just a man
drag off a cigarette smirk
a walking shell game
snake in a can
so backwards in life
one questions
reports of his death
yet
he would crookedly smile
calling it
legend
Category: film
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Ha!! Me, too…
Categories
Abelard and Heloise activism Americana animals Anne Boleyn astrolabe astronomy baseball writing battle beauty belief bibliophilia biology books botany California cartography cemeteries childhood Christmas chronology cinema civility coffee comedy comfort communication confections corsets crime criminal behavior dance death desserts destruction deviance digital art digital photography divinity domestic violence drawing ecology education electoral process English epicuriosity epidemeology Europe fairy tales family fashion fauna feminism festivities fiction film food forensics fucking funerals furniture geneology geography girl stuff good reads government government and a lack thereof gratitude Halloween happiness health Hell history holidays human behavior iconography Jazz journalism kindness kinetics Lent life literature local color love poetry medicine mindfulness mortuary sciences mourning muse museums Music mythology nature non-fiction Ohio ornithology painting pandemics papyrus parenthood parenting Paris performance photography physics poetic theory politics pop culture produce psychology public broadcasting publishing punk puppies reading red hair in the morning, fucker grab a cab relationship studies relationships religious studies reproductive rights rituals romance science science writing seasons self-care self-love sex sexism sexuality shitty shit shooting stars Short Stories slang society sociology sociopathology Southern Gothic Southern Living suicide technology thanatology the arts The British Royal Crown theatre theism theology tomes traditions travel writing Uncategorized Urban Legends vice war waste weddings women words writing
Poof* Take MY water
last night
shots rang out
slicing August’s midnight miasma
a quivering queen city listened
as Cherokee bells
echoed over cobblestones
black swan feathers topping lost hopes
filling horse-drawn funeral carriages
eighteen shot
four dead
blood pooling at the base
seven screaming hills
four shootings in Cincinnati
ninety fatal minutes
national news coverage
backlit red images
of our violent infection
suffer do we
these slings & arrows
whispering sacred prayers
to a god unlistening
please make
every bullet fired
explode into a spray
of evening primroses
Categories
shock jock
there are times
i feel like the only person alive
who feels that
one Bukowski
was enough
when you find the corner
of contentment & vine
chaos comes as a dark-eyed lover
yellow cab splashing
through the crosswalk puddle
leaving you nothing but dripping regrets
and the keys to an apartment building
still burning
Categories
on fire
just for a moment
i want to be
humphrey bogart’s
cigarette
loving him
always felt askew
like watching
lars von trier films
or eating fondue
the twenty-seventh day of december
in a year
we did not share together
.
afterglow of christmas beaming
from the tree
through my scotch-taped-back-together soul
.
tis the season to ache infinitely
.
driving through light strands
of red and yellow traffic
to the art museum upon the hill
.
with the little park beside it
where the son we will never have
took his first wobbly
bear dripping honey grinning steps
.
into your arms as i watched filming
jumping and cooing the way a mother does
over the littlest triumphs
.
but we never were, darling
our lips never touched
.
our breathy kissed love affair
ether white wedding by the sea
raven haired children
are nothing
but a shared
far away dream
.
an assorted pile of glistening
christmas presents
never to be wrapped
accumulating beneath
my tinsel heart
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you’re so much like daddy, be the death of me
my father died in 1984
i haven’t been able to remember his voice since 1986
and the sound of a voice
is the most precious thing to me
but this morning
your twang brought back synapses who longed for three decades to remember
“Daddy loves you, Alicia, be a good girl”
(and i died a thousand deaths in the minutes still ringing after)
and how five minutes later
out the front door
would go all my mother’s clothing
and our Zenith console TV
thank you for that
saddle up, cowboy
give me immortality
you’re so much like daddy
be the death of me