laughed and applauded
on the other side
of our bomb shelter door
in that moment
we
truly lived
My poetry is irreverent, prone to sentimentality, and prurient behavior.
My poetry hates your mother.
My poetry worships humanity.
My poetry stuck a finger in your wedding cake.
My poetry made a blonde girl cry in Starbucks.
My poetry wants to overthrow the government.
My poetry misses her father.
My poetry screwed your sister in the back of a Chevrolet.
My poetry can’t sing, but she can dance, baby.
My poetry took a shit in your designer handbag.
My poetry is piss shiver art.
My poetry laughs too loudly.
My poetry thinks god has run out of excuses.
My poetry weeps for the dying world.
But mostly,
My poetry hopes
you’re enjoying the ride.
i put on some water for tea
then decided to mop the floors
of our new little nest
before the furniture gets carried in
before the rest of our lives happen
Murphy’s Oil Soap
water and sunshine into a bucket
carried through the echoing emptiness
of what will be
over original hardwood
placed there in 1941
i love to clean
the ritual of it
i write in my thoughts as i work
images painting themselves
into spaces around my gentle humming
spreading wet across the grain
seeing hands that mopped this floor
before me
wives husbands
fathers mothers
lovers and
put-upon teenagers
oh this house
has a history
built the year
the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor
it’s all still there
nailed down memories
layers of time entombed in wax
someone stood in that living room and heard
we dropped the bomb
we landed at Normandy
of a flag raised in Iwo-Jima
Kennedy was dead
Vietnam was a lost cause only good
for folded flags being handed to weeping mothers
Nixon was a crook
Reagan and John Lennon had been shot
the Berlin wall had fallen
i heard first steps
crying babies
crying widows
joyous laughter
say cheese
wine glasses clinking together
realizing with a smile
this floor is mine
the foundation of a family
and i will love it
then
the teapot
began to whistle
Tiny Jack
little boy
nine years old, I’d say
leaning on the wall by the
Newberry Medal bookshelf
red Chuck Taylor’s
one foot pulled up
brown hair
tan corduroys ripped at the knee
not-so-white button down shirt
looking like a
tiny Jack
Kerouac
eyes wide
lost in the pages of
A Wrinkle in Time
I smile and think
one day
he’ll be traveling
On the Road