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
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
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
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
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
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