When the stranger
smiles back,
I know I've gone too far.
Circles under my eyes
contain hours,
midnights,
and bruise my face.
My fingers charge,
tangle,
dance like hooked worms.
****** blood GO!
Pump,
push,
and fleet red channels.
Give me nosebleeds!
Give me tight jaw!
Make me haunt this room,
lost in chemical worlds
like an angel who
***** into hell
for the fun of it.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 11:58 PM UTC
This small talk kills me
when once it was so easy.
I remember when I
was the favorite.
This was before her first car
and sixteenth birthday,
movie dates, weekend sleepovers,
and high school crushes.
This must be how old toys feel,
played out, aged,
traded for the new and bright.
On a sand dune,
we sit shipwrecked,
stranded,and talk carefully
like strangers do about
sea birds pecking for food,
dead jellyfish,
and the innocence of sand castles.
Dark glasses disguise
my quick views of bikinis,
fitness thighs, and smooth dark tans,
mask her sneak peeks
at young muscle, flat stomachs,
and cute boys with fashion haircuts.
She burrows her toes into the sand
to pass the time.
I try to think of jokes
to make her laugh
but no punchlines come.
We share a fancy grilled cheese sandwich,
shy giggles,
and a pink lemonade
before she can no longer hide
the boredom in her eyes.
I know its time to leave.
She reclines her seat back
and sleeps the drive home,
leaving me alone
with miles, empty highways,
and whispers of classic rock
from the radio.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 10:53 PM UTC
I smile when I can
about good news,
sunsets,
the faces babies make
in super markets,
laugh in the evening
with a girl
who laughs back
and smiles over
dinner while we watch television.
In the evening, we sleep
together under blankets,
touch skin,
hold each other
until we both go to work
in the morning.
I work,
pay bills,
earn simple man wages,
enjoy simple man pleasures.
I drink bottle beer and
smoke workingman cigarettes.
Sometimes late at night,
I watch my alarm clock
and feel time is running out.
Other times, I regard the moon tattoo
inked in galaxies of freckles on her shoulder
and listen to her weak snores
while distant sirens moan
like banshees yawning
midnight sorrows
on blank streets.
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 6:29 PM UTC
Trailer park loves are the saddest
and no one knows this more than Jesse.
A young lesbian with no money,
crazy girlfriends,
skimpy furniture,
a hole in her bedroom wall.
She smokes her last cigarette,
smiles over ***** dishes
and unpaid bills.
Tomorrow the power gets turned off
and we will sit by candlelight
laughing in cheap dark.
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 7:22 PM UTC
The discount Daisies
are no longer fresh
and the rot continues
on the dining room table.
Stale stalks stir
week old water
like straw skeletons.
Brittle crowns bend,
slouch,
curve skinny blossoms
from a vase.
Petals fall,
crumbs of yellow
and white
wrinkle like
tired confetti.
Lucky flowers,
they got to know your smile,
surprise,
skin,
and fill your fist
like ripe wands.
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 7:20 PM UTC
I smile when I can
about good news,
sunsets,
the faces babies make
in super markets,
laugh in the evening
with a girl
who laughs back
and smiles over
dinner while we watch television.
In the evening, we sleep
together under blankets,
touch skin,
hold each other
until we both go to work
in the morning.
I work,
pay bills,
earn simple man wages,
enjoy simple man pleasures.
I drink bottle beer and
smoke workingman cigarettes.
Sometimes late at night,
I watch my alarm clock
and feel time is running out.
Other times, I regard the moon tattoo
inked in galaxies of freckles on her shoulder
and listen to her weak snores
while distant sirens moan
like banshees yawning
midnight sorrows
on blank streets.
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 6:17 PM UTC
"Praise the meek
Praise the timid
Praise the unwanted!"
He knows toils,
the street hymns,
secret bungalows
of the tattered,
the terrors
of being invisible.
The sidewalk cracks
under ***** boots
and yields to the weight
of his woes.
A floppy hat crowns
the colored face,
yellow eyes and teeth,
that suffer climates.
Stains scar a gray sweatshirt.
If only they had mouths.
What gospels they would sing!
"This is when I became lost.
This is when I hungered.
When I shivered,
when I bathed in moonlight!"
Tiny radio shrieks
cheap jazz from
worn speakers,
shouting horns and piano.
He is blues
and knows what it's
like to be broken
with nothing but hobo dreams
that few will hear.
He struts,
limps,
shrugs,
SURVIVES!
Faint music and a yellow backpack
fades around the corner
and he looks like a
champion songbird for the forgotten.
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 6:16 PM UTC
Run!
Fly!
A dollar deal
fun for all ages
cartoon wood owl
fights flight,
forsakes ascension,
lingers shallow sky
like a feral flag.
Black disc eyes
startle,
scorn,
rattle plastic sockets.
Faster!
Higher!
Painted plumage surges
fast ripples that
shiver synthetic feathers
and crinkle wind.
Orange streamers whip,
kink,
furl
and twist like crooked ribbons
Out of breath!
Out of shape!
Oiled families point
and laugh,
my stepdaughter blushes,
I gallop like a madman
barefoot,
splash over seashells
and crab holes,
dragging a stubborn symbol
of childhood,
I cannot wrangle
or tame.
The leash has snapped!
My body fails!
Broken nylon falls
like tangled web,
frail,
flimsy ,
my handful of slack
spills like silk
when i trip in sea ****
and accept this refusal
knowing we share
the same fates,
crashing into white sand
bruised, tired,
a folly for sunny strangers.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 10:01 PM UTC
Amanda's skin opens
a red yawn,
empties stuffing,
and bleeds
for the love of her father,
to protest a twenty third birthday,
because God has forgotten her.
This girl is no good at dying.
The razor missed.
The emergency room is serious
with news magazines,
coughing children,
and the panic of families.
All night the hurt comes.
We leave at daybreak,
white gauze strangles
her rip,
and clings to her like a dove
scared of flight.
Jun 7, 2013
Jun 7, 2013 at 7:14 PM UTC
"sitting on the wrong side of heaven
sitting on the wrong side of hell,
sitting on the wrong side of everything"
Two truckers talk miles
weight stations,
and *******
as the barmaid coughs up
a sharp,
wet,
smokers laugh,
at the racist joke
an old man tells
while he rolls up a cigarette
cracks with wrinkles,
and upsets
the heavy middle aged woman
feeding dollars into the slot
of a game machine,
trying to beat her own
high scores.
My draft mug sheds frost
into a soggy napkin and
I notice how useless
everything is.
The empty pool table
with a warped stick on it,
the display of snack food
behind the bar
that look old and dusty
The man coming from the bathroom,
coughing as he passes
a twinkling electronic dartboard,
a powered down
Creature from the Black Lagoon
pinball machine,
and a hi-tech jukebox
that will never be used
because the patrons here
are low-tech with no interest
in the cyber-generation's toys.
Too early for happy hour,
too late to go in for work
We are all just waiting,
killing time,
trying to remember
or trying to forget,
and hiding from the world,
Of course,
we all could be drunks,
losers, the **** that lives
in **** town, but the latter
seems more romantic
and truthful.
Eye of the beholder
I guess.
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 9:55 PM UTC