All the trees were dead on Mulberry Street
No one cared
No one noticed
No one recognized the difference
Fingers of wood frozen pointing panicked skywards like knives hung suspended-motion upside down from the ceilings of remote caves.
I give up - her breath was frozen in the midnight air spotlit with white, it turned a different color instantly irradiated as the bombs fell. No one cared. I give up.
And if I could do it all again I would.
She doesn’t want to hear the wheedling carry-on, how I can cover with excuses and false promises the plain absence of love.
She gave up when I did
She gave in when I did
Oh, how she did.
Now I know how it felt
On that bridge in the Ukraine
The night the flakes fell
When it wasn’t scheduled to snow.
Now I know how it felt
When the star landed
In Hiroshima
With its endless heat
And all that glow,
Baby,
Glow.
Stark relief.
Stark relief.
The chance to start again.
Drop the bombs,
Love is dead,
Drop the bombs,
Bombs away.
Jan 17, 2020
Jan 17, 2020 at 5:26 PM UTC
Huddled by the bypass entrance
The sun glared at the Earth's
Asphalt facade, walloping it accordingly
Cameras sat patiently on the
Sign-beams like congregant birds
Waiting to snitch on someone
Behaving out of turn
Those adoring paparazzi
Admonishing, admonishing
Wannabe-rapper-wannabe came crawling
Out of the watering hole
Still parched yet gasping for air
Looking like he'd been swimming,
Looking like he'd been up against a current
That traveled generations wide
"Spare change, anyone,
Spare a quarter, help
Little old me?"
Tsk. - Doors locking
Tsk. - Glass shimmying
"I'm not out here for fun, man"
The whimpering stray
Bitch-slapping the open air
"Well, **** you all, any way"
The drone of throttled engines
Rubber to road and fleet vanishing
He's melting, on the wing of the onramp
He is being drunk whole
"Man, **** you all, any way"
An echo's trace as the ghost ships depart.
Jul 20, 2019
Jul 20, 2019 at 5:09 PM UTC
Gesundheit;
Just looked back over the letters I never sent
There were so many of them
I can always start but seldom finish
Not just innuendo, trust me,
I wish that it were
That would be a better problem to have
Grandfather ambled about,
In some strokes standing as still as a
Clock and waiting for me to
Wind him. I didn't just then,
Too rusted. Peered through the blinds,
Some light spilled in, I sunk further
Under the covers like Nosferatu,
Dracula, accurate.
Demon.
Eventually he left me to
My slumber again but the
Tranquility was disturbed,
****** left the lid to the coffin
Wide open.
Later I shifted about,
Slinking around different eaves,
Trying to disappear
From the frames of any
Francophilic voyeurs,
I can never find them
Though I know they're always there
Later still returning to the
Origin point of that morning
Finding grandmother now occupying
That plot where I bury and unseal and bury again
She asked if she should leave
But I assured her I'd tell her
Were that ever the case
Though I surely wouldn't:
She's sensitive like I am,
She knows all the signs from her youth abroad
Her mother alternating between
Stints of fox and hare in as
Many rapid cycles
of the phases of the moon
Tareyton smoke drifting over
The damp gardens of tea leaves
She read for prophecies always
Served to keep her steady until
They walled her up in a mattress room
Some of us aren't designed for this place
The coveted excuse of genes,
These weaknesses are inherited traits
A return call from the doctor
Too distracted to find a pen
Jul 15, 2019
Jul 15, 2019 at 4:54 PM UTC
They are all the Stonehenge slabs waiting
to topple over, granite foundation
of the cosmic cardhouse.
Expressionless: blank stares
Like the ceiling of the sky with
wall-to-wall cloudless gray
Warmed over with a vague upset -
The sun still tries its damnedest
Underneath the folds somewhere
Some of the grim flock re-picturing
bedspreads they snuck under with
lovers passed on long-since
(Stop, dash, as good as dead
Dash, stop, resume again)
They felt trapped,
they motioned Your Honor for bust-out.
New apartments, new partners,
new town centers eventually
seemed all the same and they
were stricken apathetic:
dead end
New installations of municipal plotting
erected in a Cold War mindframe,
Brutalism put to shame.
Rising above an alma mater
Those who stayed pass by,
Itinerants late-stage en-route
To spiritual tent cities to remain.
Rising above the rest of town
Squinting producing the pitched
Concrete walls, the barbed wire vein
Circulating among borders
Teeth of ******* razorblades.
Another life they’d never graduate
Now all that’s left is ponzi schemes,
billiard hellscapes accented with
deep-discount tobacco flames,
greasy spoons caddy-cornering
shuttered gas stations with their
mummified attendants left
moaning with desire from
beneath the boards:
Broken glass glints on felled horizons
of the ever-present post-industrial plains
What a waste slog on what a waste
What a waste slog on what a waste
Your Honor we request another stay
Your Honor we request another stay
Mar 21, 2019
Mar 21, 2019 at 6:25 PM UTC
Train baring down on the ex-lover
Like a shell casing: silver coffin.
He hasn’t told her yet, still he
Summoned her here. And so
Onto the old meeting-place.
Careless gestures, there follows a
Long walk. Down the trail that
Speaks clearer left undisturbed.
After all, the nature of things.
The light bright though lacking luster
Refracted through the tangled cords
Of ivy, tree limbs -
A festival of dead leaves.
Warmed mud envelops soles
Engorging them like bloodrush
As a half-loving couple trek on.
It feels like autumn when spring comes
As winter is bowing out again.
He feels that way two, three
Times a year; wishing it remained
Taunting circularity, he plods on.
No escape.
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 2:07 PM UTC
Sunkissed girls on the strand
Pastel-clad chirp-chirping; little birds
Cigarette smoldering in hand
From the watcher, below-deck
They adorn the walls of his compartment
In tabloid form.
Tying off the garbage bags,
Plastic encasements framing
Neutral-tone collages of consumption,
Needless consumption. Frivolity. Waste.
Oh, the **** that these tourists throw away.
Towards winter the cheering, the chatter,
The hollering - all dying down as the
Shifting economies of hot light convey
The end of one cycle. Cease all motion
Regathering strength to start all over,
Come back burning brighter, compelling
Renewed faith.
For now, it seems, this may last forever
Gathering up the trash for disposal
Keeping little trinkets as reminders,
Taping to the walls with favorite posters
Closing down, a sign slung up:
Closed for Winter.
Come whatever
May
Mar 10, 2019
Mar 10, 2019 at 2:36 PM UTC
I'd love to love you, but -
How the static used to glimmer
On our in-betweens
You run behind the high buildings
Sleeping off dreams in a stranger's backseat
You walk toe to toe on fountain edges
While the weathered green children,
Stately lions and long-dead Greeks
Spout water to the sky,
Not theirs but channeled as if
Marbled sentences carried out permanently
You look to the happy pairings
Entangled arm in arm like *****
Scuttling up the many streets
Living advertisements for human harmony
You see yourself and me similarly arranged
Then cloud coverage as always
Shadows strike out the flight of fancy
My ghost, the first to leave
You turn your head to sunspots
Silently bereaved
Make it like you haven't seen
You go back to your old haunts
And you ply rationale with drinks
Just as your idols taught you
That's just like you
That's just like me
Nov 28, 2018
Nov 28, 2018 at 11:01 PM UTC
Desired to be more attuned with idols
Their private lives gleaned from
Stills and moving images cutting swaths across
Skyscraping billboards, TV screens
The sides of passing buses
Subway cars headed deeper in,
Further in, beneath
Magazine spreads pulled out for
ad-hoc posters taped and tacked across
the plaster-sputtering suburban drywall paths
Like screams in arctic winds
Many, the young mean-spirited things
Wanting kinship with these enemies
Trying to plot a course to
**** diagonally-up across
their strident wildlife scenes
Attuned with idols riding their
phantom wavelengths with the
maverick assistance of Reds and
water-cut pints of irish whiskey
Then Father comes in proclaiming
to have saved our democracy on
the whim of a lever-pull upon
a municipal voting machine
No interruptions now please
I will direct the favors of my unborn
I am honed in on what really matters:
Hemingway hedonism.
Getting dead with generations
slinking in and out of frame
from before and after
me
Nov 7, 2018
Nov 7, 2018 at 2:25 PM UTC
Metal dogs roaming the freeway
They flick their smoldering biscuits
They sidle up alongside one another
They veer away whining
There was a haze seated on top
Of the freeway as searchlights
Lit the distant plains from behind like
Projector bulbs of past lives
Channeling their idols spewing
Nicotine like sidewalk stoves beneath
Glowing tubes arranged proclaiming
"Life is better at the beach"
They could do this anywhere
But anywhere is better than here
Monotony will **** you early
They don't want to die like this
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 12:45 AM UTC
How long has the porch light been on
When it's off it still buzzes
Insects still hover around in it in rings
The boy, a brother, their friends
Sneaking acts of quiet rebellion after the parents go to bed
They all grow up, things never change
The haze of boredom blanketing the small sports town
Makes the smoke sting better
How could you be unhappy here?
When you come of age:
You can watch the game on every corner
When the time is right:
Pawn shops that discount their engagement rings
When you settle down here:
[You will just like your parents did]
The schools do not have bars or grates across their many windows
How could you be unhappy here?
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 11:37 PM UTC