If she were a song,
no doubt she'd be on vinyl--
stuck in her old ways.
* * *
All too familiar
with the sharp dissonance of
a needle's cycle.
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 8:12 PM UTC
Loose coins sing like cheap nickel-plated wind chimes
in the side compartment as she slams
the car door behind her.
For half a second, I consider getting out after her--
following, so she can give me those petulant puppy dog pupils
she's perfected through persistant practice.
A better plan: I make a face at her back reminiscent of
three "na's" and a pair of "boo's."
As if somehow cosmically aware I've just hit my daily quota of immaturity,
she speaks.
"You know, I just find it funny h--"
but I'm already in reverse.
***
What is it about driving with nothing but stars and trees as companions
that makes a night cruise so much more thought provoking?
Could it be because I can finally hear myself think?
No. I always think out loud anyway.
Maybe it's because they actually seem to listen?
**** you are way too high right now, my guy.*"
"Nah, I'm good, brody."
Okay. I don't even listen to myself;
why would nature be any different?
But there's something.
Picking up speed,
back pushing against the seat,
feeling every imperfection in the road through the chassis--
eyes peeled for parked patrol boys.
Making turns onto streets I have no business on.
If she were here, she'd be giving me one of her looks
instead of standing with her head out the moonroof
as I would if I were passenger with someone driving this fast
in unfamiliar territory.
If she were here, she'd give me **** about the wind tangling her hair
like I won't use it as an excuse to run my fingers through it later.
If she were here, she'd give me **** about my music being
too loud in this minivan heavy neighborhood
like I won't use it as an example why we shouldn't be mad at kids
who do it to us twenty years from now once we've settled down.
If she were here, she'd be a voice of reason.
For whatever reason
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 7:05 PM UTC
Lately, you've become the last place my mind wanders before bed.
Why it would choose such a place is beyond me.
Mar 30, 2016
Mar 30, 2016 at 7:40 PM UTC
The moment time you find
the answers for which you search,
the question changes
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 1:01 PM UTC
There's an old forgotten cemetery
just through the woods we used to pretend was Narnia
when we were young.
Defaced and orphaned, it sleeps.
An early morning fog hovers
lazily atop browning blades of grass.
The headstones not repurposed into gravel and firewood by
bored teens read numbers that speaker much louder
than the names above.
1937-1939.
1943-1944.
1948-1953.
I can see it--
pink, chubby legs stuffed into tiny dress slacks;
soft eyelashes kissed for the last time
before the waves of dirt storm the beach
of a casket much too small to seem real.
***
I wonder if your mother knew
that this place would fade from memory.
That it would dry and shrivel from neglect and indifference.
That you would inspire poetry,
Rowland
*how many baby boomers never bloomed--
their escape from the womb punished too soon
by a God with whom no take backs isn't a rule?*
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 4:27 AM UTC
Tell me something I've heard before...
convince me I'm not dreaming.
Pull me from that forgotten space way back on the top shelf
between the rapidly growing families of dust
and those god awful boxes of stuffing you're saving for Thanksgiving
Lying here--
Can I look at your face while you search my chest for those twin kicks?
I want to memorize every shade in your iris
and color them by number in my head from memory
in case I ever lose the originals
You tell me all you want in life is consistency,
so I'll continue to tell you the lies you want to hear.
I can still feel your palm's pressure on my body;
have you found my heartbeat yet?
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 4:04 AM UTC
the mane of countless
flowers, mutilated in
hopes of finding truth
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 9:41 PM UTC
I've always detested poetry in which
rhyme was thrown about
without reason.
And you truly are poetry
with neither rhyme nor reason.
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 9:36 PM UTC
Let me inspire
your poetry. Rather that,
than your decisions
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 10:43 PM UTC
Most mornings I wake from my sleepless nights
and catch myself particularly deep in shallow thoughts
of impossible futures born of better decisions in a
past that never really seems my own.
Incoherent branches of thought grow and snap
under their own weight;
their fruits sunken with decay before touching
the sands that nurtured them.
In an attempt to brush away the ********
I step into Minerva and her soft tan leather bodice
and stare through the top of her body at the dead stars
whose luminescence have yet to match their
state of existence.
Beautiful, yes, but even this does nothing for my nerve.
Born of immense pressure to endure countless millennia
engulfed in the flame of their own energy in order
to survive…
The thankless agony of bearing light
You know,
you and I could make a star.
I, the invisible pocket of dense gaseous creativity;
you, the insistent force of gravity surrounding me–
allowing me a leap…but only so far.
Your eyes whisper psalms (off key, mind you, but I’d never tell)
to the frozen vacuum my chest cavity houses,
and embroider pillows day and night so that my fall from grace,
however un–or disgraceful, ends safely enough to preserve my body
for science.
A tree outside of Minerva aborts an arm
as a lizard does its tail when threatened, and I wake with a start.
Moving from daydream to daydream remains the only way my mind
will allow the retention of my sanity.
Am I a star or just another tree feeling winter’s pressure?
I sure as **** wouldn’t cut it as a broom at a rodeo
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 10:35 PM UTC